Home by Nightfall

by Charles Finch

  “That’s a bit more difficult to say. If you’ll give me a moment—”

  “Of course, of course.”

  Stallings and Lenox stood in silence as McConnell, with great, great care, examined Stevens by the fading light from the windows. He spent an endless amount of time on each wound; the mayor never flinched, and to Lenox’s untrained eye he looked past rescue, four-fifths dead, closer to walking with his ancestors than to walking in Markethouse again.

  At long last, McConnell neatly redressed Stevens’s wounds, placed a thin sheet over him, and then stepped to the basin in the corner of the room to wash his hands. When that was finished he looked at the two men and nodded toward the door, indicating that they ought to speak away from the patient.

  Once they were in Stallings’s office, McConnell, his face grave, shook his head. “He’ll be gone before nightfall I think.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “He lost too much blood, and it was not a strong constitution to start with—overwork, lack of exercise, alcohol. Dr. Stallings, is that accurate?”

  “I would not have called him more given over to alcohol than other men. A glass of sherry with lunch. Overwork, certainly.”

  “Well—perhaps. I see the signs in a certain venous lethargy. Leave that aside, anyhow, and we can agree that he was singularly ill suited to survive such an attack.”

  “Would he do better in London?” Lenox asked.

  McConnell shook his head. “His whole fate is in his body’s reaction now. That will determine whether he lives or dies. There is nothing more that medical attention can do for him. Thus far the signs are not hopeful.”

  “And what about the attack?”

  “Ah. There I can be more definite.” McConnell ran his hand through his hair, gathering his thoughts. “I’m sure Dr. Stallings observed that the wounds are mostly clustered well below Mr. Stevens’s sternum. There are seven of them. Six are very shallow, one slightly deeper, and all of them were dealt in the same flurry. Lenox, you recall my study of wound patterns in East End stabbing victims. The attacker was right-handed.”

  “Anything else?” asked Lenox, slightly disappointed at this vagueness.

  But McConnell had an arrow remaining in his quiver. “Yes, this: that based on the height, depth, and nature of the wounds, I think it overwhelmingly probable that you are looking for either a woman or a boy.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The country evenings were getting icy now, and as Lenox and McConnell walked from the village back toward Lenox House an hour or so later, both pulled up their collars, shivering when the winds picked up. It was pleasant to stamp their feet on the threshold of Edmund’s house and feel the warmth awaiting them inside; they went straight to the long drawing room, where tea was waiting, and took opposing armchairs next to the hearth. Thawing, they drank their tea in appreciative, sleepy silence, both staring into the lulling light of the wood fire.

  After a few minutes, when they had poured their second cups of tea and woken up slightly, they began to talk, McConnell first. “May I ask how your brother is faring?”

  Lenox shrugged. “I should say, not well, all in all—not well. The case has at least been a distraction.”

  “Poor fellow. Molly was a lovely woman.”

  “Yes, she was. I think if only the boys knew, he might begin to—to look forward, at least a step or two. While they don’t know about their mother, it’s as if it happens again every day.”

  “I understand.”

  The conversation wandered back in the direction of Stevens. Lenox had asked that word be sent if he died, and McConnell, not a man usually given to pessimism, had said on their walk that he would wager the news would beat Edmund back to Lenox House. He hadn’t at all liked the clamminess or pallor of the mayor’s skin.

  They had achieved little after seeing the patient. First, they had gone to see Stevens’s secretary, Miss Harville, at the town hall, only to learn from the mayor’s clerk that she had gone home to rest until the morning. Then they had checked in once more with Clavering, a baleful figure in the pub, still negotiating the aggregated rumors of Markethouse. Hearing nothing new from him, they had returned home to wait for news and for Edmund, in whichever order they came.

  Waller came in and topped off their tea, coughing discreetly when he was done and asking whether they knew how many they might be for dinner.

  “Three,” Lenox replied. “At least, I’m almost sure my brother will be back soon.”

  He was right: Not ten minutes later there was a noise in the front hall, and Edmund, red-cheeked and watery-eyed from riding in the twilight cold, entered.

  There was a minor commotion as the dogs greeted him. He strode forward with a creditable imitation of good cheer to greet McConnell, saying how grateful he was the doctor had come down, how happy he was to see him, inviting him to stay the night, regretting it when McConnell said he could not, expressing his pleasure that at the least he could stay for dinner—his manners still intact even though the spirit had half gone out of him, as Lenox could see more plainly with an outsider present.

  “And Cigar?” said Lenox, as they all settled down.

  “Well, he’s mine again,” said Edmund. “I just rode him home. Damnably cold for my troubles, too. Waller, could I have a whisky?”

  “I’ll have one, too,” said Lenox.

  “And I,” said McConnell.

  “So?” said Lenox as his brother sat down. “Who sold the horse to Tattersall’s?”

  Edmund screwed up his mouth, looking frustrated. “It’s a maddening story. No name. At first they were extremely stiff with me—said they didn’t deal in stolen horses. I took a pretty high hand with them after that, I must say.”

  “Did you tell them that you were a Member of Parliament?”

  “No, I told them I was going to bring in the police. Finally a fellow named Chapman was able to help me. He said that he had bought the horses from an older gentleman, well dressed, with a gray beard, three days ago.”

  “And this person didn’t leave a name?”

  “No. Chapman had the good grace to be embarrassed by that, for of course they usually insist upon a full record of ownership. But that’s a stricter rule in London than here, apparently. Chapman said this fellow was well spoken, and he told them he had won the horses in a bet but didn’t want to take the trouble of housing them, nor did he want the publicity of having his name attached to them. In the end they struck a handshake deal. Chapman told me that they only paid twenty-five pounds for the pair, by way of explanation. Cash.”

  Cigar and Daisy were thoroughbreds, together worth probably close to a hundred and thirty pounds at the right auction. Twenty-five pounds for the pair would have been a hard bargain for any horse trader to resist. “How much did they sell them for?” asked McConnell.

  “Cigar for forty-five, just as Flint said, and Daisy for sixty, plus fees. A young fellow from Hampshire with a string of ponies bought her, apparently, with an eye toward amateur racing. Criminally cheap. He’s in county for the hunt.”

  “She has the pace for racing,” Lenox said.

  “Yes, true. Anyhow, Flint’s money is going back to him, and Daisy should be here tomorrow morning, with any luck. They’re very scared I’m going to write to the Times, or the London office, or the police. Chapman was full of apologies and promises by the end. I did let it slip who I was.”

  “A gray-whiskered man, well dressed,” said Lenox thoughtfully. “They didn’t give you any other detail?”

  “A local accent,” said Edmund. “I was sure to ask about that.”

  “Well done!” said Lenox, and his brother looked briefly pleased. “And his boots? A walking stick? How did he arrive, how did he leave?”

  Edmund’s face fell slightly. “I don’t know. Chapman said to wire him with any questions, however, at their expense. I’ll ask.”

  “Good,” said Lenox.

  “And you two?” asked Edmund. “Did you see Stevens? How is he?”


  Lenox described what they had done in some detail, then said, “But tell us, Ed, about going back to the gamekeeper’s cottage. As I was walking in from the station, I met Adelaide Snow, and she told me that you went over it with a fine-toothed comb. I’m curious what you found.”

  Just as Edmund was about to tell them, Waller came in and said that dinner awaited—and though their whisky was only half gone, McConnell had an eye on the clock, since he hoped to catch the 8:08 train back to London, so they went into the dining room.

  That also gave Edmund the chance to find the notes he had jotted down when he inspected the cottage, which he read over as they sat down to a first course of a rich onion soup, made with ingredients from the house’s gardens, topped with thick slices of local cheese. It was hearty enough that a spoon would stand up in it, and eaten along with a cold glass of Tokay, the white Hungarian wine Edmund loved best, it was wonderfully delicious, warming.

  As they ate, Lenox’s older brother described in detail what he had found at the house, including much that Lenox himself had seen—the remnants of a plucked chicken, the makeshift bed, the small decorative touches that suggested an inhabitation of at least intermediate length. These details were new to McConnell, of course, and for his part, Lenox always liked hearing details twice when he was investigating a crime.

  Two new ones struck him. The first was that a small hand-drawn map of Markethouse had been tucked into one of the books. “Was the town hall on it?” asked Lenox.

  Edmund nodded. “Not only that, but Potbelly Lane, which is not quite at the very center of town.”

  “Where is the map now? I should like to see it.”

  “With Clavering.”

  “I’ll look at it tomorrow, then,” said Lenox, frowning to himself.

  The other detail was that along with the stolen food there was a slab of butter and several sprigs of herb—mint, marjoram, and rosemary were the ones Edmund had identified—which again suggested both a longer inhabitation, and a certain sophistication, of a piece with the novels and the bed.

  As the footmen cleared the soup and brought out plates of steak, smothered with roasted potatoes, McConnell said, “Still, I would prefer dining here,” and the brothers laughed.

  “There’s one thing that puzzles me more than the others,” Lenox said. “I understand all the food, our horses, the blankets, even the books. But I don’t understand the dog.”

  “Nor do I,” said Edmund.

  “Perhaps it was a watchdog,” Lenox said. “But then, it never barked at us. And it was surely the thought of the moment to have it act as a decoy, rather than a premeditated idea.”

  They discussed the dog for some time then, sipping the claret Waller had opened for them to follow the Tokay, the disappearance of the last evening light in the windows making the candlelit family dining room of Lenox’s youth close, intimate, friendly. He asked if Edmund could get hold of a decent scenting dog, and he said he could, down at the Allenby farm, their excellent brindle pointer. Lenox suggested they put his skills to the test the next morning.

  When McConnell left at a quarter to eight in the dogcart, both Edmund and Charles stood in the doorway, waving good-bye to him and asking him to pass their love to Toto and Georgianna.

  After he was out of sight, they turned back inside and immediately started discussing the case again, even before they had reached the brandy.

  It was good to see Edmund animated; and for that reason, Lenox said, when perhaps he might have kept it to himself, for it was a slender thought, “Gray beard, you know. Well dressed. Does it sound like anyone to you?”

  “The Duke of Epping.”

  Lenox shook his head. “No, I’m being serious.”

  “Well, who?”

  “To me it sounds rather like Arthur Hadley.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Lenox had a favorite piece of public wit from his many years of life in London. It had appeared at the north end of Westminster Abbey, which had one of the only walls in the entire city that was not covered in handbills—those familiar bright papers pasted up all over, advertisements for steamships, patent medicines, exhibitions, notices of public auction, whole magazines laid out to read page by page.

  The men who posted these handbills were a familiar sight. All of them wore similar fantastically garish fustian jackets, with cavernous pockets to hold their bills, their pots of paste, their long collapsible sticks with rollers at the end.

  The abbey was exempt from their energies only because of a large, forbidding placard that read BILL STICKERS WILL BE PROSECUTED in bold lettering. One day, passing nearby, Lenox had noticed an acquaintance—a usually somber fellow, a naval officer named Wilson—standing at the wall, grinning. Lenox had greeted him and asked what was so entertaining, and Wilson had pointed at the wall, where, underneath the placard, some anonymous genius had written Bill Stickers is innocent! Lenox had stared at this for a moment and then burst into laughter, and every time he saw Wilson now they smiled before they spoke, remembering the joke.

  The next morning, Lenox woke up smiling, with this joke in his mind. He had been trying to remember all of his favorite ones for Edmund—most of which would elicit a groan from his brother, but a smile, too.

  This one was good, and Lenox went downstairs thinking about how he would phrase it for maximum effect. But when he came into the breakfast room, he found that his brother was gone.

  “Out on a walk again?” he said to Waller, who was carefully laying strips of kippered herring on a tray.

  “Yes, sir, out on a walk.”

  Lenox cursed. He didn’t know why this sudden uncontrollable passion for morning walks had arisen in his brother, and they had agreed the night before that they would make an early start to interview Miss Harville, Stevens’s secretary, before visiting Clavering to check on his progress. As soon as the morning frost burned off, he also wanted to take the pointer out and look for Sandy, Mickelson’s dog.

  For twenty minutes he felt modestly irritated, as he ate and read the newspaper, and then in the next twenty minutes he began to grow more seriously vexed. This was a murder investigation, not a boys’ adventure. By the time he had waited an hour and ten minutes, he was full of utterly righteous indignation.

  Edmund came in with red cheeks. “Hullo,” he said.

  “Did you leave the dog in the stables?” asked Lenox.

  Edmund was reading a letter and looked up from it only after a beat, distracted. “The dog?”

  “The Allenby pointer—the one I asked you to borrow.”

  “Oh, dash it, I forgot. I’ll have Rutherford send someone.”

  “Just a leisurely walk, then?” asked Lenox.

  “Why, what’s wrong?” said Edmund.

  He was pouring himself a cup of tea, as if they had all the time in the world, and Lenox said coldly, “It’s nearly half past nine.”

  Edmund glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was actually about ten past the hour, but he didn’t mention it—a piece of discretion that only annoyed Lenox further, in his current mood. “I’m sorry,” Edmund said. “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll be with you.”

  “Where in creation do you keep going every morning?”

  Edmund frowned and was silent for a moment, as if contemplating how to answer. Then he said, “Do you recall that one of my tenants, Martha Coxe, came to the house on the evening you arrived?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “Apparently Molly was teaching three of the women in the Coxe household to read, the mother and the two daughters. I have undertaken to continue the lessons.”

  In a different mood, Lenox would have answered differently—but he was put out, and he made a scoffing noise. “Is that right?”

  “Yes,” said Edmund.

  “And you imagine that to be a good use of the time of a person engaged upon a piece of detective work—not to mention a Member of the Parliament of Great Britain.”

  “I do. Why should it not be?”

  “Teaching a par
cel of women how to read? Your time is more valuable than that, Edmund, and if yours is not, mine certainly is.”

  Edmund reddened. “And what was Molly’s time, may I ask you, valueless?”

  “Of course not, don’t twist—”

  “Valueless, simply because she did not sit in the greatest assemblage of fools in the history of the British Empire? Am I to consider yet another blue book on coal mining in preference to teaching these women, and leave them halfway through the alphabet? Do you call that honorable? Parliament!”

  “Then there’s the case.”

  “The case! It can wait half an hour.”

  “That is not an assessment you are qualified to make. But more than that, how can you be so obtuse? You have a dozen duties more pressing than—you have the estate, that on its own, you know, is enough!”

  “The estate,” said Edmund flatly.

  “Your time—”

  Suddenly Lenox saw that Edmund was close to vibrating with fury. He realized, a moment too late, that he wasn’t even angry at his brother anymore. He tried to go on, but Edmund said, in a very distant voice, “I shall conduct my personal affairs as I see fit, Charles. I do not recall telling you that it was unwise to go into trade, though neither of us has to stretch far to imagine how our mother would have felt to learn that you had.”

  “Edmund—”

  “I shall teach the horses to read if it pleases me. I invite you to disengage yourself from any interest in how I choose to spend my time immediately.”

  “Edmund, I—”

  “Please feel free to carry on the investigation without me. Good morning.”

  He left. When he had gone, Lenox sat back in his chair, thoroughly dissatisfied with his behavior, Edmund’s too, and conscious as well of that word, “trade,” still alive in the room. For another ten minutes he sat and picked at the toast on his plate, dipping it in jam and eating it absentmindedly.

  When he got up, he thought he might go and apologize. He stood there, indecisively. He noticed the letter Edmund had been reading when he had come in, the one that had distracted him. It was on the piano, atop its torn envelope. Lenox read it.