“She is receiving excellent care.”
“From Dr. Eastwood?”
“From a doctor who comes from Bath. None of these countrified barbers when it comes to the health of my wife.”
“May I see her?” Lenox asked.
“Certainly not.”
“If I were to return with Constable Oates, he—”
“Was she seen upon the town green? Is she a suspect?”
“No.”
Musgrave’s face was dangerously composed. “In that case, nothing short of legal compulsion shall grant you an audience with her.”
Lenox had asked the questions he wished to ask. Now he risked a gambit of the kind that Scotland Yard might approve. “You keep her a prisoner, from what I understand?”
Musgrave stood up, his rage near to overflowing. “You should be ashamed to repeat the lazy gossip of stupid women, Mr. Lenox. You will see yourself out.” He strode to the door, Cincinnatus on his heels — such a pompous name for a dog! — before turning back. He was shaking. “Would that it were a different age, that I might see you at dawn tomorrow with a pistol in hand,” he said, and then left the room.
Lenox, quite unperturbed — he had been glared at by men with a dozen murders to their credit, in gin mills east of the Isle of Dogs, so it was unlikely that Musgrave’s genteel ire would much frighten him — sat for some moments, considering the interview.
This man was certainly capable of violence. He had been in the military and he had a temper, but why would he have killed Weston? Were his answers, straightforward and occlusive at once, evidence of any larger concealment?
At length Lenox stood, pocketing a couple of the macaroons from the plate on the table, waved good-bye to the cherubim, and walked out.
There was a snarl of inconsequential, linking facts that he felt confident lay at the heart of the case. The question now was to order them for himself, if possible to add to them, and to reduce them, finally, to their common element. He was closing in, he knew. It vexed him that for the moment he could not see how, or if, Musgrave fit into it all.
Outside the rain had intensified and steadied, and he regretted not bringing an umbrella. He hunched further under his coat, lit a small cigar, and puffed it meditatively as he began the short walk back to town.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Lenox had no real plan, now, except for a period of calm reflection — perhaps he would have lunch at one of the town’s public houses — but found himself walking in the direction of the village green.
Frederick was there, outside of Fripp’s shop. Honoring Lenox’s request, he had arranged for a further canvass of the houses that had a view of where the crime had taken place — there were men knocking on doors. It was obvious from his face, distracted and with a dissatisfied clench around the eyes, that his efforts thus far had been unavailing.
“Charles,” he said. “Oates is speaking to Carmody now.”
“Excellent. I have a question to add to his.”
“Was Musgrave a help?”
“I don’t know, yet. Have you turned up anything here?”
“Not yet. I spoke to Jones, at the Royal Oak, however, and asked him to direct any coach drivers who come along toward me, before they leave again.”
“Have there been any yet?”
“No, but there should be a flurry soon. I mean to have lunch there, so that I may catch them.”
“I was about to do the same — with regard to lunch, I mean.”
“Then we shall go together.”
A small, murmuring crowd had gathered on the steps of the church, Lenox noticed. He shot a quizzical look at Frederick.
“Gossip,” the older man said. “Nothing more.”
“Still, gossip may be useful.”
“Oh?”
“I’m going to speak to them, and then to Carmody. Shall I see you in the Royal Oak in half an hour?”
“Half an hour,” Frederick responded with a nod.
Fripp was standing among the people on the church steps. As he walked toward them Lenox heard the name Musgrave spoken.
“How do you do, Mr. Fripp?” said Lenox.
“Charlie. Do you know these ladies, my boy?”
“I don’t.”
Fripp said a flurry of names, which Lenox immediately forgot. “What are you speaking about?” he asked.
“These women are afraid, unfrortunately,” said Fripp. “They feel—”
“Last night I locked my front door for the first time in fourteen years,” said a stout middle-aged woman, a child braced under each arm.
“Why did you lock it back then?” Lenox asked, curious.
“Rabid badger roaming the town,” the woman answered immediately.
There was a chorus of gratified concurrence at this recollection. Lenox just managed to stop himself from asking what the difference between a locked door and an unlocked door was to a badger. “You suspect Musgrave?”
All of them did, vocally. “Why would he want to harm Mr. Weston, though?” Lenox asked.
“Mischief-making,” said a woman, thin as a flagpole and with a great beak of a nose emerging from a tightly tied bonnet. “And what he’s done to that poor girl I shudder to think. As was Cat Scales, I mean.”
“His wife,” Lenox said.
“That’s her.”
Wells’s grain shop was very close by, and so after Lenox had doffed his hat he stopped in. The shop was empty, its fine bronze weights and barrels of grain awaiting their next customer. Wells himself stood behind the counter, jotting in a ledger. He looked up as the door opened.
“Mr. Lenox,” he said. “Have you found my clock yet?”
“Soon, I hope. I wanted a quick word.”
Wells laid his pencil down. “By all means.”
“I take it you saw nothing from the shop, late last night?”
Wells sighed and shook his head. “I was home several hours before Weston died. I dearly wish that I had been here.”
“You live …”
“Three streets south, on the corner of Maiden Lane. A large white house. My servants”—this word delivered with an inflection of pride—“can attest to my presence there yesterday evening. I was up rather late, past midnight, working on my books, and at least two of them stayed up with me, fetching drinks, managing the fire. They’ll tell you I never left my study.”
“Is anyone else in the village accustomed to passing time here in the evenings?”
Wells narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “Perhaps the vicar,” he said. “Or his curate. They have keys to the church at any rate.”
Lenox paused, now, uncertain of how to ask what he wished to ask next. At last, he said, “Your incident with Captain Musgrave—”
“Yes?”
“Was it possible as you saw him to gather anything of Mrs. Musgrave’s mental state?”
Wells shrugged. “You might say as she seemed unhappy — but then with tales passing around the town like ’flu, it leads to an active imagination.”
“Confidentially, what have you heard of her mental state?”
“Nothing of her mental state. Only that she is unhappy — fearfully unhappy — and kept captive in that house.” Wells looked troubled, and Lenox remembered Frederick telling him that Wells had been one of Catherine Scales’s suitors, before she met Musgrave.
He wondered, as well, if he was duty bound to investigate that scream. Perhaps he would return with Oates.
For now, though, he bade Wells good day, lifted his hat to Fripp and the women on the church steps — still yattering away, to Musgrave’s bedevilment — and walked to Carmody’s. Carmody provided Lenox with a great deal of unasked-for information about the gentlemen in Covent Garden, as a sort of tax upon entering his home, before finally condescending to hear his question.
“Which way was Captain Musgrave walking when you saw him at eleven thirty — toward Yew Walk or home, toward Church Lane?”