“But if that was all anybody used it for, then why—”
“Why was it in the compost pile, hidden,” said Lenox impatiently. “I understand the situation, Oates.”
“Apologies, sir.”
Lenox looked up. “No, I apologize. If only it made sense! Either way we must send word along to Bath and Taunton that Captain Musgrave is wanted for questioning, in connection with Mr. Weston’s death.”
Oates’s face had a shadow upon it. “Do you think he did it, the bastard?”
“I think it’s too early to reach any conclusions. We must send our telegrams now, though, even if it means fetching the dispatcher out of bed.”
It was Oates who committed to do this job. Lenox took the knife in his pocket, for safekeeping, bade the constable good night, and — having dismissed the coachman and his horses when they dropped him at Musgrave’s house several hours before — began the walk back to Everley.
When he reached the hall there were still lights on in the rooms of the ground floor. They would have had dinner without him, in all probability. His own hunger had vanished when he saw the knife; even as he took a step now he could feel its weight in his coat pocket swing away from his body and then return with a thump against his hipbone. He didn’t like it.
He found his cousin and his protégé smoking a pipe and a small cigar, respectively, in the large library.
“How do you do, Charles?” said Frederick. “I was on the verge of asking your friend here whether he was much of a hand at cricket. Are you, Lord John?”
“Oh, none at all,” said Dallington cheerfully. “In school I forged my own sick notes.”
“Ah, excellent,” said Frederick, “we can give you to the King’s Arms. They’re a bowler short.”
Dallington looked prepared to object to this recruitment, but Lenox said, rather sharply, “You’ll enjoy it, John.”
Looking as if he doubted that assertion, the young man nevertheless said, “Yes, of course.”
“Do you have a report to make on Fontaine?” asked Lenox.
Now Dallington’s face brightened, exchanging the ease of an after-dinner smoke for a new sharpness. “Yes. Would you like to hear it?”
“Certainly. First, though, I should show you what I found at Musgrave’s.”
He unwrapped his handkerchief, now stained with a faint rust, to reveal the knife. His uncle gasped. “At Musgrave’s? Is that blood?”
“Yes, on both counts.”
Dallington, with the procedurally sound method that Lenox had taught him, used his own handkerchief to turn the knife over and examine it from every angle. “Fingerprints?”
“I am hopeful. I propose to send it to McConnell, in London, along with another little parcel.” He had almost forgotten about the white powder, but patted his breast pocket, took out the bag, and showed it to the men. “I’m rather curious what it was that the kitchen staff fed Mrs. Musgrave every morning and afternoon.”
Frederick was still absorbed by the knife, however. “Fingerprints, you mentioned? What does that mean?”
“It is a technology in its infancy, but quite useful,” said Lenox. “The whorls and ridges of each fingerpad are quite distinctive, from man to man—”
“I once read that Babylonian potters used the impress of their fingers to identify their work,” said Frederick, “but surely Musgrave wouldn’t have pressed his finger against the knife. It isn’t wet clay, either.”
“It doesn’t matter. Herschel’s son has been using them as a means of identification in India for years.”
“John Herschel? The astronomer?”
“Yes. Apparently with careful dusting one may ‘lift’ them, as the terminology has it, from any object. If Musgrave has held this knife, McConnell may be able to tell us. He has a very expensive kit, one of his own design, that he uses. He’s become rather a hobbyist, in fact. Offered the thing to the Metropolitan Police and they declined, with a typical deficit of imagination.”
“Where did you find it?” asked Dallington.
Lenox described the slop bucket and their retreat to the police station. “In the meanwhile Musgrave may be on a ship to Calcutta, for all that we know.”
Frederick frowned. “Perhaps I can rouse the authorities in Bath faster than Constable Oates,” he said. “I have one or two friends there. Will you excuse me, Charles?”
“By all means, though if you lack the energy to—”
“No, not at all,” said Frederick, and indeed he had a steely look in his eye. He tapped the ash out of his pipe, gave it a quick swab with a ball of cotton that had been left on a silver tray nearby for that purpose, and left the room, calling for his coat and his horses.
Dallington and Lenox were left alone.
“Cricket, then?” asked the younger man with a smile.
“I expect you’ll quite enjoy it.”
“Miss Taylor and I had been planning to watch from the sidelines,” he said.
“I would appreciate your playing.”
The compact young lord merely nodded. “Will you hear about Fontaine, then?”
“In fifteen minutes, if you wouldn’t mind. I would ship these things off to McConnell.”
“I’ll return with my notes.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
The library in which Dallington left Lenox was one of the glories of Everley, built at the end of the seventeenth century by a student of Wren’s. It had white plaster walls and a white plaster ceiling, with intricate moldings where they met, and vast, cathedrallike windows, flat at the bottom, where each had a bench, and rounded at the top. Down the center of the library — which was tiled black and white, striking especially in the sunlight — was a long oak table, while mirroring limewood bookcases receded to a fireplace at the end of the room. In these bookcases were treasures: old incunabula still chained to the shelves, folios from the early part of the 1600s, and long leather-bound rows of philosophy, a hobby of Frederick’s father, their bindings well worn.
Dallington and Frederick had been sitting in armchairs by the fireplace; now Lenox took their spot, though not before pouring himself a healthy tot of whisky from the table of bottles nearby. He rang the bell and requested a spoon, some small boxes, and some string, and when they arrived he carefully apportioned a small amount of the powder into two separate parcels, writing a note to go with each, one to Dr. Eastwood, which he would send down in the morning, and one that would travel to London and McConnell. The notes asked if either doctor could identify the powder. He had more faith that his friend would arrive at the answer, but of course Eastwood was closer by.
After he had accomplished this he took the knife and made up a second package for his friend, and included a note, on a piece of blue-bordered Everley writing paper, that said, simply, Fingerprints, urgent. Lenox.
He rang again — for Nash, this time, the butler — and handed him the parcels. When this was just done, Dallington returned to the library. He sat down in the other armchair, eyes on his notes, without as much as a glance at the table of alcohol. Funny, that. Lenox had known men who were saintly fathers and husbands but couldn’t be within fifteen yards of a quarter pot of beer without becoming different creatures, while Dallington, if he had work in front of him, seemed entirely indifferent toward his intermittent vice.
“Where shall I begin?” he asked.
“First of all tell me what you did when you left this morning,” said Lenox.
“Did Oates tell you I sat with Fontaine for a while?”
“No. Did Oates himself let you in?”
“No, he’s got a temporary constable, a man named Hutchinson who has a small farm nearby. Apparently his son can operate the place for a few weeks without much disruption.”