Everley is quiet since you left — Plumbley, too — and has reminded me why I feel, as you know, unequal to the ongoing task of her maintenance. In September I planted a line of spruce saplings along the west portico, against the better judgment of Rodgers — and now they have all but one of them died, which I view as final and irrefragable evidence that I have entered my senescence. It is a period I think better spent in a cottage in the village, a spacious and light-filled cottage, none of your dank rabbit holes, but a cottage nevertheless, and I therefore propose to come up to London on Monday next to see Wendell and discuss the transfer of ownership with him. There are three or six or even eight months of work left for me to do before I am satisfied that I have truly done my all by this house I have loved so much, and then it shall be his. I hope I may come to see you upon my arrival, however, as there are one or two subjects I should like to discuss before I see him.
Funny how quickly one grew accustomed to Jane, Sophia, and Miss Taylor! The house feels empty indeed. Return at any time the four of you please; and indeed if you do you shall have the best of Plumbley’s hospitality, being rather more of a grandee than they realized when they had you in their grip.
Ever,
Frederick Ponsonby
“Well?” said Charles.
Edmund shrugged. “If he feels himself unequal to the work—”
“Does it not sadden you? To think of — well, of mother, I suppose? It is very like the end of an era.”
“Eras go on ending,” said Edmund gently. “It is the sign of a small—”
“A small mind to deplore change, yes,” said Lenox crossly. “We had the same father, you know.”
Edmund smiled at his brother, whose brooding eyes were turned toward the fire. “My primary thought on the matter—”
The world would have to wait for Sir Edmund Lenox’s primary thought on the matter, however, because just then they heard the front door open. “Who could that be?” wondered Charles.
“Will it not be Jane?” Edmund asked.
Lenox said he thought not, that she was out visiting for the afternoon, that it was more probably Graham or someone unexpected, but within fifteen seconds the door of the study had made a liar of him. Lady Jane came in, surrounded by shopping bags, her bright smile and kind eyes alighting on each brother in turn.
“You wouldn’t believe the weather — porpoises in Piccadilly — I saw Meredith Hance and thought her nose might fall off it was so red. That’s terrible to say, Edmund I’m sorry. Oh, but Sophie! She must see her uncle! Miss Taylor! They are just in the hall.”
“Was she quite warm?” said Charles.
“It is hard to remember whether she wore seventy-eight layers of wool or seventy-nine, but at any rate, yes, I imagine she was.”
The governess, the red in her cheeks making her look rather prettier than usual, came in with Sophia, and then, the other three adults descending upon the child at once, made her safely to the sofa and sat sipping a very welcome cup of tea.
“I have clean forgotten,” said Jane, when at last they looked up from Sophia. “Edmund, we saw Molly.”
“Did you? In the park?”
“Yes. She invited us to supper tonight.”
“I hope you’ll come.”
“Certainly we shall. I do not think either of us is bespoken, Charles?”
“Lord Furze,” said Lenox shortly, and with a petulant sigh returned to the tottering stacks of paperwork upon his desk.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
By great fortune Dallington had almost immediately, upon returning to London, received another case. His health was fully intact again — that remarkable resilience of the young — and while he sent Lenox small notes, apprising him of new facts as they arose, the two men did not see each other after their return from Everley.
When he was announced as a visitor that Saturday morning, Lenox assumed it was because the young lord wished to consult with him about the case. It was a theft of some important blueprints from a clockmaker and watchmaker in Clerkenwell. Because there was no evidence of forced entry Scotland Yard refused to make an investigation, but Inspector Jenkins, returned from his foray into the ginsoaked parts of Belgium, had passed the matter onto Dallington.
“Clerkenwell?” he asked when Dallington came in.
The young man was holding a clutch of flowers. “For Lady Jane,” he said, though Lenox wondered, rather to his own surprise, whether they had been in fact intended for Miss Taylor. “And about Clerkenwell — no, that is finished. It was Aguetti.”
“The watchmaker next door?”
“Yes. Not a matter of professional interest, either, for he is far and away the better craftsman. No, Thomson was carrying on with his wife, and Aguetti wished to harm his business.”
“How is it being handled?”
“By the Yard, you mean? I have not passed it to them. Aguetti made restitution of the papers and apologized, Thomson apologized too, and they are in the Coach and Horses, drinking pint after pint of ale. Mrs. Aguetti is in a fine pique, being ignored as she is — both men have sworn off of her.”
Lenox smiled. “Just a social call, then?”
“No — but where is my brain! It is this!” From his back pocket Dallington produced a telegram. “It is from Archer — have you not received it?”
“No.”
“Then I daresay yours will be coming soon, if it has not already.”
Lenox rang the bell and asked if there had been any telegrams; in fact there had been one while he and Lady Jane were at a champagne breakfast for the First Lord of the Navy, whose daughter had been married, but it had been forgotten, perhaps mislaid, the footman was most terribly sorry, it would never happen again — at any rate here it was.
“Shall I read it or will you tell me?”
“It’s Musgrave. He was run to ground. Among other things they found him with six sea chests of false coin.”
Lenox, who had stood to receive the telegram, stopped where he was, looking agape at Dallington. “Where?” he said.
“Read the telegram, if you like.”
Archer did offer a location — Musgrave had been hidden away at a rented estate in Surrey — but little more, promising only that he would write again should further information make itself available.
Dallington had taken a seat upon his sofa and was snipping the end of a short cigar. “Odd, no?”
Lenox still stood. “I’m a fool.”
“Come now.”
“Really I am. It is the clearest conspiracy I ever saw. Musgrave had the machine, but Bath had obviously become too hot to hold him, and he wanted to apportion the risk to somebody else. Wells could take that on, and had both space in his shop and the opportunity for distribution, as well as being above suspicion. Having poor Oates on their side squared away any chance of local detection.”
“You stopped Wells and Oates.”
“Not before Weston died.” Lenox slumped down into his chair. “From the start I should have asked myself how Wells had made criminal contacts, a country grain merchant. Clearly it was Musgrave who came to him. For that matter, I should also have asked myself why Musgrave ever moved to Plumbley.”
“For his wife, was it not?”
“I imagine his wife would have been perfectly content to live in Bath. I also think Musgrave needed to leave; that perhaps his wife introduced him to Wells. I wonder whether she was complicit. Anyhow their argument on the town green will not have been about her, but about the money.”