"But I put everything into my letter, sir."
Hoare shook his head. "No, Mrs. Graves. That would be impossible, even for a professional observer. For instance, you did not tell me the time of night that the shot awakened you. How was your husband dressed? How was his office lit? And so forth."
He stopped to rest his whisper. "In fact," he continued, "would it disturb you to reenact the event itself, at the place where it occurred?"
"If by 'disturb' you mean 'arouse painful memories,' Mr. Hoare, not in the least. My memories of my husband transcend place."
She seemed to choke, recovered, and went on. "And I am not afraid of ghosts. Besides, I am sure that Simon's ghost, if there were such a thing, would be a gentle one… to me, at least. So let us proceed as you ask." She rose from her tuffet and began to lead the way into the front hall.
"Do you wish us to commence in my bedroom," she asked over her shoulder, "where, of course, the shot awakened me? Or will it be sufficient for me to begin at the foot of the stairs?"
Hoare felt strangely disturbed at the idea of seeing the lady's chamber. "We can begin here," he whispered.
"Very well. You asked me what time of the night it was. I can only estimate it, for while this clock under the stairs must have chimed, I fear I was too distracted to notice it. It rang four just as Sir Thomas entered, so I would judge that it was about three in the morning."
Hoare nodded.
"As I believe I wrote in my letter," she went on, "I was awakened by a shot. With it came the sound of something below me, falling. When my husband is working below stairs, I keep a candle burning, so that I will not need to grope about for flint and steel if an emergency should arise. I used the candle to light my way downstairs. I could see light coming into the hall from my husband's study-workshop."
Mrs. Graves walked into the study, which lay diagonally across the hall from the drawing room. Hoare now saw it for the first time. It was a peculiar place, half-library, half-laboratory. On one side, low counters supported a variety of instruments and vessels that Hoare, at least, found quite daunting. He could recognize retorts, measuring glasses, microscopes. A handsome Herschel telescope stood in a corner in its glowing mahogany case, awaiting its departed master. He could not imagine the use of some of them; he found some oddly beautiful. They glittered in the sunlight like a small trove.
Set apart in one corner, under a high north-facing window, a table bore a multitude of clean, tiny instruments including what Hoare believed was a miniature lathe. A few possible products of this machine lay in clean white porcelain saucers-tiny gears and pinions that could only be portions of clockwork mechanisms. Several mounted magnifying glasses stood about. The center of the table was clear, as if to provide the experimenter with ample work space.
"Was it at this table that he did his experiments?" Hoare asked.
"No. The table is an addition of the last three months," said Mrs. Graves. "My husband had taken to the study of Mr. Whitney's principle, as it might apply to watchmaking."
"Mr. Whitney's principle?"
"An American by the name of Eli Whitney, Mr. Hoare. I know little about him, except for what Simon told me. He has apparently found a way of producing the locks of muskets in considerable volume, by somehow making components that are identical. I remember Simon saying that the man astonished a group of gunsmiths by assembling complete locks from several heaps of parts.
"To tell you the truth, I know no more than that."
The other, literary half of the room looked more familiar to Hoare. The rows of filled bookshelves lifted all the way to the plain ceiling. The shelves, however, were unusual. Being unable to walk, let alone climb the usual rolling library steps, the doctor had devised a pair of endless chains, between which the bookshelves hung on gimbals so that they remained forever upright.
Apparently, the doctor could control these chains from his chair, so that he could make them present him with the shelf or shelves he needed at the moment. Hoare was tempted to try the mechanism himself, but now was hardly the time.
Between the two parts of the chamber were a low cot with gleaming brass handrails that the doctor could grip when moving from chair to bed and back, and his writing desk. Except for a magnifying glass and the usual writing materials, the surface of the desk was quite bare. The doctor's empty wheeled chair faced it, some three feet away. The floor between chair and desk bore marks of the doctor's lifeblood, and spots of blood marred the desk's top.
"I found Simon slumped forward in his wheeled chair," Mrs. Graves went on. "His forehead had been thrown forward onto the desk. There were drops of blood from his forehead on his papers. I knew immediately that he was dead.
"But his death was not due to the wound in his forehead. As I had thought, the sound that awakened me was a shot. Someone standing in the back lane outside behind the house had taken aim at my husband as he sat at the table with his back to the open window and fired a single bullet at him. It penetrated his chair… here-you can see the hole it made- and continued into Simon's back. It was the shock of the bullet hitting him that drove his face into the table.
"I ran into the back hall and called out to waken the servants. Then I sat down on the floor beside my husband and took his poor head in my arms."
"The message you mentioned?" Hoare prompted her.
"It was not in Simon's handwriting. As I remember it, the words were very even. Beside it was the paper on which Simon had been writing when he was killed, with a splash of ink where he had dropped his pen. But to tell the truth, Mr. Hoare, I barely noticed the arrangement of the desk at the time. My mind was elsewhere. When the servants entered, I sent our man Tom to Sir Thomas and Mr. Morrow with the news. The two arrived within minutes of each other."
"Which gentleman arrived first?" Hoare asked.
Mrs. Graves shook her head. "I fear I do not recall, sir. They both said all the proper things, I suppose, and did what must be done, but by then I had begun to be a trifle confused. One of them-Sir Thomas, I suppose, as the senior magistrate-took charge of affairs. It must have been he who had Simon's body removed from the chair and laid out decently on his bed.
"I am ashamed to say that from that moment until the next morning-the Wednesday-I remember nothing. I awakened in my own bed, with no knowledge of how I got there. In fact, I was hard put to it to recall any of the previous night's events. It seems that Agnes, who I am sure meant well, administered a draft to me, unaware that Mr. Morrow had already taken it upon himself to do so."
"Mr. Morrow? How would he have found…?"
"Mr. Morrow has become quite familiar with my husband's workplace. I believe that is to be laid at your door, Mr. Hoare."
This brought Hoare up all standing. "I do not understand you, ma'am," he protested.
"Simon had little to say to me about the project in which he was engaged with Mr. Morrow," the widow said. "He was always very closemouthed about his doings, both as a physician and as a natural philosopher or mechanician-whichever term you prefer. But he gave me to understand the two were experimenting with nonmedical uses of the listening device which so caught Mr. Morrow's interest when you and he dined with us a fortnight ago."
That explanation was as good as any. Hoare himself had noticed the American's interest in the instrument. He went on to the matter of most immediate interest.
"And the message? When did you notice it was missing?" he whispered.
"After I came to my senses on Wednesday morning," Mrs. Graves said. "I returned to where we are now standing, to greet my dead husband. The servants had had mercy on me, for his body was cleaned and decently laid out on his cot.
"I sat down beside him once again for a moment, to share with him a few last memories. Then I recalled myself to duty and went to his writing table to begin informing those who should be informed… his sons, of course, and a few more distant relatives.