Morrow was as good as his word, for he returned within minutes. "As a matter of fact," Morrow went on more blandly, as if he had not interrupted himself, "I fear blame for Mrs. Graves' delusion may, indeed, lie in part at my door. For when I saw the distress under which she was laboring, I took the liberty of drawing a scruple of laudanum from the doctor's apothecary shelf and administering it to her. It produced some noticeable confusion in her mind.
"I was alarmed to learn later that the maid Agnes foolishly did the same thing, so doubling the dose and rendering the poor woman unconscious for some hours. Fortunately, the effect was transient, and she is none the worse for it-except for her confused conviction that I stole some of her husband's secrets. It may interest you to know Sir Thomas Frobisher is of my mind."
With this, Mr. Morrow rose to his feet with a meaningful look. Hoare must needs follow suit.
"And now, sir," the American said, "I must ask you to excuse me. As I said, there is a matter of considerable urgency at the quarry, to which I should be attending at this very moment.
"Let us not forget our engagement to match our yachts, Mr. Hoare," he added at the door. "Marie Claire and her crew stand ready, at your convenience. See? There she lies."
Mr. Morrow's voice was filled with pride. And justifiably so, Hoare thought. Schooner-rigged and half again the length of Unimaginable, Marie Claire gleamed as she lay at a mooring close inshore, easily visible from Morrow's hilltop house.
"Next time, sir," Hoare said. "I'll need a hand or two aboard if my craft is to do herself justice."
Hoare must now retrace his steps back into the town that lay displayed before him, its harbor twinkling in the sunlight. Sir Thomas Frobisher's dwelling would not have been out of place among the mansions of London's Mount Street. It must be staffed accordingly, for the big front door was opened by a bewigged footman in livery and pimples. Hoare named himself to the man, handed him his hat, and let himself be ushered into a large room to the left of the hallway, decorated in the latest French style. It was more than a trifle dusty.
Hoare had ample time to examine the mixed lot of ancestral portraits set on the walls to entertain the waiting visitor. The male Frobishers were almost uniformly froglike, the females weedy.
"Pat Sprat could eat no fat; her man could eat no lean…" he hummed to himself, paraphrasing Dr. Graves's ditty about his wife and Hoare himself.
Hoare had reached a Frobisher in half-armor-at the Battle of Naseby? If so, on which side? — when Sir Thomas himself entered.
If anything, Hoare soon discovered, his host would be even less enlightening than Mr. Morrow had been. Could Morrow have sent a man with word of his likely advent?
Sir Thomas did not offer refreshment or even invite him to be seated. Instead, he stood in the doorway, managing despite his lower stature to look down his nose at him coldly. Hoare could think of nothing to do but to fall back on an equal formality.
"I am here, Sir Thomas, to inquire into the recent death of Dr. Simon Graves."
"Eh? Speak up, man. I can't hear you."
Hoare repeated himself as loudly as he could.
"Why?"
Hoare could feel his face reddening. "The Admiralty has reason to believe, sir-"
"What? Speak up, I told you."
"You hear me well enough, sir, I believe. The Admiralty-"
"Has nothing to do with me. Nor I with the Admiralty."
"Admiralty business, sir," Hoare persisted. "On His Majesty's service. I require your written authorization to question the coroner who sat on Dr. Graves' death."
"Is that all, fellow?" asked Sir Thomas in a voice that oozed contempt. "Then wait here. If you should need to call at my house again, the tradesmen's entrance is at the back." He turned as if to leave the room.
Hoare rarely flew into a rage. When he did so, he turned white. Now, he barely restrained himself from seizing the baronet by the shoulder, in his own house. It would have been disastrous.
Instead, Hoare put his fingers to his mouth and blew a piercing blast into Sir Thomas's ear. It must have nearly deafened him, for he turned back to Hoare in a rage of his own. On his catching sight of the death that lay behind Hoare's face as it loomed over him, the rage turned into something approaching fear.
"The written authorization, Sir Thomas, if you please. Now."
Frog-shaped the baronet might be, but he was no less valiant in defending his position. "I found you an offensive jackanapes, fellow, when first you pressed yourself upon my acquaintance by seducing Eleanor Graves into effecting an introduction to me. My opinion remains unchanged. The tradesmen's entrance next time, remember, or I'll have my men take a horsewhip to you."
With this, Sir Thomas left the room, making a peculiar grinding noise. Hoare had read of people gnashing their teeth, but he had never before heard one actually do it. In the midst of his own fury, he was delighted at the sound.
Hoare now had another opportunity-long, long-to catch his breath, recover his temper, and further his acquaintance with the baronet's ancestors. He had now gotten as far as a flat-chested maiden of twenty, done in the style of Mr. Gainsborough, when a footman entered. He was not the same footman who had ushered Hoare into the ancestral gallery, for his pimples were pink instead of purple and were located elsewhere on his face.
" 'Ere," he said, and thrust a sealed paper at Hoare, then turned to leave the room. "This way," he added over his shoulder.
Hoare followed him, opening the envelope as he went. This at least would serve.
The footman's livery was threadbare and much too big, Hoare noticed with secret glee. At the door, the man pointed to the left, toward the town hall.
"That way," he said, and gave Hoare a little shove. Hoare's blow to the footman's belly carried his pent-up wrath with it and knocked him back through the open doorway.
Hoare marched down the street, seething. He had been twice a fool, he told himself. Despite Mrs. Graves's warning, he had totally failed to foresee how Sir Thomas would react to the invasion of his manor. The baronet must have had advance warning of his coming and his purpose and had already worked up an impromptu strategy for putting Hoare in his place. In that, at least, the man had failed.
For his own part, Hoare knew, he had been wholly unprepared for the baronet's attack on him through his handicap. As it was, he was lucky even to have gotten the scrap of paper. With it, of course, he had gotten Sir Thomas's enmity.
And most unforgivably, he had deeply offended Mrs. Graves without justification or reason.
Hoare would not have put it past Sir Thomas's flunky to have misdirected him out of excess malice borrowed from his master, so he was relieved to find a decrepit half-timbered cottage within a stone's throw of the town hall, with a sign over its door:
JOSIAH OLNEY
SURGEON AND APOTHECARY
WENS REMOVED
While Sir Thomas had, of course, sat behind Olney as the coroner presided at the inquest on his colleague's murder-the jury had, as instructed, brought in a verdict of "murder by person or persons unknown"-it was Olney to whom he must turn for professional information about the killing.
Hoare more than half-expected that Sir Thomas had kept him waiting not only from simple ill will but also so he could send word ahead to the coroner to make himself scarce. But there Mr. Olney was, seated in a cobwebby nook and rotting quietly. He rose to greet his visitor, hastily brushing the snuff from his waistcoat. Hoare could read his thought: Could this be a patient? One, perhaps, with money?
Mr. Olney, Hoare suspected, was a former naval surgeon. At least, while respectable enough to have been made medical examiner for the Weymouth Assizes, he was not the professional peer of the late Dr. Simon Graves, physician, artificer, correspondent with La+Фnnec and Dupuytren. Nonetheless, he showed himself willing to help Hoare as best he could. Hoare did not even have to show Sir Thomas's paper. He had, then, made a new enemy for no reason.