She quite mistook his tone — and perhaps felt herself worried that she would have to pay the bill of the doctor, who was known to travel in a coach led by a horse, too, and she flushed red and said, “I never took it! I swear it before Jesus Christ our savior himself!”
“Mrs. Watson, be calm, please,” Hadley said. “These gentlemen don’t think you stole anything.”
“I didn’t!” she said.
“I’m very sorry,” Lenox said. “I ought to have phrased it differently: We believe someone stole the sherry, not you, and hope that with your help we might find the person.”
“I didn’t steal it.”
“We have no suspicion whatsoever that you did,” said Lenox, though from the corner of his eye he could see that Edmund did.
Ah, that was different, Mrs. Watson said; she would be only too happy to help. She poured more tea into Lenox’s cup.
It was at this moment that the sound of hooves came clicking up the small street, and a moment later a small fly led by a single horse arrived at the door. Dr. Stallings dismounted from the conveyance. They waited for him in the doorway, and he inclined a deep bow toward Edmund.
“Sir Edmund,” he said. Then he turned to Charles. He was a round, very well dressed man, bald but for a fringe of hair around his ears, with half-moon spectacles. He gave Lenox a slightly shallower bow. “Mr. Lenox. I hope that the reports in town are correct, and I may be the first to congratulate you on your permanent return to the county. For your health, you could not have chosen more intelligently.”
“I’m only here for a visit,” Lenox said, but Stallings had already turned toward Hadley and was addressing him.
Mrs. Watson, driven to distraction by this accumulation of distinguished visitors (Had the physic said Sir Edmund? she muttered to herself, to herself but audible to all), spoke in a long, ceaseless, meaningless rattle, whose gist eventually shepherded the doctor into her overheated kitchen.
Lenox knew that Stallings was a fair physician. He radiated the complaisant good cheer of a man whom life had treated kindly — who hadn’t missed a meal in many years, nor lost a bet, nor thrown a shoe, nor shed a tear.
The doctor approached the patient very gravely, sat in the chair next to him, and proceeded to make a considerable examination of him, as they all looked silently on: pulse; temperature; responsiveness of the eyes; examination of the gums; test of the reflexes; and much more beside.
At the end of his inspection, he patted the boy on the arm, stood up, turned toward the adults in the room, and said, in a loud, clear voice, “He’s faking.”
“Faking?” said Edmund.
“Yes. Faking, shamming, putting it on. However you prefer to put it. He’s in more or less perfect health. His most serious ailment at the moment is the castor oil I believe he may have swallowed. Was it as an emetic, young man? Well, never mind. I hope you have managed to avoid whatever you wished to avoid. I will wish you good day, Mrs. Watson … Mr. Hadley … Mr. Lenox … Sir Edmund.”
“Good day,” Edmund said. “The bill to me, mind you.”
“Of course, sir.”
Mrs. Watson, amidst these pleasantries, had shifted from confusion to incandescence — she was cuffing her son on the ear, dragging him up out of the straw, telling him how little he was good for, and how stupid he was, and that he had wasted the time of four gentlemen that day, and she had missed work for the first time in two years (she had apparently forgotten the first time, even if Hadley hadn’t), and did he think money grew on primrose bushes. Gradually Lenox came to understand that the young man had been scheduled to return to the village school that day for the first time since spring. Unusual, rather, for a boy of fifteen and his class. He made a gentle comment to that effect. Mrs. Watson turned and proudly declaimed to him, Edmund, and Hadley — without any apparent concern for consistency — on the subject of her son’s extreme brilliance, overwhelming cleverness, unsurpassable goodness.
Meanwhile the boy was quietly eating a piece of bread — having apparently gone without, while his ruse de guerre to avoid school was in action, but having given up now. He did indeed look to be in fine health, now that he was upright. Mrs. Watson rushed him out then, saying that he could at least make the afternoon lessons — and he went, hair flattened, a slate and chalk tied to his belt, and a sprig of mint in his hand to sweeten his breath when he made his excuses to the teacher.
At last, this comedy of errors concluded, their interview could resume.
CHAPTER NINE
“Please tell us what you did on Thursday of last week, then, the next day, Mrs. Watson,” said Lenox, “beginning when you arrived at Mr. Hadley’s house in Potbelly Lane. Was it at seven o’clock?”
Mrs. Watson, who looked as though she had never experienced a more eventful hour in her life, fanned her face, took a deep breath and a long sip of tea, collected her thoughts, and then nodded, trembling slightly. “Yes,” she said. “It was seven o’clock in the morning, as usual, sir.”
“And you found Mr. Hadley in a state of some consternation?”
“Sir?”
“Mr. Hadley was upset?”
She shook her head. “Not that I noticed at first, sir. I banked the coals, you know, sir, and fixed his tea and breakfast — he sleeps late on a Thursday, after traveling the previous three days — and when he came downstairs at half past, he was very friendly-like, sir, which is just as usual, you see.”
Hadley, a peaceable soul, smiled at her encouragingly. “Go on, Mrs. Watson,” he said.
“As I was cleaning the sitting room, where he sits and works at his desk, sir, he mentioned that he thought he had seen someone in the house last night — but I said to him quite honest that I had gone at five as usual. Then, of course, he was called away to his fire at Chichester.”
“You remained in the house,” Lenox said.
She nodded stoutly. “I did. Immediate upon him leaving, I locked up every door and window in the place, because I was not quite happy to be left there alone.”
Lenox shot a meaningful glance at Edmund, upon whom this new fact was not lost. Hadley, too, frowned. “Then how could someone have entered the house while I was gone?” he asked.
“It certainly would have been much more difficult, and suspicious, than if you had actually left all the doors and windows unlocked while you flew to Chichester, as you thought you had,” said Edmund.
“Mrs. Watson, you heard nothing? Nobody entering?” asked Lenox.
“No, sir.”
“And the first you heard of the missing sherry was that evening, when Mr. Hadley came to see you?”
“Yes, sir.” She grew defiant. “And you may search the house up and down — and it may please you to know that I do not even care for sherry! And nor does Mr. Watson, and the boys are too young to drink spirits, except on Saturdays.”
“We certainly don’t think you took it,” said Hadley. He looked perturbed. “I wish we knew who had.”
Lenox ran through several more questions. He asked Mrs. Watson if the chalk figure was familiar to her (Hadley had replicated it upon a piece of paper), which it was not, and in detail about the construction of the house, which he presumed she knew as well as her master, if not better — specifically if there was anywhere that might have concealed a person who wished to hide. She was adamant that there was not.
Hadley looked horrified. “You think someone might have been in my house the entire time?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Lenox.