“There’s a ball next Friday night. I’m to invite you,” Houghton said. “Jane wrote.”
“That was decent of her.”
“I would have come straight across anyway, had I known you were here. Why the devil didn’t you write to say you were going to be staying?”
“I had planned to write this morning. I only decided at the last moment, when my brother needed me to come down. It all happened in a rush.”
Houghton nodded. “I was very sorry about Molly.”
“We were glad to see you at the funeral,” said Lenox.
“Oh, of course.”
“Did you ride across today?”
“I? Oh, no, I took my carriage. Is your brother here?”
“He is out on a walk upon the estate,” said Lenox.
“Ah, is he! Capital, capital — so much to do with that sort of thing. You have it easy, Charlie, larking about London. Only he and I know all that can go wrong in places such as ours.”
This was polite of Houghton. Lenox House was not one of England’s great stately homes — a hunt, riding hard, could cross its acres in five or six minutes, whereas Houghton’s land would have taken them the best part of an hour, and two river fordings at that.
Still, Lenox had always felt with pride that it was one of the prettiest of country houses, a small jewel of its kind, the pond serene and fringed in each season with different lovely green shoots and flowers, primroses or cowslips or cyclamen. Being back now — the ride that morning, and indeed seeing Houghton, whom he associated so strongly with the country — gave him a wistful, loving, affectionate feeling for the place. He was very fortunate to have grown up here. He was conscious that in Edmund’s absence, just for this moment, he must play its host. It was a duty that birth, to his great fortune and occasional sadness, had precluded him from ever truly performing. He could do it momentarily now. He rang the bell for hot coffee, gestured for his brother-in-law to sit down, and asked what the chess problem had been that morning, and whether the skies looked likely to clear.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Hello, Sir Edmund!”
This was the bright greeting of Mrs. Appleby, the postmistress for Markethouse, later that day. “Hello, Mrs. Appleby,” Edmund said.
“Ah, and Mr. Charles Lenox. I thought I saw a letter addressed to you last evening. Only here for a short visit, I take it?”
“No, I’m—” Lenox stopped himself. “Yes, in fact! Only a short visit. How did you guess?”
“Oh, London rarely spits ’em back out.”
She was a stout, rosy-cheeked, white-haired woman, who worked from a windowsill in her house with a small ledge in front of it. There she gathered parcels, letters, and, most importantly, behind the counter, telegrams. There were only two telegraphs in the village.
It was nearly noon; Edmund had taken a longer walk than he anticipated. “We’re helping Mr. Hadley, of Potbelly Lane, with a small private matter,” Lenox said. “I understand from him that you two have an arrangement about telegrams.”
“Certainly we do. Always shut the window and bring ’um to him straightaway. Him and the doctor. I s’pose I would do the same for you, Sir Edmund, if the Prime Minister was to write.”
“No fear of that,” said Edmund.
“You brought Mr. Hadley a telegram from Chichester last Thursday?” said Lenox. “A week ago?”
“I did. Only it wasn’t from Chichester.”
“Excuse me?”
Mrs. Appleby looked at him as if he were slow-witted. “It wasn’t from Chichester.”
“Where was it from?”
“Massingstone.”
That was a village four miles north of them. “That’s the opposite direction of Chichester,” Edmund said.
“So ’tis!”
“How many people work at the post office in Massingstone?”
“Four,” said Mrs. Appleby.
“They deal with more telegrams than you, then?” said Lenox.
“Oh, many more, dozens more a day.”
Another mystery.
Charles and Edmund put a few more questions to Mrs. Appleby — she hadn’t kept a copy of the telegram but would swear that it came in from Massingstone, she could see the initials before her eyes even now; no, the figure of the little girl in chalk they showed her didn’t mean anything to her, though she couldn’t rightly say that she liked the look of it — and then left her window with thanks.
“Very curious,” said Edmund.
They were walking across the square. “Mm.”
“I’m beginning to believe that Mr. Hadley is in danger.”
“Something rotten is going on, all right,” said Lenox, studying the ground as he walked with a knit brow. He looked up at Edmund. “But if you wanted to harm a fellow, would you clear him out to Chichester? No, it’s something in the house, I think.”
“The bottle of alcohol?”
Lenox shook his head. “Would it surprise you at all if this pale-faced man or woman had swiped the sherry to steady their nerves? And kept the bottle, not guessing it would be missed so quickly?”
“That’s plausible.”
“No, it’s not the sherry that concerns me. For my part, I keep returning to the gemstones.”
They were going to see Constable Edward Clavering. “Here we are — turn here,” said Edmund.
Clavering was Markethouse’s sole police officer, although in times of trouble he could enlist the help of several volunteers, and there was also a night watchman who walked the streets and had the power of arrest in exceptional circumstances. Lenox wanted to talk to him, too — and as luck would have it he was with Clavering, a beanpole named Bunce.
Lenox had only a passing impression of Clavering, who was a tall, bristle-mustached, thick-faced, stupid-looking fellow, standing at attention now outside of the sole jail cell in Markethouse. He took off his hat immediately upon seeing them, deference to the local squire’s presence.
“How do you do, Sredmund?” he said.
“Very well, Clavering, very well — and you?”
Clavering frowned. “Not well, I don’t mind telling you, sir, since you’re back in town, and glad we are to have you. Not well.”
“No?” said Edmund, concerned.
“May I ask who this gentleman is?” asked Clavering, nodding to Lenox.
“This is my brother, Constable. His name is Charles Lenox. He’s a consulting detective in London, though at the moment he’s working on behalf of Mr. Arthur Hadley.”
Lenox nodded. “How do you do?”
“A detective!” said Bunce wonderingly.
“Is Mr. Arthur Hadley having a trouble now, too?” said Clavering. He brushed his hand across his forehead, looking overwhelmed. “Add him on the list, then, for he ain’t the only one.”
“Why, what’s been happening?” asked Edmund.
“All sorts,” said Clavering. “All sorts. Day on day. And starting at the market, worst luck yet.”
Charles and Edmund nodded somberly. The market was essential to life at Markethouse — what had given the town its name, of course, many centuries before, and what kept it prosperous now. The market occurred every Saturday, fifty-two times a year, without fail, whether England was at war or peace, without regard for who had left or entered the world, as regular as sunrise. It was the closest market for the citizenry of eight villages and their environs, and drew sellers from farther away still. You could buy anything there: a bag of walnuts, a Spanish guitar, a herd of cattle, a tin pot, a painted cabinet, a glass of stout.