It ran on Saturday because that was the day when employers paid wages, and many of the attendees of the market shopped for the week. For that reason it stayed open well into Sunday morning, hundreds of stalls humming through the night. Markethouse’s church had always had erratic attendance.
“What happened at the market?” asked Edmund.
“And what’s been happening generally?” Lenox put in.
“Theft,” said Clavering pointedly, shaking his head.
“Theft,” Lenox repeated.
Bunce nodded, and Clavering removed a small notebook from his breast pocket. “Which it is this, sir, in the last ten days, the following have gone missing: two chickens, from a house in Cow Cross Lane; four shillings in change, from three various market stalls; a half wheelbarrow of carrots, also from the market — a half wheelbarrow!; a springer spaniel, name of Sandy, belonging to a farmer who had stopped to wet his whistle at the Bell and Horns; several blankets and a cloak, from the church basement; a box of candles, from Mr. Woodward’s stall at the market; and just this morning another chicken from a yard in Victoria Street.”
“My goodness,” said Edmund, and the concern on his face was real.
“The dog may have run off,” Clavering added, “but the owner thinks not. It were a very obedient dog.”
“Is this an abnormal amount of crime?” asked Lenox.
Clavering’s small eyes widened slightly. According to Edmund, he was a conscientious but not dazzlingly gifted officer of the law. Then again, the chief qualification for the job he held was to stand under the hot sun in a thick uniform without looking uncomfortable each year during the school prize-giving, and evidently he was an eminent hand at that.
“Is it an abnormal amount of crime? Well, put it this way: It’s as much as we had in the whole entire preceding year all together,” he told Lenox.
“Are there not often thefts at the market? That surprises me.”
Edmund interjected here. “Never. The vendors of long standing have a strong interest in self-policing. No forgiveness. Permanent expulsion, fines and jail if they can manage it. They’d use the gallows if we let them.”
Clavering nodded. “And as for chickens, they roam more or less free in Markethouse, and nobody dreams of stealing them.”
Bunce agreed. “Can’t recall the last time a chicken went missing.”
Lenox felt an idea percolating in the back of his mind. “The blankets and the cloak in the church, whose were they?” he asked.
“The blankets belong to the church. Itinerants occasionally sleep on the porch there in winter, though we encourage ’um on their way with a hot meal and a penny or two. The cloak belonged to the pastor himself, Reverend Perse.”
“Very interesting indeed,” said Lenox. “Have you observed anything else peculiar happening?”
Clavering shook his head. “No. That’s enough for me, mind.”
“More specifically,” Edmund said, “we were wondering if either of you had observed anything in Potbelly Lane, last Wednesday or Thursday, perhaps, though really any day at all.”
Clavering shook his head again, but Bunce said, “I have.”
“Have you never!” said Clavering, turning to look at him indignantly. “And you didn’t saw fit to tell me?”
“I forgot.”
“Forgot! Haven’t I enough on right now, without secrets? My goodness,” said Clavering, with cutting disdain in these last two words.
“What did you see?” asked Lenox.
Bunce’s answer shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did. “There was a chalked drawing on a stoop there. Tolerably odd one, too.”
Lenox raised his eyebrows. “Was it this?” he asked, pulling from his pocket the drawing Root, the solicitor, had made.
“That was it,” said Bunce.
Clavering looked unhappy. “Now what?” he asked. “Was something else stolen?”
“A bottle of sherry,” said Edmund.
“Dear me, dear me,” said Clavering. He took out his notebook and wrote that down. “A bottle of sherry, too. From Mr. Hadley?”
“Yes,” said Lenox.
“Heavens.”
“Tell me, this is a small village — has anyone returned recently, or has there been any new face people are talking of?”
Clavering and Bunce looked at each other and smiled grimly, a passing moment of amusement in a serious day. “What?” asked Lenox.
“None except you, sir. You haven’t been stealing chickens, have you now, Mr. Lenox?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Late that afternoon, the two brothers sat in the drawing room, Lenox on the sofa under old Sir Albion, Edmund in an armchair by a window, which was running with rivulets of rainwater. Each brother had a cup of tea, and each was reading. At the far end of the room a steady orange fire burned in the hearth, its susurrating crackle a homely, comfortable pleasure. Occasionally one would recite something out loud to the other — Lenox from a pile of cuttings that had arrived for him from Lady Jane about the disappearance of Muller, Edmund from the evening edition of the Markethouse Gazette, which Waller had brought in not long before.
“Nothing on the thefts in it?” asked Lenox. “Or on Hadley?”
Edmund shook his head. “The leading story is about the market tomorrow. Apparently it is ‘scheduled to run as per usual.’”
“Seems a bit thin for the top news story.”
“The whole newspaper is only four pages long,” Edmund pointed out.
“I don’t know how they fill that many.”
Edmund, cutting the second and third pages with a penknife, smiled. “Well, then, tell me what’s happening in London, where you can fill a newspaper just with stories of murdered musicians.”
Lenox shook his head. The cuttings were interesting but inconclusive. The newspapers, especially the Telegraph, blared the news of LeMaire’s entry as a new assistant to Scotland Yard, all of them giving summaries of his experience and qualifications, as well as making prominent reference to his detective agency. Invaluable publicity.
In fairness to him, he had already, perhaps, chased down one lead: A cabman swore that on the night of Muller’s disappearance he had taken a man in a dinner jacket, just such as Muller had been wearing during his performance, from the Cadogan Theater to Paddington Station. He recalled it clearly because the gentleman had been wearing no hat and no coat. Nor had he carried any luggage, which was odd for someone well dressed and on his way to Paddington.
It did sound like Muller — and Paddington Station had trains at that hour that could carry him all over the Isles, and from thence by boat to Europe, certainly. LeMaire’s men were currently interviewing the employees at Paddington and felt confident of further success.
“And they are kind enough to inform us,” said Lenox, “in an irritating little boxed note, that LeMaire — well, I shall read it to you. Monsieur LeMaire is no doubt familiar with the word ‘cabriolet,’ which in the language of his native shores means ‘a little leap,’ the precise sort of motion that a British carriage of one horse, or ‘cabriolet,’ makes — and whence, as a result, the word ‘cab’ has descended to us, in one of the many portmanteaux of our two nations. Perhaps this knowledge gave him the special insight needed to find the cabman who may have driven the German pianist to Paddington Station.”
“Ha!”
Lenox shook his head. “No doubt it was that — he was pondering the word ‘cabriolet’ in his office for a few leisurely hours, and finally it inspired him.” Edmund snorted. “Daftest thing I’ve ever read.”