CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lenox sat in the sunroom with Lady Jane and Sophia for a few pleasant moments, during which he told his wife about Frederick’s plans to give up the house, and she reacted more calmly than he had — thought it was a sensible idea. Perhaps she was right.
After they had discussed it Lenox said good-bye to his wife and his child, called Bear and Rabbit, put on his black topcoat, and set out for Plumbley.
The clean air had already invigorated him. Few men felt more at home in London than Lenox did, yet even he had to acknowledge the difference it made to his heavy lungs and his stinging eyes to be away from the metropolis. It was a worsening problem; on one day earlier that month the mixture of yellow fog and coal smoke — what residents called the London Particular — had been so bad that the police ordered the streetlamps lit during the daylight hours, not much after noon. Then there were the cattle the year before, brought in from just such a place as this for an exhibition of livestock, who had suffocated to death. It sounded like a joke, but it wasn’t. Even every Englishman’s favorite accessory, the tightly furled black umbrella, had become that color largely to guard against the discoloration of the polluted air that a white umbrella in London invariably suffered.
The countryside was so beautiful. It was that season when the end of summer and the beginning of autumn get muddled, and one never seemed to know whether to dress for the impending October frost or the lingering September heat. In the small houses he passed on the grassy lane, there was a feel of homeward-turning, of less time outdoors, as if in anticipation of winter, with firewood stacked outside of each chimney again and, visible in the dim windows, congregations by the warmth of the stove, just while the morning chill lasted.
As he walked, he cut a solitary figure, slender, fingers occasionally dragging along the stone wall that guarded the path. The two retrievers gamboled around his feet as he went, one black and one golden. Neither ventured too far from his heel, except once in a while to contemplate for a longer moment some especially arresting scent in a clump of grass along the side of the road, like a scholar who turns a page back to read it again. When whichever dog had been detained by a particular odor was finally satisfied with his interrogation of it, he would sprint forward in bounds to catch up with the pack. As for Lenox he stopped twice during the mile and a half walk, almost as if he had forgotten something at home. Both times his eyes rose to the meadows along the path and his face broke into a radiant smile. He would pause in his steps, then carry on his way, eyes to the ground again, his expression slowly returning from joy to meditation. What had come to his mind, each of these times, was Sophia; what drew his thoughts back away from her were Captain Musgrave, his black dog, and the drawing of the hanging man.
Soon the lane brought him to a small stream, which meant he was close to town. The dogs barked a duck, strolling along its bank, back into the water, and then circled proudly back to their master for praise.
“There’re two of you,” Lenox said chidingly and nipped Bear on the ear with his fingers.
At the path’s final turn, a grove of trees gave way and revealed Plumbley. He stopped, happy to look upon it again.
It was an ancient place of habitation, set at a low point among the few miles of serene countryside that surrounded it, near the strength of the stream. It was entered in the Domesday Book as Plunten, and then round about the year 1160 took the name Plumton; two centuries later it was Plomton; soon enough thereafter it was Plum’s Lea; then Plumley, and now, finally, for the past hundred years or so, Plumbley. Whence that superfluous B came no local historian had satisfactorily deciphered, but now, planted where it was, it showed no signs of moving. What was certain was that, as they had nearly a thousand years ago, when they give the village its name, plums still grew on the lea near the great wood. Locals would tell you that they tasted dreadful off the branch but made for a fair jam.
It was an industrious place, full of handsome rows of gray houses. It had two public houses, the Royal Oak (named for the tree in which Charles the Second, pursued by Roundheads, had concealed his august personage) and the King’s Arms, which were in a semipermanent state of war, each with fierce partisans; a smithy; a butcher’s; a school; and a lovely village green. As Lenox walked down Woodend Lane, toward the fruit and vegetable seller’s, he could see twinned above Plumbley its two highest points, the small spire of St. Stephen’s church and the cupola of the town hall, freshly painted white, its resting bell, slightly louder than the church’s, ready to beat out the time as twelve o’clock in, oh, what now — he looked at his pocket watch — three minutes. Good, the shops wouldn’t have shut for lunch yet.
Fripp had replaced his broken window. Stenciled upon it in gold letters was w. F., PURVEYOR, and leaning against the window was a green signboard with white paint that said, in three lines, FRESH FRUIT, FARM VEGETABLES, and OPEN YEAR-ROUND. As Lenox pushed the door open a bell rang. It was a tight space, with crates nailed up tidily along the walls, overflowing with cabbages, potatoes, apples, and much more.
The fruit-and-vegetable seller himself, now five or six years beyond sixty, was at his counter, hunched over a piece of wax paper, intent on some piece of work. He was a wiry, short man, in the pink of health, with fastidious circular spectacles and a carefully maintained black moustache.
He looked up. “Why, Charlie!” he said.
Lenox, who had known Fripp for some thirty-odd years — since Charles was ten — said, “Hello, Mr. Fripp.”
Fripp took off his spectacles. “I heard you might be at the great house — but tell me, are you still a batsman?”
Lenox smiled. “If you’ve a spot for me.”
“If we’ve — we’ll only just make the numbers now you’re here, you know.”
“How are the King’s Arms this year?”
“They have a devilish spin bowler, Yates, from after your time. But welcome! And you married, too!” Fripp came around from the counter and shook Lenox’s hand.
“And our side? The Royal Oak team?”
Here Fripp began a lengthy, obviously much rehashed description of all the many virtues and vices of the cricket players who frequented each evening the same public house he did. Lenox half listened, as he did so gathering a few choice pieces of fruit to the counter. He would take them back to Jane.
“Is there fig jam left?” he asked in a break during Fripp’s voluble recollection of his wicket-keeper’s poor eyesight.
“A few jars left, yes. Shall I wrap one in paper?”
“Two if you would.” Fripp crouched down beneath the counter, rooting among his preserves. Lenox raised his voice slightly. “By the way,” he said, “my uncle told me about your window. Terrible business.”
“Yes, it was,” said Fripp, rising with the jars in hand. “And then Wells got the same thing.”
“I heard. Do you have any idea who might have done it?”
“None, and I still don’t feel at ease in my mind about closing up the shop alone. Did your uncle show you the hanging man?”
Lenox’s face was severe with sympathy. “Yes. I didn’t like the look of it.”
“Nor did I.”
“You cannot think who might have done it?”
“I would stake my life that nobody in Plumbley wishes me that ill,” said Fripp. “Even at the King’s Arms, you know, it’s only a friendly joke we have with each other.”
“What do you and Wells have in common?”
Fripp considered this. “Not very much, I suppose. He rarely takes a pint. His father liked to come into the Oak on occasion, and shopped his fruit and vegetable with me here for many years. The son does, too, but sends his maid around. He’s grown very prosperous.” He snorted.
“I heard.”
“Sells grain and seed to half the farmers in Somerset, it sometimes seems. What similarity could he have to a small shop like this one?”
“And personally? Do you share any family, any friends?”
“Not except insofar as everyone does, in Plumbley.”
“What do you make of Captain Musgrave?”
“Mr. Ponsonby mentioned the captain, did he? I can only say that’s he’s treated very fair with me, buys in his
