A Death in the Small Hours

that it will be easy, with that fool of a—”

“Enough there,” said Oates sharply.

“Do you have a list of the crimes other than the vandalisms?”

“We could knock one together if you gave us a day or so.”

“Thank you.”

“Now, Mr. Fripp and Mr. Wells — can you tell me what you think they have in common?”

The two constables looked at each other. Oates spoke. “They both own shops, less than ten houses apart from each other. We think it might be an attack on the shops of Plumbley.”

“But then how to account for the church door?”

“Well, precisely,” said Oates. “And the other shops untouched, too.”

“Both men have been in town a long time, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps they’re being menaced in the hopes that they will pay off their attackers,” said Lenox. “Are they the two richest shops?”

“Wells is doing all right—”

“Better than all right!” said Weston.

“But as for Fripp, I don’t think he puts much by. His house is paid for, but his tab is running at the Royal Oak, I know.”

“Is it long past due?”

“Not too far, and not for too much. You won’t find a motive there,” said Oates.

Lenox looked down at a slip of paper he had brought. “The Roman numeral on the church door. Twenty- two.”

“Yes?”

“Do you have any thoughts about what it means?”

“We can’t make head nor tail of it,” said Oates.

“Do any of the street numbers in town go that high? Could it be a date, a time, a numbered gravestone? Who knows Latin, or would be likely to use it? What if it’s not a number? Could it be a message, ‘two down, two to go,’ that sort of thing?”

Weston had taken out a pencil and was writing. “Hadn’t thought of those questions,” he muttered.

“I’ll look at whatever possibilities I can,” said Lenox. “Meanwhile, Captain Musgrave. Where does he enter into it?”

Both of the constables’ faces darkened. “We’re keeping an eye on him,” said Oates. “A very close eye.”

“Only because he’s new in town? And because he has a black dog?”

“If you meet him you’ll see why folk’re suspicious, Mr. Lenox, sir.”

“That woman is in trouble,” said Weston sadly.

“Catherine Scales?”

“Yes.”

“What makes you say so?”

“Nobody’s seen her, have they?”

A troubling thought struck Lenox. “Are you sure she’s alive?”

Oates nodded. “Went up to check not ten days ago. She received us, after we fair insisted, but she didn’t look well. Weston’ll tell you.”

Weston had no trouble elaborating on this point — was shocked, most shocked to see the lady so pale — striking beautiful lady, too — damn shame.

“And if you had to assemble a narrative in your minds of what Musgrave is doing, what would it be?” Lenox asked.

“Causing trouble,” said Oates.

Weston nodded stoutly. “Causing trouble.”

Lenox held back a sigh. “Very well. Perhaps I’ll see the captain myself, if I can find the time. In the meanwhile let us hope that nothing further happens.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Lenox and the dogs walked home. His mind moved slowly from the mysteries of Plumbley to the mysteries of the nation. When he got back he found the house empty, Jane, Sophia, and the governess on a walk, his uncle working in the muck of the gardens. Lenox went straight to his desk and began to work on his speech.

This age of Queen Victoria, through which he was living, regarded itself as one of great social rigidity, of great propriety — and it was true. The beefeaters stood guard before Buckingham Palace, the banker in his sitting room smoked his pipe and read his evening newspaper, his wife paired people off by rank as they went into dinner, the pound was worth a pound of silver.

Nevertheless, Lenox was persuaded that one day, long after he had slipped out of life and been forgotten, this epoch would be remembered equally for its profound social changes. Look how far they had come! The Reform Act of 1832 had begun the movement toward equality, permitting hundreds of thousands of new people to vote, an expansion that the act of 1867 had widened. The government was growing less brutal, too. In 1849 a husband and wife, convicted of murder, had been hanged by the neck before thirty thousand people, but five years ago Parliament had finally banned all public executions. Transportation to Australia, whose consequences had been occasionally tantamount to execution, ended ten years before that. Even more astonishing, until 1823 very nearly within his own lifetime, it had been the law — the law! — that a suicide must be buried at a crossroads with a stake through his heart. Those days were gone. Society was growing gentler, more inclusive, perhaps, even, he hoped, less stratified. This was the change he had stood for Parliament in the hopes of achieving.

Finally it was happening. His hardest work as a member had come earlier that year, when he fought for a bill, a special pet of his, called the Agricultural Children Act; it had been a bill he championed in the face of widespread indifference even among his friends, had absolutely forced his brother and the cabinet members he knew intimately to stand behind. The act forbade children under the age of eight — he had been hoping to make it twelve, but was forced to compromise — from working on farms, and, as an extra step won in the compromise, had provided for the education of the same children. Fighting for the bill had been exhilarating, with sleepless night after sleepless night, the thrill of productive work, strong cups of coffee as the House debated into the small hours, the maddening lassitude of the lords. In the end it had passed.

There was still so much to do. That was to be the subject of his speech. Even as he jotted notes now he came across a new fact: apparently a study that year had determined that about a quarter of men and women who registered for marriage signed their name only with the letter X. They were illiterate. He frowned and started a new piece of paper with that at the head.

He knew what the Tories would say — that God would provide for his children — and smiled when he thought of an old quote. Was there a collected Shakespeare in here? He walked over to the bookcase and saw that there was, the usual ornament of any English bookcase, and found what he had been looking for, by way of preemptive riposte. “Our remedies often in ourselves do lie which we ascribe to heaven.”

Occasionally it crossed Lenox’s mind that he came to this problem from a perch of exceptional comfort and ease, manufactured for him by hundreds of years of tradition and accumulation. When the thought came he pushed it away, knowing that he lacked the strength to sacrifice any of his personal comfort; ill at ease with himself for it, but also, as a man of his age, forgiving himself, and half persuaded that it was all part of the order of things. Mightn’t he do enough good to make it up?

He wrote steadily on for an hour, then two, the thoughts coming to him in phrases, little strings of inquiry. Soon it would all begin to knit together into a speech. He had been writing the same way since his English tutor set him All’s Well That Ends Well at Harrow, when he was fourteen.

Just when he was thinking that a cup of tea might not go amiss, he heard the door to the east wing open. It was Jane and Sophia returning, the governess with them. He greeted the adults with a smile, then he peered down at the child in her bassinet and chucked her under the chin. She had a curious, mobile face, which broke into a grin