CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
He slept later than usual the next morning, dressed quickly, and went down with Jane to breakfast. The room was empty, however: Dallington was walking in the gardens with Miss Taylor and Sophia, apparently, while Lenox’s cousin was in his study.
After downing a cup of coffee Lenox looked in on him. The older man was sitting in a shaft of sunlight by the window, engrossed in a journal.
“Anything interesting?” asked Lenox.
“A history of the tulip in Brabant.”
That was a kind of answer. “Do I have time for a quick ride out?”
Frederick took his pocket watch from his waistcoat. “The constable from Bath will arrive on the eleven twenty-seven, so if you’re sharp about it I think you might have time. I don’t suppose you’d prefer to sit and tell me who you think killed Weston?”
“Soon, soon,” said Lenox, his voice apologetic.
“By all means, leave me in suspense as long as you wish.”
It was colder than it had been in the past few days, but as he rode, jumping stiles and puddles, Lenox quickly warmed. After half an hour of pacey travel across the fields circling the village, startling birds and small game as he tore along, he was sweating.
It was refreshing to be in the country: He slowed the hack down with a tightening of the reins and turned her halfway back to gaze out at the course they had been running at Everley, set below them in its swale of land. This was the distance from which many artists had painted the house, and indeed it looked wonderfully serene. So, too, did the village, with its spires and its curvingly crossed lanes.
He took the way back at a canter, not a gallop, and handed the horse over to Chalmers feeling energized. As he was washing his face and arms, Nash, the butler, came in and said that the carriage was waiting downstairs.
It was with a feeling of some solemnity that the three men, Dallington, Ponsonby, and Lenox, gathered there at a little after eleven o’clock. They picked up Oates, who was silent after his greeting, then as a group met the train, where a tall, solid-looking constable named Archer, his face dominated by an enormous mustache, was standing on the platform with a small satchel. He did not require a bite to eat, no; he would prefer they made the arrest directly.
“Where shall we go, Charles?” said Freddie.
“To Fripp’s, please.”
“Fripp’s!” said Oates.
It was a short, tense ride. The squire, who had lived on the same meridian as Fripp for these sixty years, kept glancing at his cousin uneasily.
The fruit-and-vegetable man was tidying his stalls, occasionally offering a stray word to one of the women prodding his goods. He looked up when the carriage stopped at the corner, and the men walked toward him along the white-stoned path that lay between the buildings and the green.
“Gentlemen!” he said. “Have you caught ’em yet?”
“Hello, Mr. Fripp,” said Lenox.
“Charlie.”
He turned to the three men. “You observe the sign in the window, gentlemen?” he said.
“W. F. Purveyor,” said Archer.
“This was the location of the first vandalism,” said Lenox. “Now — moving along.”
Fripp looked confused. “Excepting what is that to mean?”
“You may come along if you like,” said Lenox. “We’re only walking ten doors down. I think your shop was vandalized by mistake, Mr. Fripp.”
“To Wells’s?” asked Frederick quietly.
Lenox nodded. “The location of the second vandalism.”
Wells’s shop was empty, though the man himself was behind his counter, apron on, barrels of seed full and gleaming, a pencil stub in his hand and a ledger before him. He looked up just as the bell, strung tightly to the door, clanged.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “Can I help you?”
“You observed the sign in the window, as we came in, Mr. Archer?” said Lenox.
“F. W. Purveyor,” said Archer with a nod.
“Outsiders, nervous about a job, knowing they’re to commit a violation of a property on the east side of the village green — it is a mistake I understand. They came back a second time to do the job correctly, and took a clock, too.”
There was a sudden strain, an airlessness, in the room. “What is the meaning of this?” asked the grain merchant.
“Mr. Wells,” said Lenox, “I have come into your shop three times now, including this visit.”
“I recall,” said Wells coolly.
“On none of those occasions have I seen a single customer. Yet what was it you told me, Freddie — that he has changed it all out of countenance from the sleepy shop that it was in his father’s day, that he had a gold watch chain now, a carriage for his mother. Is that correct?”
“My customers buy in bulk, not in dribs and drabs. But then I would not expect a politician to understand the ways of business.”
Lenox laughed. “A point fairly taken, though I’ve seen grain shops busier than this. No, I grant you that — if it was only the watch chain, the carriage, then I would be on an unstable footing.” He went silent. The laughter left his face. “But your expansion,” he said. “The expansion of your store.”
“What of it?” asked Wells.
“Are we to arrest this man?” said Archer. Oates murmured his concordance with the question.
Only Dallington knew Lenox’s methods. He was quiet. “How long did the expansion take, Mr. Wells?” asked Lenox.
“Two months.”
Lenox gestured at the narrow strip of new flooring in one corner of the room. “I noticed this when I was here before. Two months! It is a very small return on a very great investment of time and, I presume, money. Freddie, you called it a hellish noise, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And — I thought this was telling — he brought in men from Bath to do the work, too? Despite the town railing against Captain Musgrave for taking his custom to Taunton.”
“I confess that I am still in the dark, Charles,” said Frederick. “May we come to the point? Did Mr. Wells kill Weston?”
“Never!” said Wells, and indeed his face was filled with a convincing outrage.
Lenox strode toward a door at the back of the room. “Dallington, it was something you said about Fontaine that finally tipped me.”
The junior detective’s face — paled with guilt for these last few days, so eager to be of aid — seemed to flush with happiness now. He restrained it long enough to ask, in a casual voice, “Oh? Which was it? Glad to help, of course.”
Lenox stopped at the door. “Mr. Wells, may we visit your cellar? As I remember there appears to be a heavy padlock on this door.”
“Can that surprise you, after this shop was vandalized and a prize clock taken?” said Wells. “Am I accused of some wrongdoing, sirs?”
“I suspect the padlock predates the vandalism — but never mind that, may we see your cellar?”
Wells’s face was, for a moment, reluctant, but then he said, “By all means. I have nothing to hide.”
“Take us down, if you would.”
There was a ring of keys tied to Wells’s apron string. He selected a large iron one and opened the padlocked
