“Fontaine admitted that he worked for Wells. Apparently he did the same as Randall, but he was given much more than usual on the day he had his spree. Wells needed the money and didn’t care about the potential for exposure, I suppose.”
“To pay off his connection in Bath,” said Lenox.
“Yes. At any rate Fontaine will testify against Wells, too.”
“I mean to go see Wells himself in the morning, if you’d like to come.”
“Of course.”
They reached the library and went to sit in front of the fire.
Lenox read the letter, throwing out the pertinent bits of information as he came across them. It said:
Dear Charles,
Thank you for two very interesting problems. The powder was the trickier of the two. I shall come to that in a moment.
As you suspected the only fingerprints on the knife belonged to Constable Oates, who of course picked it up. They matched the second set of sample fingerprints you enclosed, which I believed to be his, though you didn’t mark them. (Sloppy science, Charles.) The more interesting discovery: The blood on the knife is human, not animal blood. I think it not much older than the parcel you sent me, certainly not more than a week or two.
Now the powder. It took a great deal of work in the laboratory on the second floor — and a fair few bangs, which made me glad Toto and George are out of the city — to determine that it is a common enough compound of magnesium, calcium, and arrowroot, a mixture that some doctors prescribe during difficult pregnancies. (Its medical value is doubtful — it may perhaps be what the Romans called a “placebo,” that is, “I will please.”)
Has it occurred to you that Musgrave’s wife may simply be in her lying-in period?
Let me know if I can be of any further assistance — I can put anything else aside, needless to say, should you need my help as your friend,
Thomas McConnell
PS: I should add of course that I send my best along to Jane and to Sophia. As I mention, Toto and the child are out of town, and have been for rather a long time. Perhaps Jane told you. I trust that John Dallington is not too badly off. Give him my best if he’s stayed in Somerset, otherwise I shall see him soon. TM.
CHAPTER FORTY
For a moment McConnell’s postscript diverted Lenox’s attention. He re-read but found that it was impossible to discern whether Toto’s absence from London was innocent or not, because in the earlier years of their marriage, when the doctor had been drinking heavily, their separations were so frequent and long. Certainly things had been better in more recent times. McConnell had finally come to terms with giving up his practice, as Toto’s more aristocratic family had essentially forced him to do, and in place of that work had gone deeper and deeper into his chemical and botanical studies. Yet Jane and Charles alike always feared a relapse on the part of either of their friends — in McConnell his drinking and sullenness, in Toto her immaturity and wrath.
Dallington snapped him out of these thoughts. “So Mrs. Musgrave is with child,” he said. “Is that all it was?”
Lenox grimaced. “I feel very stupid. Also rather ashamed, if they left Plumbley because of her health. I imagine they have gone to London.”
“How long ago were they married?”
“Six months, I believe. We might ask Freddie.”
“Of course a woman might lie abed her whole term,” said Dallington, rather uncomfortably.
“Yes, and what a terrible intrusion it must have seemed, when I asked why she cried out that way! A town can always convince you to abandon your reason, if you listen to enough of its gossip. I should have been more intelligent than to listen.”
Dallington waved this away. “No, Musgrave was our chief suspect. It would have been irresponsible not to ask. At any rate, a knife with human blood upon it!”
“Yes. But might it not be her blood?”
“What, his wife’s? You think her dead?”
“No, no. I mean, might it not be … but here you lose me,” said Lenox. “I don’t know what doctors do at all.”
“They possess their own knives, certainly.”
“Yes, you’re right.”
Dallington frowned. “We could ask Dr. Eastwood. Or write to McConnell. If there’s any chance it was required for medical reasons one of them would know, in all likelihood.”
“You’re thinking more clearly than I am, John — that is what we shall do. Of course there is no proof that Captain Musgrave ever held the knife in his hand, much less used it.”
Dallington nodded. “Your finding it in the slop bucket makes me think that somebody in the kitchen cut themselves and disposed of the knife there, fearing they had damaged it.”
Lenox gave him a skeptical look. “Rather than rinsing it? I don’t think the common sense of the average servant is so shallow as that. Perhaps if it was a young boy.”
“How heavy was the blood?”
“There was a great deal of it, more than a small cut would have produced — though obviously not, of necessity, a fatal amount. No, let us leave the knife aside until the morrow, when we speak to Wells.”
“As you please.”
The next morning Lenox rode out across the countryside and again returned to the squire’s excellent breakfast table, sharing eggs, bacon, toast, porridge and coffee with Lady Jane — and with the governess, whom even Lenox was force to admit had a new shine in her face. Perhaps the matchmaking had worked.
If Dallington was similarly affected he took care not to show it. “Are you ready to go to town?” he asked, resplendent in a gray morning suit, carnation in his buttonhole, as soon as he saw Lenox.
“Shall we walk? It’s not much above a mile.”
So they took the dogs and ambled toward Plumbley. When they reached the village green they dropped Bear and Rabbit in Fripp’s shop. (Fripp, all his cricket-pitch glory shed, was deep in conversation with a woman who wanted to know which kind of apples made the best sauce, because her neighbor’s Cox’s Orange Pippins were too tart, and she liked it sweeter anyhow.) At the police station a sober Oates nodded them into the door.
“Gentlemen. Want a word with Wells, do you? He won’t speak to me.”
“Have you been trying often?” asked Dallington.
“Once in a way.”
Wells had been kept so far in some comfort, was eating food brought from his home, had seen his wife and his son. He was to be transported to Bath the next day, because the evidence of his crimes originating there had become so incontrovertible that higher authorities than Frederick were demanding it.
As he sat in his cell, Wells must have heard the chimes of the church bells after Weston’s funeral — nineteen of them, one for each year of the lad’s life. Lenox wondered how he had felt.
His first impression when he saw Wells again was of how youthful the man looked. In his element, at the grain shop — green apron, black mustache, healthy, ruddy face — he had seemed somehow older. Here he looked a diminished soul. Lenox felt unbidden sympathy for him.
They had expected him not to respond to their questions, but in fact when Oates left them in the windowless room where they had interviewed Wells before, he spoke first.
“Who won the cricket?” he asked.
“The Oak.”
“Did they? That’ll wipe Millington’s eye,” said Wells with satisfaction.
Dallington raised his eyebrows. “I’m amazed you care, at such a juncture.”
