A Death in the Small Hours

“Apparently Wells loosed her. I’m surprised he didn’t try to sell her to a farmer, but he must have figured it wasn’t worth the risk of being caught.”

“I’m amazed she made it back.”

“As was I. It is a small miracle. It’s a good thing she traveled under the cover of darkness, because certainly some unscrupulous traveler would have taken her up, if he had found her wandering loose upon the road during the day.”

“Of course — a fine animal,” said Lenox. He was unreasonably happy.

“The servants have rounded up every apple in Somerset and given it to her — she is an object of great wonder indeed. She shall lose her sweet tooth, I don’t doubt.”

“Any injuries?”

“A cut along one hock, incidental. Our own veterinarian is coming to look at her, but the boy, Chalmers’s assistant, Peters, says she could run today.”

“I won’t chance it,” said Lenox.

“No, better not.”

“What about the papers?”

“Eh?”

“Wells — has he made the papers?”

“Ah, that. Yes, I’m afraid he has.” Frederick pushed a copy of the Bath Herald across the table. “My name is out of it, thank God, though Oates is mentioned. Too early to know whether Fleet Street has gotten hold of the story.”

“I wonder where Wells is.”

Frederick shook his head. “He might have let Oates live, even if he took the money for himself.”

“Oates did not have much to live for.”

“But that was not Wells’s to determine.”

“What will you do today, Uncle? Rest, I hope?”

“Rest! No, I mean to have busier days now. Miss Taylor has still yet to see half of the gardens, and there is a correspondent — a most vexing correspondent, Charles — who writes me on the subject of the peony; facts all wrong. I mean to put across a good letter to him in Wiltshire, set him firmly in his place on the subject of compound leaves.”

Lenox planned to return to work upon his speech after breakfast. With a fluttering in his stomach he realized that it was now rather close, less than a week. A packed House of Commons.

These plans were upset by a succession of visitors. First there was Lucy, good-hearted niece of the redoubtable Emily Jasper, who had come to console Frederick for his ordeal. The squire, however, was on fire to write his letter to Wiltshire, so it was Lenox who entertained her, their easy rapport passing thirty minutes in what seemed like five, covering those eternal village subjects: the vicar; the vicar’s wife; the town drunk; the old days. He extended her an invitation to London and was pleased when she said she would take him up on it. They had been friends in years past, and he always liked to pick up such strings again.

As she was leaving Dr. Eastwood came in. She curtsied to him, he bowed gravely, and then inquired, when she was gone, whether he might see Frederick.

“By all means, though he seems in the pink of health. Might his head injury have changed his personality?”

Eastwood laughed. “It is not likely. It was a soft blow, though I admit he has come up under it strong, very strong indeed.”

Lenox lingered in the hallway reading Cornhill after Eastwood had gone to Frederick’s study, waiting for the doctor to come out. As he was waiting the third and fourth visitors arrived. The bell rang and Lenox, being nearby, went to the door, but found that Nash had hurried, indeed rather pushed, beyond him, giving a soft exasperated sigh at Lenox’s infringement upon his rightful terrain.

Nash stepped backward to admit the visitors. “Mr.—”

He needn’t have said a word, though, for Lenox could have spotted the two gentlemen from a Somerset mile off. “Edmund! And Graham! What on earth are you two doing here!”

Edmund laughed, taking off his hat, handing over his cane and cloak to the butler. “The cavalry has arrived, Charles. We cannot have you getting knocked on the head and missing out on your speech and going into pistol fights with bit fakers. It won’t do. And Graham has been pining to see the text you’ve drafted; he won’t stop complaining.”

One look at Graham’s silent, smiling face showed that there was some truth in this. Lenox shook his hand, thrilled to see his old butler, now his political secretary — indeed one of the savviest political secretaries in the Commons, despite the handicap of his birth, as most such jobs went to recent graduates of the great public schools, sometimes even one of the two universities.

“It’s true,” he said, “I am desperate to see it, after the prime minister himself stopped me in the halls yesterday to ask about your progress.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

It is the commonest observation in the world that a week can sometimes pass in an hour and an hour in a week, but it is true. Lenox’s final days at Everley had been idyllic — long rides out on Sadie, afternoon tea in the great drawing room, walks in the garden with Sophie and Jane — and had passed in such a flash that now, sitting in a small anteroom outside the House of Commons, he felt practically dazed.

From the chamber there was a steady hum of human voices, each, because it belonged to a member of Parliament, more than usually accustomed to attention.

“Are they preparing for a great failure, do you think?” asked Lenox, and then laughed rather weakly.

Graham was the only other person in the dim room. Frabbs, their carrot-haired clerk, was at the door, prepared to reject entrance by anyone other than the prime minister himself. Or, if he were to stretch a point, the Queen. “I’ve no doubt they’re speaking of their suppers and their women,” said Graham.

“You are right of course.”

They were on two blue leather sofas, with a mahogany table between them. There was a plate of biscuits and a bottle of claret there. Both were untouched as yet. Bottlesworth — that noble expert on comestibles who had advised Lenox to have two pints of porter and a passel of sandwiches before his speech — would have been distressed.

Lenox shuffled through the papers in his hand, looking at them and seeing nothing. He was all nerves; Lady Jane was in the visitors’ gallery, McConnell too, and the press box, he had seen, was jammed. The prime minister had sent him a very civil communication, congratulating him on the tone of the speech and inviting him to dine together afterward.

“We shall see about that, if it goes badly,” muttered Lenox.

“Sir?”

“Oh, nothing.”

The door opened. Lenox assumed it was Frabbs and didn’t turn, but then noticed with some consternation that a man in a snuff-colored suit of clothes had entered the room, and said, in a hoarse voice, “I have come to give my best wishes for your speech.”

Lord preserve me from well-wishers, thought Charles, and why has Frabbs—but as he turned, artificial smile on his face to accept the compliment, he saw that it was his brother. Of course! Edmund had a cold in his head and shouldn’t have been here at all, were it not for the occasion.

“Why, thank you, Ed.” Charles’s face was flushed with true pleasure as he spoke these words.

“I am prepared to hear a thumper.”

“Lower your expectations, for the love of all that’s good.”

Edmund smiled. “Graham, I wish you joy of your achievement today, too.”

“Thank you, sir.”