A Death in the Small Hours

the place.”

“It’s very beautiful,” the governess said soberly, gazing upon its littoral calm.

“Well, she’s not bad,” murmured Frederick, but his tight lips showed that the comment had pleased him.

Indeed Everley was famous in Somerset, famous even in England, among the people who knew of such things, for its serene loveliness. It had none of the grandeur of a palace, or of the great medieval castles — it was only two stories — yet it had a beauty all its own.

In color and build it looked something like an Oxford college, made of the same honey-colored stone, which looked beautiful no matter how the light struck it; it was in the shape of an open-ended square, with a medieval hall at one end, dating from 1220, and opposite that a matching Tudor hall. The front was more recent, dating to the reign of Queen Anne, and had two rows of four great windows and a large archway that led to a grassy inner courtyard. Ringed around it were small gardens with gravel paths, not grand but perfect in their beauty; Frederick tended them very carefully. The whole picture was one less of uniform imagination, like Chastworth or Castle Howard, than of a modest, gradually evolving, lived-in place. Yet the effect, between the pond and the quiet gardens and the house itself, was one of almost supernal beauty.

“It looks as if a nobler race than ours made it,” said Miss Taylor.

“You are very kind and I welcome you,” said Frederick. “You must admire it later, at length — for now I imagine all of you want tea.”

“Oh, badly,” said Lenox.

Soon they had been deposited in their rooms, complete with their luggage. He and Jane had a timbered- ceiling sort of hall with at one end a slim window of pink stained glass, which discouraged the light very beautifully against the walls. It was the oldest part of the house.

That evening they all ate supper together, Sophia coming in for a visit just beforehand. Afterward Lenox and Frederick retired to the latter man’s small library, a tiny half-moon — shaped room, cluttered with odds and ends, very comfortable for reading. It had just enough space for two chairs and a bottle of port. The rosewood table between the chairs held a chessboard.

“A game?” said Frederick, pouring the port into two glasses.

“With pleasure.”

He lit his pipe and opened with his queen’s knight. “Well, Charles, I sent you that note without any very great hope that you would come, but here you are.”

Lenox smiled. “Thank you for having us all. I’ve missed it. Hold for a moment — what is this smile you’re giving me? You look as if you have a secret.”

“No, no. Only I wonder what brought you down here?”

“What can you mean?”

“Was it that postscript of mine? There, yes, put out your pawn, I’ll take him soon enough.”

“I was intrigued by it, of course, but I came down because—”

“No, I’m only having fun with you. I know you would come oftener if ever you could.”

Besides his servants Frederick lived alone; Lenox did wonder whether he grew lonely. “Of course I would.” He moved. “In fact I shall come more often. You don’t know how it’s been, with Jane pregnant, that trip to Egypt —”

“Yes, the reports of it reached me in the Times. And your letter, of course, telling me you were safe long after I knew it.” The older man chuckled. “Old Rudge, the farmer who lives on the county line, wouldn’t believe you were my own cousin.”

“We shall have to call on him.”

“He’s a curmudgeon — would think you a charlatan, I don’t doubt. There, I told you I would have your pawn.”

“Though it means I take your knight.”

“Damn your eyes,” he said good-naturedly. “But I may have some plan? No, I look over the board and see that I do not — I thought I had — but no. Still, let’s follow the game through. Neither of us is very good, or likely to set the world afire with our brilliance, but it passes the time.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

They played on in silence. When Frederick finally spoke again his face had grown more serious. “I’ll tell you why I’m glad you’ve come down, however. I’ve some news I had rather tell you in person.”

“Oh?”

“I’m passing Everley on to Wendell.”

Lenox laughed. “Is that so?”

“I’m quite serious, Charles.” The older man looked obstinate. “I plan to do it some time in the next eighteen months, in fact.”

Wendell was the eldest son of Frederick’s first cousin. He was a moon-faced, respectable, surpassingly dull soul, a barrister at Gray’s, and Everley had been his due from birth — but not until his cousin died. Lenox felt the disorientation of a sharp shock. It was impossible to imagine Everley otherwise than it had been, and impossible to imagine Wendell appreciating Everley’s charms — he was a man full of the same romance and poetry as a fair-sized rock.

“I pray you aren’t ill?”

“No, but I am old.”

“You’re not yet sixty. I don’t call someone old until they’re eighty-five, these days, and even then I have a look at the withers.”

Frederick smiled. “No, I’m not sixty, not for a month, and there’s a bit of youth in me yet, but I feel a great strain in taking care of Everley — to be alone here, to be responsible. I am tired, Charles, heartily tired.” As he said this, the squire’s incipient old age suddenly showed in his eyes. “Wendell has a large family, a good wife. He will be happy here.”

“Where will you go?”

“I’ll buy a house in the village, I imagine. At first I thought it ill-mannered, to stay so close, but I think Wendell won’t mind. He might even let me continue in the gardens — the Ribes Rubrum that Rodgers and I planted are very beautiful this year — and I know he will keep on the staff, if I ask him to.”

“Freddie, you cannot—”

“Cannot leave? I can, and I shall.”

“Is this decision financial?” he asked.

If they weren’t relatives it would have been an inappropriate question; it was still very near to being one. “No.”

“But Uncle Freddie, how can you leave your library? The card room where the two of us used to play hands of whist with my mother and old Kempe? I cannot understand it.”

“Your mother would understand it.”

“Would she?” Lenox was beyond forty now himself, a member of Parliament, but he felt the frustrated anger of a thirteen-year-old. “What about your responsibility to the house?”

“If I think that responsibility is best discharged by passing it to a good — to a very reliable — gentleman, then that is what I shall do.” Now the squire looked severe. “We might discuss it some other time, but before you say anything else I beg you will consider my position.”

Lenox, rebuffed, still bewildered, inclined his head. “Very well. I’m glad my daughter has come to stay here, then, though she will not remember it.”

“There’s no need to find melodrama in the situation, Charles. Wendell would take any number of your daughters in if you asked him to.”

They played their game of chess on in a tense silence. It was Lenox who broke it. “I suppose you have lived here a long time alone.”

“Yes, a very long time. I like to believe that I have stood a fine sentry over the house.”

“There’s no doubt of that.”