“The gardens, in particular.” Frederick’s face looked softer now. “You aren’t my age, yet, Charles. When you are, you’ll see that it is wiser to make your own decisions than to let time make decisions for you. I hate to think of rotting away here, unable to shift for myself, a burden on everyone.”
Lenox pondered this. “My reaction was selfish. I suppose I have the attitude toward Everley that some people do toward church. I don’t always go, but it’s a relief to know that I always could.”
The squire laughed. “Precisely how I felt about leaving. I never thought I would — I love the place too much — but now I find that I would like to do it. Life is strange, I suppose.”
“Nobody could contradict that.”
“Shall I show you my final project?”
“By all means,” said Lenox.
The older man stood, and beckoned his cousin to his small desk. “Here it is.
“Your book?”
“Yes.”
“At long last!”
“Easy for you to say, my boy! It hasn’t been quick work.”
Lenox leafed through the loose pages, each of which bore a drawing of a different plant. They were artfully done, and at the bottom of each page was a short description. “Will you publish it?”
“The horticultural society in Bath is eager to publish it, but I may take it to a London firm. More professional.”
“Is there not a definitive work on the subject?”
Freddie shook his head. “Only a penny-pinching little volume from the year ’twenty-eight, by someone called Horace Hargreaves. I don’t think he could have told you a tree from a sheep, to be honest — dozens of mistakes.”
“I congratulate you.”
Frederick tapped on the window. It was dark outside, but the silhouettes of a line of trees were visible. “Most of these plants I have managed to cultivate out there, too. A living monument. Another glass of port?”
“No, thank you.”
Frederick poured his own. “You’re tired, I’ve no doubt — I should let you retire. Yet—”
“What is it?”
“If you are not too upset with me—”
“Never in life,” said Lenox.
“Then let us circle back for a moment,” Frederick said, sitting. “I do wish you would give me your counsel, your professional counsel, as it were, on the vandalism we’ve had down in the village. It’s giving the constables a fearful time, and to be frank, people are beginning to grow scared. I don’t like it at all.”
“Is it as bad as all that? I assumed it would be schoolboys.”
Frederick shook his head. Outside the wind picked up, rattling the windows. “No,” he said. “I fear it is more mysterious than that.”
“I would like to hear the facts of the matter.”
“Tonight?”
Lenox shrugged. “Why not? Start from the beginning, if you like.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Frederick stood again and began to pace the small room, hands behind his back, brow furrowed. “It began not a few weeks ago, in late August. In a larger town — in Bath, say — I doubt it would have been much remarked at all, or if it were then they wouldn’t have taken it very seriously, but of course Plumbley is a very small village.”
“Six hundred people as I recall, or thereabouts?”
“When you were a child, yes. Perhaps nearer eight hundred now. The curate could tell you an exact figure. He’s been collating the parish registers. At any rate, one sees very few unfamiliar faces in the village. Occasionally a traveling salesman of some sort will pitch up and stay at the Royal Oak for an evening, or a sister from London or Taunton will be resident with one of the townspeople for a month’s vacation. Yet I can say with almost perfect certainty that there has been nobody here over the course of the time in which these vandalisms have taken place who is unknown to me.”
The chessboard forgotten, Lenox slouched back in his chair, eyes sharp and narrow with attention. “What about over the past year, to take a longer view of things? Has there been anyone new come to town during that time?”
“Captain Josiah Musgrave and his family, yes. He moved into that pretty little house — it has an acre or two attached to it — that Dr. McGrath used to live in, down at the bottom of Church Lane. I’ll come to him.”
“Pray go on.”
“You remember Fripp, the fruit-and-vegetable seller? I mentioned him in my letter?”
“I do. Is his shop still just off the village green?”
“That’s the one — little place, not much room to move about inside, but it’s by way of being an institution here, not unlike the saddler’s or the butcher’s. Very little change there.”
“He still has the cricket bat nailed over the door?”
“Yes, and he’s eager to see your form — but that’s for another time. Here, wait there a moment.”
“As you like.”
Frederick stood and went to his cherry-wood desk now, pipe locked into his teeth, and sorted through the rich profusion of papers, books, and old teacups that concealed the desktop beneath them. At last he found what he had been looking for. “There we are,” he said in a quiet voice. “I don’t like to look at it, myself.”
He passed a piece of paper to Lenox. Upon it, in dark ink, was a stick figure, something akin to a pictograph, of a man hanging by a noose.
It sent a chill up Lenox’s spine.
“This was in Fripp’s shop?”
“In a manner of speaking. One morning Fripp arrived at his shop — he lives with his mother, who is a very ancient personage, on the Mill Lane — and found all of his front windows broken. There were two or three rocks inside that had evidently done the job. A piece of paper was wrapped around one of them with this image upon it.”
“Crudely drawn.”
“Yes.”
“This is the original?”
“No, that’s a sketch, a fairly accurate one, I can confirm, as they sent for me straight away, my being the magistrate.”
“Was anything taken from the shop?”
“No — at least, not anything of value. Perhaps they swiped an apple or two as they went, whoever did it.”
Lenox studied the simple outline of the hanging man. “Not a happy sight.”
“No, and it frightened the poor man half to death.”
“I can imagine. He must be close to seventy,” said Lenox. “He was in the shop when I was a boy.”
“Yes, and his mother well over ninety. They’re a hardy lot, the Fripps, but I cannot blame him for reacting unhappily. There was something horrifying about it, Charles, I swear to you — just a mute picture but I shouldn’t like to gaze upon it again. It had an ominous feel.”
“Who is the police constable in the village?”
“There are two: There is Oates, a good man, who’s been in the job twenty years or more, and his new assistant, a boy, not much past eighteen, named Weston.”
“They haven’t been able to find anything?”
