“Call it a suspicion.”
It was only twelve minutes or so to the village green, which was ablaze with light and jostling with Plumbley villagers.
“Look at this. It’s like the first of November,” said Freddie.
Dallington shot him a quizzical look, but Lenox understood. “You’ve heard of soul-caking?” he said.
“No,” said Dallington.
“Spoken like a Londoner,” Frederick said, though his eyes were fixed on the people congregated near the police station.
They stepped out of the carriage. Lenox said, “It’s a custom in many villages, though I’ve never seen one take it as seriously as Plumbley. They do it differently here, too, because in most villages the children beg for cakes, but here the children make them. They spend the whole last week of October doing it, out of raisins and flour, nutmeg and cinnamon, perhaps a little ginger, that sort of thing.
“Then on the first of the new month the whole village opens itself up, lights on in every house, a glass of wine exchanged among all the neighbors, very friendly, and the children trade the cakes they’ve made for toys and candies. It’s lovely to see. Old feuds are set to the side for an evening. At the end there’s the first Christmas carol of the year on the town green, along with a hymn or two, by candlelight. Each cake that’s eaten represents a soul freed from Purgatory, they say.”
“Sounds rather like guising.”
“No, there’s nothing mean-spirited in it. There wouldn’t be, in Plumbley.” As he said this Lenox felt a surge of fondness for the little village, and simultaneously an anger at the men who had put it in a state of fear, had fretted the faces he saw in conversation around the town green. “You two go. I’m off to see Carmody.”
That won their attention. “Carmody?” asked Dallington, eyebrows raised.
“I’ll see you before too long.”
As he approached Carmody’s house there were clusters of people talking, in the low murmuring gossip of village life. In the window of the man’s sitting room, Lenox could see that the curtains were parted and the lights were on. He knocked sharply on the door.
“Good evening, Mr. Lenox,” said the housekeeper. “Unfortunately Mr. Carmody has retired. Would you care to leave a message for him?”
“Please rouse him, if you would.”
“But—”
“It’s a matter of some moment, ma’am.”
“Very well. Wait here, please. I would invite you in, but at this hour—”
Lenox, standing on the stairs that led to the front door of the row house, pivoted so that he could survey the green as Carmody would have. He wondered where on earth Captain Musgrave might be.
The door opened again. “He will see you in his study, sir,” said the housekeeper.
“Excellent.”
Carmody was in his seat by the window, in a vermilion-and-gold dressing gown, a glass of port wine — no doubt of a vintage deemed acceptable by the boys in Covent Garden — in his left hand. “Mr. Lenox,” he said, “I take it your visit pertains to this latest incident?”
“Would you dress and come with me on an errand?” Lenox asked. “It would only take fifteen minutes.”
“At this time of the evening I fear I cannot—”
“Really, I must insist, Mr. Carmody,” said Lenox. “The next murder could happen this evening.”
“The next murder, Mr. Lenox?”
“Will you help me?”
“I do customarily take a walk in the evenings, as you know — but — well, yes, I shall come along, I suppose. Give me a moment, give me a moment,” he said, with the flustered annoyance of a bachelor interrupted in his routines.
Soon they were walking down the dim, moonlit streets of Plumbley. The short white houses, with their stooped green doors and friendly brass door-knockers in the shapes of horses, dogs, coronets, any such thing, looked completely innocent of malevolence.
“Where are we going?” said Carmody, trotting alongside Lenox.
“I’m taking you on a circuitous route to avoid the town green.”
“But where—”
“I’d like you to look at a pair of horses.”
After a short walk, not more than eight minutes, they stood before a large house with a stable adjoining it. Both were silent. “This is the place?” asked Carmody.
“Yes. Help me open the top-half of the stable door, if you would.”
They creaked these open, Lenox trying to be quiet in case there was a boy who slept above the stalls. Nobody emerged, and soon three fine horses were at the window, open breast-high. It was just like Plumbley to have an unlocked stable so close to town. Or had been, perhaps, until the recent crimes. Who knew what precautions people would begin to take if it didn’t stop; how the town would change.
“Are these the horses?” said Lenox.
Carmody looked at them very carefully. It was a piece of good fortune that the moon was bright. “Yes,” he said at last, very slowly. “They are, these two to the left here, beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
“Good. Help me close the door.”
Carmody was dumbfounded. “Stay a moment. Can that mean—”
“I must entreat you to hold your tongue, Mr. Carmody. Soon enough it will all come out, I assure you, but until then your discretion is crucial.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The two men split apart now, Carmody for his evening walk — though he seemed apprehensive about venturing anywhere too far out of town, and said he would avoid the wood — and Lenox back to the town green.
Dallington, standing on the church steps, hailed him. “Charles!”
“How are you?”
“Well enough. More important, how was your errand?”
Lenox nodded slightly, his face grim. “I think the facts are settled in my mind. I shall wait until the morning — until this has died down — to make the arrest. First I must go to one of the public houses and have a quiet word with a man, as a final verification. Perhaps you and Freddie might come with me, and I shall explain.”
Freddie was speaking in consoling tones to a group of woman who were standing in front of the police station. When he saw Lenox, he asked, “Do you need to see the constable’s hat, the rock, Charles?”
The detective shook his head. “No, at least not at the moment. As long as Oates has retained it as evidence.”
“It is in the station’s safe.”
“Will you come along to the Royal Oak for a few moments? I should like you to point out Weston’s friends to me. We are close to the end.”
Frederick looked hopeful. “You have it?”
“I think I may,” said Lenox. “It is a pitiful reason to waste a life, if I am correct.”
They trudged across the village green toward the King’s Arms, a dark, low-slung Tudor pub without much cheer to it, full of quiet voices and lit only by a few swinging candles. The cider was reckoned to be some of the best in Somerset, however. Lenox ordered three pints of it at the bar.
“Which of these is Weston’s friend?” he asked Frederick.
“Several by the back wall there, that young man, for instance, Michael Robe. Then there’s Edward Carfax, just next to him, holding the glass of shandy.”
“Which one can keep a secret?”
“Carfax, I would say.”
“I’m going to ask the publican for a private room. If you could bring Mr. Carfax back to see me, I would be grateful.”
Soon it was done, and in a few, low words, sealed with a promise of silence, the young man confirmed Lenox’s suspicions.
Dallington and Frederick came in again when Carfax had left. “Well?” asked the old squire.
“Could you have a constable here from Bath, in the morning?” asked Lenox.
“Very easily, yes.”
“And could you write up a search warrant?”