“On the contrary, nearly full.”
“How can you be sure that it hadn’t gone missing the night before?”
Hadley nodded excitedly. “Precisely the question, sir, precisely the question! I am very particular in my habits, and the night before, after seeing that pale face, and that ghastly drawing, I had taken a glass of brandy. I am absolutely certain — would swear it upon my parents’ eyes — that all six bottles were there when I went to bed. The same six bottles I always, always keep on hand.”
There was a long pause. “Curious indeed,” said Edmund.
“I felt a chill run down my spine. I tried to shake it off, tried out just the explanations you have both offered, but I couldn’t, and in the end I walked across town and knocked on Mrs. Watson’s door, which interview’s results I have already conveyed to you. She did not touch the liquor table, did not take the bottle of sherry. And yet it was gone. For the second day in a row, someone had been inside my house.”
Now Lenox frowned. “Had Mrs. Watson allowed any visitors into the house while you were away?”
“None.”
“Was the door to your house locked?”
“I generally leave the door and the windows unlocked while Mrs. Watson is there, and I believe I did that day, too. Since then, of course, I have taken to locking everything — and, I don’t mind saying, checking twice or three times that I have done so, before I have the courage to fall asleep.”
“Someone could have entered the house without her noticing, then?” asked Lenox.
Hadley grimaced. “I would have doubted it, if it hadn’t happened. Somehow they must have, I suppose. It’s true that Mrs. Watson passes a great deal of her time in the kitchen, which is at the back, and to some degree segregated from the other rooms in the house. By her own account, she was there for several hours in the afternoon while I was gone.”
Lenox pondered for a moment all that he had heard, and then, leaning back in his chair, he said, “You have come to ask me my professional opinion — well, you may have it.”
“Ah, that’s a relief.”
“I think that these are very strange circumstances indeed, and I think that the police would unquestionably be interested in them. I am happy to assist them or you, of course, but they know the village better than I do, they have your welfare at heart, and I should certainly, in your position, place the matter in their hands.”
Hadley nodded but said, “Without intending any disrespect, Mr. Lenox — I think you are perhaps accustomed to the Metropolitan Police, which is of a very different order than our local police forces, here in the country. I deal with loss and fire and theft for a living, and you cannot imagine how hidebound, how immobile, how very contrary, a small village constable can be.”
Charles looked to his brother, hoping to appeal to him for a better account — but saw, to his surprise, that Edmund was nodding. “It is quite true. Clavering’s a very good fellow, but not one of your cunning London sharps.”
“Indeed?” said Lenox. He thought for another moment. In truth, he was intrigued. The pale face, the drawing of the girl, the bottle of sherry. He turned to his brother. “Edmund, you know my days here are yours.”
Edmund nearly smiled. “In that case, I happily transfer ownership of them to Mr. Hadley, at least temporarily — and hope that he will accept mine as well, for I am exceedingly curious about what on earth all of this can mean. In Markethouse, too, as he says!”
“Very well,” said Lenox. “Mr. Hadley, I will take the case.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Mrs. Watson, the charwoman, lived with a family of six in two rooms on Drury Street. This was one of the small lanes toward the western end of town, near Markethouse’s only factory, which manufactured tallow. It was the poorest part of the village — there was an unpleasant smell from the factory at most hours, much worse in the summer — but it was still nothing like the poverty of London. Penned in front of most houses were a few chickens or a pig, and more often than not a small vegetable garden grew alongside them.
The charwoman was not at work in Hadley’s more middle-class street, closer to the square, because one of her children was ill; Hadley had given her permission to take the day.
“It’s only the second time it’s happened these two years,” he’d told them in Edmund’s breakfast room, speaking in a forgiving tone, and Lenox’s ears had pricked up at that. Anything out of the ordinary was worth noting.
“Has she been behaving peculiarly at all, your Mrs. Watson?”
Hadley had furrowed his brow. “Mrs. Watson! Not at all. As reliable as the church bells, she is.”
Now they arrived at the house where she lived. The young boy who answered the door didn’t look sick. “Do you want to buy a toad?” he asked.
“No,” said Edmund.
“What about two toads?”
“Can they do anything interesting?”
“They’ll leap something tremendous,” he said, with fervent sincerity. “I can give you both for sixpence.”
“George!” cried a voice behind the boy, before they had the time to answer. It was Mrs. Watson, hurrying forward. “Gracious me, Mr. Hadley, how sorry I am — George, get out of the house this instant — with your brother ill, no less — go!”
The little boy ran off without looking back at them, and Mrs. Watson, though flummoxed by the appearance of her employer and two strangers who were obviously gentlemen, made a fair show of guiding them into her small, extremely warm kitchen. Another boy was lying in some straw in the corner, a long string bean of fifteen or so, his face waxy, his eyes fluttering. Mrs. Watson put a kettle on for them without being asked.
“Is he all right?” asked Edmund, frowning.
Mrs. Watson glanced down at the boy. “Him? He’ll be well enough soon, I hope.”
“Should he see a doctor?” asked Edmund.
The charwoman looked at him for a moment, and then realized that her face must have betrayed how stupid the question was, because she said, “It’s a very gracious thought, sir, but not just yet, I think.”
Only if the boy was actually dying, of course, Lenox realized, maybe not even then. “I know that Dr. Stallings would come visit if we asked him,” he said. “Edmund, why don’t we send a note and ask him? It’s not ten minutes’ walk.”
“I call that a capital idea.”
So the note was written, and the boy next door enlisted to take it to Stallings, and they sat in the boiling hot kitchen, sipping flavorless boiling hot tea — and waited. Mrs. Watson, a rough, raw-faced, but kindly woman, was too polite to inquire why they had come, and the three men didn’t wish to disturb the boy. At last, Lenox suggested they remove themselves to the next room for a moment.
Here they were able to interview the charwoman.
She offered an account that mirrored her master’s: She had worked for him for two years, six days a week, Sundays to herself, cooking, cleaning, mending, sewing, shopping, no, the duties was not onerous, sir, yes, she was quite happy in her position. With these initials out of the way, Lenox was able to pose a few more probing questions.
“Can you cast your mind back to last Wednesday?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“What time did you leave Mr. Hadley’s house?” he asked.
“At five o’clock,” she said. “Same as every day, sir.”
“When you left, was there anything chalked on the steps of the house?”
She shook her head, face firm. “No, sir. Absolutely not. I would have seen. I always sweep the steps, last thing, before I go.”
“Was the day unusual in any way?”
“None at all, sir.”
She had so far evinced no desire to know who they were, or why they were questioning her — apparently Hadley’s presence was enough to vouchsafe them — but now Lenox said, “We’re hoping to get to the bottom of this missing bottle of sherry.”