“Well?” said Lenox. “What?”
Atherton looked surprised at the vehemence in Lenox’s voice. “Yes, Hadley bought Stevens’s house when Stevens moved to Cremorne Street,” said Atherton. “Ed, you must have known that.”
“I had no idea,” said Edmund. “In Potbelly Lane?”
“Yes, they’ve been friendly since.”
Toby was making an outright commotion at the gate of the cottage. Though nobody was stirring inside, in the rest of Clifton Street people had noticed. Glancing back, Lenox saw several women in the doorways, peering down toward the group on horseback.
They must do something soon, or risk Calloway running as he had before, if indeed it had been he who’d taken their horses outside the gamekeeper’s cottage. This new information about Stevens and Hadley — this troubling new information — would have to wait. He looked back to make sure that Atherton was still restraining Toby. The dog was pulling hard at the end of his leash, forelegs lifting off the ground, but Atherton had him.
Lenox went to the gate. As he pushed it open, it gave a loud creak.
“Mr. Calloway?” he called.
There was no reply. He went in and took one or two steps up the short path to the low front door. Edmund, too, had dismounted. He followed behind his younger brother.
Together they waited at the front door. “Do you hear anything?” Lenox asked in a quiet voice, after he had knocked on it.
“No. You?”
Lenox pushed the door inward. The garden smelled strongly, but as they moved into the house the smell of greenery became all-consuming — neither pleasant nor unpleasant precisely, a jumble of every herb that had ever been, living, dead, growing, dried. In the dim light, Lenox could see dozens of jars on a small table by the door.
“Mr. Calloway?” he called out loudly.
There was no answer, and he began to have a dreadful feeling. What if they found him dead, Mad Calloway? The town’s mayor and its hermit in the same week?
What if that chalk drawing was waiting on the wall?
The rooms of the house were tiny. There was a sitting room, a kitchen, and a bedroom, none much wider than the span of Lenox’s arms, and none of the ceilings high enough that he felt confident walking entirely upright.
These rooms were also empty.
“What now?” asked Edmund.
“I’m not sure.”
“Hm.”
“Let’s see if there’s a back gate,” said Lenox. “It’s a trick that fooled us once before.”
They returned to the front door and walked out the little path. Then, peering around the corner of the house into the garden, Lenox noticed a rickety shed at the end of it, made of what looked like ancient time-blackened driftwood.
Through its slats he saw a movement.
Heart quickening, he gestured to Edmund to follow him, and they waded through the deep herbs growing all around to get to it — trying not to trample them underfoot, which was funny, Lenox thought. After all, Stevens was nearly dead.
“Mr. Calloway?” Lenox called when they had come to the shed.
At the sound of his voice, there was a thin whine for response — a dog’s whine.
Without hesitating, Lenox opened the door and saw them both: There was Calloway, still alive, thank God, bent over a small sprig of some herb, pruning it with infinite care and tenderness, and behind his chair, staring up at them with beautiful wet dark eyes, was Mickelson’s spaniel.
“Mr. Calloway?” said Charles softly.
There was no reply.
“Mr. Calloway, I’m Edmund Lenox. My brother and I hoped to have a word with you.”
Calloway didn’t turn away from his project, and Lenox said, “It’s about Stevens Stevens, the mayor. Did you know that he’s been attacked, Mr. Calloway?”
There was a long pause, and then the old man put down the plant carefully on a bed of wet cotton that he had evidently prepared before beginning this delicate operation — there were similar such beds on the makeshift table, a kind of infirmary for plants — and turned to them.
“Is he dead?” Calloway asked.
Lenox would later learn that these were the first words anyone in Markethouse had heard Mad Calloway speak in eleven years. Not surprisingly, his voice was hoarse. “No, he’s not,” said Lenox.
“More’s the pity. Have you arrested anyone?”
“No, sir.”
“And who do you think did it?”
“We don’t know, sir.”
A look came over Calloway’s face then that struck Lenox, a look he would remember, some odd mixture of strain, relief, and exhaustion. “Well,” he said calmly. “I did it. Give me a moment to finish this and I’ll come away with you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
It was a few hours later when Mrs. Appleby, highly professional representative that she was of the Royal Mail, came to find Lenox in the jailhouse near the Bell and Horns.
“You have three wires addressed to you at Lenox House,” she said, “but I thought you might prefer to have them now.”
“Thank you very much, Mrs. Appleby,” said Lenox.
“I heard that you were here, you see.”
She needn’t have added that; the entire village had known within seconds, it seemed to Lenox, that Mad Calloway had been arrested for the violent assault upon the person of Stevens Stevens. This, even though they had tried their hardest to transport him to the jailhouse anonymously. It hadn’t mattered. The word had run up Clifton Street faster than their horses, then perhaps north to Pilot Street over a back fence, then probably down Pig Lane with the washing-woman — and now here they were, with half the people of Markethouse again gathered in the square, and half of them convinced that Calloway had killed Arthur Hadley, too.
Clavering had a little desk outside of the single jail cell. Edmund, Lenox, and he were seated in chairs around it, staring at Calloway, who was asleep upon the low straw-filled bed in the cell. Atherton had gone home at last, taking Toby with him along the way as a favor to Edmund — though not before the dog had been treated to a piece of beefsteak from the public house next door by Lenox, who had strong convictions about fairly rewarding anyone who assisted him in finding a murderer, regardless of the number of legs they might possess.
“Damned awkward,” Clavering said for the dozenth time, after Mrs. Appleby had left. “He was never a bad sort. Even a very good sort, I would have said, before he lost his mind.”
They had tried to question Calloway for hours now; they might as fruitfully have tried to question the wall behind him, or the straw in the bed. He was silent.
“What was his motive?” Edmund muttered, yet again.
Lenox had his own thoughts on that score. Until his mind had worked over the facts, however, he was going to stay quiet.
He tore open the first of the telegrams, read it, and sighed heavily. “What is it, sir?” asked Clavering.
“The case began with Arthur Hadley coming to us,” he said, “and his problem, at least, I think we have solved.”
“We have?” said Edmund doubtfully.
Lenox passed across the telegram, which was from the Dover Limited Fire and Life Assurance Company. “I believe so.”
Edmund read it out loud:
Arthur Hadley safe STOP staying night in Chiselhurst STOP plans return home when work concluded STOP sends thanks for concern STOP
Clavering took it from him and read it again, frowning. Edmund, looking at Charles, said, “I still cannot see the thread.”
Lenox explained. “As soon as Atherton told us that Hadley lived in Stevens’s old house in Potbelly Lane, the pieces fell into place. My first thought was of the sherry.”