Claire Adams nodded her agreement with this assertion.
“That family, including the two sisters present in this room, had become strangers to him, and though both Elizabeth Watson and Claire Adams seemed to me to bear some personal animus toward Stevens, it was impossible to imagine that Calloway would care enough about their prejudices to act upon them, or to sacrifice himself for either of them.
“Add that, of course, to the other facts that didn’t square with the idea of Calloway as the murderer — the use of the gamekeeper’s cottage, when he had his own house, the theft of the library books, the map of Markethouse, the mistake of thinking that Stevens still lived in Potbelly Lane, in what is now Mr. Hadley’s house. It was clear to me that an outsider to the village was involved.”
Calloway’s daughter looked up. Though he was old and bearded and mad, it was possible now to see the resemblance between them; both had strong cheekbones and penetrating eyes. Hers were trained on Lenox. “How do you know that I went to Hadley’s house?” she asked.
“Hush, Helena,” said Adelaide.
“How did Miss Snow come to be involved?” asked Clavering.
“Give me a moment and I’ll explain,” Lenox said.
The mood of the room had changed. Now they were upon the terrain of firm fact. Sandy was curled up happily at Mrs. Evans’s feet, eyes already settling closed in the warmth of the fire. Edmund, standing near the fireplace, was gazing at the scene with a calm, steadying sympathy.
“I asked myself,” said Lenox, “whom Calloway might then have cared enough about to protect. He more or less invited us to hang him, after all. And I thought: Who could inspire such a cheerful suicide but a child? I myself am a father — and it is no sacrifice, the idea of sacrificing yourself for a child. Your self doesn’t even come into it.
“So it was that I came to the answer: this woman, before you. Mad Calloway’s daughter.”
“Please don’t call him that,” she said.
“I apologize. In fact, I remember Miss Snow, Miss Adelaide Snow here, stopping herself just short, yesterday, of saying Mad Calloway, and saying, much more politely, Mr. Calloway. It struck me as an odd hitch in her speech at the time, until I realized she was sparing your feelings, Mrs. Evans. I also wondered why you took such a pressing interest in the condition of Calloway’s imprisonment, about which you asked us several questions. As a cousin visiting from out of town, you could scarcely have known anything about him. Now, of course, I understand.”
“But what was it for?” asked Edmund suddenly. “If Mrs. Evans did indeed attack Stevens, why?”
“Ah.” Lenox looked at the two young women on the sofa. “There I enter into the realm of speculation. Mrs. Evans?”
She remained silent. Lenox glanced at Adelaide Snow’s usually kindly face and was startled to see in it something stony and strange. It took him a moment, but then he realized what it was: rage, sheer rage.
He looked at the two Watson sisters, and upon their faces, too, was deep emotion.
“I suspect that Stevens Stevens is not a — not a good man,” he said lamely, and then went on. “Mrs. Evans, Miss Snow, you have both been in his employ. Can you tell us the truth of his character? Of what happened?”
“Never,” said Adelaide Snow fiercely. She gripped Liza Calloway’s shoulder again. “Just leave us alone. You can’t prove a thing.”
Lenox glanced at Edmund and raised his eyebrows slightly. He was about to speak again when there was a knock on the door, and then, without waiting for a reply, the knocker pushed it open a few inches. It was Lady Jane.
“Charles, there you are, and Edmund, too,” she said. “What have you been doing?”
Despite the circumstances, Adelaide Snow rose to her feet, and Lenox realized that of course his wife was famous in this part of the world. He watched her take in the entire scene with her quick, intelligent gray eyes.
“This is Miss Liza Calloway,” he said, “or more properly, Mrs. Evans.”
“Ah,” said Jane. She still had a hand on the doorway. There was a long pause, and then it was clear that she had apprehended the situation, the tenor of the room, and she said, “Well, perhaps I might sit with you.”
It was Edmund who saw the merit of the idea most quickly. He strode forward. “Listen, perhaps all of us had better clear out,” he said. “You and I, Charles, and us, Clavering and Bunce. Jane — these young women have had some trial. Ladies, you may speak to my sister-in-law with utter confidence that she will keep your secrets — or not, if you prefer, but at any rate you ought to have a few minutes to yourselves. It’s been a difficult night, I’m sure. We’ll return in a little while.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
They left. Lady Jane was closeted with Adelaide Snow, Liza Calloway, and Elizabeth Watson and Claire Adams for the better part of an hour. Halfway through she came out and told Lenox to go and find Toto for her, which he did. Clavering and Bunce were in the kitchen, eating and drinking; the two brothers sat in the hall outside the room, on a wooden bench beneath a comically bad portrait of the seventh King Henry, waiting. Off to their left was the ceaseless roar of the ball, and behind them the close little room, from which a raised voice would occasionally emerge.
They passed the time first by playing five-across noughts and crosses (Edmund won five games out of fourteen; they drew six; Lenox won three) and then by attempting to throw playing cards into an empty wastebasket across the hallway. Lenox had a blue deck, Edmund a red one, and after each had thrown all of his cards they would go and count up how many of each color was in the basket. They were more or less even, Edmund perhaps edging his younger brother more often than not. His sideways flick of the wrist achieved less glamorous results than Lenox’s tomahawk motion — but was more reliable.
He didn’t ask about the case until they had been sitting there for forty-five minutes or so. And then all he said was, “Stevens, then — from the sound of it he was a kind of — of vicious exploiter of young women, you believe.”
Lenox nodded. “That’s my guess.”
“How do you know?”
Lenox sighed. “A feeling, I suppose. He hired this long series of young girls as his secretaries, and the list Pointilleux found showed that almost half of them left immediately. Including Miss Adelaide Snow, for example. Do you remember her saying that she hoped Miss Harville enjoyed the job — and then adding, ‘I gave her fair warning that she might not’? And don’t forget Miss Ainsworth, the young girl Clavering told us disappeared to London after only a few weeks of working for Stevens.”
Edmund shook his head, disgust on his face. “It wasn’t because it was less expensive to hire women, then, or because he believed them to be more intelligent than men.”
“I doubt saving the village fifteen pounds a year was his first priority, in a budget of so many thousands. Though perhaps it added to his pleasure.”
“And Miss Calloway — or Mrs. Evans, I suppose we should call her—”
It was then that Lady Jane opened the door. Her face was sad, full of concern. “You may come in again, if you like,” she said. “I think we can have a reasonable conversation. I’ve assured them that you’re not trying to hound them onto the gallows. I hope I’m right.”
“Don’t be absurd,” said Edmund.
They followed her into the little room, where the four women were sitting as they had been. Toto, perched on a small armchair next to the fire, her arm resting on a card table, had tears on her face, and the spaniel, which was still lying between Liza Calloway’s feet, looked up as they entered, thumped his tail once, sniffed the air, and then laid his head between his paws again, his eyes quickly closing.