Charles Lenox Mysteries 09 Home by Nightfall

Author:Charles Finch [Finch, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466880191
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Almost involuntarily, both brothers looked around the office, making sure there was nobody about to leap out at them. Nobody was—there was nowhere to hide, no closet to slide into or sofa to crawl under. They turned back to the figure of the schoolgirl. It wasn’t pleasant to look at, even there in the broad light of day.

“Well,” said Lenox, trying to keep his voice steady, “at least our attacker has had the courtesy to link our crimes to each other. That was sporting.”

Edmund, whose face had always been so full of good cheer and country haleness until Molly’s death, now looked sick, as thinned out as Lenox had ever seen him. He shook his head. Here he was, close to death once more. “I don’t know that I like this job of yours,” he said. “I didn’t realize—well, I don’t know.”

Sympathetically, Lenox went and put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Yes, I know,” he said. “Dallington had a terrible time with it at first, I suspect, though he never said a word. But one gets used to it—and then, think, hopefully we may be a help, to all of these frightened people in Markethouse. If the porch of the pub is anything to go by, they’ve lost their wits with worry.”

Edmund nodded. “Yes. I’m only telling you that I don’t like it. I don’t.”

“Would you like to wait outside while I look at the office?”

“No, no. Tell me what we ought to do.”

They looked over the office very carefully together. At one point Lenox asked if anyone had mentioned the figure on the wall before his arrival, and Edmund said no one had, which was odd—Clavering ought to have.

Then again, Edmund pointed out, it had still been near dawn when Miss Harville had found Stevens Stevens, and everyone’s energy had been intent upon moving him safely to Stallings’s house. It was possible they had missed it. And since then, Clavering had been with the town’s leaders, trying to come up with a plan to ensure the calm and safety of the village. Nobody had returned to inspect the office.

That made some sense, and as Lenox looked through the papers on the mayor’s desk he thought about what the drawing might mean. It felt … well, it felt personal, and yet both Hadley and Stevens were men without any strong personal ties, neither married, both childless, each more engaged with his work (or, in Hadley’s case, a hobby, the gemstones) than any individual connection.

Might this lack of connections even be what linked them?

“What do we make of our second Watson sister?” asked Edmund, who was crouched by the armchairs, looking underneath them, at Lenox’s instruction. Two sets of eyes on everything in the room—for it was even odds that the motive behind the attack must be in this room, Lenox had been at pains to insist to his brother. “Small-town coincidence, or more?”

“I wish we knew that it was one or the other,” said Lenox. “Because I don’t like that it might be either.

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