Free Home by Nightfall by Charles Finch

sum, and most men even of the middle class merely rented it for an hour’s use each day, which cost a little above a pound per annum. (Lower down the scale, it was possible to rent the previous day’s paper for about a quarter of that price.) Money: always something to keep in mind when a crime had taken place. Hadley’s could have made him a target.
    They walked with great care through each of the house’s four rooms and its small rearward kitchen. Lenox had Edmund go back and enter the front door as he and Hadley stood by the stove, quiet. They couldn’t hear him come in. So it was possible that a person could have slipped inside while Mrs. Watson was in the kitchen, though obviously it would have been a risk.
    Mrs. Watson had been telling the truth, too—there was nowhere in this house where a person larger than a child could reasonably have hidden, by Lenox’s reckoning. He knocked at the back of every closet, listening for the hollow sound of a false compartment, inspected the floorboards, asked whether there was an attic.
    It was growing rather late now. “We have mastered the facts of the case today, at least,” said Lenox to Hadley. “Tomorrow I hope we may make further progress.”
    A shadow of panic crossed Hadley’s stolid British face. “Do you think I am in danger?” he asked.
    Lenox shook his head. “I think that if anyone intended you harm, they wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to draw you away from Markethouse, by reporting that fire in Chichester.” Hadley and Edmund made identical faces then, some realization dawning on them. Lenox felt a discreditable little moment of superiority and covered it with a frown. “On the other hand, I think something unusual is certainly occurring.”
    â€œAnd you advise?”
    â€œGiving us a little more time,” said Lenox. “If you feel uneasy, I would be sure to let your neighbors know before you retire for the night. A street full of inquisitive neighbors is often the most powerful deterrent to crime in my experience.”
    Hadley nodded and, as they gathered up their cloaks and went to the door, thanked them profusely, telling them that he would be home all the next day, their servant whenever they might have the time free to see him again.
    â€œAn interesting day,” said Edmund, as they walked down Potbelly Lane and through Cow Cross Street. From a thousand summer afternoons, they both knew without saying it that they would take the shortcut across the old grazing pasture home—much quicker than the long road. “Why didn’t you mention the gemstones, may I ask?”
    â€œI’d like to know a little more about it all first.”
    â€œAbout the crime?”
    Lenox shrugged. “The crime, the criminal, the telegram—and Hadley, too.”
    At Lenox House, Waller greeted them in the entrance hall, where their footsteps sounded loudly on the black-and-white checkerboard floor.
    At this hour, the light falling gray through the windows, lamps still unlit, there was something peculiarly sad in the air, to do with Molly—something silent, almost more silent because of their own small sounds in this empty little hallway, with its vestiges of another, fuller life, gloves on the front table, umbrella stand poised to receive hats and sticks. In a frame next to the front table was a small line drawing of the dogs.
    Waller coughed discreetly. “One of your tenants, Martha Coxe, is at the servants’ entrance, Sir Edmund, enquiring for”—he looked distinctly uncertain as he said the next words—“for the late Lady Molly, sir.”
    Edmund hesitated before he responded. “She doesn’t know … no, evidently not,” he said. “They’re very isolated down in the valley, I suppose. Please, lead the way.”
    Edmund followed Waller. Lenox, alone, sighed and walked into the drawing room.
    Things were a little bit