Free Home by Nightfall by Charles Finch Page B

Sophia’s. You will be no doubt content to hear, since you are pleased to indulge her worst vices, that she pulled the hair of a little boy on the street when he wasn’t looking. He shouted terribly. She said that she knew him— didn’t like him, he had done the same to her earlier. I had to apologize abjectly to her mother, who looked fit to roast me over a fire.
    Toto arrives in ten minutes to help me plan the seating for the luncheon. If HM does come, of course, every plan will be shot straight to pieces. Then again, nobody will care, because she will be there. Then again again, even if she comes I will feel as if I have done wrongly, for Edmund’s sake. I am glad that you are there at least.
    Will you see my brother while you’re in Sussex? Do call on him if you remember. More tomorrow morning—I will send cuttings of the news on Muller, as you requested. Write me by next post, would you? Love always,
    Jane
    Muller. Lenox, sitting on a rock by the brook, restored now but waiting to be sure that his horse had caught her breath, too, contemplated the missing German. The night before, after he had gone to his bedroom (the blue room, the best in the house they’d always thought, and strictly out-of-bounds in their youth), he had stayed up with a candle and examined his own small private file on the case. There was something slightly unbecoming—to be kept private, at any rate—in this collection of paper clippings, notes on chronology, scribbled thoughts. It was the pride of it. He had a great deal to do, and many, many men were already focusing their efforts on finding the pianist, LeMaire now among them, a wily old hand.
    Yet Lenox found that he couldn’t quite resist making his own surmises. Then again, neither could Pointilleux, nor Dallington, nor Edmund, nor probably HM herself, if it came to that. So it was without too much self-recrimination that he’d sat up later than he had intended, pondering every facet of the case anew, trying to circle in closer to the truth. If Polly thought the agency ought to be involved, she was no doubt correct. Of the three of them she had the best head for business.
    He was nine-tenths of the way home, riding at a canter, when to his surprise he saw Edmund, walking down the slender path that led west away from the house. “Have you had your breakfast?” asked Charles. “It’s very early.”
    â€œI have,” said Edmund.
    â€œI was expecting to see you over coffee. There’s Hadley.”
    â€œYes, of course! I shan’t be more than an hour or two. I just liked the sound of a walk.”
    â€œWith your valise?”
    â€œBlue books, in case I sit.”
    â€œDo you want company?”
    Edmund shook his head soberly. “You’d better stable her. It’s only getting wetter. I’ll be back soon.”
    Lenox watched his brother go, then shrugged and turned back toward Lenox House. He wouldn’t be able to distract him indefinitely, that was the trouble. With a twinge of memory he recalled Edmund referring to “the boys” the day before. This was among the cruelest aspects of Edmund’s grief: that his two sons did not yet know of it.
    The older of them, James Lenox, who’d become baronet one day himself, would learn of his mother’s death soon. He was an adventurous, handsome, fast-living young person, who had decided after he graduated from Harrow to forgo the slow rewards of university education and instead try his hand in the colonies, specifically Kenya. The letter Edmund had written him with the news a month before would arrive shortly, if the mails ran as they ought to.
    But then there was Teddy, Edmund and Molly’s younger son, who had been particularly close to his mother. He was at sea aboard the Lucy, a senior midshipman of Her Majesty’s Navy. There was no way at all of knowing when he might return, or even what latitude he was currently sailing