In the Still of the Night

sleep.“
    “Are you keeping him here?“ Robert asked.
    “Long enough to stitch up the cut in his head. We did an X-ray. No harm done to his thick skull. Just a hairline fracture less than an inch long. We should be able to let you have him back around noon tomorrow. Who’s paying for this?“
    “He will. He’s worth millions.“
    “Am I?“ Henry asked.
    The doctor looked at Henry. “He sure doesn’t look like it.”
    It was three in the morning before Robert and Howard got back to Grace and Favor. They spoke as they drove back, in a lethargic manner, of the attack on Henry.
    “No matter how it happened, what with the ropes and all, I can’t figure why it happened to him of all people,“ Walker said. “He seems about the most harmless person in the whole mess.“
    “I suppose it was the calling system,“ Robert said, slowing down and peering ahead. It had become seriously foggy along the river.
    “The calling system?“
    “Henry hooked up telephone wires to all the bedrooms. That’s why nobody saw much of him. He spent most of his time in the servants’ basement, threading it along somehow where the old bell pull system was. And putting speakers in the rooms.“
    “I talked to him before about it, but didn’t ask why he was doing it.”
    Robert shrugged. “Because he’s Mad Henry. I suppose the idea had come to him and Grace and Favor struck him as a good place to test it out. It was meant to improve the bell pull system to the basement servants’ kitchen and dining room. Not that there have been servants down there for years. He said instead of a guest or resident just ringing the bell and a servant having to go to the second or third floor to find out why, then go back down to the basement or wherever to tend to the matter, Henry thought the person could call down to the servants’ hall and say what he or she needed.“
    “Thereby saving the nonexistent servants trouble?“
    “Right.“
    “And how did it work?“
    “Pretty well, though, as I saw, it was useless.“ “No, I meant could people really talk back and forth on it or was it a one-way thing? I didn’t question him as closely as I should have about how it worked.“
    “As I understand it, each room had a little speaker box and so did the servants’ hall. In the individual rooms they had a choice of listen, talk or off. Controlled by a switch.“
    “So eavesdropping on someone was possible.“
    “Not only possible, but I tried it myself,“ Robert admitted. “Henry set all the switches to ‘talk’ while everybody else was at dinner. I went down later and listened. All I heard was snoring and some jumbled voices. The reception is very bad. The closer the person is to the thing, the louder and clearer the voice is, but apparently if you get farther away, the voice fades and static takes over. I gave up when Agatha barked in my ear deafeningly.“
    “I wouldn’t tell this to anyone else if I were you,“ Walker said.
    “Why?“
    “It’s obvious. Somebody else might have figured out the system and feared that Henry had overheard something to their disadvantage.“
    “That’s exactly what I had in mind the night I listened in. But Henry was interested only in whether or not it worked. Not what was being said. He’s remarkably single-minded.“
    “You know that because you know him. Nobody else did. Someone could have regarded him as a very serious threat.”
    They were silent for the next couple miles. “Okay. It’s possible. But there are other possibilities.“
    “Like what?“ Walker asked.
    “Anybody might have been up to something nasty in the woods and feared that Henry had seen them at it,“ Robert said.
    “Aside from the obvious naughtiness of courting couples, what could that have been?“
    “I don’t know. Disposing of some sort of evidence, maybe? What if the person who murdered Mrs. Ethridge had left something else behind in the room and realized it before Mimi went on her cleaning spree and felt the need to get rid of it?“
    “That doesn’t make sense,“ Walker said. “If no one knew this mysterious object had been in her room, what would be the point in disposing of it?”
    Robert shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just casting around for other explanations. But I repeat, Henry pays attention to only one thing at a time and wouldn’t have even noticed if someone were standing right next to him. But as you say, nobody would know that.”
    Walker glanced at his watch. “I’ll have to be