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Saturdays.”
    â€œWe certainly don’t think you took it,” said Hadley. He looked perturbed. “I wish we knew who had.”
    Lenox ran through several more questions. He asked Mrs. Watson if the chalk figure was familiar to her (Hadley had replicated it upon a piece of paper), which it was not, and in detail about the construction of the house, which he presumed she knew as well as her master, if not better—specifically if there was anywhere that might have concealed a person who wished to hide. She was adamant that there was not.
    Hadley looked horrified. “You think someone might have been in my house the entire time ?” he asked.
    â€œI don’t know,” said Lenox.
    â€œI tell you it’s not possible,” said Mrs. Watson, sirs forgotten in her certitude. “After I locked the doors and windows I looked the house through and through. There’s nowhere a person could have hid, not under the beds, not in a closet. Nowhere.”
    Lenox went on to ask her in detail for her activities Thursday, so that they might try to estimate which hours she had been in the kitchen, and therefore less likely to hear someone enter by the front door. She thought she had gone back there at around noon, perhaps a little earlier, and come out to clean the front rooms at one o’clock. Nothing had been disturbed or altered in that interim. The front door had still been locked—she had checked, some of Mr. Hadley’s nervousness having rubbed off on her before the telegram drew him away to Chichester.
    At last they left, with their thanks. Mrs. Watson told Mr. Hadley that she would be to Potbelly Lane directly, now that her son’s health was “improved,” which seemed a rather inaccurate word to Lenox, though he made no comment upon it.
    â€œI hope that was of some assistance to you, gentlemen,” said Hadley.
    â€œIt was entertaining, at any rate,” Edmund answered.
    â€œMay I ask what course you now mean to pursue, Mr. Lenox?”
    Lenox checked his pocket watch. It was just past one o’clock, and after so much exercise before breakfast, he found that he was famished. “I would like to look at your house,” he said, “and then speak with your neighbors. But first, I think I may need to eat something. Is it convenient for you if we call at your house in an hour’s time, Mr. Hadley?”
    â€œMore than convenient. I wait upon your leisure, Mr. Lenox.”
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œThe house is number seven, with the blue shutters. I will be there.”
    Soon the brothers were alone. “Well!” said Edmund, as they walked down the quiet streets of Markethouse, in the direction of the Bell and Horns. “You have brought me a far more interesting morning than the tenant rolls would have.”
    Lenox shook his head, doubtful. “I cannot say I like it.”
    â€œI’m surprised to see you look concerned,” said Edmund. “From what I understood, you missed this sort of thing, with all of your administrative duties.”
    â€œI meant that I don’t like a case I don’t understand,” said Lenox.
    â€œHow do you mean?”
    Lenox shrugged, then said, “What facts do we have? To begin with, how many crimes have been committed? One? Three? None? A missing bottle of sherry—there are a dozen innocuous explanations that present themselves for that. Would Mrs. Watson sincerely have wished us to search her house? Because I think Mr. Hadley is a gentle employer—very easy to take advantage of.
    â€œAnd then, can we even be sure that the bottle was there in the first place? Mightn’t he have been primed for some oddity by the evening before, and forgotten that he finished it?”
    â€œI found him very convincing,” said Edmund.
    â€œWell—yes. But the chalk figure, the face in the window. Nobody except Hadley saw them. He has no witnesses to confirm his story. Are we to