They rounded the mound, which wasn’t the perfect hemisphere it appeared from the south, but more the shape of a pear, sliced in half along the length and tapering to the north. The entrance was located at the slenderer end, guarded by a police constable jumping in place to keep himself warm. At the approach of Scotland Yard, he saluted.
Chief Inspector Fowler didn’t enter the structure immediately but made another slow tour of the exterior, Mr. Holmes in his wake. Treadles consulted a diagram that had been provided by Lord Ingram. The icehouse was built on a gentle slope to facilitate drainage, and the surrounding earth had been raised to insulate the most critical section, a brickwork, double-walled conical shaft with an interior diameter of ten feet at the top.
According to the diagram, at the bottom, the ice well narrowed to an opening two feet across, stoppered by a reed-covered grate, through which the melt seeped into an underground channel that conducted it, past an air trap, to the estate’s own small dairy, keeping milk, cream, and butter cool.
The chamber that contained the ice well was finished with a double-walled domed roof, which was then blanketed by turf, making the icehouse appear a part of the landscape to anyone who didn’t know what to look for.
When Fowler was ready, the constable unlocked the door.
“I’ll wait for you outside,” said Lord Ingram.
“And Mr. Holmes?” asked Fowler.
“Oh, I’m coming with,” Mr. Holmes answered brightly. “Cheerio, Ash.”
* * *
The first antechamber was a small, narrow tunnel, barely high enough for a grown man to stand straight. To Treadles it didn’t feel perceptibly cooler than outside—in fact, shielded from the wind, it was more pleasant in temperature, if less fresh in the quality of its air.
The second antechamber was colder but not remarkably so.
Chief Inspector Fowler sniffed. “Doesn’t smell much like a latrine, does it?”
“No,” said Treadles.
Apparently the three ladies who had come through the icehouse all reported a foul odor in this particular antechamber—so foul that Lady Avery and Lady Somersby, while waiting for the police, had decided to wedge all the doors open to let the stench out.
The kitchen boy hadn’t reported any odors. Then again, he’d suffered from a stuffed nose and hadn’t been able to smell anything at all.
“I wonder about the reek the ladies noticed,” murmured Mr. Holmes. “Curious, isn’t it?”
When they reached the third antechamber, the cold bit into Treadles’s face. He wound his muffler tighter about his neck.
The space, which functioned as a cold larder, was both wider and higher than the two previous ones. To the left hung game birds, sides of beef, and other butchered carcasses that he, not having spent much time in the country, couldn’t readily identify. To the right, neat shelves held fruits, vegetables, and cheeses. Overhead, cured hams and sausages swayed gently from Fowler’s exploratory touches.
In the middle of the antechamber lay an overturned wheelbarrow, the handle of which had fallen in such a way as to tip over a bucket of milk. Or so Scotland Yard had been informed—Sergeant Ellerby had allowed for the spill to be cleaned up.
The entire structure was windowless. At the opening of each door they had to light tapers. Inside the domed space that held the actual ice well, several lanterns had been brought in to add to the luminosity of the wall sconce.
Treadles lit all the light sources and then hastened to put his gloves back on. The cold of the ice chamber grew denser and sharper with every passing minute.
The initial report gave that Lady Ingram was lying atop a layer of wood shavings. Treadles had expected to find her halfway down the ten-foot-deep ice well; instead she was only eighteen inches or so below floor level, a great deal closer than he had anticipated.
“This is ice from last winter? Did it not melt at all?” he marveled.
“The construction here appears superb. And the bigger the volume, the longer the ice stays frozen,” said Fowler. “Icehouses are usually built to hold enough ice for two years, in case any single winter is too feeble for proper replenishment.”
“You are knowledgeable about icehouses, Chief Inspector,” said Mr. Holmes.
“My father was in service, a member of the outdoor staff. It was among his duties to cut ice from the pond and resupply the icehouse.” He indicated Lady Ingram with his walking stick. “At least ten inches of wood shavings on top, I’d expect. A good thing for us, or her ladyship would be stuck to the ice and we’d have a devil of a time getting her out.
“In fact, even less ice has melted than you suppose, Inspector. Some would have been removed for use.” Fowler turned to Mr. Holmes. “Would you agree, sir?”
“I would indeed. Although recently the need for ice has been minimal. The family—and a good portion of the staff—left for London shortly after Easter. Normally, upon their return, there would be guests. But this year, given Lady Ingram’s absence, there have been none. Until now.”
Mr. Holmes gave an absent-minded pat to his ample stomach. “I spoke to the staff. Before yesterday, the last time anyone came to fetch ice was when Lord Bancroft visited, some five weeks ago.”
Treadles jotted down a reminder in his notebook to ask the servants to confirm this. Even though he wanted Lord Ingram cleared of any wrongdoing, he did not entirely trust Mr. Holmes,
“My wife enjoys perusing fancy housekeeping books,” said Fowler. “If you listened to her, you’d think that in manors like this one, iced puddings and fruit ices are served year-round.”
“It’s expected that when a dinner is given, in town or in the country, that some kind of ice—or a number of them, depending on the scale of the occasion—will be served,” answered Mr. Holmes. “And that is what ‘fancy’ housekeeping books concentrate on, those instances intended to impress others. But when people dine en famille, it’s a different matter.
“In the case of Stern Hollow, Lady Ingram grew up in a household where ices were seldom served and never developed a taste for them. Lord Ingram is in general not particular about his food. As for the children, ice cream—or ices of any kind—is an occasional treat rather than an expected item in the nursery.”
“The boy came yesterday to fetch the ice needed for last night’s dinner,” said Fowler. “But Lord Ingram’s guests arrived in Stern Hollow the day before. What about that dinner? Did no one come to the icehouse in preparation for that occasion?”
“According to the cook, when the exodus from Mrs. Newell’s house came, in one of the luggage carts they brought the slab of ice that was already in their ice safe, so that it wouldn’t go to waste. That slab was broken up, the resultant crushed ice put into freezing pots to facilitate the churning of various fruit ices for dinner. Therefore, there had been no need to visit the ice well the first day the guests were here.”
Mr. Holmes made no mention of Lord Ingram’s guilt or innocence, but it did not escape Treadles’s attention that he had mounted a forceful argument for the latter: If Lord Ingram had killed his wife and kept her in the ice well, confident that no one would go there, then why hadn’t he removed the body the moment he’d realized that large amounts of ice would be required for the guests abruptly thrust upon him? He would have had twenty-four hours to accomplish the deed.
Fowler said to Treadles, “Shall we take a closer look?”
The company climbed down into the ice well.
Lady Ingram was not frozen solid. Her clothes and the thick layer of wood shavings that covered the ice had kept her body at the ambient temperature, which, according to a thermometer on the wall, hovered a degree or two above freezing.
“No marks on her throat,” noted Fowler.
After death, blood obeyed the law of gravity and pooled in the lowest part of the body. A supine corpse such as Lady Ingram’s developed bruise-like discolorations on the
back. But blood in the front of the body could be trapped by an injury to the flesh, depending on the nature of that injury.
“Was she lying in this exact position when she was found?” asked Mr. Holmes.
“Sergeant Ellerby reports that he turned her over briefly and then returned her as best as he could to the way he found her. And before that she had not been moved.”
“Would it be logical to assume whoever had put her here carried her until they reached the lip of the ice well and then dropped her straight down?”
Chief Inspector Fowler, still crouched over the body, played with the small brush of a beard on his chin. “That would probably not be wrong.”
“It will be difficult to judge when she died, I take it, given this inadvertent method of preservation,” said Mr. Holmes.
“And you would be correct again, my good sir. Unless we are able to match the contents of her stomach to a known last meal.”
Lady Ingram lay flat on her back but her head had rolled to one side, her nose close to the edge of the ice shaft. Fowler turned her face. “Hmm,” he said, “didn’t she have a beauty mark in her photographs?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Treadles.
“I see only an excision here.”
Treadles brought a lantern close and saw that the beauty mark had been scooped out, leaving a small dent where it had once been. The wound had healed but still looked recent.
“A pity,” said Mr. Holmes. “It was one of her distinguishing features.”
“Ah, look at this.”
Fowler had rolled up Lady Ingram’s sleeves and a small puncture wound was visible above her wrist. The otherwise ice-pale skin around it was discolored—the discoloration extending upward in a faint line, disappearing after approximately two inches.
Likewise on her other arm.
“Intravenous injections,” said Treadles.
“The pathologist might be able to tell us exactly what the substance is. Or the chemical analyst,” said Fowler.
“Do either of you smell the odor of alcohol?” asked Mr. Holmes.
The policemen exchanged a glance. Now that Mr. Holmes mentioned it, Treadles could indeed detect the faintest whiff in the air.
“If memory serves, Lady Ingram was a teetotaler—it was debated whether she even touched the champagne served at her own wedding. A shining paragon in so many ways, our dearly departed,” said Mr. Holmes, and smoothed the ends of his mustache with what seemed to Treadles an unnecessary amount of enjoyment.
Such an odd chap.
Lord Ingram seemed drawn to people who were at least somewhat misaligned with the world.
“But alcohol, in sufficient quantities, is most certainly a poison,” Mr. Holmes went on. “Assuming that she’d been injected with absolute alcohol, would that prove to be an irritant to the blood vessels?”
Again, a skillful argument put forth for Lord Ingram’s innocence: He would not have killed his wife with injections of absolute alcohol, knowing that she did not imbibe on any regular basis.
Fowler frowned. “A rather diabolical way to kill, is it not?”
“But a relatively clean one, from a certain point of view. No need to visit a crooked chemist, as would be the case with arsenic poisoning. And the body could be passed off as having resulted from a natural death, if one wished to move it without arousing too much suspicion.”
This was a body that came from elsewhere, implied Mr. Holmes, transported in a coffin.
Fowler, frowning more deeply, performed a systematic search of the pockets—very few, given that ladies didn’t care for that sort of thing—and found nothing more than a handkerchief. He then slipped off her boots.
“Aha, what have we here?”
Something made a crinkling sound inside her woolen stocking. The removal of the stocking revealed a folded-up piece of paper that had been placed inside, against the sole of a blue-tinged foot.
Unfolded, the paper was full of writing. Upon closer inspection, however, it turned out that a single line of text was repeated nearly two dozen times, each iteration in a different hand.
Vixen Charlotte Holmes’s zephyr-tousled hair quivers when jolted in fog bank.
Upon seeing that name, Treadles’s gut tightened.
“What in the world is this?” exclaimed Fowler.
“A pangram,” said Mr. Holmes. “A sentence that contains all twenty-six letters of the alphabet.”
“And who is Charlotte Holmes?”
“Are you related to her?” Treadles asked at almost the same time.
“She is a friend of Lord Ingram’s, a young woman with a peculiar bent of mind. I would not be surprised if she came up with the pangram herself,” answered Mr. Holmes, unruffled. “And we are not related.”
Fowler cast Treadles a look, before turning back to Mr. Holmes. “You say she is a friend of Lord Ingram’s. Not Lady Ingram’s?”
“Not in my understanding.”
“Then why would Lady Ingram have in her possession something like this?”
Mr. Holmes hesitated. “That is a question better answered by Lord Ingram.”
“Then let us speak to Lord Ingram,” said Fowler, straightening. “The constables can arrange to have the body transported to the coroner.”
“Gentlemen, would you mind if I looked around a little more?” said Mr. Holmes.
Fowler considered Mr. Holmes with a wariness that echoed Treadles’s own. Mr. Holmes was no doubt acting on behalf of Lord Ingram, the prime suspect in the case. But Lord Ingram was also the brother of a duke, and a man of wealth and influence in his own right. It would not help Scotland Yard to antagonize him—at least, not yet.
“Go ahead,” said Fowler, after a meaningful pause.
“Thank you. Much obliged,” replied Mr. Holmes.
Mr. Holmes examined Lady Ingram’s feet, her stockings, and her boots. Then he inspected the surface of the ice, pushing aside piles of wood shavings as he did so. Both the policemen watched him closely, but he worked with a singular concentration, seemingly oblivious to the scrutiny he himself was under.
“What are you looking for, Mr. Holmes?” Treadles asked, despite his intention not to do so.
“I haven’t the slightest idea, Inspector. Anything out of the ordinary, I suppose.”
“Do you see anything?” Fowler asked.
“A few strands of hair.”
“Where?”
Mr. Holmes pointed at a spot some six feet removed from where Lady Ingram lay. The two policemen hurried forward to check. And there they were. Fowler took off his gloves, felt the strands, then approached Lady Ingram and touched the latter on the head. “Similar color and texture.”
“Hers?” asked Treadles.
“We can only assume so,” said Fowler, his eyes narrowed.
Once Mr. Holmes had finished with the ice well, he climbed out and proceeded to study the rest of the space. On their way out, he examined each antechamber, paying especially close attention to the doors and their locks. But when Fowler asked whether he’d seen anything else, he only shook his head.
Outside, Lord Ingram stood fifteen feet away from the entrance, a cigarette between his fingers.
“How did she die?” he asked.
The question was addressed to his friend.
Mr. Holmes fetched a pipe from inside his coat. “You’ve a match, Ash?”
With a somewhat disapproving look, Lord Ingram handed over a box of safety matches. Mr. Holmes lit his pipe with practiced ease and took a puff. “We’ll see what the pathologist has to say, but my guess would be poisoning, by an injection of absolute alcohol.”
Lord Ingram winced, an expression of fear and revulsion. And pity. He took a long drag on his cigarette, and then another. “Did you observe anything else?”
“Nothing the gentlemen from Scotland Yard haven’t remarked.
Her shoes do not fit her feet—probably the reason we were able to remove them so easily. And her stockings are far too cheaply made to have been her own purchase. A few pieces of straw among the wood shavings. Coal dust on the floor of the antechambers, up to the second one but not in the ice well itself. Some bits of metal filing right near the threshold of the entrance, still new and shiny.”
Treadles hadn’t seen the straw among the wood shavings, but judging by Fowler’s self-satisfied look, he’d taken note of everything Mr. Holmes mentioned, and probably more.
“But enough of that for now. Let’s go back inside and warm up,” said Mr. Holmes. “I’m frozen down to my bollocks.”
Ten
A plentiful tea awaited the party back in the library.
Treadles hadn’t expected much of an appetite, but the cold of the icehouse and the wind-buffeted walk led him to gulp down two cups of tea and three tartlets. Chief Inspector Fowler, who appeared to have no interest in sweet things, heaped praise on the finger sandwiches. “Flavorful and substantial—not like eating air and bubbles, as is so often the case.”
Lord Ingram, who again took up a position next to the fireplace, did not touch anything except a cup of black tea. Mr. Holmes, who didn’t touch even that, sat sprawled in a nearby padded chair, legs splayed, head tilted back, eyes half closed.
Treadles stared at him. How many friends named Holmes did Lord Ingram have? And how many did he trust to find out the truth behind his wife’s death?
“As you might have expected, my lord,” said Fowler, “we will need to ask you some questions.”
Lord Ingram appeared resigned. “Certainly.”
Fowler glanced at Mr. Holmes. “Some of these questions could prove uncomfortable in nature.”
“I have no secrets before Mr. Holmes,” said Lord Ingram.
Was there an edge of reluctance to his tone, a wish that he had been able to keep a secret or two to himself? All the same, it was very much the master of the house who had spoken—and let it be known that Mr. Holmes wasn’t going anywhere.
Mr. Holmes appeared not to have heard this tussle over his presence. Presently he poured himself a cup of tea and eyed the variety of refreshments on offer.
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