The Hollow of Fear

by Sherry Thomas

  “No, sir. Sergeant Ellerby, Lord Ingram, and—”

  The door to the second antechamber opened, and out came Sergeant Ellerby, Lord Ingram, and Miss Holmes.

  “Chief Inspector, Inspector,” said Sergeant Ellerby, his teeth chattering, “here to have another look at the icehouse? Us, too.”

  “Great minds think alike,” added “Sherrinford Holmes,” whose lips were quite blue.

  Fowler’s eyes narrowed. “Best get back to the house soon, Sergeant, before you catch a chill. Same for you two, my lord, Mr. Holmes.”

  “Thank you, Chief Inspector,” said Mr. Holmes. “By the way, I have heard back from my brother. He will be able to receive us tonight, after dinner. Does the time suit you, gentlemen?”

  Fowler raised a brow. “Yes, very much so. Thank you, Mr. Holmes. Though I must say, I had no idea Mr. Sherlock Holmes was in the vicinity.”

  “He has been rusticating in these parts for a few days,” said “Sherrinford Holmes” cheerfully, despite her chattering teeth. “I am in the area to visit him, in fact. Of course I haven’t seen much of him since everything happened. But there will be plenty of time for brotherly chats once all this unpleasantness is behind us.”

  Miss Holmes’s nonchalance should have heartened Treadles, but the news that they were to see Sherlock Holmes so soon caught him flatfooted.

  When a client called on Sherlock Holmes, Miss Holmes explained that his health kept him bedridden and all communications must go through her. From time to time, she would disappear into an adjacent room to consult him. In truth the room was empty and Sherlock Holmes only a front for Miss Holmes to exploit her own deductive abilities.

  Chief Inspector Fowler, however, would not be satisfied with being told that Sherlock Holmes was in the next room. Where would Miss Holmes find an actual Sherlock Holmes on such short notice? And how could the act possibly fool eyes as sharp and suspicious as Fowler’s?

  “Shall we expect you after dinner, then?” asked Miss Holmes.

  “Yes, of course,” said Fowler, with a wolfish grin. “We are most eager to meet with Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”

  It was only after Miss Holmes, Lord Ingram, and Sergeant Ellerby were on their way that a horrifying possibility occurred to Treadles. After he had stood by Lord Ingram, when the latter declared that he had no way of getting word to Miss Holmes, surely . . . surely she didn’t mean to unmask herself tonight?

  But what if that was exactly what she intended?

  Fourteen

  “I have your tea here, Holmes.”

  Charlotte smiled a little: There was no better or more desirable way for a man to announce himself.

  She emerged from her dressing room to find Lord Ingram already in the bedroom, standing with his back to her. He wore a blue-gray lounge suit, his dark hair still slightly damp, his fingertips grazing the lapel of Sherrinford Holmes’s jacket, which she’d placed on the back of a chair.

  Well, well. And here she thought she’d still need to push, shove, or otherwise cantilever him into her den of iniquity.

  At her entrance he turned around. She thought he might comment on her attire—or lack thereof: She had on only a heavily embroidered dressing gown. But that was not what caused his jaw to slacken.

  “What happened to your hair?”

  She’d forgotten that he hadn’t seen her without her Sherrinford Holmes wig. “I had it chopped off. There was too much. Wigs wouldn’t sit properly.”

  “You chopped off everything!”

  She hadn’t. There were a good few inches left—Mrs. Watson had absolutely refused to trim her hair any shorter. “I like it. Mrs. Watson says it brings out my eyes.”

  He shook his head, not so much in disagreement, but as if he still couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Anyway, come and eat something.”

  He had never complimented her looks—and he didn’t need to. All she’d ever wanted from him was friendship.

  And this, of course.

  This.

  She walked to the tea tray, which held an astonishingly beautiful French apple tart, paper-thin apple slices arranged in perfect concentric circles, glistening under an apricot jam glaze.

  A decade ago, sitting at one of his digs with a book in one hand but, alas, nothing to eat, she’d pined for a French apple tart to try. He, a lover of Monsieur Verne’s scientific romances, had pointed out, rather indignantly, that the French did things other than cooking. To which she’d replied that two of the foremost French inventions, canning and pasteurization, had to do with food and drink. And then she’d written a message in his notebook in Braille, another major French invention:

  You should have said, I’ll ask my godfather’s pastry chef to make it for you.

  She had no idea whether he’d ever bothered to translate the note. Certainly he had never obliged her on the French apple tart. Until now.

  Too bad she didn’t want any.

  He looked at her. She smoothed the back of a spoon across the jam glaze on top of the tart, returning his gaze. He stood very still—no fidgeting for him. But in the rise and fall of his chest there was agitation. Inquietude.

  “Why are you nervous?”

  He hesitated. “You make me nervous.”

  “Why?” She was not nervous at all. “You must have done this hundreds of times—at least.”

  “Not with you.”

  “The process should be the same.”

  He glanced out of the window, his strong, sharp profile to her. “It’s impossible to talk to you, sometimes.”

  “You mean, all the time? Or at least the vast majority? That’s why we wisely did not bother with conversation when we were children.”

  He drew the curtains shut. It wasn’t six o’clock yet, but it was almost pitch-black outside. “What will we be to each other afterward?”

  “What we have always been. Friends.”

  “And you think this”—the word was accompanied by a gesture toward the bed—“won’t have repercussions?”

  “So . . . you think we’ve had an easy, uncomplicated rapport and you don’t want it to become thorny and convoluted?”

  He snorted. “Can I want it not to become more thorny and convoluted?”

  “Why does it have to be? Why can’t things become simpler? Surely some of the difficulty we’ve experienced in our friendship could be attributed to the fact that we wanted to sleep together but you wouldn’t permit it.”

  “Well, if you’re going to put it like that.”

  “How would you put it, if not like that?”

  He didn’t reply but crossed the room, pulled out his pocket watch, and set it down on the nightstand. She liked the sight of it—his watch on her nightstand, his person leaning against the side of her bed. She went up to him and placed her hands on his chest.

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For the apple tart, of course. For remembering it after all these years.”

  “I’ve never forgotten—and I absolutely will not have it said that Bancroft feeds you better than I do.”

  She smiled, cupped his face, and kissed him. He stood still and let her. And then he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her into bed.

  * * *

  Over supper, Chief Inspector Fowler and Treadles listened to Sergeant Ellerby’s account of the missing padlock and crate from the lavender house, and the unused estate gate with its chain and lock gone.

  Treadles, who had been picking at his food until Sergeant Ellerby joined them, experienced a surge of appetite—so Miss Holmes had been making some progress of her own, after all. Thank goodness.

  He attacked his steak and kidney pie with renewed vigor.

  “And then we returned to the icehouse for another look. And that’s when Mr. Holmes asked me whether any bodies have turned up recently in these parts. I said no, not t
hat I’ve heard of, and he asked me to keep an eye out for a well-dressed woman with her face bashed in and a man, not so well-dressed, who might have soiled himself before he died.”

  “Is that so?” said Fowler sharply. “Did Mr. Holmes say why?”

  “I asked who they were and how they were related to Lady Ingram’s death,” said Sergeant Ellerby. “Mr. Holmes said that he didn’t know enough to speak with complete confidence. Only that those bodies must be there—or at least the woman’s must be there, according to his deductions.”

  Treadles remembered the strands of hair that Miss Holmes had found, some six feet away from where Lady Ingram had lain.

  Fowler asked several more questions. When it became clear that the sergeant had nothing else to tell them, he thanked him gravely and wished him a good evening. Sergeant Ellerby saluted and left for his room at the constabulary, pushing open the door of the inn with some difficulty.

  A high wind lashed. The night promised to be intolerable.

  Treadles hesitated before he asked the chief inspector, “What do you think of the two bodies Mr. Holmes spoke of, sir?”

  “A fishy thing to ask about, isn’t it? I can’t decide whether it’s pure chicanery. Hard to think it could be anything else, when he must know word would get back to us.”

  Treadles did his best not to frown. Miss Holmes’s methods might be incomprehensible to him but he could not argue with her effectiveness. Granted, Fowler hadn’t worked with her before, but the competence “Sherrinford Holmes” displayed in the icehouse today should have earned her pronouncement a closer scrutiny. “And the rest?”

  Fowler shook his head. “Too convenient that a crate that wasn’t ever expected has by now disappeared. Not to mention, anyone could cut a padlock or two. Sergeant Ellerby is a good copper, but frankly, a little naïve.”

  But the arrival of the third crate was something that could be verified by interviewing the station agent, Mr. Walsh, and the manservant Mr. Walsh sent to accompany the crate to the lavender house.

  Would Fowler suggest, then, that all those involved must have been bribed by the rich and powerful local seigneur?

  Treadles didn’t say anything. It was clear that Fowler had his sights set on bagging Lord Ingram, who could prove a spectacular feather in the cap of an already legendary career.

  Miss Holmes had better not help the chief inspector by revealing the truth of Sherlock Holmes tonight.

  Treadles excused himself by saying that he needed to write his wife. He hadn’t meant to actually do that, but before he knew it, he had already finished a letter.

  Dear Alice,

  It’s cold and miserable in Derbyshire. An interminable day, and it still hasn’t ended yet.

  I wish I could reassure you otherwise, but at the moment it isn’t looking very good for Lord Ingram. The evidence that points to him is legion. Evidence to the contrary, despite some illogic and oddities, scant.

  I hope tomorrow will bring better tidings.

  Love,

  Robert

  He found himself turning his pen around and around, wanting to write more. He used to dash off letters running several pages, telling her about every part of his day, major and minor. But now he felt like a rusted spigot that let out only trickles and irregular spurts.

  He set down the pen and dropped his head into his hands.

  * * *

  “Is there time to do it again?” asked Holmes, her eyes bright, her face flushed.

  Lord Ingram reached for his watch on the nightstand. Three minutes to seven. They were to dine with Bancroft at half past. And even though he’d already told Bancroft they wouldn’t be changing into tails and pumps, they were still running short on time. “No, not properly, in any case.”

  She sighed, the sound a sweet flutter. “I liked it. Did you?”

  Did he? If he liked it any better, he would be stark-raving obsessed. “It was all right.”

  “I thought you’d be rusty, since it’s been a long time for you—or so you claim.”

  It had been an age of the world. He ran his fingers down her arm, marveling at the softness of her skin. “Maybe it’s like riding. Once you learn, you don’t forget how.”

  “I have much to learn,” she said happily. “I wonder if Mrs. Watson can impart any wisdom.”

  Good God. “How about I tell you exactly what I like?”

  “Really?” She batted her eyelashes at him, needlessly long lashes that would have been a lethal asset had she any interest in flirting. “I’m astonished, my lord. You never tell me anything except what you don’t like.”

  “In that case . . .” He placed his lips against her ear and whispered for some time.

  When he pulled back, her eyes were slightly glazed. “I was rather hoping, given how starchy you are in public, that in private you might be a man of varied and somewhat depraved tastes. I must say I’m not disappointed.”

  He gave her a mock-glare. “I’m too young to be called starchy.”

  “You are too young to be so starchy.”

  “Fine,” he said, laughing a little. “I deserved that. Now tell me, when you were talking about your inability to eat earlier, were you using impotence as an analogy?”

  “What if I was?”

  She took a strand of his hair and rubbed it between her fingers, a gesture the intimacy of which rather took his breath away—and made him forget, for a moment, what he was about to say. “Please, please make me very happy by informing me that your experience with impotence happened with Roger Shrewsbury.”

  “He managed to overcome it in the end,” she said in her matter-of-fact way.

  “I know that—no need for reminders. I just want to hear that he couldn’t get it up for some time.”

  “Well . . . he told me that I intimidated him,” said the most intimidating individual he had ever met.

  “Ha!”

  She placed a hand on the pillow, under her cheek, her expression genuinely curious. “Why are you so happy about that?”

  “I don’t know.” He grinned. “Obviously, despite my starchiness, I am not a very good man. I’ve wanted to punch him ever since that day last summer—every time we came across each other.”

  “Why? You could have slept with me at any time since I was seventeen.”

  And therein lay the rub, didn’t it? He’d been massively wrong about what he wanted—and needed.

  “Maybe the one I really wanted to punch was myself,” he said.

  She gazed at him, a pensive look on her face. Silence enveloped them, not tense or heavy, but a shade melancholy.

  He sat up and checked his watch again. “We must dress now. This moment.”

  She took his hand as he was about to leave the bed. “See, we’re still friends. Nothing has changed.”

  He looked back at her, at the fulcrum of his life. She was not wrong. Nothing had changed.

  Except him.

  * * *

  Mrs. Newell and her guests had left in the afternoon. The senior police officers had retired to their rooms in the village, leaving only a young constable in the entrance hall. The corridors echoed as Charlotte and Lord Ingram made their way to the drawing room.

  Lord Bancroft was already there, studying a map of Stern Hollow. He rose. “You are late.”

  They were, by ninety seconds.

  “My apologies,” said Lord Ingram. “We must leave soon to fetch the policemen. Shall we dine?”

  Lord Bancroft inclined his head. “I have requested service à la française. We won’t have need of servants.”

  Dinner was normally service à la russe, with courses brought out sequentially, the reason Charlotte had sat through more than one three-hour dinner. Service à la française placed all the food on the table at once and the diners helped themselves.

  They proceeded to the dining room, with its
twenty-five-foot ceiling and a table capable of seating sixty guests. They occupied the merest corner of this table. The food took up more space: Lord Bancroft was not the sort of diner to accept anything but the finest efforts from the kitchen—and a variety of those, no less.

  After soup was ladled, Lord Ingram dismissed the staff. Almost immediately Lord Bancroft asked, “Ash, what is this I hear about a page of your handwriting that might implicate Miss Holmes?”

  “I think Lady Ingram had cut out some pages from my practice notebooks and sent them to Moriarty,” answered his brother, “so that he and his underlings would recognize letters from me, should they intercept any, even if I’d written in a different hand.”

  Lord Bancroft loaded his plate with roast sirloin, lobster ragout, and oyster patties. “What woman would wander about with such a thing in her stocking? Can the police not fathom that it’s a transparent attempt to point the finger at her husband?”

  “It’s obvious to us,” said Lord Ingram. “But Scotland Yard sees only what it wants to see.”

  “Passel of idiots. Very well, what have you found out?”

  The question was directed at Charlotte, so she told him about the extra crate that was put into the lavender house, and which later disappeared.

  “So that’s how her body arrived at Stern Hollow, I see,” said Lord Bancroft, frowning. “When I was here last, I tried to ascertain whether other agents of Moriarty, besides Lady Ingram, had successfully infiltrated this household. I’d thought myself fairly satisfied on that account, but perhaps I was wrong.”

  “You are not the only one who has taken a hard look at the servants,” said Lord Ingram. “I spent weeks at that same task. They are not working for Moriarty.”

  Having spoken to all the staff, Charlotte was inclined to agree. “The men who came with the crate were lucky. The station agent is a talkative chap and probably told them everything they needed to know—and their arrival coincided with the mass migration of Mrs. Newell’s guests.”