The Hollow of Fear

by Sherry Thomas

  “So speaks a lordship who’s never had to dine on cuisine de prison. You will be denied bail. Guard your basket with your life.”

  He set a hand on the basket, his fingers digging into its wicker exterior. He wanted out of this place. He wanted to see his children. He wanted a wall behind which to hide, damn it, and not be exposed to every passing guard’s curiosity.

  “Come here,” she said.

  He rose and went to her. “I’m afraid.”

  Terrified.

  “As you should be. As am I. But don’t forget, sir”—she reached through the bars and took hold of his hands, her own hands steady, her gaze clear and calm—“that I am a queen upon this board—and I do not play to lose.”

  * * *

  Livia grabbed the envelope.

  It was the day after she’d made the devastating discovery at Moreton Close. She’d arrived home in numb despair and had to spend the rest of the day fending off her mother’s angry comments about Mrs. Newell’s inconsideration at not providing a maid to accompany Livia on her trip.

  She wrote Charlotte a letter, begging her sister to do something. Anything. She hoped to be able to post it away from Lady Holmes’s prying eyes—and feared it would be just like a peevish Lady Holmes not to let her out for a day or two.

  But the early post had brought a letter from Charlotte. The short note was written in the code that they’d devised for themselves—not the one Charlotte had made up for her to give to the police, but the modified Caesar cipher they had been using since childhood.

  Translated, the message read,

  Dear Livia,

  My apologies. B is with me and has been all along. Please do not worry anymore. I will explain everything when I see you next.

  C.

  P.S. Until then, please make no decisions with regard to Mr. Moonstone.

  Inspector Treadles had done his best to ensure that Lord Ingram was put up in a clean cell and treated with due respect and courtesy. But still he felt guilty, as if it had been his machinations that had put his friend behind bars, and not Chief Inspector Fowler’s.

  “You mustn’t abandon hope, my lord,” he said.

  Lord Ingram did not look worse for wear—yet. It had been only a day. “I have not. I have friends working on my behalf.”

  “Sergeant Ellerby is seeking the other body specified by Sherlock Holmes with all his might,” said Treadles, feeling more than a little stupid. He wasn’t sure how that would help Lord Ingram.

  “You must thank him on my behalf until I can do so in person. He has been very kind.” Lord Ingram smiled a little. “And how are you, Inspector? How is Mrs. Treadles? Cousins Manufacturing running smoothly under her stewardship?”

  “I think so. Or as smoothly as can be expected now, since she is still relatively inexperienced. But I’m quite astonished at how much she has learned.” There was a lingering sweetness on his tongue. It took Treadles a moment to recognize it as pride—he always used to speak of his wife with pride and now he was once again doing so. “I would find the management of such a large organization overwhelming, but she enjoys herself immensely.”

  “I’m happy to hear that. I hope to have you both to Stern Hollow someday soon.”

  He imagined his friend, free again. The Treadleses, walking arm-in-arm on that beautiful estate, talking and laughing. And himself, bathed in forgiveness and understanding, neither of which he deserved, but he hoped to.

  Someday.

  “I will be most gratified to have that come to pass.”

  Lord Ingram smiled slightly. “Holmes is on the case. We have nothing to fear.”

  * * *

  Lord Ingram was in custody for more than thirty-six hours before the message Charlotte had been waiting for came, typed on plain paper, posted from one of the busiest corners of London, in an envelope addressed to Sherlock Holmes.

  Hand over Mr. Finch and exculpatory evidence will be offered for Lord Ingram. You may post your reply in the papers as a +10 Caesar cipher.

  She immediately sent in her reply. Hand over exculpatory evidence first.

  The response came two hours after the morning editions became available, this time delivered to the mail slot at 18 Upper Baker Street itself. You are not in a position to negotiate. Give your answer as a Vigenère cipher. Keyword: STERN.

  She took a deep breath and dispatched her next message to the evening papers, coded as specified: 22 Compton Lane, Hampstead Heath.

  * * *

  The man in the parlor of 22 Compton Lane had become accustomed to making himself at home in different surroundings. He always carried the same Darjeeling tea and the same pair of house slippers wherever he went, so that there would be some sense of familiarity and coziness, no matter how strange and inhospitable his new dwellings.

  This house was not so bad. Close enough to London to be convenient, but with slightly cleaner air and somewhat less clogged streets. There was a bookstore nearby he enjoyed browsing—in fact, he’d spent too much money there—and the food at the tea shop on the next street was downright decent.

  He had just settled into his chair, a glass of Armagnac at his side, a Mrs. Braddon novel in hand, when he heard suspicious sounds at the front door. He rose and extinguished all the lights in the parlor. The firelight from the grate couldn’t be helped, of course, but he did take the poker in hand, before he secreted himself behind the grandfather clock.

  Men came into the house. Two of them. One went deeper, ascending the stairs. The other came toward the parlor.

  He recognized those footsteps.

  The intruder walked into the parlor. He glanced at the glass of Armagnac and the hastily cast aside book—and cocked his revolver.

  The occupant of the house stepped out from behind the grandfather clock.

  The intruder raised his firearm. Then his expression changed.

  The firelight was not brilliant, but it was illumination enough in such close quarters.

  “Remington,” said the intruder coldly. “What are you doing here?”

  Lord Remington shook his head. He’d thought he had steeled himself, but still he was close to tears. “I had hoped it wouldn’t be you. Even after everything I’ve learned, I still hoped that we were wrong and that it wouldn’t be you, Bancroft.”

  Twenty-two

  STERN HOLLOW

  EARLIER

  “What do you think of what you are being asked to do here?” murmured Charlotte.

  “Oh, I will go to jail before I give up my virtue, you may depend on that.”

  She couldn’t help smiling a little. With everything spinning out of control, at least his defense of his virtue was a familiar refrain, even if this time it was uttered with a hint of mockery rather than as an outright refusal.

  He set aside his tea cup. “That said, I still don’t think you have told me everything. Far from it.”

  He sat sprawled in his chair, one shoulder lower than the other—she rarely saw him with less-than-perfect posture. Fatigue was writ deep across his features. Dread, too. A desire not to know radiated from him. He must hate these serious conversations with her—they had never held one that didn’t strain their friendship or, far more unhappily, upend his life.

  “You are right,” she said reluctantly. “I have not told you everything. I have not told you whom I suspect to be behind all this.”

  He straightened, his expression incredulous, almost disbelieving. “Someone other than Moriarty?”

  “When I made arrangements to remove Bernadine from my parents’ house, I wasn’t thinking of Moriarty.”

  “Then who?”

  “When Mr. Finch left Moriarty’s service, why do you suppose he didn’t turn to agents of the Crown?”

  “He must have known that there was at least one informant among our ranks.”

  “He could have gone straight to th
e top, bypassing the ranks.”

  Now he only looked confused. “You aren’t implying that Bancroft is working for Moriarty?”

  “No, not that. Bancroft would never put himself in the hands of someone like Moriarty. I would even posit that he despises the existence of Moriarty’s organization: It isn’t affiliated with or dependent on any sovereign nation, but forms mercenary alliances as it sees fit. In an already complicated landscape of competing powers and loyalties, it is an agent of chaos.”

  Lord Ingram exhaled, his relief palpable.

  But a man did not need to work for or with Moriarty to have done something reprehensible. She bit the inside of her cheek. “However, it’s possible—in fact, I would put it as probable—that what Mr. Finch stole from Moriarty concerns Lord Bancroft and that Lord Bancroft knows it.”

  He braced his hands against the edge of the table. “I’m willing to cede that as a possibility. Bancroft doesn’t have the cleanest hands. And if worse comes to worst, I can believe that he might have slept with someone unsuitable, an agent for a foreign government—or from Moriarty’s organization.

  “But Bancroft wouldn’t have passed along secrets to women he dallied with. And empires are not built with clean hands. I fail to see how Mr. Finch’s illicit knowledge could possibly damage Bancroft to such an extent that they would fear each other.”

  She considered what she was about to say. “What did you think when you received Lady Avery’s letter, the one that detailed our meeting at the tea shop in Hounslow?”

  “I thought it was a remarkable piece of bad luck that someone who served us in a random tea shop should also serve, in a random hotel counties away, the one woman who would listen, take note, then broadcast this all . . .”

  His voice trailed away—he was beginning to see.

  “Indeed, an extraordinary coincidence. Which begs the question. What if it hadn’t been a coincidence? What if someone deliberately wished Lady Avery to know about our encounter? Besides the two of us, who else knew that we were there that day?”

  “I know you want me to say Bancroft, since he sent his man Underwood to fetch us. But why couldn’t Moriarty also know?”

  As soon as he said it he grimaced.

  She knew exactly what he remembered. “Moriarty wouldn’t know because we shook off his minions when we set out that day. I’m certain you were vigilant even afterward, making sure no one else followed us—I know I was. Not to mention that, on the night Mr. Finch was almost caught, it wasn’t Moriarty’s men who stopped my carriage. It was Mr. Underwood, Lord Bancroft’s man.”

  Granted, she had then run into Mr. Crispin Marbleton, Moriarty’s brother. But that had been an amicable meeting, focused more on Mr. Marbleton’s concern for his son Stephen—and Charlotte’s for Livia. The worries of two parties who weren’t ready to become in-laws yet—who feared that the unexpected attraction between their loved ones could lead to dangerous complications.

  She didn’t burden Lord Ingram with this particular development—they had more pressing problems.

  He frowned. “But you know Bancroft was also looking for Mr. Finch at the time. That it was Mr. Underwood who tried to nab him doesn’t mean anything.”

  “But since it wasn’t Moriarty that night, Moriarty couldn’t have any idea that I knew, however briefly, where to find Mr. Finch. He wouldn’t have had any reason to pressure anyone else in my orbit to get to me.”

  He gripped his teacup, as if needing to extract what remained of its warmth. “Still, what could Bancroft possibly have done that he would need to orchestrate such a diabolical trap, to get the evidence from Mr. Finch?”

  She finally took a bite of the charlotte russe. It was beautiful, cool and velvety on the tongue—but her stomach convulsed in protest.

  She waited for the spasm to pass. “Who made this?”

  “An acolyte of Bancroft’s pastry chef—who once worked in this house, of course.”

  “When we were talking about Lord Remington, Mrs. Watson mentioned that Lord Bancroft had in fact been the family’s black sheep.”

  “I have heard that—my father mistrusted him because he spent too much money. But that was long ago.”

  She pushed away the dismembered charlotte russe at last. “What kind of a man keeps a pastry chef in his employment?”

  He stared at her, his eyes wide with dread that was beginning to congeal into understanding. “What do you mean?”

  She took a deep breath. “I mean, how much income would you estimate he has? Lord Bancroft is a second son. He works for the Crown, which doesn’t pay extravagantly. And he doesn’t have, as far as I can tell, a wealthy godfather who has settled a magnificent fortune on him.”

  He didn’t speak.

  “I knew very little of men’s clothes before this autumn. But now that I do, I can see that his garments are, if not vastly, then at least noticeably superior to yours. Not that yours are inferior by any means, but his are superlative.

  “And let’s not forget the house near Portman Square, which he bought and kitted out in anticipation that I would marry him. We joke about how he threw all taste and refinement to the side to please me, but have you ever thought of how much such a venture—a house in a desirable location, filled to the brim with exotic and extravagant furnishings—would have cost?”

  He pressed his fingers against his temples.

  “When Mrs. Watson mentioned his spendthrift ways, she kindly posited that no one should be judged on their adolescence. But we are not judging Lord Bancroft on old habits. We are looking at how he lives now. Where do you suppose he obtains such a sizable income?”

  Now he covered his entire face.

  “You may know something of how he directs the day-to-day operations of his agents. Do you have the impression that they are being shortchanged in terms of remuneration or other necessary funds?”

  Behind his hands, he shook his head.

  She was breathing fast. Her hands were clenched together. She flexed her stiff fingers and forced herself to exhale slowly, quietly. “Whatever possibility remains, then, no matter how terrible it is, must be the truth.”

  * * *

  Lord Ingram shot out of his chair.

  For a man in Bancroft’s position to have so much inexplicable income—if he wasn’t stealing from his office, there was only one other possibility.

  He was selling state secrets.

  Lord Ingram wanted to deny it. He wanted to shout that it was beyond absurd that such an accusation could be levied at his brother.

  But truth, however absurd it seems at first, always possesses undeniable weight and solidity. Yes, Bancroft had been a valuable asset to the Crown. He was extremely competent and handled everything under his purview with aplomb. But he was also a man without true loyalties, except to himself. Lord Ingram wasn’t certain, now that push came to shove, whether Bancroft could even be called an honorable man.

  Dear God, all this time, all this time when Bancroft had asked his subordinates to risk their lives for Queen and country . . .

  He didn’t know whether he wanted to weep or to smash things. All he knew was that he gripped hard onto the mantel, feeling as if he’d never be warm again.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured next to him.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said by reflex. “But what am I to do?”

  “You protect yourself. And you protect me. Can you imagine what would happen if he were to guess that we suspected his worst secrets?”

  He shivered, chilled from head to toe.

  “There is still, of course, a chance that I’ve read too much into everything. That he is a bystander in all this. If he is innocent, he will do as he usually does, remain in the shadows himself and let others take care of everything.

  “But I think he has something to do with what happened in that icehouse. He visited Stern Hollow five weeks ago. Wh
at reason did he give—that he wanted to make sure that there are no other traitors in your household?”

  He gave a small, grim nod.

  “While he was here, he would have familiarized himself with the geography of Stern Hollow—that’s how the abductors he’d sent knew to head directly for the nursery. Had he succeeded, had he your children in hand, he would have been in a stronger position to demand Mr. Finch in exchange. But that attempt failed and he knew that you were vigilant. So he switched to his contingency plan, and made it appear that you had murdered Lady Ingram.”

  “But surely I would have learned of it, if he or his men had found her.”

  “I don’t think he found her. I suspect the ‘maid’ who told Lady Avery about our encounter in the tea shop was involved in more ways than one. If I must guess I would say that she was of the same approximate height and build as Lady Ingram, with dark hair and a beauty spot in a similar position on her face. Bash in her face, put her in your icehouse, and who would that beauty spot identify her as?”

  “But that wasn’t the body your sister—or I—saw in the icehouse.”

  “That part puzzles me—I can only assume something went awry. But the important thing is, if my suspicions are correct and Lord Bancroft indeed orchestrated the icehouse incident—or part of it—then he would not stay away. He would send Mr. Underwood—and possibly even come himself to investigate. There are many questions to which he would need answers. How did the actual Lady Ingram end up in the icehouse? Where had that decoy gone? Who else was at work? Who knew enough of what he was doing to mock him so?”

  The fire in the grate crackled. She sighed softly. “Should he or even Mr. Underwood arrive, you must take it as an admission of guilt and be careful. Above all else, do not let him guess that you know.”

  Now he understood, viscerally, why she couldn’t eat. Now he was as afraid as she. Moriarty was a distant specter. But his brother, a man with just as much power and menace, was right here, moving among them.