by Anna Elliott
“It’s called, Love’s Dream,” Becky put in. She looked pale and as exhausted with worry as I felt, but she smiled just a little, too, as she said it.
As guilty secrets went, this one registered high on the scale. Mr. Phelps wouldn’t just be a laughingstock if word got out about his method for supplementing his barrister’s income. His entire career would be in shambles around him.
Knowledge of Rosalind Lovelace’s real identity would be like Christmas, birthdays, and bank holidays all rolled into one for any barrister on the opposing side of a court case from Mr. Phelps. One mention of Love’s Dream, and the jury would be laughing too hard to listen to a word that Mr. Phelps said.
Laurence Linden and others like him might go free.
That thought squelched even the small desire I had to regard the situation as funny.
“We can’t tell anyone about this.”
“We know.” Flynn nodded. “We promised Mr. Phelps that we wouldn’t.”
“Did the kidnappers telephone again?” Becky asked.
“No.” I’d sat here all the while they’d been gone, staring at the telephone, but it had been silent. I still couldn’t decide whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. Another call would likely mean that they had decided to renegotiate their terms. But I would have almost been willing to risk that, if it meant that I got the chance to hear Jack’s voice again and know that he was still alive.
“And you didn’t find anything else in Mr. Phelps’s flat?” I asked.
“No, I—oh.” Becky stopped abruptly. “I just remembered. I brought Lady Constance’s will back here with me. I didn’t mean to, but I put it in my pocket, and then I forgot all about it when Mr. Phelps came back home and found us.”
“Lady Constance’s will? Why would Mr. Phelps have that?”
“Maybe she asked Mr. Phelps or someone in his law practice to help her make it?” Becky offered. “She might not have made one before.”
But now that her life was threatened, she would be forced to confront the issue. Or maybe Mr. Phelps himself had suggested it; it was the sort of precaution a legal man would think of.
The door to the sitting room opened and Watson tramped wearily inside. One look at him was enough to tell me that his and Holmes’s investigations that night had been no more successful than Becky and Flynn’s: his face was drawn, his shoulders slumped with tiredness. But I still couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Did you learn anything?”
“Holmes is still questioning the police officers assigned as our guard. They all swear that they are innocent, and I am inclined to believe them. So far, we have made no discoveries, other than to uncover the fact that Lord Anthony is still a young wastrel. Despite all his talk of wishing to turn over a new leaf.”
Watson crossed to the wooden apothecaries’ cupboard where he kept the medical supplies that he stored here instead of at his own private practice. He shook his head, pulling open a drawer. “This profession of ours can make one despair of human nature. Lord Anthony may speak of marriage having made a new man of him. But apparently the new man has the same scurrilous habits as the old one, because he is losing a staggering amount of money each week at both the racing track and the roulette table.” Watson sighed, pocketing a vial of some medicine that he’d taken from the chest. “But I am duty bound to treat him as I would any other patient, regardless of moral worth.”
Briefly, Watson explained that Lord Anthony had been shot, and that he had attended to the bullet wound. “That’s why I came back; he will need a dose of morphine—”
“Wait a moment.” I sat up, jolted by the thought that had just struck me. “Lord Anthony has gambling debts?”
“Very considerable ones.”
“And Becky—you just said that you’d gotten hold of a copy of Lady Constance’s will.”
Watson’s brows pulled together. “You surely don’t think—”
Maybe I was clutching at straws right now, but I didn’t care. “I just think it would be interesting to know how Lady Constance has left her money in case of her death.”
A quarter of an hour later, I sat back from the table, rubbing my forehead. Maybe it was worry or tiredness or both, but all the legal phraseology in Lady Constance’s will and testament had felt even more than ordinarily difficult to wade through.
“Did you find out anything?” Becky asked.
Since it was pointless to tell her to go to bed, she was sitting at the table beside me. She’d been drooping a little, resting her head on her folded arms, but now looked up quickly.
“It’s all very complicated,” I said. “Lady Constance inherited a great deal of money from her grandfather—her mother’s father—but he had it all tied up in a trust. He must not have had a very high opinion of women’s intelligence, because as it stands, Lady Constance can only receive a fixed income from the interest on the inheritance, she can’t touch the whole sum, even though she’s of age.”
I glanced at Watson for confirmation; he’d been reading each page of the will after I finished with it.
“That’s right,” Watson said. “If Lady Constance is widowed, then by law, as a widow, she gains full control of her own property and any money that her husband leaves her.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Becky wrinkled up her nose. “Why should being a widow make a difference?”
A slight smile showed beneath Watson’s moustache. “The great writer Charles Dickens created a character who had a similar view of the Law, which I shall not repeat here. As I understand it, the terms of her grandfather’s trust dictate that if Lady Constance dies, the inheritance passes to her children. But if she dies without having children, then the money passes to her husband.”
Watson’s eyes met mine.
“It is a motive,” I said. “Men have killed for far smaller fortunes.”
“Lord Anthony nearly died himself tonight,” Watson said. “I can personally testify that the danger of it was quite genuine.”
“Yes, but that might have been a blind. Just in case anyone put the pieces together as we did and suspected him of enabling Linden’s hired thugs to kill his wife. No one could possibly suspect him if he’d almost been killed himself.”
“We would still need to prove it,” Watson said. “We haven’t any hard evidence, only theory.”
“I know.” I stood up. Leaving was a risk, when the men who had Jack might telephone. But this might be a chance of getting Jack home safely. “Holmes will still be at Claridge’s Hotel. I think we should join him there.”
CHAPTER 9: WATSON
We were all gathered in the Dales’ sitting room at Claridge’s hotel. Dawn had come. Tranquility had been restored for the moment. The window had been repaired and shut. The dove-grey satin drapes were drawn. Electric light sconces glowed steadily, illuminating the expectant faces of Lady Constance and Lord Anthony, each in satin robes, Mr. Phelps, and Lucy. They were all looking up at Holmes as he stood before the fireplace mantel. Leonie the maid was in the bedroom, but the door was open a crack and I suspected she was listening behind it. Two uniformed constables stood on either side of the entry door, inside the room this time, at Holmes’s instruction. Two more stood guard in the hallway outside.
Holmes and Lucy had formed a plan to expose the traitor who had revealed the transport arrangements this morning and so enabled the attack and kidnapping. I was not certain of their conclusions, or even if they had narrowed their target to only one person, but from what they had said I knew that they were planning to direct their initial interrogation towards Lord Anthony.
So I watched carefully as Holmes began. “There is a traitor in this room. One of you betrayed the substitution plan this morning. One of you is in collusion with the kidnappers.”
“Well, don’t pussyfoot around, Mr. Holmes,” said Phelps, his chubby hands clasping his capacious middle. “Who is it?”
“One of you has a strong financial motive. You, Lord Anthony, are in dire financial straits. You had squandered mo
st of your fortune prior to your marriage, and you have begun your wastrel ways once more, accumulating more gambling debts—”
Lord Anthony turned on me. “You said you wouldn’t tell!”
“I said I would not tell your wife,” I said.
Holmes glanced at Lucy for a brief moment, then turned back to Lord Anthony. “With your wife dead,” Holmes said, “you would inherit her fortune, now held in trust. Your plan was to have her nobly volunteer as a substitute hostage for the kidnapped police officer, whereupon some fatal accident would befall her.”
“Certainly not!” said Lord Anthony. His eyes widened, and he gaped at Holmes in outrage and astonishment. “I would never do such a thing! And I nearly died when that shot was fired here in this room. Or I might have, if I hadn’t been reaching for the supper-tray—”
“You lie,” Holmes said.
There was a long pause, as we stared at Lord Anthony.
“No.” To my intense surprise, it was Lucy who broke the silence. She slowly shook her head. “No, he’s not lying. He really didn’t have anything to do with orchestrating the kidnapping.”
She turned to Holmes. “I had my eye on Lady Constance when you said that someone in this room was a traitor. Everyone else looked around quickly, wondering who the traitor could be. That’s the natural response to an announcement like that. But Lady Constance didn’t look around at all. She sat quite still, just staring straight ahead.”
Lucy took a step nearer to the chair where Lady Constance still sat. “That’s because you already knew who the traitor was. It was you, wasn’t it. And just now, when your husband was being accused of wanting to have you killed, you continued just as serene as before. No outrage, no shock. Not even sorrow that the man you love had betrayed you. Because you knew he hadn’t. Maybe you originally had every intention of testifying against Laurence Linden. But Linden’s gang got to you and offered you a bribe to keep silent. It’s much riskier to try to assassinate someone than it is to offer them a hard sum of cash. You accepted.”
Lady Constance flinched back a little in her seat, but then pulled herself straighter. “How dare you suggest such a thing? I will not sit here and be rudely accused—”
“Rudely.” Lucy’s green eyes were blazing, but she gave a half laugh at that. “I’m so sorry, where are my manners? I suppose I must have left them behind when I realised you helped to kidnap my husband.” She leaned over Lady Constance and kept speaking, her voice clear and hard. “That’s why you could so bravely offer to exchange yourself for Jack. You knew very well that no harm would come to you. You wanted to make the exchange. You must at first have planned that you would be the one kidnapped. But the guard placed around you was too good. You couldn’t evade them without suspicion. So you had to try a different way. You would take Jack’s place and remain a hostage—in the eyes of the world, at least—until the trial was over. Then after Mr. Linden’s acquittal, you would re-emerge—maybe with a thrilling story of how you had escaped your captors—and be free to enjoy all the benefits of the money you took from Mr. Linden.”
“By Jove!” I exclaimed as sudden realisation dawned on me. “Just as you were leaving the house, she sent the roller window shade up in the room where we were waiting. I thought it an accident, but it could have been a signal to anyone watching from outside.”
“It probably was,” Lucy agreed. “She could have telephoned to a confederate while she was supposed to be upstairs packing for the hotel. Then she raised the window shade as a signal—and confirmation that she wasn’t the one in the carriage that was departing.” She stopped, her voice hardening as she faced Lady Constance once more. “It must have been a terrible disappointment, though, when your attempt to have your husband murdered failed tonight.”
Lord Anthony sat up with a sharp intake of breath and a bitten-off cry of pain as the movement stretched his wound. “What?”
Lucy nodded. “Oh, yes. The gunshot assumed to be aimed at Lady Constance was a quite deliberate attack on you, Lord Anthony. By the terms of her grandfather’s will, she will gain full control of her own property if she marries and is widowed. I imagine that was her intention in marrying you all along. But the affair of Linden’s trial gave her a perfect means for getting you out of the way without any suspicion attaching to her.”
Holmes added, “Earlier this afternoon, Lady Constance, you drew your husband to sit beside you at the window, and then bade him remain seated while you got up and served him his tea. Did you think we would not notice?”
Lord Anthony’s face had gone greyish white as he gaped at his wife. “Constance! Is this true?”
Lady Constance’s lovely face quivered for an instant, then the words burst out as water from behind a broken dam. “Yes! It’s true. Don’t pretend, Anthony, that you married me for any other reason than my money! All your talk of wishing to become a better man were lies to induce me to become your wife. How long did you wait after our wedding before you began gambling and indulging in drunken debauchery again? One week?”
Her mouth twisted. “I had already made up my mind to marry someone I could very easily stand to lose so that I could gain control of my fortune. You were ideal in every way. And Linden’s upcoming trial was the perfect opportunity to rid myself of you before you had a chance to squander away the rest of your own money, so that I could inherit that as well.”
Holmes beckoned to one of the constables. “Officer, please arrest this woman.”
“On what charge?” Lady Constance held her head high, her tone sneering.
“The attempted murder of your husband, to which you have just confessed before witnesses, including the Queen’s Counsel.”
“But you are forgetting one thing.”
“What might that be?”
“At noon today the kidnappers are expecting a telephone call from me. If I don’t make the call, they will know something has gone wrong and won’t turn up at midnight to make the exchange at Shadwell Basin. They might even kill your precious husband, Lucy dear.”
“In which case,” Holmes said, “You will hang as an accomplice to his murder.”
“I have plenty of funds to hire a barrister to prevent that,” she said, her confidence apparently unshaken. “But if you let me go free, I will make the call at the appointed hour.”
She smiled at Mr. Phelps. “Though I’m afraid I won’t be able to testify against Linden in any case,” she said. “Terrible inconvenience for you, I’m sure.”
“Yes, a pity indeed,” replied the barrister. “With a credible witness, I would be confident of a conviction. But your credibility is worthless, Lady Constance.”
Holmes was looking at Lucy, waiting, I knew, for her decision. After a long moment she spoke.
“You and your husband are a fit pair for each other, Lady Constance. As for my husband, he would be disgusted that I would even consider an agreement with the likes of you. Even to save his own life. Constable, please take this woman out of my sight.”
CHAPTER 10: LUCY
“Drink this.” Holmes pressed a cup into my hands. “It will help to clear your mind.”
A part of me wanted to ask what that would accomplish—besides enabling me to see even more clearly that our list of options had shrunk to practically nil.
But I took the cup and sipped obediently at what turned out to be coffee so strong it tasted as though it could dissolve a spoon and so hot it almost burned my tongue. I still couldn’t get warm, though. I was ordering my hands not to shake, but I couldn’t order away the ice-cold fear that was burrowing into my bones.
“Maybe Lady Constance was bluffing,” Flynn said.
We had come back to Baker Street to find him and Becky asleep on the hearth rug, but they’d woken at our entrance.
“You know, trying to get out of going to the clink by saying she had to make that telephone call,” Flynn went on. “She might have just made it up.”
She might. She might also be willing to make the telephone call after all in exchange
for a reduced prison sentence. That was what Inspector Lestrade and his officers were offering her now, in a Scotland Yard interrogation room.
But that didn’t help Jack, or make me feel any the less as though time was running out. I could picture a giant hourglass, and with every grain of sand that slipped through its narrow neck, my chances of ever seeing Jack alive again slipped just a little further away.
Holmes was watching me—and most likely deducing the spiral of my thoughts, because he cleared his throat.
“We have just seen tonight that even those marriages which to all outward appearances most resemble the happily-ever-after of a fairy tale may prove hollow at their core. An observation that is not at all uncommon in this profession of ours, which deals with the basest of human traits.”
I looked at him. “If this is supposed to be making me feel better somehow, it’s not helping.”
Holmes cleared his throat again. He looked distinctly as though he were testing out words in a foreign language, but he said, “What I am endeavouring to convey is that seeing you and Jack together has made even me, cynic that I am, believe in the possibility and the strength of what the poets and novelists term true love. The power of goodness is no less a force than the power of evil, else why do we persist in this business? And it is your strength that Jack can rely on now. You will find him. Of that, I am confident.”
My eyes stung at the rarely glimpsed warmth in Holmes’ expression. But I also wished that I could share his confidence.
“Lucy?” Becky had been sitting pressed tight against me on the sofa, but now she looked up. “Did Jack say anything to you when you spoke to him on the telephone? He would have tried to give you a hint about where he was being held, if he could, don’t you think? Maybe something he said was a clue, and you just didn’t realise it.”