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 to 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.”
“They seemed to know the estate rather well for strangers,” Lord Bancroft pointed out.
“Mrs. Watson and I toured the grounds a few days ago, before the imbroglio with Lady Ingram. We were given a map of the entire estate and its walking paths, and on the reverse side was a smaller map of the house, the garden, and the outbuildings. Perhaps the men who put Lady Ingram in the icehouse had done a similar tour earlier, which would have given them all the familiarity necessary for their task.”
Great country estates often permitted sightseers on the grounds—some even allowed the public rooms of the house to be viewed, when the family was away. And it was not uncommon to have maps at hand for the tourists, so that they would know how to proceed.
“But why did those men choose the icehouse? Why not dump her body in the gardens? And is the icehouse even labeled on this map you speak of, the one handed out to tourists?”
Lord Ingram and Charlotte exchanged a look.
“You are right. It may not be,” said Charlotte. “I don’t recall seeing the icehouse on the map.”
“Then why?” Lord Bancroft murmured, as if to himself.
“You were out in the afternoon, did you find out anything?” Lord Ingram asked his brother.
“I went to see the body. Couldn’t quite believe it until I’d seen it with my own eyes. The pathologist is arriving tonight—Scotland Yard wanted their own—and the autopsy has been scheduled for the morning. We’ll see if we learn anything. What do you suppose she did to turn Moriarty against her?”
“I thought it was simply a case of his having no more use for her. But Holmes disagreed. She thought a woman such as Lady Ingram would be highly valuable, even after she had lost her proximity to you.”
“I agree with Miss Holmes. Which makes the entire matter even more incomprehensible.”
No one said anything else for some time. Charlotte ate doggedly. It was enough that her lack of appetite had struck fear in the hearts of Mrs. Watson and Lord Ingram. She didn’t want Lord Bancroft also to wonder about her current state of mind.
Lord Bancroft broke the silence. “Those are excellent garments, by the way, Miss Holmes.”
“Thank you, sir. Men’s clothes are far more interesting than I first assumed. I have now made a rather thorough study. Do feel free to inquire,” she said solemnly, “should you find yourself with questions concerning the latest fashions in gentlemanly attire.”
“I will be sure to take advantage of your expertise, if and when the need arises,” the perpetually stylish Lord Bancroft answered with equal gravity. “Have you been handling cases that necessitate dressing as a man?”
“Not yet. But Mrs. Watson and I both thought that it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared. It would be only a matter of time before such a case arose.”
“What made you think that you’d need men’s garments for a two-week stay in the country?”
“I didn’t think so, but they are rather like new toys. I didn’t want to part with them.”
“You’ve also had practice speaking and acting as a man.”
“Mrs. Watson was a professional actress—and her butler had been on the stage, too. They make for excellent tutors.”
Charlotte, who didn’t have a high voice to begin with, had learned to pitch it much lower. She didn’t need to drop it a whole octave for Sherrinford Holmes—no one expected that gentleman to have a gravelly voice—but she could, if necessary.
“Quite a bit of practice. I thought you were an odd fellow, but until Ash mentioned Sherlock Holmes, I didn’t think you were Charlotte Holmes.”
“Why, thank you, my lord.”
“My point is, you didn’t arrive overnight at this level of proficiency. And I can’t see you putting in this much effort for a mere nebulous future need. What is going on that I don’t know about?”
Charlotte glanced at Lord Ingram, who took a bite of his filet of leveret, and seemed to concentrate on only his chewing.
“Well, before this unfortunate incident with Lady Ingram, Ash and I were discussing taking a trip abroad after Christmas. While under my parents’ roof, I rarely set foot outside of Britain—something I wish to rectify. And Ash, of course, could use some time away from Society.
“My reputation is beyond recovery, but he still has his to think of. And since the children would have come along, we must conduct ourselves with some semblance of propriety. If I could pass for a man, well, then, problem solved.”
Lord Bancroft was in the middle of slicing through a vol-au-vent of chicken. He stilled. “Where were you thinking of going?”
This question was directed at Lord Ingram, who took a sip of his wine and said, “Warm places, since we would have left in the middle of winter. Spain, Majorca, Egypt, the Levant. By the time we reached India, it would probably have been unbearably hot in the plains, but the hill stations should still have been pleasant.”
His eyes locked with Charlotte’s, a small smile animating his lips.
“I see,” said Lord Bancroft, whose courtship of Charlotte had twice ended without her hand in marriage, his tone remarkably even.
Charlotte served herself oeufs à la neige, poached quenelles of meringue in a bath of crème anglaise. “These are delicious. And not too sweet.”
“They are made by the undercook trained by the pastry chef Bancroft poached from Stern Hollow,” said Lord Ingram.
“Do you still have that pastry chef in your employ, my lord Bancroft?” Charlotte asked.
She had heard herself described as difficult to read. Lord Bancroft’s face must be on a par with hers in its opacity. She could decipher little in his features beyond a concentration on his food.
He looked up. “I do. And before I left to present myself at Eastleigh Park, he made me a most excellent citron tart.”
Charlotte turned to Lord Ingram. “I like citron tarts.”
“Then you shall have them.” His gaze again lingered over her. “Now if you are done, Holmes, we must be going. Enjoy your dinner, Bancroft.”
“Now why do you suppose Lord Bancroft didn’t believe that I would invest some time and energy to gain the ability to pass myself off as a man?” asked Holmes, when she and Lord Ingram were alone in the coach. “It’s a valuable professional skill.”
“Because, for all that your mind is a thing of wonder—and terror—you are not particularly industrious. When need be, yes. Otherwise you could easily pass for a Punch caricature of a lady of leisure, eating bonbons and reading novels on the chaise, except you’d be reading The Lancet or a Patent Office catalogue.
“For you to set aside that book, get up from the chaise, put on the padding, the clothes, the wig, the orthodontia, the beard and mustache, and practice passing for a man—why should Bancroft believe this would have happened under normal circumstances?”
“Do you think he believed I would do it to travel abroad with you?”
He shrugged.
It was, as ever, difficult to guess what Bancroft might be thinking. But he would have liked to believe that. He could so easily see them standing shoulder to shoulder at the bow of a ship. It didn’t matter what kin
d of seas they sailed, warm, cold, smooth, or choppy. It didn’t matter where they were headed, empty wilderness or teeming metropolises. It mattered only that they were together at last.
She was right. He was still the same romantic he had always been.
A bittersweet thought, more bitter than sweet.
He wanted to ask whether such a voyage might be possible, one of these days. But she was a woman who made no promises of the future. And he . . . deep down he still wanted all the promises.
Or at least clarity and certainty.
He glanced out of the window, at the murky night and the rain that seemed determined to drag on for the remainder of the year. After a while she placed her gloved hand on top of his.
Her words echoed in his ears. Why can’t things become simpler?
No, no complicated relationship ever became simpler by the addition of physical intimacy. But at least now, when they ran out of words, he could turn to her—and kiss her.
So he did.
Treadles had not expected to see “Sherrinford” Holmes in the coach—he thought she would have already gone to their destination to prepare for her role as Sherlock Holmes’s sister—or God forbid, Sherlock Holmes himself. But she—and Lord Ingram—greeted the policemen cordially.
Chief Inspector Fowler led the way with small talk. Treadles waited for him to steer the conversation to the bodies in which “Sherrinford” Holmes had expressed an interest. But whether he was genuinely uninterested or merely wished others to think so, he instead concentrated his questions on the running of a large estate.
Treadles had attended Lord Ingram’s archaeological lectures. The man had no trouble keeping an audience spellbound. Here, although the topic was much more mundane, Treadles found himself fascinated by what he had to say about the myriad responsibilities that fell upon his shoulders.
“Do you enjoy it, your estate?” asked Fowler.
The question met with almost half a minute of silence, before Lord Ingram said, “My godfather, while he yet lived, had strongly hinted that Stern Hollow would be mine upon his passing. I liked the idea exceedingly well—the wholesome, peaceful life of a country squire seemed everything I could possibly hope for.
The Hollow of Fear: Book three in the Lady Sherlock Mystery Series Page 19