He might have mumbled something in reply. She bade him good day and walked out of the front door.
“Was that Mr. Holmes?” said Chief Inspector Fowler a minute later, startling Treadles.
“Yes, that was.”
“Hmm,” said Fowler, studying Charlotte Holmes’s retreating back. “There goes a man far more dangerous than he looks.”
Mrs. Newell did not pretend to be pleased that she must speak to the police again. Faced with her aloofness, Chief Inspector Fowler dispensed with small talk. “Ma’am, I understand that you yourself gave the order to send ice to Stern Hollow. Why?”
“Lord Ingram asked me to. He said that one of their freezing pots is missing, if I wouldn’t mind sending one from my kitchen, so that my guests would be able to enjoy the cold dishes that they are accustomed to. And would I not mind sending some ice along with the freezing pot.”
Treadles went cold. What reason could Lord Ingram have for requesting ice from a neighbor, when he had several tons of perfectly good ice waiting in his icehouse?
“Did he mention why he wanted you to send ice?”
“He didn’t. But I was delighted to oblige, since he was doing me the far larger favor by taking in all my guests. My kitchen staff already had a block of ice in an ice safe and it was very little trouble to send it along with all the food that would have otherwise gone to waste.”
“Why did you not mention this when we last spoke?”
“You didn’t ask.”
“Mrs. Newell, withholding evidence from the police, in the course of a murder investigation, is a serious offense. I didn’t ask because I didn’t know enough to inquire in that particular direction, but you knew the significance of what you were not telling us.”
The old woman wrinkled her nose. “Why should I volunteer information that might send an innocent man to the gallows?”
“What makes you still think that he is innocent?”
“What makes you think he is guilty?”
“Simply from what you’ve told us, it’s obvious that Lord Ingram was hiding something. He requested for you to supply the ice so that none of his servants would need to go near the icehouse.”
There could be no other conclusion, yet Treadles still cringed to hear it said aloud.
If Lord Ingram killed his wife, then he could never again appear before Miss Holmes.
Mrs. Newell had said that, Mrs. Newell who was obviously biased in favor of Lord Ingram. But Treadles clung to that statement, to the implied integrity of Miss Holmes.
Mrs. Newell, unlike him, was not disheartened by Fowler’s charge. “If that were the case, wouldn’t Lord Ingram have made sure no one entered the icehouse the next day as well? Why would a servant be able to waltz in a mere twenty-four hours later?”
“Perhaps he underestimated how much ice the kitchen needed. Perhaps he thought the amount you supplied would be enough to last the entirety of your guests’ sojourn at Stern Hollow.”
Mrs. Newell scoffed. “Would you make such assumptions, Chief Inspector, if you had your wife’s dead body lying in a structure that is sure to be visited at some point by members of your staff? Lord Ingram is not stupid. And any inference of guilt that starts with him doing something stupid is, by default, a line of reasoning that must be rejected.”
The fog was still rampant when they left Mrs. Newell’s house but had begun to clear by the time they reached Stern Hollow. Instead of calling for an interview with Lord Ingram, Chief Inspector Fowler requested to speak to his valet, Cummings.
They had already spoken to Cummings once, when they had interviewed all the other servants. When Treadles consulted his notes, he saw that Fowler had already written, in the margins, Need to question this man again.
“Mr. Cummings, do you recognize these boots?”
Cummings, a small, neat man, examined the contents of the boot box, which had been taken from Lord Ingram’s dressing room the evening before. “They belong to Lord Ingram.”
“You have seen them before?”
“Yes. They are quite old, from before I came to work for his lordship.”
“Are they usually kept in the dressing room?”
“No. Usually they are kept near one of the side entrances, along with his Wellington boots, for when he wishes to walk about the estate.”
“Were you not concerned they were no longer there?”
“Boots that are never worn in public do not fall under my purview, Chief Inspector. The hall boy has the responsibility of cleaning them. I check on them once in a while, to make sure he has done them properly. But I usually inspect only one of the side entrances at a time, and there are several in this house. If I don’t see a pair of boots at any given point in time, I assume that they have been stowed near one of the other doors.”
“Why do you suppose these boots have been stowed in the dressing room?”
“I can’t say, Chief Inspector.”
“You are responsible for Lord Ingram’s wardrobe, which means the dressing room should fall entirely under your purview. You didn’t think to ask his lordship about the appearance of these boots at a place they didn’t belong?”
“I might have, if they’d been put on my side of the dressing room,” said Cummings. “The innermost quarter or so of the dressing room is where Lord Ingram keeps his letters, journals, portfolios, and such. I do not venture into that part of the dressing room. My instructions are clear. Even if I see something on his side that has clearly been misplaced, say, a necktie or a comb, that should have stayed on my side of the dressing room, I am to leave it alone and let his lordship sort it out in time.”
“So you have seen this boot box in the dressing room but not gone near it.”
“That’s correct, Chief Inspector.”
“How long has the boot box been in the dressing room?”
“Years.”
“Years?” Fowler frowned. “I see, let me ask a different question. When did it move to Lord Ingram’s side of the dressing room?”
Cummings bit his lower lip. “Two or three weeks ago. Three, most likely.”
“And of course you didn’t ask why.”
“No, indeed.”
“The boots have a great deal of coal dust encrusted on the soles. Where do you think they have been worn to?”
“I can’t imagine. The coal cellar would be the only place in the house where there might be some coal dust to be found.”
“If he goes to the coal cellar and comes back, surely you would have seen coal dust in the dressing room?”
Mr. Cummings hesitated.
“May I remind you, Mr. Cummings—”
“I understand I am to speak truthfully, Chief Inspector.”
“Has Lord Ingram demanded otherwise of you?”
“No. When Sergeant Ellerby came, his lordship asked the entire staff to be forthright and helpful when questioned by the police.”
“Then why the reluctance, Mr. Cummings?”
“I don’t know, Chief Inspector. But you are right, I’ve noticed coal dust lately in the dressing room.”
“Did you ask Lord Ingram about it?”
“No, I cleaned up and carried on with my duties.”
“Now, Mr. Cummings, has there been anything else about his lordship’s ambulatory habits of late that is out of the ordinary?”
Mr. Cummings hesitated some more. “About a fortnight ago, I checked on the boots by one of the side doors in the morning, instead of in the evening, as I usually do, and saw a pair of Wellingtons that were encrusted with mud. I had a word with the hall boy. He swore that he had not been neglecting the boots. That at the end of the previous day, they’d all been scrubbed, brushed, and set to rights.
“He told me that he’d been finding the boots used overnight. That he’d been cleaning them first thing in the morning. But that morning, Mr. Walsh had some other tasks for him and he hadn’t got around to the boots yet.”
“I see,” said Fowler, a gleam in his eyes. “Anything else, Mr. Cummi
ngs?”
The valet shook his head.
Fowler dismissed him and studied a detailed map of the estate, an exact copy of the one that hung in the library. Then he looked up. “Inspector Treadles, care for a little outing?”
Before they left, they spoke to the hall boy, who confirmed that indeed, every morning for the past few weeks he’d found a pair of Wellingtons that needed heavy cleaning.
The policemen rode out, accompanied by Mr. Platts, the estate manager. Treadles saw little of the passing scenery. Scotland Yard’s progress was accelerating. What was Miss Holmes doing? Was she finding out anything that could save Lord Ingram?
They reached the gate Lord Ingram had mentioned the night before, the one the reconstruction of which had given him much trouble and negligible pleasure. From the gate, after five minutes on foot, they came to a clearing, with a cottage at its center. The cottage occupied only a little more area than a town coach, but it was two stories tall, with a gabled, deeply pitched roof, round dormers, and window boxes full of pink and purple sweet alyssums.
And while he had my attention on the matter, my estate manager brought up a whole slew of other deficiencies near the gate, everything from a derelict woodsman’s cottage to footbridges that were too rotted for safe crossing.
Treadles had not seen any new footbridges, but the once derelict woodsman’s cottage had certainly been restored to a state of glory. Had Treadles encountered such a scene as a child, he would have thought he’d wandered into a fairy tale. Even as a grown man, he would have felt a swell of wonder and delight—under any other circumstances.
Now all he felt was an inchoate panic. If this was the place Lord Ingram had visited at night, resulting in those muddy boots, then he was sure Lord Ingram wouldn’t want Chief Inspector Fowler to know about it.
“Very nice,” said Fowler to Mr. Platts.
“I concur,” said the estate manager. “It’s my understanding that the children quite adore it.”
The children. Dear God, the children.
“May we see the inside?” asked Fowler.
“Of course.”
The inside of the cottage was decorated with yellow gingham curtains, baskets hanging from ceiling beams, and rustic furniture built for small people.
Fowler examined every square inch of the interior. Treadles had no choice but to do the same.
To the experienced eye, there was no question that until quite recently there had been people inside. The policemen found strands of fine dark hair, in two different lengths, on the beds in the loft. The small stove on the ground floor had been used less than two days before, judging by the lack of dust on its surfaces. And a jar on the shelves above the stove contained several ginger biscuits, which according to the housekeeper—Treadles remembered this with a plummeting heart—Lord Ingram had been fetching from the stillroom in the middle of the night, even though he didn’t care for them.
As they started the walk to where they had left the horses, Fowler asked, “Mr. Platts, can you tell us if there is anything interesting or different about the coal cellar at Stern Hollow?”
“It’s certainly an amply proportioned one. And I’ve always appreciated the dumbwaiter that Lord Ingram had installed, so that the servants needn’t carry coal up and down the stairs. But beyond that—”
He stopped for a second. “How silly of me. I’ve become so accustomed to the estate’s various oddities—all great houses have them—that I didn’t think of it sooner. You see, Stern Hollow boasts a magnificent kitchen garden, one of the finest I’ve ever seen, and I try to visit them everywhere I go.
“The garden slopes downhill by design, to maximize exposure to sunlight. Unfortunately, this meant that the glass houses, which are built halfway down the slope, are approximately six feet below the top of the north wall, behind which stands the boiler hut. To send hot water to heat those glass houses and to ensure that the water returns, the boilers had to be sunk to a spectacular depth, almost eighteen feet, to be exact, as the boilers themselves are the tubular sort the height of which must also be accommodated.
“Once the boilers are lit for the winter, and they should be any day now, one of them must be operating at maximum capacity all the time, which means they must be stoked three times a day, and one more time late in the evening on particularly cold nights. A hair-raising task, it used to be, going down a pitch-dark pit on a rickety ladder bolted to the side of the chute, with a heavy basket of coke on one’s back.
“Some fifteen years ago one young man fell down the ladder and broke his limb. Lord Ingram’s godfather, who had acquired the house not long before, told me to do something—he didn’t want anyone else seriously injured in his service. How I was to accomplish this he left to me—he didn’t want to be bothered about details—only that something must be done.
“I puzzled over the solution. It was Lord Ingram, in fact, visiting on his school holidays, who suggested that since there was already an underground tunnel connecting the kitchen to the dining room, why should we not branch out and intersect it with one going from the coal cellar to the garden boilers?”
Mr. Platts, warming up to his subject, described the construction of this tunnel. Then he assured them that it had been worth the time and treasure, having made it both easy and safe to heat the glass houses.
Treadles could tell that Fowler had no interest in the finer points of this tunnel, but was biding his time until he could see it for himself. Back at the house, Mr. Platts gladly unlocked a double trap door in the coal cellar and led them down a ramp.
With considerable pride, the estate manager flipped a switch. A bright, if rather harsh light flooded the tunnel, which was wider than Treadles expected, enough for three slender men to walk abreast.
“Electricity, gentlemen—a wonder of the modern age.”
“Is the rest of the house electrified?” asked Treadles. “I don’t recall that being so.”
“The staff quarters and the domestic offices are all electrified, but not the main part of the house—Lady Ingram had strong feelings against electricity and her wishes were respected.”
Finally, an assertion to counterbalance ladies Avery and Somersby’s charge that Lady Ingram might have been made to feel unwelcome in her own home.
As if he hadn’t heard, Fowler said, “With your permission, we would like to walk the length of the tunnel.”
“Certainly. But you’ll excuse me for not accompanying you, gentlemen. I can’t spend much time in these confined, underground places without getting into a state.”
“You have already been most helpful, Mr. Platts. We can look after ourselves, and we will make sure everything is in order before we leave.”
Mr. Platts left for his regular duties. The policemen proceeded down the tunnel. By and by they came to a cross tunnel, which must be the one between the kitchen and the dining room. Then the tunnel began to slope downward noticeably. Treadles could feel grooves underfoot, to slow the descent of a wheelbarrow filled with coke, no doubt.
The fabled boilers came into sight, cold and silent, not yet lit for winter. Something else also came into sight: laden shelves.
The shelves must have been intended for the tools and implements necessary for the functioning of the boilers. But those had all been banished to a corner. Now the shelves were occupied by a thin, rolled-up mattress, toiletries, a row of foodstuffs from Swiss chocolate to tins of potted chicken and condensed milk. One section was devoted to picture books. There were also crayons and hand-sewn notebooks that contained children’s drawings.
Fowler picked up a small mug and handed it to Treadles. The remnants of its contents had yet to dry completely. He sniffed. Cocoa. And no more than two days old.
Fowler looked around for some more time. Then he nodded. “I believe I shall now speak to Lord Ingram.”
Treadles dreaded arriving at the library. Was this the beginning of the end? Was there anything he could do? Where was Miss Holmes—and had she prepared at all for this moment?
/>
Miss Holmes was nowhere to be seen in the library. But Lord Ingram was not alone: With him was another man, elegantly turned out yet blank in some ways.
Lord Ingram turned to the man. “Allow me to present Chief Inspector Fowler and Inspector Treadles of Scotland Yard. Gentleman, Lord Bancroft Ashburton.”
His brother, then. The newly met men shook hands.
“Lord Ingram, if we could have a word alone,” said Fowler. “We have a somewhat delicate matter to discuss.”
“Lord Bancroft is well versed in the situation,” Lord Ingram answered firmly. “There is nothing here that needs to be kept from him.”
“Very well, then, my lord—”
The door burst open.
“Chief Inspector! Inspector!” cried Sergeant Ellerby. “We found another body on the estate, a man’s body!”
17
“It was Mr. Holmes’s idea. Remember he told me that I should be on the lookout for the body of an indifferently dressed man?” gushed Sergeant Ellerby, as excited as a child who had discovered a cache of sweets. “He also told me that the body could very well be located not that far from the icehouse. So this morning, as the fog cleared, I thought to myself, why not conduct a search? And lo and behold, we found it within the hour.”
The dead man’s clothes were shabby, not so much those of a vagrant but more those of a ne’er-do-well. He had been strangled, the marks on his throat still vivid. And though the smell was fading, he had indeed soiled himself before he died, as Charlotte Holmes had predicted.
The spot he lay on was fifteen minutes’ walk from the icehouse, longer if one were pulling a body—his still-damp trousers showed tears consistent with having been dragged.
The Hollow of Fear: Book three in the Lady Sherlock Mystery Series Page 22