Mr. Greville swallowed, unable to continue.
“As Lord Ingram’s friend, I share your concern,” said Charlotte. “I want to make sure that the worst doesn’t happen to him. That’s why I came to you, Mr. Greville. Will you help me?”
“Of course! What can I do? Please tell me. I will do anything in my power.”
His eyes shone with a desperate wish to help. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Charlotte felt pleased for Lord Ingram. He had been unable to spark love in his wife, but the affection he inspired in others was deep and genuine.
“There are some things I need to find out about your late sister. Most likely you will not be able to offer the answers yourself, but somewhere in this house we should be able to locate what I need.”
Mr. Greville leaped up. “Then let us proceed!”
As he led the way to the study, Charlotte asked when Lady Ingram had last visited. Apparently it had been after their parents passed away, to go through some records.
“Once she left, she didn’t come back very often. Almost not at all,” said Mr. Greville, a little apologetically.
And that absence translated into scant traces of Lady Ingram in this house. Charlotte had caught sight of an oil portrait and several large photographs of Lord Ingram—and only one picture of Lady Ingram, as part of a group. It was almost as if he was a favored son of the family and she only a distant cousin.
Mrs. Watson had once relayed to Charlotte an opinion on an adolescent Lady Ingram, by a woman who had worked for the Grevilles. Her main impression of Lady Ingram at that age was one of frustration. A frustration that approached rage, at times.
Lady Ingram hadn’t been angry because she’d wished to marry a different man, as Mrs. Watson had thought at the time, but because her life hadn’t been her own.
Charlotte did not pity Lady Ingram—the woman played no small role in her own fate. But she sometimes thought of the former Miss Alexandra Greville, brought to London and told to smile, told to be happy that an eligible man loved her, told that upon marriage she would have everything a woman could desire.
When it should have been obvious to all who knew her that such a life would unravel her. Yet they’d pushed it on her with all their might—and made it plain that for her to do anything else would be a gross betrayal to her family.
Perhaps she had always been a monster, but even the lady monsters of the world couldn’t escape the expectations that came of being women.
It was past eleven o’clock when Charlotte’s train pulled into Paddington station again. She hailed a hansom cab to take her to a small house in St. John’s Wood, the address of which Mrs. Watson had given her earlier in the day.
Mrs. Watson herself opened the door. “I think we have done it,” she said in a whisper.
“This house looks exactly the kind of place for a kept woman,” Charlotte whispered back.
Mrs. Watson smiled. “Glad to oblige, my dear.”
Behind Mrs. Watson stood Frances Marbleton, Stephen Marbleton’s sister, though Charlotte had never been entirely convinced that they were, in fact, siblings.
“Come,” said Miss Marbleton.
In the parlor, a woman sat rigidly in a high-back chair, dressed in somber clothes that were neither new nor fashionable but hardy of material and well made. At Charlotte’s entrance she looked up: One of her eyes was an ethereal blue, the other milky and blind.
In the first days after Charlotte ran away from home, she’d come across a beggar woman and her child and had been so moved by their plight that she’d given them some of her scant coins. Only to realize later that her pocket had been picked during the encounter.
This was that woman.
Stephen Marbleton, who had been seated across from the woman, rose. “I hope your journey has been a pleasant one.”
Charlotte found her voice—or, rather, Sherrinford Holmes’s voice. “It has been, thank you.”
Even so the woman stared at her, as if trying to recall where she’d heard her before.
Charlotte was not very often unnerved, but she sensed in herself a strong quiver of apprehension.
“This is Mrs. Winnie Farr,” said Mr. Marbleton.
A notice had gone into the papers the evening before, seeking those with a young, dark-haired sister or daughter who had been missing for more than a fortnight. And Mrs. Winnie Farr had answered, Mrs. Farr, who had already written Sherlock Holmes for help with her missing sister.
Except Sherlock Holmes had been too preoccupied of late to take on any other case.
“Sherrinford Holmes, at your service, Mrs. Farr,” Charlotte said to the woman who stole a solid pound from her. “How do you do?”
“Your man said you can find out what happened to my sister.”
Her voice had a heavy quality, as if words had to be dredged up from her larynx. Her expression was almost as heavy. But her good eye was alert and piercing, and Charlotte found herself having to take a deep breath.
The reverberations of alarm were only partially brought on by Mrs. Farr’s presence. They were echoes of a difficult time, of the closest Charlotte had come to the edge of desperation. The loss of one pound had been disastrous; the loss of hope, far worse.
But she was in a different place now. And this was no time to lose her concentration, because a primitive part of her mind was too busy wallowing in old fears. She owed Mrs. Farr her undivided attention. She owed Lord Ingram her utmost effort.
She owed herself the clarity to know when she was in danger and when she was not.
“We may be able to help,” she answered. “Did you bring photographs?”
Mrs. Farr opened a shabby handbag and took out two small pictures. When Charlotte held them in hand, she realized that they were not photographs but postcards—or, rather, a young woman’s face cut out of postcards.
Postcards came in many varieties: some scenic, some sentimental, and others highly risqué. There was no need to ask which category these ones fell into.
The young woman in the postcard was full of vitality, her eyes mischievous, her hair shiny even in the grainy print.
“How old was she at the time these photographs were taken?”
“They were taken this year. She’s twenty-five. Twenty-six January next.”
Which made her close in age to Lady Ingram. “And you said she has been missing a little more than three weeks?”
“I last saw her almost a month ago. She told me she’d be out of London for a day or two, but that she’d be back in time for my daughter’s birthday. I didn’t want her to go. Sometimes, postcard girls are invited to stag parties in the country—and those parties don’t always go well for the girls.
“She said it would be nothing of the sort, that she’d already helped this gentleman before. She said he thought well of her ideas—which worried me even more.
“She was tired of depending on men to photograph her, you see. They don’t pay much and some of them want favors besides. She was going to buy her own equipment and learn how to do everything herself, from pulling the shutter to developing the negatives. She wanted to have a stable of the best girls in the business. And someday she wanted to own a printing press, too.”
Mrs. Watson looked uncomfortable. Charlotte felt no particular dismay. Pornography would exist as long as the human race did. If a woman didn’t mind appearing on a risqué postcard, she might as well maximize her control over—and profit from—the entire process.
“I see,” she said. “Commendable entrepreneurial spirit on her part.”
Mrs. Farr had looked defiant as she narrated her sister’s plans. But Charlotte’s comment seemed to have rattled her, as if she’d expected anything except a compliment. “I—I thought so, but I didn’t believe her gentleman thought the same. When a man first claps eyes on a girl on a postcard, the chances of him ever seeing her as anything other than flesh—” She shook her head. “Anyway, we had words. I told her she oughtn’t go. And she told me that she looked after herself just fine and d
idn’t need an one-eyed old woman ordering her about.
“When she didn’t come for my daughter’s birthday I thought maybe she was still angry with me. But the next day I thought, no, that’s not my Mimi. She doesn’t hold a grudge. And she loves her niece and thinks the world of her. I went ’round to her room, but her landlady already let the room to someone else because she’d been gone more than a week and hadn’t settled her account.
“Her friends didn’t know what to think. She promised them that she’d start her own studio as soon as she returned, and she wasn’t some flighty girl who made promises she didn’t keep. I went to Scotland Yard and begged to speak to somebody. And this hoity-toity inspector told me that it was hardly unheard of for girls like Mimi to hole up with a man and not be seen for a while.
“I told him that maybe he knew nothing about girls like her. Because girls like her have family and friends they see on the regular, and rooms and appointments to keep. Girls like her have mementoes that mean something to them—she knew her landlady would sell her belongings wholesale to some rag dealer, if she left them behind. And what kind of arrangement with a man wouldn’t give her half a day to come back to see to her things and tell her family and friends that she now had an arrangement?
“But I might as well have talked to a statue—men like that have ears but nothing goes in. I kept going back, but it was no use. There was one nice sergeant who told me I ought to write to Sherlock Holmes. I did but he was out of town and I still don’t know anything more about Mimi.”
“Sherlock is my brother and I’m here on his behalf. For the past few days I have been occupied with a difficult case, but it would seem that you and I are fated to meet after all.”
“Is that so?” Mrs. Farr sounded doubtful.
“That is so. Have you or any of your sister’s friends seen this gentleman of hers in person?”
Mrs. Farr shook her head. “None of them. And not me either.”
Charlotte asked a few more questions, but Mrs. Farr could tell her nothing else about the man. And she was becoming impatient. “I’ve told you everything I know. Now what can you tell me?”
Her question was a near growl. Surprising how much authority a woman who begged on the streets at least some of the time could pack into a few words. Then again, Mrs. Farr was not an ordinary down-on-her-luck mendicant—Charlotte had already deduced that after their first meeting. She might exist on London’s underbelly, but she was not lost in it. In fact, she might have carved out her own small fiefdom there.
Charlotte did not recoil this time. “I’m afraid all I have concerning your sister is bad news.”
“I’ll take bad news. I’ll take any news.”
Since she’d become Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, Charlotte had made her share of unwelcome announcements, but this might be the most brutal one yet. As hungry as Mrs. Farr was for news—any news—hers was a despair still shot through with strands of hope. Now Charlotte would snip every last filament of that hope.
“Unless there are more than one young brunette with a beauty mark who’s been missing for exactly as long as she has, your sister is most likely dead.”
On an otherwise blandly pretty face, the beauty mark had served as a punctuating feature, bringing focus to Mimi Duffin’s pert chin and bow-shaped mouth. And it had been the cause of her misfortune. Mrs. Farr was right; the gentleman hadn’t been in the least interested in Mimi Duffin’s ideas or ambitions.
Mrs. Farr clamped her fingers over the arms of her chair. The veins on the backs of her hands rose in sharp relief. “What happened? Where is she?”
“Her body hasn’t been found yet. It might take some time to surface, as there was incentive to move it some distance from the site of the crime. As for what happened, she bore a resemblance to someone else, someone the gentleman wanted others to think of as having been murdered.
“He probably saw her face on a postcard and realized she could make for a fairly decent approximation to the body he wanted. He found her, cultivated her, and then had her transport herself to where he intended to kill her.”
“And where is that?” Mrs. Farr’s voice turned harsh.
“At the moment I’m not at liberty to divulge that. I apologize, but the man who did this is wily and dangerous and I have put everyone here at risk in seeking Miss Duffin’s identity. The less you know, the better. But I promise you that as soon as possible, I will tell you more. And I will not consider the matter finished until your sister’s body has been found and returned to you.”
Mrs. Farr sat still and silent. Mrs. Watson brought her a glass of brandy. Mrs. Farr drank with shaking hands. When she was done, she set down the empty glass, rose, and walked out.
Mr. Marbleton got to his feet. “I’ll see that she reaches home safely.”
“Thank you, sir,” murmured Charlotte.
Only then did she allow herself a moment to deal with the memories the sight of Mrs. Farr had brought to the fore—and the associated panic that still rippled in the back of her mind.
Mrs. Watson left with Mrs. Farr and Mr. Marbleton. She didn’t say why, but if anyone could give comfort to Mrs. Farr right now, or at least not have her presence despised, it would be Mrs. Watson.
“There’s food in the larder,” said Miss Marbleton, rather standoffishly. “And an Etna stove that you can use.”
“Thank you,” said Charlotte. “And thank you for all your help, Miss Marbleton.”
Miss Marbleton pursed her lips. “You know I’m against our involvement, Miss Holmes.”
“And I have told your brother I will speak no kind words on his behalf to my sister.”
“She would not last a minute in the kind of life we lead.”
“You might be surprised at the strength of the fragile. And for some people, it is ordinary life that is most challenging, not so much the extraordinary.”
In a way, Livia’s greatest strength was that she was so overlooked and underestimated. Within seconds people decided who she was, and what she was and wasn’t capable of. But no one was so easy to sum up, least of all a someone like Livia, who yearned to be more with every fiber of her being.
“That said, I hope she never decides to find out for herself. I expect you heard from your father that he and I met?”
“I took a few days to recuperate and everyone decided to throw all caution to the wind,” said Miss Marbleton, who was clearly the enforcer of rules in her family.
“Did he tell you that he introduced himself as Moriarty?”
Miss Marbleton shrugged, a gesture almost French in its resigned disapproval. “He was born a Moriarty. It’s his prerogative to introduce himself however he pleases.”
“It must gall James Moriarty to no end that his wife absconded with his brother.”
Miss Marbleton only shrugged again, an even more eloquent gesture.
“If I may be so forward, is Mr. Stephen Marbleton your brother or your cousin?”
“We are not related. Mr. Crispin Marbleton is my stepfather.”
A neat sidestepping of the question. Did she know the truth of his parentage? Did Stephen Marbleton himself know? In either case, it would be highly dangerous for Livia to become better acquainted with him.
Charlotte sighed. “Your brother should stop sending my sister gifts and messages, but I’m sure you have already wasted your breath saying the same.”
“He has been needlessly obstinate, refusing to make any promises not to contact her again. Would you please tell her that he’s too young for her?”
Charlotte could scarcely admonish Livia about a man she had never admitted to having met, let alone having fallen in love with. “I will see what I can do. Before you go, there is something else I need to ask.”
“Yes?”
“Last night, when Mr. Stephen Marbleton played the part of Sherlock Holmes, he told Scotland Yard the man Lady Ingram was involved with was Moriarty. Other than the fact that Lady Ingram did not have romantic feelings for Moriarty—as far as I can
tell—that claim was largely correct. But all the same I was surprised that the name Moriarty came up and that he wanted the police to hear it.”
Miss Marbleton shrugged into her coat. “On that front, at least, Stephen did not do anything rash. We discussed this as a family and the decision was unanimous. If Scotland Yard does not know Moriarty’s name, they should learn it. If they already do, then it is high time they pay him more attention.”
18
Departing Oxfordshire. A. Greville sends his regards. Holmes.
There were hundreds of things Lord Ingram needed to keep in mind and dozens of tasks to finish, but he stood in place and read the cable again and again, thoughts of Holmes overriding everything else.
They had not spent a great deal of time together, not in years. Even when they had been much younger, passing long stretches of silence in each other’s company, he occupied with some minor excavation, she burrowing through two brick-like books in a single afternoon—those had not been regular occurrences, but had come only when they both happened to be at his uncle’s or Mrs. Newell’s estate at the same time.
He had a very clear memory of the day she told him to write her. It was the summer of the Roman villa ruins. She had blackmailed him into kissing her—and afterward had visited the ruins as she pleased, with him by and large ignoring her. Or, rather, he had not spoken to her, but had furtively observed the utterly incomprehensible girl.
And had remembered the kiss more often than he wanted to, when he lay in bed alone at night.
I’m leaving in the morning, she’d said one afternoon, with no preamble. Here’s my address.
Out of politeness, he’d taken the slip of paper, while thinking ferociously, I won’t.
But two months later he had, from his room at school, with cricket practice canceled and a thunderstorm raging outside. And it had been a far longer letter than he’d intended. Nothing personal, a rather dry encapsulation of the lessons he’d learned from working on the ruins of the Roman villa, and the improvements to both record-keeping and excavation methods that he intended to make.
The Hollow of Fear: Book three in the Lady Sherlock Mystery Series Page 24