“You should give Sodom and Gomorrah more credit: After living there, Lot’s daughters thought nothing of incest.”
She laughed—and giggled again after a moment. “My, you are a wittier man in the vicinity of a bed.”
Now it was he who grinned. “Maybe I’m just more relaxed after a good roll in the hay.”
“Which reminds me . . .” She climbed above him. “Is there time to do it again?”
“I did not,” protested Charlotte.
“Yes, you did,” insisted Lord Ingram, half-laughing. “You told me I was odd-looking. Said Roger Shrewsbury had the perfect face but mine was just odd.”
“No, I wrote that everyone’s face was odd to me. And Roger’s was odd, too, because it possessed near-perfect symmetry, which is highly unusual.”
“And how is that different from saying that he has the perfect face?”
She studied his face with pleasure, because it was so much more arresting and magnetic than Roger Shrewsbury’s. “Have I told you lately, my lord, that, compared to you, Mr. Shrewsbury is a sadly inadequate lover?”
A beatific smile spread slow across his face. “I apologize, but a thousand gardens just bloomed in my soul.”
She returned the smile. “I’m not sure why, but I’m beginning to wallow in this particular pettiness of yours.”
She wasn’t sure that she wanted to understand the full spectrum of human emotions—everything that remained seemed dire to one degree or another. But this warm, silly mutual delight, this she wouldn’t mind experiencing until she comprehended its place in the world.
Alas, they could not cocoon themselves off for much longer from the realities they faced. Soon her lover honored her request from earlier and recounted what had happened at Stern Hollow, culminating with his departure.
“Things have progressed faster than I thought,” she murmured.
“If I hadn’t left when I did, the next time you saw me would have been in jail.”
She traced a finger along his brow. “Chief Inspector Fowler is convinced that you would have killed a wife who came to you carrying another man’s child. But what would you have done, if Lady Ingram had indeed returned in such a state?”
“The thought alone gives me nightmares.”
“But you would have taken in the child, in the end.”
He expelled a breath. “Of course. I was such a child.”
It was hardly analogous. His parents had had that tacit understanding Chief Inspector Fowler had referred to, with none of the acrimony that had characterized his own marriage. But he would never have blamed the child. Would have done his best to make sure that it was treated with kindness and generosity.
She settled a hand on his arm. “Let me tell you something. I met Roger Shrewsbury a year before I met you—and idly thought that perhaps someday I’d kiss him to see what it was like. But then I saw you and immediately knew that it would be you and never him.”
“Never?”
“Never. I didn’t permit him to kiss me at any point in our acquaintance. But that’s not all I’m going to tell you.”
He kissed her slowly. “Frankly, Holmes, I don’t know how you can possibly improve on what you have already told me.”
“Have some faith, Ash,” she admonished. “Now, when I said someday, at the time I thought that meant when I reached twenty, or some similar ripe old age. And then, do you remember the ink incident at your uncle’s estate?”
“What ink incident?”
“Two boys rigged up a device that could squirt ink a fair distance. They decided to try it on a girl. But things went awry, and they splattered ink all over themselves instead.”
“Oh, that ink incident. Yes, I remember.”
“I’d observed ink stains on the boys’ hands, in quantities too large to be attributable to any normal writing. And then, just before the ink incident, you, on whose hands I’d only seen traces of dirt from working on the Roman villa, also sported visible ink stains. And when the incident happened, when the boys were flailing about in shock and confusion, you were the only one, other than me, who didn’t laugh.”
“You didn’t admire my restraint?”
She had been rather lost for a moment, riveted by his aloof silhouette, of the gathering yet very much apart. “I was busy studying the device to see which girl they had targeted. Did you know it would have been Livia?”
“Had it been you, I wouldn’t have taken the trouble—re-engineering their device ruined my shirt.” He sighed. “I didn’t think Miss Olivia would have cared for the experience.”
“No, she would have been humiliated and traumatized. In any case, when I woke up the next morning, I found myself in an unholy hurry to kiss you. I couldn’t wait another week, let alone another seven years.”
He gazed at her for a while. And, with a murmured “Thank you,” wrapped his arms around her.
For precisely two minutes and not a second more.
“Stay a while longer,” she said. “Don’t go anywhere yet.”
Lord Ingram wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Holmes speaking in such a tone. She sounded almost . . . anxious. He snapped his braces in place and reached for his waistcoat. “I came with a citron tart and the shirt on my back. Somehow I don’t think Sherrinford Holmes’s clothes would fit me.”
“I can send for Dr. Watson’s—Mrs. Watson still has plenty of his things.”
He shook his head. “You didn’t even ask where the citron tart is. Who are you and what did you do with Holmes?”
She came off the bed and threw on a dressing gown. “So where’s the citron tart, then?”
“In the pantry.”
“Thank you.”
“You don’t need to thank me for the citron tart, since my motives are impure: I’m aiming to overtake Bancroft’s place as your favorite procurer of fine cakes and pastries.”
“Lord Bancroft’s motives were no more pristine than yours. And I wasn’t thinking of the citron tart, but the thing that they didn’t—or perhaps did—do in Sodom and Gomorrah.”
Her words might be interpreted as flirtatious; her tone, however, was anything but. Her expression too was tight and shuttered.
Briefly he cupped her face. “Still scared witless?”
Of course she was—he’d had to remind her that there was a citron tart on the premises.
She did not answer but only wandered about the room as he finished dressing.
“It’ll be all right. I’ll bring something back for supper. How does a basket from Harrod’s sound? Or would you prefer that I visit a greasy chop shop?”
She remained silent and followed him to the vestibule. They stood there for some time without speaking. Her silence became less tense and more wistful; he let out a breath.
“I’ll be back before tea time,” he said. “How would you like to try the kind of tea public school boys made for themselves—scrambled eggs, tinned beans, and slices of toast covered with their weight in butter?”
Her lips curved down slightly. “Bring back a basket from Harrod’s, too, in case I don’t care for your cooking.”
“I will. And you, Holmes, has anyone ever told you that you are romance writ large and personified?”
With that, he kissed her and walked out of the house.
Ah, London. Noisy, malodorous, overcrowded London. He didn’t always care for the great metropolis, but today he could write a sonnet, no, a five-canto ode, to its noisome vapors and grime-streaked thoroughfares.
The multitudes that thronged the streets were a much-needed antidote after the sometimes unbearable solitude of the country. And after the fishbowl Stern Hollow had become, he couldn’t get enough of this blessed anonymity, just another bloke hurrying about his business, one face among millions.
He reached Abbey Road and raised his hand to hail a hansom cab. Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around. A stricken Inspector Treadles stood there, next to a broadly smiling Chief Inspector Fowler.
“My lord,” said Chief Inspe
ctor Fowler, sounding like a fox still spitting out a mouthful of chicken feathers, “I’m sorry to interrupt your stroll, but you will need to come with us.”
20
Stern Hollow, three days earlier
“Be careful what you say to me. I have not in the least eliminated the possibility that you are the one who killed Lady Ingram, accidentally or intentionally, when she came to abduct the children.”
Silence.
How far he had fallen, thought Lord Ingram, that Holmes suspected him of manslaughter—and possibly murder.
Then again, for her, nothing was unthinkable.
“She did not come to abduct the children and I did not kill her.”
“Where are your children?”
“They are exactly as I’d told you, with Remington.”
She studied him. He held her gaze: He had nothing to hide from her. Except, if he must be completely honest, certain sentiments—and that was only for the sake of his pride.
“I was in your apartment earlier tonight. There was a pair of boots hidden in a corner of your dressing room that has coal dust encrusted in the soles. Years ago, in one of your letters, you wrote about a tunnel that was opened up under the house at your suggestion, between the coal cellar and some boilers for the glass houses in the gardens. What were you—”
She paused.
“I see. You want somebody to think that your children are still here. Why? Has there been an attempt at abduction?”
He let out the breath he had been holding. Until her suspicions lifted, he hadn’t realized how heavily they had weighed on him. “The would-be abductors set a fire as a diversion, but they didn’t succeed.”
“When was this?”
“A month ago.”
“When did Remington come?”
“A few days later. He’d actually visited Stern Hollow earlier, but this time he came at my request.”
She propped her chin on her hand. “I had trouble believing you’d actually let your children out of sight. I’m sure others might have had the same doubt.”
“That’s what I’ve been hoping for. I’ve been keeping both the story cottage and the tunnel appearing as if they’ve recently housed children.”
She nodded slowly, swirling her spoon in the Bavarian cream from the charlotte russe. Then she broke apart the sponge cake base. Bad enough that she wasn’t eating her dessert, but dismantling it? The relief he’d felt evaporated.
You should be terrified, she’d told him earlier that evening. I am.
He had already been swimming in anxiety and distress; her statement had perhaps not made quite the impact it ought to have. Now it dawned on him that although his life was at stake, it was possible he still had only the most superficial understanding of the situation.
She looked up from the disassembled charlotte russe. “There’s still something you aren’t telling me. Livia wrote about the ordeal of meeting with you this afternoon. At first she could only bring herself to mention the icehouse. She reported that you appeared weary but steady. It was only when she brought up Lady Ingram’s that you became stunned. Which leads me to ask, did something else happen at the icehouse?”
Trust her to be able to deduce something like that from nothing more than her sister’s account of how he had reacted. He told her then about the man who called himself George Barr, who might or might not have been a common thief, and whom he had kept in the icehouse, pending an investigation into the man’s true identity.
“Lady Ingram must have already been in the ice well when I stood in the second antechamber, wondering how George Barr had managed to escape. But I didn’t go forward because outside each inner door there is a large latch, and the one on the next door was perfectly in place. When Miss Holmes first started to stammer about the icehouse, I thought to myself, what an idiot I had been not to check more thoroughly. If Barr had an accomplice, and if that accomplice thought Barr had become a liability, there was every chance that he would kill the man and put him deeper into the icehouse to delay discovery. Instead . . .”
She pressed down at the ruins of the charlotte russe with the back of her spoon. He grabbed her wrist. “Stop that. I am terrified now.”
He felt the tension in her arm, as if she might yank away. But a long second later, she set down the spoon and flexed her fingers.
He exhaled and let go. “I’ve told you everything. Now you tell me what you have kept back.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Of everything that’s happened today, the most inexplicable has been your reaction. You are never so terrified that you are unable to eat. What is going on?”
“Can I not simply be concerned for you?”
“Holmes, you ate half a dozen macarons while you told me that my wife had become an agent of Moriarty’s.”
“Yes, I did, didn’t I? They were excellent macarons.”
“And this”—he pointed at the dessert carcass—“was an excellent charlotte russe, something you would have had two helpings of, on any other day, after you’d had the cake Mr. Walsh served.”
She stared at the blight on her plate. “Very well. There are a few things I don’t understand yet, but I would say, on the main, that someone is trying to frame you. Had it been anyone else in the icehouse, the suspicion would have immediately fallen upon Lady Ingram—at least among those of us who know the truth. In fact, even though you tell me it’s Lady Ingram herself in there, I daresay that a part of you is still convinced that she has somehow masterminded all this.”
She was exactly right about that.
“I know you wonder whether she hated you enough to spite you this way. I am more than convinced that she wouldn’t have minded seeing you dead, but not enough to throw her own life into the bargain. So we must take her out of the role of the mastermind.
“She was a pawn—the most important piece on the board, perhaps—but this is someone else’s game. Which leads me to ask, what is the ultimate objective of this game that Lady Ingram was used as the opening sacrifice?”
He had been eating as she spoke—he hadn’t had any food since luncheon. But now the game pie congealed in his stomach, as heavy as a cobblestone. “What?”
She rose from the table. A kettle of water had been provided for the room. She swung it into the grate. “That it’s Lady Ingram in the icehouse muddies the waters. But if I must name a motive for this scheme, I would say it’s Mr. Finch.”
“Your brother, Mr. Finch?”
She nodded.
Mr. Myron Finch had once been an underling of Moriarty’s but had chosen to leave the organization. Lady Ingram, pretending to be Mr. Finch’s star-crossed lover, had asked Sherlock Holmes to find him, knowing that he was Charlotte Holmes’s illegitimate half brother.
“Don’t you think this is a bit extreme, simply to get back a renegade?”
She came back to the table. “It depends on what he stole from Moriarty.”
Holmes had told him that according to Stephen Marbleton, when Mr. Finch left, he had taken something of great value from Moriarty.
“What can it be? Plans to assassinate the queen at next year’s Jubilee celebrations?”
“Mr. Finch was Moriarty’s cryptographer. I think he left with something he was deciphering, which might have been more personal in nature.”
She took a strand of her hair and let it fall through her fingers. At its current length, her hair was just long enough to begin to curl. He would have thought, if he were asked to imagine how she looked shorn of most of her locks, that she would appear somewhat boyish. Instead, the paucity of hair only seemed to emphasize her eyes and her lips.
“I didn’t have the opportunity to tell you this yet,” she went on, “but on the day I last saw you in summer, I also met Mr. Finch.”
“You found him after all?”
“You and I were, in fact, both in the same room with him a few days prior, but at the time I hadn’t realized his true identity yet.”
A few days prior he had met her at the
office of her father’s solicitor. Four other men had been present, their goal to forcibly abduct her and return her to the high uncomfortable bosom of her family. “You mean the groom your father brought? The one who had been helping you and Miss Olivia pass letters to each other?”
“Mr. Finch, in the flesh. I asked him about what he took and he declined to tell me.”
“You are sure he remains free to this day?”
“I have reason to believe so. Although on the night we met, he was almost taken. If it weren’t for Mr. Marbleton’s timely appearance, I’m not sure what would have happened.”
“You don’t mean to tell me you were accosted by Moriarty’s people? My God, Holmes—”
“I’m fine. Nothing happened to me. Mr. Finch is still on the loose—that’s the most important thing.”
“What about since? Have Moriarty’s agents plagued you since?”
“I don’t believe so. But”—she pointed at her hair and her men’s clothes—“I began to learn, with some urgency, how I may pass myself off as a man. Mr. Marbleton came to us dressed as a woman—most convincingly so. And we all went on our way that night in some form of cross-dress.”
“I was wondering how—and why—you had come by this proficiency, since you aren’t—” He stopped. “I must have missed something. Why would anyone frame me for a murder to get their hands on Mr. Finch?”
She didn’t say anything.
After a moment, he said, “You mean to tell me that they think you know, and that by placing me in jeopardy, you will somehow deliver Mr. Finch into their keeping?”
Again she said nothing.
“Are they correct?”
“No,” she said, “I don’t know where Mr. Finch is.”
“You know what I mean. Are they correct in pressuring you via me?”
This time her silence lasted even longer. “Our unseen opponents are counting on that to be the case. So we must do two things. First, we must further bolster their belief that they are correct in that assessment. For that we should become lovers as soon as possible—and please believe me I am not proposing this solely, or even mainly, to take advantage of you.”
The Hollow of Fear: Book three in the Lady Sherlock Mystery Series Page 27