A Study In Scarlet Women (16 page)

Her description of the twenty-four hours before also did not differ too much from everyone else's: household duties, an afternoon spent with the vicar's wife, who organized activities so that girls in service didn't get into trouble on their half days and Sundays, and a return to Curry House in the evening for supper and bed. She complained about Mrs. Meek's food, “so bland, but she's a nice woman,” and about being locked in nightly with Jenny Price, “as if we was chickens in a coop, with weasels prowling outside.” And she'd have had more to say about Mrs. Cornish's strictness, but Inspector Waller moved on from the subject.

An exchange toward the end of the interview caught Treadles's eye.

Now most likely your Mr. Sackville died of an accidental overdose, but since we can't be sure yet, I have to ask you this: Do you know of anyone who might wish him harm?—You mean someone killed him? I knew it. I knew it the moment I heard that letter at the inquest.

I implied nothing of the sort. He could have committed suicide, for all we know.—Not him, not Mr. Sackville. He told me he wanted to live to a hundred twenty.

He did? When?—Not long ago.

Under what circumstances did he tell you that?—I took a walk one Sunday afternoon, a couple of weeks after I started working at Curry House, and he did the same. We ran into each other right above the cove. I said I was sorry that it happened, but he said not to apologize. He said of course I'd want to have a stroll on a beautiful spring day. Said he looked forward to every spring. More so now that he was older and there wouldn't be as many springs left for him. I told him he was going to live to a hundred. And he said he much preferred carrying on another twenty years past that.

I see. So you would swear on a Bible that he wouldn't take his own life.—I would, Inspector. I'd swear on a stack of Bibles taller than me.

Then do you know anyone who might have a grudge against him?—I say them what be good and generous always have people who hates them.

Anyone specific?—His brother.

His brother?—Yes.

Have you met his brother?—No, his brother is some high and mighty lordship.

Then how do you know?—Mr. Sackville told me, of course. He said his brother would be happy if he were dead.

Ever since Treadles took on the investigation, he had been trying to arrange an interview with Lord Sheridan. And the next of kin to Lady Amelia Drummond and Lady Shrewsbury.

The ladies' relations flatly refused to have anything to do with the police. Lord Shrewsbury—Lady Shrewsbury's firstborn son and the current baron—went so far as to call Sherlock Holmes “a ghoulish, depraved rumormonger” and characterized Treadles's professional interest as “shamelessly intruding on a family's private grief.” But after some more back-and-forth with Lord Sheridan's secretary, Treadles did manage to gain an appointment with the man's employer.

The Sheridans' address, unless Treadles was mistaken, placed their dwelling close to Lord Ingram's, though not on the same street. Treadles had never seen Lord Ingram's town house and found himself curious.

But first, business.

The Sheridan residence was third in a row of town houses, in white stone and stucco, with wrought-iron railings and a small portico above the entrance. A dour-looking footman opened the door and conducted them to a study.

The sight of an entire wall of books, as always, was delightful. As for the rest of the room—Treadles was no expert on the furnishing of houses, but even to his relatively untrained eye, the study appeared . . . threadbare. Literally so, in places. The two padded
chairs set against the far wall should have been reupholstered years ago. The curtains, too, looked sorry. The carpet, which had once probably cost a fortune, was now in its most heavily trod areas barely thicker than a tea towel.

The footman left to fetch his master.

Sergeant MacDonald scooted closer to Treadles. “Thought I'd be afraid to set me bum down in a place like this. But I never guessed it'd be because I don't dare put any more wear and tear on the chairs.”

Treadles answered in a similar whisper. “It's the price of crops. They've been dropping a good long while and these old families who depend on the land for their income, well, that income has been dropping, too.”

“Then why doesn't his lordship sell this house and live someplace smaller and cheaper, so he can at least afford new chairs?”

“Not so simple. The house might be entailed. In which case he can't sell it even if he wants to, not without first petitioning Parliament or something equally complicated.”

“Huh, fancy that. But now he won't be as poor, not with his dead brother's money coming his way.”

The day before, Sergeant MacDonald had paid a visit to Mr. Sackville's solicitors, who had confirmed for him that Mr. Sackville, despite his regular visits to London, had seldom called on his men of business. MacDonald had also obtained a copy of Mr. Sackville's will: There were various odds-and-ends bequests, but the bulk of his fortune had gone to Lord Sheridan.

Which meant that Lord Sheridan, unlike everyone else involved with the case so far, had a motive that passed muster. He needed a great deal of funds; and by getting rid of his brother, he would come into a great deal of funds.

Men had killed for much less.

The door of the study opened again and their best suspect walked in. Lord Sheridan, a man of about seventy, was short and bald, but his eyes were sharp and his movement spry. He greeted the policemen and bade them to take seats before the big desk.

“My secretary tells me you have questions for me, concerning my brother's death.”

“We hope you can shed some light onto the circumstances of Mr. Sackville's passing, sir. You have heard of the connection that has been made between his death and those of Lady Amelia Drummond and Lady Shrewsbury?”

“It is one of the leading topics of the day,” said Lord Sheridan with distaste. “That and the identity of this meddlesome Sherlock Holmes. Harrington retired from Society decades ago. The younger generation does not even know who he was. And now all manners of unfounded speculations circulate and multiply.

“But no, I cannot help you. My brother and I had not spoken in many years. I am unfamiliar with what his habits and inclinations had become.”

“Can you give us some knowledge as to why he retired from Society?”

“No, I cannot.”

Cannot or will not?
Lord Sheridan spoke with a casual impatience that was surprisingly difficult to decipher. “And is that related to the reason the two of you became estranged?”

“You leap to conclusions, Inspector. My brother and I were not close, but I never suggested that we were estranged.”

This gave Treadles the opening he had been looking for. “My apologies, my lord. My perceptions might have been colored by having read a statement, made by someone in Mr. Sackville's employ, that you would be glad if he were to drop dead.”

Lord Sheridan's expression did not change. “I recommend that
you give no credence to such statements, Inspector. I took no delight in Harrington's passing. I was much older than he—at one point I was his guardian—both father and brother. There is no joy to be had at the death of someone I watched growing up. Now, if you have no more questions . . .”

His tone carried more than a hint of sternness. Treadles pressed on. “I do happen to have one more. Forgive me if the question borders on vulgar, my lord, but if I understand correctly, in families such as yours, the eldest son inherits the bulk of the family wealth. Yet the impression I receive seems to be that Mr. Sackville had been the one with the larger fortune.”

“Your impression is correct. Harrington is my half brother. His mother brought a great deal of wealth into her marriage. But while tens of thousands of pounds from her dowry were used in shoring up the estate, upon her death she willed almost all of her remaining assets to Harrington, her only child. So yes, he was wealthier and his wealth was never bled by the ancestral pile.”

His recitation of facts was . . . smoother than his avowal that he found no pleasure in his brother's death. But how should Treadles interpret this observation? Was it because Lord Sheridan was not an accomplished liar—or was it because it in fact distressed him to have lost someone who had once been both brother and son?

“Would you happen to know, sir, who would benefit most from Mr. Sackville's will?”

“His lawyers have informed me that I stand to inherit his fortune.”

“Did you know that before he died?”

Lord Sheridan's expression turned forbidding: He was quick—too quick, perhaps?—to realize the thrust of the question. “Of course not. We are finished here, gentlemen. I trust you will see yourselves out.”

“Not worried about what the law might think of him, is he, Inspector?” asked Sergeant MacDonald as they walked out.

“He is a peer. He can only be tried in the House of Lords
and
he enjoys privilege from arrest. If I were him, I also wouldn't burden myself too much with what a pair of lowly policemen might think of my statements.”

MacDonald scratched his reddish, slightly scraggly beard. “So who do you think is lying then about how happy he'd be to see his brother dead, his lordship or the dead man?”

“Hard to say, without knowing what had made them grow apart in the first place. That is, provided the girl wasn't making it up out of whole cloth.”

Treadles wished now he'd done the questioning himself. So much could be gleaned from face-to-face observation. Nuances in tone, changes in expression, and postures of the body added up to a rich symphony of information, as opposed to this thin, tinny tune derived from typed words.

To Sergeant MacDonald's surprise, instead of leaving the premises altogether, Treadles led them down to the service entrance and knocked. But his ambush of Lord Sheridan's staff, though successful in one sense—he managed to speak with both the butler and the valet—did not yield any useful information in the end.

Except in the negative category: His lordship did not leave London in the time period of interest to Inspector Treadles. In fact, he had attended a wedding and a dinner in the twenty-four hours immediately preceding his brother's death, not to mention went to sleep and woke up in his own bed.

This time, when they left the Sheridan house, they walked away—and turned onto the street where Lord Ingram lived. It was
of a similar arrangement to Lord Sheridan's, a row of elegant town houses all of the same style and construction, except these houses faced a small park surrounded by a hedgerow, with swings and a duck pond in its interior.

They were approaching Lord Ingram's home when a gleaming brougham drew up by the curb and disgorged a beautiful and stylishly dressed woman. At the same moment Lord Ingram stepped out of the house. They greeted each other with cool nods. Treadles would have thought the woman was perhaps a neighbor Lord Ingram did not know very well, until his lordship said to the coachman, “I will need the carriage at seven tonight.”

The woman was Lady Ingram.

Treadles did not move in Lord Ingram's circles. Nor had Alice ever done so, though her father had been a wealthy industrialist. It had not struck Treadles as particularly odd that Lady Ingram did not accompany her husband on digs or attend his lectures at Burlington House—he'd simply assumed that things were different for the very upper echelons of Society and that she must have been busy with her own duties.

That greeting between spouses, however, implied such a vast distance. What Treadles was looking at was not any kind of upper-class stricture against displays of affection, but a resolute lack of affection altogether.

Lord and Lady Ingram were two strangers who happened to live under the same roof.

This was probably not news to anyone who knew the couple. But Treadles still felt as if he'd witnessed something he ought not to have—an insight into Lord Ingram's marriage that the latter had not chosen to share with him. Embarrassment further pummeled him when he realized that he and MacDonald were too close to turn
aside, that he might put Lord Ingram in a situation of having to introduce a pair of coppers to the lady wife.