A Study In Scarlet Women (21 page)

“I am extraordinarily fortunate in Mrs. Treadles.”

“Yes, you are, Inspector,” said Miss Holmes, taking a sip of her tea.

Inspector Treadles did the same, to help recover from his sudden onset of sentiments. Dear Alice. Dear, dear Alice.

“Well, Inspector, do you feel more confident now that my brother's abilities have not been diminished by his recent misfortune?”

Treadles wasn't sure whether
confident
was the correct word. He was awed, as well as rattled. “I—yes, Miss Holmes.”

She smiled again. “Excellent. Let us proceed.”

Treadles gave a quick account of his investigation thus far. “After I left Lord Sheridan's residence, I happened to run into Lord Ingram. Taking advantage of that, I requested his help in finding out what lay behind the estrangement between the brothers.”

“It took me a little longer to hunt down my quarry than I'd anticipated,” said Lord Ingram. “When I received word that you had telephoned, Inspector, I had just spoken to Lady Avery.”

“Lady Avery, of course,” said Miss Holmes. She turned to Treadles. “Lady Avery and her sister Lady Somersby are Society's most accomplished gossips. They possess an encyclopedic knowledge of every affair, every snub, and every spat from the past fifty years. If anyone alive knows the reason for the estrangement, other than Lord Sheridan himself, it would be one of these ladies.”

“Unfortunately, even Lady Avery has never been privy to the
particulars of that alienation,” said Lord Ingram. “She did, however, pinpoint the last time the brothers were seen together, which was in August of fifty-nine, twenty-seven years ago. The previous summer the Sheridans' only child had died. For a year afterward the parents did not move in Society. That August marked their first outing at a house party. Lady Avery was there in person and remembered the brothers being very affectionate.

“Later that year she heard that Mr. Sackville had left for an extended stay in the south of France. She thought nothing of it. He was a wealthy bachelor and south of France a fashionable place. It was quite some time later that she noticed he had not returned. Then rumor had it that he did come back but not to the bosom of the family. She tried to pry some information out of Lady Sheridan, but Lady Sheridan was apparently in the dark as well. She was under the impression that Mr. Sackville had suffered severe personal trials and was hurt that he didn't come to the family to seek comfort and succor, but rather shut himself away, locations unknown.

“And that was all she was able to tell me. That and something that may or may not be related to the case. Inspector, you said you had verified that Lord Sheridan had been in town throughout the time period of interest. But did you ask about Lady Sheridan's movements?”

“No, I did not. It didn't occur to me.”

“Lady Avery mentioned that she recently saw Lady Sheridan at Paddington Station, getting off a train by herself, without a maid in tow. She is sure that was the day Mr. Sackville died.”

Paddington Station served all points west of London, including Devon. It would be
very
interesting if Lady Sheridan's travels had taken her to the vicinity of Stanwell Moot. But again, a tantalizing clue that did not amount to concrete evidence.

“Anything else, gentlemen?” asked Miss Holmes.

Inspector Treadles produced all the transcripts and reports that had been generated in the course of the investigation, from the inquest onward.

“I will take this to my brother. Please excuse me.”

They both rose as she departed. Lord Ingram remained on his feet and moved slowly about the room, examining the furnishing. Treadles, without thinking about it, reached for the notebook she had left behind.

It was new. And almost completely blank except a single word on the first page:
Barrow-in-Furness
, his place of origin, written in an unfamiliar hand.

He frowned and set the notebook down again.

Lord Ingram was before the mantel, looking at framed photographs, his brow furrowed. Treadles moved to the bookshelf and picked up a slim volume lying on its side, by none other than Lord Ingram himself, titled
A Summer in Roman Ruins
. Treadles remembered his lordship mentioning that he'd explored the remnants of a Roman villa on his uncle's estate. He didn't know Lord Ingram had also produced a written account.

The book was dedicated to “that wellspring of warmth and good sense, my friend and ally, J. H. R.” The next page bore an inscription,
To Holmes, Long may you carry on as a reprobate of the first order. Ash.

“Holmes dictated that inscription,” said Lord Ingram from across the room.

Treadles chuckled. He'd read only two pages when Miss Holmes said, a hint of mirth in her voice, “Oh, the twists and turns in the plot of Lord Ingram's archeological adventure.”

Treadles returned the book to its place. “Mr. Holmes has read everything?”

“Yes.”

“And does he have any fresh insights?” asked Treadles, almost
embarrassingly eager to receive what bounty of perspicuity Holmes might have to impart.

“He noticed a discrepancy about the curtains in Mr. Sackville's room.”

“Oh?”

“Becky Birtle, the maid who first found Mr. Sackville in an unconscious state, said in her testimony at the inquest that she opened the curtains as soon as she went to Mr. Sackville's room. But in your interview with Mrs. Meek, the cook, she is recorded as saying that she and Mrs. Cornish, the housekeeper, opened the curtains after they reached the room, to have a better look at Mr. Sackville.”

Treadles hoped his disappointment didn't show. “I noticed that as well, but I attributed it to the vagaries of memory—witnesses almost always recollect the same events with noticeable differences. What does Mr. Holmes see as the significance of that discrepancy?”

Miss Holmes glanced at Lord Ingram. “With regard to the reconvening of the inquest tomorrow, nothing. It will be easily dismissed as vagaries of memory, as you said. Overall Sherlock concurs with your assessment that there isn't enough evidence to persuade the coroner's jury to return a verdict that will allow you to carry on with the investigation.”

This time Treadles didn't bother to hide his dismay. “Is there nothing we can do then?”

Miss Holmes tapped the tips of her fingers against one another. “You can test the bottles of strychnine in Dr. Harris's and Dr. Birch's dispensaries.”

Had he misheard? “Strychnine? Mr. Sackville died of chloral.”

“We, however, are operating on the assumption that his death was not an accidental overdose, but a murder that is meant to appear as an accidental overdose.” Miss Holmes leaned forward an inch. “Were you the systematic executor who could pull off multiple
murders that appear otherwise, Inspector, what would
you
have done ahead of time to make sure that Mr. Sackville wasn't saved by a dose of strychnine delivered just in time?”

It was the first time that anyone had, within Treadles's hearing, referred to the deaths of Mr. Sackville, Lady Amelia Drummond, and Lady Shrewsbury as murders. A chill ran down his spine. “Are you implying, Miss Holmes, that I would have tampered with the supply of strychnine in the vicinity?”

“Yes. So that even if help reached Mr. Sackville before the point of no return, that help would have been administered in vain.”

Treadles let out a breath. “That is both diabolical and brilliant.”

“It is, let's face it, quite a reach,” said Miss Holmes modestly. “But at this point, Inspector, what do you have to lose?”

“True, nothing. But I must make haste, if I hope to achieve anything in time.”

Cables needed to be sent immediately to have the evidence gathered for testing. He had planned to leave for Devon first thing in the morning, but now it would seem that he had better be on his way as soon as possible, to be there in the morning and urge matters along.

He rose. “Thank you, Miss Holmes. And please convey my gratitude to Mr. Holmes. I will see myself out.”

“Inspector?”

“Yes, Miss Holmes?”

Miss Holmes smiled a little. “My brother advises that you request the chemical analyst to also test Mr. Sackville for every poison for which he has an assay. If the strychnine turns out not to have been tampered with, then this will be our last hope, to find something in Mr. Sackville's system that couldn't have arrived there accidentally.”

A
silence fell at Inspector Treadles's departure.

Charlotte moved to the window seat and poured a little water into the vase of roses. She was surprised to see raindrops rolling down the windowpanes. A shower fell, quiet and steady. A carriage passed below, hooves and wheels splashing, a yellow halo around each lantern.

She had expected Lord Ingram to stay longer—they were friends of long standing, having known each other since they were children. She had very much looked forward to a word in private with him. But she forgot, as she usually did, the silence that always came between them in these latter years, whenever they found themselves alone.

The sensation in her chest, however, was all too familiar, that mix of pleasure and pain, never one without the other.

She could have done without those feelings. She would have happily gone her entire life never experiencing the pangs of longing and the futility of regret. He made her human—or as human as she was capable of being. And being human was possibly her least favorite aspect of life.

“More tea, sir?” she asked, remembering that they weren't truly
alone. Mrs. Watson was in the next room, the door to which was open a crack.

“No, thank you,” he said quietly.

“Nibbles?” He hadn't touched the madeleines.

“Most kind of you, but no.”

She returned to her seat and took a madeleine herself—she didn't understand how anyone had the willpower to say no to madeleines. Then again, the man before her said no to the vast majority of her suggestions, whether they concerned tea cakes or life-altering courses of action.

Other young ladies she knew enjoyed the construction of an ideal man for themselves. Charlotte never understood the point of such an exercise: She'd yet to meet a woman who thought her house perfect, and unlike men, houses could be planned, expanded, and redecorated from top to bottom. But had she indulged in intellectually devising her own perfect match, she would have come up with someone substantially similar to herself, an aloof observer, a creature of silence, a man happy to live life entirely inside his own head.

Whereas with Lord Ingram, she was always first struck by his physicality. She was aware of the space he occupied, his motion, his weight, the cut and drape of his coat, the length and texture of his hair—even though she had never touched his hair. She found herself observing, intensely, the direction of his gaze, the placement of his hands, the rise and fall of his chest with every breath.

He was not the only fine male specimen of her acquaintance. Roger Shrewsbury, for one, was considered handsomer and more stylish. But Lord Ingram possessed something else, a vitality with a jolt of sensuality and an undercurrent of hostility to the world at large, which made for a masculinity magnetic to both men and women.

When he was younger, that hostility had been more evident. But
at some point, the troublemaker reformed and became thoroughly integrated with the rest of the Upper Ten Thousand. He was a member at all the expected clubs, friends with all the right people, and of course his polo matches featured as some of the more notable highlights of any given Season.

Another ten years and he'd be called a pillar of Society.

But . . .

Somewhere beneath all the respectability and sociability still lurked the boy who preferred long, solitary hours among relics to almost anything else. And he remained the only person she had ever met who did not mind her tendency toward silence. Sometimes she even thought he was at ease with it, though it was possible he was simply relieved that when she didn't speak, she couldn't make discomfiting observations about his private life.

She remembered Mrs. Watson again. For her sake, the silence ought not to stretch much longer. “I didn't explain to Inspector Treadles what I thought to be the significance of the discrepancy concerning the curtains.”

“I noticed.”

“But you understood?”

He hesitated briefly, then nodded.

It was Charlotte's estimation that when Inspector Treadles married a woman from a family far wealthier than his own, he consented to have his clothes made at one of the best tailors' in London to honor and respect his in-laws, so as to not appear as if he didn't belong. It was also her estimation that Mrs. Treadles, who married down, would have opted to run a simple household, leaving behind the more luxurious style she'd known, to honor and respect the man to whom she had made the commitment of a lifetime.

Charlotte didn't believe Inspector Treadles's maid came into his
bedchamber in the morning on a regular basis and his inexperience in the matter caused him to miss the clue in Mrs. Meek's description of the events.

“I called on your sister this afternoon, by the way,” said Lord Ingram.

Her fingers tightened around the half-eaten madeleine in her hand. “How is she?”

“Doing her best to hold herself together.”

Oh, Livia. “She knows about our father's quarrel with Lady Amelia?”

“Everybody knows.”

Was there a more terrifying phrase in the English language than “unintended consequences”?

“Did you see him?”

“He wasn't at home. And your mother was not receiving visitors.”

Meaning she had taken to her bed—after another hefty dose of laudanum, no doubt.

“But Miss Livia did ask me to tell you, should I run into you, that she is grateful for what you have done. She emphasized that you couldn't possibly have foreseen that—”

“That by connecting the deaths of Lady Amelia, Lady Shrewsbury, and Mr. Sackville, I would double the number of Holmeses suspected of homicide?”

“Inspector Treadles will find something tomorrow.”

She almost dropped the madeleine in her surprise. He was consoling her—and he'd never consoled her in all the years they'd known each other. “You don't believe it.”

“I often question your actions, but rarely your reasoning. And this isn't one of those rare instances.”

She took a deep breath: She had fallen so far that he of all people felt the need to comfort her. “Thank you. Very kind of you.”

Mrs. Watson stuck her head out from the bedroom. “Beg your pardon, miss, but Mr. Holmes, he's fast asleep. Do you still need me to keep an eye on him?”

“That won't be necessary, Mrs. Hudson. Thank you.”

Mrs. Watson bobbed a curtsy and left, galumphing down the stairs. When the house was quiet again, Lord Ingram asked, “Is that the actress who took you in?”

His voice was carefully neutral, but nothing could disguise disapproval of this magnitude, so she pretended not to have heard it. “She's very convincing, isn't she? And she's the one who identified the inspector's origin by his accent. I must have her train me to better hear the differences in regional accents.”

“I don't like this arrangement. You know nothing about her.”

At least now he was sounding more himself. “I happen to think I know a great deal about her.”

“That you can deduce someone's circumstances doesn't mean you can read all their thoughts and intentions. Ask yourself, if this had happened to someone else, to Miss Livia, for example, wouldn't you point out that she is enjoying an unlikely amount of luck?”

“Sometimes luck is just luck.”

“And most of the time, what seems too good to be true generally is.”

Disagreement, their usual state of affairs. A bittersweet sensation, this familiarity. Sometimes it was more sweet than bitter, but not tonight.

She rose and walked to the desk at the back of the parlor. “What would you have me do? Leave my benefactress?”

“Yes.”

“And then what?”

“Let me help you,” commanded her old friend who had become so proper and decorous, every inch the future pillar of Society. “You
always said you wished to be the headmistress at a girls' school. You can still achieve that.”

“How?”

He joined her at the side of the desk. “Move to America. You can invent a new identity and start a new life there, with nothing to prevent you from going to school, receiving training, and ultimately finding a good position.”

“With you bearing all the expenditures in the meanwhile?”

“Pay me back once you are self-supporting. With interest, if you'd prefer.”

“But there will be no consequences whatsoever if I do not or cannot pay you back. Am I correct?”

He did not answer.

The direction of his gaze: somewhere over her right shoulder. The placement of his hand: braced at the edge of the desk. The rise and fall of his chest with every breath—beneath his dark grey coat, his waistcoat was silk jacquard, silver tracery upon the blue of deepest twilight.

“I assume you've heard from Mr. Shrewsbury?”

His jaw tightened. “I have.”

“Did he offer me the position of his mistress?”

“He did.”

“I hope you didn't decline on my behalf.”

At last he looked directly into her eyes. “I would not presume to speak for you.”

His dark eyes were solemn, almost antagonistic. Yet heat prickled her skin and charred her nerves. She set the last bite of madeleine on her tongue. “Aren't you going to ask whether I will consider it?”

His gaze dipped to her mouth before meeting hers again. “I won't presume otherwise. You have demonstrated that you will consider—and do—just about anything.”

She tilted her chin up. “Are you angry with me?”

He again did not answer, but looked at her as if taken aback at how close she was to him, even though they were separated by a chair.

“I'm sure you would prefer for me to remain with Mrs. Watson,” she murmured, “rather than take up Mr. Shrewsbury's offer?”

The direction of his gaze: the pulse at the base of her throat. The placement of his hand: a hard grip on the back of the chair. The fine white linen of his shirt rose and fell with every quickened breath.

The next moment he was ten feet away by the grandfather clock, standing with his back to her. “And when have you ever taken my wishes into consideration when it comes to making your choices?”

She exhaled slowly, unsteadily. “I won't apologize, you know. Going to Mr. Shrewsbury was the only choice I could live with, the only way to break through this wall that my family would keep around me all my life.”

“Have I asked you to apologize?”

“No, but you are angry with me. Furious.”

He turned around halfway. If glances could take physical form, his would have speared her to the wall. “There isn't a single person with the slightest interest in your well-being who isn't furious with you, Charlotte.”

“But I'm fine now.”

“You are not starving in the streets, but you are not fine. You are a lady's companion, for God's sake—there is no one worse suited to being a lady's companion. Today you may rejoice in escaping worse misfortunes. Tomorrow, too, perhaps. But in a week you will be bored out of your mind.

“When you were living under your parents' roof, at least you had the possibility of an independent future to look forward to. What do you have to look forward to now? Let me be generous and attribute only the best of motives to this Mrs. Watson. Still it remains
that now you are an employee at a position that provides nothing of what you seek—no independence, no intellectual stimulation, and certainly not anywhere near five hundred pounds a year.

“How long can you last? How long before it sinks in that you have exchanged one cage for another? How long before your mind rebels against listening to the same anecdotes for the fifty-eighth time?”

She leaned against the desk, needing its support. “You make it sound so bleak.”

“What did you think it would be? A rich and fulfilling life?”

This time it was she who did not answer.

He exhaled. “I will see myself out.”

He was retrieving his walking stick from the stand when she said, “I will let you sponsor the cost of my emigration and education if you will agree to one condition.”

“No.”

“But you haven't—”

He set a hand on the door. “I may not be able to tell what your mother had for lunch yesterday by the color of your hat ribbons, but that doesn't mean I can't extrapolate what you are about to demand. It will be the same . . . service you tried to extort from me by threatening to go to Roger Shrewsbury if I failed to provide it.”

She slanted her lips. “You should have heeded that threat. We'd all be much better off if you'd come off your high horse and done some yeoman's work.”

“No, we'd all be much better off if you'd stuffed your idea exactly where I told you to.”

“I can't live the way you want me to, all bottled up and pretending that everything is all right.”

“It's how the rest of us live. Why can't you?”

This debate was inching dangerously close to the lines of their
previous conversation, which had flared into a heated argument, and ended with her shouting that no, they
really
would have all been much better off if he'd taken her advice and never proposed to his wife, an I-told-you-so she had refrained from lobbing at him for six long years.