The Hollow of Fear

by Sherry Thomas

  There was something oddly familiar about the way he contemplated cake.

  “Mr. Holmes is a privileged friend indeed,” said Fowler, pulling out a typed transcript of the interview between Lord Ingram and Sergeant Ellerby.

  Treadles readied his notebook, even as his face heated from secondhand mortification. He had read the transcript, a story only the power of the Crown could make a man divulge, let alone repeat.

  A sound came like grains of sand thrown against the window—it was raining, high wind driving a storm into Stern Hollow. In the grate, fire hissed, but otherwise the library was silent. Fowler continued to scan the transcript, each flip of the page as loud as the cracking of a whip.

  Treadles braced himself. No one was better at winding up a suspect than Fowler. Make them wait. Make them guess. Make them wonder how much they’d already given away.

  “The apple cake looks rather appealing,” said Mr. Holmes to Lord Ingram, his words so incongruous Treadles almost laughed. “The apples come from Stern Hollow’s kitchen garden?”

  “Indeed, they do,” replied Lord Ingram with the sort of grave courtesy appropriate to a question of pastry.

  When a man wasn’t the prime suspect in the murder of his wife.

  Mr. Holmes bowed his head slightly. “I must try a slice then.”

  Chief Inspector Fowler did not glance up from the transcript but he looked irritated. Mr. Holmes’s little aside had broken the tension, cracked it like a spoon to an eggshell. And there was no guarantee he wouldn’t do it again, were Fowler to re-escalate the silence—and the pressure.

  Support, both moral and practical, Lord Ingram had said about his friend’s purpose at Stern Hollow. Was Mr. Holmes here to sabotage Fowler’s effectiveness?

  “Lord Ingram,” began Fowler, “you allege that your wife ran away from home on the night of her birthday ball.”

  It would have been a stronger opening had it come at the end of a prolonged silence—and if Fowler had been able to pitch his voice slightly lower. Still, the statement arrived like a battering ram upon the gate of a castle.

  Lord Ingram left the mantel to pour himself a glass of whisky. “She did.”

  “There is talk of her childhood sweetheart. But I find it difficult to believe that a woman of Lady Ingram’s station would abandon everything for a love affair. It is my understanding that, in the upper echelon of Society, affairs are conducted under civilized rules. Why would she have run away when she could have indulged in a liaison, while retaining all the comfort and prestige to which she had become accustomed?”

  Lord Ingram considered his glass, as if wishing he could down its entire contents in one draught. In the end he took only a sip. “Civilized rules require a state of civility, which was not a characteristic of my marital union.”

  “You mentioned a curtailment of affections but did not give a reason.”

  “I would prefer not to discuss it.”

  “I understand your reluctance. And I deplore intruding on another man’s privacy,” said Fowler, evincing no such reluctance whatsoever. “But your wife, whom no one had seen in months, was found dead on your land. Reticence, which I otherwise admire as a manly virtue, will not work to your advantage here.”

  This time Lord Ingram did pour back half of the whisky. Treadles winced inwardly. In happier times, he had shared meals and animated conversations with the man, and Lord Ingram had never imbibed except in exceedingly modest quantities.

  He knew he should view his friend as the prime suspect, but he couldn’t help a surge of sympathy. And a scouring of misery, that he himself, viewed as enviably married, was also, on the inside, in anything but an enviable state.

  Putting down his glass, Lord Ingram walked to a window and stared out. The wooded slopes behind the house had turned red and gold, a beautiful tableau. Treadles wondered whether he saw anything at all.

  “Immediately after the reading of my godfather’s will, I told Lady Ingram that I would receive five hundred pounds per annum instead of the preponderance of his fortune, as was, in fact, the case.”

  The words emerged slowly, as if they were dragged across knife and fire.

  Fowler set his chin in the space between his thumb and forefinger. “Does this imply you already harbored doubts as to the validity of her affection?”

  Lord Ingram’s hands clasped behind his back. “I knew when we met that her family was poor. I was more than happy to be their knight in shining armor. At the time it had seemed highly romantic, that our paths should cross when she came to London in search of a well-situated husband.

  “I was young and vain—and likely believed myself a prize even without the attraction of my future inheritance. That the woman I loved perhaps wouldn’t want to marry me . . . Such a thought never crossed my mind.

  “That Season she stayed with a cousin in London. I didn’t meet her family until after my proposal had been accepted. The lack of warmth she evinced toward her parents—and even her brothers—should have put me on alert. But I was blinded by love and freely discarded what I did not wish to see.

  “In time I came to understand that a similar distance existed between us. I thought we had everything we needed to be happy—health, security, beautiful children. But she grew only more distant, more unreachable.

  “That was when I learned that she had loved another, a man rejected by her parents because he was in no position to help her family. Everything began to make horrifying sense. She despised her parents because they refused to consider her personal happiness. She was remote toward me because she did not love me. Because she never would have married me, except for the fact that I was rumored to be my godfather’s heir apparent.”

  Treadles dared not put himself in Lord Ingram’s place. He didn’t even want to imagine disillusionment of this magnitude.

  “I didn’t want it to be true. But I also needed to know. My godfather died soon thereafter and I made up my mind. If she loved me, then she would be disappointed that I would remain only a moderately well-off man rather than become a very rich one, but it would not be a fatal disappointment. If she did not love me . . .”

  He’d been speaking faster and faster, as if hoping simple momentum would carry him through the worst part of the story. But now he came to a stop. His head bowed. His fingers gripped the edge of the windowsill.

  When he spoke again his voice was quiet, barely audible. “Her anger was beyond anything I could have imagined. My godfather was Jewish, and it is rumored that I am his natural son. She told me, in exactly so many words, that without this inheritance, she had married me for nothing. And her children had Jewish blood for nothing.”

  Outside, wind howled. A sheet of rain pelted the windows. Inside, the silence was excruciating. Treadles didn’t dare breathe, for fear of betraying his presence. He wanted Lord Ingram to believe that he was speaking to an empty room—it would be the only way he himself could have managed to relive such painful memories.

  “There was no attempt at reconciliation, then?” Fowler was unmoved, his question cold and inexorable.

  “As ruptures go, ours was thorough—and as final as an amputation. I imagine the truth came as a relief for her, an end to all pretenses.”

  “And for you?”

  “On my part, I at last perceived her clearly—and I saw the greatest mistake of my life.”

  Another silence fell. Fowler polished his spectacles with a handkerchief. Mr. Holmes picked up the slice of cake that had been sitting beside him and gave it a quarter turn on its plate.

  For a moment, something about him again seemed strangely familiar.

  And then he looked in Lord Ingram’s direction, his expression entirely blank.

  Treadles almost cried out. That expression, as if he viewed the pain and suffering of others from a great remove, as if he himself never expected to experience such frailties—Treadles had seen that express
ion before.

  On a woman.

  On Charlotte Holmes.

  Despite the foppishness of his appearance, Mr. Holmes did not look . . . feminine. He didn’t even look effeminate. And certainly not at all pretty. While Miss Holmes was very pretty and extravagantly feminine—Treadles still remembered the endless rows of bows on her skirt the first time he met her.

  But now that the idea had come into his head . . .

  Sherrinford Holmes’s girth might be a way to disguise Miss Holmes’s buxom figure. His facial hair needn’t be real and the dark hair on his head could be a wig. The wearing of a monocle subtly distorted one’s features—but didn’t account for all the differences between Sherrinford Holmes’s face and Miss Holmes’s.

  Ah, of course, his less-than-perfect enunciation. At the time Treadles had thought he sounded as if he might have a piece of boiled sweet in his mouth. But he could very well have something else inside, something that altered the shapes of his cheeks just so.

  Dear God, had Charlotte Holmes been among them all this time?

  “Marital disharmony is a terrible cross to bear,” said Fowler, setting his glasses back on his face and yanking Treadles’s attention back to the interrogation. “But many do bear it. Lady Ingram did so for years. What compelled her to suddenly abandon her entire life?”

  “This summer, not long before the end of the Season, Lady Ingram called on Sherlock Holmes.”

  What? Lady Ingram calling on Charlotte Holmes? But she knew Charlotte Holmes.

  “Sherlock Holmes? The fellow who helped you on the Sackville case?”

  Fowler’s question was for Treadles.

  Treadles could only hope his face was not a disarray of tics and convulsions. But there was no time to think. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Lord Ingram, in fact, was the one who introduced me to Sherlock Holmes.”

  Fowler’s attention shifted back to Lord Ingram. “Lady Ingram did not know that the two of you are acquainted?”

  Treadles let out a shaky breath.

  “I had never mentioned the name to her,” said Lord Ingram.

  “I see. Please go on.”

  “Before we do, gentlemen,” said Lord Ingram, “you should know that Mr. Holmes here is Sherlock Holmes’s brother. But he did not assist Sherlock with Lady Ingram’s case and therefore cannot tell you much about it.”

  Had Treadles not realized Sherrinford Holmes’s true identity on his own, his shock at this moment might have been too great to conceal from Chief Inspector Fowler.

  “I dare say I’m just as good at this deduction business,” said Charlotte Holmes. “But unlike Sherlock, I cannot be bothered about strange knocking sounds in old ladies’ attics.”

  Fowler looked from her to Treadles.

  “I have only met your sister,” said Treadles to Charlotte Holmes, feeling ridiculous. “Is she well? And your brother?”

  “My sister is well. And my brother fares tolerably.”

  “Mr. Holmes,” said Fowler, his voice clipped, “you didn’t think to mention sooner that you are related to the man who helped Lady Ingram search for her lover?”

  Charlotte Holmes regarded him, her monocle flashing as she cocked her head. “With Lord Ingram in the same room, Chief Inspector, you think I should have brought that up before he did?”

  Fowler blinked—and cleared his throat. Treadles winced with second-hand embarrassment for his colleague; the misstep was unlike him.

  “My apologies, my lord,” said Fowler tightly. “Please carry on.”

  “Very well,” said Lord Ingram, his voice remarkably neutral. “Sherlock Holmes theorized that Lady Ingram must have come across the article in the paper about his willingness to deal with minor mysteries and mere domestic oddities. Certainly she arrived on his doorstep very soon after the publication of the piece, looking for help locating the man her parents forced her to give up.

  “Apparently they had a standing annual appointment before the Albert Memorial. This year, he did not come. She posted notices in the paper. And when she still had no news of him, she called on Sherlock Holmes.”

  “And Sherlock Holmes agreed to help, knowing what Lady Ingram wanted?” demanded Fowler. “Knowing full well that—that he would be assisting your wife in an endeavor you would not have approved of in the least?”

  “Geniuses must be allowed their eccentricities.” Lord Ingram turned around at last. “Sherlock Holmes had never paid heed to conventional ideas of acceptability. Why start with Lady Ingram?”

  Charlotte Holmes shook her head, as if she genteelly deplored such nonsense.

  A door opened and closed softly. Everyone looked up at the gallery, which went all the way around the second story of the library. From where Treadles sat, he couldn’t tell whether a servant had opened the door by accident or whether someone had come in.

  Lord Ingram downed what remained of his whisky. “According to Sherlock Holmes, Lady Ingram was impatient to find this man, and then suddenly she no longer wanted to look for him. That was when Holmes spoke to me of the matter and warned me that it was quite possible that Lady Ingram hadn’t changed her mind but had found him on her own.

  “I, in turn, remembered that Lady Ingram had lately consulted a book on matrimonial law at home. With the revelation from Sherlock Holmes, I began to wonder what she would do, knowing that if she gave in to her heart’s desire, I would have grounds for a divorce.

  “She had always been a devoted mother. But in a divorce she would lose the children. What would she do if she had to choose between her children and the man she loved?

  “Then a third, far more terrifying possibility occurred to me. What if she did not intend to give up either? What if she intended to run away with the man, my children in tow, so that she never needed to worry about being parted from them?

  “With that in mind, I studied the cipher with which they communicated, and sent her a note in the same cipher, telling her that the night of her birthday ball would be a good time to take the children and leave, given that I would be distracted by my duties as the host.

  “A little before one o’clock that night, she opened the door to the nursery, only to find it empty of all occupants, except me. I confronted her about her plan to make off with the children. And she, who had too long been accustomed to dealing with me without pretenses, was again bluntly truthful. I told her to go and not come back. She understood then that the children were now beyond her reach, that even if she stayed I would never trust her to see them again. And she must have decided that the only thing she could salvage from this misadventure was her lover and that she might as well leave with him since he had already cost her dearly.

  “My primary concern had been to keep my children from being taken—to prevent that from ever happening. To that end, Lady Ingram’s departure appeared a highly favorable development. It wasn’t until I’d calmed down somewhat I realized the difficulty I was now in.

  “Lady Ingram was a prominent member of Society. She had friends, acquaintances, and, however distant, a family. She had dozens of servants from whom her absence could not be concealed for any length of time. Not to mention, a ball in her honor was still in full swing.

  “I had to brazen it out, but etiquette was on my side. Guests are supposed to slip out discreetly, without saying good-bye to the hosts, if they leave before the end of a ball. Those who stayed until carriages came knew better than to inquire of me, at least, as to the whereabouts of Lady Ingram. They would have assumed either she was seeing to other guests or that the strain of the long night was more than her bad back could take—the same assumption the servants would have made. And she had dismissed her maid for the night at the beginning of the ball, rather than making the latter wait until the small hours of the morning.

  “Given all that, I didn’t need to announce her departure until the next day. And then, only to the senior servants. I told them th
at her health had taken a catastrophic turn in the later part of the ball and that she’d needed to leave immediately. And then I asked them to carry on as usual, except that we would depart from London as soon as possible.

  “To her maid, Simmons, I spoke separately. I told her that Lady Ingram had decided to leave her behind, as Simmons is not fond of either overseas travel or cold climates. Simmons once worked for my mother and was well-positioned to retire. She was distressed to be let go unceremoniously, after six years of service. But she is a kind-natured person and was more concerned for Lady Ingram than for herself.

  “To the children I gave the same story. They were saddened but believed me when I said that she would return when she was well. I took them to the seaside to distract them—and to be somewhere my wife could not readily guess at, for I still feared that she would come for them.

  “But there had been no sign of her in all the months since. Until yesterday, when I was told that her body had been discovered in the icehouse.”

  It was the same account he had given Sergeant Ellerby, only in greater, unhappier detail.

  Fowler considered Lord Ingram for close to a minute, then extracted something from his pocket. “We discovered this in Lady Ingram’s stocking. If you don’t mind taking a look, my lord.”

  Charlotte Holmes leaped up, took the folded-up piece of paper from Fowler, and delivered it to Lord Ingram, still at the window. Lord Ingram smoothed out the paper and stared at it, his expression odd, as if unable to believe his own eyes. Miss Holmes gave him a few more seconds before retrieving the evidence and returning it to Fowler.

  Treadles’s eyes were on Miss Holmes the entire time, but could not detect on her face anything other than an eagerness to be of service.

  “That is a sheet of my handwriting practice,” said Lord Ingram.

  Fowler leaned forward. “All these different hands, they are all done by you?”

  “It’s a hobby.”

  Treadles’s heart sank. A man who could write as if from many different people? This was not a helpful skill for the police to discover, especially when they already suspected him of murder.