The Hollow of Fear

by Sherry Thomas

  Mr. Cummings hesitated some more. “About a fortnight ago, I checked on the boots by one of the side doors in the morning, instead of in the evening, as I usually do, and saw a pair of Wellingtons that were encrusted with mud. I had a word with the hall boy. He swore that he had not been neglecting the boots. That at the end of the previous day, they’d all been scrubbed, brushed, and set to rights.

  “He told me that he’d been finding the boots used overnight. That he’d been cleaning them first thing in the morning. But that morning, Mr. Walsh had some other tasks for him and he hadn’t got around to the boots yet.”

  “I see,” said Fowler, a gleam in his eyes. “Anything else, Mr. Cummings?”

  The valet shook his head.

  Fowler dismissed him and studied a detailed map of the estate, an exact copy of the one that hung in the library. Then he looked up. “Inspector Treadles, care for a little outing?”

  * * *

  Before they left, they spoke to the hall boy, who confirmed that indeed, every morning for the past few weeks he’d found a pair of Wellingtons that needed heavy cleaning.

  The policemen rode out, accompanied by Mr. Platts, the estate manager. Treadles saw little of the passing scenery. Scotland Yard’s progress was accelerating. What was Miss Holmes doing? Was she finding out anything that could save Lord Ingram?

  They reached the gate Lord Ingram had mentioned the night before, the one the reconstruction of which had given him much trouble and negligible pleasure. From the gate, after five minutes on foot, they came to a clearing, with a cottage at its center. The cottage occupied only a little more area than a town coach, but it was two stories tall, with a gabled, deeply pitched roof, round dormers, and window boxes full of pink and purple sweet alyssums.

  And while he had my attention on the matter, my estate manager brought up a whole slew of other deficiencies near the gate, everything from a derelict woodsman’s cottage to footbridges that were too rotted for safe crossing.

  Treadles had not seen any new footbridges, but the once derelict woodsman’s cottage had certainly been restored to a state of glory. Had Treadles encountered such a scene as a child, he would have thought he’d wandered into a fairy tale. Even as a grown man, he would have felt a swell of wonder and delight—under any other circumstances.

  Now all he felt was an inchoate panic. If this was the place Lord Ingram had visited at night, resulting in those muddy boots, then he was sure Lord Ingram wouldn’t want Chief Inspector Fowler to know about it.

  “Very nice,” said Fowler to Mr. Platts.

  “I concur,” said the estate manager. “It’s my understanding that the children quite adore it.”

  The children. Dear God, the children.

  “May we see the inside?” asked Fowler.

  “Of course.”

  The inside of the cottage was decorated with yellow gingham curtains, baskets hanging from ceiling beams, and rustic furniture built for small people.

  Fowler examined every square inch of the interior. Treadles had no choice but to do the same.

  To the experienced eye, there was no question that until quite recently there had been people inside. The policemen found strands of fine dark hair, in two different lengths, on the beds in the loft. The small stove on the ground floor had been used less than two days before, judging by the lack of dust on its surfaces. And a jar on the shelves above the stove contained several ginger biscuits, which according to the housekeeper—Treadles remembered this with a plummeting heart—Lord Ingram had been fetching from the stillroom in the middle of the night, even though he didn’t care for them.

  As they started the walk to where they had left the horses, Fowler asked, “Mr. Platts, can you tell us if there is anything interesting or different about the coal cellar at Stern Hollow?”

  “It’s certainly an amply proportioned one. And I’ve always appreciated the dumbwaiter that Lord Ingram had installed, so that the servants needn’t carry coal up and down the stairs. But beyond that—”

  He stopped for a second. “How silly of me. I’ve become so accustomed to the estate’s various oddities—all great houses have them—that I didn’t think of it sooner. You see, Stern Hollow boasts a magnificent kitchen garden, one of the finest I’ve ever seen, and I try to visit them everywhere I go.

  “The garden slopes downhill by design, to maximize exposure to sunlight. Unfortunately, this meant that the glass houses, which are built halfway down the slope, are approximately six feet below the top of the north wall, behind which stands the boiler hut. To send hot water to heat those glass houses and to ensure that the water returns, the boilers had to be sunk to a spectacular depth, almost eighteen feet, to be exact, as the boilers themselves are the tubular sort the height of which must also be accommodated.

  “Once the boilers are lit for the winter, and they should be any day now, one of them must be operating at maximum capacity all the time, which means they must be stoked three times a day, and one more time late in the evening on particularly cold nights. A hair-raising task, it used to be, going down a pitch-dark pit on a rickety ladder bolted to the side of the chute, with a heavy basket of coke on one’s back.

  “Some fifteen years ago one young man fell down the ladder and broke his limb. Lord Ingram’s godfather, who had acquired the house not long before, told me to do something—he didn’t want anyone else seriously injured in his service. How I was to accomplish this he left to me—he didn’t want to be bothered about details—only that something must be done.

  “I puzzled over the solution. It was Lord Ingram, in fact, visiting on his school holidays, who suggested that since there was already an underground tunnel connecting the kitchen to the dining room, why should we not branch out and intersect it with one going from the coal cellar to the garden boilers?”

  Mr. Platts, warming up to his subject, described the construction of this tunnel. Then he assured them that it had been worth the time and treasure, having made it both easy and safe to heat the glass houses.

  Treadles could tell that Fowler had no interest in the finer points of this tunnel, but was biding his time until he could see it for himself. Back at the house, Mr. Platts gladly unlocked a double trap door in the coal cellar and led them down a ramp.

  With considerable pride, the estate manager flipped a switch. A bright, if rather harsh light flooded the tunnel, which was wider than Treadles expected, enough for three slender men to walk abreast.

  “Electricity, gentlemen—a wonder of the modern age.”

  “Is the rest of the house electrified?” asked Treadles. “I don’t recall that being so.”

  “The staff quarters and the domestic offices are all electrified, but not the main part of the house—Lady Ingram had strong feelings against electricity, and her wishes were respected.”

  Finally, an assertion to counterbalance ladies Avery and Somersby’s charge that Lady Ingram might have been made to feel unwelcome in her own home.

  As if he hadn’t heard, Fowler said, “With your permission, we would like to walk the length of the tunnel.”

  “Certainly. But you’ll excuse me for not accompanying you, gentlemen. I can’t spend much time in these confined, underground places without getting into a state.”

  “You have already been most helpful, Mr. Platts. We can look after ourselves, and we will make sure everything is in order before we leave.”

  Mr. Platts left for his regular duties. The policemen proceeded down the tunnel. By and by they came to a cross tunnel, which must be the one between the kitchen and the dining room. Then the tunnel began to slope downward noticeably. Treadles could feel grooves underfoot, to slow the descent of a wheelbarrow filled with coke, no doubt.

  The fabled boilers came into sight, cold and silent, not yet lit for winter. Something else also came into sight: laden shelves.

  The shelves must have been intended fo
r the tools and implements necessary for the functioning of the boilers. But those had all been banished to a corner. Now the shelves were occupied by a thin, rolled-up mattress, toiletries, a row of foodstuffs from Swiss chocolate to tins of potted chicken and condensed milk. One section was devoted to picture books. There were also crayons and hand-sewn notebooks that contained children’s drawings.

  Fowler picked up a small mug and handed it to Treadles. The remnants of its contents had yet to dry completely. He sniffed. Cocoa. And no more than two days old.

  Fowler looked around for some more time. Then he nodded. “I believe I shall now speak to Lord Ingram.”

  Treadles dreaded arriving at the library. Was this the beginning of the end? Was there anything he could do? Where was Miss Holmes—and had she prepared at all for this moment?

  * * *

  Miss Holmes was nowhere to be seen in the library. But Lord Ingram was not alone: With him was another man, elegantly turned out yet blank in some ways.

  Lord Ingram turned to the man. “Allow me to present Chief Inspector Fowler and Inspector Treadles of Scotland Yard. Gentlemen, Lord Bancroft Ashburton.”

  His brother, then. The newly met men shook hands.

  “Lord Ingram, if we could have a word alone,” said Fowler. “We have a somewhat delicate matter to discuss.”

  “Lord Bancroft is well versed in the situation,” Lord Ingram answered firmly. “There is nothing here that needs to be kept from him.”

  “Very well, then, my lord—”

  The door burst open.

  “Chief Inspector! Inspector!” cried Sergeant Ellerby. “We found another body on the estate, a man’s body!”

  Seventeen

  “It was Mr. Holmes’s idea. Remember he told me that I should be on the lookout for the body of an indifferently dressed man?” gushed Sergeant Ellerby, as excited as a child who had discovered a cache of sweets. “He also told me that the body could very well be located not that far from the icehouse. So this morning, as the fog cleared, I thought to myself, why not conduct a search? And lo and behold, we found it within the hour.”

  The dead man’s clothes were shabby, not so much those of a vagrant but more those of a ne’er-do-well. He had been strangled, the marks on his throat still vivid. And though the smell was fading, he had indeed soiled himself before he died, as Charlotte Holmes had predicted.

  The spot he lay on was fifteen minutes’ walk from the icehouse, longer if one were pulling a body—his still-damp trousers showed tears consistent with having been dragged.

  Chief Inspector Fowler’s expression was unreadable. He sent a constable to inform the London pathologist to delay his departure. Then he examined the body and the surrounding area. Lord Bancroft walked about slowly, taking in everything. Lord Ingram leaned against a tree, smoking, seeming to pay no attention to the goings-on.

  Half an hour later, they were back in the library.

  Fowler wasted no time. “Lord Ingram, why don’t you tell us who that man was.”

  “He told me his name was George Barr.”

  “Why did you kill him?”

  “Last I saw him, he was perfectly alive. I had nothing to do with his death.”

  “Very well, then. Tell us how you came to know him at all.”

  “It was the day before Mrs. Newell’s guests came to my house, or perhaps I should say the day of, since it was approximately one o’clock in the morning. I was in the tunnel going toward the glass house boilers when he appeared at the end of the tunnel. The electric lights were on and the entire tunnel was lit. He saw me and immediately turned around and started up the ladder.

  “I chased after him. Near the icehouse I caught up with him, overpowered him, and tied him up.”

  “You carried rope on you?”

  “Some good cord.”

  “Why?”

  “Perhaps you’ve learned from my staff that there had been a fire at Stern Hollow some time ago?”

  “I was made aware of that.”

  “I am almost entirely certain the fire was started as a distraction—that same night there was an attempt to kidnap my children, which I managed to foil only because I didn’t run toward the fire but in the direction of the nursery.”

  “You didn’t tell me, Ash,” said Lord Bancroft, his voice low.

  Lord Ingram shook his head. “You had enough to worry about. I didn’t want to add to your burden.”

  “So you were already concerned that your children might be abducted?” asked Fowler.

  “I did not think Lady Ingram was above such machinations.”

  “And that was the reason you sent them away with Lord Remington. You thought they would be safer away from Stern Hollow,” said Treadles.

  “Yes. I trusted Remington to be able to evade anyone Lady Ingram might send after him.”

  But if the children were far away, then who had slept in the fairy tale cottage? Who had drunk the hot cocoa in the space that housed the boilers? And what had Lord Ingram been doing there past midnight?

  Fowler apparently had the same questions. “My lord, why were you in the tunnel in the first place, late at night?”

  Lord Ingram shrugged. “I don’t sleep very well these days. So I sometimes walk about the estate at odd hours.”

  “All right. You subdued this man and tied him up. Then what?”

  “I tried to question him. At first he wouldn’t say anything. Then he told me that his name was George Barr and he lived outside the village, mainly on money his sister sent him. He’d heard that Stern Hollow housed a valuable collection of art. He’d also heard that art theft was both quick and easy.

  “A few weeks ago he met a footman from Stern Hollow at the village pub, having a pint on his half day. During their chat he said he’d heard that the manor was locked up nice and tight at night, with no way for anyone from the outside to get in. According to him, the footman, having already had a few pints, declared that if he were trying to break in, he would get into the boiler hut, climb down the ladder, and take the tunnel to the coal cellar. And Mr. Barr decided that he would do exactly that, for instant riches.

  “He seemed a genuinely stupid man. But I didn’t dare trust my first impression. So I decided I would verify his story first, before I did anything else. Since we were already near the icehouse, that seemed as good a place as any to stow him.

  “I tied him to a tree, gagged him, and went to the head gardener’s shed and took his key to the icehouse. While I was in the shed, I saw that he had a pile of padlocks and decided to take one. I didn’t want the kitchen helper to accidentally come upon Mr. Barr before I could find out whether he was truly the village idiot.

  “I put him in the second antechamber and secured the icehouse with the other lock. In the morning I meant to take him some water and food, but the outdoor staff were working nearby and I couldn’t get into the icehouse without being seen. And then the cisterns broke at Mrs. Newell’s and I was faced with an influx of guests who must be looked after. I was unable to get away for the rest of the day. And when I managed to do so after most of them had gone to bed, one of the gentlemen decided to set up his telescope twenty feet from the icehouse.

  “I waited for an hour. He showed no intention of leaving. I came out again at three in the morning. He was gone by then. But so was the lock on the icehouse door. This alarmed me to no small extent. I went in and all that remained of the man was a foul smell he had left in the second antechamber.

  “You didn’t go deeper into the icehouse?”

  “No. My first—and only—thought was that he had been sent by Lady Ingram—and that he had not been sent alone. His partner must have set him free. Since it would profit them not at all to venture farther into the icehouse, I never thought to check the inner chambers.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then it didn’t matter anymore whether a
nyone came into the icehouse; I put the old lock back on, returned the spare key to the head gardener’s place, and went back to the house.” He tapped his fingers once against the top of his large mahogany desk. “And that afternoon Lady Ingram’s body was discovered twenty feet from where I’d stood that morning.”

  * * *

  Beyond the windows the sky was blue—the fog had cleared entirely; the day promised to be cold but crisp. The brilliance outside only made the interior of the library, despite its many lamps and sconces, appear somber and unlit.

  In the wake of Lord Ingram’s confession, silence reigned—even the fires barely hissed. Chief Inspector Fowler polished his spectacles. Lord Bancroft finished one slice of cake and picked up another. Lord Ingram took a sip of tea, his hand steady, his expression detached, seemingly unaware of his impending doom.

  Treadles held on to the edges of his notebook so that his fingers wouldn’t shake. Where was Charlotte Holmes? And where was the exculpatory evidence that he and Lord Ingram had trusted her to unearth?

  Fowler, satisfied with the clarity of his glasses, set them back on his nose. His owlish gaze landed on the master of the manor. “Lord Ingram, this is what I believe happened: You killed this man.”

  Neither Lord Ingram nor Lord Bancroft betrayed any reaction. Treadles gritted his teeth, wiped his perspiring palms with a handkerchief, and resumed his note-taking.

  “It could have happened under two different sets of circumstances, both involving your children,” Fowler went on. “I do not believe your children left with your brother, Lord Remington Ashburton. I believe they are still somewhere here on this estate. George Barr happened to stumble upon one of the places where you keep the children, and possibly their governess—namely, the tunnel between the glass house boilers and the coal cellar. Little wonder, then, that his presence so alarmed you.

  “You chased him down and subdued him. This is where possibilities diverge. It’s possible you killed him on the spot. But I am of the opinion that you didn’t. That you told the truth about locking him in the icehouse while you sought to discover whether he truly was the moron he appeared to be.