“In a strange way.” Livia bit her lower lip. “I was making decent progress until I realized that I had much less to write than I thought I did, only a few thousand words left. Almost immediately I couldn’t write anymore. I knew exactly what I wanted the next sentence to say. And the next paragraph. But somehow putting pen to paper became impossible. I kept jumping up from my chair. I couldn’t do anything useful at all.
“I thought that was an anomaly. I thought it was just a fit of nerves. But I haven’t been able to write since either. Granted, that was the day you and Mrs. Watson came back and said you needed to go to France and we’d had plenty to do since. But I hadn’t been that busy that I couldn’t have written a single word. Just now I sat for a while with Bernadine and didn’t make any progress. I sat for a while in my own room and still didn’t make any progress.”
Livia pressed her fingers against her temples. “I’ve been in worse surroundings, worse moods, worse company, and I’ve managed to write. I would think that maybe Mrs. Watson’s house doesn’t agree with me, except I wrote just fine here after I came, before I realized that I was near ‘the end.’”
The kettle whistled. Charlotte put two cups of tea to steep and asked, “What would have happened had you finished your story?”
Livia looked at her in puzzlement. “I . . . would have finished it?”
“When Mr. Marbleton called on me to deliver the letter you wanted forged in his mother’s handwriting, he told me, with great delight and even greater details, of his meetings with you during his family’s visit to ours. I believe, when the two of you went for a walk, you promised him he would be the first to read your finished story.”
Livia’s jaw dropped. “You think I don’t want him to read my story?”
Charlotte tilted her head. “I think you would be ecstatic if he loved your story and devastated if he didn’t. If I didn’t like your story, you would still be crestfallen, but you would be able to tell yourself that we have very different taste in fiction. That, in fact, I have no taste for fiction at all.
“But Mr. Marbleton is a reader of fiction. And he enjoys the same books you do. If he didn’t like it, you wouldn’t know what to tell yourself.”
Livia picked up her teacup and held it with both hands. “What should I do then?”
“Do you like your story?”
“I . . .”
“Don’t think about everything that needs improvement. Do you like your story?”
Livia breathed in and out heavily, almost as if she were panting. “I do.”
“Then you finish it. As much as Mr. Marbleton’s views matter to you, your own should matter still more.”
Livia was silent for some time, looking down into her tea. “Do you think I’ll ever manage that?”
“Maybe,” said Charlotte, “but only after a great deal of practice.”
Livia snorted. Charlotte allowed herself a small smile. “Now come help me with the code.”
* * *
Around midnight Livia asked whether the code should be interpreted as numbers, rather than letters. Charlotte had always kept that in mind as a possibility, but numbers presented the same problem as letters: too many possibilities, and too many paths to nonsense. Not to mention, in Morse code, some digits were represented by four or more consecutive dots or dashes, but the cipher did not feature any such easily noticeable strings.
Charlotte had already been looking for encoded dividers. She decided to see whether there were small strings of dots and dashes breaking apart long strands of only dots or only dashes. There weren’t.
“What if the divider is bigger than the thing it divides?” mused Livia, whose mind was often livelier after midnight.
That seemed counterintuitive, but that would be precisely the reason to use it, to confound unauthorized code breakers. It took Charlotte and Livia another two hours, but in the end they found a string of eight dots and dashes that changed order every time they appeared—the first item in the string becoming the last item in the next iteration.
And when they had accounted for these mutating dividers, they were indeed left with an assortment of digits, twelve to be exact.
“What are they?” asked Livia, her eyes wide.
Charlotte waved her out. “We’ll worry about that in the morning. Now go rest.”
Unlike Livia, Charlotte’s ability to think reduced sharply after midnight. She’d already exhausted herself solving the code, and now her brain wasn’t much more useful than a turnip.
She climbed into bed and was almost immediately awakened by loud and insistent knocking on her door. “Miss Charlotte, Lord Ingram is here to see you.”
She opened a bleary eye and glanced at her bedside clock. It had been at most four hours since she laid down, and if Mr. Mears would stop knocking, she could easily go back to sleep in the next moment, Lord Ingram’s presence notwithstanding.
She forced herself to sit up. His brother’s estate was not on a main branch of the railway. Even if Lord Ingram had caught the earliest train out that morning, he still wouldn’t have arrived in London in time to call on Charlotte before the crack of dawn.
So he had to have left the previous evening, at the latest, mere hours after arriving.
What could have torn him away so abruptly from his reunion with his children?
“I’ll be there in a second,” said Charlotte to Mr. Mears, on the other side of the door.
A second was, naturally, a euphemism. Even with Livia and Mrs. Watson’s help, a good ten minutes passed before she was sufficiently dressed and coiffed to receive a gentleman to whom she was not related.
“I’m sorry to disturb your rest,” said Lord Ingram, rising.
His clothes were travel-rumpled, his face dark with stubble. Looking as he did now, had he disturbed her rest in certain other ways, she wouldn’t have minded at all.
She waved a hand and indicated that he should retake his seat.
Mr. Mears, entering the afternoon parlor behind her, set down the tea tray, poured, and left.
“What happened?” she asked, her voice still raspy from sleep.
“The woman who arrived at Château Vaudrieu the afternoon of the reception, the one I almost ran into in the secret passage . . . I have reason to believe she might be Lady Ingram.”
Charlotte narrowed her eyes. “Why do you think so?”
She’d thought about the mysterious guest but had decided that as long as she wasn’t the maharani, they didn’t need to worry about her identity. But if she was Lady Ingram, then that changed things.
“I didn’t mention this earlier because it seemed barely worthy of attention, but in the woman’s room at Château Vaudrieu—or at least in the one I assumed to be her room—there was a frame of pressed flowers on the nightstand. I saw only a corner of it, but I had the impression that the one visible pressed flower was purple.
“Yesterday I learned from my daughter that several days ago, Lady Ingram had visited Eastleigh Park at night. And that she left with a gift from Lucinda, a frame of pressed purple pansies.”
His jaw was clenched, his entire person tense. Charlotte extended a cup of tea toward him, but he shook his head.
“Ash, the connection you made seems fl . . .”
Her voice trailed off. On its own, the connection was flimsy. But less so when one considered what Lord Ingram had overheard between the two women.
Let’s just say it involves a syringe and a choice of injectable solutions.
Lady Ingram had left Moriarty’s fold when she learned that Moriarty’s underlings had murdered a close relative of hers with little pity and no remorse. The woman had died from alcohol poisoning caused by an injection of absolute alcohol.
If Madame Desrosiers was helping Lady Ingram achieve vengeance, then from Lady Ingram’s point of view, an injection of poison into the killers—an overdose of per
haps none other than absolute alcohol—must be poetic justice.
Charlotte passed a hand over her face. She was awake now, but her brain was still dull from a lack of sleep. “From your description of the two women’s conversation, it sounded as if they did not know each other well, or even at all. Why would Lady Ingram go to a stranger’s place?”
Lord Ingram rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “I wonder if Madame Desrosier’s people found Lady Ingram and, to demonstrate their goodwill, arranged for her to get into Eastleigh Park to see the children. Left to her own devices, she couldn’t have achieved that without alerting anyone at all.”
Eastleigh Park was no bastion. Still, it was far from other dwellings and had a full complement of staff and gates that were locked and watched. For Lady Ingram to infiltrate the children’s nursery, then to depart without leaving a trace, she must have had extremely competent help.
Which wasn’t something a woman who no longer had any backing could count on, normally.
“Why would anyone take such trouble for her?”
Lord Ingram raised a brow. “During the investigation at Stern Hollow, weren’t you the one who said that she would be an asset in many situations?”
“I was arguing that it made no sense for Moriarty to kill her—and I was proved correct on that account. But Lady Ingram is no longer in the same position she was then. She’s made accusations against Moriarty in front of both Scotland Yard and the biggest gossips in London, and brought notoriety to the doorstep of the man who’s always preferred to operate in shadows. In short she’s declared herself an implacable enemy.”
“Moriarty must have other implacable enemies. Perhaps Madame Desrosiers is one, too. Perhaps she and Lady Ingram wish to band together and capitalize on that shared enmity.”
“Perhaps.”
The Marbletons were also implacable enemies of Moriarty, but while they could keep themselves safe, would they have expended so much energy to aid Lady Ingram?
Lord Ingram rose. “I have to set a few things into motion, and then I plan to return to Eastleigh Park. I’ll be back in London tomorrow.”
Charlotte got to her feet. “I’ll see you out.”
At the door of the parlor he turned around and took her hand. “Be careful, Holmes.”
She gave his hand a squeeze. “You too, Ash.”
She expected him to let go of her hand and open the door. Instead he enfolded her in an embrace. A brief one. Before she understood what was happening, he was already descending the stairs in the direction of the breakfast parlor.
Only his scent of wool and sandalwood lingered.
She inhaled deeply, and sighed.
* * *
Mrs. Watson half-heartedly stirred her tea. Livia spread more butter on her muffin, without intending to consume either. They glanced at each other again, wondering what had brought Lord Ingram to confer with Charlotte at this unexpected hour.
“Mrs. Watson, Miss Olivia,” said Lord Ingram from the door of the breakfast parlor.
They rose hurriedly. “Is everything all right?” asked Mrs. Watson.
“Nothing is amiss,” said Lord Ingram. “I learned something yesterday evening that Miss Charlotte needed to know without delay.”
Without taking a seat, he asked them about their doings since they parted ways and then took his leave. Livia and Mrs. Watson saw him out, then climbed up to the afternoon parlor, where Charlotte told them about Lord Ingram’s suspicions.
“Lady Ingram!” Mrs. Watson cried. The next second she covered her mouth and looked around, as if someone might be spying on her in her own home.
When she spoke again, her volume was much lower. “Do you think he’s right, Miss Charlotte?”
Charlotte tapped the pad of her index finger against her chin. “I have no way of verifying anything—I wasn’t in the secret passage, and I wasn’t there during Lady Ingram’s visit to Eastleigh Park. But Lord Ingram isn’t the sort to jump to conclusions. For him to rush over here like this, at least he is convinced.”
“But you aren’t?” asked Livia.
“I’m not sure whether my belief matters one way or the other. Does the identity of a guest at Château Vaudrieu change anything for us, as far as our task and the Van Dyck painting are concerned?”
Livia blinked. The news that Lady Ingram might be lurking about Château Vaudrieu was so sensational that she hadn’t even once considered that it might not make any difference.
“If everything Lord Ingram reported was accurate, then Lady Ingram doesn’t know and doesn’t entirely trust her hostess—and the feeling is very much reciprocated. When she still moved in Society Lady Ingram disliked balls and considered them a chore. I doubt she would take part in the masquerade ball, let alone participate in any of Château Vaudrieu’s schemes. If her presence doesn’t change what we need to do, then why do we need to know with complete certainty whether it’s her in the château?”
“So we are to completely disregard her presence at Château Vaudrieu? To think of it as altogether tangential to our plans?” asked Mrs. Watson, sounding incredulous.
“I can’t think what else to do,” said Charlotte, “unless . . .”
Her expression changed.
A barely perceptible flicker, such a tiny ripple, smaller than that caused by the landing of a dragonfly on the surface of a pond. But to Livia, long accustomed to subtle variations in Charlotte’s expression, it was as if Charlotte’s jaw had fallen all the way to her lap.
“Unless I’ve read the situation entirely backward.”
“How?” cried Livia.
“Lord Ingram and I both assumed that since Lady Ingram had become an implacable enemy to Moriarty, whoever was helping her must share that enmity to some extent. What if we were wrong about that? What if this isn’t a ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ alliance? What if this is simply Moriarty bringing Lady Ingram back into the fold?”
“What?” Livia and Mrs. Watson exclaimed in unison.
“But Moriarty killed her twin sister!” Mrs. Watson went on. “And Lady Ingram gave his name to the police. Why would Moriarty seek a reconciliation?”
“Moriarty didn’t personally kill her sister,” Charlotte pointed out. “In England de Lacy is Moriarty’s deputy, and I very much doubt de Lacy soiled his own hands in the matter. That would have been done by some minions of de Lacy’s.
“All Moriarty had to do was to kill de Lacy and the minions in front of Lady Ingram—or maybe even let her do the deed herself, by injecting them with poisonous substances. Not an act beyond her ability or temperament—not if those about to meet their end were already subdued.”
“But why would Moriarty do that for Lady Ingram?” Mrs. Watson pressed her hand into her heart, as if her courage needed bolstering amidst all this talk of wanton killings.
Charlotte, on the other hand, was back to her imperturbable self. “Perhaps he already meant to get rid of de Lacy and decided to kill two birds with one stone. Lady Ingram is still too inexperienced and too brittle. But she is a beautiful, intelligent woman burning to prove to herself and everyone else that even though she is now without a friend in the world, she can still make something of her life. Something remarkable, even.”
Livia looked from her sister to Mrs. Watson and back again. “Charlotte, if you are even remotely correct in your line of reasoning, does that mean”—she swallowed—“does that mean we are about to enter Moriarty’s lair?”
Sixteen
Moriarty,” said Lord Ingram, slowly. “You think Château Vaudrieu is Moriarty’s stronghold?”
It was evening the next day. He’d just returned to London again. The invitation to dine at Mrs. Watson’s was most welcome, but he’d wondered why Holmes had sent along a note for him to arrive half an hour early. Now he knew. While Mrs. Watson and Miss Olivia were in their rooms, finishing their toilette, Holmes sat him down in Mrs. Wat
son’s afternoon parlor and gave him a general outline of her hypothesis concerning Château Vaudrieu and Moriarty.
“It’s possible,” replied Holmes, “but it’s hard to estimate the actual likelihood. Suppose that the likelihood of you being correct about Lady Ingram visiting Château Vaudrieu is eighty percent. Then my hypothesis about Moriarty, which depends on yours being correct, not to mention a host of other assumptions, can’t be more than fifty percent likely to be correct. In fact, even pegging the likelihood at forty percent is generous.
“Which makes the next hypothesis I’m mulling less than ten percent likely to be proven right.”
“Your next hypothesis?”
“Remember how unlikely it is, but if the château belongs to Moriarty, then I must wonder whether the prisoner in its bowels isn’t my brother Mr. Finch.”
She handed him a piece of paper. “Livia and I broke the code. It’s a rather ornate code. And you remember that Mr. Finch was Moriarty’s cryptographer.”
He studied the solution—and remained silent for another two minutes. “If that’s the case, we must think about how to get him out.”
Holmes regarded him steadily. “No.”
“No? But you just said—”
“I said that idea is highly, highly unlikely to be correct. It is a possibility I have thought of, not something I will act on.”
“You would let Mr. Finch remain a prisoner at Château Vaudrieu?”
“When I am less than ten percent confident that the prisoner is Mr. Finch? Of course. We have scant manpower, scant opportunity, and only a vague idea where Château Vaudrieu keeps its prisoners. Even if I were far more sure that Mr. Finch is at Château Vaudrieu, I would still hesitate to devise, let alone execute, a plan based on what little we know.”
Logically he knew she was right, but the idea of her brother locked away far underground gnawed at him. “What if his life is at stake?”
“A cryptographer good enough for Moriarty must be one of the best cryptographers in the world. Were I Moriarty, I would put him to use, rather than summarily execute him.”
The Art of Theft Page 21
