A Conspiracy in Belgravia

by Sherry Thomas

  It had been a long time since Lord Ingram asked his wife what she thought of marriage, either in general or in specific. “You’ll be able to do more of what you want when you are older, whether you are married or not.”

  “Miss Yarmouth said I can be married at sixteen. Mamma said she won’t let me. She said she’ll have a word with Miss Yarmouth.” Lucinda looked up, worried. “Is she going to dismiss Miss Yarmouth?”

  Lord Ingram watered the last seedling—that was his task as her “prime assistant,” as she’d dubbed him. “I shouldn’t think so. But Miss Yarmouth’s idea of marriage . . . I don’t know anyone else who thinks of marriage as unlimited freedom.”

  “Mamma said I might hate it. And I won’t be able to unmarry.”

  Who recoiled more from the state of their marriage, Lord or Lady Ingram? Until this moment, Lord Ingram had never been able to decide on an answer. Now he knew it was his wife, by a hair.

  “It definitely isn’t easy to unmarry.”

  An annulment would render his children illegitimate. And even if he’d had grounds for a divorce, it was a breathtakingly scandalous—and damaging—process.

  Lucinda closed her notebook. “Why do Mamma and Miss Yarmouth think so differently about the same thing?”

  “It’s like asparagus. You can’t get enough of it; Carlisle hardly ever touches his. Nothing is for everyone.”

  “What about you? What do you think about it?”

  He’d been expecting the question—this was where the conversation had been inexorably headed. Still he flinched inwardly.

  He set aside the watering can, sank down to one knee, and placed his hands on his daughter’s shoulders. “I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. Do you know why?”

  She shook her head.

  “Because it brought me you—and your brother.” He kissed her forehead. “Now let’s eat. I hear we’ll have asparagus again.”

  “Something has come up,” said Miss Holmes as she served herself a generous portion from the trifle bowl at the center of the table.

  They had been talking about Penelope’s friends from medical school who were shortly to arrive in London. Penelope was intent on organizing a tour of the Scottish Highlands. Mrs. Watson, in between listening to her ideas, pondered whether she ought not to make some changes to the house’s public rooms. They were so very somber, full of deep blues and joyless browns. Practical to be sure—the soot in London would turn everything dark and grimy in time. But perhaps a new wallpaper with leafy designs on a stone-hued background might serve as a compromise?

  Miss Holmes’s announcement yanked her out of this pleasant reverie of colors and patterns. “What is it?”

  Miss Holmes spooned a whipped-cream-cocooned blueberry into her mouth. “At four o’clock a new client will be calling. She knows me. I have a sneaking suspicion that she might also know Mrs. Watson by sight, even if they have never been formally introduced. So Miss Redmayne, provided she can keep a secret, must take on the part of Sherlock Holmes’s sister.”

  Penelope’s dessert spoon hovered above her own serving of trifle. She glanced at Mrs. Watson. They had come to a stalemate concerning the role Penelope would or wouldn’t take with regard to Sherlock Holmes. Miss Holmes’s request broke the deadlock.

  Mrs. Watson grew alarmed—Miss Holmes would not give up her neutrality unless something extraordinary had happened. “I thought we had no appointments for the day. Who is this client?”

  “Lady Ingram,” said Miss Holmes.

  Placidly.

  Mrs. Watson exchanged another look with Penelope, now slack-jawed in astonishment.

  Three years ago, during intermission at the Savoy Theater, Lord Ingram had come to Mrs. Watson’s box to pay his respects. As he was about to leave, her eyes happened to alight on Miss Holmes in the auditorium, headed for her own seat.

  Oh, look at that young woman in rose moiré, Mrs. Watson had exclaimed. She must be the most darling girl in attendance tonight.

  Lord Ingram glanced down. That’s Charlotte Holmes, the greatest eccentric in attendance tonight.

  Mrs. Watson had been incredulous. That sweet young thing? Are you sure, sir?

  Her friend had smiled slightly. I’m quite certain, madam.

  The theater’s electric lights dimmed—the next act was about to begin. Lord Ingram took his leave. But Mrs. Watson remembered that smile, a fond smile that said, The stories I could tell. No doubt the stories would have been delightful—yet Mrs. Watson had felt strangely dejected for the rest of the evening.

  It was only the next day that she had been able to articulate why she had been so affected: In that smile had been a wistfulness that encroached on regret.

  Mrs. Watson had not brought up Miss Charlotte Holmes again. Neither had Lord Ingram, until he came to see her the evening of Miss Holmes’s unfortunate “incident,” and asked for her help.

  Mrs. Watson knew then that her instincts had been correct all those years ago. She had no doubt that Miss Holmes reciprocated Lord Ingram’s sentiments: When these two young people had been alone in the same room, despite their reserve—or perhaps because of it—the tension had been palpable. Mrs. Watson, sitting in the next room and pretending to look after the nonexistent Sherlock Holmes, had departed hastily, her own face flushed from the latent heat of their unacted-upon desires.

  How then, did Miss Holmes manage to utter Lady Ingram’s name with such ease—such casualness, almost? Even Mrs. Watson, who considered herself not ungenerous of spirit, could not speak or even think of that woman without a swell of hostility.

  But this was not the question she posed to Miss Holmes. “Lady Ingram does not realize that you are Sherlock Holmes?”

  “It would appear not.”

  “Did she say why she wished for a meeting in her letter?”

  Miss Holmes dug up half a strawberry from the decadent depths of her trifle. “No, only that she urgently needed one.”

  “And she sent it to Upper Baker Street? How did she know the address?”

  “My guess is via Mr. Shrewsbury. I have heard now that the mystery behind his mother’s death has been solved, he’s told certain parties that he’s been to see Sherlock Holmes. It would not have been difficult for Lady Ingram to ferret the address from him without disclosing that she wanted it for herself.”

  A silence fell. Penelope blinked slowly, as if unable to believe what she’d heard. Miss Holmes ate with great solemnity and concentration, giving every appearance of encountering this most familiar dessert for the very first time. Mrs. Watson took sip after sip of water and tried to convince herself that she ought to trust the decision Miss Holmes had already made.

  After all, that extraordinary mind was usually allied to a lot of good sense and pragmatism.

  “I can’t help but feel that we should not see Lady Ingram,” she heard herself state emphatically. “She is known to us and we are known to her, or at least Miss Holmes is. If hers is a problem she wanted Miss Holmes to know, she would have told Miss Holmes. Instead she chose to put her trust in a stranger. Shouldn’t that tell us that she values her anonymity in the matter?

  “What if her concern has to do with Lord Ingram? Does the confidence we owe her outweigh our duties of friendship to him? What if we learn something that he would want to, indeed, deserves to know? Worse, what if his wife’s disclosure should prove detrimental, were he to remain in a state of ignorance?”

  Miss Holmes did not deviate from her imperturbable self, but Penelope stared at Mrs. Watson with more than a little concern. Mrs. Watson realized that her voice had risen a good half octave. That instead of giving calmly reasoned objections, she had let herself be carried away on a current of righteous dismay.

  For a minute, everyone busied herself eating. Then Miss Holmes set down her spoon.

  “By seeking an appointment with Sherlock Holmes, Lady Ingram has alr
eady informed me, however unwittingly, that she has a problem. Knowing what I do about her, I have a fair idea of the nature of the problem. Suffice to say that it does not involve Lord Ingram, except in the sense that she is his wife and any problem of hers ought to concern him, too.

  “Moreover, by putting her hope in Sherlock Holmes, Lady Ingram makes it clear that she has no one else to turn to. Not at this moment. Not with this problem. If we do not help her, no one will. Purely on a humanitarian basis, it would be cruel to turn her away.

  “As for what duties we owe Lord Ingram, since her problem does not relate to him, except peripherally, it would be no moral compromise to keep her confidence.” Miss Holmes looked down momentarily. “Lord Ingram is my friend and benefactor. I wish him nothing but success and happiness. But the estranged wife of my friend is not my enemy. If she were a stranger knocking on Sherlock Holmes’s door, would she have been denied help in her hour of need?”

  Unfortunately, Lady Ingram was no stranger. And by accepting her as a client, they would become interlopers in an already unhappy union. As much as she admired Miss Holmes’s principled stance on not abandoning anyone in need, Mrs. Watson could not possibly imagine any scenario in which they ended up doing more good than harm.

  But she didn’t know how to change Miss Holmes’s mind without a draconian invocation of authority: I finance this operation, therefore my word is law. She couldn’t see herself acting in such a heavy-handed manner, certainly not on the day after the young woman learned that Mrs. Watson had first helped her at Lord Ingram’s behest. If anything, Mrs. Watson was keen to reassure her that their partnership—and friendship—was genuine, an expression of mutual respect and affection.

  Mrs. Watson sighed.

  Miss Holmes must have sensed her capitulation. She picked up her spoon, gathered the last bit of trifle from her bowl, and consumed it with her characteristic mixture of gourmandise and wistfulness.

  Now she addressed Penelope. “I trust in Mrs. Watson’s discretion. May I count on you also, Miss Redmayne, to refrain from broaching this subject to anyone outside the present company?”

  Penelope, to her credit, did not answer immediately. She thought for a while. “I don’t believe I’ve ever made such promises before, but I’m beginning to see now why Aunt Jo doesn’t want me to be too deeply involved in Sherlock Holmes’s affairs: Even when there is no actual danger, the matters that are brought to the attention of Upper Baker Street can be ethically challenging.”

  She thought for a moment longer. “But it seems today I’m destined to play a part and I promise you that nothing I learn will be repeated to anyone outside this room.”

  “Thank you, Miss Redmayne,” said Miss Holmes. “We are ready for Lady Ingram, then.”

  “Excuse me, miss, but is this yours?”

  Livia looked up. A young man stood before her, holding out a book.

  The rain had stopped some time ago. The clouds, instead of remaining thick and sulky, had parted. And the young man, framed against freshly rinsed trees and a blue-enough sky, appeared as cheerful as any summer afternoon she had ever known.

  Livia didn’t mind cheerful people, as long as they didn’t tell her to cheer up, which, alas, they did more often than not. And they probably thought her petulant and ungrateful when she didn’t seize on the chance to burst out of her shell.

  She glanced down at the book he proffered. The Woman in White. How odd, she had taken that title from the circulating library two days ago. Had even hauled it to the park, in case the other book she’d brought turned out to be less than engrossing. But her copy was safe in her handbag, wasn’t it?

  She patted her handbag and it was, well, not empty exactly but most certainly devoid of full-length novels.

  “Ah—yes, I believe that is mine. But I’ve no idea how I lost it.”

  Surely it should have been in her bag all this time—nothing else seemed to have fled.

  “Not a problem at all, miss.” The young man handed the book over. “An excellent reading choice, if I may say so.”

  Livia forgot all about how The Woman in White had magically disappeared. “Do you think so, sir?”

  She was sure of very few things in life. And one of those few happened to be the types of books she enjoyed, none of which, alas, were the least bit improving. Charlotte could at least defend her choice of reading as encyclopedic; Livia, well, all Livia wanted was a solid stretch of time away from her own life. And she was surrounded by people who disapproved of such transport.

  An excellent reading choice were words that she had never heard spoken in her direction, with regard to her reading choices.

  “Oh, yes.” He grinned. His full beard made it difficult to gauge his age—he could be anywhere from twenty-two to thirty-two. The corners of his eyes crinkled but his skin was otherwise smooth and unlined. “I read it a while ago. Sat down and never got up till I was done.”

  “That sounds promising.”

  “Of course I sat down at about nine o’clock in the evening, you see, and intended to read only for a short while before bed. But the next thing I knew, it was dawn. And I had to get ready for the day!”

  “Oh, dear!”

  “I know, but I don’t regret it. There’s nothing like the pleasure of a book that pulls you in by the lapels and doesn’t let go until The End. God gives us only one life. But with good books, we can live a hundred, even a thousand lives in the time we are allotted on this earth.”

  Livia was not prone to feeling such things, but she could kiss the young man for the sentiments he’d so eloquently expressed.

  “And what about this one then?” Eagerly she showed him the book in her lap, which she’d only just started. “It’s by the same author.”

  “Moonstone? I liked that one, too, but it wouldn’t have kept me up all night reading.” She must have appeared disappointed, for he held up a finger. “However, a good friend of mine prefers Moonstone to The Woman in White.”

  “Oh, how fortunate that you know someone who enjoys the same books you do. My father only reads history and my sister only things that impart knowledge. I pestered her for a long time to read Jane Eyre, and she did, finally, but I don’t think she much cared for it.”

  Charlotte had little use for fiction: She would rather not deal with people altogether if she didn’t have to, real or imaginary. Livia, on the other hand, actively preferred literary characters to real-life acquaintances: Tom Sawyer stayed forever young, Viola always retained her spunk, and Mr. Darcy could never turn out to be a hypocrite who was also disappointing in bed.

  “Well, I thought Jane Eyre was splendid,” said the young man. “What an indomitable spirit in our Miss Eyre. And it turned out all right for her, too!”

  “Precisely. I told my sister she needed to be more grateful that such a book exists. So many novels about women either feature stupid women who make bad choices and then commit suicide when it all goes awry, or subject virtuous women to terrible misfortunes and then, to add insult to injury, have them die of consumption anyway.”

  He laughed. He had lively brows and warm, dark eyes. “Goodness, I’ve never thought of it that way, but you are absolutely right.”

  Livia could only be glad that she was already sitting down—her knees would have buckled otherwise. Nobody, but nobody had ever told her that she was “absolutely right.”

  About anything.

  And the sensation zipping along all her nerve endings—as if she were taking on solidity and existence for the first time, as if until now she had been an apparition, drifting in the shadows, a mere shimmer under the sun.

  From the other end of the bench, her mother snorted.

  Lady Holmes and Livia had come to the park together. Lady Holmes, her penchant for laudanum tippling more pronounced than ever in the wake of Charlotte’s scandal, had quickly slipped into open-jawed slumber, her cheeks slack, her parasol l
isting hard to the right, like the headsail on a capsized sloop.

  Don’t wake up. Don’t wake up!

  Lady Holmes snorted again and drew a few agitated breaths. Then her entire person slumped further. Livia exhaled, relieved to be spared her mother’s suspicions, thrilled that she wouldn’t drive the young man away with her unpleasantness.

  “I mustn’t impose any longer, miss,” said he, inclining his head. “I hope you enjoy both of Mr. Collins’s books. A very good afternoon to you.”

  Three

  Mrs. Watson was not proud of herself.

  She and Lady Ingram had never been introduced, but Mrs. Watson, like Miss Holmes, suspected that Lady Ingram knew of her existence and could recognize her on sight. Therefore, there was no reason for her to be anywhere near 18 Upper Baker Street during Lady Ingram’s call.

  Especially since she had been the one to protest that they ought to have nothing to do with Lady Ingram’s problem.

  Yet here she was, exactly where she had no business being, rearranging books on the shelves and plumping cushions that were already plenty plump, while Miss Holmes checked on the camera obscura.

  A camera obscura was usually a box with a pinhole at one end that allowed in light, which rendered as a reversed and upside-down image. When that image in a box fell upon light-sensitive material, voilà, photography.

  Here “Sherlock’s” entire room had been turned into a camera obscura. The wall opposite the door had been painted a thick white, the window fitted with two sets of black shades—in addition to the curtains already in place—to block out all exterior light. The pinhole, an opening the size of a guinea, was set in the center of a round frame that, although made for a picture an inch and a half across, was itself at least six inches wide and so ornate and protuberant that no one ever paid attention to the image it ostensibly displayed.

  The frame was one in a group of six, to lessen the chance that it would be noticed. Although Miss Holmes had never been particularly worried about it. She pointed out that their clients already knew they were being observed by someone in the next room, so they could scarcely protest that an unobtrusive method had been devised for said observation.