Penelope was still at the other house, getting ready. Mrs. Watson debated with herself whether to take advantage of her absence and ask a few questions.
Miss Holmes, returning to the parlor, settled the debate for her. “You aren’t certain, Mrs. Watson, that I harbor enough goodwill toward Lady Ingram to truly want to help her.”
On the evening Mrs. Watson offered Miss Holmes the position of a lady’s companion, Miss Holmes had been shocked that the older woman still wished to spend time with her, after Miss Holmes had laid bare not only the facts of Mrs. Watson’s life but the most closely held secret of her heart. Miss Holmes had been sure that no one wanted to be around someone who could see through them so transparently.
Belatedly Mrs. Watson realized that since then Miss Holmes had refrained from practicing her powers of deduction on Mrs. Watson. Until this moment.
“Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I’m not sure I harbor enough goodwill toward her for any philanthropic purposes.”
Miss Holmes pushed the chair that would be offered to Lady Ingram a few feet farther from the pinhole. “I feel no animosity toward her.”
But she is what stands between you and the man you love. Between you and happiness. “I find it difficult to achieve such equanimity. She is the wife of a young man I dearly adore and admire—and she has not made him happy.”
“One could also argue that he hasn’t made her happy,” Miss Holmes said, moving the chair for “Sherlock’s” sister a corresponding distance.
Mrs. Watson blinked. There was fairness and there was high-minded fairness, but Miss Holmes’s defense of Lady Ingram shot past both and landed directly in false equivalency. “She married him for his money.”
“For a woman raised to be purely ornamental, marriage is her livelihood. If Lady Ingram hadn’t married for money she would have been a fool.”
Mrs. Watson stared at Miss Holmes, who smiled a little. “I do apologize, ma’am. My sister Livia has told me repeatedly how useless I am when she wishes to rail against someone. Instead of echoing her sentiments, I analyze the situation from different perspectives.”
Together they shifted the tea table. “So you truly don’t despise Lady Ingram?”
Mrs. Watson still found it difficult to believe. Or did Miss Holmes feel guilty toward Lady Ingram, because Miss Holmes was now the object of Lord Ingram’s affection?
“For making rational choices for herself? No, I do not despise her. I do not applaud her, but I do not find her decision to marry the richest man interested in her reprehensible.”
“Even if—”
The front door downstairs opened: Penelope had arrived for her performance as Sherlock Holmes’s sister.
“Even if her rational choice hasn’t led to marital felicity for Lord Ingram?” Miss Holmes finished Mrs. Watson’s question, as Penelope bounced up the steps. “Let us not forget that he isn’t without blame in the matter.”
Before Mrs. Watson could protest that Lord Ingram’s conduct had always been above reproach, Penelope sauntered into the parlor.
Lady Ingram was slightly older than Miss Holmes.
In fact, Mrs. Watson knew the woman’s precise age, as her husband had once given extravagant balls in honor of her birthdays.
He still did: Lord Ingram was not the kind of man to publicly repudiate his wife, by either deliberate gestures or the deliberate absence of certain other gestures.
This year’s ball was coming up soon, the last major event of the Season. But Mrs. Watson no longer sent anonymous bouquets in honor of the occasion. Nor did she ask Lord Ingram whether he still gave his wife lavish gifts.
Lady Ingram was still a remarkably good-looking woman. But Mrs. Watson remembered a time when she had been heartbreakingly beautiful, with luminous skin, wide eyes, a perfectly placed beauty mark at the corner of her mouth, and a smile that conveyed just a hint of vulnerability—the sadness of the innocent, upon finding out that the world was a deeply heartless place.
Little wonder that Lord Ingram had been wildly in love with her. He was born a protector and she had aroused every last one of his protective instincts.
She had not aged badly—at mere weeks short of twenty-six she had barely aged at all. But her face had changed: Her lips had become thinner, her complexion chalkier, her jaw squarer and more prominent. And she resembled not so much her older self as a less ravishing sibling.
Or at least upside down she did.
Her inverted image on the wall, almost life-size but not quite, moving, speaking—Mrs. Watson felt as if she were in an uneasy dream.
In the parlor, Penelope was all effusive welcome—the girl was a better actress than Mrs. Watson had given her credit for. Lady Ingram sat down, rather stiffly, in the seat that had been indicated. That lack of suppleness resulted from the birth of her younger child, a back pain that never completely went away.
“Won’t you take some of this pound cake, Mrs. Finch?” Penelope addressed Lady Ingram by her alias. “Very good stuff.”
“Thank you, Miss Holmes. I’m quite all right,” said their caller.
Her voice, at least, had retained its original loveliness, a sweet contralto with a hint of huskiness.
Some back-and-forth on the weather took place. Then Penelope, her image also upside down, part of her skirt almost invisible against the darkly stained wood of the bedstead, set down her teacup and folded her hands in her lap. “You wrote to this address directly, Mrs. Finch. Should we assume you have already spoken to someone who had dealings with Sherlock?”
“That is correct.”
“May I also assume that you know the situation of my brother’s health?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like some reassurance that despite his physical handicap, his mental perspicacity remains undiminished?”
Their caller hesitated.
Penelope did not wait for her answer. “That is a yes, then.”
Hurriedly the ladies-in-hiding pulled up the black window shades and removed the rug that had been pushed up against the bottom of the door to keep out the light that might seep in from the crack. Penelope knocked, and when Mrs. Watson had given a “Come in” in a broad Yorkshire accent, she entered, retrieved a notebook, and returned to the parlor.
Back at her seat, she took a minute to peruse what had been written inside the notebook, which gave Mrs. Watson and Miss Holmes time to again block all light from the room. The images on the wall, of Penelope reading with great concentration and Lady Ingram sipping uncertainly at her tea, gradually returned.
“My brother thanks you for your trust,” said Penelope, eventually. “You’ve come on a delicate matter and he would like to assure you, Mrs. Finch, that every word spoken on these premises will be held in the strictest confidence.”
Lady Ingram fidgeted. “Thank you.”
“My brother feels it’s safe to say that you hail from very respectable stock. But that respectability hasn’t always been accompanied by as solid an income. In fact, he hazards that your parents often found themselves in financial straits. But you married well and have known only ease and stability since.”
An upside-down Lady Ingram bolted out of her chair, her head sliding past the skirting board to the floor. “Does Mr. Holmes know who I am?”
“Yours is not an unusual reaction to Sherlock’s powers of deduction,” Penelope answered calmly. “He is able to perceive a great deal based on your attire. Your visiting dress is from the House of Worth—the workmanship is impeccable. A married woman who has a wardrobe from Monsieur Worth has either deep pockets of her own, or very generous pin money from her husband.
“Your dress dates from two seasons ago and has since been altered to keep up with the whims of fashion. Your hat, however, is from this season, Madame Claudette’s, also a first-rate establishment. Which tells us that you have not become less well off, but that
you are still holding on to thriftier habits you developed in your parents’ house, that of modifying garments rather than getting rid of them wholesale at the end of a season.”
Lady Ingram sat down slowly. “I see.”
“Given your personal frugality, we can assume that you have not come to see Sherlock on a matter concerning money. Were it a problem about your children or your household, you would not have sent a letter without a return address. Clearly you do not wish for anything concerning this matter to reach your residence. That implies a problem that, if it becomes more widely known, could cause embarrassment, at the very least. Possibly much worse.
“Which leaves two possibilities. Either you feel a certain apprehension with regard to your husband or you are here to see Sherlock about a man who is not your husband.”
Mrs. Watson’s fingers dug into the sides of her chair. Miss Holmes had already said earlier that it wouldn’t be about Lord Ingram, which meant . . .
Lady Ingram bit her lower lip. “I’m surprised Mr. Holmes did not name the exact reason I’m here.”
“Sherlock wishes only that you should have confidence in his ability, Mrs. Finch, not to tell you why you have come to see him.”
Had Mrs. Watson received Lady Ingram and uttered this exact sentence, she would not have been able to prevent her words from dripping with judgment. Penelope, who adored Lord Ingram just as much, somehow managed to sound only reassuring and matter-of-fact.
“Very well then,” said Lady Ingram, taking an audible breath. “I have come to consult Mr. Holmes about a man, and that man is not my husband.”
Beside Mrs. Watson, Miss Holmes picked up a slice of plum cake and took a bite. Mrs. Watson stared at her. Lady Ingram could potentially reveal information that would give Lord Ingram grounds for divorce. Were he a free man, he could marry Miss Holmes. Yet the latter seemed far more interested in cake.
“As Mr. Holmes inferred, I am advantageously married,” said Lady Ingram. “That is the consensus and you will find no disagreement from me on that point. Pedigree, wealth, and good form—my husband possesses them all in abundance.
“But . . . perhaps I should tell you something of my girlhood. Mr. Holmes is again correct here: My parents were in a perilous state of finance. We couldn’t afford anything. And yet because of our name, because we were offshoots of an illustrious family, appearances had to be kept at all times.
“I have two younger brothers. For as long as I can remember, it had been my duty to marry well, so that they would not go through life under the same yoke of penury. But I’d hoped for a miracle. That we would, out of the blue, find ourselves beneficiaries of a generous settlement by some distant relative we’d never heard of. Not because I was a romantic who disdained the idea of marrying for money, but because I was already in love.”
Mrs. Watson sucked in a breath. Miss Holmes continued to graze on her plum cake, as if in their parlor sat a little old lady who couldn’t find her favorite slippers.
“He was poor—not to mention illegitimate,” Lady Ingram went on, her voice turning softer, dreamier. “But he was kind, sweet and sunny in temperament, and appreciative of any drop of good fortune that fell his way. We met when he was an apprentice bookkeeper. His ambition was to be an accountant in London, to be successful enough to comfortably support a wife and a family.
“A simple life, that was all he wanted. And I found it impossibly appealing. Very little in my own life wasn’t about pretenses. To give a dinner meant that the rest of the month we subsisted on bread and thin soup. Another piece of my mother’s jewelry must become paste before my father can have a new coat. One year we were so short on funds that we hired out our house and lived in a hovel, while telling everyone that we’d taken off for a tour of southern France and Italy.
“I yearned for the honest, uncomplicated life he envisioned for himself. How wonderful it would be to live as ourselves, complete nobodies who wanted only the shelter we found in each other. But of course my parents were apoplectic. My father said he would never be able to hold up his head again if it was known his daughter had married a bastard. My mother was horrified that I would be so selfish as to let my brothers suffer, when I could ensure a far better future for them.
“I was bitter. My beloved was . . . He apologized. He said he’d always known it was a futile dream and he should never have let himself hope, however briefly.”
In spite of herself, Mrs. Watson felt a pang of sympathy. She, with her history on the stage, had been an irregular candidate for marriage. But her husband had been the last surviving member of his immediate family. What if his parents had still been living? Would they have been distressed about his choice? What if he’d had siblings who took offense that he would bring such a woman into the fold? It would have made their marriage an agonizing choice—and he had been a man with an independent income, not a young girl trained from birth to defer to the will of her family.
Lady Ingram was silent for some time. “In any case, six months later I was in London for my first Season. Another few months and I was married. Before my wedding, we agreed that after I became another man’s wife we would not meet or write to each other. I also told him I would not seek his news, as to do so would be . . . I did not believe my husband would have been pleased to learn that I kept a close eye on the doings of an erstwhile sweetheart.
“But we did settle on something. Each year, on the Sunday before his birthday, at three o’clock in the afternoon, we would both walk by the Albert Memorial. And that would be how we would know that the other person was still alive and still well enough to be up and about.”
So much for Mrs. Watson’s hope that Lady Ingram would give her husband grounds for a divorce. If this was all Lady Ingram had done, it would take a far more thunderous moralizer than Mrs. Watson to condemn her for her conduct—at least with regard to this “erstwhile sweetheart.”
“We followed our agreement strictly. Once a year we passed each other before the memorial, with nothing but a nod.” Lady Ingram laced her fingers together. The column of her throat moved. “This year he was not there.”
Mrs. Watson’s hand came up to her own throat. Miss Holmes nibbled some more at her cake.
“If for some reason one or both of us could not make it, the agreement called for us to put a notice in the Times. Every year, in the weeks leading up, I always scan the notices religiously and save the papers, in case I miss something. As soon as I went home that day, I looked through all the papers again. Nothing.
“I had no idea what to do. It has been more than six years since I last spoke to him. I don’t know where he lives or what he does for a living. I don’t know whether he’s still a bachelor or married with children. I’ve put notices in the papers but have heard nothing. I’m plagued with terrible thoughts, wondering if he is . . . no more, but I can’t bring myself to go to the General Register Office to search for a death certificate.
“Of course, the far more likely explanation is that he outgrew a youthful infatuation—in fact, every year I was surprised to see him. But it isn’t as if he would fear recriminations on my part, if he were to declare that he no longer wished to see me. In fact, it would be only natural, if he’d met someone else.”
“But that he never sent word has you worried,” said Penelope.
“It’s entirely out of character for him to break a standing appointment in such a brusque manner.” Lady Ingram touched the cameo brooch at her throat, as if seeking to draw strength from it. “And then I saw the article about Mr. Holmes in the papers. I’d thought he only consulted on notorious criminal cases. But the article made it plain that he would also help those of us with less sensational problems.”
“A problem is a problem. My brother does not turn away clients because their problems fail to meet a threshold of notoriety or sensationalism.” Penelope handed Lady Ingram a plate of cake, which the latter meekly accepted. “Now, if I unders
tand you correctly, you would like for us to look into this gentleman’s disappearance.”
“Yes. I already suspect the worst. So nothing you learn will shock me. But I want to know with some certainty whether he has passed away unexpectedly, whether he has married and no longer wishes to continue our acquaintance, whether he has been imprisoned or sent abroad, et cetera, et cetera.”
“To do that we will need to know as much as you can tell us about him,” Penelope said decisively. “His name, to start. His last known domicile. Names of employers, landladies, friends. Leave nothing out.”
Lady Ingram closed her eyes briefly. “His name is Myron Finch.”
The name meant nothing to Mrs. Watson, but Miss Holmes stilled, a slice of plum cake stopping halfway to her lips. In another woman Mrs. Watson might not have noticed such a pause. But for Miss Holmes, this was a sizable—seismic, one might say—reaction.
In the parlor, Lady Ingram poured forth a torrent of ancient information concerning Myron Finch. In the bedroom, Mrs. Watson wrote on a piece of paper, You know this man, Miss Holmes. Who is he?
Miss Holmes considered the note. For a long moment Mrs. Watson had the impression that she meant to brush the question aside, but then she uncapped a fountain pen and wrote back.
Mr. Finch is my brother.
Four
“I haven’t liked her too much,” said Miss Redmayne. “But now I feel sorry for her.”
Lady Ingram had departed, leaving behind only a whiff of perfume, of the essences of neroli and gardenia.
Mrs. Watson sighed. “Her parents should not have demanded that she marry for money, rather than love.”
They were softhearted creatures. Charlotte, on the other hand, was almost as slow to sympathize as she was to condemn. She did not despise Lady Ingram for watching out for herself in the marriage mart, but neither did she think better of the woman after a tale of woe and lament. After all, it didn’t change anything she did subsequently.
A Conspiracy in Belgravia Page 5
