A Conspiracy in Belgravia

by Sherry Thomas

  It would feel like an insult if Bernadine was capable of it. Or if she hadn’t already been sitting in this exact same position when Livia had entered the room.

  Bernadine had been almost eighteen when she learned to use a spoon. And she wielded that spoon on food that had already been cut into small pieces with no more grace and accuracy than a two-year-old. But that had been progress for Bernadine, mind-boggling progress.

  Three days after Charlotte left, Bernadine had stopped feeding herself, once again needing to be spoon-fed. And Livia, who thought she’d given up on Bernadine long ago, had wept, hard, racking sobs that would not stop, all the despair in her heart condensing into a singular misery.

  Charlotte was doing better these days. But Bernadine had yet to recover any lost ground.

  Livia glanced at the untouched bowl on a stool next to Bernadine. She glanced at Bernadine, seated on the floor, staring at where the walls joined, barely two feet away from her, and felt a burning desire to be out in the wildest, most sweeping space in all of Britain.

  It was going to be a long evening.

  Five

  Mrs. Watson couldn’t stop shaking her head.

  Miss Holmes had brought up the previous week’s papers from the domestic offices in the basement of the house: Newsprint, terrifically useful for all kinds of household purposes, was never thrown away. And it didn’t take her long to find and decipher Lady Ingram’s messages to Mr. Finch.

  M, are you well? Your silence worries me more than your absence. I pray for your health and well-being. A

  M, a word is all I need. Let me know you are well and you need say nothing else. A

  M, I can neither eat nor sleep. Please do not keep me in ignorance. A

  M, my heart still flickers with hope, but the flame thins daily. A

  M, am I truly never to hear from you again? A

  “These are all the notices?” asked Mrs. Watson, still shaking her head.

  Miss Holmes nodded. “The first one appeared on Wednesday and the last in today’s paper.”

  Such an escalation of despair, even as each subsequent message grew shorter and shorter, like an old woman shrinking under the weight of her years.

  “I wonder if she held out as long as she could against this need to know exactly what happened,” murmured Mrs. Watson. “And perhaps once she gave in, she couldn’t stop: The lengthier his silence, the more she needs him to respond.”

  In recent years, Lady Ingram had always appeared extraordinarily self-possessed, as if her skin were not made of flesh and blood, but an adamantine, unassailable substance. The hurt and desperation in her appeals, however, made Mrs. Watson recall the debutante with a hint of sadness in her eyes.

  Love, the saboteur of all defenses.

  A soft knock came at the door. Mr. Mears. Mrs. Watson’s heart thumped. It was embarrassing how much she needed to know the truth of the matter. And downright shocking how much she wanted to tell Lady Ingram that Mr. Finch had been abed with a broken limb, drifting in and out of a laudanum haze. “Do come in, Mr. Mears. Do you have news for us?”

  Mr. Mears had put away the wire-rimmed glasses and removed most of the pomade he’d put into his hair for the role. Now he once again resembled the elfin young man Mrs. Watson had first met, when she herself had been a grass-green girl, overwhelmed by the raucousness and sheer indifference of London.

  “I introduced myself to the landlady as solicitor to Mr. Finch’s father. She didn’t doubt I was who I said I was and was very complimentary to Mr. Finch. She thought him a fine young man, courteous and personable and no trouble at all to his landlady. But according to her, he has gone on holiday—left two days ago and isn’t expected to return until Sunday next.”

  “Holiday? Where?” But that was impossible. “He isn’t incapacitated?”

  “Nothing Mrs. Woods said would indicate that he wasn’t in the finest of health and spirits at the time of his departure. She didn’t feel herself at liberty to disclose his precise destination but mentioned that he had promised to fetch her a souvenir.”

  “What about his bills?” asked Miss Holmes, her fingers tented together under her chin.

  “He paid up in full before he left—reduced rates of course, since he wouldn’t need cooking, washing, or attendance while he was away.”

  Miss Holmes’s brow furrowed, a barely perceptible crease. Mrs. Watson asked a few more questions, but the answers she received were all variations on a theme: No one at Mrs. Woods’s saw the least need to be concerned for Mr. Finch’s well-being.

  Mr. Mears withdrew to enjoy the rest of his Sunday. Mrs. Watson paced the length of the room, utterly befuddled. If Mrs. Woods was correct—and there was no reason she wouldn’t be—this meant that Myron Finch had been very much in London Sunday a week ago and could easily have walked by the Albert Memorial for a fleeting glimpse of his beloved. That he had gone about his normal life for several days afterward before gallivanting off to his holiday clearly indicated he was not bothered by the breaking of a long-standing tradition.

  “I guess you were right not to worry, Miss Holmes. But this was the last thing I expected.”

  When Miss Holmes didn’t reply immediately, Mrs. Watson chuckled self-consciously. “You’ll probably tell me that expectations are squirrelly things—better not to have them.”

  Miss Holmes rolled a pencil between her palms. Her hands were a little plump and looked remarkably pliant. “I try not to expect people to be who I wish them to be, rather than who they are. But the kind of expectations you speak of, ma’am, deal with probabilities. I have nothing against those. Without them, it’d be difficult to mark anything as out of the ordinary.”

  “So you agree this is out of the ordinary?”

  Miss Holmes spun the pencil between her fingers, a blithe motion. In contrast, her features were drawn, colored not with the bewilderment Mrs. Watson saw on her own face each time she passed the mirror on the wall, but a somberness that verged on disquietude.

  Compared to someone like Penelope, whose brows waggled and danced and whose lips stretched into hundreds of exaggeratedly eloquent shapes, Miss Holmes’s expression could seem as unchanging and inscrutable as Mona Lisa’s. But Mrs. Watson was becoming more skilled at reading the minute deviations.

  Earlier in the day Miss Holmes had not been worried about her brother. She had been surprised by the connection between Lady Ingram and Mr. Finch but had viewed the latter’s absence as but another quotidian oddity one quick explanation away from being no oddity at all.

  But now she had changed her mind.

  “Perhaps we should question some of our assumptions,” she said.

  It took Mrs. Watson a good minute to even see her own assumptions. Her eyes widened. “We assumed that because Lady Ingram has been fervent in her devotion to this young man, he must love her to the same extent. Perhaps he has been showing up yearly more out of pity than passion. Perhaps he has been hoping that Lady Ingram would come to her senses and put a stop to these rendezvous—that way he’d be able to maintain an appearance of having never rebuffed her. But over time it became too great a burden. Instead of informing her he no longer wished to participate, he struck a decisive blow.”

  Miss Holmes appeared contemplative. “That is certainly one assumption we must now question. I wonder what else we have accepted as given that perhaps we shouldn’t.”

  “Good gracious. Do you think we ought to question whether he loved her at all? She said that her family sought to maintain appearances above all else. It’s possible that he was a social climber who didn’t realize that her family’s financial situation was so precarious. It’s again possible that he had maintained this yearly not-quite-contact with her out of a hope that she might stop being so fastidious about the boundaries of marriage and either undertake an affair with him or furnish him with introductions that will allow him into milieus that provide rich
targets for a fortune hunter.”

  Her heart ached for all the ways it could have gone wrong for the former Alexandra Greville. For all the ways things could go wrong for any woman, really.

  “Do you suppose, ma’am,” said Miss Holmes, “that Mr. Mears’s report is sufficient evidence to bring before Lady Ingram?”

  Mrs. Watson didn’t know whether it was disconcerting or reassuring that Miss Holmes didn’t seem to feel any pity for Lady Ingram. “I can tell you right now that Lady Ingram will not accept this account. Even I have trouble accepting it and I’ve known Mr. Mears for more than thirty years.”

  Again, only the smallest movement in the muscles of Miss Holmes’s face, but Mrs. Watson felt the consulting detective was relieved that the case was not yet at an end. “We will bide our time until Mr. Finch’s return then—and see if he truly is as cheerfully unrepentant as his choices suggest.”

  “A week is an eternity for a woman waiting on news of her lover.”

  Mrs. Watson saw herself standing on the veranda of her small bungalow in Rawalpindi, after the Battle of Maiwand. It had been a hot day. Waves upon waves of heat and humidity battered her, and yet she’d grown colder with every passing minute.

  Miss Holmes studied her, as if she were witnessing the exact same thing. Then she walked to the sideboard, poured a glass of whisky, and brought it to Mrs. Watson. “I’ll see what I can learn in the meanwhile.”

  Livia muttered a curse at herself as she slipped out the back door of the house.

  Now she regretted telling Charlotte about the young man from the park. Now she wished she hadn’t so blithely left the letter in its designated hiding spot for Mott, their groom and coachman, to post when he went about his duties on the morrow. Why hadn’t she realized sooner that it was a stupid idea to mention the young man at all, let alone state so plainly—in writing, no less—that she wished she could meet him again? She might as well wish to reconnect with the drop of rain that fell exactly on the tip of her nose and made her laugh when she was ten years old.

  And she would have about as much chance of success!

  At least it was dark and no one would see her: Lady Holmes was already abed; Sir Henry had gone out again. A narrow lane separated the handkerchief-size gardens behind the houses and the row of stables that held the residents’ cattle and carriages. The air was thick with the odors of horse, straw, and horse droppings, topped with an incongruous note of sweetness from a neighbor’s profusely blooming honeysuckles.

  She knocked on the door of the Holmes stable and prayed that she wouldn’t have to pound on it with both fists before Mott would hear. To her surprise, the door opened quickly.

  “Is everything all right, Miss Livia?” asked Mott.

  He was about thirty years old, a man of dark hair, medium height, and somewhat stocky build. Charlotte once mentioned that she thought him nearsighted, but he had yet to drive a carriage into a lamppost.

  Livia squeezed past him. It wouldn’t do for her to remain outside the door—she would be that much more easily seen in the light spilling out. “I need my letter back, Mott. You still have it?”

  A nonplussed Mott closed the door. “Yes, miss. I’ll fetch it.”

  He climbed up to the loft that served as his lodging, the ladder squeaking with his every step.

  The place smelled of leather polish, wheel grease, and ammonia. Livia looked around. She hadn’t been in here since shortly after Charlotte ran away, to ask for Mott’s help in getting her letters to Charlotte and vice versa. It was as tidy as she remembered. A town coach—hired for the Season—occupied one side. The other side was taken up by four stalls, but only two were occupied, a pair of fidgety bays that were also hired for the Season. Stirrups and coils of ropes hung from large wooden pegs; an array of brushes, scrapers, and homemade pastes lined an uneven-looking shelf.

  Mott came back down the ladder, her letter clasped between his lips.

  “Thank you,” she said, when he handed her the letter. And then, without much hope, she added, “Have you spoken to my father about staying on with us?”

  Mott, like the carriage and the horses, was hired only for the Season: Appearances must be maintained, and someone had to drive Lady Holmes and her daughters about town. At home in the country, they shared a gardener-groom with their nearest neighbor and drove themselves.

  Normally Livia did not inquire into prospects of continued employment for members of the staff. Her parents were not easy or kind and she had become inured to the coming and going of servants. But Mott had been truly helpful this summer.

  And he didn’t seem to dislike her, which made him rather extraordinary in her eyes, since most people didn’t care for her particular kind of high-strung self-consciousness. Still, it had been an act of desperation on her part, asking him to speak with Sir Henry about his chances of remaining with the Holmeses beyond the Season. But he was now her only ally and she didn’t want to rusticate in the country for nine months without a single person she could count on.

  “He ain’t been in a proper mood lately,” said Mott.

  Livia couldn’t disagree with that assessment.

  One would think her father would be thrilled to be cleared of all suspicions with regard to the death of his erstwhile fiancée, with whom he had been heard to argue in the hours shortly before her sudden demise. And to learn that it was his good fortune to have been jilted by Lady Amelia Drummond after all, as the Sackville affair had shown her ladyship to have been of singularly questionable character and judgment.

  But no, Sir Henry had been furious instead.

  According to Charlotte, he felt outraged that a woman of such inferior moral fiber had rejected him. And he was further incensed that as she was already six feet underground, he couldn’t possibly berate her as she deserved.

  As a result, there had not been an opportune moment for Mott to approach Sir Henry.

  Nor was he very likely to find one before the end of the Season.

  “Well, don’t give up hope,” said Livia, more for her own benefit than his.

  Mott opened the door for her. “I shan’t, Miss Livia.”

  Lord Ingram met his wife on the stairs—he was headed up to the nursery to say good night to his children, and she had just come from there.

  “My lady,” he said, keeping his voice free of inflections.

  She nodded coolly. “My lord.”

  Over the years they had come to a domestic arrangement that enabled them to spend as much time apart as possible, while still ostensibly living as man and wife. They took their meals separately, simple enough when she had her morning cocoa in bed and he availed himself of luncheons at his clubs. And during the Season it was particularly easy to avoid each other at dinner: Whether they dined out or hosted dinner parties at home, it was Society’s unspoken rule that such occasions were not for chitchat between husband and wife, but socializing with others.

  With regard to the children, too, they had come to an unspoken agreement: He breakfasted with them on weekdays and took them out Sunday afternoons; she lunched with them on weekdays and had the nursery to herself Sunday evenings.

  She would have tucked the children in bed just now—had she managed the feat five minutes sooner, as she usually did, they would not have run into each other. Come to think of it, she had also been late coming back home this afternoon. He didn’t mind spending more time with his children, but it was uncharacteristic of her to be less than punctual.

  She descended past him, her steps impatient.

  “Did you use the typewriter in the study, by the way?”

  He did not say my typewriter or my study. But she must have heard something to that effect. She turned around. “Would you like me not to, in the future?”

  “You are at perfect liberty to avail yourself of anything in this house. I was only curious—you do not ordinarily require a typewriter.”
<
br />   “Sometimes I wish for my correspondence to be typewritten,” she said, her tone civil but distant.

  He wasn’t sure what had led him to ask the question in the first place. Something about his wife felt different of late. Charlotte Holmes would be able to tell him exactly what constituted that disparity; he, not blessed with Sherlockian faculties of observation, had to rely on his gut, which didn’t tell him how or why, but only that he should pay attention.

  Was it possible she was having an affair? He had yet to betray his marriage vows; he didn’t think she had either. Not to mention that for a while now, he’d had the impression that romantic entanglement was the last thing she was after.

  But did it behoove him to be more watchful, in case she gave him grounds for divorce? Would he actually put those grounds to use? Was he hardened enough to tear his children from their mother, who, despite her flaws as a wife, had always been a caring parent?

  And if he was never going to divorce her, what would he gain by finding out whether she might be having an affair?

  “I wish you a good evening, Lady Ingram,” he said.

  Charlotte walked into her room, shut the door, and leaned back against it, a hand over her face.

  It had been a long, strange day, from Lord Bancroft’s proposal to Mr. Finch’s nondisappearance. And to think, only a little more than twenty-four hours ago, she had kissed Lord Ingram. Very briefly, to be sure, but the first time in more than a decade, a moment of stark, all-engrossing heat.

  Events were easy to deal with. Emotional responses, less so. They were not crisp or factual. They mutated at will. They expanded to fill all available space in one’s consciousness and left no room for anything else.

  And no clarity with which to think.

  The situation with Mr. Finch was too incongruous to be normal. But between Lady Ingram’s anguish, Mrs. Watson’s distress, and her own discomfort with having Lady Ingram as a client, Charlotte couldn’t pin down exactly what was bothering her.