A Conspiracy in Belgravia

by Sherry Thomas

  This was news to Charlotte. “Let me guess. Mr. Hayward was new to London, or at least new to this friend. The friend knows nothing of his origins. And the police haven’t been able to find out anything either.”

  “That . . . does happen to be the case.”

  “Then it doesn’t matter by what name the victim has been identified.”

  “Let’s put aside for a moment the name of the dead man. What I do not understand is why Stephen Marbleton introduced himself to Miss Livia. To contact her was to court your attention. The moment you saw him, his guise would be penetrated—which was more or less what happened. Do you mean to tell me that the Marbletons had no idea of the connection between Livia Holmes and Sherlock Holmes?”

  Good. He didn’t dismiss her theory out of hand. Instead, he challenged it on reasonable grounds and left it up to her to justify her assertions.

  It was a sad comment on the state of humanity that his willingness to take her seriously counted as a very large point in his favor, when really it should be considered a bare minimum in civil discourse.

  “In Mrs. Marbleton’s letter to me near the end of the Sackville case, she specifically wished me success in my endeavors as Sherlock Holmes—given the resourcefulness of that clan, it would be careless to assume that they didn’t know I am none other than the disgraced Charlotte Holmes, daughter of Sir Henry Holmes. As for why Mr. Marbleton approached Livia, I can only suppose it must have been a matter of necessity.

  “Mr. Finch had been removed for a reason. Mr. Marbleton is impersonating him for a reason. It’s possible Mr. Marbleton believed that Mr. Finch’s relations knew something—something crucial.”

  “But you yourself told me just now that no one in your family ever had any personal interactions with Mr. Finch,” Lord Bancroft pointed out. “Your father, only via his solicitors. Your sisters, resistant to the idea of becoming acquainted with their illegitimate brother. What could they possibly know about a man they had never met?”

  “Sometimes one knows things without understanding what one knows. I, without having ever met Mr. Finch, could be said to have known of his demise for days—I have even examined his body. But until more information came to light, I didn’t know what I knew. Perhaps Mr. Marbleton sought a single missing piece, which he was convinced a member of my family might unwittingly possess.”

  Lord Bancroft’s brows drew together—he really wasn’t an unhandsome man. “I’m not sure I’m fully convinced of your theory, Miss Holmes, but I’m willing to look into this business with Mr. Finch.”

  Yet another point in his favor: Not only was he willing to listen, but he was willing to act—even if it would be only a simple command issued to a subordinate. “The real Mr. Finch, or the imposter?”

  “Both.”

  But she was not finished yet with her theories. She was curious to see what he thought of the next one. “After the conclusion of the Sackville affair, I went to Somerset House and looked up marriage records for Sophia Lonsdale. When I found out that she was married to someone named Moriarty, I asked Lord Ingram whether he knew of the name. He went to you, and you warned him to steer clear of the man.”

  “I did.”

  “Officially, Sophia Lonsdale died many years ago. From what I’d been able to gather, it had been reported as a skiing accident. Upon learning that Moriarty was not a man to be trifled with, I assumed that she had begun to find life with him intolerable and had therefore staged her own death in order to escape. But now I’m not so certain.

  “What if, instead of a one-sided scheme, it was a jointly planned, jointly executed ruse? Perhaps they realized that she was a potential weakness for him—that his enemies could harm him by targeting her. But if those enemies believed her dead, then that was one significant vulnerability neutralized.”

  Lord Bancroft leaned forward an inch. “Are you implying that Moriarty is involved in this affair?”

  “More than implying, I should hope,” said Charlotte. “I am stating it outright. That Vigenère cipher always struck me as excessive. And the Braille on the dead man’s garments—ridiculously complicated. Then I remembered the ciphers Mrs. Marbleton presented when she first called on me. They were much simpler, of course, but still had a similarly Baroque feel.

  “It may be that for those in orbit around Moriarty, communicating in code is deemed as necessary and indispensable as wearing hats for going out. I posit that the Vigenère code I deciphered wasn’t a transmission of vital information so much as a test, to see whether the recipient could find his way to the house in Hounslow. It’s my further contention that the dead man, in the Braille he left behind, wasn’t trying to signal a detective from the Metropolitan Police but a fellow member of the organization, someone more accustomed to looking for such clues everywhere, especially in unexpected places.”

  “You think the dead man, Mr. Finch by your contention, was one of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “It would imply that there had been a schism in the organization, that the death was fratricidal.”

  “Yes.”

  Lord Bancroft’s expression turned speculative. “I’d like for you to be correct. Any division on their part is good news for me.”

  “But perhaps not for long. After they stamp out dissension, they could become more efficient and more ruthless.”

  “Or it could embroil the entire organization in upheaval and reprisals.” He looked at her. “I’m an opportunist, Miss Holmes. I must be prepared for any and all opportunities.”

  Such as a time when a woman who had previously turned him down found herself no longer in a position to do so? “Naturally,” she replied.

  “And opportunist that I am, I must seize the occasion to invite you to remain for luncheon.”

  Charlotte consulted her watch. It was almost time for luncheon, yet another point in his favor for not neglecting his—or her—stomach. “Thank you. I’ll be glad to join you.”

  She must still eat, even on the day she found out that she had most likely met her brother as a dead man.

  Luncheon was the afterthought among meals. Breakfast was a necessity, dinner had its swagger, tea everyone was fond of, but luncheon usually limped by with a few leftover cuts from the night before, a bit of bread and cheese thrown in.

  Lord Bancroft’s luncheon, however, featured thin, crispy chicken cutlets, an excellent veal-and-ham pie, an even better cold plum pudding, and an abundance of summer berries to enjoy in a manner Charlotte had never been exposed to before, dipped into a small dish of condensed milk.

  She understood condensed milk to be very popular in America, resulting from its ubiquity as rations for soldiers during the Civil War. But here in Britain, condensed milk had something of a dubious reputation. And yet she couldn’t argue that a strawberry with just a tiny dot of sweetened condensed milk was utterly delightful.

  “I didn’t know condensed milk could be put to uses other than feeding infants deprived of mother’s milk,” she said.

  “At home my cook has found an even better use for it,” said Lord Bancroft. He looked completely at ease in a dining room that was as gaudy as the drawing room, one step up—or down, she had no way of knowing—from what she imagined a brothel with some aspirations must look like. “Condensed milk, heated gently for a few hours in simmering water, will turn into a kind of milk jam, with a taste rather like very soft caramel.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “My reaction precisely.” Lord Bancroft studied Charlotte. “I hope this news further tilts you in favor of my proposal?”

  “It does,” Charlotte had to admit.

  Charlotte believed that romantic love was a perishable item, at its freshest and most delicious for a limited amount of time before turning stale, if not outright putrescent. As a woman who put no stock in the primacy of love, she ought to be perfectly amenable to his offer.

  Alas, there was th
e little matter of preference: She infinitely preferred being on her own to being Lord Bancroft’s wife. The only question was, at a moment like this, how much importance should she give her own decided preference?

  “Good,” said he. “Perhaps you, Mrs. Watson, and Miss Redmayne will consider dinner at my house one of these days? It would be my honor to host the three of you.”

  When he had said that he would not object to her further association with Mrs. Watson, she had assumed that he meant he would not forbid her from slipping out and calling on Mrs. Watson, as if she were conducting an illicit rendezvous. She had no idea he was open to receiving either Mrs. Watson or Miss Redmayne in his own home. “I’ll be delighted to convey your invitation.”

  She was almost afraid to ask whether he had changed his mind about her taking clients as Sherlock Holmes.

  Lord Bancroft inclined his head. “And your sisters, are they well?”

  Ah, he knew exactly where to press his advantage. This, she approved of. They were, after all, grown-ups in something approaching a negotiation. He was free to remind her, using every means at hand, that she really was in no position to negotiate at all.

  Before she could answer, a servant announced, “Lord Ingram to see you, my lord.”

  Lord Ingram entered, dressed in a grey lounge suit, cut loosely and of very modest material—someone who didn’t know better might mistake him for a bicycle messenger. His boots and trouser legs had the telltale splashes, too—too muddy to have originated in London, though, what with the roads and functional sewage system the great metropolis currently enjoyed.

  Country mud, then, no more than two hours old.

  The papers might be able to tell her which places, within two hours by rail, had the right kind of weather. The papers might even provide clues on why he had rushed back to London to speak to Bancroft in person, instead of using a coded telegraph.

  Unlike Livia, Charlotte found the papers wonderfully illuminating. But one had to know where to look—it was often in pieces that didn’t grace the front page or sentences outside the first twenty paragraphs of an article that the true significance of the matter accidentally shone through.

  Lord Ingram reacted to her presence at his brother’s table as she had expected him to, his surprise—and was that a trace of alarm?—quickly and thoroughly contained. “Miss Holmes, how do you do? Bancroft, a word with you.”

  Lord Bancroft excused himself. The brothers left the room. A few minutes later, Lord Ingram returned by himself and sat down. “Bancroft sends his regrets, Holmes. Pressing matters, et cetera.”

  It shouldn’t have come as such a relief to hear him address her as Holmes, but it did. Holmes meant they were on good terms. Or, at least, normal terms. “Of course. And how do you do, my lord?”

  They had not seen each other since the day they discovered the significance of the house in Hounslow. In the meanwhile, his hair had been cut shorter—but the difference was most pronounced in how much more she noticed the bone structure of his face.

  “I’ve been well enough. You?”

  She thought of the dust sheet—of herself, with no feelings whatsoever, pulling it back and revealing the body underneath. “Same. I assume I shouldn’t inquire into what you have been doing with yourself since you abruptly deserted me Saturday last.”

  “You can inquire but I won’t be able to answer—forgive me. And you, what have you been doing?”

  His wife’s frantic letter came to mind, as well as the desperate hope in her eyes, the last time Charlotte saw her in person. No, I’m afraid this is all wrong. You must have found a different Mr. Finch.

  And she had been right all along.

  “Interestingly enough, I also cannot answer. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

  Lord Ingram’s eyes bored into Charlotte. His mind didn’t work in remotely the same fashion as hers: Whereas hers dealt in cold, swift calculations of logic and facts, his relied much more heavily on a finely honed instinct. Good instinct, the way she saw it, was but logic and facts processed by the gut rather than the cerebrum—he might not be able to enumerate each step of the analysis, but that didn’t mean the conclusion he reached was any less sound.

  “You have done something,” he stated. “You are not issuing a general apology, as I was. You are asking me, specifically, to forgive you.”

  She dipped a raspberry into the dish of condensed milk—and left it there. “You are right.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “And that is all the answer I am to receive?”

  His gaze was on her fingers, still nudging the raspberry around in its milky bath. His arm braced along the back of the next chair, a seemingly relaxed gesture that radiated latent power. Beneath the unassuming brown waistcoat and the humble white shirt, his chest rose and fell evenly, steadily—he was waiting.

  She made him wait some more, eating the raspberry with the speed of a tired snail—this time not tasting anything.

  He raised a brow.

  She sighed inwardly. “Strictly speaking I’ve done nothing wrong. But things are complicated and I’ll probably be held to blame for certain decisions on my part that placed my integrity as an investigator above my loyalty as a friend.”

  “Usually you speak with greater clarity and directness.” He lifted his eyes to her face. “Should I understand, from all that verbiage, that you have done something that might be construed as disloyal to me?”

  She nodded, distracted for the moment by the motion of his thumb, slowly caressing the crest rail of the adjacent chair.

  “In the course of your work as Sherlock Holmes?”

  She nodded again, still distracted by the way his fingers grazed the notches and swirls atop the ornate chair.

  “Be more specific.”

  With some regret, she looked away from his hand. “I can’t. I can’t say anything beyond what I’ve already said.”

  “You think this will anger me?”

  If nodding could reduce extra chins she would have whittled hers down to only one point two. “But it does not harm you in the not-knowing.”

  Their eyes met, his cool and dark. “Are you asking me to trust you?”

  “I’m letting you know that I’m in the middle of something that you will not like, if you knew what it was.”

  His eyes narrowed. “There are a great many things I don’t like. But losing a polo match, for instance, is not the same as my house burning down.”

  She could only repeat herself. “I can’t say anything beyond what I’ve already said.”

  He was silent.

  “I’m sorry,” she heard herself murmur.

  Soundlessly his fingers tapped the crest rail on which they rested, each one by turn. “Years ago, you said something to me. I don’t remember it word for word, but in essence, you told me that men, even otherwise sensible men, fall under the illusion that they will be able to find a perfect woman. That the problem lies not in the search so much as in the definition of perfection, which is a beautiful female who will integrate seamlessly into a man’s life, bringing with her exactly the right amount of intelligence, wit, and interests to align with his, in order to brighten every aspect of his existence.”

  She remembered that conversation, one of the most disharmonious they had ever held, on the subject of the future Lady Ingram.

  “You warned me against believing in that illusion—and I was highly displeased. I didn’t say so at the time, but as we parted, I thought that you’d certainly never be mistaken for a perfect woman. It was beyond evident you’d never fit readily into any man’s life, and no one could possibly think that the purpose of your life was to be anything other than who you were.

  “At the time, those were not kind thoughts. They flew about my head with a great deal of scorn—venom, even. My opinion of you hasn’t changed, by the way. But nowadays I think those same thoughts with much resignation but
even more admiration.” Their eyes met again. His were still the same mysterious dark, but now there was a warmth to them, a deep affection tinged, as he said, with much resignation but even more admiration. “I’m sure I’ll fly off the handle and accuse you of all kinds of perfidy once I learn what you’ve been up to, but let it not be said that I don’t know who I’m dealing with. We disagree often, and that is a fact of our friendship.”

  He reached across the table and took away the berries and the dish of condensed milk. “But for your penance, and because I’m hungrier than you, these have been confiscated.”

  She watched him eat. How did preferences arise? Was it due to the arrangement of features or the modulation of voice? Certainly it couldn’t be argued that Lord Bancroft was less wise or less powerful than Lord Ingram. Yet one brother invoked in her a bland and rather aloof approval, while the other . . .

  “Little did you know, these were forbidden fruits,” she told him. “And I will extract payment in exchange.”

  “Huh,” he said in response.

  “I believe there is a darkroom in this house. And I believe you, time permitting, develop negatives for Bancroft. I would like to have a copy of a photograph.”

  “Which photograph?”

  “A clear image of the face of the victim from the house in Hounslow.”

  He put down his fork. “Why do you want it?”

  She explained, omitting Lady Ingram’s name and general background. He listened with some incredulity. “You understand it isn’t likely for the man to be your half brother.”

  “I do understand that. Yet I am compelled to think so, unless proven otherwise. I’d like a photograph, so that I can show it to those who actually did know him. That way I’ll know for sure, one way or another.”

  “You shouldn’t further involve yourself in this matter. If it’s as you said, and Moriarty or his associates are involved . . .”

  “I’m only trying to find out if he was my brother.”

  “And what will you do if he does turn out to have been just that?”