“The crate!” cried Sergeant Ellerby, catching on.
“From the lavender house it’s about a furlong to the icehouse. Still no small distance to move a dead woman but doable for two men, or even one very strong one.”
“So if you are right, we should see an open, empty crate in the lavender house?”
“That is possible,” said Holmes. “At the very least, we should see that the lavender house’s lock has been tampered with.”
And the padlock that had once secured the lavender house was indeed absent. Sergeant Ellerby exclaimed and went down on all fours. “I see bits of metal filings near the threshold—still new and shiny. The servant Mr. Walsh sent to accompany the men with the crate would have locked the door after the crate was put in. So when these men came back for the crate again, they must have used a bolt cutter on the lock.”
He opened the door excitedly.
Alas, the lavender house contained no open, empty crate.
Sergeant Ellerby glanced uncertainly at Holmes. But it was Lord Ingram, his heart thumping, who said, “There are only two new crates here—these two.”
He set his gloved hand atop a stack of crates placed against the far wall, between sturdy metal shelves that held a number of boxes and other crates marked fragile and this side up. “Everything else was already here earlier. If Mr. Walsh is right and a third crate came the day before Lady Ingram was discovered—well, that crate is gone.”
“But . . . wouldn’t it have been easier to open it here and carry only the body to the icehouse?” puzzled Sergeant Ellerby.
“Look at the floor,” said Holmes, pointing down. “Ash, would your servants have been so untidy?”
Elsewhere a few pieces of straw and wood splinters would not have been considered untidy in a rarely visited outbuilding. But this was Stern Hollow, where meticulousness was not an aspiration but a minimum standard. Lord Ingram’s heart thumped harder. “They wouldn’t. All the senior servants believe that cleanliness is next to godliness, and they have trained those under them accordingly.”
Holmes nodded. “So the men who came later did uncrate in here.”
“Then what did they do with the crate?” asked Sergeant Ellerby. “The gatehouse keeper might not mind a crate coming in. But wouldn’t he think it strange to see men leaving with one?”
Holmes turned to Lord Ingram. “When I first visited here, I was given a map at the gatehouse. I remember more than one entrance marked on the map.”
“So they could have left a different way and not been seen,” marveled Sergeant Ellerby.
“Normally I would say no,” said Lord Ingram, doing his best to keep his voice even, “because the only other entrance that would let a cart through doesn’t have a manned gatehouse and is almost always locked. But if those men had a bolt cutter and a willingness to use it . . .”
“Get us some horses, Ash. Let’s ride out that way,” said Holmes.
The unused entrance, from a distance, appeared properly shut. But when the company drew near, they saw that the two halves of the gate had been fastened together with nothing more than a length of rope, the chain and heavy padlock that usually secured them nowhere to be seen.
Rain was coming down hard again. They had borrowed some mackintoshes from the coach house, but Lord Ingram’s trousers were soaking wet. And he could barely feel the tips of his fingers.
“I’m no expert,” Sergeant Ellerby shouted to be heard above the rain. “But I didn’t see any signs that would indicate our quarries veered off the driving lane to get rid of the crate. Why do you think they took it with them?”
“They might simply be cautious,” replied Holmes.
“Or perhaps they needed it for some other reason,” said Lord Ingram, still searching the ground, his boots squelching in the mud.
“Maybe,” said Holmes. “It’s getting dark and the rain isn’t helping. Let’s go back to the house!”
As much as he would have preferred to pursue the men with the crate—or at least find some hints as to where they had been headed, she was right. It was too late in the day to see anything, and with cold, wet trousers plastered to his person, he might come across pneumonia first.
He helped her up her horse. “Good work,” he said, in a volume meant for only her ears.
“Thank you, my lord.” She leaned down and murmured, “And do you know what I want in return for all my good work?”
His heart skipped several beats. “What?”
“Three hundred quid in compensation.” She squeezed his hand through their sodden gloves. “Mrs. Watson will send an invoice.”
Chief Inspector Fowler spoke again to Finney, the young servant who first stumbled upon Lady Ingram’s body. The boy was confused to hear talk of a different lock and insisted that he, in his short time at Stern Hollow at least, had ever seen only one lock on the icehouse, the one he opened every time he went there, including the day he found Lady Ingram.
The discrepancy made Treadles’ palms perspire.
After Fowler dismissed the boy, he informed the house steward that he wished to tour Lord and Lady Ingram’s private chambers. Mr. Walsh, not exactly in a position to deny him the request, reminded him that Sergeant Ellerby and his men had already looked through the rooms’ contents.
“Nevertheless, we wish to examine them again.”
Mr. Walsh led the way himself, his gait stiff with disapproval.
Lady Ingram’s rooms, where they stopped first, felt as if they had never been occupied. Dust sheets covered everything, which, in the lamplight, seemed like so many bulky ghosts. Her dressing room, which should have housed a resplendent collection, was three quarters empty. Her clothes, like the woman herself, had never returned from London.
And the décor here had a different feel from the rest of the house, more opulent yet somehow, at the same time, stodgier.
“Empire style,” mused Fowler, “while most of the other rooms we have seen are more modern.”
Treadles recalled what ladies Avery and Somersby had said during their interview, that they suspected a secret oppression on Lord Ingram’s part. They had given as example that Lady Ingram had not left any imprint on Stern Hollow—that it had seemed to belong wholly to her husband.
“Lady Ingram had very little interest in the decoration of domiciles. She was satisfied with how her rooms appeared and didn’t want men traipsing through, changing everything,” Mr. Walsh said with staunch loyalty to his employer, the one who was still alive.
Lord Ingram’s chambers, in contrast, though of the exact same dimension as his late wife’s, felt light and airy. Instead of Old Masters artworks, which populated the public rooms of the house, here on the walls were hung charcoal sketches of archaeological sites. Treadles recognized the one depicting the site on the Isles of Scilly, where they’d all enjoyed such a convivial time—and where he had first heard the name Sherlock Holmes.
The one that had pride of place—over the mantel—was labeled simply Roman Villa. Treadles recalled that Lord Ingram had written a small volume about the finding and excavation, when he was an adolescent, of a minor Roman ruin on his uncle’s property.
“Inspector, if you would bring some more light here, please?” Fowler called from the dressing room.
Treadles brought in a seven-branch candelabra and lit all the tapers. Fowler was on his knees on the large, luxurious rug at the center of the spacious room. Before him lay a boot box that had been opened.
“I’m sure if you need to inspect any items from the dressing room, his lordship’s valet will be more than happy to assist,” said Mr. Walsh, his voice almost high-pitched with anxiety.
“Thank you but we are capable of helping ourselves,” said Fowler, in a tone that brooked no dissent. Then, more quietly, to Treadles: “I found these at the very back. Take a look.”
The boots were old and worn and seemed thoroughly unremarkable. But when Treadles lifted them up, he saw what Fowler had seen: The soles were encrusted with coal dust.
&
nbsp; There had been coal dust on the floor of the icehouse.
Of course, this wasn’t conclusive evidence that Lord Ingram had been inside the icehouse before Lady Ingram was found. Treadles would be surprised if the boy, Finney, didn’t have some coal dust on his soles, from fetching enough coal to power kitchen stoves that daily must cook for a staff of eighty.
But again, this did not look good for Lord Ingram.
Treadles exhaled slowly, trying to contain a rising panic. Charlotte Holmes had better be quick with exculpatory evidence—Scotland Yard was proceeding at a blistering pace.
Fowler, satisfied that Treadles had understood the significance of the boots, went on to search the rest of the apartment.
They left with the boots, which Fowler gave to a constable, since Sergeant Ellerby, according to a most unhappy Mr. Walsh, had gone out with Lord Ingram and Mr. Holmes.
“I think it behooves us to examine the icehouse one more time, don’t you think?” said Fowler.
They’d brought mackintoshes, but that did not make the walk to the icehouse much more pleasant. The constable stationed at the icehouse had retreated to inside the first antechamber, where he sat on a stool, huddled over a brazier that the house had provided.
“Chief Inspector! Inspector!” He leaped up and saluted.
“Why is it so wet in here?” asked Fowler. “Does the door leak?”
“No, sir. Sergeant Ellerby, Lord Ingram, and—”
The door to the second antechamber opened, and out came Sergeant Ellerby, Lord Ingram, and Miss Holmes.
“Chief Inspector, Inspector,” said Sergeant Ellerby, his teeth chattering, “here to have another look at the icehouse? Us, too.”
“Great minds think alike,” added “Sherrinford Holmes,” whose lips were quite blue.
Fowler’s eyes narrowed. “Best get back to the house soon, Sergeant, before you catch a chill. Same for you two, my lord, Mr. Holmes.”
“Thank you, Chief Inspector,” said Mr. Holmes. “By the way, I have heard back from my brother. He will be able to receive us tonight, after dinner. Does the time suit you, gentlemen?”
Fowler raised a brow. “Yes, very much so. Thank you, Mr. Holmes. Though I must say, I had no idea Mr. Sherlock Holmes was in the vicinity.”
“He has been rusticating in these parts for a few days,” said “Sherrinford Holmes” cheerfully, despite her chattering teeth. “I am in the area to visit him, in fact. Of course I haven’t seen much of him since everything happened. But there will be plenty of time for brotherly chats once all this unpleasantness is behind us.”
Miss Holmes’s nonchalance should have heartened Treadles, but the news that they were to see Sherlock Holmes so soon caught him flatfooted.
When a client called on Sherlock Holmes, Miss Holmes explained that his health kept him bedridden and all communications must go through her. From time to time, she would disappear into an adjacent room to consult him. In truth the room was empty and Sherlock Holmes only a front for Miss Holmes to exploit her own deductive abilities.
Chief Inspector Fowler, however, would not be satisfied with being told that Sherlock Holmes was in the next room. Where would Miss Holmes find an actual Sherlock Holmes on such short notice? And how could the act possibly fool eyes as sharp and suspicious as Fowler’s?
“Shall we expect you after dinner, then?” asked Miss Holmes.
“Yes, of course,” said Fowler, with a wolfish grin. “We are most eager to meet with Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”
It was only after Miss Holmes, Lord Ingram, and Sergeant Ellerby were on their way that a horrifying possibility occurred to Treadles. After he had stood by Lord Ingram, when the latter declared that he had no way of getting word to Miss Holmes, surely . . . surely she didn’t mean to unmask herself tonight?
But what if that was exactly what she intended?
14
“I have your tea here, Holmes.”
Charlotte smiled a little: There was no better or more desirable way for a man to announce himself.
She emerged from her dressing room to find Lord Ingram already in the bedroom, standing with his back to her. He wore a blue-gray lounge suit, his dark hair still slightly damp, his fingertips grazing the lapel of Sherrinford Holmes’s jacket, which she’d placed on the back of a chair.
Well, well. And here she thought she’d still need to push, shove, or otherwise cantilever him into her den of iniquity.
At her entrance he turned around. She thought he might comment on her attire—or lack thereof: She had on only a heavily embroidered dressing gown. But that was not what caused his jaw to slacken.
“What happened to your hair?”
She’d forgotten that he hadn’t seen her without her Sherrinford Holmes wig. “I had it chopped off. There was too much. Wigs wouldn’t sit properly.”
“You chopped off everything!”
She hadn’t. There were a good few inches left—Mrs. Watson had absolutely refused to trim her hair any shorter. “I like it. Mrs. Watson says it brings out my eyes.”
He shook his head, not so much in disagreement, but as if he still couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Anyway, come and eat something.”
He had never complimented her looks—and he didn’t need to. All she’d ever wanted from him was friendship.
And this, of course.
This.
She walked to the tea tray, which held an astonishingly beautiful French apple tart, paper-thin apple slices arranged in perfect concentric circles, glistening under an apricot jam glaze.
A decade ago, sitting at one of his digs with a book in one hand but, alas, nothing to eat, she’d pined for a French apple tart to try. He, a lover of Monsieur Verne’s scientific romances, had pointed out, rather indignantly, that the French did things other than cooking. To which she’d replied that two of the foremost French inventions, canning and pasteurization, had to do with food and drink. And then she’d written a message in his notebook in Braille, another major French invention:
You should have said, I’ll ask my godfather’s pastry chef to make it for you.
She had no idea whether he’d ever bothered to translate the note. Certainly he had never obliged her on the French apple tart. Until now.
Too bad she didn’t want any.
He looked at her. She smoothed the back of a spoon across the jam glaze on top of the tart, returning his gaze. He stood very still—no fidgeting for him. But in the rise and fall of his chest there was agitation. Inquietude.
“Why are you nervous?”
He hesitated. “You make me nervous.”
“Why?” She was not nervous at all. “You must have done this hundreds of times—at least.”
“Not with you.”
“The process should be the same.”
He glanced out of the window, his strong, sharp profile to her. “It’s impossible to talk to you, sometimes.”
“You mean, all the time? Or at least the vast majority? That’s why we wisely did not bother with conversation when we were children.”
He drew the curtains shut. It wasn’t six o’clock yet, but it was almost pitch-black outside. “What will we be to each other afterward?”
“What we have always been. Friends.”
“And you think this”—the word was accompanied by a gesture toward the bed—“won’t have repercussions?”
“So . . . you think we’ve had an easy, uncomplicated rapport and you don’t want it to become thorny and convoluted?”
He snorted. “Can I want it not to become more thorny and convoluted?”
“Why does it have to be? Why can’t things become simpler? Surely some of the difficulty we’ve experienced in our friendship could be attributed to the fact that we wanted to sleep together but you wouldn’t permit it.”
“Well, if you’re going to put it like that.”
“How would you put it, if not like that?”
He didn’t reply but crossed the room, pulled out his pocket watch, and set it down on
the nightstand. She liked the sight of it—his watch on her nightstand, his person leaning against the side of her bed. She went up to him and placed her hands on his chest.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For the apple tart, of course. For remembering it after all these years.”
“I’ve never forgotten—and I absolutely will not have it said that Bancroft feeds you better than I do.”
She smiled, cupped his face, and kissed him. He stood still and let her. And then he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her into bed.
Over supper, Chief Inspector Fowler and Treadles listened to Sergeant Ellerby’s account of the missing padlock and crate from the lavender house, and the unused estate gate with its chain and lock gone.
Treadles, who had been picking at his food until Sergeant Ellerby joined them, experienced a surge of appetite—so Miss Holmes had been making some progress of her own, after all. Thank goodness.
He attacked his steak and kidney pie with renewed vigor.
“And then we returned to the icehouse for another look. And that’s when Mr. Holmes asked me whether any bodies have turned up recently in these parts. I said no, not that I’ve heard of, and he asked me to keep an eye out for a well-dressed woman with her face bashed in and a man, not so well-dressed, who might have soiled himself before he died.”
“Is that so?” said Fowler sharply. “Did Mr. Holmes say why?”
“I asked who they were and how they were related to Lady Ingram’s death,” said Sergeant Ellerby. “Mr. Holmes said that he didn’t know enough to speak with complete confidence. Only that those bodies must be there—or at least the woman’s must be there, according to his deductions.”
Treadles remembered the strands of hair that Miss Holmes had found, some six feet away from where Lady Ingram had lain.
Fowler asked several more questions. When it became clear that the sergeant had nothing else to tell them, he thanked him gravely and wished him a good evening. Sergeant Ellerby saluted and left for his room at the constabulary, pushing open the door of the inn with some difficulty.
The Hollow of Fear: Book three in the Lady Sherlock Mystery Series Page 18
