Chapter Seven
T his time, when Charlotte arrived at Ravensmere, a woman searched her to make sure that she wasn’t carrying weapons or contraband and then escorted her inside.
The entirety of the estate was enclosed by a high wall. But inside that, another set of walls sealed off a sizable garden. From the gatehouse, the ground sloped down. At the garden wall, it sloped up again toward the manor. As a result, visually, this second wall did not constitute much of an obstruction—a great many of the garden’s geometric parterres remained visible during the approach. Yet up close, the wall formed an effective barrier, seven feet tall, plastered smooth, and topped with shards of glass that glittered in the sun.
Charlotte passed through another gate, this time in a wrought iron fence that isolated the house and a small portion of the grounds from the rest of the garden.
The house featured a limestone exterior and a slate roof. It was handsome enough but not remarkable, certainly not the kind of great house that typically spawned extended acreage of formal French landscaping. But if one considered the barely knee-high patterned hedges as yet another measure of escape prevention—there was nowhere to hide in this very large garden—then everything made more sense.
Charlotte was conducted not into the house but into a side garden delineated by three-foot-high pickets, where Lord Bancroft Ashburton ambled by himself on a smooth stone path.
She almost didn’t recognize him. True, he now sported a scraggly beard and his hair hung lank around his nape, but that was to be expected.
She had not anticipated his new ampleness.
The last time they’d met, he’d been gaunt, almost haggardly, living in fear of his crimes coming to light. Now the worst had already happened; now he had lost his stature, his power, and his prestige. A man who thought strategically would use the time to recuperate, and it was obvious he had.
Still, the gain of two stones struck her. He was not fat. He could not even be considered stout. But for a perpetually slender man, this plumping-up was drastic. And his sack suit, made of a strange orange-brown fabric and cut far too loose, was something his former self would never have glanced at, let alone donned.
Yet this man, who bore little resemblance to his sleek, fashionable former self, had managed to organize a successful invasion of Mrs. Watson’s household.
There was no welcome in his gaze. “Will you join me for a walk, Miss Holmes?”
She did. “How do you do, my lord Bancroft?”
“A rhetorical question, I presume, as my circumstances are hardly ideal,” he replied, his tone as devoid of warmth as hers.
“That you can now take walks outside would indicate that your circumstances have improved markedly.”
When Lord Ingram last visited Ravensmere in February, he’d reported that his brother remained confined to his rooms.
“Half an hour a day outside does not make me content with my lot.”
“Interesting. Your dissatisfaction with your lot was what led to your downfall in the first place.”
Her host snorted without humor and made no reply. They walked twice along the periphery of the diminutive side garden in silence. There was no rustle of trees—there were no trees nearby—but an occasional bird trilled.
“Tea?” he offered at last, indicating a pair of wicker chairs.
She took a seat.
Two plainclothes guards had followed in their wake during their promenade. Lord Bancroft spoke to one. The man left, returned a few minutes later with a tea tray, and set it on the wicker table between the chairs.
It was the first time Charlotte had ever seen tea served in wooden cups. She picked one up and examined the handleless, rustic-looking container.
“Height of elegance, is it not?” murmured Lord Bancroft.
A year ago he had treated her to the best Victoria sandwich she’d ever enjoyed—at a murder site, no less, with a body in the next room. Mostly she remembered the perfection of the cake itself, but the presentation, too, had been flawless: etched-glass cake stand, hand-painted plates, and monogrammed linen napkins.
The guards were now stationed out of earshot. Did they think that a dialogue of delicate sentimentality might be taking place? “What is it you want Sherlock Holmes to do for you, my lord?”
“Underwood is missing. I want you to find him, if he is alive. Otherwise, find out what happened to him.”
When Lord Bancroft had been in charge of certain clandestine operations for the crown, Mr. Underwood had been his right-hand man.
He was the reason Bernadine became a hostage?
“I thought Mr. Underwood was in Paris, overseeing the occupation of Mrs. Watson’s house.”
Lord Bancroft bit into a biscuit that had come with the tea and frowned, an expression of profound disdain. “It would be wholly unnecessary, would it not, to secure your assistance for a problem I didn’t have?
“Besides, you might be an excellent investigator, but you’ve been no lucky charm to those who have come to you in search of missing persons. The matter ended badly for Lady Ingram; it did not prove much better for Moriarty. I would have hesitated to use you at all, but I need Underwood found and you are good at the hunt.”
Charlotte took a sip of her tea. The water used for steeping the leaves hadn’t been hot enough, and the brew was anemic. “How do you know that Mr. Underwood hasn’t been found and arrested by the crown?”
“Because the crown would have told me. You believe that I’ve been punished very lightly for my supposed crimes, I imagine?”
“Yes.”
Her unembellished answer seemed to surprise him. He stared at her a moment, his gaze flat and cold. “You might have guessed—or certainly Ash would have—that my life has been spared because I know enough secrets about enough people. I’ve let it be known that those secrets would become common knowledge should anything untoward happen to me—and, well, thus far I have been safe.
“But my former superiors have been urging me, with much greater frequency and impatience, to give up what they consider to be my ill-begotten gains. Had they caught Mr. Underwood, they would have informed me straightaway, in the belief that it would make me more pliant to their demands.”
True, an underling such as Mr. Underwood had no value on his own. He was only important as an appendage to his master. “Fair enough. Tell me what you can of Mr. Underwood. I know what he looks like, but beyond that, nothing else.”
“He is forty-three years of age and hails from the countryside surrounding Eastleigh Park. He was orphaned early in life. His cousin was an under-housekeeper at Eastleigh Park, and so he became a hallboy there at age ten.”
Eastleigh Park, the country seat of the Dukes of Wycliff, was also Lord Bancroft’s—and Lord Ingram’s—childhood home.
“Underwood rose rapidly through the ranks,” continued Lord Bancroft. “But twenty years ago he left Eastleigh Park to work for me.”
Charlotte waited. He said nothing more. Was that all he was going to tell her about Mr. Underwood? “How did you learn that he was missing?”
Lord Bancroft tossed the biscuit that had so displeased him back onto the plate, also made of wood. “I had a mistress. Once we parted ways, she took up with Underwood—and became engaged to him in time. After my imprisonment, he had her act as a go-between, and she came on regular conjugal visits.”
This was more gossip than Charlotte had anticipated. Had she been playing any kind of role, her brows would have shot up to her hairline.
Strictly speaking, we are not allowed conjugal visits. But when palms are sufficiently greased, eyes look elsewhere. Those had been Lord Bancroft’s words, as relayed to Charlotte by Lord Ingram the previous February.
She was curious as to whether the woman came only to deliver and fetch messages or whether hers functioned as true conjugal visits—but not so curious that she asked the question aloud.
Lord Bancroft seemed equally disinclined to discuss the matter. “She was here a fortnight ago, distressed, because Underwood hadn’t visited or sent a message for some time.”
A cloud occluded the face of the sun; with the shade came an abrupt drop in temperature. “And it’s unlike Mr. Underwood to disappear in this manner?”
“Extremely unlike him.”
“So most likely he is already dead.”
“I’d put his chance of survival at no more than twenty percent. But these are not impossible odds.”
It was usually harsher illumination that revealed flaws in a person’s appearance, but in the relative dimness, the lines on Lord Bancroft’s face stood out more starkly. “Any enemies of his—and yours—that I should know about?”
Another look of distaste passed over Lord Bancroft’s countenance before he took a sip of his tea. “I have asked myself the same. We and the work we did for the crown were not known to the public. We collected information. Others, not I and certainly not Underwood, made decisions based on what we learned. If any ramifications of those decisions provoked anyone into retaliation, I should think their wrath would first fall on the decision-makers, and not on those of us who were mere intelligence gatherers.”
Charlotte knew something of his official responsibilities because of Lord Ingram, but it had always been evident that she knew only a fraction of what Lord Ingram did and that he in turn had known only a fraction of everything under Lord Bancroft’s purview.
No doubt Lord Bancroft’s subordinates had gathered intelligence. But had that been their sole activity? What else had he—and Mr. Underwood—done during those years when he had been entrusted with many of the empire’s secret portfolios?
“Ash once said to me, ‘Empires are not built with clean hands.’ Surely you have staged less benign schemes during your tenure.”
“And surely, had I done that, I’d have been careful to leave no calling cards. Underwood likewise.”
In other words, Mr. Underwood’s disappearance was not related to their work on behalf of the crown. “Then what about activities that were not sanctioned by the crown? Could they have caused someone to harm Mr. Underwood?”
Lord Bancroft gave her a thin smile. “I have never participated in or condoned any activities that were not sanctioned by the crown. And neither has Underwood.”
Of course, Lord Bancroft had never officially admitted to any wrongdoing. The parties who had purchased state secrets from him were not going to step forth to help with his prosecution. And the properties that the crown had confiscated, in the wake of the discovery of his treachery, could still, if barely, be explained away as having been paid for by some long-ago parental largesse combined with subsequent gains on the stock market.
But why this insistence of blamelessness? It was not going to convince her, the discoverer of his guilt, otherwise. And incomplete knowledge would only hamper her search for Mr. Underwood.
“If Mr. Underwood’s disappearance had nothing to do with his professional life—or yours—then what could have caused it?”
Lord Bancroft ran his fingers down his sparse beard. “He might have made enemies in boxing gymnasiums.”
“He boxed?”
Boxing was a sport beloved by gentlemen and ruffians alike. But the kind of gymnasiums Lord Bancroft referred to, which seemed to exist on every other street in London, were not genteel establishments. They used the upper floors or back parlors of pubs, ran matches that didn’t follow the Marquis of Queensberry rules, and engaged in prizefighting, which was not precisely legal.
“Why, hello, young lady!”
Charlotte glanced over her shoulder at the man who stood at an upper-story window, waving at her from behind bars.
“My goodness!” the man exclaimed further. “I thought I was hallucinating. But you are real and you are a vision, miss!”
“Thank you,” said Charlotte, squinting.
“Very kind of you to call on my housemate—and good day to you, too, sir! What brought you here? What were you discussing?”
“Your housemate was assuring me of his innocence.”
“Well, I believe him!” cried the man whose voice seemed to belong to someone middle-aged. Late middle age, perhaps. “And please, you must believe me, miss, when I say that I, too, have done nothing to deserve this prolonged internment. It must be extrajudicial and highly illegal to hold me here, and if you would please contact the newspapers for me, I would be most grateful. The reporter who speaks truth on my behalf will surely be rewarded with readership beyond his dreams!”
His face was now pressed into the bars, an ordinary face, its enthusiasm belied by a lack of true goodwill. A guard appeared and pulled him away from the barred window, which was then closed and shuttered from the inside, firmly cutting off Charlotte’s line of sight.
Lord Bancroft narrowed his eyes, then said, as if the interruption hadn’t taken place, “No, Underwood didn’t box—at least I never saw cuts and bruises on him. He sponsored boxers, and his boxers were successful, from what I understand.”
That could lead to retaliations, if those boxers’ successes were due to underhanded methods, although a knife between Mr. Underwood’s ribs seemed a more likely outcome than his wholesale disappearance.
“I will speak to Mr. Underwood’s lady and find his boxers. What about his subordinates? Any of them at large?”
“Not all have been arrested, but I do not know their precise whereabouts, just as I didn’t know Underwood’s.”
Charlotte rubbed her thumb across the side of her wooden cup. It was smooth and just a little bit warm. “Any helpful advice on how I can best locate Mr. Underwood?”
For all that Lord Bancroft had gone through a great deal of trouble—and illegality and heartlessness—to secure her help, he had not given her much useful information.
As if he’d heard her thought, Lord Bancroft said, “It has occurred to me before that I did not know Underwood very well as a man, but at the time our lack of greater intimacy had struck me as both correct and seemly. He discharged his duties by being useful and efficient, and I rewarded him with income and opportunities far beyond what he could have achieved in domestic service.
“Now, that once highly appropriate distance has turned out to be a disadvantage. Even the bit about boxing I learned by chance. After that, I did ask him whether he boxed personally. When he assured me that he didn’t, I told him to beware the unsavory elements found ringside. I did not inquire after the identity of the boxers he sponsored, where they trained and fought, or how much money exchanged hands.”
He chuckled without mirth. “Let that be a lesson to me, a man who has spent his life in the acquisition of particulars: Knowledge I disdain to acquire today might prove to be the vital intelligence I lack tomorrow.”
?Charlotte glanced at the guards. One studied the sky; the other had his eyes on them but in truth might be looking through them, busy with his own thoughts. Both remained safely out of earshot.
She returned her attention to Lord Bancroft. “If I may speak frankly, my lord, I find it difficult to believe that you are so generously disposed toward a subordinate, even Mr. Underwood. I thought at the very least you would demand my help freeing you from Ravensmere.”
Lord Bancroft snorted. “So now Sherlock Holmes also engages in jailbreaking? Look at this place, all the windows are barred. The single entry into and out of my rooms is guarded by two sets of reinforced doors. As a further precaution, there is a security cabin in my parlor, bolted to the floor. Before any guards or charwomen come inside, or even unlock the swinging tray to deliver my meal, I must lock myself into this security cabin.
“The front door of the manor is barred from both inside and outside. The back door has been bricked over. Stairs are barred at each landing. There are two guards on each floor and four in the garden, one by the front door, three patrolling the expanse.
“Moreover, all my meals are cut into bite-sized pieces, and I am only given a single wooden spoon, which must be surrendered at the end of every repast. As you can see, I haven’t shaved in months—or had my hair cut. I do not even have proper suspenders these days. What approximations I’m allowed are of such flimsy construction that if I attempted to asphyxiate anyone with it—or even to tie him up—the whole thing would disintegrate into segments too short to be of any use.”
In disgust, he picked up his discarded biscuit and bit into it again. In even greater disgust, he hurled the rest beyond the wrought iron fence into the larger garden. “Now, given all that, could Sherlock Holmes have succeeded in getting me out?”
?Lord Bancroft’s voice remained low, but his action constituted an outburst. One guard took a step forward, the other reached inside his jacket, presumably for a firearm.
Charlotte drank her tepid tea. After a moment, Lord Bancroft picked up his teacup and joined her, sipping in silence. When it became apparent that nothing else was going to happen, the guards relaxed somewhat but kept their eyes on Lord Bancroft.
Charlotte reviewed what he had said about the security measures in and around Ravensmere. They accorded with what Lord Ingram had told her about the place. She did not believe in the impossibility of getting out of a place that had doors and windows. All the same, Lord Bancroft was correct that it would not be easy.
“All right, so it is only the disappearance of Mr. Underwood for which you have engaged me. And now that I understand my task, I have some conditions about the house in Paris.”
Lord Bancroft raised a brow.
“Your people are not to enter Miss Bernadine’s room under any circumstances. Miss Redmayne is allowed access to the house at least once a day, twice if she so wishes, and no part of the house will be forbidden to her. You may limit the amount of time she spends in the house, but on any given visit, she cannot be ejected before half an hour has passed.”
Lord Bancroft flicked nonexistent biscuit crumbs from his fingertips. “Very well. You may send a cable to the house, starting with the words ‘Corvus dicit.’ They will know it’s from me.”
“And you had best inform the gatehouse that Sherrinford and Charlotte Holmes should be on the guest list for the foreseeable future.”
Her adversary rose. “Anything else? I will be escorted back inside in a minute or so.”
Under normal circumstances, this would be when Mrs. Watson, while accompanying a client out of 18 Upper Baker Street, discreetly broached the topic of remuneration. But Mrs. Watson was waiting outside many walls, and it was highly unlikely that Lord Bancroft intended to compensate Charlotte for her work.
“The man who interrupted us,” she asked, “do you believe in his assertion of innocence?”
A brief beam of sunlight struck Lord Bancroft’s startlingly pale face before shadows took over again, limning the spreading web of fine lines on his no-longer-supple skin. “I do not,” he answered with a sneer. “I believe only in my own assertion of innocence.”