Chapter Eleven
When Inspector Treadles handed the Christmas Eve Murder to Charlotte, he had already uncovered some useful information. That Garwood Hall was empty and up for let, for one thing. And, for another, Miss Harcourt’s address.
Victor Meadows’s sister, Mrs. Harcourt, had passed away. Charlotte wrote her daughter, claimed to be an old acquaintance of Mrs. Meadows’s, and requested an audience. That was immediately following her meeting with Inspector Treadles. But even after her return from Paris, having reassured herself that Bernadine and everyone else in Mrs. Watson’s household were all right, there was no response from Miss Harcourt.
Last night, however, as soon as Charlotte had said good-bye to Lord Ingram, a telegram from Miss Harcourt landed on her doorstep.
Apologies. Was away and read your note only now. Do not know anyone’s current whereabouts but am keen to speak together. Will postpone all other engagements to await your call.
Charlotte would have happily set aside the Christmas Eve Murder for the time being. But in pretending to be Mrs. Meadows’s old friend, trying to find her again after many years, she had made herself sound most eager. The fictional Mrs. Beaumont would not have turned down Miss Harcourt’s invitation, especially now that Miss Harcourt was rearranging her own schedule.
Her reaction surprised Charlotte—she had expected at best a polite tolerance, not this avid interest to meet a murdered uncle’s wife’s forgotten friend.
She weighed the matter, entrusted the ongoing search for Mr. Underwood’s boxing connections entirely to Mrs. Watson and Lawson, and set out by rail early in the morning.
Miss Harcourt lived in Oxfordshire, at the edge of the Cotswolds. Unlike the modern mishmash that was Garwood Hall, Trilby Park had been built in the heyday of neoclassicism, with an exterior that was severely symmetrical, almost humorless.
Miss Harcourt’s carriage had picked up Charlotte from the railway station. Miss Harcourt herself was waiting by the wide granite steps at the front of the manor as the vehicle rolled to a stop.
She pumped Charlotte’s hand with both of her own. “Oh, Mrs. Beaumont, I’m so glad you’re here. Do please come in!”
Her Wedgwood blue drawing room felt comfortably worn. Not threadbare or ill maintained, simply a little faded with the passage of time.
Miss Harcourt, if one judged her by appearance alone, was also slightly faded. At thirty years of age, she had faint lines on her forehead and at the corners of her eyes, and a few grey strands in her light brown hair. But she walked fast—she’d bounced up the steps—gesticulated expansively, and peppered Charlotte with questions about Mrs. Beaumont’s life, her curiosity benign and lively.
If anything, Miss Harcourt had understated her keenness to speak to Mrs. Meadows’s long-lost friend.
After a cup of tea, Charlotte ventured to ask, pointing at the garden outside the windows, whether they could chat while taking a stroll outside. “I’ve been on a great many railway journeys of late and am growing terribly stiff. Given that I must still return to London by rail today…”
When she was younger, whole days on end of sitting—or lying on a chaise—exacted no toll at all. Now if her bottom remained glued to chairs for such Homeric durations her back protested. And Mrs. Watson, always one to encourage movement, had warned her that the stiffness would only worsen with age.
“Oh, absolutely.” Miss Harcourt immediately led the way. “I prefer the outdoors. In fact, as a part of my grand tour, I plan to stay awhile in Southern California. I’ve heard that it has marvelously agreeable weather and one can be outside most of the year without being too cold, too hot, or too drenched.”
As it turned out, Miss Harcourt was days away from beginning that globe-spanning voyage, the first leg of which would see her visit Madeira, the Canary Islands, and the Azores.
Charlotte had met her share of heiresses. Often they carried an unhappy tension within: They were raised to believe in the superiority of their bloodlines—a massive fortune must be a sign of God’s favor—only to be regarded as lowly upstarts when they were thrust into the thick of Society. And for all the wealth they would inherit, they often had little say in the most pivotal decisions of their young lives.
But Miss Harcourt had endured no ambitious parents forcing her to marry a resentful peer. She’d never even partaken in a London Season. Instead, she’d invested in an education for herself and then cared for her mother.
“In the final months of my mother’s life, we spoke quite a bit of my aunt Meadows,” she said. “In fact, that’s part of the reason I’m going on this rather intimidating voyage. Cousin Miriam—that’s what I called Aunt Meadows’s sister—she once said that someday they were going to see the whole world. I would dearly love for them to be doing just that right now—and for me to run into them along the way.”
They were walking between two tall hedges—the garden boasted a hedge maze. And the wistfulness in Miss Harcourt’s voice made Charlotte wonder whether her dealings with Mrs. Meadows hadn’t been somewhat one-sided.
“All I know is that Mrs. Meadows stayed in Manchester for a year or two after she was widowed. She left no forwarding address?”
“No.” Instead of tassels, the edge of Miss Harcourt’s parasol had been trimmed with strings of clear glass beads. She raised a hand and filliped one such string. “Nor had she breathed a word to us beforehand.”
Aha, so the Harcourt ladies had indeed been the more fervent ones in their friendship with Mrs. Meadows.
Charlotte told Miss Harcourt the story of how her younger self, lonely and homesick in Australia, had exchanged letters with a young Angelica Tipton for two years. “My letters spilled on for pages and pages, but hers were always short and to the point.”
That regular correspondence ended abruptly.
“I found out later it was around the time of her wedding that Angelica stopped writing. My mother cautioned me against reading anything sinister into it, but I was never able to feel completely at ease about her marriage. She was only sixteen, and it followed so closely on the heel of her parents’ bankruptcy and deaths.”
The path turned. They had reached the center of the maze. In the small clearing, a stone nymph danced in a fountain, water pouring from the vase she held aloft.
“Even my mother didn’t know much about the state of her marriage—she wasn’t close to her brothers,” said Miss Harcourt. “But my aunt Meadows was thought of as a dutiful wife who managed her household well and rendered onto her husband all due deference. And we never heard about my uncle Victor not treating her well or anything of the sort.”
She looked contemplative. “He was eighteen years her senior. But age difference aside, theirs was a domestic arrangement that attracted little attention. And knowing Aunt Meadows, it feels…deliberate. There was always something unknowable about her, do you not think, Mrs. Beaumont?”
Miss Harcourt would have been all of seven when Victor Meadows had married his young wife, and fifteen at the time of his murder. If even her mother hadn’t known much about the state of the Meadowses’ marriage, then there was no point for Charlotte to press further on the topic.
Charlotte made a show of twirling her parasol and thinking. “Yes, I do believe you’re right, Miss Harcourt. She listened far more than she spoke, and even when she spoke, it was rarely of herself.”
“Yes, that was exactly how I remembered her,” concurred Miss Harcourt.
The maze path turned again. Now their shadows were in front of them, small, stubby shapes surrounded by more nimbus-like shadows cast by the lace parasols.
“My mother always felt curious about her,” continued Miss Harcourt. “After Uncle Victor died, Aunt Meadows lived in Manchester for a while and our family, too, because Mother had to look after the factories. During that time, Mother called on her regularly, often with me tagging along. And most of our visits consisted of Mother and me blathering on and on about this and that, and my aunt Meadows listening with a nunlike concentration.”
“Did she never say anything about herself then?”
“She was more likely to say something about Cousin Miriam. Cousin Miriam was very active and curious, so we heard tales about her spraining her foot trying to teach herself ballet and such.
“But even though Aunt Meadows didn’t like to talk about herself, I never received the impression that she found us trying,” Miss Harcourt went on. “She was curious about Mother’s work running the factories. And she always made sure to tell us how much Cousin Miriam enjoyed our visits. Which was why her disappearance dumbfounded us so—and baffles me to this day.”
Their shadows disappeared—a tall plume of a cumulus had eclipsed the sun. Charlotte turned to Miss Harcourt. “Can you tell me exactly what happened?”
Miss Harcourt looked at the darkening sky and collapsed her parasol, its trimming beads clinking pleasantly. “For Cousin Miriam’s twelfth birthday, we called on them with presents. As Mother had just then learned how to use a camera, she also photographed the two sisters together.
“When the photograph was developed, we used the opportunity for another visit. But when we reached their hired house, Aunt Meadows and Cousin Miriam were gone, and a for-let sign had been put up. When we found the estate agent, he said the house was vacated a fortnight earlier—mere days after the birthday visit—and the departing tenants had left no forwarding addresses.
“Mother spoke to two women who had been Aunt Meadows’s neighbors when Uncle Victor had been alive. They called on her occasionally, but it was from Mother that they first learned Aunt Meadows had moved away. She then managed to track down a few distant cousins of Aunt Meadows’s, but they hadn’t heard from her since before her marriage.
“The photograph of the two sisters together, which we weren’t able to give to them, found a place on our mantelpiece for a time—for as long as Mother’s search continued. We used to stand together and look at it. And then one day the photograph disappeared. Mother said that it felt wrong to keep staring at Aunt Meadows, when it was obvious she didn’t want to see us again.”
A stiff breeze blew. The fringes on Charlotte’s parasol streamed horizontally. “I was seventeen then, and took the snubbing personally. Aunt Meadows was like the Mona Lisa, smiling yet inscrutable. We crowded near her not because we wished to be kind to someone less fortunate but because she was this beautiful mystery and we, her gauche admirers, longed to bask in her enigmatic allure.
“I’d been angry, but when the photograph disappeared and Mother said aloud what we’d both been thinking, I was crushed. Perhaps that’s how a rejected suitor feels—all that fervor and adoration marked undeliverable and returned to sender.”
This disclosure was not meant for Charlotte Holmes. Even Mrs. Watson, before whom everyone opened up like steamed clams, might not have elicited as deep a confession. These words were meant only for Mrs. Beaumont, a fellow devotee who had been ejected from Mrs. Meadows’s orbit just as unceremoniously—and who understood Miss Harcourt’s distress and bewilderment.
They walked silently for some time before Charlotte asked, “Would it be possible for me to see this photograph? I should dearly love to see her all grown up.”
“I would love to show it to you. In fact, I long to see it myself and started looking for it as soon as I received your note. But it was put away so many years ago and—”
Another gust of wind blew, and with it came large raindrops. Charlotte swung aside her parasol and looked up just as a small deluge came down, heavy and cool on her face, while the sun emerged at the same time.
She and Miss Harcourt stared at each other for a moment.
“This way!” cried Miss Harcourt. “There’s a covered swing!”
They were shaking out their drenched parasols—at least parasols could not develop pneumonia—when Miss Harcourt’s servants sprinted over with raincoats, umbrellas, and towels.
After inquiring into Charlotte’s preference, Miss Harcourt asked the staff to return to the house with the soaked parasols but leave behind the extra umbrellas that they had brought, along with the flask of whisky that the housekeeper had thrust into one footman’s hand.
The sun shone fiercely. The rain came down just as fiercely. Charlotte drank a small draught from the flask and offered in return a ginger-studded biscuit from her reticule—after having known real hunger the summer before, she never went anywhere these days without a supply of foodstuff.
The biscuits were the last of what remained of Lord Ingram’s hamper, now that most of its vast contents had been donated to Mrs. Watson’s staff in Paris. Miss Harcourt was eating solemnly when she broke out laughing. “My goodness, I don’t remember the last time I was caught in the rain.”
“I don’t mind this sort of being caught in the rain,” murmured Charlotte, “with shelter almost immediately at hand, and people to see to our comfort within seconds.”
Miss Harcourt laughed again. “True, this is a very pleasant way to be caught in the rain.”
Threads of rain shone white and silver in the brilliant sunlight—and then in the next minute dwindled to almost nothing, except for a steady drip-drip from some nearby trees.
In the new silence, Charlotte gauged that the time had come. “Miss Harcourt, do you think my Angelica had anything to do with her husband’s murder?”
Miss Harcourt, who had been brushing crumbs from her fingertips, stilled.
“Over the years, I’ve always worried about her, especially after I learned about her parents’ bankruptcy,” said Charlotte, her tone urgent. “She was a young girl left alone and destitute, with the care of a sister barely out of infancy. Maybe she married a man more than twice her age out of something other than desperation, but I’m no longer an adolescent romantic who can convince myself of that.
“And his death was so gruesome. If someone had shot him, perhaps I wouldn’t have been so perturbed, but I went to Manchester and found articles in the newspaper archives and—” She took a deep, audible breath. “I hope I don’t sound a complete ghoul, but I’ve been terrified ever since that Angelica—Mrs. Meadows—that—”
Miss Harcourt placed a finger before her own lips.
Charlotte hushed accordingly.
“If she did it, then it must have been for a good reason.” Miss Harcourt’s voice was low and equally urgent. “And if she did it, she’s been able to keep herself free all these years. Let’s not accidentally shatter the safeguards she may have put into place for her well-being.”
So Miss Harcourt had given the matter plenty of thought. Charlotte dropped her voice, too. “No, never.”
The errant rain cloud had moved on; the entire garden glistened under the midday sun. Miss Harcourt looked all around them before she spoke again. “The good news is that my mother didn’t think Aunt Meadows did it. The bad news is my uncle Ephraim also disappeared, sometime after my aunt Meadows. Taken together, that wouldn’t look good—if anyone were still looking into the murder, that is.”
Inspector Brighton had looked into the case. Charlotte was looking into the case. And an ambitious young detective sergeant might receive the full dossier from Scotland Yard in the near future.
Charlotte gripped the handkerchief that she had been using as a napkin. “Surely you aren’t implying that…”
That Mrs. Meadows and Ephraim Meadows, her brother-in-law, had been in collusion?
“Not only do I not want to imply it, I do not even wish to think about it.” Miss Harcourt downed another draught of whisky and scooted a few inches closer to Charlotte on the covered swing. “But Mrs. Beaumont, do you remember what I said about my mother taking away the photograph from our mantelpiece?”
“Yes?”
“We didn’t talk about my aunt Meadows for years upon years. It was only in the final months of my mother’s life that Aunt Meadows came up again as a topic of conversation. That was the first time Mother told me the reason she removed the picture: She found out from my uncle Victor’s solicitors that before my aunt Meadows left for parts unknown, she’d informed them that she had remarried and would no longer be collecting the annualized dower that had been set out in my uncle Victor’s will.”
Charlotte sucked in a loud breath.
“That was when Mother became convinced that Aunt Meadows really wanted absolutely nothing to do with us. Why else would she have not breathed a word of something as significant as her remarriage? At the time, Mother happened to be extremely busy with the factories—and with me about to leave for Girton College—so it was some time before she realized that my uncle Ephraim hadn’t either called or written for a while.
“As he usually called or wrote to ask for money, at first she was simply glad not to have his news. But when more time passed and she still received no new entreaties, she began to find it incomprehensible.”
“No!” Charlotte leaped up from the swing. Her abrupt motion caused a metallic squeak. “My friend would never have married such a leech.”
Miss Harcourt rose, too. She had in hand an umbrella that the servants had brought and tapped its tip against the flagstone clearing on which the covered swing sat. “I don’t believe so either, and neither did Mother—her dower would have been too moderate for him, and his character too deficient for her. And that she refused further dower? Without a doubt, her bridegroom could not have been a man who had never seen a farthing he didn’t try to put into his own pocket.”
Miss Harcourt exhaled. “What worried Mother more was that they might have committed the crime together.”
“I’d rather that she did the killing herself, if it had to be her!” Charlotte cried softly.
At her minor outburst, Miss Harcourt, who had been frowning and tight-jawed, blinked—and burst out laughing. “I’m sorry.” She quickly gathered herself and apologized. “I’m not sure what made me laugh—I just did.”
“It’s this ridiculous murder,” said Charlotte. “It makes one conjure up too many awful theories. If we can’t find something to laugh at once in a while, we’d all be like a cat on a hot bakestone.”
“True. And anyway, I was trying to reassure you that neither my uncle Ephraim nor my aunt Meadows had the least reason to kill my uncle Victor—they both became worse off as a result of his death, and they both knew ahead of time that, for them, his will would not prove a lucrative document.
“But still it begs the question.” Miss Harcourt looked up, but there was no rainbow in the sky. “Why did they both drop off the face of the earth?”
Charlotte sighed. “And in the end, whom did she marry?”