Chapter Twenty
Livia had thought that she wouldn’t be able to get much out of Lieutenant Atwood, the man in charge of operations in Aix-en-Provence. To her surprise, he had been quite forthcoming and even invited her to visit their headquarters, situated almost directly across the street from the house belonging to Moriarty.
They were in a large drawing room that faced the Cours Mirabeau, its walls covered with academy-style paintings of peasant girls who somehow maintained spotless feet and milky complexions.
“Did you enjoy your outing, Miss Holmes?”
The day before, Livia had visited Mount Sainte-Victoire in order to appear more like a real tourist.
“I did—I always relish the outdoors. What about you, sir—have you had any chance to visit the surrounding countryside?”
Immediately she realized she’d asked a silly question. He couldn’t possibly have had the time.
“Actually, I have,” said Lieutenant Atwood, setting down his coffee. “We visited a quarry and bought some tools shortly after we arrived in Aix. The quarry was halfway to the Luberon and made for an agreeable excursion.”
Quarry tools. Were they working with stones or—
“Surely—surely you’re not digging a tunnel.”
He smiled, white teeth against suntanned skin. “Of course not, Miss Holmes.”
He seemed sincere, but she had no idea how to gauge his cordial denial.
“It’s for storming Moriarty’s house,” he added, “if it came to that.”
She had imagined an invasion with guns drawn, but not one that involved chisels and splitters.
Lieutenant Atwood smiled again and pointed at Moriarty’s house across the Cours Mirabeau, bathed in afternoon light. “There is a window on one of the upper floors that remains lit longer than anyone else’s.”
The very one that she always glanced up at when she walked past the house.
“Recently the occupant of the room began to move the curtain at night in such a way that we can only interpret as sending messages via Morse code.”
Livia’s heart thumped. “What messages?”
“So far, it’s always been the same message. Be careful.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. Repeated as many times as the number of pinecones I toss on the window.”
Livia swallowed. “And will you be very careful?”
Lieutenant Atwood picked up a small olive oil cake, supposedly a specialty of the region, and said, “Rest assured. We’re not planning to do anything dangerous at all.”
?Penelope stopped in her tracks.
What was that smell inside Aunt Jo’s house? And what was going on in the salle de séjour to the side of the entry?
Fontainebleu, the young man who claimed to be the son of one of Aunt Jo’s lovers, sprawled sideways in a padded chair. He was dressed in only his shirtsleeves, a lit cigar clamped between his teeth, a handful of cards held facedown on his chest. A glass of whisky and a mostly empty coffee cup sat on the table before him. Also on the table, a small gleaming pile of napoleons.
“Why, hullo,” she said.
She hadn’t seen him since the day he’d arrived like a speeding bullet and then ricocheted off just as abruptly. Not that he hadn’t returned to the house periodically from his merrymaking. Once, when she asked, a mercenary said he was sleeping. And on a different occasion, she was told he was bathing.
“Why, hullo yourself,” he said. “But shhhh, don’t talk anymore, or my friend here will blame his loss on you.”
He yawned and addressed the man across the small table from him. “Patron, are you playing cards or reading my fortune? Hurry up.”
“One second,” answered the leader of the mercenaries, whom Livia had termed Number One. He looked to be agonizing over his cards.
Fontainebleu yawned again. “It’s been your turn for five minutes, and if you don’t put down a card in the next ten seconds I am going to pull one from your hand.”
Penelope glanced at Mercenary Number Two, the one who had opened the door for her. “Is Monsieur Fontainebleu a good card player?”
Number Two shook his head decisively. “He’s terrible, but sometimes his luck is good. I won forty napoleons from him, but then lost everything, plus another fifteen napoleons.”
All at once cards were being slapped down on the table one after another. And Number One cried in jubilation. “Yes, yes, thank God!”
“Did he win?”
“He recouped his losses,” said Number Two, looking envious. “The next hand he might win.”
But the opportunity was denied Number One. Fontainebleu stretched and tottered out of the chair. “Time for bed.”
It was six o’clock in the afternoon.
“Will you play after you get up?” Number Two asked eagerly, as Fontainebleu staggered up the staircase.
“No, I’m going out tonight. It will be smashing fun.” He turned around, leaning on the banister. “And you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. My aunt Watson hired you to look after her house in her absence, not for you to gamble with any riffraff that walks in from the street.”
And with that, he resumed his ascent.
?By the time Charlotte said good-bye to Mrs. Lane and scribbled a note to the chemist’s shop—she might as well follow Mrs. Farr’s instruction to Mrs. Lane and “send word”—the day was growing late, and the city had become congested.
Before her hackney turned onto the street where the Treadleses lived, she had already spotted the family carriage driving away. It took some spirited chasing and a great deal of shouting to attract the coachman’s attention. Fortunately, the coachman recognized Charlotte: She had spoken to him on Sherlock Holmes’s behalf the previous winter, when his master’s fate had hung in the balance.
Inspector Treadles had already alit when Charlotte finally caught up. She swung herself up directly into his carriage. “I understand you have a train to catch, Inspector, and no time to lose?”
The alarmed policeman nevertheless followed her into the vehicle with alacrity.
As soon as the door closed, even before the carriage rejoined the tide of traffic, Charlotte said, “Concerning the case you gave me, Inspector, I have spoken to Miss Harcourt, Victor Meadows’s niece. And she has found an old photograph of Mrs. Meadows for me. It so happens that we are both acquainted with her.”
She handed over the photograph, which Miss Harcourt had said she could keep, as in happier days multiple prints had been made.
Inspector Treadles stared at the image, then at Charlotte. “Are you sure I know this—”
He looked down yet again. “My goodness, could it possibly be Mrs. Farr, the one who wanted the Yard to look into her sister’s disappearance? And is that the sister beside her?”
“Correct on both accounts.”
Inspector Treadles spent another minute scrutinizing the photograph, looking only more stunned. And then his expression grew sober. “I think back to my conduct at the time with much self-reproach. I’d told Mrs. Farr quite blithely that her sister must have disappeared on a lark, based on little more than my disinclination to believe a troublesome woman. But Mimi Duffin was killed—by a jealous lover, it was said, but I don’t recall that anyone was ever charged for the crime.”
Inspector Treadles, alongside Chief Inspector Fowler, had investigated the murder at Stern Hollow. Yet even he didn’t know that Lord Bancroft had been the initial instigator of the crime, the one who had first put a female body in the estate’s ice well to frame Lord Ingram.
He gave the photograph back to Charlotte, his brow furrowed. “What happened to the former Mrs. Meadows and her sister? They weren’t extravagantly provided for, but there was enough of a dower, wasn’t there?”
“Enough if one was willing to make some economies,” said Charlotte. “But about two years after Victor Meadows’s death, Mrs. Meadows and her sister disappeared from Manchester. According to Miss Harcourt, her mother, the late Mrs. Harcourt, found out from Victor Meadows’s lawyers that Mrs. Meadows had married again and would no longer receive the dower.”
“You think she married to her economic disadvantage this time around?”
“I was inclined to consider that likely, because Mrs. Farr has a child. But according to Mimi Duffin’s friend, whom I met this afternoon, the child was adopted. In any case, Mrs. Watson should have already visited Somerset House this afternoon to check marriage records.”
Inspector Treadles picked up the newspaper on the carriage seat next to him and tapped the rolled-up column against his palm. “After I learned about Mimi Duffin’s death, I looked a little into Mrs. Farr. She is no ordinary woman. She isn’t part of London’s underworld, per se, but she exists on the edge of it. And she has a network of…scouts, let’s say, who keep her supplied with valuable information.”
Unfortunately, Mimi Duffin had known how to evade that network and had kept Lord Bancroft’s identity a secret from her sister until it was too late.
“She has stayed far away from the gaze of the police by being muted about her work, and I’ve heard rumors that she developed that network by helping people in need, especially women and children,” continued Inspector Treadles. “Still, any good senior barrister can make the case that she has the cunning and the mental fortitude to carry out a murder.”
He shook his head. “Miss Holmes, perhaps it would be best if we pursued this case no further. I doubt that Mrs. Farr would wish her past revealed, and she might not appreciate being approached by someone with that dangerous knowledge.”
“I agree,” said Charlotte.
It would indeed be wiser if she stopped. But did she have a choice in the matter?
She looked outside the window. Until last year, she’d never spent an August in London—the end of July had always marked her family’s migration to the seaside or the countryside. Mrs. Farr would have been about the same age as Charlotte when she’d abandoned the familiar rhythms of a Manchester woman of means for a very different life in the poorer districts of London.
Except she’d had a young sister to look after and no friends on a par with Lord Ingram and Mrs. Watson to cushion her fall.
Charlotte realized she had been quiet for some time. She had finished her report, but she and Inspector Treadles were not on such close terms that she could simply indulge herself in silence.
“Are you headed to a riveting case, Inspector?” she asked.
This was small talk for her, though he might not consider his case to be an idle topic.
“A baffling one, to be sure,” answered the policeman. He did not sound reluctant to speak of his work. “A lone woman arrived in a small community and was killed almost right away.”
A lone woman?
“Where is this small community, Inspector, if you don’t mind my curiosity?”
Perhaps he heard the sudden interest in her voice, for he studied her, a little taken aback. “Near a village called Feynham, not far from the Swale.”
That was only a little farther from Sittingbourne, where Mrs. Claiborne’s last letter had been postmarked.
“Is there any chance that the case happened extremely recently, as in the woman only arrived in the area two nights ago?”
Inspector Treadles’s brows leaped up. “Correct. She arrived in the area exactly two nights ago, took the house yesterday, and the body was discovered this morning.”
“Did she tell anyone local that she was from somewhere other than London?”
Inspector Treadles leaned forward. “This can’t be a matter of deduction. You have someone specific in mind, don’t you, Miss Holmes?”
“I’m afraid I do. She is in her early thirties, beautiful, well-dressed, speaks with a slight French accent—and used a name that wasn’t her own. Something along the lines of Mrs. Overhill?”
Inspector Treadles sucked in a breath.
Charlotte sighed. “Inspector, I’m afraid I shall have to go with you.”