Chapter Thirty
By the ruined abbey
It was quarter past four. The very first suggestion of light glimmered along the eastern edge of the sky.
Charlotte’s eyes were dry and the back of her head ached. But for someone who did not enjoy staying up late, her mind felt unusually sharp. Nimble, even. Her bottom, however, was numb from sitting on the cold rock. Lord Ingram had got up ten minutes ago to stretch his legs and now stood next to Mrs. Watson. Charlotte rose to her feet and shifted her weight around.
At her motion, Lord Bancroft, who had been staring at the dirt lane from which no cavalry had ridden to his rescue, wheeled around. “You did this, didn’t you, Charlotte Holmes?”
They’d been in place almost an hour. Either Moriarty had abandoned him or something had happened.
Charlotte took a step back—she did not want to be any closer to Lord Bancroft. “Sir, you pay me a great compliment. But please remember, until a fortnight ago I was in Paris, minding my own business. And since then I’ve been running around London looking for Mr. Underwood and his murderer. You think that in my few minutes of spare time I could have managed to sunder your alliance with Moriarty?”
Lord Bancroft pointed an accusatory revolver muzzle. “You were up to something before that. In your note to me you said that you happened to already be in England because Ash broke his limb.”
The revolver now jabbed in Lord Ingram’s direction. “There is nothing the matter with Ash. He lied about it so you could come back to England.”
“He did indeed lie about that, but it was only so that he could see me.” She turned toward her lover, her voice gentle. “And you would not do such rash, childish things anymore, would you, Ash?”
Lord Ingram lowered his face and appeared commensurately contrite. “No, Holmes. I won’t make you worry ever again.”
She sighed. “You didn’t make me worry. I guessed that you simply missed me too much. But poor Mrs. Watson, how she imagined all the worst.”
“Oh, Miss Charlotte,” piped up Mrs. Watson from beside the carriage, “don’t give the poor boy a hard time. He was fine. We are fine. Everyone will be fine.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” growled Lord Bancroft.
“Wherever you were planning to go, my lord, Lawson can still drive you,” said Charlotte soothingly. “And if you need some money until you can sort things out with Moriarty, there is twenty pounds in the satchel in usable denominations.”
“I meant, I do not believe you will be fine.” Lord Bancroft ground out the words.
Charlotte took another step back. “Still trying to hold on to your bargain with Moriarty even after he has abandoned you?”
“He did not abandon me—his men have been delayed. And yes, I will still uphold the bargain.”
“What did you promise to do for him?”
The question came from Lord Ingram, his voice heavy.
There was almost enough light to make out the sneer on Lord Bancroft’s face. “I promised him that your Holmes would no longer be a nuisance to him—or to me, for that matter.”
And there it was finally his intention in the open, the last shred of pretense ripped away.
“It made sense, your bargain, given the agreement that now exists between myself and Lord Remington,” mused Charlotte. “Moriarty would be wary of harming me himself, lest Remington’s reprisal did more damage to his organization than what benefit he could reap by eliminating me as a potential threat. You, on the other hand, are not afraid of similar reprisals from your brother.”
“Exactly. Given all that, why shouldn’t I fulfill my bargain honorably and be rid of the person who robbed me of everything?”
Charlotte did not bother to explain that he had been the one who had destroyed his career and his standing: Lord Bancroft and his ilk blame only others, never themselves.
“Because you have bargained with a highly unsuitable party,” she said instead. “Have you forgotten Moriarty’s interference in the Stern Hollow case? Sherlock Holmes was but an investigator doing what investigators are paid to do, but Moriarty’s involvement was entirely malicious, meant only to hasten your downfall.”
Lord Bancroft was silent.
“I see you have not forgotten. How could you? Had you been looking for an ally and promised me that, in our shared enmity, together we would vanquish Moriarty, now you might already be on a luxury steamer, headed for your new life.”
“And you would have had me as an ally?”
“Ash would have been the first person to tell you that my morality is quite flexible. Instead of holding my sister hostage, had you set three thousand pounds in front of me, I’d have broken you out of Ravensmere.”
“You?” Lord Bancroft snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself, Miss Holmes. You might be able to dig up some facts and make some deductions, but I wouldn’t put any program that requires intricate planning and coordination into your hands.”
This hardly corresponded with his earlier accusation that she’d been the one behind de Lacey’s nonappearance, but Charlotte was pleased. She would be even more pleased if Moriarty believed likewise. What greater advantage could she enjoy than a consistent underestimation on the part of her sworn enemies?
“Oh, how did Moriarty obtain the hydrochloric acid then? How did he even think to employ such a method?”
“He didn’t. The plan was of my design.”
“I had no idea you were an expert in industrial chemistry. One moment, did you happen to come across the article in the April issue of Cornhill Magazine?”
“How did you—” Lord Bancroft’s voice had turned sharp. And then his tone relaxed. “Of course, you read everything.”
“I must admit, I thought it an interesting article, but nothing else,” said Charlotte evenly, happy to play the role of a woman who was a little cleverer than the rest of her sex but posed no threat to the cerebral powerhouse that was Lord Bancroft Ashburton.
She felt no need to let him know that the copy of Cornhill that he had read was part of a minuscule print run carried out especially for his benefit, with the insertion of an article on hydrochloric acid that did not appear anywhere else. The laboratory mentioned in the article, located in the Berkshire countryside, had been supplied with the massively corrosive substance by none other than Miss Longstead, who had written Charlotte the moment two of the four bottles especially placed there had been pilfered.
“I still maintain, however,” continued Charlotte, “that I could have helped you better, had you been able to see that.”
“No, Charlotte Holmes. You were never any help to anyone. You make people’s lives more dangerous, more complicated. I would be doing everyone a favor—”
He pointed the revolver in his left hand at her.
“I won’t let you hurt her!” cried Lord Ingram.
But he could not move closer to Charlotte. His brother raised the revolver in his right hand, too, aimed at him. In the clearing before the ruined abbey, there was nothing to hide behind. The sun, minutes from rising, provided enough illumination for an expert marksman such as Lord Bancroft.
“And how will you protect her?” he scoffed. “With your broad, manly chest against the firepower of two revolvers? Don’t be a fool, Ash. Stay where you are.”
Instinctively Charlotte reached into her pocket, but her derringer had already been confiscated by Lord Bancroft outside the walls of Ravensmere. She swallowed. “You may hold overwhelming firepower, but you’re still outnumbered, my lord.”
“By those standing too far to tackle me in any significant manner before I fill them with lead? Pathetic.”
She reasoned with him. “But who else will help you get to where you want to go?”
“Your horse and carriage are still here—I can drive myself. Then again, I need not shoot everyone. I can kill you and still retain compliance from the rest, unless you forget that your sister is still in the hands of my men.”
She had never considered him a good enough man not to use her sister against her. All the same, she had hoped that Bernadine would be left alone.
The suffering of others meant nothing to him.
“Right, my sister,” she said, her voice turning cold. “Let’s set aside your most recent pronouncement that I could not coordinate something as intricate as your unauthorized release from Ravensmere. Instead, let’s go back to an earlier moment, when you accused me of having obstructed Mr. de Lacey’s arrival by nefarious means. Why would you think, my lord, that someone who can throw de Lacey’s night into disarray would find it particularly difficult to liberate a house guarded by all of four mercenaries?”
Aix-en-Provence, France
More than anything else, Konstantin Meier wished to impress Mr. Baxter.
Tonight was to be his chance. He’d got rid of the stupid Frenchman who had been appointed to oversee things in Aix—nobody would know that the man didn’t die in a drunken brawl. Nothing else stood in the way of Konstantin Meier taking all the credit for the success of the operation.
After all, the entire thing was as simple as could be.
He had a man in the house on the Cours Mirabeau, and there were those who wished to rescue this man. They moved into the house diagonally across weeks ago and had been busy as ants, making preparations.
And counting down.
They’d lobbed pinecones at the house, one fewer pinecone each day. They’d run small notices in the papers, both local and Parisian, the coded number featured in the adverts decreasing likewise. And this morning—yesterday morning, given that it was now well past midnight—the small notice had simply said, Tonight.
So tonight Konstantin Meier had invited the local chef policier and a half dozen of his men. For them, he had laid out an enormous spread of cheese, sausage, bread, and fruits, along with five whole tarts from a nearby bakery.
But with almost all the food gone, and the flow of wine stopped after each man had had a few glasses, the Proven?al policemen had grown impatient.
“Are you sure that there are criminals intending to steal from you?”
Konstantin Meier smiled carefully. “Would I be wasting your time and my money if that isn’t the case?”
“It’s past four o’clock in the morning,” the police chief pointed out.
“Maybe they are waiting for the darkest hours before dawn.”
The police chief shrugged, clearly not convinced. “Eh bien, we wait some more then—and you had better be right.”
Konstantin Meier left the room and found the actor in the passage. “What are you doing here? Go back upstairs. Walk some more right behind the curtain. Make sure your silhouette can be seen.”
“I’m hungry. I’ve been up all night.”
“Then go to the kitchen, eat something, take the two roast chickens to the policemen, and go back up!”
“All right, all right,” the actor grumbled.
Konstantin Meier tried to calm himself. It was all straightforward. Someone had been troublesome for Mr. Baxter. That someone was in England—and would be punished there. But here, in Aix-en-Provence, they had a great many of her helpers, ready to storm this house to steal someone called Stephen Marbleton.
And when they did so, they would all be arrested for breaking and entering and sent to French prisons.
An excellent plan.
He hoped those two chickens would be enough to make the policemen stay until that glorious moment.
That is, if only the fools from across the street would come!
And if they didn’t, then by God, after breakfast he was going to march across the Cours Mirabeau and demand to know why they—why they hadn’t—
Except…how did one go about demanding, of complete strangers, why they had absolutely failed to trespass and commit grand larceny?
The outskirts of Paris
“Clu-cluck-cluck-cluck. Mooooooo. Cluck-cluck,” called the woman mercenary.
“Baa. Baaaaaa,” answered Mercenary Number Two, seated next to her.
This barnyard conversation had gone on for at least half an hour; Penelope barely heard it anymore. Her attention was on Number Three, who was sliding down the banister again, for what must be the hundredth time. Not far from the staircase stood Number One, who had plucked a feather duster bare. He tossed all the feathers up and blew on them to keep them airborne, bending lower and lower until his face was nearly on the floor. Then he collected all the feathers and tirelessly started the process anew.
“Ooh la la, quel chaos,” said Madame Gascoigne, their Belgian cook, beside her, slipping back into her native French. “What did you say it was called again, mademoiselle, what young Monsieur Fontainebleu snuck into my hand before he was evicted?”
“Devil’s snare. It’s a plant from the same family as belladonna, but its toxins are deliriants. When Virginia was still a colony, soldiers in Jamestown ate the plants as greens and ended up acting like monkeys or running about naked for days on end.”
“Nobody had better run about naked in this house,” said Madame Gascoigne darkly. “Certainly not this unprepossessing lot.”
Penelope laughed, the first truly lighthearted emotion she’d felt in days.
The mercenaries had been more careful in the beginning and supervised the preparation of every meal. But after a week in the house without so much as a stomachache, they had relaxed. After ten days, they barely bothered sticking their heads into the kitchen unless it was to ask what delicious dishes Madame Gascoigne would be serving up next.
And tonight, she had put on a scrumptious late repast at ten, and by midnight Number One was crouched at the foot of the newel post, barking.
The women of the staff waited some more time before they signaled Penelope, via a lantern in the window, that she could now come back into the house.
She had to tiptoe around the three male mercenaries on all fours in the entry, sniffing one another’s behinds. Mr. Mears, released from his room, made himself presentable and immediately left to alert the police.
Knocks came at the front door. Penelope and Madame Gascoigne both froze. But it was only Mr. Mears, returning with the gendarmes.
“Oh, messieurs, thank goodness you’re here!” Penelope cried, throwing herself at the nearest officer. “You cannot believe the terror we have lived through. These three men and one woman invaded our home. They barged in and demanded twenty-five thousand francs.
“But my aunt who owns the house is in England right now, and I couldn’t come up with that sort of money. So they settled in, these dreadful malefactors. We scarcely dared draw breaths around them.
“Then a few hours ago, they became like this.”
She swept her arm toward the delirious mercenaries. The officer—and his men—stared in fascination.
“At first we became even more frightened. But when it seemed that they’d truly lost their minds, our brave butler stole out to inform you of our plight. And thank goodness you’re here, gentlemen!”
“Have no fear, mademoiselle, you are safe now,” said the officer gallantly. “We will take these lawbreakers away. They have the look of repeat offenders. Perhaps you’ve heard, mademoiselle, we now have photographic records of our inmate population. Even if they choose to prevaricate, we will be able to identify them quickly—and send them back to prison just as quickly.”
Upon Lieutenant Atwood’s advice, Livia had left Aix-en-Provence the day before. Her train reached Lyon at ten in the evening, and Paris a little before six in the morning. The sun was up, the day bright but still cool, and Miss Redmayne was there on the platform, waving.
They embraced each other tightly.
“You look like you haven’t slept a wink,” said Livia. She herself had expected to contend with nerves all night but had instead been lulled into slumber by the motion of the train.
“Only half an hour in the carriage, coming here. But what theater we had last night.”
She ushered Livia into the waiting carriage and launched into an account of the spectacle she and Mrs. Watson’s staff had witnessed. As she described how the police had to beat Number One to prevent him from removing his trousers right there in the parlor, Livia laughed so hard she had to wipe away tears.
When the carriage pulled up before the house, Livia leaped off almost before it had come to a complete stop. At the door she slowed, shaking her head at herself. Bernadine, not having any social obligations, rarely got up so early.
But she was wrong. Bernadine was up, dressed, and in the garden, walking about, holding on to Mademoiselle Robineau’s arm.
To a stranger, Bernadine might appear indifferent to her surroundings. But Livia knew what Bernadine’s raised face and half-closed eyes meant. Whether it was the fresh air, the morning sunlight, or the simple freedom of being in the garden, Bernadine was happy.
Livia greeted the nurse and they switched places, so that Bernadine now held on to Livia’s arm. She patted her sister’s hand. “It’s me. I’m back and we’re safe.”
If only they could have some news from England. If only she knew for sure that Charlotte, Mrs. Watson, Lord Ingram, and Lawson were safe, too.
And Mr. Marbleton, her dear, dear Mr. Marbleton.