Chapter Thirty-Four
By the ruined abbey
Bancroft toppled over.
Lord Ingram swore but before he could run toward his brother’s crumpled form, Mrs. Watson gripped him by the arm. “Wait. What if he’s only pretending to be dead?”
Charlotte would have said the same.
He shook free of Mrs. Watson’s grasp and ran, but someone darting out from the ruins of the abbey reached Lord Bancroft first.
Mrs. Farr.
She removed the revolvers from Bancroft’s hands and only then felt his neck. “He’s dead.”
Lord Ingram, kneeling down next to his brother, had his wrist in hand. After a while, he slowly set it down into the grass and covered his eyes with his hand.
Another figure tottered out of the ruins. Mrs. Claiborne, a pistol in hand. “I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice shaking. “But when he shot at everyone,I—I’m not even sure what happened—”
She looked around, shook her head, and looked again. “How are you all perfectly fine?”
“Blanks,” said Mrs. Watson, putting an arm around her. “The weapons Lord Bancroft had were all taken from us, and we made sure to load them with only blank cartridges.”
Lord Ingram had been so meticulous he had weighed individual bullets for the different firearms, and had a gunsmith insert tiny metal slugs inside the stock of each gun so that they weighed the same as if real cartridges had been used, on the off chance that Bancroft, on picking up a weapon unfamiliar to him, could still detect the eight-to-ten-percent weight differential in the bullets.
And the distance they’d carefully kept from him? Blank cartridges were useless for hitting targets, but had he fired upon them point-blank, the explosion of the gunpowder could still be injurious, possibly fatal.
Lord Ingram shot to his feet. “Holmes, there is going to be trouble for you.”
Their plan was never to kill Bancroft, but to deliver him—anonymously, if possible—back to the authorities.
But perfect plans existed only on paper, never in real life. With Lord Bancroft dead, Charlotte, who had visited him frequently of late, would face inquiries.
Lord Ingram was already urging everyone to check that they’d left nothing behind. After he’d ushered them into the carriage, he checked the entire area one more time before climbing inside.
“Mrs. Watson, can you glue a beard on my face?” he asked. “I already told Lawson to drop me off at the nearest railway station.”
The safe, he mouthed to Charlotte.
She nodded. “And then please go back to Stern Hollow and ‘recuperate.’?”
He hesitated a moment. “You’re right. Appearances still need to be kept.”
“Mrs. Farr”—Charlotte shifted her attention to the next person—“the note you dropped off in the post for your children before you came with us?”
Mrs. Farr had not come for an overnight trip without informing Mumble and Jessie.
“I’ll destroy it as soon as I get back,” she said.
Charlotte now regarded a paper-white, trembling Mrs. Claiborne. “Accidents happen, Mrs. Claiborne, and yours came about because of an abundance of concern. Lord Bancroft is no more, but it might be safer, all the same, for you to leave the country, as you had originally planned.”
“All right.” Mrs. Claiborne bit her lower lip. “But what about you, Miss Holmes?”
The locket with the unfortunate Mrs. Kirby’s picture inside had already been delivered to Sergeant MacDonald; there were no other loose ends concerning Inspector Treadles to take care of—or none Charlotte could do anything about at the moment. She planned to stop by the counterfeit Mrs. Claiborne’s town house and use the typewriter there to fabricate an extra note from Lord Bancroft, a more conciliatory one to aid in the interrogation she was about to face. Then she would go back to her hotel, breakfast, and take a small nap, if possible.
“I will deal with what comes,” she said. “I will be fine.”