Murder at Fear's Hollow

Prologue

“Hello, brother,” murmured Charlotte Holmes to the man who helped her descend from the carriage.

The man, who had hitherto presented himself as Mott, groom and coachman to the Holmes family, half bowed.

They stood in the coach house behind the town residence that Sir Henry, their father, had hired for the Season.

Charlotte’s sister Livia had just been delivered to the front door.

And the entire family, with the exception of Charlotte, would be setting out for the country in the morning, as it was nearly the end of July, a fashionable time to leave London.

“May I offer you some tea?” asked Mr. Myron Finch, her half brother, pulling off his driving gloves.

He seemed entirely unconcerned that she’d peeled back his secret.

Then again, he had read the note she’d pressed into his hand when he’d helped her into the carriage earlier, requesting that he put the vehicle directly to the coach house after Livia stepped off.

He might not have known that she wished to discuss his true identity, but he would have braced himself for something.

“Tea would be much appreciated,” she said.

He showed her to a stool near an uneven-looking folding table. “I’m afraid I haven’t any decent foodstuffs on hand. I’ll be vacating the place as soon as I’ve taken your family to the railway station tomorrow morning.”

Her family.

“Not to worry. I have just the thing.”

She opened her handbag and took out a small wrapped package. Having briefly lived on the edge of hunger earlier in the summer, after she’d run away from home, she never left Mrs. Watson’s house without a supply of comestibles.

The package contained three slices of plum cake. “Shall I serve you a piece, Mr. Finch?”

“Certainly,” he replied, echoing her elaborate politeness. “Let me light the Etna stove.”

The Etna stove, made for travelers, was said to boil water in three minutes flat. Charlotte was content to wait in silence; apparently, so was her father’s illegitimate son.

He was an unremarkable-looking man: his features neither handsome enough nor odd enough to attract notice. But as with most other seemingly ordinary faces, a closer study yielded interesting details: fine-textured skin, long lashes, a strong jawline.

“How did you think to hide here?” she asked, after tea had been made and served.

She occupied the only seat. He stood against a brick column, a dented tin mug in one hand, a piece of plum cake in the other.

“When we realized the kind of danger we’d put ourselves in, Jenkins and I agreed to go our separate ways.”

There was a pause before he mentioned Jenkins by name, the first hint of deeper emotions. Jenkins had been his friend from school, and the two men had served Moriarty, a man of dangerous aims. Years later, they had left Moriarty’s service together.

But Moriarty rewarded deserters with death. Jenkins had already met his. Mr. Finch, as of now, was still in one piece. But for how long?

“It stood to reason that two lone men would be more difficult to track down than two men traveling and rooming together,” he went on.

“For me, it would be better to disappear into the bowels of London. But where in London would I be safest? Where would Moriarty’s minions be least likely to look for me?

“Moriarty preferred to bring into his service young men born on the wrong side of the blanket. The subject of our fathers came up from time to time—and I’d always said that I would never introduce myself to the man who’d sired me.

Not even if I somehow became Home Secretary—or rich as Croesus.

He would need to come to me, hat in hand.

“They believed me, because I was—and am—sincere in those sentiments. I decided to take advantage of that and tuck myself away in the last place they would expect.”

She had wondered what he had made of the Holmes family—and whether he had been disappointed in their father, even though he couldn’t have expected much to begin with.

To Sir Henry, Myron Finch had only ever been an abstract inconvenience addressed via family solicitors.

How had Mr. Finch felt then, standing before the father who did not know what he looked like—nor had ever cared to find out?

“We are not the easiest people to work for.”

“You and Miss Livia are all right.”

They met a minimum standard of decency and consideration. But their parents . . .

Charlotte nodded. “An excellent strategy. I thought you were more than you let on—but often people are. I didn’t in the least suspect anything while I lived here.”

“When did you realize? And how?” he asked, as if the questions had only then occurred to him.

In his nonchalance, this brother might be more similar to her than any of the siblings with whom she had shared an upbringing. “Very recently. When I went to your old school and asked to see photographs of cricketers from your batch.”

“And what prompted you to do such a thing?”

“It’s a long story.”

She gave him a condensed version of the maneuvers, on the part of a Moriarty ally, to find him.

The ally, who had known of both Charlotte’s connection to Myron Finch and that she was taking consulting clients under the guise of Sherlock Holmes, had asked Sherlock Holmes to find the errant Mr. Finch.

And the irregularities of the case had eventually led Charlotte not only to unmask Mr. Finch but also to expose the Moriarty ally.

He listened without interruption. And except for a widening of the eyes when she mentioned that she was Sherlock Holmes, he could have been nodding along to a stranger’s account of garden pests.

But when she fell silent, he exhaled, a shaky breath—he was not free from fear, after all. “I knew that if they found me, I’d be dead. But I had no idea so much effort had been expended toward that end.”

If he only knew. She had not told him that the Moriarty ally was none other than her friend Lord Ingram Ashburton’s estranged wife, who had been passing along crucial information that she’d gathered from spying on her husband, himself an agent of the Crown.

As a result of coming to Sherlock Holmes, her secret had been exposed.

And she was now a fugitive, her children essentially motherless.

But Lady Ingram’s fate was not Mr. Finch’s concern. He had enough of his own worries.

“I understand you have taken something of value from Moriarty,” said Charlotte. “But I imagine, theft or not, he must make an example out of everyone who deserts him—or his other minions might think they could abscond at will.”

“Not many wish to. Then again, those who do choose not to express that desire aloud. Jenkins and I were unusual in that we knew each other before we pledged our fealty to Moriarty. Most others come into his service singly and alone.”

“And his organization becomes the only family they know.”

“Precisely.”

She wondered, then, and not for the first time, what had compelled him to leave this “family”. Had it been the culmination of years of ever-increasing urge? Or had he, like her, made up his mind within minutes, when his circumstances deteriorated abruptly?

She did not ask that question. She asked, “If you don’t mind my curiosity, what did you do for Moriarty, exactly?”

“I was his cryptographer.”

Similarities. “I had to solve a Vigenère cipher recently. It nearly broke my will to live.”

He smiled and made no response.

Charlotte took a sip of her tea, a strong, brisk Assam, served without milk or sugar. “What do you plan to do now?”

“I think you know I plan to disappear again. But that isn’t what you are asking, is it?”

“You are correct,” said Charlotte. She nibbled on her slice of plum cake, which had held up well despite having spent the evening in her rather cramped handbag. “I am more interested in what you intend to do with what you stole from Moriarty.”

“I didn’t steal anything from Moriarty,” said Mr. Finch.

Charlotte raised a brow.

He smiled slightly. “That is the official version. Moriarty will deny, to his dying breath, that anything has been taken from him in an unauthorized manner. I don’t know how you came by your information, but it most certainly wouldn’t have been one of his usual agents.

To them he would have said only that we were traitors—and that would be reason enough to hunt down and eliminate us. ”

“I received my intelligence from people who call themselves the Marbletons. Mrs. Marbleton was once married to Moriarty. Or perhaps I should say, she still is, since she did not die, as is commonly believed.”

“And which late Mrs. Moriarty is she?”

“Excuse me?”

“There are three late Mrs. Moriartys.”

“That many?”

“First died in childbirth. Second in a skiing accident in the Swiss Alps. Third of an embolism of the heart.”

“This would be the second Mrs. Moriarty—still alive after all these years. Then again, she might not be Mrs. Moriarty at all, if the first Mrs. Moriarty also turns out to be still alive somewhere. Is there a current Mrs. Moriarty?”

“Not that I know of. There is a mistress whom Moriarty seems fond of—but he is determined not to marry again, since he considers himself an agent of misfortune to any woman named Mrs. Moriarty.”

“How thoughtful,” Charlotte murmured.

“Anyway, please go on. The second Mrs. Moriarty is still alive and well.”

“And it is from her associates that I learned that you may have something of value to Moriarty.”

“I’m going to toe the official line and say that there is no such thing.”

Because it would be better for her not to know? “The Marbletons want to meet you. They’d like to offer you a safe haven. In exchange, they desire to weaken Moriarty by exploiting the item you have not stolen and are not carrying.”

“They have very rosy expectations.”

“They claim—or at least one of them claims—that they are tired of running and hiding. They wish to be on the offensive. To better ensure their safety and well-being by making Moriarty fear them instead.”