Chapter 5 #2
“We will allow for that possibility. But then you must also allow for the possibility that the truth might not be as complimentary to Lord Ingram: He could have orchestrated what the public was allowed to learn, in order to tilt the narrative heavily in his favor, and then practiced intimidation at home to isolate his wife and cow her into silence.”
This was ludicrous. “No one could have cowed Lady Ingram into silence.”
“Appearances are often deceiving,” said Lady Somersby, who until now had been happy to let her sister do all the talking.
“You should trust us on this, Miss Holmes. It has been our vocation in life to see beneath the surface. Women who appear perfectly happy sometimes live in fear of their lives. And men who give every impression in public of kindness and amiability can be monsters in private.”
“And you believe Lord Ingram—Lord Ingram—to be such a man?”
“No one is above suspicion on such matters, because in private no one is entirely what they seem in public.”
But wouldn’t Charlotte have known if he was a monster? Wouldn’t she have honed in on all the clues?
Then again, as remarkable as Charlotte was, she was still only human. He was her faithful friend; his wife remained barely an acquaintance. Would her opinion have been swayed, as Livia’s most certainly would have been, by that unspoken hostility on Lady Ingram’s part?
“Only last night you were telling me, Lady Somersby, that Lady Ingram might have run away from home. Now you portray her as a prisoner in her own marriage.”
“Both are possible. We searched the manor not to look through anyone’s things but to see whether she might have left behind some clues to her fate.”
“Her fate? What do you think has happened to her?”
“What would your parents have done to your sister if she hadn’t run away?” asked Lady Somersby.
Livia felt her jaw unhinge. “You think Lady Ingram has been shoved into the attic like Mr. Rochester’s wife?”
“Who is this Mr. Rochester?” asked Lady Avery. “Why have I never heard of such infamy?”
“Fictional character, Caro. Dreadful mad wife in the attic, and with her there he tries to marry someone else.” Lady Somersby turned back to Livia. “At least Lord Ingram won’t be able to commit bigamy with your sister, since we all know he’s already married.”
Livia could barely keep her voice from rising an entire octave. “Why do you keep bringing everything back to my sister?”
“Everything comes back to her because she is an understandable motive. Think of this, what if Lady Ingram had something to do with her downfall? What if, instead of Mrs. Shrewsbury, it had been Lady Ingram who organized that mob who marched in on her and Mr. Shrewsbury? And what if Lord Ingram, in punishing his wife, thinks of himself as having righted a wrong perpetrated against Miss Charlotte Holmes?”
“Ladies, I begin to weary of declaring your ideas preposterous. It isn’t so simple to hold someone prisoner!
” Livia had tried writing something like that in her Sherlock Holmes story and the problems had immediately become apparent.
“How does he feed her? Who empties her chamber pot? How does he prevent her from screaming without suffocating her in the process?”
A scream pierced the peaceful afternoon.
Livia started. The ladies looked at each other in confusion. The scream came again, a man’s scream. The three women picked up their skirts and ran.
The path led downhill. Soon Livia saw the man. The boy, rather, an adolescent dressed in a dark jacket and dark trousers. A servant of the house.
He was on his knees. When he saw the women coming toward him, he rose unsteadily to his feet and attempted to speak.
“She’s—she’s—” He swallowed. “She’s in there. She’s in there!”
He pointed to an grassy mound to their left.
“Who is in there?” demanded Lady Avery.
But the boy trembled, as if he’d come down with a case of palsy, and couldn’t get another word out.
Livia peered at the mound. “Is that the icehouse?”
“I believe so,” said Lady Somersby grimly.
They found the entrance on the north side of the mound. The heavy door hadn’t been locked but had shut by its own weight. With some effort, Livia pulled it open.
What in the world was she doing? She should be staying with the poor, traumatized boy. Why was she headed for a destination that had made him run out screaming?
And who was she?
They passed through three antechambers, each chillier than its predecessor. The second one smelled of a badly kept latrine. Livia grimaced. Why should there be such a disagreeable odor in an icehouse?
The third antechamber was quite large. The lit taper that had been set into a wall bracket illuminated shelves built to either side, holding all kinds of foodstuff that benefited from cold storage.
A wheelbarrow lay sideways on the floor, which was wet from a pail of milk that had been knocked over.
And fortunately here the air smelled mostly of milk and cold, nothing foul.
They skirted the puddle and headed for the last door.
Which opened to greater brightness than Livia anticipated—the lamp just inside had two lit tapers and a mirrored back. The ceiling domed above the ice well, the lip of which rose a foot from the floor.
Nothing, as of yet, looked out of place.
“So . . . he left his wheelbarrow outside to open this door and light the tapers,” Livia heard herself say.
She had not advanced farther toward the ice well. She felt as if her blood was congealing, the warmth in her veins draining away.
“Once they were lit,” said Lady Avery, her voice almost a whisper, “he would have gone to the edge of the well to take a look at the ice level.”
Her sister took over. “Then he rushed out so fast he knocked over the wheelbarrow. For all we know, he might still be screaming outside.”
Livia shivered—and not only from the fear that seemed to crawl out of her very marrow. The ice well was at least ten feet across in diameter and probably just as deep. How much ice did it hold? Two tons? Three? Her breaths emerged in visible puffs.
“Shall we”—Lady Avery swallowed audibly—“shall we step forward together?”
They did, inch by inch, as if they were approaching the edge of a cliff. The first thing that came into view was wood shavings on the far side of the ice well, providing insulation for the ice underneath.
And then an outstretched hand.
Her hand, whoever she was.
Livia whimpered. She, too, wanted to turn around and sprint away. But her feet kept carrying her forward.
At last they stood at the edge of the ice well and stared down onto Lady Ingram—Lady Ingram’s body—lying on top of the wood shavings.
Someone patted Livia’s hand—she’d been clutching at Lady Somersby’s sleeve, with fingers that had been chilled to the bone.
“Well,” said Lady Avery, her voice low yet harsh, “I guess this place is as cold as Switzerland.”