Chapter 6
Mrs. Watson was disappointed. Two days had passed since their visit to Stern Hollow, and Lord Ingram had not called. Granted, he had a houseful of someone else’s guests. But still, he should have been able to get away for an hour or two and come to pay his respects.
“Really, he ought to know that I, at least, would have been anticipating his presence.”
She fully expected Miss Holmes to make no comments. But Miss Holmes set aside the newspaper she had been perusing and said, “It is rather odd.”
And that, apparently, was all she would say on the subject, for she picked up and glanced through the mail that had just arrived. “Mrs. Farr wrote back.”
Mrs. Watson had to think for a moment to remember the name. Mrs. Winnie Farr, who had been given the idea to write Sherlock Holmes by Sergeant MacDonald, Inspector Treadles’s subordinate.
“What did she say?”
Miss Holmes scanned the letter and handed it to Mrs. Watson.
Dear Mr. Holmes,
Thank you for your kind letter.
My sister, Miss Mimi Duffin, has been missing for almost three weeks. She is a grown woman and leaves London sometimes. But ten days ago my daughter Eliza turned seven. Mimi loves Eliza as her own and has never skipped her birthday before.
When she didn’t come—or send any word—I worried. Her friends hadn’t seen her. Her room was already let to someone else, because she hadn’t paid rent.
Her landlady told me that when she saw her last, Mimi was in high spirits because she was about to take up with a fine gentleman who was going to keep her in style. If I can find this gentleman—if you can help me find him—maybe I will learn what happened to Mimi.
I hope she is alive and well, but I don’t believe it.
Sincerely yours,
Mrs. Winnie Farr
“It would be a difficult search,” said Mrs. Watson. “And most likely fruitless.”
“True,” said Miss Holmes. She tapped a finger against her chin. “Mrs. Newell’s guests will depart Stern Hollow soon. Should Lord Ingram call upon us afterward, I might mention that we are headed to some of London’s rougher districts.”
Oh, that was genius. “He will insist on accompanying us. We won’t wish to trouble him, of course, but who are we to keep saying no to such chivalry?” enthused Mrs. Watson. “Should I write back and arrange for an appointment with Mrs. Farr for, let’s say, three days hence?”
Before Miss Holmes could reply, the doorbell rang. This being the maid’s afternoon off, Mrs. Watson answered the summons herself. A young man who identified himself as a groom from Stern Hollow greeted her.
“I have an urgent message for the ladies of Rampling Cottage, mum.”
Mrs. Watson had taken off her reading glasses before she came to the door—oh, the vanity. Now she found it difficult to make out the exact letters on the envelope—at least without holding the letter as far from her eyes as her hand could reach and squinting unattractively.
“An urgent message for us from Stern Hollow,” she said when she returned to the sitting room. “I wonder if it’s from Lord Ingram. Drat my old eyes.”
Almost immediately Miss Holmes said, “That’s my sister’s handwriting.”
“Oh? What news does she have?”
Miss Holmes took the letter. Her expression changed—changed so much that even someone not at all acquainted with her would be able to tell that something dreadful had happened.
“My goodness, what’s going on?” cried Mrs. Watson.
Miss Holmes did not answer. She turned the letter over and read it again from the beginning, much slower this time, as if committing every word to memory. When she was done, she set it down on the tea table and pushed it across to Mrs. Watson.
Dear Charlotte,
I hope my hand will stop shaking long enough for me to write.
Although what I really want is for what I’m about to tell you to never have happened at all.
Lady Ingram is dead. Her body was discovered in the icehouse by a kitchen helper.
The poor boy ran out screaming. Lady Avery, Lady Somersby, and I, who happened to be passing nearby, ran to his aid.
We then went into the icehouse to see what had so frightened him, when he couldn’t say anything beyond, “She’s in there. She’s in there!”
We saw her in the ice well. I’m not sure what happened afterward. I think one of the ladies tasked me to inform Lord Ingram, because the next thing I can remember is insisting to the house steward that I must see his master without delay.
When he received me, I found myself as inarticulate as the kitchen helper. “We—we were near the—the icehouse,” I stammered, “the icehouse, you—you see.”
Then I stared at him, as if he could divine what I could not bring myself to say. He looked back at me steadily, but with such weariness that my heart broke.
At last the words came. “Lady Ingram—Lady Ingram is in the icehouse. And she is no more.”
Now it was he who stared at me, as if I were a chair that had spoken. His lips moved, but no sounds emerged.
“I think you will wish to see it—to see her—for yourself,” I managed.
An eternity passed before he said, “Lady Ingram? Lady Ingram in the—in this icehouse?”
I nodded helplessly, wishing I’d never agreed to be a harbinger of evil tiding.
“Are you absolutely sure?” he asked, his voice so quiet I had to strain to hear.
I could only nod with unhappy certainty.
He rose, poured a measure of whisky, and pressed the glass into my trembling hands. “I’ll have Mrs. Sanborn send up a tea tray to your room. It has been an awful shock. Please go and take some rest.”
I did not need to be encouraged twice.
But now, with the tea tray beside me, my cheeks scald as I recall my utter uselessness.
He’d remembered to see to my well-being but I didn’t even possess the presence of mind to comfort him.
To declare my belief in his innocence. My faith that the universe would not be so cruel as to saddle him with the blame for Lady Ingram’s death.
Alas, all I did was babble something incoherent. Worse, as I left, I wished him good luck.
I should have at least told him that you would get to the bottom of the matter. That he was not alone in this dire misfortune. But at the time I fled with an unholy haste, only to moan and shiver in the tranquil loveliness of my room, no longer able to hold on to any illusion of sanctuary.
Please, Charlotte. You must help him.
Please.
Livia
Someone was whimpering, pitiful, wounded sounds.
Mrs. Watson. She clamped a hand over her mouth, her mind a battlefield of fear and chaos.
Miss Holmes stood by the secretary, sealing a note. “Ma’am, will you kindly hand this to the messenger?”
Her request pulled Mrs. Watson out of her paralysis. Yes, disaster had fallen. And no, it was not the time to hide in a dark corner, rocking herself.
“Of—of course.” She’d forgotten entirely that the messenger was waiting for a reply.
She did not forget to tip the boy. When he’d left, she rushed back to the sitting room, where Miss Holmes already had two fingers of whisky waiting for her.
“Oh, thank you, my dear.” She finished the entire glass in one continuous gulp, her eyes watering from the fiery eau-de-vie.
“Are you all right, ma’am?”
“Please don’t worry about me. I am most awfully unhappy but I shall be fine. We must think only of Lord Ingram now. And goodness gracious, those poor children of his.”
It was a moment before Mrs. Watson could go on. “And you, Miss Holmes, are you all right?”
“As of yet, nothing has happened to Lord Ingram,” said Miss Holmes quietly. “I will be busy in the coming days. And I will require a great deal of help. May I count on you, ma’am?”
“Of course!” said Mrs. Watson, almost shouting.
Had Miss Holmes some floors to scrub, Mrs. Watson would have attacked them with religious fervor, if only to keep herself from sinking further into this pit of anxiety. A “great deal” of work to help her help Lord Ingram? Mrs. Watson would have climbed over a mountain of fire to pitch in.
“Excellent. You’ll need your notebook to write everything down.”
Mrs. Watson leaped up to retrieve her notebook. The more tasks, the better.
Miss Holmes dictated for the next forty minutes. Some of what she needed would have occurred to Mrs. Watson herself, others she couldn’t even guess the purposes of. Why, for instance, did they need to hire two houses in London, in two very different districts?
Miss Holmes gave no explanations and Mrs. Watson asked for none. When they finished, Miss Holmes rose. “Mrs. Watson, will you help me dress?”
It was only a while later, when Mrs. Watson was alone in the sitting room again, that she had the sense that something else was wrong.
She paced for several minutes before her gaze fell on the tea tray: They had been about to have their afternoon tea when the messenger had arrived with Miss Livia’s note.
And in all that time since, Miss Holmes hadn’t touched anything that had been laid out: slices of butter cake, plum cake, and Madeira cake lay neglected on their respective plates.
Before the immensity of Lord Ingram’s misfortune, Miss Holmes, with her otherwise constant and unfailing adoration of baked goods, had lost her appetite.
The dread in Mrs. Watson’s heart froze into terror.
Lord Ingram gazed at his wife.
He had not believed Miss Olivia Holmes. Seeing her petrified bewilderment and feeling the tremor in her hand had not shaken him from the belief that it must all be an enormous misunderstanding.
And only an enormous misunderstanding.
His wife’s dead eyes killed that particular belief.
Alexandra, her name came to him unbidden. He had not thought of her as such in a very long time. Had referred to her, even in the privacy of his mind, only as his wife. And not with the pride and possessive zeal of a new husband, who had held her and whispered, My wife.
My wife.
My wife.
My wife.
My heart, he had meant then, my sky, the center of my universe.
He had been all goodwill and shining innocence. A man incapable of imagining that someday my wife would signify my error, my shame, my ineluctable punishment.
“My deepest condolences, my lord. It is a terrible misfortune.”
Slowly he turned his head. Lady Avery stood beside him, peering up.
“A terrible misfortune indeed,” he echoed woodenly, returning his attention to the woman in the ice well.
She looked . . . ungainly. After the birth of their second child, she had never moved as easily or gracefully as she had earlier. But even so, she would have been displeased, had she seen herself thus: her chin jutting out, her lips slack, her feet inelegantly splayed.
The urge rose to do something so that her posture would have met her own standard of acceptability.
Instead he tightened his fingers into a fist.
Her face, during the years of their marriage, had become squarer, harsher. Despite that, she would have remained lovely for at least another decade, before settling into middle-aged handsomeness, her erstwhile incandescent beauty something for others to reminisce about, and perhaps sigh over.
But death had robbed her of something essential. Her features were very much as he remembered, yet she looked a stranger, and not exactly an attractive one.
Dimly it occurred to him that he didn’t want his children to see her like this. Let them remember the mother they loved as living and beautiful. Let them never witness the corpse that had nothing of her left, bad or good.
“We didn’t know Lady Ingram had returned from Switzerland,” said Lady Avery, her voice an artillery boom in the silence.
He turned to her again, still in a fog of numbness. “Neither did I.”
“How do you suppose she came to be here?”
“I am as bewildered as you are, my lady.” The deep-seated cold of the icehouse enveloped him, seeping in from every pore. He willed himself not to shiver. “Ladies, you will be much more comfortable in the manor. I will wait here for the police.”
“We will wait with you,” said Lady Avery, without a moment’s hesitation. “We don’t mind a little cold.”
“And we are not bewildered,” added her sister. “Only outraged.”
Outraged.
He supposed he ought to be, too. But he couldn’t summon enough outrage, not when Lady Ingram’s choices had led to the deaths of three agents of the Crown.
Not when he could have told her that her own untimely demise would be the most likely outcome, once she lost her place at his side and could no longer supply intelligence to Moriarty.
Those who betrayed Moriarty faced execution. And those who became useless—a slightly gentler riddance?
He couldn’t tell how she had died. She wore a promenade dress, which seemed stiff with newness. There were no visible wounds, no markings on the throat, or telltale streaks of blood on her clothes.
He stepped onto the lip of the ice well, intending to get inside and take a closer look.
Someone grabbed him by his coat. “I don’t believe you should touch anything, sir.”
He stared at Lady Somersby. This was his wife. His estranged wife, yes, but his wife nevertheless.
It occurred to him at the end of a very long moment, during which Lady Somersby’s eyes blazed like Lady Justice’s, with her blindfold ripped off, that she meant to prevent him from tampering with the site.
Him.
Fear snaked down his spine.
The gossip ladies believed that he was responsible for his wife’s death.
That she had never been sent to Switzerland but had instead been murdered in cold blood.
Here in her own home.