Chapter 8 #2
“After what happened with Lady Ingram, I could have sworn you would never let them out of your sight again. What changed your mind?”
“Your sister once told me that you didn’t speak until you were four and a half. I’m sure you were under great pressure to say something, anything, from the moment you could walk. But you waited until you were ready and not a moment before.
“Children are people. They have their own minds. I have never been the kind of parent to impose my own will at any cost. Lucinda and Carlisle wanted to go with Remington, and in the end they got their way.”
Charlotte dabbed a napkin at her lips. Did she believe him?
In the middle of her first major case, Lord Ingram and Mrs. Watson had “met” at 18 Upper Baker Street, Mrs. Watson’s property that had been staged as Sherlock Holmes’s residence.
Mrs. Watson had attired herself as the landlady, Mrs. Hudson, in a padded dress, a gray wig, and wire-rimmed glasses.
Lord Ingram had looked upon her with unease and mistrust. And pointedly asked Charlotte whether, if it were anyone else, she wouldn’t have considered it too good to be true that she had randomly encountered a demimondaine who not only took her in but enthusiastically supported her powers of deduction.
When he himself, as Charlotte would later discover, had sent Mrs. Watson to assist her—Mrs. Watson, his trusted friend, whom he’d known for longer than he had known Charlotte Holmes.
He had been so good an actor, so convincing in his display of rigid displeasure, that she, despite her powers of observation, had believed entirely in his disapproval of Mrs. Watson.
Had not in the least suspected that he had conspired with the latter to provide assistance to her, in those desperate days after she’d run away from home, when she was perilously low on both funds and choices.
Across the table he took a slow bite of the game pie, studying her as she studied him, his gaze steady, opaque.
He had told her before that she was the best liar he knew, a prodigious, possibly generational, talent.
She had not thought the same of him—perhaps because their interactions had been characterized by so much silence.
But when she had confronted him, after finding out that he had been friends with Mrs. Watson all along, this had been his response: I have said a great many things to you that are convenient, rather than truthful.
What was he telling her now, the truth, or something more convenient?
“You’ve met with Sergeant Ellerby.”
He narrowed his eyes at the change of subject. “Yes.”
“You told him as much of the truth as you could, I take it, since lying at this point would lead only to further incrimination.”
“Correct.”
“You spoke calmly and conducted yourself with a dignity befitting your station, no doubt. But at the same time, you let him see your fingers tremble when you picked up that glass of spirits. From time to time, you stopped speaking to pull yourself together. And of course, you made yourself sound increasingly hoarse as the interview wore on, a man buffeted and battered by the unkindness of the universe.”
His grip tightened on his fork and knife. “He was the first person I needed to convince of my innocence.”
“Precisely. Why didn’t you expend any effort to convince me, just now?”
“You can speak to anyone on the staff—Remington was here and he left with the children.”
“I don’t propose to dispute what everyone saw. What I need is the reason for their departure.”
“I told you—”
“Be careful what you say to me. I have not in the least eliminated the possibility that you are the one who killed Lady Ingram, accidentally or intentionally, when she came to abduct Lucinda and Carlisle.”
“Who is that?” murmured Alice, leaning into Treadles’s dressing room. “Are you headed somewhere?”
Treadles buttoned his jacket. “Chief Inspector Fowler. He wants me to accompany him on a case.”
Alice blinked. She had already been abed, probably asleep when the commotion of the late-night caller arose. “It must be a major case, then, if they’ve put him on it. And if he’s asked you for help.”
“It is a major case.” He straightened the knot of his necktie and did not look at her. “Lady Ingram.”
She gasped. “What?”
“Apparently everyone believed her to be overseas, but she was found dead this afternoon on the grounds of Stern Hollow.”
He hadn’t known anything about Lady Ingram’s whereabouts—he hadn’t written Lord Ingram since before the end of summer; nor Lord Ingram him. And without that correspondence, he had few means of obtaining Lord Ingram’s news—they moved in very different circles and shared no mutual friends.
Except Sherlock Holmes, once upon a time.
“Doesn’t Chief Inspector Fowler know that you are acquainted with Lord Ingram?”
Treadles stuffed a folded handkerchief into his pocket, only to realize he already had one. “He does. I expect that’s why he has chosen me, because I’ll be able to help him assess Lord Ingram.”
Which could constitute the entirety of his duties on this case. Chief Inspector Fowler had strong ideas on how subordinates ought to behave. Treadles might be an inspector in his own right, but with Fowler in charge, he suspected his own role would amount to no more than that of a stenographer.
Not to mention, he would need to be careful in both speech and action so that he didn’t come across as an advocate for Lord Ingram.
“Surely they don’t suspect him of complicity in her death.”
“I don’t know enough yet,” he lied.
In cases like this, it’s almost certain that the husband is responsible, Chief Inspector Fowler had once told him on a different but similar case. And he would not have sought Treadles if he didn’t already believe that he had a plum of a target in Lord Ingram.
Alice clutched at the lapels of her dressing gown. “Lord Ingram is our friend.”
“And I am a policeman.” He lifted his always-ready travel bag. “If he is not guilty, he has nothing to fear.”