Chapter 9 #3
“Yes, sir,” answered Treadles.
“I see only an excision here.”
Treadles brought a lantern close and saw that the beauty mark had been scooped out, leaving a small dent where it had once been. The wound had healed but still looked recent.
“A pity,” said Mr. Holmes. “It was one of her distinguishing features.”
“Ah, look at this.”
Fowler had rolled up Lady Ingram’s sleeves and a small puncture wound was visible above her wrist. The otherwise ice-pale skin around it was discolored—the discoloration extending upward in a faint line, disappearing after approximately two inches.
Likewise on her other arm.
“Intravenous injections,” said Treadles.
“The pathologist might be able to tell us exactly what the substance is. Or the chemical analyst,” said Fowler.
“Do either of you smell the odor of alcohol?” asked Mr. Holmes.
The policemen exchanged a glance. Now that Mr. Holmes mentioned it, Treadles could indeed detect the faintest whiff in the air.
“If memory serves, Lady Ingram was a teetotaler—it was debated whether she even touched the champagne served at her own wedding. A shining paragon in so many ways, our dearly departed,” said Mr. Holmes, and smoothed the ends of his mustache with what seemed to Treadles an unnecessary amount of enjoyment.
Such an odd chap.
Lord Ingram seemed drawn to people who were at least somewhat misaligned with the world.
“But alcohol, in sufficient quantities, is most certainly a poison,” Mr. Holmes went on. “Assuming that she’d been injected with absolute alcohol, would that prove to be an irritant to the blood vessels?”
Again, a skillful argument put forth for Lord Ingram’s innocence: He would not have killed his wife with injections of absolute alcohol, knowing that she did not imbibe on any regular basis.
Fowler frowned. “A rather diabolical way to kill, is it not?”
“But a relatively clean one, from a certain point of view. No need to visit a crooked chemist, as would be the case with arsenic poisoning. And the body could be passed off as having resulted from a natural death, if one wished to move it without arousing too much suspicion.”
This was a body that came from elsewhere, implied Mr. Holmes, transported in a coffin.
Fowler, frowning more deeply, performed a systematic search of the pockets—very few, given that ladies didn’t care for that sort of thing—and found nothing more than a handkerchief. He then slipped off her boots.
“Aha, what have we here?”
Something made a crinkling sound inside her woolen stocking. The removal of the stocking revealed a folded-up piece of paper that had been placed inside, against the sole of a blue-tinged foot.
Unfolded, the paper was full of writing. Upon closer inspection, however, it turned out that a single line of text was repeated nearly two dozen times, each iteration in a different hand.
Vixen Charlotte Holmes’s zephyr-tousled hair quivers when jolted in fog bank.
Upon seeing that name, Treadles’s gut tightened.
“What in the world is this?” exclaimed Fowler.
“A pangram,” said Mr. Holmes. “A sentence that contains all twenty-six letters of the alphabet.”
“And who is Charlotte Holmes?”
“Are you related to her?” Treadles asked at almost the same time.
“She is a friend of Lord Ingram’s, a young woman with a peculiar bent of mind. I would not be surprised if she came up with the pangram herself,” answered Mr. Holmes, unruffled. “And we are not related.”
Fowler cast Treadles a look, before turning back to Mr. Holmes. “You say she is a friend of Lord Ingram’s. Not Lady Ingram’s?”
“Not in my understanding.”
“Then why would Lady Ingram have in her possession something like this?”
Mr. Holmes hesitated. “That is a question better answered by Lord Ingram.”
“Then let us speak to Lord Ingram,” said Fowler, straightening. “The constables can arrange to have the body transported to the coroner.”
“Gentlemen, would you mind if I looked around a little more?” said Mr. Holmes.
Fowler considered Mr. Holmes with a wariness that echoed Treadles’s own.
Mr. Holmes was no doubt acting on behalf of Lord Ingram, the prime suspect in the case.
But Lord Ingram was also the brother of a duke, and a man of wealth and influence in his own right.
It would not help Scotland Yard to antagonize him—at least, not yet.
“Go ahead,” said Fowler, after a meaningful pause.
“Thank you. Much obliged,” replied Mr. Holmes.
Mr. Holmes examined Lady Ingram’s feet, her stockings, and her boots.
Then he inspected the surface of the ice, pushing aside piles of wood shavings as he did so.
Both the policemen watched him closely, but he worked with a singular concentration, seemingly oblivious to the scrutiny he himself was under.
“What are you looking for, Mr. Holmes?” Treadles asked, despite his intention not to do so.
“I haven’t the slightest idea, Inspector. Anything out of the ordinary, I suppose.”
“Do you see anything?” Fowler asked.
“A few strands of hair.”
“Where?”
Mr. Holmes pointed at a spot some six feet removed from where Lady Ingram lay. The two policemen hurried forward to check. And there they were. Fowler took off his gloves, felt the strands, then approached Lady Ingram and touched the latter on the head. “Similar color and texture.”
“Hers?” asked Treadles.
“We can only assume so,” said Fowler, his eyes narrowed.
Once Mr. Holmes had finished with the ice well, he climbed out and proceeded to study the rest of the space. On their way out, he examined each antechamber, paying especially close attention to the doors and their locks. But when Fowler asked whether he’d seen anything else, he only shook his head.
Outside, Lord Ingram stood fifteen feet away from the entrance, a cigarette between his fingers.
“How did she die?” he asked.
The question was addressed to his friend.
Mr. Holmes fetched a pipe from inside his coat. “You’ve a match, Ash?”
With a somewhat disapproving look, Lord Ingram handed over a box of safety matches. Mr. Holmes lit his pipe with practiced ease and took a puff. “We’ll see what the pathologist has to say, but my guess would be poisoning, by an injection of absolute alcohol.”
Lord Ingram winced, an expression of fear and revulsion. And pity. He took a long drag on his cigarette, and then another. “Did you observe anything else?”
“Nothing the gentlemen from Scotland Yard haven’t remarked.
Her shoes do not fit her feet—probably the reason we were able to remove them so easily.
And her stockings are far too cheaply made to have been her own purchase.
A few pieces of straw among the wood shavings.
Coal dust on the floor of the antechambers, up to the second one but not in the ice well itself.
Some bits of metal filing right near the threshold of the entrance, still new and shiny. ”
Treadles hadn’t seen the straw among the wood shavings, but judging by Fowler’s self-satisfied look, he’d taken note of everything Mr. Holmes mentioned, and probably more.
“But enough of that for now. Let’s go back inside and warm up,” said Mr. Holmes. “I’m frozen down to my bollocks.”