Chapter 11
Before the policemen were shown out, they made clear, albeit with great politeness, that the entirety of Stern Hollow was subject to search.
Lord Ingram indicated his willing cooperation and made a request of his own.
“One of the three ladies who went into the icehouse, Miss Olivia Holmes, is of a much more sensitive temperament than Lady Avery and Lady Somersby. Coming upon Lady Ingram has been a great shock to her. If you gentlemen could speak to her first, so that she can put this behind her as soon as possible . . .”
Treadles’s eyes widened. “Would this be the same Miss Olivia Holmes who is Miss Charlotte Holmes’s sister?”
“Correct. She was Mrs. Newell’s guest—and consequently now my guest.”
“A small world, this is,” said Fowler, his tone gentler now that the interrogation had finished—for the moment. “It will be no trouble at all to see her first.”
“Thank you, gentlemen. Most kind of you.”
The head footman arrived to show Scotland Yard to the room where they would conduct the rest of their interviews. When they were gone, Lord Ingram glanced up at the gallery, then at Holmes.
Their eyes met. She rubbed her bearded chin. “By the way, Ash, you bowdlerized my pangram. I’m devastated.”
“I don’t know why you believed I would have ever committed the original in writing, in any of my scripts.” He took a deep breath. “Will you come down, Bancroft, or should we join you up there?”
Bancroft descended a spiral staircase and approached the fireplace.
He was a slender, finely built man who usually appeared much younger than his actual age.
But he had lost some weight, which emphasized the delicate lines that webbed the corners of his eyes.
And his gait, otherwise smooth and graceful, gave an impression of jerkiness. Of agitation.
“How did you get here so fast?” Lord Ingram asked.
“I was at Eastleigh Park. You almost gave Wycliffe an apoplectic attack with your note. I talked him out of coming here himself, but that meant I had to act as his emissary.”
“Why were you at Eastleigh Park? Since when do you visit Wycliffe?”
Bancroft was the most remote of the four Ashburton brothers. During the London Season he occasionally accepted invitations to dine at his brothers’ houses, but rarely issued any of his own. Lord Ingram seldom met him except to discuss the more clandestine concerns of the Crown.
“I am obliged to account for myself to His Grace the same way you are—he doesn’t order me to it as often as he orders you, but it happens. And I thought it would be better for me to call on him now, so as to be spared a family reunion at Christmas.”
“Excellent thinking, that,” said Holmes.
Bancroft gave her a chilly look and said to Lord Ingram, “You weren’t planning on making introductions?”
“This fine gentleman here is Mr. Sherlock Holmes’s brother, Mr. Sherrinford Holmes.”
Bancroft’s eyes widened. He studied Holmes from head to toe, more than a little astonished. “I see. I should have expected an envoy from Sherlock Holmes, given the nature of the case. How do you do, Miss Holmes?”
“I’m very well, thank you, my lord. Should we ring for a fresh pot of tea?” asked Holmes. “You’ll approve of the cake.”
The cake that she hadn’t touched. Granted, the modified orthodontia she wore to alter the shape of her face did not make eating easy, but the Holmes of old would have found a way.
“No tea for me,” said Bancroft. “Tell me what you have found out, Ash. Is it really Lady Ingram’s body in the icehouse?”
“I wish it were otherwise.”
Bancroft ran his fingers through his hair. “Why? Why did it happen?”
Lord Ingram couldn’t remember the last time his brother sounded so baffled—or so perturbed. “I wish I knew. If Moriarty is playing a game, I fail to understand the game’s objective.”
“And the police? Do they know anything?”
“Do you remember when you sent your man Underwood to fetch Miss Holmes from that tea shop in Hounslow?”
“Yes, you were with her at the time.”
“Our meeting has been reported to the greater world by ladies Avery and Somersby—and the police are entirely seduced by the obvious. If this keeps up for much longer, I will need to become a fugitive.”
“What about your children?”
This question earned Bancroft a sideways look from Holmes. Bancroft was hardly one to be concerned about other people’s offspring, even if the children in question were his niece and nephew.
“Wycliffe will claim them, no doubt, and raise them to be stiff, pompous younger versions of himself.”
Bancroft nodded slowly. “It hasn’t been a smooth year for you, has it?”
Lord Ingram laughed softly. “Not altogether, no.”
“I’ll see if I can view the body. Anyone interested in joining me?”
Both Holmes and Lord Ingram shook their heads.
“Very well, then. I’ll leave you to your work.” He hesitated a moment. “I’m sorry I can’t do more. It is imperative that we not breathe a word about Lady Ingram’s betrayal of the Crown.”
When he had gone, Holmes said, “He does look a bit worn down. Perhaps my powers over the males of the species are more legion than I suspect.”
Lord Ingram rolled his eyes. “Your powers are exactly as legion as you suspect—you’ve never been one for underestimating yourself.”
She smiled slightly and touched him on the arm. “Frankly, I’m a little disappointed that Lord Bancroft came, instead of the duke—I was looking forward to one of His Grace’s deadly lectures. But now we must carry on.”
Treadles wished he had some time to think. Charlotte Holmes’s presence was hugely problematic. As a potential material witness, she needed to be interviewed. But Treadles couldn’t simply point Chief Inspector Fowler to Sherrinford Holmes and tell him to proceed.
Or could he?
It would be the right thing to do. The proper thing to do.
But it would require him to admit that Sherlock Holmes, whose help had been instrumental in several of his biggest cases, was not only a woman, but a fallen one unwelcome in any respectable drawing room.
The very thought was enough to make his head throb.
Perhaps it was a good thing then that he had no time to think. They had scarcely settled themselves in the blue-and-white parlor, bedecked with pastoral paintings, when Miss Olivia Holmes was shown in.
“Miss Holmes, thank you for taking the time to speak to us,” said Fowler in his most avuncular voice.
Treadles hadn’t known what to expect, but it was not this stiff, unsure woman.
She might be pretty enough if she smiled, but as she sat down, smiling appeared very much beyond her.She studied Fowler, her eyes devoid of trust. And they remained devoid of trust as she provided one terse answer after another.
After Fowler had inquired into every facet of the icehouse discovery, he said, “I am interested in your opinion, Miss Holmes. You were acquainted with Lady Ingram. Can you think of anyone who might have wished her harm?”
“I had been introduced to Lady Ingram,” said Miss Holmes, drawing that distinction with a trace of impatience. “So I could have claimed an acquaintance, I suppose, but I knew her very little.”
“I thought Society was small.”
“It isn’t big. But it would be akin to asking a constable in the street what he might know of you, Chief Inspector.”
“I see. But I understand that your sister Miss Charlotte Holmes is a good friend of Lord Ingram’s. Would that not have earned you a place in Lady Ingram’s circle?”
“Not in the least. A man’s wife is the one who issues invitations to functions that they host together. And Lady Ingram had never invited my sister—or myself—to any of her events.”
“Why do you suppose that was the case? Was she jealous of the friendship between Miss Charlotte and her husband?”
“I didn’t know her well enough to speak to that. If she was jealous, then it was over nothing. My sister and Lord Ingram have always conducted themselves with the greatest propriety.”
Treadles couldn’t help interjecting himself into the interview. “Yet I understand that Miss Charlotte has been banished from Society because of an act of impropriety with a married man.”
Miss Holmes stared at him, her expression at first dumbstruck, then furious. She took a deep breath. “And that man was not Lord Ingram.”
“Thank you, Miss Holmes,” said Fowler, his tone soothing, “for your time and cooperation.”
Miss Holmes nodded curtly and rose. But instead of walking out, she stood in place. Fowler and Treadles, who had also come out of their chairs when she got up, stayed on their feet and exchanged a look.
“Did you remember something, Miss Holmes?” asked Fowler.
“No, but there is something that bothers me. I found Lady Avery searching my room yesterday. She later told me that she and her sister, Lady Somersby, were looking to see whether Lady Ingram might have left messages behind as to her whereabouts.”
“Yesterday, after Lady Ingram was discovered dead?”
“No, well before. Even her confession came while the icehouse was still in the distance.”
Fowler appeared to ponder this new information. “Where did ladies Avery and Somersby think Lady Ingram might have gone?”
“They weren’t sure, but they weren’t above suspecting Lord Ingram of keeping her under lock and key, possibly somewhere on this very estate.”
“Given that she was found dead on this very estate, perhaps that was not such an outlandish charge after all.”
“You are wrong, sir. Lady Ingram’s body in the icehouse makes those women’s assertions more outlandish, not less.”
Miss Holmes stood straighter now, her voice stronger, a fiercer woman than Treadles had first given her credit for.
“People thought it was a little odd—perhaps very odd—that Lady Ingram had left for Switzerland without any notice. But they didn’t worry about her.
No one worried about Lady Ingram, ever. Not even in the immediate aftermath of the rupture between her and her husband, when everyone learned that she had screamed that she’d only married him for his money.
They didn’t worry about her because they knew him.
They knew that his character was above reproach. ”