Chapter 13
Sherrinford Holmes marched into the library at Stern Hollow.
Despite the direness of his situation, Lord Ingram had to suppress an urge to smile.
By and large Charlotte Holmes was unhurried in her ways.
Unless one knew, for example, the fiendish speed at which she read or that she needed only three seconds of observation to extract all pertinent life facts from a stranger, it was easy to mistake her for a creature of languor, or even indolence.
The character she had created in Sherrinford Holmes, however, spoke at a rapid clip and walked with a bounce in his step.
And was a far more affable soul than she had ever been.
In fact, if Lord Ingram didn’t know any better, he might not find the chap comical at all.
A bit peculiar but obviously a man of intelligence, discretion, and unimpeachable loyalty.
“Already back?” said Lord Ingram, rising. “I expected you to be out for longer.”
“Come with me,” said Holmes.
Lord Ingram did not hesitate.
In the vestibule a footman waited with hats, overcoats, and gloves. Mr. Walsh, the house steward, was also there, alongside Sergeant Ellerby.
“Do you remember the two crates of expedition equipment you received a few days ago?” asked Holmes, shrugging into a caped coat.
Lord Ingram nodded.
The crates had arrived on the day Charlotte Holmes and Mrs. Watson toured the grounds of Stern Hollow.
While he and Holmes were walking about in the kitchen garden, she had asked why he hadn’t gone on any digs.
And he had pointed to the lavender house, where his staff had just finished stowing the crates, which he hadn’t bothered to open and examine, archaeology being the last thing on his mind these days.
“Well, according to the very helpful gentleman at the village station, one more crate arrived for you the next day. Do you know about that?”
His heart thudded. “No.”
She turned to the majordomo. “What about you, Mr. Walsh?”
Mr. Walsh’s eyes widened. “Now that you mention it, Mr. Holmes, I do recall being informed about an additional crate. It was the day Mrs. Newell and her guests arrived. Carts and carriages were pulling up to the house one after another with guests, luggage, and food for the kitchen. When the crate came, the two men who brought it said that a mistake had been made on the part of the equipment company and that they’d forgotten to include a few items, which was why the crate was being delivered all the way to the house instead of the railway station. ”
“At what time did the delivery come?” asked Lord Ingram, his heart beating even faster.
“Toward dusk. Or perhaps a little later. Since your lordship hadn’t wished to bother with the other two crates, I had someone show the men directly to the lavender house.
I meant to inform you, but it was a bit of an uproar that evening.
I did remember twice the next day, but the first time you’d taken the gentlemen out to shoot and the second you were resting and had asked not to be disturbed.
And then—and then the matter with the icehouse, and I’m afraid the additional crate completely slipped my mind.
” Mr. Walsh’s complexion had turned a thoroughly perturbed pink. “My apologies, sir.”
“I would have paid no mind to the crate even if you had mentioned it,” said Lord Ingram. “No need to dwell on it further.”
He had no idea what he would have done had he been told, but no point saying anything else to the steward. He turned to the policeman. “Sergeant, Mr. Holmes and I are headed for the lavender house. Would you care to come with us?”
Sergeant Ellerby, in fact, had no choice but to come with them. When Lord Ingram had gone for his ride earlier, he’d discovered that henceforth either Sergeant Ellerby or one of his constables must accompany him every time he stepped out of his own front door.
“I would be honored, sir,” answered Sergeant Ellerby, with great sincerity.
And gratitude.
This gave Lord Ingram pause.
Sergeant Ellerby had been mortified when he’d informed Lord Ingram of the curtailment to his freedom. And now he was relieved that an invitation had been issued, so that he didn’t need to officially insert himself as an unwelcome minder.
Lord Ingram supposed he could be forgiven for thinking that deep down Sergeant Ellerby believed him innocent.
But Sergeant Ellerby didn’t know him as a person. His faith might be nothing more than a reluctance to attribute true darkness to a man who lived in an earthly Eden. Or even a tribal allegiance to the local squire, against barbarian outsiders from London.
No matter the sergeant’s reasons, Lord Ingram found himself grateful.
From the moment Lady Somersby had barred him from descending into the ice well, he had understood that he would be the prime suspect in this murder.
But intellectual knowledge was scant preparation for the reality of the investigation.
There was Chief Inspector Fowler, of course, all lupine ferocity behind his owlish mien.
There was Inspector Treadles, radiating discomfort, vacillating between sympathy and dismay.
But the worst was the collective uncertainty of his staff.
More than anything else, their unspoken misgivings made the air in the house heavy and the silence oppressive.
They still believed in him—they desperately did not want him to be the murderer—but they were beginning to wonder whether they knew him as well as they had thought they did.
Had it been twenty-four hours since Finney, the young kitchen helper, had run screaming out of the icehouse? Already, not being a murder suspect felt like a mythical state of bliss for which Lord Ingram could only yearn in hopeless futility.
The rain was now an inconsistent drizzle, but the temperature continued to drop. A gloom had settled over Stern Hollow. What daylight still remained suffered from a watery pallor, a grayness that stripped all vibrancy from even the gaudiest stretch of autumn foliage.
They were halfway to the lavender house when Sergeant Ellerby at last asked, “If you don’t mind, Mr. Holmes, why are we headed out to see a crate of expedition equipment?”
Holmes pulled down the flaps of her deerstalker cap—Lord Ingram’s deerstalker cap, in fact. It fit her well and he liked seeing it on her. “If I may be frank, Sergeant, it’s obvious that Scotland Yard suspects Lord Ingram.”
“I’m sure it’s far too early to come to any conclusions,” protested Sergeant Ellerby. “Lady Ingram’s body was only discovered yesterday.”
“We thank you for your impartiality, sir. And I can truthfully say that no one was more flummoxed by Lady Ingram’s untimely death than my friend here.
Set aside the fact that his house swarms with investigators and the papers in London are saying goodness knows what, the whole thing has been incomprehensible from an operational point of view.
“Lady Ingram did not return to Stern Hollow at the end of the Season. She hasn’t been here this autumn.
How did her body end up in the icehouse?
If we assume that she didn’t travel here under her own power while she was still alive, then somebody else had to have transported her body. How did they do it?”
“The crate!” cried Sergeant Ellerby, catching on.
“From the lavender house it’s about a furlong to the icehouse. Still no small distance to move a dead woman but doable for two men, or even one very strong one.”
“So if you are right, we should see an open, empty crate in the lavender house?”
“That is possible,” said Holmes. “At the very least, we should see that the lavender house’s lock has been tampered with.”
And the padlock that had once secured the lavender house was indeed absent.
Sergeant Ellerby exclaimed and went down on all fours.
“I see bits of metal filings near the threshold—still new and shiny. The servant Mr. Walsh sent to accompany the men with the crate would have locked the door after the crate was put in. So when these men came back for the crate again, they must have used a bolt cutter on the lock.”
He opened the door excitedly.
Alas, the lavender house contained no open, empty crate.
Sergeant Ellerby glanced uncertainly at Holmes. But it was Lord Ingram, his heart thumping, who said, “There are only two new crates here—these two.”
He set his gloved hand atop a stack of crates placed against the far wall, between sturdy metal shelves that held a number of boxes and other crates marked fragile and this side up.
“Everything else was already here earlier. If Mr. Walsh is right and a third crate came the day before Lady Ingram was discovered—well, that crate is gone.”
“But . . . wouldn’t it have been easier to open it here and carry only the body to the icehouse?” puzzled Sergeant Ellerby.
“Look at the floor,” said Holmes, pointing down. “Ash, would your servants have been so untidy?”
Elsewhere a few pieces of straw and wood splinters would not have been considered untidy in a rarely visited outbuilding.
But this was Stern Hollow, where meticulousness was not an aspiration but a minimum standard.
Lord Ingram’s heart thumped harder. “They wouldn’t.
All the senior servants believe that cleanliness is next to godliness, and they have trained those under them accordingly. ”
Holmes nodded. “So the men who came later did uncrate in here.”
“Then what did they do with the crate?” asked Sergeant Ellerby. “The gatehouse keeper might not mind a crate coming in. But wouldn’t he think it strange to see men leaving with one?”
Holmes turned to Lord Ingram. “When I first visited here, I was given a map at the gatehouse. I remember more than one entrance marked on the map.”
“So they could have left a different way and not been seen,” marveled Sergeant Ellerby.