Chapter 14
“I have your tea here, Holmes.”
Charlotte smiled a little: There was no better or more desirable way for a man to announce himself.
She emerged from her dressing room to find Lord Ingram already in the bedroom, standing with his back to her. He wore a blue-gray lounge suit, his dark hair still slightly damp, his fingertips grazing the lapel of Sherrinford Holmes’s jacket, which she’d placed on the back of a chair.
Well, well. And here she thought she’d still need to push, shove, or otherwise cantilever him into her den of iniquity.
At her entrance he turned around. She thought he might comment on her attire—or lack thereof: She had on only a heavily embroidered dressing gown. But that was not what caused his jaw to slacken.
“What happened to your hair?”
She’d forgotten that he hadn’t seen her without her Sherrinford Holmes wig. “I had it chopped off. There was too much. Wigs wouldn’t sit properly.”
“You chopped off everything!”
She hadn’t. There were a good few inches left—Mrs. Watson had absolutely refused to trim her hair any shorter. “I like it. Mrs. Watson says it brings out my eyes.”
He shook his head, not so much in disagreement, but as if he still couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Anyway, come and eat something.”
He had never complimented her looks—and he didn’t need to. All she’d ever wanted from him was friendship.
And this, of course.
This.
She walked to the tea tray, which held an astonishingly beautiful French apple tart, paper-thin apple slices arranged in perfect concentric circles, glistening under an apricot jam glaze.
A decade ago, sitting at one of his digs with a book in one hand but, alas, nothing to eat, she’d pined for a French apple tart to try.
He, a lover of Monsieur Verne’s scientific romances, had pointed out, rather indignantly, that the French did things other than cooking.
To which she’d replied that two of the foremost French inventions, canning and pasteurization, had to do with food and drink.
And then she’d written a message in his notebook in Braille, another major French invention:
You should have said, I’ll ask my godfather’s pastry chef to make it for you.
She had no idea whether he’d ever bothered to translate the note. Certainly he had never obliged her on the French apple tart. Until now.
Too bad she didn’t want any.
He looked at her. She smoothed the back of a spoon across the jam glaze on top of the tart, returning his gaze. He stood very still—no fidgeting for him. But in the rise and fall of his chest there was agitation. Inquietude.
“Why are you nervous?”
He hesitated. “You make me nervous.”
“Why?” She was not nervous at all. “You must have done this hundreds of times—at least.”
“Not with you.”
“The process should be the same.”
He glanced out of the window, his strong, sharp profile to her. “It’s impossible to talk to you, sometimes.”
“You mean, all the time? Or at least the vast majority? That’s why we wisely did not bother with conversation when we were children.”
He drew the curtains shut. It wasn’t six o’clock yet, but it was almost pitch-black outside. “What will we be to each other afterward?”
“What we have always been. Friends.”
“And you think this”—the word was accompanied by a gesture toward the bed—“won’t have repercussions?”
“So . . . you think we’ve had an easy, uncomplicated rapport and you don’t want it to become thorny and convoluted?”
He snorted. “Can I want it not to become more thorny and convoluted?”
“Why does it have to be? Why can’t things become simpler? Surely some of the difficulty we’ve experienced in our friendship could be attributed to the fact that we wanted to sleep together but you wouldn’t permit it.”
“Well, if you’re going to put it like that.”
“How would you put it, if not like that?”
He didn’t reply but crossed the room, pulled out his pocket watch, and set it down on the nightstand. She liked the sight of it—his watch on her nightstand, his person leaning against the side of her bed. She went up to him and placed her hands on his chest.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For the apple tart, of course. For remembering it after all these years.”
“I’ve never forgotten—and I absolutely will not have it said that Bancroft feeds you better than I do.”
She smiled, cupped his face, and kissed him. He stood still and let her. And then he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her into bed.
Over supper, Chief Inspector Fowler and Treadles listened to Sergeant Ellerby’s account of the missing padlock and crate from the lavender house, and the unused estate gate with its chain and lock gone.
Treadles, who had been picking at his food until Sergeant Ellerby joined them, experienced a surge of appetite—so Miss Holmes had been making some progress of her own, after all. Thank goodness.
He attacked his steak and kidney pie with renewed vigor.
“And then we returned to the icehouse for another look. And that’s when Mr. Holmes asked me whether any bodies have turned up recently in these parts.
I said no, not that I’ve heard of, and he asked me to keep an eye out for a well-dressed woman with her face bashed in and a man, not so well-dressed, who might have soiled himself before he died. ”
“Is that so?” said Fowler sharply. “Did Mr. Holmes say why?”
“I asked who they were and how they were related to Lady Ingram’s death,” said Sergeant Ellerby. “Mr. Holmes said that he didn’t know enough to speak with complete confidence. Only that those bodies must be there—or at least the woman’s must be there, according to his deductions.”
Treadles remembered the strands of hair that Miss Holmes had found, some six feet away from where Lady Ingram had lain.
Fowler asked several more questions. When it became clear that the sergeant had nothing else to tell them, he thanked him gravely and wished him a good evening. Sergeant Ellerby saluted and left for his room at the constabulary, pushing open the door of the inn with some difficulty.
A high wind lashed. The night promised to be intolerable.
Treadles hesitated before he asked the chief inspector. “What do you think of the two bodies Mr. Holmes spoke of, sir?”
“A fishy thing to ask about, isn’t it? I can’t decide whether it’s pure chicanery. Hard to think it could be anything else, when he must know word would get back to us.”
Treadles did his best not to frown. Miss Holmes’s methods might be incomprehensible to him but he could not argue with her effectiveness.
Granted, Fowler hadn’t worked with her before, but the competence “Sherrinford Holmes” displayed in the icehouse today should have earned her pronouncement a closer scrutiny. “And the rest?”
Fowler shook his head. “Too convenient that a crate that wasn’t ever expected has by now disappeared. Not to mention, anyone could cut a padlock or two. Sergeant Ellerby is a good copper, but frankly, a little na?ve.”
But the arrival of the third crate was something that could be verified by interviewing the station agent, Mr. Walsh, and the manservant Mr. Walsh sent to accompany the crate to the lavender house.
Would Fowler suggest, then, that all those involved must have been bribed by the rich and powerful local seigneur?
Treadles didn’t say anything. It was clear that Fowler had his sights set on bagging Lord Ingram, who could prove a spectacular feather in the cap of an already legendary career.
Miss Holmes had better not help the chief inspector by revealing the truth of Sherlock Holmes tonight.
Treadles excused himself by saying that he needed to write his wife. He hadn’t meant to actually do that, but before he knew it, he had already finished a letter.
Dear Alice,
It’s cold and miserable in Derbyshire. An interminable day, and it still hasn’t ended yet.
I wish I could reassure you otherwise, but at the moment it isn’t looking very good for Lord Ingram. The evidence that points to him is legion. Evidence to the contrary, despite some illogic and oddities, scant.
I hope tomorrow will bring better tidings.
Love,
Robert
He found himself turning his pen around and around, wanting to write more. He used to dash off letters running several pages, telling her about every part of his day, major and minor. But now he felt like a rusted spigot that let out only trickles and irregular spurts.
He set down the pen and dropped his head into his hands.
“Is there time to do it again?” asked Holmes, her eyes bright, her face flushed.
Lord Ingram reached for his watch on the nightstand. Three minutes to seven. They were to dine with Bancroft at half past. And even though he’d already told Bancroft they wouldn’t be changing into tails and pumps, they were still running short on time. “No, not properly, in any case.”
She sighed, the sound a sweet flutter. “I liked it. Did you?”
Did he? If he liked it any better, he would be stark-raving obsessed. “It was all right.”
“I thought you’d be rusty, since it’s been a long time for you—or so you claim.”
It had been an age of the world. He ran his fingers down her arm, marveling at the softness of her skin. “Maybe it’s like riding. Once you learn, you don’t forget how.”
“I have much to learn,” she said happily. “I wonder if Mrs. Watson can impart any wisdom.”
Good God. “How about I tell you exactly what I like?”
“Really?” She batted her eyelashes at him, needlessly long lashes that would have been a lethal asset had she any interest in flirting. “I’m astonished, my lord. You never tell me anything except what you don’t like.”
“In that case . . .” He placed his lips against her ear and whispered for some time.
When he pulled back, her eyes were slightly glazed. “I was rather hoping, given how starchy you are in public, that in private you might be a man of varied and somewhat depraved tastes. I must say I’m not disappointed.”
He gave her a mock-glare. “I’m too young to be called starchy.”
“You are too young to be so starchy.”