The Hollow of Fear: Book three in the Lady Sherlock Mystery Series Read online

  When he spoke again his voice was quiet, barely audible. “Her anger was beyond anything I could have imagined. My godfather was Jewish, and it is rumored that I am his natural son. She told me, in exactly so many words, that without this inheritance, she had married me for nothing. And her children had Jewish blood for nothing.”

  Outside, wind howled. A sheet of rain pelted the windows. Inside, the silence was excruciating. Treadles didn’t dare breathe, for fear of betraying his presence. He wanted Lord Ingram to believe that he was speaking to an empty room—it would be the only way he himself could have managed to relive such painful memories.

  “There was no attempt at reconciliation, then?” Fowler was unmoved, his question cold and inexorable.

  “As ruptures go, ours was thorough—and as final as an amputation. I imagine the truth came as a relief for her, an end to all pretenses.”

  “And for you?”

  “On my part, I at last perceived her clearly—and I saw the greatest mistake of my life.”

  Another silence fell. Fowler polished his spectacles with a handkerchief. Mr. Holmes picked up the slice of cake that had been sitting beside him and gave it a quarter turn on its plate.

  For a moment, something about him again seemed strangely familiar.

  And then he looked in Lord Ingram’s direction, his expression entirely blank.

  Treadles almost cried out. That expression, as if he viewed the pain and suffering of others from a great remove, as if he himself never expected to experience such frailties—Treadles had seen that expression before.

  On a woman.

  On Charlotte Holmes.

  Despite the foppishness of his appearance, Mr. Holmes did not look…feminine. He didn’t even look effeminate. And certainly not at all pretty. While Miss Holmes was very pretty and extravagantly feminine—Treadles still remembered the endless rows of bows on her skirt the first time he met her.

  But now that the idea had come into his head…

  Sherrinford Holmes’s girth might be a way to disguise Miss Holmes’s buxom figure. His facial hair needn’t be real and the dark hair on his head could be a wig. The wearing of a monocle subtly distorted one’s features—but didn’t account for all the differences between Sherrinford Holmes’s face and Miss Holmes’s.

  Ah, of course, his less-than-perfect enunciation. At the time Treadles had thought he sounded as if he might have a piece of boiled sweet in his mouth. But he could very well have something else inside, something that altered the shapes of his cheeks just so.

  Dear God, had Charlotte Holmes been among them all this time?

  “Marital disharmony is a terrible cross to bear,” said Fowler, setting his glasses back on his face and yanking Treadles’s attention back to the interrogation. “But many do bear it. Lady Ingram did so for years. What compelled her to suddenly abandon her entire life?”

  “This summer, not long before the end of the Season, Lady Ingram called on Sherlock Holmes.”

  What? Lady Ingram calling on Charlotte Holmes? But she knew Charlotte Holmes.

  “Sherlock Holmes? The fellow who helped you on the Sackville case?”

  Fowler’s question was for Treadles.

  Treadles could only hope his face was not a disarray of tics and convulsions. But there was no time to think. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Lord Ingram, in fact, was the one who introduced me to Sherlock Holmes.”

  Fowler’s attention shifted back to Lord Ingram. “Lady Ingram did not know that the two of you are acquainted?”

  Treadles let out a shaky breath.

  “I had never mentioned the name to her,” said Lord Ingram.

  “I see. Please go on.”

  “Before we do, gentlemen,” said Lord Ingram, “you should know that Mr. Holmes here is Sherlock Holmes’s brother. But he did not assist Sherlock with Lady Ingram’s case and therefore cannot tell you much about it.”

  Had Treadles not realized Sherrinford Holmes’s true identity on his own, his shock at this moment might have been too great to conceal from Chief Inspector Fowler.

  “I dare say I’m just as good at this deduction business,” said Charlotte Holmes. “But unlike Sherlock, I cannot be bothered about strange knocking sounds in old ladies’ attics.”

  Fowler looked from her to Treadles.

  “I have only met your sister,” said Treadles to Charlotte Holmes, feeling ridiculous. “Is she well? And your brother?”

  “My sister is well. And my brother fares tolerably.”

  “Mr. Holmes,” said Fowler, his voice clipped, “you didn’t think to mention sooner that you are related to the man who helped Lady Ingram search for her lover?”

  Charlotte Holmes regarded him, her monocle flashing as she cocked her head. “With Lord Ingram in the same room, Chief Inspector, you think I should have brought that up before he did?”

  Fowler blinked—and cleared his throat. Treadles winced with second-hand embarrassment for his colleague; the misstep was unlike him.

  “My apologies, my lord,” said Fowler tightly. “Please carry on.”

  “Very well,” said Lord Ingram, his voice remarkably neutral. “Sherlock Holmes theorized that Lady Ingram must have come across the article in the paper about his willingness to deal with minor mysteries and mere domestic oddities. Certainly she arrived on his doorstep very soon after the publication of the piece, looking for help locating the man her parents forced her to give up.

  “Apparently they had a standing annual appointment before the Albert Memorial. This year, he did not come. She posted notices in the paper. And when she still had no news of him, she called on Sherlock Holmes.”

  “And Sherlock Holmes agreed to help, knowing what Lady Ingram wanted?” demanded Fowler. “Knowing full well that—that he would be assisting your wife in an endeavor you would not have approved of in the least?”

  “Geniuses must be allowed their eccentricities.” Lord Ingram turned around at last. “Sherlock Holmes had never paid heed to conventional ideas of acceptability. Why start with Lady Ingram?”

  Charlotte Holmes shook her head, as if she genteelly deplored such nonsense.

  A door opened and closed softly. Everyone looked up at the gallery, which went all the way around the second story of the library. From where Treadles sat, he couldn’t tell whether a servant had opened the door by accident or whether someone had come in.

  Lord Ingram downed what remained of his whisky. “According to Sherlock Holmes, Lady Ingram was impatient to find this man, and then suddenly she no longer wanted to look for him. That was when Holmes spoke to me of the matter and warned me that it was quite possible Lady Ingram hadn’t changed her mind but had found him on her own.

  “I, in turn, remembered that Lady Ingram had lately consulted a book on matrimonial law at home. With the revelation from Sherlock Holmes, I began to wonder what she would do, knowing that if she gave in to her heart’s desire, I would have grounds for a divorce.

  “She had always been a devoted mother. But in a divorce she would lose the children. What would she do if she had to choose between her children and the man she loved?

  “Then a third, far more terrifying possibility occurred to me. What if she did not intend to give up either? What if she intended to run away with the man, my children in tow, so that she never needed to worry about being parted from them?

  “With that in mind, I studied the cipher with which they communicated, and sent her a note in the same cipher, telling her that the night of her birthday ball would be a good time to take the children and leave, given that I would be distracted by my duties as the host.

  “A little before one o’clock that night, she opened the door to the nursery, only to find it empty of all occupants, except me. I confronted her about her plan to make off with the children. And she, who had too long been accustomed to dealing with me without pretenses, was again bluntly truthful. I told her to go and not come back. She understood then that the children were now beyond her reach, that even if she stayed
I would never trust her to see them again. And she must have decided that the only thing she could salvage from this misadventure was her lover and that she might as well leave with him since he had already cost her dearly.

  “My primary concern had been to keep my children from being taken—to prevent that from ever happening. To that end, Lady Ingram’s departure appeared a highly favorable development. It wasn’t until I’d calmed down somewhat I realized the difficulty I was now in.

  “Lady Ingram was a prominent member of Society. She had friends, acquaintances, and, however distant, a family. She had dozens of servants from whom her absence could not be concealed for any length of time. Not to mention, a ball in her honor was still in full swing.

  “I had to brazen it out, but etiquette was on my side. Guests are supposed to slip out discreetly, without say good-bye to the hosts, if they leave before the end of a ball. Those who stayed until carriages knew better than to inquire of me, at least, as to the whereabouts of Lady Ingram. They would have assumed either she was seeing to other guests or that the strain of the long night was more than her bad back could take—the same assumption the servants would have made. And she had dismissed her maid for the night at the beginning of the ball, rather than making the latter wait until the small hours of the morning.

  “Given all that, I didn’t need to announce her departure until the next day. And then, only to the senior servants. I told them that her health had taken a catastrophic turn in the later part of the ball and that she’d needed to leave immediately. And then I asked them to carry on as usual, except that we would depart from London as soon as possible.

  “To her maid, Simmons, I spoke separately. I told her that Lady Ingram had decided to leave her behind, as Simmons is not fond of either overseas travel or cold climates. Simmons once worked for my mother and was well-positioned to retire. She was distressed to be let go unceremoniously, after six years of service. But she is a kind-natured person and was more concerned for Lady Ingram than for herself.

  “To the children I gave the same story. They were saddened but believed me when I said that she would return when she was well. I took them to the seaside to distract them—and to be somewhere my wife could not readily guess at, for I still feared that she would come for them.

  “But there had been no sign of her in all the months since. Until yesterday, when I was told that her body had been discovered in the icehouse.”

  It was the same account he had given Sergeant Ellerby, only in greater, unhappier detail.

  Fowler considered Lord Ingram for close to a minute, then extracted something from his pocket. “We discovered this in Lady Ingram’s stocking. If you don’t mind taking a look, my lord.”

  Charlotte Holmes leaped up, took the folded-up piece of paper from Fowler, and delivered it to Lord Ingram, still at the window. Lord Ingram smoothed out the paper and stared at it, his expression odd, as if unable to believe his own eyes. Miss Holmes gave him a few more seconds before retrieving the evidence and returning it to Fowler.

  Treadles’s eyes were on Miss Holmes the entire time, but could not detect on her face anything other than an eagerness to be of service.

  “That is a sheet of my handwriting practice,” said Lord Ingram.

  Fowler leaned forward. “All these different hands, they are all done by you?”

  “It’s a hobby.”

  Treadles’s heart sank. A man who could write as if from many different people? This was not a helpful skill for the police to discover, especially when they already suspected him of murder.

  “And this . . . pangram”—Fowler turned to Mr. Holmes—“is that the correct word?”

  “Quite so, Chief Inspector.”

  “My lord, why did you choose this pangram to write repeatedly?”

  “I didn’t. Miss Holmes came up with a number of pangrams. Don Quixote jokes flippantly at windmill, vexing Bach and Mozart. Volcano erupts liquidly, spewing marzipan, pâte à choux, and breakfast jam. So on and so forth. I used them all at some point.”

  “Nevertheless, this is the one Lady Ingram kept. Do you think she resented that you wrote another woman’s name two dozen times on a single page?”

  “Lady Ingram would have had to feel a sense of possessiveness toward me in order to harbor any twinges of jealousy. No, I don’t believe she had ever viewed Miss Holmes as a romantic rival.”

  “And yet according to Mr. Holmes here, Miss Holmes was not a friend to both yourself and Lady Ingram, only to you.”

  “A woman can dislike another for reasons having nothing to do with a man. I daresay Lady Ingram’s antipathy toward Miss Holmes stemmed not from her friendship with me but her ability to resist the pressure to accept a proposal of marriage.”

  Fowler’s eyes narrowed. “I am not sure I understand.”

  “Miss Holmes’s background isn’t all that different from Lady Ingram’s, a penurious respectability. But whereas Lady Ingram buckled under and married after her first Season, Miss Holmes long held firm on her disinclination to marry and turned down any number of proposals.

  “Lady Ingram prized strength above all else. From the beginning, she sensed in Miss Holmes a strength greater than her own, both of mind and of character. That was what she was jealous of. That was what prevented any possibility of friendship: Simply by existing, Miss Holmes made her feel inferior—and angry at herself.”

  “Miss Holmes’s name is beginning to ring a bell,” mused Fowler. “I remember someone by this name connected with the Sackville case. Are we speaking of the same Miss Charlotte Holmes, who disgraced herself last summer and is now no longer received in polite company?”

  “That would be the very same Miss Charlotte Holmes,” said Lord Ingram.

  Nothing at all had changed about his tone, yet Treadles felt as if his answer had been a rebuke.

  They had never spoken of Miss Holmes, not openly, in any case. But Lord Ingram’s steadfast support of and admiration for this fallen woman—Treadles did not understand it. And it made him realize that he did not understand Lord Ingram either. Not at all.

  Fowler gave Lord Ingram a speculative glance. “To return to the subject of your ability to write in many different hands, sir, why do you suppose Lady Ingram would have carried that piece of paper with her?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea. But it behooves me to tell you now that I have written letters in Lady Ingram’s hand to her friends and our children.”

  Oh, this would not look good at all to a jury. Or in the court of public opinion.

  “You had no choice, of course,” said Miss Holmes gently. “Her disappearance would have been that much more incomprehensible if she hadn’t written from her Swiss sanatorium.”

  “Do you have any of those letters that had been written to your children?” Fowler, for all his experience and sangfroid, sounded excited at this prospect.

  Treadles’s heart sank further. Anything that excited Chief Inspector Fowler was bound to be bad news for Lord Ingram.

  “The children took the letters when they left with my brother—they wished to hear them read every night. But I have one that I had been working on, before all this happened.”

  Lord Ingram went to his desk, opened a locked drawer, pulled out a portfolio, and handed it to Fowler. When opened, the left side of the portfolio held a menu and the right side, a half-finished letter, which read,

  My Dearest Lucinda and Carlisle,

  Thank you most kindly for your loving thoughts, as penned by Papa. I am slightly better, but alas, still not well enough that the doctors are willing to release me.

  It is turning cold here, much colder than at home. But I find the cold tolerable, since the air is dry and the weather clear. From my balcony I can see a lake halfway down the mountain, surrounded by soldier-straight fir trees, with a tiny island at its center and what looks to be an even tinier chapel on this island.

  You asked about the food that is served here. Well, that depends on which cook is on duty, the one from the G
erman-speaking part of Switzerland, or the one from the French-speaking part.

  Fowler pointed at the menu. “And this is an example of her ladyship’s handwriting?”

  “Correct.”

  “You do an excellent imitation.”

  Lord Ingram made no reply.

  The next few questions concerned Lord Ingram’s whereabouts during the past forty-eight hours and—the past fortnight. “Given her state of inadvertent preservation, it might be impossible for us to determine her time of death with any accuracy,” said Fowler.

  Lord Ingram, blank-faced, pulled out an appointment book and answered accordingly.

  “I understand you are a busy man, sir, so I will not take much more of your time. But there is one question that I must ask: Do you know of anyone who wished to harm Lady Ingram?”

  Lord Ingram shook his head. “She did not instill widespread devotion, but neither did she inspire enmity. Her death benefits no one.”

  “I hate to ask this, but it must be done, so I beg your forgiveness in advance. Are you certain that her death benefits no one? Are you certain that you yourself do not stand to reap rewards?”

  Lord Ingram raised a brow. “By being suspected as responsible for her death?”

  “Nobody would have suspected anything if her body hadn’t been found. If she had died somewhere else—overseas, for example—would you not have then been rid of an unloving wife, and would that not have been an advantage?”

  “I have long coexisted with an unloving wife—were she to live to a hundred it would not have further injured me.”

  “But it would have prevented you from marrying someone who does love you. With Lady Ingram no more, in six months’ time you will be able to marry again. This Miss Charlotte Holmes, for example, and rescue her from her disgrace.”

  Miss Holmes appeared unmoved; Lord Ingram, equally so.

  “I will not take umbrage on my own behalf, Chief Inspector—it is your professional obligation to suspect everyone. But you are operating under an entirely mistaken assumption of who Miss Holmes is. She has no use for a husband and would not have accepted any proposal from me, should I be so thoughtless as to tender one.”