Page 15 of A Conspiracy in Belgravia
“If for some reason one or both of us could not make it, the agreement called for us to put a notice in theTimes. Every year, in the weeks leading up, I always scan the notices religiously and save the papers, in case I miss something. As soon as I went home that day, I looked through all the papers again. Nothing.
“I had no idea what to do. It has been more than six years since I last spoke to him. I don’t know where he lives or what he does for a living. I don’t know whether he’s still a bachelor or married with children. I’ve put notices in the papers but have heard nothing. I’m plagued with terrible thoughts, wondering if he is... no more, but I can’t bring myself to go to the General Register Office to search for a death certificate.
“Of course, the far more likely explanation is that he outgrew ayouthful infatuation—in fact, every year I was surprised to see him. But it isn’t as if he would fear recriminations on my part, if he were to declare that he no longer wished to see me. In fact, it would be only natural, if he’d met someone else.”
“But that he never sent word has you worried,” said Penelope.
“It’s entirely out of character for him to break a standing appointment in such a brusque manner.” Lady Ingram touched the cameo brooch at her throat, as if seeking to draw strength from it. “And then I saw the article about Mr. Holmes in the papers. I’d thought he only consulted on notorious criminal cases. But the article made it plain that he would also help those of us with less sensational problems.”
“A problem is a problem. My brother does not turn away clients because their problems fail to meet a threshold of notoriety or sensationalism.” Penelope handed Lady Ingram a plate of cake, which the latter meekly accepted. “Now, if I understand you correctly, you would like for us to look into this gentleman’s disappearance.”
“Yes. I already suspect the worst. So nothing you learn will shock me. But I want to know with some certainty whether he has passed away unexpectedly, whether he has married and no longer wishes to continue our acquaintance, whether he has been imprisoned or sent abroad, et cetera, et cetera.”
“To do that we will need to know as much as you can tell us about him,” Penelope said decisively. “His name, to start. His last known domicile. Names of employers, landladies, friends. Leave nothing out.”
Lady Ingram closed her eyes briefly. “His name is Myron Finch.”
The name meant nothing to Mrs. Watson, but Miss Holmes stilled, a slice of plum cake stopping halfway to her lips. In another woman Mrs. Watson might not have noticed such a pause. But for Miss Holmes, this was a sizable—seismic, one might say—reaction.
In the parlor, Lady Ingram poured forth a torrent of ancientinformation concerning Myron Finch. In the bedroom, Mrs. Watson wrote on a piece of paper,You know this man, Miss Holmes. Who is he?
Miss Holmes considered the note. For a long moment Mrs. Watson had the impression that she meant to brush the question aside, but then she uncapped a fountain pen and wrote back.
Mr. Finch is my brother.
Four
“Ihaven’t liked her too much,” said Miss Redmayne. “But now I feel sorry for her.”
Lady Ingram had departed, leaving behind only a whiff of perfume, of the essences of neroli and gardenia.
Mrs. Watson sighed. “Her parents should not have demanded that she marry for money, rather than love.”
They were softhearted creatures. Charlotte, on the other hand, was almost as slow to sympathize as she was to condemn. She did not despise Lady Ingram for watching out for herself in the marriage mart, but neither did she think better of the woman after a tale of woe and lament. After all, it didn’t change anything she did subsequently.
“I’m sure her parents would have preferred for her to marry for both love and money,” she said from the window, watching as Lady Ingram’s hired trap pulled away. “But failing that, money is more reliable than love. Money does not devolve into ennui and regret, as romantic sentiments often do.”
“Do you mean to say youdon’tfault her parents?” asked Miss Redmayne.
“Given that marriage presented her sole path to greater wealth and respectability, they acted in the only logical fashion. Had they defied the norm and given her their blessings, they would have been the ones held accountable by everyone, including Lady Ingram herself, should her marriage to Mr. Finch have proven less than successful.”
But even if she had married Mr. Finch, would that have made any difference to Lord Ingram?
In those years immediately after he first learned that he was not the late Duke of Wycliffe’s fourth son, but the product of an affair between the duchess and one of the country’s most prominent bankers, he’d been hell-bent on proving his own respectability. He would still have marriedsomebody—nothing made a man as respectable as the possession of wife and children.
So in the end, none of it made any difference toCharlotte.
“Miss Holmes, you are the most unromantic soul I have ever met—and I like that,” pronounced Miss Redmayne. The next moment she leaped up. “Oh, goodness, look at the time. We are to meet with the de Blois ladies and I haven’t even opened the book they gave me for my journey home from Paris. Better take a quick look—in case they ask about it this evening.”
She ran off. Mrs. Watson and Charlotte followed, at a more sedate pace, out of 18 Upper Baker Street. They were not dressed for walking, but Charlotte did not protest when Mrs. Watson, instead of going home—a stone’s throw from Sherlock Holmes’s office—bypassed her own front door and headed for Regent’s Park across the street.
Mrs. Watson didn’t ask any questions until they stood on the edge of Boating Lake, beside a large weeping willow. “You once mentioned an illegitimate half brother, Miss Holmes. The same Mr. Finch?”
Charlotte reached out and touched a trailing branch. The sunhad emerged a while ago, but the finely serrated leaves were still damp from earlier showers. “It is unlikely for there to be more than one illegitimate man named Myron Finch working as an accountant in London.”
“You never said why you chose not to seek his aid when you were in desperate straits.”
A breeze rippled across the lake. The willow swayed, the motion of its foliage as sinuous as that of a woman shaking out her hair before a lover. “I didn’t want to leap from one man’s keeping into another’s, for one thing. Not to mention... I didn’t trust that he wouldn’t immediately call on my father and tell him where I was.”
