Page 4 of A Study in Scarlet Women
“As am I, to be the bearer of such news.” Lord Ingram’s voice was low, almost inaudible.
Treadles left Burlington House in a daze, hounded by dozens of unhappy conjectures. Had Holmes leaped from a perilous height armed with nothing but an unreliable parachute? Had he been conducting explosive experiments at home? Or had his brilliant but restless mind driven him to seduce the wrong woman, culminating in an illegal duel and a bullet lodged somewhere debilitating but not instantly lethal?
Whathad happened to the elusive and extraordinary Sherlock Holmes?
Such a tragedy.
Such a waste.
Such a shame.
Two
“The shame. Oh, the shame!” Lady Holmes screeched.
From her crouched position before the parlor door keyhole, Livia Holmes glared at the young maid peeking around the corner.Back to your duties, she mouthed.
The girl fled, but not before giggling audibly.
Did no one understand the concept of privacy anymore? If there was any spying to be done in the midst of a reputation-melting scandal, it ought to be left to a member of the family.
Livia returned her attention to thesturm und drangin the parlor. Her view through the keyhole was blocked by her mother’s skirt, a ghastly mound of heliotrope silk that shook with Lady Holmes’s outrage.
“How many times have I told you, Sir Henry, that your indulgence of the girl would prove to be her undoing? How many times have I said that she ought to have been wed years ago? Did you listen? No! No one heeded me when I warned that letting her reject perfectly suitable gentlemen one after another would only serve to make her unfit for marriage and motherhood.”
Her mighty bustle oscillated from side to side as she lurched forward. She lifted her arm and brought down her hand. An explosivethwackreverberated. Livia flinched.
She and Charlotte, the recipient of this resounding slap, had once discussed their mother’s talents, or lack thereof. Livia was of the view that a segment of the population was inherently middling. Charlotte, of a more charitable bent of mind, believed that even those who appeared incurably undistinguished must possess some hidden skills or aptitudes.
Livia, not convinced, had brought up Lady Holmes as an example of utter mediocrity, a person who was unremarkable in every observable trait. Charlotte had countered, “But she has an extraordinary technique at slapping, the backhand especially.”
Now Lady Holmes produced just that, a dramatic backhand the force of which wobbled the lace trimmings on her skirt. “The worst has happened. No one will marry her and she can never show her face in Society again.”
It was the eleventh time she had spat out these lines this evening. Livia’s neck hurt from the strain of crouching so long before the keyhole. How many more iterations before Charlotte would be allowed to escape to her own room?
“You haven’t only caused your own ruin, Charlotte. You have also made us laughingstocks the rest ofourlives.” Lady Holmes was still plowing through the remainder of her tirade, though her voice was becoming hoarse. “You have perpetrated a crime against Livia’s chances at a decent marriage. If Henrietta hadn’t already secured her Mr. Cumberland we would have nothing but a passel of spinster daughters.”
The contempt in Lady Holmes’s voice—spinster daughters might as well be thieving whores. Livia lived with that scorn daily, a woman of twenty-seven, eight Seasons under her belt and no marital prospects whatsoever. Still she winced.
If history was any indication, Lady Holmes would storm toward where her husband sat and berate him some more. Then the entire diatribe would begin again.
Lumbering bustle in tow, Lady Holmes marched on, clearing the line of sight from the keyhole to Charlotte.
It never failed to astonish Livia that, after having known Charlotte all her life, sometimes she was still surprised by her sister’s appearance. Especially at moments like these—well, there had never before been a moment quite like this, to be sure, but Charlotte had been dumbfounding her family for as long as Livia could remember.
When Livia was six and Charlotte four, one cold but clear Saturday afternoon on a family stroll around the village green, they’d come across a drawing that had been pinned to the noticeboard. There were four images on the piece of paper: a well, a horseshoe, the Virgin, and a kitten that was only half the size as the other images, a round, quizzical head floating on the top half of the paper.
Lady Holmes had sniffed. “How strange.”
“Rather interesting, I should think,” replied her husband.
“But what is it?” asked Henrietta, the eldest of the Holmes girls, her voice high-pitched and whiny.
“It’s a message, of course,” Livia told her impatiently. “Must be something about the children’s Christmas party.”
“What about that party? I don’t see how that can be.”
How anyone could live to be ten years old and still remain so thick Livia had no idea. “The Virgin gave birth to baby Jesus at Christmas. The other drawings are games that will be there.”
