Page 106 of The Hollow of Fear
The asylum came into view. At night, it would have been easy to mistake it for just another isolated country manor, if it weren’t for the walls that surrounded it on all sides. They drove through the gates into a courtyard. The main building was large and ivy-covered; behind several of the dark, barred windows, curtains fluttered.
A nervous-looking man of about fifty-five introduced himself as Dr. Connelly and conducted them inside. After a quick cup of tea, they were taken down long corridors to one wing of the house.
Dr. Connelly unlocked a door and lit a sconce. “Miss Greville, we have some visitors for you.”
The room was spartan. The woman inside sat at the edge of the bed in her dressing gown, holding a sharpened pencil as if it were a knife. She gave a look of pure loathing to Dr. Connelly but recoiled as her gaze landed on Lord Remington.
“Would you mind coming with us, Lady Ingram?” said her brother-in-law. “We have need of your help.”
“How did you find me?”demanded Lady Ingram, once she, Charlotte, and Lord Remington were all in the carriage together. “How did you know about this place at all?”
Charlotte had first believed, as had everyone else, that the woman in the icehouse had been Lady Ingram. But that woman had turned out to have been pregnant. Lady Ingram had never been interested in romantic love. How likely was it that she would take a lover when she was on the run for her life?
For a moment, Charlotte’s mind had moved toward darker possibilities—a woman didn’t need to be a willing participant in her own impregnation. But then she remembered what she herself had said, when Lord Ingram had expressed his disbelief at the sight of his dead wife.
Maybe that’s her secret twin sister in the icehouse.And the real Lady Ingram is waiting in the wings, cackling with anticipation.
He had said immediately that if she did have such a sister, no one knew about her.
But such sisters existed—Charlotte had one. She’d told him about Bernadine, but prior to her meeting with Mrs. Watson, he had been the only outsider with whom she’d ever broached the subject. To the rest of the world, there were only three Holmes sisters, Henrietta, Olivia, and Charlotte.
And this was true for a woman who had lived under the family roof until Charlotte had poached her away. What if Lady Ingram’s twin sister had a worse condition, one that required her to be institutionalized from an early age? Parents didn’t mention such children. Eventually, even their own siblings forgot about them.
Mrs. Watson had verified the existence of one Constantina Greville at the General Register Office, headquartered at Somerset House: There was a birth certificate for her, showing that she was born on the same day as Lady Ingram, but no death certificate. Lady Ingram might have discovered the existence of this twin sister when she had gone through some of the family papers after her parents’ deaths, or even known about her all her life. And when she’d needed a safe refuge this summer, a place to hide from Lord Bancroft’s wrath, she must have remembered this sister no one had ever heard about.
“We know because Miss Constantina Greville, who lived here before you displaced her, is now dead,” said Lord Remington.
“You are lying!”
Lord Remington handed her a newspaper. “It’s a long story, but in essence Moriarty killed her to frame your husband for murder.”
Charlotte did not fail to notice that Lord Bancroft’s name had been omitted.
“But he promised to look after her!” Lady Ingram cried, even as she yanked the paper from Lord Remington.
She read in the light provided by Lord Remington’s pocket lantern, her breathing growing more and more agitated. At last she crumpled up the paper and threw it aside.
The silence was harsh.
“Did Moriarty himself promise to look after Miss Greville?” asked Lord Remington.
“I’ve never met Moriarty. I dealt with a man named de Lacy.”
Charlotte remembered the name from her investigation this past summer.
“De Lacy wasn’t impressed when I went to him,” Lady Ingram continued, speaking as if through clenched teeth. “I was supposed to look after myself, he told me, not needing to be sheltered. Lord Bancroft was always going to be after me, how would I deal with that? In the end he challenged me to last six months out there by myself and I agreed.
“I thought it would be a brilliant idea to take Constantina’s place in the asylum. No one would ever find me. And when I told de Lacy my plan, he agreed to get me in and bring Constantina out, and to look after her in the meanwhile, in exchange for my emerald necklace.”
She laughed bitterly. “Maybe there really is no such thing as honor among thieves, and I’m just the last person to learn that.”
They spentthe night at a railway hotel, with Lady Ingram carefully guarded by the men Lord Remington had brought. In the morning they took the early train into London and went to Lord Ingram’s town house, where Lady Ingram’s wardrobe, left behind when she’d fled, was still in her dressing room.
Charlotte, ironically enough, had served as Lady Ingram’s chaperone since the latter had been taken into custody. The interaction between the two women had been almost entirely silent, but as Charlotte helped Lady Ingram into a handsome travel gown, the latter said, “It’s your idea, isn’t it, to make me the scapegoat?”
“No,” said Charlotte. “You have Lord Remington to thank for that.”
She believed Lord Bancroft should be exposed for his crimes, but the Crown did not want the failings of its clandestine servants made known.
