Page 107 of The Hollow of Fear
Perhaps Lady Ingram was getting her just desserts. Mr. Underwood would pay, too. But Charlotte wasn’t so sure Lord Bancroft himself would suffer the fall of the hammer. A man such as he, who dealt in secrets, could have easily set things up so that other powerful men’s shameful dealings became at risk of exposure, unless his own safety was assured.
“As it stands, you can’t touch de Lacy or Moriarty,” Charlotte went on. “But there is something you can do for your late sister. It was kept from the papers and, out of delicacy, Lord Remington hasn’t mentioned it either. But Miss Constantina Greville was with child at the time of her death and I think you have a fair idea who must have done it to her, she who could never have given consent.”
“That bastard,” Lady Ingram growled. “Connelly.”
“Did he try anything with you?”
“Oh, he tried. But one jab of the pencil and he ran out crying.”
A man who only preyed on the weakest of the weak.
“Here’s what you can do,” said Charlotte.
After she gave the contours of a plan, Lady Ingram scoffed. “You want me to speak tothosehags?”
“I wouldn’t overlook potential allies simply because they haven’t been my allies before. But if you find that too distasteful—”
“No,” said Lady Ingram. “I’ll do it for Constantina. She deserved better.”
Charlotte nodded. “Should I tell Lord Remington that you are ready?”
One side of Lady Ingram’s mouth curved down, the side where her beauty mark had been. A woman on the run couldn’t afford such a distinguishing characteristic; now there was only a slight dent. The dent on Constantina Greville, at the same spot, must have been to disguise the fact thatshehad never had a beauty mark.
“Are you not going to thank me?” Lady Ingram said, her voice slightly less strident than it had been. “You only look good to him compared to me.”
“I can thank you if you need me to,” Charlotte said. “But really all he needed was time to grow up.”
Lady Ingram set a severely sleek hat on her head. “You have a very high opinion of yourself.”
She regarded her reflection with the scorn of someone who did not have a very high opinion of herself. Who had, in fact, never cared for the person in the mirror.
Into Charlotte’s lack of a response she said, “He will disapprove of you. You know he will.”
Of course he would—he’d always made it plain when he disagreed with her. But disapproval was not the same as obstruction and he would never stand in Charlotte’s way.
She smiled a little. “I’ll let Lord Remington know you are ready.”
The invitationfrom Sherlock Holmes had filled Treadles with a strangely elated presentiment.I think Chief Inspector Fowler is going to suffer a public debacle, he’d told Alice over breakfast.I just don’t know how yet.
The discovery of the bomb should have given Fowler pause. But he was adamant that the bomb was irrelevant, that they had enough to get a conviction in court. Treadles had found his excuse repugnant. Their first commitment should be to the truth, not to whether their evidence could be spun into a hangman’s noose.
He was hampered by both his lower rank and his friendship with Lord Ingram—anything he said could be construed as a display of personal bias. Nevertheless, he had made a carefully deferential argument for more police work, which Fowler dismissed in its entirety. So one might say that Treadles rather wanted for his superior to suffer a public debacle. And how oddly fitting that Sherlock Holmes should be the one to administer that dressing down.
They arrived to their rendezvous with the consulting detective at a St. James’s tea shop only to realize they were to be seated at the same table as Lady Avery and Lady Somersby.
“Chief Inspector, Inspector, what an unexpected pleasure,” declared Lady Avery. “Are you also here at Sherlock Holmes’s invitation?”
Fowler eyed her warily. “We are, my lady.”
“Excellent. Now I’m even more excited for what we are about to learn.”
Treadles’s pulse accelerated. Whatever it was, Sherlock Holmes meant for the news to be splashed all over town before the end of the day.
A man came and sat down at a nearby table. He looked familiar, somehow. Like a bigger, more rough-hewn version of Lord Bancroft. Could he possibly be another one of Lord Ingram’s brothers?
Before Treadles could ask the gossip ladies, Lady Somersby made a choked sound. “Oh my—my goodness gracious! Caro, look.Look!”
She was pointing at the door. Lady Avery glanced up. The policemen turned halfway around in their seats.
