Page 46 of The Hollow of Fear
“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 German-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.
