Page 105 of The Hollow of Fear
“But surely I would have learned of it, if he or his men had found her.”
“I don’t think he found her. I suspect the ‘maid’ who told Lady Avery about our encounter in the tea shop was involved in more ways than one. If I must guess I would say that she was of the same approximate height and build as Lady Ingram, with dark hair and a beauty spot in a similar position on her face. Bash in her face, put her in your icehouse, and who would that beauty spot identify her as?”
“But that wasn’t the body your sister—or I—saw in the icehouse.”
“That part puzzles me—I can only assume something went awry. But the important thing is, if my suspicions are correct and Lord Bancroft indeed orchestrated the icehouse incident—or part of it—then he would not stay away. He would send Mr. Underwood—and possibly even come himself to investigate. There are many questions to which he would need answers. How did the actual Lady Ingram end up in the icehouse? Where had that decoy gone? Who else was at work? Who knew enough of what he was doing to mock him so?”
The fire in the grate crackled. She sighed softly. “Should he or even Mr. Underwood arrive, you must take it as an admission of guilt and be careful. Above all else, do not let him guess that you know.”
Now he understood, viscerally, why she couldn’t eat. Now he was as afraid as she. Moriarty was a distant specter. But his brother, a man with just as much power and menace, was right here, moving among them.
She fell quiet. Exhaustion battered him—he could scarcely remain upright. But he knew what he needed to do.
He would protect himself.
And he would protect her.
The next day
The policemen vacated the library. Now he and Holmes were alone with Bancroft, who had been watching them from the recesses of the gallery.
Bancroft looked even worse than Lord Ingram remembered from his recent visit. But now he knew that this deterioration was not due to the loss of Holmes’s hand for a second time, but because Mr. Finch, in possession of his secret, was still at large—and his schemes to pry the man’s whereabouts out of Holmes had not gone as planned.
Lord Ingram’s eyes met Holmes’s. She rubbed her bearded chin. “By the way, Ash, you bowdlerized my pangram. I’m devastated.”
“I don’t know why you believed I would have ever committed the original in writing, in any of my scripts.”
He could scarcely feel a single muscle in his body, only a palpitating fear that somehow Bancroft would take one look at him and know everything.
He took a deep breath. “Will you come down, Bancroft, or should we join you up there?”
And so it begins.
23
“And so it ends,”murmured Lord Remington.
Society still remembered him largely as a wild young man, but in his years abroad, he had risen high in the Crown’s service. Lord Bancroft, he had told her, was being held in a secure location, pending a thorough investigation of everything he had done during his tenure.
And now Lord Remington and his men—who occupied a separate compartment—accompanied Charlotte on what she hoped would be the final journey for this case. She was bone-tired. And the sandwich she’d wolfed down before she boarded the train—Lord Bancroft being put away had restored most of her appetite—contributed a lethargy in addition to the fatigue that had accumulated for days.
The countryside sped by in the darkness, the train’s wheels thudding rhythmically. Before she knew it, Lord Remington was shaking her softly by the shoulder. “Miss Holmes, wake up. We have reached our destination.”
Outside the railway station, the company climbed into waiting carriages. She was almost about to doze off again when Lord Remington said, “Forgive me, Miss Holmes, I’ve only just now remembered the bomb. Was that also Bancroft’s doing?”
Charlotte rubbed her eyes and sat up straighter. “He chose the ice well as the place to leave Mimi Duffin’s body because he’d learned that in Lord Ingram’s household, not a great deal of ice was consumed. The icehouse must have seemed perfect—the body wouldn’t be discovered immediately after he left. But when no one came across it for days on end, I imagine he grew impatient.
“He and Lord Ingram had called on Mrs. Newell together, so he knew that Mrs. Newell was expecting guests. If he put a bomb in place, then her guests would need somewhere else to go. Stern Hollow, of course—its master could always be counted on to do the right thing. And once the guests arrived, the kitchen boy would be digging out ice from the ice well.”
“I see,” said Lord Remington. “What I still don’t understand is why did Moriarty choose get involved? And how did he even know what Bancroft was up to in the first place?”
“I’ve been pondering the same question. Perhaps Moriarty knew that the code Mr. Finch was breaking concerned Lord Bancroft but not exactly what it entailed. Perhaps he had other informants who learned that Lord Bancroft was still ardently seeking Mr. Finch’s whereabouts, with more intent and focus than he was putting into the search for Lady Ingram.
“And if Moriarty had someone observe Mr. Underwood, he would have seen that Lord Bancroft was up to something irregular. As for why Moriarty interfered—in the end, it might have been nothing more than malice. Lord Bancroft was a powerful opponent. Why not throw a wrench in his plans? Why not see if this was his Achilles’ heel?”
“Moriarty killed a woman forthat?”
“He killed someone he believed to be utterly without value. As did Lord Bancroft.”
