Page 35 of The Hollow of Fear
She gasped. “What?”
“Apparently everyone believed her to be overseas, but she was found dead this afternoon on the grounds of Stern Hollow.”
He hadn’t known anything about Lady Ingram’s whereabouts—he hadn’t written Lord Ingram since before the end of summer; nor Lord Ingram him. And without that correspondence, he had few means of obtaining Lord Ingram’s news—they moved in very different circles and shared no mutual friends.
Except Sherlock Holmes, once upon a time.
“Doesn’t Chief Inspector Fowler know that you are acquainted with Lord Ingram?”
Treadles stuffed a folded handkerchief into his pocket, only to realize he already had one. “He does. I expect that’s why he has chosen me, because I’ll be able to help him assess Lord Ingram.”
Which could constitute the entirety of his duties on this case. Chief Inspector Fowler had strong ideas on how subordinates ought to behave. Treadles might be an inspector in his own right, but with Fowler in charge, he suspected his own role would amount to no more than that of a stenographer.
Not to mention, he would need to be careful in both speech and action so that he didn’t come across as an advocate for Lord Ingram.
“Surely they don’t suspecthimof complicity in her death.”
“I don’t know enough yet,” he lied.
In cases like this, it’s almost certain that the husband is responsible,Chief Inspector Fowler had once told him on a different but similar case. And he would not have sought Treadles if he didn’t already believe that he had a plum of a target in Lord Ingram.
Alice clutched at the lapels of her dressing gown. “Lord Ingram is our friend.”
“And I am a policeman.” He lifted his always-ready travel bag. “If he is not guilty, he has nothing to fear.”
“But Chief Inspector Fowler is the Bloodhound of the Yard. They are not sending him out if they think the butler did it.”
The handkerchief in his other hand he shoved into his pocket, only to realize it was the same extra handkerchief from earlier.
She took it from him—and wrapped her fingers around his hand. “Robert, are you all right?”
No. I’m afraid for Lord Ingram and I don’t know what to do.
He gave Alice a perfunctory kiss and left before he could betray the depth of his fear.
Lord Ingram shotout of his chair. He paced in the room, a caged animal barred in every direction. Dimly he was aware that Holmes watched him, her otherwise blankly limpid eyes not without a measure of compassion.
He braced his hands on the mantel. A fire roared in the grate and he couldn’t feel the heat at all. The chill of the icehouse had crept inside his spine, its arctic dominion spilling vertebra by vertebra.
She came to stand next to him. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” he said, barely able to hear his own voice. “But what am I to do?”
The forces arrayed against him were legion. The cold had spread to his lungs. A little more and his courage would fail altogether.
She spoke and he tried to listen. But her words rode over him like an advancing glacier, annihilating and endlessly cold.
When she finished speaking, she slipped away. He was bereft—and afraid in a different way. With Holmes there was always the possibility that she would leave him alone to pick up the pieces.
But she came back—and wrapped an arm about his middle. This was unlike her. She had kissed him twice, more than ten years apart, and propositioned him from time to time; yet he maintained a distinct impression that she found touching to be an odd and sometimes discomfiting experience.
Charlotte doesn’t like to be hugged, Miss Olivia Holmes had once said, rather sadly, in his hearing.
But Holmes did not disengage. In fact, she placed both arms around him, and rested her cheek against his back.
It had been a very, very long time since a woman had embraced him. As his astonishment receded, her warmth seeped into his rigid frame.
He felt less chilled.
