Page 38 of The Hollow of Fear
“Thank you, Inspector.”
“And the children, are they all right?”
“They are with my brother, and they have not been told yet.” Lord Ingram exhaled. “So as of the moment, they are all right. But they are living in a soap bubble, and a storm of needles is on its way.”
“I’m very sorry for their loss.”
Lord Ingram exhaled again.
What had happened? How had everything gone so wrong? Not long ago Treadles had looked upon his friend with wholehearted and limitless admiration—that is, before he had learned the truth about Sherlock Holmes.
He caught himself. So often these days his thoughtsbegan and endedwithbefore he had learned the truth about Sherlock Holmes. And it was only recently that he had become aware of each instance.
Sherlock Holmes was not the First Coming. No one ought to reckon their days from her emergence on the scene. Not to mention, Lord Ingram’s alienation from his wife had begun years ago. Treadles should have perceived sooner that all was not well.
But he had liked the idea that the great manors of the land housed harmonious families who embodied all the virtues that should naturally be present in lives so far removed from the strife of poverty and the narrowness of commerce.
Sometimes heneededthat to be true. He encountered so much greed, stupidity, and ugliness. All that was base and tainted in human nature begged for a counterpoise in nobility and loftiness of character.
Before he had learned the truth about Sherlock Holmes, he had thought he had found such an ideal in Lord Ingram.
He winced at the direction in which his thoughts had once again strayed.
“Ah, that must be the icehouse,” said Fowler.
Treadles was not intimately involved in the management of his household, but he knew that in warmer months, ice was delivered in blocks and kept in an ice safe. His late father-in-law, though a wealthy man, had not, as was often the case of those making a fortune in the Age of Steam, acquired a country house.
He had, therefore, no firsthand knowledge of how an estate dealt with the large amounts of ice required for its operations. Even after Fowler had pointed out the proximity of the icehouse, it took Treadles a moment to realize that he meant the grassy mound they were approaching.
He understood, from speaking to Sergeant Ellerby, that the previous day had been unseasonably warm. But overnight there had been a hard frost and the turf was encased in a crystalline membrane of ice that crunched audibly underfoot.
They rounded the mound, which wasn’t the perfect hemisphere it appeared from the south, but more the shape of a pear, sliced in half along the length and tapering to the north. The entrance was located at the slenderer end, guarded by a police constable jumping in place to keep himself warm. At the approach of Scotland Yard, he saluted.
Chief Inspector Fowler didn’t enter the structure immediately but made another slow tour of the exterior, Mr. Holmes in his wake. Treadles consulted a diagram that had been provided by Lord Ingram. The icehouse was built on a gentle slope to facilitate drainage, and the surrounding earth had been raised to insulate the most critical section, a brickwork, double-walled conical shaft with an interior diameter of ten feet at the top.
According to the diagram, at the bottom, the ice well narrowed to an opening two foot across, stoppered by a reed-covered grate, through which the melt seeped into an underground channel that conducted it, past an air trap, to the estate’s own small dairy, keeping milk, cream, and butter cool.
The chamber that contained the ice well was finished with a double-walled domed roof, which was then blanketed by turf, making the icehouse appear a part of the landscape to anyone who didn’t know what to look for.
When Fowler was ready, the constable unlocked the door.
“I’ll wait for you outside,” said Lord Ingram.
“And Mr. Holmes?” asked Fowler.
“Oh, I’m coming with,” Mr. Holmes answered brightly. “Cheerio, Ash.”
The first antechamber was a small,narrow tunnel, barely high enough for a grown man to stand straight. To Treadles it didn’t feel perceptibly cooler than outside—in fact, shielded from the wind, it was more pleasant in temperature, if less fresh in the quality of its air.
The second antechamber was colder but not remarkably so.
Chief Inspector Fowler sniffed. “Doesn’t smell much like a latrine, does it?”
“No,” said Treadles.
Apparently the three ladies who had come through the icehouse all reported a foul odor in this particular antechamber—so foul that Lady Avery and Lady Somersby, while waiting for the police, had decided to wedge all the doors open to let the stench out.
The kitchen boy hadn’t reported any odors. Then again, he’d suffered from a stuffed nose and hadn’t been able to smell anything at all.
