Page 43 of The Hollow of Fear
“I understand your reluctance. And I deplore intruding on another man’s privacy,” said Fowler, evincing no such reluctance whatsoever. “But your wife, whom no one had seen in months, was found dead on your land. Reticence, which I otherwise admire as a manly virtue, will not work to your advantage here.”
This time Lord Ingram did pour back half of the whisky. Treadles winced inwardly. In happier times, he had shared meals and animated conversations with the man, and Lord Ingram had never imbibed except in exceedingly modest quantities.
He knew he should view his friend as the prime suspect, but he couldn’t help a surge of sympathy. And a scouring of misery, that he himself, viewed as enviably married, was also, on the inside, in anything but an enviable state.
Glass in hand, Lord Ingram walked to a window and stared out. The wooded slopes behind the house had turned red and gold, a beautiful tableau. Treadles wondered whether he saw anything at all.
“Immediately after the reading of my godfather’s will, I told Lady Ingram that I would receive five hundred pound per annum instead of the preponderance of his fortune, as was, in fact, the case.”
The words emerged slowly, as if they were dragged across knife and fire.
Fowler set his chin in the space between his thumb and forefinger. “Does this imply you already harbored doubts as to the validity of her affection?”
Lord Ingram’s hands clasped behind his back. “I knew when we met that her family was poor. I was more than happy to be their knight in shining armor. At the time it had seemed highly romantic, that our paths should cross when she came to London in search of a well-situated husband.
“I was young and vain—and likely believed myself a prize even without the attraction of my future inheritance. That the woman I loved perhaps wouldn’t want to marry me... Such a thought never crossed my mind.
“That Season she stayed with a cousin in London. I didn’t meet her family until after my proposal had been accepted. The lack of warmth she evinced toward her parents—and even her brothers—should have put me on alert. But I was blinded by love and freely discarded what I did not wish to see.
“In time I came to understand that a similar distance existed between us. I thought we had everything we needed to be happy—health, security, beautiful children. But she grew only more distant, more unreachable.
“That was when I learned that she had loved another, a man rejected by her parents because he was in no position to help her family. Everything began to make horrifying sense. She despised her parents because they refused to consider her personal happiness. She was remote toward me because she did not love me. Because she never would have married me, except for the fact that I was rumored to be my godfather’s heir apparent.”
Treadles dared not put himself in Lord Ingram’s place. He didn’t even want to imagine disillusionment of this magnitude.
“I didn’t want it to be true. But I also needed to know. My godfather died soon thereafter and I made up my mind. If she loved me, then she would be disappointed that I would remain only a moderately well-off man rather than become a very rich one, but it would not be a fatal disappointment. If she did not love me...”
He’d been speaking faster and faster, as if hoping simple momentum would carry him through the worst part of the story. But now he came to a stop. His head bowed. His fingers gripped the edge of the windowsill.
When he spoke again his voice was quiet, barely audible. “Her anger was beyond anything I could have imagined. My godfather was Jewish, and it is rumored that I am his natural son. She told me, in exactly so many words, that without this inheritance, she had married me for nothing. And her children had Jewish blood for nothing.”
Outside, wind howled. A sheet of rain pelted the windows. Inside, the silence was excruciating. Treadles didn’t dare breathe, for fear of betraying his presence. He wanted Lord Ingram to believe that he was speaking to an empty room—it would be the only way he himself could have managed to relive such painful memories.
“There was no attempt at reconciliation, then?” Fowler was unmoved, his question cold and inexorable.
“As ruptures go, ours was thorough—and as final as an amputation. I imagine the truth came as a relief for her, an end to all pretenses.”
“And for you?”
“On my part, I at last perceived her clearly—and I saw the greatest mistake of my life.”
Another silence fell. Fowler polished his spectacles with a handkerchief. Mr. Holmes picked up the slice of cake that had been sitting beside him and gave it a quarter turn on its plate.
For a moment, something about him again seemed strangely familiar.
And then he looked in Lord Ingram’s direction, his expression entirely blank.
Treadles almost cried out. That expression, as if he viewed the pain and suffering of others from a great remove, as if he himself never expected to experience such frailties—Treadles had seen that expression before.
On a woman.
On Charlotte Holmes.
Despite the foppishness of his appearance, Mr. Holmes did not look…feminine. He didn’t even look effeminate. And certainly not at all pretty. While Miss Holmes was very pretty and extravagantly feminine—Treadles still remembered the endless rows of bows on her skirt the first time he met her.
But now that the idea had come into his head…
Sherrinford Holmes’s girth might be a way to disguise Miss Holmes’s buxom figure. His facial hair needn’t be real and the dark hair on his head could be a wig. The wearing of a monocle subtly distorted one’s features—but didn’t account for all the differences between Sherrinford Holmes’s face and Miss Holmes’s.
