Page 64 of The Hollow of Fear
“He has been rusticating in these parts for a few days,” said “Sherrinford Holmes” cheerfully, despite her chattering teeth. “I am in the area to visit him, in fact. Of course I haven’t seen much of him since everything happened. But there will be plenty of time for brotherly chats once all this unpleasantness is behind us.”
Miss Holmes’s nonchalance should have heartened Treadles, but the news that they were to see Sherlock Holmes so soon caught him flatfooted.
When a client called on Sherlock Holmes, Miss Holmes explained that his health kept him bedridden and all communications must go through her. From time to time, she would disappear into an adjacent room to consult him. In truth the room was empty and Sherlock Holmes only a front for Miss Holmes to exploit her own deductive abilities.
Chief Inspector Fowler, however, would not be satisfied with being told that Sherlock Holmes was in the next room. Where would Miss Holmes find an actual Sherlock Holmes on such short notice? And how could the act possibly fool eyes as sharp and suspicious as Fowler’s?
“Shall we expect you after dinner, then?” asked Miss Holmes.
“Yes, of course,” said Fowler, with a wolfish grin. “We are most eager to meet with Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”
It was only after Miss Holmes, Lord Ingram, and Sergeant Ellerby were on their way that a horrifying possibility occurred to Treadles. After he had stood by Lord Ingram, when the latter declared that he had no way of getting word to Miss Holmes, surely... surely she didn’t mean to unmask herself tonight?
But what if that was exactly what she intended?
14
“I have your tea here, Holmes.”
Charlotte smiled a little: There was no better or more desirable way for a man to announce himself.
She emerged from her dressing room to find Lord Ingram already in the bedroom, standing with his back to her. He wore a blue-gray lounge suit, his dark hair still slightly damp, his fingertips grazing the lapel of Sherrinford Holmes’s jacket, which she’d placed on the back of a chair.
Well, well. And here she thought she’d still need to push, shove, or otherwise cantilever him into her den of iniquity.
At her entrance he turned around. She thought he might comment on her attire—or lack thereof: She had on only a heavily embroidered dressing gown. But that was not what caused his jaw to slacken.
“What happened to yourhair?”
She’d forgotten that he hadn’t seen her without her Sherrinford Holmes wig. “I had it chopped off. There was too much. Wigs wouldn’t sit properly.”
“You chopped off everything!”
She hadn’t. There were a good few inches left—Mrs. Watson had absolutely refused to trim her hair any shorter. “I like it. Mrs. Watson says it brings out my eyes.”
He shook his head, not so much in disagreement, but as if he still couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Anyway, come and eat something.”
He had never complimented her looks—and he didn’t need to. All she’d ever wanted from him was friendship.
And this, of course.
This.
She walked to the tea tray, which held an astonishingly beautiful French apple tart, paper-thin apple slices arranged in perfect concentric circles, glistening under an apricot jam glaze.
A decade ago, sitting at one of his digs with a book in one hand but, alas, nothing to eat, she’d pined for a French apple tart to try. He, a lover of Monsieur Verne’s scientific romances, had pointed out, rather indignantly, that the French did things other than cooking. To which she’d replied that two of the foremost French inventions, canning and pasteurization, had to do with food and drink. And then she’d written a message in his notebook in Braille, another major French invention:
You should have said, I’ll ask my godfather’s pastry chef to make it for you.
She had no idea whether he’d ever bothered to translate the note. Certainly he had never obliged her on the French apple tart. Until now.
Too bad she didn’t want any.
He looked at her. She smoothed the back of a spoon across the jam glaze on top of the tart, returning his gaze. He stood very still—no fidgeting for him. But in the rise and fall of his chest there was agitation. Inquietude.
“Why are you nervous?”
He hesitated. “You make me nervous.”
