Page 11 of The Art of Theft
“You are most welcome. But as Miss Charlotte would tell you, my motives were somewhat impure.”
“I have learned not to disdain impure motives,” said Lord Ingram. “Impure motives can still be excellent and admirable.”
Mr. Marbleton laughed. “Thank you, my lord. I came to give a message to Miss Charlotte. Having done so, I will see myself out.”
“Not so fast, Mr. Marbleton,” said Mrs. Watson, walking in. “Nobody leaves my house without a good chat with me.”
Mr. Marbleton exclaimed with pleasure. “My dear Mrs. Watson! Of course I shall not leave now that you are here.”
Mrs. Watson radiated such warmth and goodwill, it was difficult not to exclaim with pleasure in her company: One felt seen and understood. Whereas in Holmes’s company, one felt seen through and analyzed.
More tea was brought in, along with a plate of Frenchmignardises,for which Mr. Marbleton happily found room in his stomach. Holmes, who abstained, gave him a look of wistful envy.
Mr. Marbleton, alternating between bites of a mille-feuille and an even prettier confection Lord Ingram couldn’t name, told Mrs. Watson of the reason for his visit.
The last time Lord Ingram had met Holmes, before she, Mrs. Watson, and Miss Bernadine had quit the cottage near his estate in Derbyshire, she’d told him about the hesitant courtship between her sister and the man who was very possibly Moriarty’s son. But it astonished him no less to hear that there had been a formal visit—albeit under false pretenses—from the Marbletons to the Holmeses.
Presently Mr. Marbleton came to the conclusion to his recital. “Miss Charlotte said she wouldn’t be doing the forgery herself. And then you came, my lord.”
“Lord Ingram is a far superior counterfeiter of handwriting,” said Holmes. “When he is here, I need not expose my mediocrity.”
“No wonder you were delighted to see me,” said Lord Ingram, hoping he didn’t sound openly disappointed. In anyone else, such a subtle smile might mean nothing. But on Holmes, that almost qualified for a surge of happiness.
All because she needed a forger and he happened to walk in?
“Miss Holmes, do please show Lord Ingram to the study, so that he may start on the letter,” said Mrs. Watson. “And you, Mr. Marbleton, let’s hear all about your visits to Miss Olivia Holmes in far greater detail.”
Mr. Marbleton, given the opportunity to expound upon his courtship, looked like a child about to go on his first journey to the seaside. The look Holmes cast him was half-sympathy, half-resignation.
She rose and led Lord Ingram to a room in the house that he’d never visited—the late Dr. Watson’s study, judging by the presence on the shelves ofGray’s Anatomy,British Pharmacopoeia, treatises ontropical diseases, and at least a dozen years’ worth ofThe Lancetin bound volumes.
She lit the wall sconces. The light made her hair a richer gold. That hair, shorn for her role as Sherrinford Holmes when she’d investigated the case at Stern Hollow, was still short, barely reaching her nape and just beginning to curl. “Would you mind if I stayed here? Mr. Marbleton might enjoy the recitation of his courtship more without my dampening presence.”
His heart skidded. She could wait anywhere in the house, if her goal was merely not to be in the afternoon parlor while Mr. Marbleton waxed poetic about his beloved. So... shewashappy to see him then?
“By all means,” he said.
A large desk had been set against a wall. Next to the desk, a chair stood facing away from the wall. She sat down in this chair. He took the chair before the desk, several feet of diagonal distance separating them.
He spread open the handwriting sample.
What were the height and width of the individual letters? Were the words packed together or strung long and loose? Did they have the bearing of proud soldiers, or were they hunched over like beggars trying to escape the attention of patrolling bobbies?
These were the questions he should be asking himself. Instead, all his attention was on Holmes. She had set one arm on the periphery of the desk, the camel-and-red plaid fabric of her dress a burst of colors at the edge of his vision. He stared harder at the handwriting sample, trying not to recall the warmth and pliancy of her skin.
Or her laughter at his rare ribald comments.
The door of the study stood open. Through it wafted Mr. Marbleton and Mrs. Watson’s animated conversation from down the hall. But he thought he heard her breaths more clearly, and the slide of her hair against the high collar of her dress as she turned her face toward the window.
It took what seemed forever before he could lift a pen from the stand, and twice as long before he warmed up with some lines and squiggles across the page.
“The imitation doesn’t need to be top-notch,” she said. “My mother wouldn’t think to check it against other instances of Mrs. Marbleton’s writing in her possession, even if she remembered where she keeps them.”
He nodded, pulled out his multipurpose pocketknife, and used the three-inch-long ruler to measure the heights of the a’s, e’s, and o’s, the typical length of the ascenders and descenders, and the width of the gaps Mrs. Marbleton left between words and between letters of the same word.
The size and spacing of a person’s handwriting were as characteristic of it as the specific look of each individual letter. Even if his work here wasn’t required to be top-notch, it still needed to be good.
Incorporating the measurements, he drew faint lines on a piece of paper as guides to practice writing letters that resembled Mrs. Marbleton’s. They had used to do this, he and Holmes, she sitting somewhere in the vicinity while he worked. But that hadn’t happened in years; not since he’d met Lady Ingram, at the very least.
