Page 30 of Murder on Cold Street
Holmes nodded.
Mrs. Watson, taking in the uncharacteristic tightness of her expression, said, “You do not expect to learn anything useful at Scotland Yard?”
“I very much do. Only not from Inspector Treadles himself.”
Mrs. Watson rolled the stem of her wineglass between her fingers, back and forth, back and forth. “I’ve been wondering the same. If he cannot exonerate himself, he, an esteemed member of Scotland Yard...”
“Then we will do it for him,” said Holmes simply. “Anything else from Scotland Yard, my lord?”
“They have given us leave to speak to those who might shed light on the case, but we will need to arrange those tête-à-têtes ourselves.”
Holmes glanced toward Penelope. “Can I entrust that task to you, Miss Redmayne?”
“Certainly—” said Penelope.
“Surely—” exclaimed Mrs. Watson at the same time.
“I have a greater task for you, Mrs. Watson: You will be looking into Cousins Manufacturing,” said Holmes. “Cousins is what links together Mr. Longstead, Mr. Sullivan, and Inspector Treadles. We have to know what is going on at Cousins, if we are to find out why two of the three men are dead and the other was locked in a room with them.”
Mrs. Watson’s hand stilled. “I’m honored by your request, Miss Charlotte, but are you sure I have enough wherewithal to take on such a large and possibly specialized portion of the investigation?”
“I have always been impressed by your financial acumen, ma’am. I am not mistaken in guessing that you know something of double-entry bookkeeping, am I?”
Mrs. Watson blinked—Lord Ingram had seen this expression a number of times on individuals who’d been told something about themselves by Holmes that they’d never shared with her. But Mrs. Watson, having been Holmes’s partner for a while, needed only a fraction of a second to recover. “I did do bookkeeping for a small theatrical company. But in scale it cannot compare to Cousins.”
“Perhaps not in scale, but in principle they should be comparable.”
“And what am I to look for, exactly, at Cousins?” asked Mrs. Watson, her gaze anxious.
Holmes served herself a slice of venison. “The press enjoys the narrative involving Inspector Treadles in the narrative, because husbandly jealousy leading to murder is both titillating and easy to understand. But if we remove Inspector Treadles from consideration, then we are left with no apparent suspect and no apparent motive.”
Lord Ingram hadn’t thought of that, at least not in such unambiguous terms. As he glanced around at the other ladies, he saw that it was the same for them.
“I am not sure what we can do to produce a suspect,” Holmeswent on. “So first we must see if we can find a motive—a different reason for someone, anyone at all, to want to kill Mr. Longstead and Mr. Sullivan. And that is what I have entrusted to you, Mrs. Watson, that motive—or at least, clues to that motive.”
At the conclusion of the meal, they returned to the afternoon parlor, where they played a few hands of whist. Both Mrs. Watson and Penelope then pleaded fatigue and retired.
Lord Ingram wondered if he should come around less often, so as not to always cause his hostesses to rush off to hide in their rooms.
Holmes rose from the card table, took a seat on the settee, and shook out her skirts. He suspected that those skirts, laden with tiny jet beads, didn’t need such elaborate arranging, but that she enjoyed hearing the tiny plinking sounds the beads made, when they struck one another with the movement of the brocaded satin.
When the other ladies had left, they had told them to keep playing, but it was obvious that the games had ended for the night. He began to gather up the cards and was about to ask after her sister Bernadine Holmes, who now lived with her, when she looked up and said, “Inspector Brighton was at Mrs. Treadles’s house when I called.”
He was immediately alert. “Oh?”
She recounted the interrogation she had overheard.
He didn’t know at which point he abandoned the task of returning the playing cards to their case. He only realized, at the end of her recital, that he had deformed three cards in his left hand, so hard did he clutch them.
“He wasthatblunt and merciless? He wentthatfar in his conjectures?”
“He was. And he went no further than I would have. In fact, I would have gone further—and I think he, too—had Mrs. Cousins not interrupted the proceedings.”
He smoothed out the bent cards as best as he could, a hard weight over his lungs. He hated to think of Mrs. Treadles’s plight, so desperately alone and in need of friends. He’d never held it againstInspector Treadles, when the police officer had grown distant from him. Nor had he thought ill of his friend on Holmes’s behalf: Holmes needed no one’s good opinion; her own was sufficient.
But he was angry on Mrs. Treadles’s behalf, that the husband whom she’d loved so deeply and for whom she had given up so much had not treasured her as he ought to. Had abandoned her when she was most in need of warmth and support at home.
And yet he could not stoke that anger without remembering how proud Inspector Treadles had been of her, the last time they’d spoken, right after—if he wasn’t mistaken about the chronology of events—the reconciliation between husband and wife. Nor could he entirely disregard what Holmes had related just now, of the efforts Inspector Treadles had put in since his return from Stern Hollow to become a better husband.
