Page 36 of Murder on Cold Street
The Webley revolver bore the emblem of the Metropolitan Police. It also had a personal embellishment: Inspector Treadles’s initials were engraved underneath the emblem, possibly an addition undertaken by his devoted wife.
“That is correct.”
Holmes popped out the chamber, which, when full, held five rounds.
One round remained.
“Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Longstead were each killed with one shot,” she mused. “Were there any other bullets or bullet holes found at the scene?”
“Yes, the report says that the door of the attic was shot at twice.”
What was the significance of an attic in an unoccupied house? When they reached 33 Cold Street, would Holmes be able to glean from it the secrets of the night?
A pocket lantern had also been found at the scene, along with three spent matches. The dead men and Inspector Treadles all carried matches, but it was easy enough to judge from the stubs that they had come from Inspector Treadles’s box. A fourth spent match, of a different make, had been found at the bottom of the staircase in number 33. But as Mr. Longstead and Mr. Sullivan used the same kind of matches, it was not clear which victim had lit that particular one.
They were last shown a scrap of black fabric, of decent but not luxurious wool, that had been found impaled on the fence surrounding the entrance into the service door in front of the house.
“What do you make of this, Sergeant MacDonald?” asked Holmes.
Sergeant MacDonald lowered his voice. “To be honest, I’m trying not to be too excited about this, Miss Holmes. Sergeant Howe, whoworks under Inspector Brighton, said that it’s probably from a passerby’s jacket, caught on a finial. But I’ve been to number 33. The fences in front are higher than my elbow. Unless I walked with one arm stuck out above the fence, I don’t see how any part of my jacket could be caught. Much more likely that somebody—the real murderer, I’d say—jumped out from number 33 and got his coattail and whatnot speared by a finial.”
Lord Ingram’s pulse quickened. This was the most hopeful evidence that they’d come across.
Holmes dropped the scrap back into its envelope. “And now we’ve seen everything of interest found at number 33?”
“Everything,” answered Sergeant MacDonald.
Everything except the item Holmes had deduced Mrs. Treadles must have left behind.
Where had it gone?
And who had taken it?
Alice Treadles smiled. She smiled so hard her cheeks hurt. “Robert, dear, are you all right?”
He was smiling as hard as she—his teeth were clenched together. “I’m quite all right. You, dear Alice?”
She stood by the door of the small room, and not within his embrace, because she still trembled from her second interview with Inspector Brighton, who had not taken kindly to being booted from her house the night before. She had wished to see Robert before she had to endure Inspector Brighton again, but Inspector Brighton had arranged for the opposite.
He wanted Robert to see her after he had browbeaten her for an entire hour, during which he came just short of labeling her a whore. She supposed she couldn’t blame him. She’d lied to him and he’d smelled it.
She’d known that he would try to break her. That he would call her all the nasty names, ones that even Mr. Sullivan might have never heard of.
She’d steeled herself for it. Or at least she thought she had.
She had been wrong about the breadth of Inspector Brighton’s vocabulary. He hadn’t used any unfamiliar words, only the well-known ones. And she had been wrong about how much she could brace herself against such rhetoric.
The contempt inherent not just in Inspector Brighton’s cold, cutting voice, but in those words themselves. The brutal disgust embedded in every syllable. The barely leashed violence of all those who had ever hurtled those words over the entire history of the English language.
She’d felt slapped, thrown, and kicked. All within a quarter hour of the beginning of her interrogation.
A battering not of the body, but of her belief in her right to exist.
She smiled even harder. “I’m all right. Everything is all right. Mrs. Cousins has been so very helpful. And Sherlock Holmes is on the case, too—and Lord Ingram as well.”
He gazed at her. He was not in shackles, her Robert, but he looked so pale and worn. She wanted to rush forward and hold him tight, but she dared not. The moment he felt her shaking all over, he would know that she was lying, that nothing was all right and everything had gone horribly awry.
Her hard-fought smiles must be saying all the wrong things. His hands balled into fists. His throat moved. “I’m sorry, Alice. I’m terribly sorry.”
