Page 47 of Murder on Cold Street
The change in her tone could not have escaped Holmes’s attention but she only asked, “How did your uncle seem to you?”
“Both apprehensive and excited—exactly how I felt.” Miss Longstead’s thumb rubbed over the delicate handle of her bone china cup. “I was asked similar questions yesterday by Scotland Yard, about whether there was anything to note during the party. The only thing out of ordinary I could think of then, and the only one I can think of now, was that I saw someone enter number 33 from the back.”
Holmes, who had been studying the array of biscuits on offer, looked up. “Do please tell more. Did you notice the time, by any chance?”
Miss Longstead shook her head. “There was no place on my dress for a pocket watch and I couldn’t see the time on the grandfather clock in the corner.”
“What about your dance card? If we know which dance you left blank, we might be able to estimate the time.”
“We didn’t have dance cards printed. Since we entertained so little, we didn’t think of dance cards until much too late. Mrs.Treadles assured us then that it was not entirely necessary for a smaller gathering. She said she would have a word with the matrons present—they would let the gentlemen know what to do. She also said that the musicians could decide what to play next. So without a dance card filled ahead of time, I didn’t need to worry about keeping my appointments throughout the evening. At one point I simply excused myself and slipped out to the garden to cool off.”
“Do you remember what music was playing while you were in the garden?”
“No, I’m sorry. I don’t have a good memory for tunes.”
Large balls often had a set sequence for the dances, this many quadrilles, that many waltzes, a smattering of galops and polkas. But with musicians left to their own devices, even if Miss Longstead remembered the melody that had wafted out of the house, the musicians might not be able to recall when they’d played it.
Holmes did not appear concerned about this additional difficulty. “Was it not cold in the garden?”
“Quite, but it wasverywarm inside the house and I was glad for a minute in fresh air. I was standing somewhere in the middle of the lawn, looking up at the sky, when I turned around and saw someone go into the house next door.”
“How far were you from the house?”
“About forty feet.”
“You can see from that distance?”
“Movements and such. My night vision isn’t bad. These houses are white stucco. A dark shape going up to a white wall, I can distinguish that, with the light spilling out from the party.”
“Do you have any idea who it was?”
“Not at all, except to think that it was a woman—something about that silhouette.”
“Did you not think that it was alarming, that someone went into number 33?”
Miss Longstead cleared her throat. “I am twenty-four, MissHolmes, not exactly in the first blush of youth. Mrs. Coltrane had told me that sometimes things happen at social gatherings. Obviously questionable conduct is much more likely in country manors where guests stay for days, and not truly expected at a town house dance. Still, before the ball started, we locked the bedrooms in the house—number 31—for precisely that reason.
“So when I saw the woman going into number 33, that was where my thought went—that it would be illicit, not criminal. There wasn’t anything worth stealing in the house—nothing, in any case, that could have easily been taken out. With the exception of the door between the dining room and the staircase hall, unlocked to allow me passage to the attic, all the other rooms in the house were locked, the attic double-locked.”
Thus explaining why the attic door had been shot at twice?
“In fact, my main thought, when I saw the woman going into number 33, was that I shouldn’t call any attention to it, lest it erupt into some sort of acute embarrassment, perhaps even a scandal. To that end I returned to the party immediately, in case anyone came outside looking for me and witnessed more than they needed to.
“I did, however, want to let somebody know about it. I looked for my uncle, but before I found him, I was swept again into several dances. Then I spoke for a bit with my friend Miss Yates, and only afterwards did I manage to locate him and tell him about the person who went into the house next door.”
“The person? Not the woman?”
“It felt a bit slanderous to state that it was a woman, even though I was sure it was.”
“How did Mr. Longstead react?”
“He was... he didn’t seem to be as concerned about it as I’d expected him to be. He told me not to worry about what I saw. That I should go back to being the belle of the ball and let him look after such a minor matter. And that was the last I thought of it until... everything else happened.”
She looked down at her hands, now tightly gripped together in her lap. Holmes picked up a plate of biscuits and extended it toward her. To Lord Ingram’s surprise—his own appetite diminished with emotional distress—Miss Longstead accepted a biscuit, ate it, and appeared more in charge of herself.
“Thank you, Miss Holmes,” she said.
“Nothing like a good coconut biscuit to help one carry on.” Holmes selected a biscuit herself and took a bite. “When you came back to the house, did you see either Mrs. Treadles or Mr. Sullivan?”
