Page 50 of Murder on Cold Street
Lord Ingram made his way to the other end of the studio, near the windows that looked down on the street. Here a different work area had been set up, with an ironing board placed next to a chair. Mrs. Coltrane explained that those were for Miss Longstead’s maid, who stayed with her while she worked and used the time to perform some of her own duties. And that there had been a sewing basket and a knitting basket, but the baskets were destroyed, and their contents mixed up with too much debris to salvage.
“Miss Longstead didn’t need the company but it was an empty house, after all. Both Mr. Longstead and I insisted that she not be alone here.”
The studio had been formed by removing thin walls that would have separated the space into small rooms for the servants. Not all the partitions had been removed. Near the maid’s station, one such room remained.
“It was used as a storage closet by the previous tenant. I do believe he left behind a few boxes of old art magazines. They were strewn all about yesterday morning, the boxes thrown against the walls,” said Mrs. Coltrane, opening the closet to show its empty inside to Lord Ingram and Holmes, who had by now repaired to this side of the studio. “Miss Longstead’s Christmas present from her uncle, too, was smashed to pieces. And it was such a magnificent pearl necklace. It would have looked stunning against her complexion.”
Holmes turned toward her, her hand over her heart, her brow raised. “Mr. Longstead had already given Miss Longstead her Christmas present?”
Both a noticeable expression and a noticeable, indeed,exaggerated gesture. Holmes didn’t just want the housekeeper to keep talking; her curiosity was truly piqued.
“She and Mr. Longstead had this tradition, you see. They hid each other’s gifts around the house, quite often in a corner of the other person’s rooms. New places every year, too; they don’t reuse old locations. Usually by mid-December Miss Longstead starts looking around for her present, but this year, what with the soiree, she was distracted.
“And then, the same morning after she’d had to identify his body, to come here, see this swathe of destruction, and catch sight of the necklace’s fragments strewn all about... She did very well, Miss Longstead—she didn’t shed a single tear before the police. But I did. I was with her and I couldn’t stop myself from crying.”
Mrs. Coltrane dabbed at her eyes again. Lord Ingram felt his own eyes sting.
Holmes took another look inside the empty closet. “May I inquire about the smell of alcohol?”
“Oh, that.” Mrs. Coltrane smiled sadly. “Mr. Longstead enjoyed a good brandy and Miss Longstead wanted to see whether she couldn’t distill something decent for him herself. All her efforts were destroyed last night, of course.”
Two sets of Christmas presents, razed in one paroxysm of violence. For Miss Longstead, other Christmases would come, and other presents. But for her uncle, stowed away in a mortuary that smelled of formaldehyde and decay, there would never again be anything else.
Outside of number 33, after assuring Charlotte that he would meet her later for their interview with Mrs. Cousins, Lord Ingram bade everyone good day—it fell to him to speak to the guests who had been at the party. He left swiftly, his greatcoat streaming in the wind.
“Well, there goes a man who knows how to cross a street,” said Mrs. Coltrane, not immune to the allure of his lordship in motion.
Charlotte could not disagree. “You should see him cross a marble hall.”
And he’s mine, rose the words, unbidden.
He was hers—they both knew that. But was she his—and to the same degree?
She feasted her eyes on him another moment, then followed Mrs. Coltrane back to number 31.
Back to the case at hand.
“You probably know Mr. Longstead’s daily habits better than anyone, Mrs. Coltrane. Could you give me an idea of them?”
The housekeeper was conducting Charlotte around the ground floor, which had been used for the party. She opened the door to a small, book-lined study that did not look much used. “I know this will sound odd but Mr. Longstead was not a person of regular habits. He rose between six to nine o’clock in the morning, depending on what hour he had retired the night before. Often he would only decide on his schedule after he had risen. He might ask Miss Longstead if she would care for a lesson, or a walk, and she would either oblige him or tell him that she already had other plans for the day.”
This seemed to Charlotte a lovely way to live. But... “Did that complicate matters for the staff?”
“No, we didn’t need to have his shaving water sent up the moment he opened his eyes or anything of the sort.” Mrs. Coltrane led the way across the stairwell hall to the dining room at the rear—number 31 and number 33 shared a remarkably similar floor plan. It was possible this entire row of houses utilized the same scheme of interior arrangement. “He was happy to wait or to do things out of order. And since his breakfast tended to be simple, it didn’t fluster the kitchen to fry him an egg at seven one day and half past eight the next. Dinner was always at eight in town and seven in the country—it would have inconvenienced the staff to move dinner about and he never inconvenienced anyone if he could help it.”
Charlotte looked at the black-draped windows of the dining room and felt a small pang in her heart for this much-beloved man. “So he got up when he pleased and took his dinner at eight. In between he might take a walk or tutor Miss Longstead in thermodynamics. Anything else?”
Mrs. Coltrane straightened dining chairs that appeared perfectly placed to Charlotte. “He read. He looked at the small notices—after he met Mr. Charles Babbage a good twenty years ago he took up an interest in ciphers. He sometimes visited the Reading Room at the British Museum. He and Miss Longstead went to lectures and exhibits. From time to time they went to the theater. He took himself to various shops around town, to see what new and interesting items they might have. Occasionally he met with old friends.”
She spoke slower and slower, as if with every recollection his loss became more difficult to bear.
For her benefit, Charlotte moved to the window that faced number 33 and lifted the curtains, ostensibly to check on the line of sight between the dining rooms of the two houses—when she’d already looked out each window of number 33 and gauged how it gave onto number 31. “And this irregular pattern continued up until his death?”
“Well,” said Mrs. Coltrane after a minute, “this was the slightly peculiar thing. His habits became rather regular in the weeks preceding his death. We’d become accustomed to a leisurely pace in the morning. We were surprised when suddenly he was up at half past six every day.”
Charlotte dropped the curtains and turned around, a flutter of excitement in her stomach. “Was there any reason you could think of for this change?”
Mrs. Coltrane, who had moved to rearrange bric-a-brac on the mantel, frowned. “Not really. It just happened one day and went on happening. He would have his breakfast, get ready, and then walk to the Reading Room. Whenever he went to the Reading Room he’dbe back only at teatime. After the first two days, we thought surely he wouldn’t make a habit of it. But he did for a good three and a half weeks.”
