Page 54 of Murder on Cold Street
“I’m sure he must have, but—”
Her hands on Alice’s arms, Mrs. Watson straightened Alice and looked into her eyes. “But you don’t think it was disloyal of him. In fact, you are downright grateful that he only thought—and didn’tdoanything with anyone else. But he isn’t particularly noble for not doing what he should not have done, and you, my dear, are not at all faithless for having had a thought you never would have acted on. Since you understand why he had such thoughts, please, extend the same understanding to yourself.”
But she didn’t know how. She didn’t even know, until Mrs. Watson pointed out the discrepancy, that she held herself to a far more stringent set of standards. “I wish I’d had you in my life sooner.”
“Well, I didn’t arrive too late, I don’t think—I arrived when I was meant to.”
Mrs. Watson dabbed at Alice’s still-wet face with a handkerchief that smelled of orange blossoms. “Now tell me about the night of the party. Tell me what really happened.”
Logically Alice knew that whatever she told Mrs. Watson, Miss Holmes would know, too, but it was the difference between confessing a mistake to a strict headmistress and admitting the same to a loving mother from whom she needed fear no recriminations.
Mrs. Watson had placed the handkerchief in Alice’s palm. Alice wiped her face some more, feeling a little stronger, a little braver. “It was an excruciating night. I’m not entirely out of mourning for my brother and went only because Miss Longstead worried that the party would be thinly attended. She need not have fretted. The attendance was most gratifying. Yet in all that crowd, I could notseem to get away from Mr. Sullivan, who was always appearing at my elbow, looking solicitous but with a snide comment under his breath. Around half past midnight I could bear it no more and went out into the garden behind the house.
“There I saw a man enter the house next door. From the back, he looked very much like my husband, who was supposed to be away from London. Mr. Longstead’s house was brightly lit. The house next door, not so much. And I was far away enough that I couldn’t be sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks.
“Then I had a horrible thought. Mr. Sullivan had threatened to go to my husband and tell him lies. What if he had done so after all? What if my husband had told me that he would be out of town so he could observe me in secret? Was that why Mr. Sullivan kept coming near me, to give an impression of intimacy where none existed?
“Without another thought, I ran across to number 33. The folly of my action didn’t occur to me. The most important thing, the only important thing, was that my marriage must not fall prey to a pack of lies.
“It wasn’t until I was inside number 33 that I began to feel apprehensive. What if the person who’d entered the house was not my husband, but a squatter or a night burglar?
“The house was cold and silent. I stood where I was, not daring to move farther into its interior. I could see a little—whoever had come in before me had opened the curtains on the window facing Mr. Longstead’s. But it was the kind of light that made the dark corners even darker.
“I thought I heard something higher up in the house. My heart thumped. By this point I was thoroughly regretting my rash entry. My feet started moving toward the back door.
“That’s when Mr. Sullivan came in. ‘Well, well,’ he sneered. ‘We could have had our assignation in a warm room with a proper bed,my dear Mrs. Treadles. But how like you to delight in uncomfortable thrills.’
“My lips must have flapped a few times before any protests emerged. ‘Mr. Sullivan, I will have you know—’”
She broke off, and covered her face. She wanted to deliver her account with aplomb, but her gut churned at the memory, and both shame and anger burned in her throat.
Mrs. Watson pressed a small flask into her hands. “Here, have some.”
Alice took a healthy swallow, breathed hard for a few seconds, and steeled herself to continue. “Before I could finish my sentence, he forcibly grabbed me and kissed me. I struggled, my head full of both revulsion and panic.
“And then, there came a loud crashing sound. Or at least what sounded like a loud crashing sound. Startled, Mr. Sullivan let go of me. I ran. Back into Mr. Longstead’s house, into a cloakroom where I could hide—and retch.
“You can scarcely imagine my frame of mind. Horror. Relief. Fury. Sheer self-vilification. I vaguely remember checking in a mirror to see that my hair didn’t look too disarrayed. I might have absentmindedly re-pinned my coiffure. But really my attention was elsewhere.
“When I finally emerged from the cloakroom, I decided that I couldn’t stay a moment longer at the party. In any case, it was going beautifully and my presence made no difference to anyone. I left as soon as I could.”
Mrs. Watson patted her on the back of her hand, a gesture of reassurance, as if Alice had done well simply to reach this point in her narrative.
She supposed she had. She supposed, in a way, that she had done well enough to be still standing. But she’d done so much trudging of late, half-buried in mud and sinking ever deeper. How she wished she were high up in the sky instead, her wings spread, soaring.
She shook her head a little and went on. “After I reached home, I couldn’t sleep—and began to wonder again if it was really my husband I saw entering number 33. What was he doing in London when he was supposed to be out in the Kentish countryside, not expected home for another day? And why, if he had come back, had he not said anything to me?
“This is where Miss Holmes—or maybe I should say Mr. Holmes—was somewhat incorrect. I pulled out my husband’s recent letters to me at that moment—not after I learned of the murders, but right then. The discrepancy between where he said he was and what the postmarks on the envelope attested to, and the possibility of his unannounced presence in London—that was what led me into his dressing room. I didn’t really know what to look for so I rooted around in his clothes for some time and left.
“In the morning, I saw at last that my jeweled comb was missing. Almost immediately Sergeant MacDonald was announced. It occurred to me, after he left, that if my jeweled comb had dropped down inside number 33, it would be nearly impossible to convince anyone that my husband hadn’t killed Mr. Sullivan in a fit of jealousy.
“I ran about the house, hoping desperately that the comb had instead fallen off after I came home, as I was moving about, still half-dazed from the events of the night. And that was when I saw that my husband’s service revolver was missing from his dressing room.”
Her fingertips shook with the memory of her overwhelming panic. Her throat was tight. Her heart pounded.
She made herself look Mrs. Watson in the eye. “And now I’ve told you everything I know about that night.”
Somewhere an organ grinder played a tinny rendition of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” Two passing pedestrians complained loudly about the overabundance of organ grinders in London. And it was raining again, the rain beating steadily on top of the carriage, still parked two streets over from Scotland Yard.
