Page 85 of Murder on Cold Street
“But I’m saving up money so that someday I may have enough to ask her to marry me!”
“Does she know that?”
He twisted his fingers. “I’m afraid she’ll say no. She comes from a respectable stock. No one from my family, men or women, have ever been respectable enough to be entrusted with the education of other people’s children.”
“Surely, Mr. Woodhollow, you understand why Miss Hendricks might also have doubts?”
“She shouldn’t,” he said stubbornly.
“But she does. Very few people think better of themselves than the world thinks of them. You feel undeserving because you are not a man of means. She feels undeserving because she is no longer a young woman. Tell her what you feel. Tell her that it is not merely her learning or the novelty of your affair that interests you. Do not assume anything that is self-evident to you must be equally self-evident to her.”
Perhaps her words at last made sense to him. Or perhaps he heard and understood her desire for there to be no more misunderstandings between him and his beloved. He raised his face and said solemnly, “I will tell her, Miss Holmes. Thank you.”
She scribbled a note and gave it to him to pass on to Miss Hendricks. “Good luck, Mr. Woodhollow.”
The butler left, still thanking her.
Charlotte sighed again. She was actually rather sincere in wishing the man luck. She must be getting soft with age—or from Lord Ingram’s influence.
At the thought of him, she smiled to herself.
Sixteen
Lord Ingram had sent his cables. Mr. Bloom was on his train back to London. And Mrs. Watson at last permitted herself to whisper, “At most two thirds. And likely only a half!”
She and Lord Ingram were in a hired town coach, driving away from Reading’s crowded railway station. Trains whistled. Street musicians pulled tirelessly at accordions. Hawkers, huddled around fires in metal bins, cried mince pies and roasted chestnuts.
Against this racket, their coachman, perched on the driver’s box in front, his head covered by a thick woolen cap, couldn’t possibly overhear any words exchanged inside the vehicle.
Yet Mrs. Watson dared not speak at her normal volume.
Lord Ingram moved to sit beside her, one arm around her shoulders.
His proximity allowed her anxious thoughts to at last pour out. “If we are accurate in our figures and Mr. Bloom correct in his assessment—and I have a sinking feeling he might very well be—then where did the rest of the money go? That is alotof money. And this is only one factory!”
Under the younger Mr. Cousins’s tenure, the firm had acquired and modernized multiple factories.
“Is this why Mr. Sullivan did his best to obstruct Mrs. Treadles from learning about the inner workings of the company? He wasdiverting funds from the company to line his own pockets, wasn’t he? Did Miss Holmes not say that his drawing room was filled top to bottom with show pieces?”
“An excess of furniture does not a man indict,” said Lord Ingram slowly. “But I do agree with you otherwise. With the younger Mr. Cousins having been an ineffective chief, and with Mr. Sullivan and his cabal having arrogated most of the decision-making power to themselves, I’d be surprised if the hostility he directed at Mrs. Treadleswasn’tpart of a concerted effort to prevent his crimes from coming to light.”
An awful thought struck Mrs. Watson. She turned toward Lord Ingram and gripped his arm. “The rumors that have been flying—so many of them have been about Inspector Treadles as a jealous husband. But—what if instead he’d been investigating this very matter and had learned about Mr. Sullivan stealing tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of pounds from his wife’s family? That would be sufficient cause to make anyone extremely—”
She stopped. Her hand dropped away from Lord Ingram’s arm—to cover her own mouth.
They were trying to exonerate Inspector Treadles, not to discover more plausible motives for him to have killed Mr. Sullivan.
Lord Ingram, who no doubt understood that her latest line of reasoning did Inspector Treadles no favors, frowned. “What I don’t understand—what I’ve never understood from the beginning—is why Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Longstead were killedtogether.”
An even more awful idea clobbered Mrs. Watson.
“What if—” she said from behind her hand, “what if Mr. Longstead wasn’t who we thought he was? What if instead of being grateful to old Mr. Cousins for buying out his shares, he resented old Mr. Cousins all these years? Could he have felt that old Mr. Cousins had forcibly separated him from his one great achievement in life? Remember he never offered Mrs. Treadles any substantive help. It couldn’t have cost him much to be kind to Mrs. Treadles to herface, especially if he’d been directing his nephew to siphon away her fortune. A man who is wonderful to his niece and solicitous of his servants can still be a monster to others.”
Lord Ingram looked pained. He gently pulled Mrs. Watson’s hand away from her face and held it in his own. “Unfortunately, this theory also places Inspector Treadles at the very center of the murders—and gives him every motivation.”
Mrs. Watson slumped against the back of the carriage seat. “Poor Mrs. Treadles. If I were her, I’d probably be stark raving mad by now. I am not her and still I feel the hangman’s noose tightening.”
Unexpectedly, Lord Ingram smiled. “I felt that distinct sensation not too long ago, when I was the prime suspect in the case at Stern Hollow. Have I ever told you what Miss Charlotte said to me when she came to visit me in my jail cell?”
