Page 91 of Murder on Cold Street
Charlotte folded her hands primly in her lap. “I do wonder where you went afterward, Mrs. Sullivan. Did you go home directly? Or did you go somewhere else in that carriage?”
“Your imagination is getting the best of you, Miss Holmes!”
“Is it? Yet my imagination hasn’t come up with answers for questions such as, how did you get into number 33? Did you make a habit of going where your husband didn’t want your company? Also, did he know this about you?”
Mrs. Sullivan shoved aside the embroidery frame. “Miss Holmes, I think—”
Charlotte rose. “Indeed, Mrs. Sullivan, it would behoove you to think carefully. For, shall we say, twenty-four hours? After that, my brother will have me call on Inspector Brighton with our deductions and ask for Mr. Sullivan’s other household to be looked into.”
Eighteen
As Charlotte expected, Mrs. Sullivan left soon, slipping out of the front door while glancing about, as if she were a maid neglecting her duties to meet with a follower, and not the only authority figure remaining in the household, able to come and go as she wished.
Miss Redmayne, now in the role of the coachman, followed. Unlike Charlotte, who’d learned to handle a vehicle in the country, Miss Redmayne had learned to drive in the city.On Aunt Jo’s phaeton, first in the parks, then mostly in quieter districts, she’d told Charlotte.
Her relative lack of experience on thoroughfares did not bother Charlotte. Her attention was on the direction they were headed: into amorefashionable district, with more abundant gardens, and large, freestanding houses.
Would they be passing through or were they approaching Mrs. Sullivan’s destination?
It was the destination.
And Mrs. Sullivan alit before a house both bigger and more opulent than her own.
Charlotte hesitated. This was not how one set up a mistress. Mistresses were usually kept in modest houses, described asbijouto give them an air of elegance. Was Mrs. Sullivan by some chance visiting a social superior?
Well past normal visiting hours and in a hired carriage?
Charlotte decided to try her luck. The maid who opened the door was at first disinclined to allow her to see the mistress of the house, but when Charlotte informed her that she was Mr. Sullivan’sothermistress, here to discuss arrangements, she was promptly, if with great curtness, shown into the drawing room.
This drawing room, while still plentifully gilded, might in some circles have been accepted as elegant enough—in certain nouveau riche circles, that was. As a further point in its favor, it was not stuffed to the gills, but had enough space that each piece of furniture could be individually appreciated for its design and placement. Charlotte walked past large pots of ferns that added splashes of soothing greenery, and mentally tallied the vases of fresh flowers that adorned every horizontal surface.
Mrs. Sullivan, seated on a white-and-gold settee, leaped up. “Miss Holmes, you—you—”
“Hullo again, Mrs. Sullivan. Will you perform the introductions?” murmured Charlotte, inclining her head toward the other woman in the room.
She appeared to be in her early thirties, pretty but not remarkably so, attired becomingly in a tea gown with an emerald-green open redingote, worn over a loose white underdress.
Charlotte aspired to own a tea gown, which had a racy reputation as what married ladies wore when their lovers came by for an afternoon tryst. Perhaps now that Lord Ingram was at last willing, it was time to make such an investment?
“May I present Mrs. Portwine, Miss Holmes?” mumbled Mrs. Sullivan. “Mrs. Portwine, this is Miss Holmes, who is looking into the murders on behalf of Sherlock Holmes, the private detective.”
Mrs. Portwine, obviously a woman of the world, did not appear too surprised or dismayed. She rose and offered Charlotte her hand to shake. “Miss Holmes, I can assure you that I had nothing to dowith the murders. Killing off my protector harms my livelihood—and I guard my livelihood jealously.”
“I believe you, Mrs. Portwine,” said Charlotte. “I am here only because Mrs. Sullivan has refused to answer questions as to her whereabouts that night. I decided to pose those questions to you instead.”
“You said you would give me twenty-four hours to think!” said Mrs. Sullivan plaintively.
“And you may still choose to tell me more at the end of those twenty-four hours,” said Charlotte. “I did not, however, give any promises as to how I would or wouldn’t use those twenty-four hours.”
Mrs. Sullivan pouted. “I didn’t mean to bring her to your doorstep,” she said, even more plaintively, to the woman with whom she’d shared her husband.
“And yet here we all are,” said Mrs. Portwine, addressing Mrs. Sullivan, only a few years younger than she, as if the latter were a wayward niece. “We might as well sit down and have a cup of tea, like civilized people.”
The tea tray, which must have been already ordered for Mrs. Sullivan, materialized that moment, carried in by the still incredulous-looking maid.
Charlotte selected a small iced cake, reminiscent of the ones her thirteen-year-old self had been thinking about when she saw Lord Ingram for the first time. “This is a delightful house, Mrs. Portwine.”
Mrs. Sullivan wrinkled her nose, but made no comment about how her husband did not buy this house for her.
