Page 98 of Murder on Cold Street
As Charlotte alit before 31 Cold Street, someone pushed open the garden gate and stepped onto the pavement.
Miss Hendricks.
Who noticed Charlotte and stopped dead.
Charlotte indicated to Lord Ingram that he should wait for her and approached Miss Hendricks, who glanced apprehensively toward Lord Ingram, even though he took himself a good thirty feet away.
“Miss Hendricks,” said Charlotte in a low voice. “You must never worry that we would put your reputation or your employment at risk. Our sole aim is to find out what happened to Mr. Longstead, not to disrupt anyone else’s life.”
“Thank you,” said Miss Hendricks in a small voice.
“I hope that a certain misunderstanding has been cleared up between you and a certain someone.”
At this, Miss Hendricks bit her lower lip, as if trying to stop herself from smiling. “Yes, thank you very much. In fact—in fact, I was on my way to the postbox at the corner. I’ve written you a note. I’ll give it to you now.”
When she had disappeared back into the garden, presumably to make her way back to her employer’s house, Charlotte opened the envelope and read it in the light of the lantern hanging from Mrs. Watson’s carriage.
Dear Miss Holmes,
At the request of a friend, I am writing with information that I hope will be helpful.
On the night in question, I did step into the house in question. Perhaps I was awakened by the sound of fireworks, which have been a sporadic nuisance in the district of late. Perhaps it was simply my own nerves—I was due to take my charges to their cousin’s birthday party fifty miles away and I have never been a confident traveler.
In any case, by the time I got up to have a drink of water and take a look outside—my bedroom faces the garden—it was half past one. My eyes fell on a certain house diagonally opposite. To my astonishment I saw someone enter.
You know enough of my circumstances to guess at my dismay. I am not sure what made me decide to have a look myself, despite the danger presented by a party in full swing in the house next door. But I dressed, slipped out, and crossed the garden.
Upon my arrival I found the door of that house unlocked. I was in the middle of the dining room when I kicked something. I knelt down and found it by feel. There was no mistaking the shape of a decorative comb, one studded with what I thought at the time to be paste gems.
I need not describe for you everything that went through my mind. I stood in place for a minute or two, my ears ringing. And then I left as quickly as I could.
Thanks to your intercession, I learned earlier this afternoon that the truth was not the catastrophe I had feared. Our mutual acquaintance asked me to tell you what I could of that night, which account I already gave above.
I am afraid it is a very meager narrative, but the discovery of the jeweled comb was such a shock that I did not notice anything else amiss with the house. But perhaps it might be useful for you to know, though I am almost certain you would have already heard it from other sources, of Mr. Sullivan’s interest in number 33.
My late father served under the governor-in-chief of British West Africa, and I was born in Freetown and lived there until I was orphaned here—cold, wet England—to live with distant relations.
Not long after I came to work in my current position, I met Miss Longstead, sitting on a bench in the garden, reading a travelogue of West Africa. We struck up a conversation and were astonished to realize that her mother and I had once known each other, as her mother, the daughter of a missionary, had also spent her childhood in Freetown.
For that reason I know Miss Longstead rather better than the average governess might know the young lady of a neighboring house. And for that reason I paid attention, when I happened to be letting myself into the garden gate on a Sunday afternoon either late in July or early in August of this past summer and saw the Sullivans leaving the Longstead house.
Having had to fend for myself since I was seventeen, I developed a keen sense of self-preservation. I did not know Mr. Sullivan, but I immediately recognized him as the sort of man who would have tried to take advantage of me, had I been younger.
Later that same afternoon I came across Miss Longstead in the communal garden and asked her about this man, as the Longsteads did not entertain often or receive many callers. She told me that he was a cousin, one whom thankfully she only had to see a few times a year.
I felt better knowing that she need not be subject to a great deal of this man’s company. Which made me all the more alarmed when I saw him the very next day, walking into the garden from the back door of number 33, in the company of someone who appeared to be a letting agent.
Miss Longstead was away at a lecture that afternoon. When I saw her again, she told me that her uncle would no longer put up number 33 for let. I was relieved and decided not to say anything about what I had seen. It was good enough for me, as long as Mr. Sullivan did not move in next door.
I do not know whether there is any connection between Mr. Sullivan’s visit to number 33 and his eventual death there. It seems terribly tenuous, yet also too much of a coincidence.
I hope it will be of some use to you.
Yours truly,
Ada Hendricks
P.S. When I began this letter, I was determined to make it anonymous and to refer to everything only in the most vague terms. But that obviously changed in the writing. There is so much to identify me there is no use withholding my name. Do please burn after reading.
