Page 85 of Miss Moriarty, I Presume?
“However, there might be something to be said about Lord Remington’s attitude.” Charlotte pointed at Livia with a biscuit. “If you were Moriarty, and found Charlotte Holmes to be a nuisance and wanted to be rid of her before she became a bigger nuisance, but had to take into consideration possible reprisals by Lord Remington, what would you do?”
“You find someone else to pull the trigger,” said Livia, barely able to hear her own voice.
“Moriarty using those whom he believes to have killed his daughter to eliminate us—that is one thing,” said Mrs. Watson hoarsely. “It would be justice served should Lord Remington retaliate against Miss Baxter’s murderers. But by dragooning you back into the Garden, he will be forcing Miss Baxter’s hand. And should retribution come, it will fall upon his own child!”
The idea did not shock Livia half as much. If Sir Henry, her father, could gain great advantage by sacrificing her, would he hesitate?
Not for long.
Charlotte, breaking off a piece of her biscuit, appeared even less affected. “My lord, what would you do if you suspected that residents of the Garden of Hermopolis had murdered your child?”
His lordship returned the marble bust in his hand to the mantel, arranging it with care. “I would not be so patient or cunning as to use them to get rid of Charlotte Holmes, and then wait for Lord Remington Ashburton to perhaps punish them when he learned of Charlotte Holmes’s fate.”
“Neither would most parents,” said Charlotte, at last taking a bite of her biscuit. “But I think Moriarty is fully capable of using a wayward daughter in this way, especially if he realized, as we did, that she might have borne a child out of wedlock.”
“Surely... ” Livia was stunned; she needed a moment to collect her thoughts. “Moriarty is a lying, cheating, blackmailing, murdering reprobate—and that’s just what little we know of him. You think he’d mind that his daughter bore a child out of wedlock?”
“Unfortunately, I agree with Holmes,” said Lord Ingram. “The world is full of men who believe that rules for men are only for lesser men, but those for women brook no exceptions. That he broke all rules for men would be a point of pride to Moriarty, but that his daughter broke all rules for women, he would find deeply shameful, a stain on herandon him.”
No one said anything for a while.
Livia shook her head. What was the point of having Moriarty for a father if a woman had to live as carefully and timidly as anyone else? Then she asked, “Where’s the baby now, if Miss Baxter indeed had one?”
“Taken away by Mrs. Crosby, most likely,” said Charlotte.
Livia remembered what Mrs. Watson had told her, that in the predawn hours of the dramatic night, Mr. Peters and Mrs. Crosby had driven out of the Garden together, but as far as they knew, only Mr. Peters had later returned.
“To the father?” murmured Mrs. Watson. She gasped. “Remember that story Miss Baxter told, about the lover she saw once a year before the statue of Achilles at Hyde Park Corner? You think it’s the same man?”
Charlotte reached for another biscuit. “I have no way of knowing, not at the moment in any case.”
Lord Ingram, as if sensing that the other two women in the room required something stronger than biscuit, decanted whisky.
Gratefully, Livia accepted the offered glass and took a sip. “So what do we do now?”
To head back to the Garden of Hermopolis was to enter a storm of knives, but not to go—if Charlotte could have refused, she would not have gone the first time.
Mrs. Watson rubbed her own arm, a disquieted gesture. “We don’t need to return to Cornwall this moment, do we?”
“Unless de Lacey is prepared to physically shoved me onto a train, I am not leaving London tonight—certainly not before we have a look at what Mr. Marbleton brought us.” Charlotte pointed toward Sherlock Holmes’s bedroom. “Now shall we?”
On the slide,there was nothing.
A scream lodged in Livia’s throat. While they’d been in the parlor discussing Miss Baxter’s possible pregnancy, had Moriarty’s minions slipped into the bedroom and stolen the dot of film from right underneath their—
“For a moment I thought we’d lost it,” said Lord Ingram, his voice heavy with relief. “It’s just too small to see.”
Livia clutched at her bodice. The microscope had been set on the window seat, the brightest spot in the parlor. Lanterns had been placed to either side, to supplement the pallid light of a winter afternoon. Livia, standing beyond the lanterns and craning her head, still could not see anything on the slide.
Charlotte sank to her knees on a footstool placed before the window seat, looked into the eyepiece, adjusted the position of the slide, and then twisted several knobs.
“Isit still there?” asked Livia, her fingers gripping her skirts.
“Yes.”
Thank goodness. “What’s on it?”
Charlotte rose and indicated that Livia should take her place. “Take a look.”
