Page 7 of A Ruse of Shadows
The windows of Lord Ingram’s apartment had been closed for hours. But now the air became too still, too thick to flow into his windpipe. “Did he say this time what he wanted?”
“No, he only chided me for not yet replying to his previous note and neglecting our long-standing friendship.” Holmes was silent for a moment. “Youand I are lifelong friends. Lord Bancroft and I, his two proposals notwithstanding, are only acquaintances. And my lord Bancroft, as you know, never does anything without calculation.”
His hand gripped the cast on his limb. He had the irrational desire to claw at the plaster. “What about the situation in Aix-en-Provence?”
In the struggle against Moriarty, they were not without allies, one of whom was none other than Moriarty’s daughter, Miss Marguerite Moriarty. Above all else, Miss Moriarty wanted to be reunited with her son—and Holmes had discovered the boy’s whereabouts aboard the RMSProvenceearlier in the year.
Now Miss Moriarty was ready to strike, which meant that they, if they wished to pry their friend Stephen Marbleton from Moriarty’s grip, must act at the same time. Otherwise, once Miss Moriarty’s actions became known to her father, Mr. Marbleton’s chances of a successful escape would tumble precipitously.
“The situation in Aix-en-Provence is manageable,” answered Holmes. “For now, at least, we have enough personnel.”
Thanks to her bargain with his brother Remington, which allowed her to borrow some of his agents, with the understanding that they were officially on loan not to her but to Lord Ingram.
Slowly she folded the letters in her hands, as if she were reading them again as she did so. “As for my lord Bancroft, we will learn soon enough what he wants.”
“I suppose that’s the reason I only wrote a single exchange of correspondence for us ahead of time. After tomorrow, I have no idea what will happen.”
And compared to the difficulties ahead, that she didn’t read his letters and immediately offer reassurances of love and regard barely counted as a vexation, let alone a problem.
“But these are lovely letters.” She kissed the edge of the letters and looked him in the eye, her gaze deep and clear. “One of the best I’ve ever received, and certainly one of the best I’ve never sent.”
Three
True to Lord Ingram’s “prediction,” Inspector Treadles called on Charlotte at her London hotel the next afternoon.
He was attired in a stylish fawn jacket in a lightweight summer wool. His wife saw to his clothes, and it appeared that Mrs. Treadles still took great pleasure in dressing her husband well.
“Lord Ingram and I met regularly this summer,” said the policeman. “I trust you know that, Miss Holmes?”
Charlotte nodded. After she and Lord Ingram had parted ways in Gibraltar, roughly three months ago, he had sailed on to Malta and Brindisi, then returned to England via the overland route and spent the summer in London. He typically took part in the Season, so that in itself was not unusual. But the Upper Ten Thousand was not accustomed to recently divorced men at their social functions, and his presence had caused some tongues to wag.
On the other hand, he was young, wealthy, and physically striking. No one blamed him for the dissolution of his marriage. And as he had limited himself to lectures and a few dinners hosted by old friends, the gossip had soon died down, replaced by renewed interest in him as a marital prospect.
None of this had been related to Charlotte by Lord Ingram but by Lady Avery, Society gossip extraordinaire, who occasionally wrote Mrs. Watson, whom she knew as Sherlock Holmes’s collaboratorMrs. Hudson, with the latest on-dits. Lord Ingram, conversely, had been curiously silent about life in the relative thick of things.
“His lordship and I had planned a trip to the Isles of Scilly in mid-August, after the end of the Season,” continued Inspector Treadles. “When we last saw each other, he let me know that chances were those plans would not come to pass. Still, I hadn’t expectedthis.”
“We are anticipating some problems,” said Charlotte. “To head them off, I prefer to be in London. But I had no ostensibly compelling reason to leave France. Ergo, this ruse.”
It was always a struggle, how much she ought to tell someone not yet deeply involved in everything. Would that knowledge illuminate their choices or merely make them huddle in fear?
“But pretending to have broken a limb—won’t his lordship need to remain immobile for months on end?”
“True. But there is no reason that after, say, a fortnight or so, his lordship couldn’t travel somewhere out of sight and move more freely.”
Inspector Treadles exhaled. “I would ask how I can help, but I already did at our previous meeting, and Lord Ingram said that he would greatly appreciate it if I would find a case for Sherlock Holmes.”
“Correct. Lord Ingram’s ‘injury’ handed me a reason to come to England. A good case from you would provide an excellent excuse for me to stay for a week or two.” Charlotte handed Inspector Treadles a cup of tea. “I hope you didn’t need to fish too hard for a suitable conundrum.”
“As a matter of fact, as soon as Lord Ingram mentioned this need, I thought of something that had been on my mind of late. The only problem is that, for the moment, it is an internal matter for Scotland Yard.”
“Oh?” She added a cube of sugar to his cup.
In response, Inspector Treadles stirred his tea, but rather mechanically. “Miss Holmes, you recall Inspector Brighton, who investigated the Longstead-Sullivan murders last December?”
Charlotte, loading onto her plate a slice of plum cake—from the magnificent hamper Lord Ingram had gifted her, of course—nodded.
Inspector Brighton, who had been beastly toward the inspector and Mrs. Treadles during the investigation, had boarded the RMSProvencethis past spring to travel to Malta, where he was to train the local constabulary in modern detection methods on behalf of Scotland Yard.
