Page 84 of A Ruse of Shadows
“I’ll need some whisky, too.”
Mrs. Watson gave him a flask, again with its lid removed. Bancroft took two large draughts, then removed his gloves and dabbed the balm on his hands, hissing in pain as he did so.
Holmes had told Lord Ingram that Bancroft looked different. He did. The shadowy light illuminated a bitter old man.
“Your change of clothes and shoes are inside the cabin,” Holmes told him. “There are sandwiches, too, if you need sustenance.”
“We will leave as soon as I change.”
Lawson had the carriage ready. Bancroft emerged from the cabin a few minutes later, clad in a country squire’s summer tweed and boater hat, the small satchel of extra clothes and essentials they had prepared for him in his hand.
The sandwiches, on the other hand, had been left behind in the cabin. Bancroft had not become less suspicious with captivity, but really, he was suspecting all the wrong things.
Holmes, who had not wasted a single crumb since her outcast days, packed up the sandwiches in a small basket.
“Well,” she said to Bancroft, her tone uninflected, “good-bye and good luck in your freedom.”
“But it’s not time for good-byes yet.”
“Oh? But you asked to be dropped off at the abbey, and Lawson here will do just that.”
“And you, Mrs. Watson, and my brother will accompany me. Otherwise, how can I be sure you will not go back to Ravensmere to let them know where I am headed?”
Lord Ingram’s heart thudded again, a slow, difficult motion smothered by the despair in his chest. Why could this not be good-bye? Why couldn’t freedom be enough for his brother?
“Very well,” said Holmes. “We will come with you.”
?Lawson drove carefully in the pitch-black night. They had five miles to cover, and it took close to an hour.
As they approached the ruined abbey, birds startled into flight, their wings thrashing loudly. Owls hooted. In the deeper recesses of the derelict edifice, other creatures shuffled and slithered.
The moon came out from behind the clouds as Bancroft leaped off the carriage. He had been silent since they left the cabin and had looked out the window in tense watchfulness. Now, as he stretched and loosened his limbs, for the first time he seemed genuinely excited by the end of his incarceration.
Are you interested only in the things of long-dead people, Ash? What about those long-dead people themselves—ever think about them?
That, too, had been in summer. Bancroft had been in his mid-twenties, and they had been walking across a moonlit glade that twinkled with fireflies.
Pain stole upon Lord Ingram like a mist, hazy yet all-enveloping.
“How does it feel, little brother, that you of all people had to break me out of captivity?”
His words pierced Lord Ingram like a knife of ice. “Now that you’re here, I assume good-byes can commence?”
“Not yet. I am ever so slightly early to my rendezvous, so you might as well remain my companions a little longer.” Bancroft spun around slowly, the revolvers he had taken from Lord Ingram and Mrs. Watson in his hands. “Well, have you no questions for me, Miss Holmes?”
Holmes, just then alighting from the carriage, thought about it. “Hydrochloric acid?”
“You mean, how I managed to remove the iron cage from my window. Why, yes, young lady.”
“So for all that you gave me a veritable dissertation on how impregnable Ravensmere was, you long ago pinpointed the one great weakness in its security: If you could remove the bars on the windows, then there would be very little to prevent you from a quick dash to the outer walls.”
Bancroft chortled. “Worked that out finally, did you?”
At the smugness in his tone, Lord Ingram’s hand closed into a fist. “How did you obtain hydrochloric acid in Ravensmere?”
“Simple. The charwoman needed money and could be bought. And she’s been there so long the guards no longer bother to check her basket anymore. Even if they noticed something, they would have assumed that it was a bottle of booze she was smuggling in for someone.”
Holmes rubbed her lower back. “I’m assuming Mr. Underwood did not participate in any of this? Remarkable how much you were able to accomplish without him, my lord. You really didn’t need him after all.”
