Page 55 of A Ruse of Shadows
The interrogation
Chief Inspector Talbot was silent for some time. “Miss Holmes, I find your account questionable. It seems much more likely that you were coerced into cooperating with Lord Bancroft. What did he do? Did he, for example, threaten the safety of your sister Miss Bernadine Holmes?”
Treadles, who had been writing furiously to record the interview, nearly tore through the page with the steel nib of his fountain pen. He looked up at Miss Holmes. She had told him that she and Lord Ingram had anticipated problems. Was this the problem that they had anticipated? But if she had been prepared, how had the situation turned so unwieldy?
She got up and rang for a pitcher of lemonade. Then she sat down and adjusted her cuffs. Her sleeves were three-quarter length, the cuffs trimmed with large, dusky pink rosettes. “Chief Inspector, I may be a fallen woman in the eyes of the world, exiled to a scabrous wilderness, but I am not without friends. What makes you think that if my sister was in danger I couldn’t have mounted a rescue?”
“So did you?” Talbot sounded genuinely curious.
Their hostess—and chief suspect—smiled slightly. “Has anyone ever told you, Chief Inspector, that after Lord Bancroft was confinedto Ravensmere, Lord Ingram sent him wine and dessert on multiple occasions, knowing that his brother was a gourmet whose palate was tormented by the indifferent cuisine at that genteel prison?”
The digression caught Treadles by surprise; even Chief Inspector Talbot seemed unsure how to respond. His thumb traveled up and down along the handle of his teacup. “No, I have not been made aware of that.”
“You can find out easily enough from the records at Ravensmere. If Lord Ingram can extend such grace to a brother who nearly caused him grievous harm, why should I not bestir myself a little when the same brother feared for his life?”
But had Lord Ingram been, in truth, offering grace to Lord Bancroft? To the recipient, the very desirable wine and dessert could have been a boon, a moment of joy in the dreariest stretch of his life. But it could also have been a taunt, the brevity of that intense sumptuousness a harsh light on the intolerable mediocrity of everything else he would have to choke down for months to come.
“You need not dig for more sinister reasons for my cooperation, Chief Inspector,” continued Miss Holmes. “And if you must, you may attribute it to a woman’s concern for her lover. The feelings between the Ashburton brothers are complicated, but I’m sure Lord Ingram would take solace in the fact that I tried to help Lord Bancroft, even if I wasn’t successful.”
Chief Inspector Talbot set down his teacup and tented his fingertips together. “Very well. So you agreed to aid Lord Bancroft. Please continue.”
Treadles didn’t know whether he ought to relax a little or brace himself for worse to come. He tried to concentrate on his note-taking.
“Lord Bancroft’s greatest need was to reestablish contact with Mr. Underwood, his chief lieutenant. But Mr. Underwood, according to his mistress, was missing,” said Miss Holmes. “Lord Bancroft told me that Mr. Underwood was a boxing aficionado, and that I might find his whereabouts if I spoke to those he knew in that context.
“And that was what I set out to do. I found the gymnasium where Mr. Underwood’s boxers had trained. I spoke to the boxers. I spoke to the accountant via whom he paid the boxers. But their knowledge of him was strictly limited to the role he played in their lives. They didn’t know his origins, his livelihood, or even his address—except for the accountant, I suppose, who was supplied with an outmoded one.
“In this regard, my efforts, though conscientious, amounted to an unqualified failure. I never saw hide or hair of Mr. Underwood, dead or alive.”
“What about his mistress?”
Treadles’s stomach twisted.
With an apologetic look in his direction, Miss Holmes said, “Mrs. Claiborne? Yes, we did find her.”
Eighteen
Four days ago
Charlotte stood by the manor at Ravensmere, looking at the back wall of the garden. Elsewhere the garden wall was seven feet high, but behind the manor, its height rose to a solid eleven feet.
She turned around and studied the iron bars outside the windows. The bars were each half an inch thick, spaced three inches apart. Unlike prison bars, installed directly into the masonry of the window opening, here at least some thought had been given to appearance. At each window, the bars bowed out and formed a decorative grille that was bolted at its four corners into the exterior of the manor.
“What brought you here today, Miss Holmes?” came Lord Bancroft’s voice.
He wore the same unfortunate orange-brown suit—or perhaps a different one cut in the exact same fashion—and he did not appear remotely pleased to see her.
But he did extend his arm, and after a moment she placed her gloved hand on his sleeve. They strolled around the periphery of the small side garden in which more privileged prisoners were allowed to take their daily exercise.
“I found Mr. Underwood and he is dead,” she murmured, once the guards were far away enough.
Lord Bancroft’s hand balled into a fist—so forcefully that the leather of his glove rasped. “How?”
“Shot in the back. I found him in the coal cellar of Mrs. Claiborne’s new place. I would say that at the time he’d been dead less than twenty-four hours—a closer estimate is beyond my expertise.”
“He was killed there?”
“I do not think so. We found no sign of a struggle and no indication that bloodstains and such had been wiped away.”
