Page 92 of A Ruse of Shadows
Treadles perspired. If she lied, and if anyone anywhere had seen her headed in the direction of Ravensmere…
He wished he knew what she had been doing the night before, but at the same time, he was terribly relieved that he had no idea. He would not have taken the earliest train back to London today had Chief Inspector Fowler not sent an urgent telegram last night, requesting his return.
Except instead of taking part in Fowler’s new case, he had been commandeered by Talbot.
A knock came at the suite’s hotel entrance. It was the lemonade she had ordered an eternity ago.
She poured for everyone. “It’s too warm for more tea. A glass of lemonade is much better.”
A cold beverage would have sounded divine a quarter hour ago, but now he already felt a chill in his stomach, even as his nape continued to grow damper.
Miss Holmes picked up her glass and took a long draught. “Chief Inspector, do you know a woman named Mrs. Farr?”
Treadles recoiled. He could only hope the horror radiating from him hadn’t raised the temperature in the room several more degrees.
Talbot looked wary, but not concerned. “What makes you think so, Miss Holmes?”
“I recently met a lovely lady by the name of Miss Harcourt, and she related to me the fascinating story of her uncle’s unsolved murder. As much as I enjoy being a consulting detective, I am not compelled to solve every mystery I come across. Therefore I only listened and nodded, until she showed me a picture of her slain uncle’s wife.
“The image had been taken more than a decade ago, and its subject had undergone a dramatic change in appearance. But still I recognized Mrs. Victor Meadows as not only an acquaintance but a former client—and then I became much more interested. So much so that my partner, Mrs. Watson, and I undertook a visit to Garwood Hall and spoke to the former gardener who climbed in through the window and discovered the body. Mrs. Watson even visited the archives of theManchester Guardian, which is how we learned that you were the investigator for the Christmas Eve Murder.”
Treadles breathed again: She was not going to divulge how she truly came to know the case.
“Mrs. Watson also visited the archives of London papers after we came back from Manchester. Here the case barely received two inches of column space. But by searching the indexes for your name in the years before and since, Chief Inspector, she found much laudatory coverage on your skills as an investigator.”
Chief Inspector Talbot frowned.
Miss Holmes smiled at Treadles, who hadn’t set down a word since she started asking about Mrs. Farr. “Inspector, would you allow a word between myself and the chief inspector?”
For once, Treadles had no desire at all to be a fly on the wall. “With your permission, Chief Inspector?”
When Talbot nodded, he shot out of the hotel suite.
It was only as he stood on the pavement, gulping down London’s not-so-fresh air, that he realized that Miss Holmes had taken over the interrogation.
?Charlotte studied the man who had given Mrs. Farr a second chance in life. “Chief Inspector, did you ever meet Mrs. Farr again after your inconclusive inquiry at Garwood Hall?”
The policeman held her gaze. “I did. Three years later, in the early months of 1875. I investigated an altercation in Bermondsey that led to several near-fatal injuries, and Mrs. Farr, as she called herself by then, happened to live next door to the residence where the altercation had taken place.”
“Miss Harcourt would envy you, Chief Inspector. Ever since Mrs. Farr departed Manchester, she’d hoped to someday run into her aunt again—if only she’d thought to try her chances in London’s rougher neighborhoods. Now, if you’ll permit me a digression.
“The first time I called on Lord Bancroft at Ravensmere, we met in the garden. And one of his fellow inmates called to me from his room. He was excited to see a woman and eagerly proclaimed his innocence. He had done absolutely nothing, he declared, to merit his imprisonment.
“I did not pay him much mind, until Miss Harcourt showed me a photograph taken at Mrs. Farr’s wedding. When she pointed to the picture of Mr. Ephraim Meadows, the victim’s half brother, what should I see but a younger, more corpulent version of the ‘innocent’ man in the window?
“I asked Lord Ingram to look into the matter. It was not easy, but he managed to access certain older files. In July of 1875—that is, a few months after you met Mrs. Farr in London—someone submitted an anonymous tip to just the right person about how much money Mr. Ephraim Meadows had been losing at the gaming tables.
“His wealthy brother, who’d once turned a blind eye to his vices, had been dead for more than three years, and his sister, who’d inherited the brother’s fortune, refused to give him a sou. How then was Mr. Ephraim Meadows able to pay his gambling debts? Perhaps someone ought to pay attention to his monthly dinners at Verey’s,surely a bit too costly for a middling bureaucrat with no other sources of income?
“Now, Chief Inspector, can you, as an honorable man, deny that you are the one who tipped the crown to the fact that Mr. Ephraim Meadows had been selling low-level secrets to foreign agents?”
Chief Inspector Talbot said nothing.
“And will you deny that your excellent and entirely unwaged work had come about because you realized that Mrs. Farr would not have fallen so low if she hadn’t been blackmailed by her brother-in-law?”
The policeman’s posture was ramrod straight, his eyes keen and clear. “Is there any point of doubt concerning Mr. Ephraim Meadows’s guilt?”
“None whatsoever,” Charlotte admitted.
