Page 52 of The Hollow of Fear
To Charlotte, fear was but a word in the dictionary—or at least it had always seemed so to Livia. While Livia dreaded and fretted over a thousand ghastly possibilities, Charlotte dealt with only facts and actual events. What did she know, then? What concrete, undeniable particulars could make Charlotte Holmes, she of the nerves of Damascus steel, actually afraid?
“Is it really that bad?”
Charlotte looked at her for a moment. “Lord Ingram is not without allies. Not to mention he has resources of his own.”
Again, an indirect answer. Livia’s heart fell like a dropped stone.
Charlotte moved to the middle of the nursery. “Anyway, how was your interview with the police?”
“I met that Inspector Treadles you worked with on the Sackville case. What an awful, sanctimonious man.”
Charlotte tilted her face in inquiry.
“The other inspector asked whether Lady Ingram might have been jealous of the friendship between you and Lord Ingram. I said that if she was jealous, it was over nothing, as you and Lord Ingram have always conducted yourselves according to the strictest rules of decorum. And guess what Inspector Treadles said?”
“Ah,” murmured Charlotte.
“He said, in almost those exact words, that weren’t you banished from Society because of something highly inappropriate with a different married man.” Livia all but growled. “I despise him. I wonder how Lord Ingram can be friends with someone like that.”
“No doubt Inspector Treadles wonders the same, how Lord Ingram can be friends with someone like me.”
“I have some police inspectors in my Sherlock Holmes story. I’ll change their portrayal, make them idiotic and incompetent, and call one of them Treadles.”
“That might not be the best idea.”
“Maybe not. But it’s a mostsatisfyingthought.”
“I see you are all right,” said Charlotte wryly, “which is what I came to see.”
“I’ll be fine. I’m only a bystander in all this. I hope Lord Ingram...”
Against the stark reality of the situation, her hope seemed too fragile to take shape.
Charlotte briefly settled a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll do what I can. Now tell me, in some detail, what you discussed with Scotland Yard.”
When Livia had finished recounting what had been said, to the best of her recollection, including her charge that someone was deliberately trying to frame Lord Ingram, namely whoever had set Lady Avery and Lady Somersby to uncover a “grand injustice” for Lady Ingram, Charlotte nodded and fell silent.
After a minute or so, she said, “I must go now. The police will wish to speak to you again. And when they do, will you do something for me?”
“Uneasy about something, Inspector?”
Treadles started—and realized that he had been rubbing his temples while pacing the parlor, his strides quick and agitated. The more he thought about it, the more complicated Charlotte Holmes’s presence became. Despite Lord Ingram’s denials, that he might wish to marry her was considered a potential, perhaps likely, motive for Lady Ingram’s murder. If Treadles were to tell Chief Inspector Fowler that Charlotte Holmes was here on the premises, in close contact with Lord Ingram, how would that affect Lord Ingram?
Disastrously, to say the least.
Fowler peered up at Treadles. He looked owlish, but an owl was a predator and a damned good one at that. Treadles felt trapped between his professional obligations and his loyalty to Lord Ingram. And the longer he waited before he revealed what he knew, the worse it would look for him.
“I was thinking about the state of Lord Ingram’s marriage in the past few years,” Treadles said. “Must not have been pleasant living in that household.”
“That’s the trouble with putting women on a pedestal. You do that, and they always fall off—knocking you over on the way down,” said Fowler.
Treadles might have laughed, if not for how aptly Fowler’s observation described his own situation.
The next moment his fingers were at his temples again, pressing hard. His reaction to the crumbling of Lord Ingram’s marriage had consisted primarily of a despondent sympathy. But now a terrifying thought struck. He had met Lady Ingram, not long before the latter allegedly fled with her lover. Granted the meeting had been very brief. But had he received any impression that Lady Ingram was the kind of woman to sacrifice everything for a man?
To the contrary, the more he thought about it, the more discordant Lord Ingram’s account grew.
At times he’d considered Charlotte Holmes cold, when Miss Holmes was only unsettlingly neutral. Lady Ingram, on the other hand, had been truly cold, a glacial lack of warmth that made Treadles wonder whether she derived any pleasure from life. He could see her act out of spite, but not love.
