Page 110 of Miss Moriarty, I Presume?
“He thinks of me as a willful girl with more arrogance than intelligence—if he had a better idea of my capabilities he would have groomed me to be his heir. But no, he only wanted me to be the kind of daughter whose appearance and conduct signaled her father’s importance.
“He probably considers you a more substantial threat, but still a woman, subject to all the frailties of our sex. The way I see it, he wants to be rid of you less because of your deeds, and more to eliminate someone who might provide safe harbor to Myron.”
“So by counterfeiting our deaths, we will be doing him a favor. We will allow him to better allocate his men and no longer waste his resources on the likes of us,” said Charlotte.
Mr. Finch, who had sat down on a footstool next to Miss Baxter’s chair, snickered.
Miss Baxter chortled a little too. “There is a third factor in our favor. You have probably never been on the run before, Miss Holmes. But I am surrounded by people who have. As long as fugitives do not go back to their old haunts or old acquaintances, it is in fact very difficult to find them, once they have disappeared. So what I need, right now, isn’t for my father to believe that I’ve really died, but only enough time in which to disappear.
“For that I have prepared a surprise or two for my father. What do you think he would do if he was to hear that Myron has entered the orbit of his paymaster?”
“Ahhh.”
“Exactly. I will quickly become a secondary concern as he intensifies his hunt for Myron, preferably in the wrong part of the world.” Miss Baxter allowed herself a small smile. “And with my father preoccupied with his own survival, the person we really need to convince becomes de Lacey—and the men under de Lacey. And here again luck is in our favor—the previous de Lacey was a wily fox. This one, not so much. So should we succeed, we would have bought ourselves some valuable time.”
Time for Miss Baxter and Mr. Finch to find their son. Time for Charlotte and her friends to free Mr. Marbleton. Time to formulate a plan to dethrone Moriarty, this time permanently.
“Good enough for me,” said Charlotte. “Now we’ve just had a tremendous row, witnessed by Mrs. Steele, which should make it appear that we have become enemies. Next I should dig up Mr. Craddock’s body—is it in one of the graves on the headlands?”
“Yes.” Miss Baxter placed her hand on Mr. Finch’s shoulder. “Only one of our people died of pneumonia, but two others wished to take that opportunity to ‘pass away,’ in case Moriarty traced their footsteps here. We put Craddock in one of the empty coffins.”
Mr. Finch placed his hand briefly over Miss Baxter’s. Charlotte must still be feeling somewhat emotional: The sight made her want to smile—and sigh. “Did Mr. Craddock see you in an advanced state of pregnancy, by the way?”
Miss Baxter rolled her eyes. “Would I be so careless? No, he was the kind of man who would abuse any little power he had. He didn’t dare approach me, but he set his sights on Miss Stoppard and cornered her on the walls one night. Little did he know she’s handy with a knife.
“She hadn’t meant to kill him, but she did. So she had Mr. McEwan and Mr. Peters come up to the wall and they were just discussing what they ought to do when agrappling hook, of all things, came plonking down.”
Charlotte briefly explained the story behind the grappling hook, that it had been launched by a friend who was investigating various properties around Britain that had been worked on by De Lacey Industries’ preferred main contractor.
“So therewasa connection. I was both rattled and perplexed—it didn’t seem like my father’s modus operandi yet I also couldn’t believe it to be a random happenstance.” Miss Baxter held out her hot water bottle to her lover with an inquiring glance; he declined it with a small shake of his head. She returned her attention to Charlotte. “Mr. Kaplan, our friend who died of pneumonia, enjoyed exploring caves. There is a cave a mile or so from here that he learned about from the locals. But inside he found a passage that even the locals didn’t know about and the passage led directly underneath the Garden.”
“Oh? Mrs. Watson and Lord Ingram saw some cave openings on the promontory. Do they belong to the same system?”
“No, none of the other nearby caves are connected—or at least, none of them are of any use to human-sized creatures. Even the passage Mr. Kaplan found was deep enough underground that at first we had no way of accessing it. Mrs. Crosby came up with the idea of building cisterns, which would give us a legitimate excuse to dig on the grounds of the Garden. Some of our people were working for the main contractor then, and we made sure they were the ones who dug through to the underground passage.
“Three cisterns were dug. That particular one, once we’d pumped out the water inside, the pump ‘broke’. Since the two others provided enough water, Miss Fairchild did not ‘bother’ to repair the pump. We shut off the inflow pipes years ago, so the cistern should be relatively dry inside and usable right away as an entrance to the cave.”
“There is a secret way into the Garden and you never allowed me to visit?” grumbled Mr. Finch. He sounded grievously hurt.
Charlotte didn’t so much see Miss Baxter glare at him as heard it. “It is impossible to walk in this passage. You have to crawl. It takes two hours to cover half a mile. And you need Mr. Peters for a guide because otherwise you’d get lost in there.”
Silence.
She sighed and caressed his hair. “Are we going to do what my father couldn’t and tear ourselves apart?”
There was fear in her voice, deep, stark fear.
Mr. Finch sighed, too, and rested his head on her shoulder. “No, we won’t.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that I was expecting again,” murmured Miss Baxter.
Mr. Finch’s voice seemed to thicken. “Apology accepted. And I’m sorry I was angry at you when in your shoes I’d have done the same thing.”
Charlotte took out the coconut biscuit she’d taken from Miss Baxter’s place earlier. It went well with a scene of dimly lit reconciliation.
She was just about finished with the biscuit when Miss Baxter said, “So you will dig up Mr. Craddock’s body on the headlands, Miss Holmes. And since my father is convinced I killed Craddock, I will, of course, need to appear on scene to prevent you from finding out the truth.”
Charlotte nodded. “We can get into another quarrel, and you can shoot me. That seems reasonable enough. But how do we account for the absence of my body? ”
