Page 22 of Miss Moriarty, I Presume?
Glasgow was the term they’d designated as the level of highest alarm, with regard to Moriarty.
At Charlotte’s indication, Lord Ingram gave a brief account of Moriarty’s visit. He was seated in a red velvet chair with a thick beard of fringes and a tiger skin draped over the back, but his inner gravitas was such that the chair, by being in his vicinity, appeared close to majestic. Briefly she imagined him fainting into such a chair, her slightly indecent story crumpled in his hands—and cursed Moriarty for not giving her more time to enjoy her dear Ash’s glorious letter.
Inspector Treadles listened, his hands clenched around the armrests of his chair, with an attention that was no doubt much less questionable than her own. He sucked in a breath when Lord Ingram explained that they’d wished to see him right away because Miss Baxter’s commune appeared to be none other than the Cornwall compound he’d attempted to reconnoiter in December.
He looked from Lord Ingram to Charlotte. “You are sure?”
Charlotte again indicated for Lord Ingram to answer the question—if she did the answering, she would need look at Inspector Treadles. And she preferred to ogle him instead.
He gave her an odd look, but complied. “Yes, we are sure, unless in that specific area of Cornwall there are two sizable walled compounds.”
“No, there aren’t.” Inspector Treadles shook his head. He stilled abruptly. “Does this mean that the place wasnotunder Moriarty’s control at the time of my visit?”
Lord Ingram raised a hand and slid the back of it along the tiger skin above his shoulder in what appeared to be an absentminded gesture. “That was certainly the gist of Moriarty’s narrative.”
Inspector Treadles’s brows shot up. “The occupants have nothing to do with Moriarty, except for hosting his daughter in their midst?”
“So it would seem,” said Lord Ingram. He dropped his hand, removed a blue-and-orange cushion from his chair, and placed it on an occasion table to his left.
“And one such peaceable occupant chased me all the way to London and wounded me with a knife?”
“If you believe Moriarty.”
“Do you?”
“Not I, but Miss Holmes does to a certain extent.”
Now Charlotte had no choice but to clarify her position. “It’s true that I do not believe Moriarty to be altogether lying. However, I feel that I have been put in a lightless room, only able to see out through a peephole with smeared lenses. Am I looking at a festively decorated village, with hausfraus hurrying to and fro—or merely the façade of an elaborate clock?”
“You fear that it is a trap?”
“I don’t fear so; I know it is one. What I cannot fathom is the purpose of this trap.”
Inspector Treadles exhaled unsteadily. “Is there anything I can do? Any assistance I can render?”
“Yes,” said Charlotte. “Inspector, when you called on Mrs. Watson and myself in January, I asked you about what you saw in Cornwall. At the time you said you didn’t have much to share, and I don’t doubt that. But today we are in need of any and all details you can recall.”
“I’ll try,” said the inspector. He took a sip of whisky and held on to the glass. “I do remember how high the walls were. There are old castles in the areas and they have high walls. But in a fortified structure, the castle itself is more prominent. In this compound, however, the walls dominated. Even standing on the highest point in the surrounding area, I could not see inside.”
Charlotte explained about the eccentric who could never agree with his architects and how only the walls were ever built, not the castle itself. “I’m curious, Inspector. How did you scale those walls then?”
“I had a blacksmith make me a grappling hook.”
“A commendable idea,” said Lord Ingram. His hand settled on the blue-and-orange cushion that he had a minute ago placed on the occasion table next to his chair.
“At the time I thought of it, I certainly congratulated myself,” said Inspector Treadles wryly. “The climate in Cornwall is relatively mild, so I couldn’t count on deafening gales to obscure the thud of a grappling hook landing against stone. But it was December, the wind was high, and there was a drizzle. I wrapped the prongs in cloth, except for their very tips, and thought that between the wind, the rain, and the muffling effect of the cloth. I wouldn’t be overheard.”
He gave a rueful sigh. “I couldn’t have been more wrong. Well, in terms of the thud, I felt it was acceptably muted. Yet I was barely one third of the way up the wall before someone at the top shone an extremely bright lantern into my face and demanded to know who was there. I heard a firearm cocking, too. I got down and ran, leaving my shiny new grapple hook behind.”
“So you didn’t get a look at the inside of the compound?” asked Lord Ingram.
“Not at all.”
The round cushion under Lord Ingram’s hand had elaborate blue ruffles along the circumference, which reminded Charlotte of the neckline of a few ballgowns she’d worn in her time. The cushion was tufted, one deep indentation at the very center, which made the rest of the cushion bulge up. And since the ruffles already reminded Charlotte of a neckline, she couldn’t help but view the bulge as what a neckline on a dress tried to contain.
Lord Ingram dragged a knuckle where the ruffles met the bulge.
Charlotte was well aware that with the occasion table lower than the rolled arm of his chair, Inspector Treadles couldn’t see the cushion, nor what Lord Ingram was doing. Still she glanced at Inspector Treadles, who frowned up at the overgrown chandelier on the ceiling and said, “I think the person who caught me mid-ascent was a woman. Now, the one with whom I fought was definitely a man, but the one who shouted ‘Who’s there?’ had a woman’s voice.”
