Page 21 of Miss Moriarty, I Presume?
“You mean that I should speak to her openly about what you are doing these days?”
“Yes, in general terms. No need to burden her with details.”
At the mere mention of details not to be discussed, Moriarty’s shadow once again fell upon the company. An uneasy silence grew. Livia placed her gloved hand over Charlotte’s and stared out of the window, her mind overstuffed with dire possibilities—and an occasional gleam of hope, quickly dimmed by its own unlikeliness.
As they neared the hotel, Charlotte gave Livia the small cloisonné jewelry case that held the ticket stub from Mr. Marbleton. “Why don’t you keep this?”
“Thank you. I’ll guard it carefully.” Livia’s hand closed over the box. In the dark, she caressed it with the skin of her wrist, feeling the smoothness of enamel interspersed with the slight scratchiness of wirework. “I know we’ve discussed this ad nauseam at supper but are you sure that you can only answer Moriarty in the affirmative?”
“I’m afraid I must,” said Charlotte.
Livia looked toward Lord Ingram.
“In life you play with the hand you are given, and this is the hand we’ve been given,” said he with an outward calmness that matched Charlotte’s.
After she had alit from the town coach, Livia remained on the curb for some time, watching it drive away. Back in Mrs. Newell’s suite, faint sounds emerged from her chaperone’s room, possibly the dear lady speaking to her maid. Livia stood in place, feeling both immensely grateful and almost as mortified over her obliviousness.
Should she speak to Mrs. Newell tonight itself, to thank her and to tell her as much as Charlotte permitted—and to perhaps, during that telling, mention that she’d written a novel inspired by Charlotte’s exploits, which would be published at Christmas in a popular annual magazine?
She vacillated. And vacillated some more.
Mrs. Newell’s maid came out, saw her in the drawing room, and asked whether she needed supper.
Livia had already ordered her own supper. Still, she could ask the maid whether Mrs. Newell was amenable to a short bedside visit. But she only shook her head, wished the maid good night, and headed to her room to change and await her meal.
Later, as she hunched over her tray, picking at her food, she wondered why she had not wanted to hold a frank, lovely conversation with dear Mrs. Newell, whom she had always both admired and adored.
Charlotte must have suspected for months that Mrs. Newell had learned the truth about Sherlock Holmes. During that time, she had not said anything to Livia. But tonight, right after Moriarty’s visit, she paved the way for Livia to have a new ally in her life.
With a shiver, Livia understood why she had refused to take that last step toward Mrs. Newell.
She already had the staunchest allies in Charlotte, Mrs. Watson, and Lord Ingram. Had Charlotte foreseen something? Did she believe that soon Livia would not have these allies anymore?
For most of its life,the Garden of Hermopolis had been a private dwelling, a remote, ramshackle edifice that bore the grand appellation of Cador Manor, but was more of an enlarged farmhouse than anything resembling a stately home.
The last local occupant died in the 1840s. His descendants sold the place to a Plymouth shipbuilder, who, like so many in the Age of Steam, wished to have a place in the country, far away from the coal and soot that had been the foundation of his prosperity.
His family having predeceased him, upon the shipbuilder’s death, the property went to a reform-minded widow intent on creating a sanctuary for young women in trouble. The widow shed her mortal coil before she could turn her vision into reality. Her son renovated the main house and added on a collection of smaller cottages with the goal of establishing a holiday destination that was readily accessible by railway, but as of yet unspoiled by hordes of unrefined tourists.
Alas, his commercial paradise failed to attract tourists, refined or otherwise. The resort was sold to a noted eccentric who aimed to construct his own castle on the spot. But as the eccentric dismissed one architect after another, only the castle’s walls were ever built.
After his death, the property proved difficult to sell. No one else wanted the trouble of constructing a castle and those who would have been tempted by the promise of a resort stayed away because its views had become obstructed by the walls. Which was how Miss Fairchild, the founder of the Garden of Hermopolis, managed to acquire the compound for very little outlay.
Miss Fairchild, born to the owner of a mercantile fleet, was independently wealthy. As a younger woman, she had sailed the seven seas and written a dozen travelogues set in Russia, Australia, and the Yoruba country, among other far-flung destinations. According to her own writings, it was during her travels that she encountered the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus and was sufficiently enamored to decide, when she settled down again in Britain, to form a community of like-minded thinkers.
This summary was given in Moriarty’s dossier. But Charlotte wished to consult someone who had personal experience with the Garden of Hermopolis. When she and Lord Ingram arrived at the location of the rendezvous, a house near Portman Square that had been used for more than its share of clandestine discussions, the officer of the law was already nursing a glass of whisky, seated in a spectacularly gaudy drawing room. Golden fringes and tassels bedecked every perimeter, tiger skins proved as abundant as antimacassars in an ordinary parlor, and the most garish hues of every color strove mightily for the gaze of the overpowered beholder.
Charlotte once again regretted that she had on only the same very staid jacket-and-skirt set and could not add to the splendid chaos.
In an earlier era, such a gathering might have been trickier to accomplish without alerting Moriarty to the fact that immediately after meeting him, Charlotte wanted to see Inspector Treadles. But with Mrs. Watson and the Treadleses having both recently installed residential telephones, and with certain code words they’d agreed to ahead of time, in anticipation of just such a moment of need, Lord Ingram had been able to ring Inspector Treadles from Mrs. Watson’s house before supper and arrange a meeting for the same evening.
The men greeted each other warmly, then Inspector Treadles bowed to Charlotte.
She inclined her head.
There was a time when Inspector Treadles had regarded her with both mistrust and distaste. Even now, in his otherwise respectful gaze, there was still a hint of wariness, but it was the wariness of a traveler on the savanna coming across, say, a rhinoceros, rather than that of one facing a pack of hyenas.
They’d barely sat down when Inspector Treadles said, “I was almost certain I’d misheard Lord Ingram on the apparatus. Did you really say Glasgow? What happened?”
