Page 14 of A Ruse of Shadows
“That puzzled me greatly, too, Inspector Talbot.” Something that felt very much like genuine bafflement radiated from Miss Holmes’s large blue eyes. “But the gatehouse at Ravensmere was not where one obtained detailed explanations, or any explanations at all. I had no choice but to leave, my perplexity in tow.”
“Leaving all the way to Paris the same night?”
“We received a cable from my patroness’s butler that my sister was not well.”
Treadles felt as if he’d been kicked in the shin. Memories rushed back of Miss Olivia Holmes giving him the cut direct for insulting Charlotte Holmes. Her conduct had made no sense to him then, but now he not only understood but shared that staunch loyalty. His nape heated with mortification at the recollection, but he prayed that what Charlotte Holmes stated so plainly was not true.
He did not want anything unhappy to have befallen her proud, lonely, and desperately caring sister.
Charlotte Holmes handed over a telegram.
Chief Inspector Talbot scanned the cable. “This says only, ‘Miss B won’t eat eggs anymore.’ ”
“My sister, Miss Bernadine Holmes, has a delicate constitution. Her digestion cannot tolerate anything made with dairy or wheat products. She also does not chew meat very well. Eggs, then, constitute an important part of her diet, and her refusal to eat eggs was nothing short of a crisis.”
Treadles vaguely recalled that the Holmes ladies had an older married sister, now known as Mrs. Cumberland. Who was Miss Bernadine Holmes then? And why was she living with Charlotte Holmes and Mrs. Watson?
“We left as soon as we could,” continued Miss Holmes. “But when we reached Paris, after an anxious journey, we discovered that the situation was not as dire as we’d originally supposed. My patroness’s cook had devised a way to grind meat and poultry extremely fine and mix the cooked puree with mashed potatoes. And my sister did not object to that.”
Food? They were talking about food?
Yet Treadles could detect no flippancy in her narrative. She approached her sister’s diet with the solemnity others reserved for horse racing and affairs of state.
“Still we debated her abrupt rejection of eggs. If she could stop eating eggs at the drop of a hat, she could spurn other foods that we rely on for her nourishment. But in the end, it was not a problem that could be solved speedily. We would need to wait and observe. My patroness’s niece stayed behind—she is a student of medicine and better qualified than us to judge matters of health and nutrition. My patroness and I returned to England.”
“Why did you not stay on in Paris as well, Miss Holmes, you and your patroness?”
“For the reason we made the trip to England in the first place. My friend, Lord Ingram Ashburton, had suffered a broken limb, and we wanted to make sure that it hadn’t been the work of malevolent forces.”
“You didn’t suspect Lord Bancroft?”
Treadles clenched his hand.
Miss Holmes’s chaotically summery dress glared in the now brilliantly lit parlor. “If I hadn’t suspected him at all, Chief Inspector, I wouldn’t have attempted to call on him. But that he didn’t receive me then, I will say, lessened the chance that he was the culprit behind my lord Ingram’s injury.”
She passed over yet another slip of paper. “When we returned here, after seeing to my sister in Paris, we found this note waiting for us.”
The typed note said,
Dear Miss Holmes,
My profound apologies for missing your visit the other day. I shall be delighted to receive you tomorrow morning at an hour of your choosing.
Yours truly,
Bancroft Ashburton
Treadles, who had become the repository for all the evidence Miss Holmes presented, compared the note to the other two purportedly from Lord Bancroft. The slips of paper, identical in size, were also exactly the same in color, thickness, and texture.
He would wager that the typewriter used to tap out the messages had been the same one, too. The notes shared a notch in the bowl of the lowercaseg, and an ever so slightly misaligned lowercasea, which sat a fraction of an inch higher on the baseline than the other letters.
When Miss Holmes was satisfied that the policemen had absorbed the contents of the third note, she said, “This time, when I called on Ravensmere, Lord Bancroft met with me.”
Chief Inspector Talbot was silent for some time. “Miss Holmes, I find your account questionable. It seems much more likely that you were coerced into cooperating with Lord Bancroft. What did he do? Did he, for example, threaten the safety of your sister Miss Bernadine Holmes?”
Six
Twelve days ago
