Page 3 of A Ruse of Shadows
“Lord Bancroft understood that. He offered me five hundred pounds sterling to find his faithful acolytes, who had scattered in the wake of his arrest, so that they could come to his aid. I told him that I would not bestir myself—not for him, in any case—for less than two thousand.”
“I applaud your astute negotiation, Miss Holmes, but may Iremind you that Lord Bancroft’s crimes came to light largely because of his very unkind act toward Lord Ingram. Your friend Lord Ingram. Yet you still took him on as a client, this man who betrayed your friend?”
Chief Inspector Talbot appeared distressed at this line of questioning; Miss Holmes, not so. She had been about to go out when the policemen had arrived. Now, as if realizing she would not be going anywhere in a hurry, she removed her hat and placed it on her knees.
“Chief Inspector, I took on Lord Ingram’s estranged wife as a client, too, when they were still married—and for far less than two thousand pounds. Also, do you believe Lord Ingram would have advised me differently, had he accompanied me to my initial meeting with Lord Bancroft?
“His lordship, as Inspector Treadles can tell you, has a truly noble soul. As disappointed as he was in his brother, he would not have wanted Lord Bancroft to die. Had I been able to save the latter’s life and win myself two thousand pounds in the bargain, he would not have questioned my loyalty to him but only said, ‘Well done, Holmes.’ ”
Chief Inspector Talbot cleared his throat. “That is, of course, between you and Lord Ingram, Miss Holmes. But did you also feel no compunction about the provenance of Lord Bancroft’s funds? He would have paid you with money derived from the illicit sale of crown secrets, would he not?”
The wide brim of the hat in her lap featured an abundance of flowers, a circular boulevard of yellow silk petals. She smoothed the trio of ostrich plumes that erupted from its crown, dyed a matching, eye-jabbing yellow. “Are you trying to persuade me, Chief Inspector, that Lord Bancroft, a son of a noble family, and a man gainfully employed for many years in a position of high trust, did not possess two thousand pounds that he had procured by honest means?”
“That I cannot say, without a thorough auditing of Lord Bancroft’s personal finances.”
“Then you can see how I easily convinced myself that my remuneration would consist entirely of funds from legitimate sources.”
Chief Inspector Talbot shook his head. “I must say, Miss Holmes, even after learning how you came to be Sherlock Holmes, I still thought that the person behind the great detective’s façade would be of a more heroic character.”
The gentle reproach, which would have stung Treadles to his soul, fell off Miss Holmes like raindrops from a mackintosh. She gave a small flick to the tip of one ostrich plume; its buoyant barbs undulated. “People come to Sherlock Holmes not for his character but for his detection. Men who are capable enough are rarely taken to task for personal flaws. Therefore I do not ask more of myself than the world would have were I a man.
“But we digress, Chief Inspector. Surely Sherlock Holmes’s qualms or lack thereof isn’t your primary concern?”
A change came over Chief Inspector Talbot. There was no clenching of jaw or narrowing of eyes, yet Treadles felt the hardening of his attitude: Upon meeting Miss Holmes, the senior policeman had viewed her as an unusual young woman; now he considered her only an adversary.
Or perhaps he had always seen her as purely an opponent, and Miss Holmes had known from the first that she faced an interrogator unlike any she had encountered before. Perhaps that was the reason for her dogged consumption of the tea cake—the reason for the fidgeting of her fingers, climbing and descending the central rachis of a plume, when she could otherwise remain effortlessly still.
“Indeed, I am here not only because you were a frequent visitor to Lord Bancroft in the final days of his life but because he himself declared, in a handwritten note, and I quote”—Chief Inspector Talbot set a pair of eyeglasses on his nose, pulled an envelope from his pocket, and extracted a piece of paper—“ ‘Should anything happen to me, I have no doubt that Miss Charlotte Holmes would bear the preponderance of blame.’ ”
To this direct accusation, Miss Holmes’s response was a tightsmile. “Surely you must see, Chief Inspector, that as a professional who has unraveled a number of murders, if I were to take justice into my own hands, so to speak, I would not choose to call on my alleged victim several times in a short spanandallow him to leave behind such a message.”
“Well said, Miss Holmes,” replied Chief Inspector Talbot. “However, it remains that, of late, you are the main vector of change in Lord Bancroft’s life. Would you, as an investigator yourself, choose to leave your doings and whereabouts unexamined?”
“Certainly not,” said Miss Holmes. She set aside her hat and laced her fingers in her lap. “Please go ahead with your questions.”
Her knuckles were pale with tension. Treadles’s pulse accelerated.
“I should like a detailed account of your doings since your return to England,” said Talbot. “And a thorough report of all your dealings with Lord Bancroft.”
Treadles’s heart now thumped. In the softness of the chief inspector’s tone, he heard a new conviction: This woman made for a brilliant murderer.
Charlotte Holmes inclined her head. “I shall furnish a complete narrative.”
Two
A fortnight ago
My dear Mrs. Watson, Miss Holmes, and Miss Redmayne,
I write with less than joyful news.
No, do not fear. Nothing is terribly wrong, only that I have sustained an inconvenient injury.
From London, the children had gone with their cousins to Eastleigh Park. Home by myself in an echoing manor, I became a little restless, decided on a long walk, and got carried away.
By the time I realized that the day had waned, it was nearly eight, with a storm rolling in. The abrupt darkness made me choose a shortcut. Alas, chancing an unfamiliar footpath in pouring rain led to an unfortunate slip down a small ravine that fractured my left limb.
The trek back nearly bested me, even with the lucky find of a suitable branch for a makeshift crutch. But I was spared the worst, as I was found half a mile from home and carried the rest of the way.
