A Study In Scarlet Women (30 page)

Mr. Addison chuckled. “Well, gasogenes don't come wrapped in wicker for nothing. They will explode if they aren't handled carefully. That's why I make the soda water myself, instead of giving the task to a footman.”

The gasogene didn't look as if it would hold more than two quarts of water and it needed to sit for a considerable amount of time to complete the carbonation. “I can see that it makes enough for a small family, but what about when you have guests?”

“We have another one. And we can always store water that's been carbonated in bottles for a short while. But you are right, this wouldn't have been enough in the old days. When we used to have a house full of guests we had gas delivered in canisters—but then again, canisters have their dangers, too. Any gas under pressure does.”

“Very true.” Treadles glanced at the gasogene again, still tempted. Perhaps Alice might relent if he could find a way to further reinforce those glass globes. “And if you don't mind one last question from
me, Mr. Addison, do you have any theories as to why anyone would wish Mr. Sackville harm?”

The butler shook his head. “It's been decades since any of us last saw him. He could have met all kinds of unsavory characters in those intervening years. All I can tell you is that his death has nothing to do with anyone in this house.”

A knock came on the door of Lord Ingram's darkroom. “My lord,” said a footman, “Mr. Shrewsbury to see you. Are you at home to him?”

That ass. “You may show him in here.”

Shrewsbury knew enough to enter quickly, closing the door behind himself. “Oh, good. This place doesn't stink as badly as I'd have expected.”

“It's ventilated,” Lord Ingram said coolly, as he pinned another photograph to a cord strung across the width of the room. “What can I do for you, Mr. Shrewsbury?”

“Ah . . . you wouldn't happen to have heard from Miss Holmes, would you, my lord? The rumors are growing wilder every day and I'm beginning to really worry about her.”

“Only beginning to?”

“Well, I thought she'd have come to me by now.”

“That foolish woman. What good reason could she possibly have for not seeking your aid?”

In the crimson glow of the small, red-glass-encased lightbulb, it was impossible to tell whether Shrewsbury flushed. But the scrape of his heels across the floor was quite audible.

He cleared his throat. “I'm also beginning to see that maybe she might not want to be my mistress. If you hear from her, will you please tell her that I'm offering help, plain and simple, whatever she needs, and no conditions attached. I only want to make sure she's all—wait, who's that?”

Lord Ingram followed the direction of Shrewsbury's gaze. The prints had come out well. Despite the dim, reddish light, Stephen Marbleton's features stood out in relief. “I don't know—I'm developing someone else's negatives. Have you seen the man before?”

“The man? No, never seen the man. But the woman looks familiar—even though I'm certain we've never been introduced.”

Lord Ingram unpinned a print of Frances Marbleton, taken at some seashore, and handed it to Shrewsbury so he could take a closer look. “Have you gone tramping over the summer? Perhaps you passed her in some field.”

“No, I haven't been anywhere near Devon this summer.”

The hairs on the back of Lord Ingram's neck rose. He exhaled carefully, so he could continue to speak with some semblance of detachment. “This is Devon?”

“There must be pebble beaches elsewhere in Britain, but this looks a good deal like the one at Westward Ho!. What a name, eh, exclamation supplied. Went there with my mates a few times when I was at university. You've a house somewhere in the vicinity, don't you?”

“My place is near the Hangman Cliffs. Never been to Westward Ho!.”

“I know what you mean. Too many tourists—I mean, it's the only reason the place exists in the first place.”

Lord Ingram was suddenly in a hurry. “Anything else I can do for you, Mr. Shrewsbury?”

“Umm, no.”

“In that case, please excuse me. I have an urgent appointment.”

Inspector Treadles was not proud of himself, but at some point his curiosity got the better of him—and he decided to burgle 18 Upper Baker Street.

It wasn't terribly late yet. But from where he stood in the alley
behind the house, number 18 was completely dark, not a fleck of light coming from behind the curtains. He had already circled the block of buildings twice. Now he slipped into the shadows of the back door—and quickly picked the lock.

The ground floor was silent, the caretaker's room furnished but empty of occupants. The stairs did not creak as he climbed up, not did the stair landing groan.

He was not surprised when the door of the parlor opened quietly at his touch—why should it be locked, when most likely no one lived on these premises? Still his heart pounded a little as he tiptoed to the bedroom.

He pulled on a curtain. Light from the street lamp streamed inside, illuminating a perfectly made and perfectly empty bed. He shut the curtain and lit a match. No, nothing else that a perennially bedridden man would need.

Was there even a chamber pot under the b—

A heavily bearded man stared back at him from under the bed—and yanked Treadles by the ankles. Treadles went down hard. The man scrambled out and ran, stepping over one of Treadles's hands, causing him to yowl in pain.

Fortunately, nothing was broken. But by the time Treadles made his way down the stairs and out the back door, the man had disappeared.

“Don't make any sounds.”

Charlotte's heart jumped to her throat before she realized the voice, though kept to a vehement whisper, belonged to Lord Ingram. “What are you doing here? And don't make the joke that I should be overjoyed to finally have you in my bedroom.”

She'd been out of her room only a few minutes, getting ready for bed. He was the last thing she expected to find upon her return.

“Why should I joke about how overjoyed you must b—”

“There is a tear near the knee of your right trouser leg. Bits of grass and leaves are stuck to the edges of your shoes. And what's—” She grabbed her magnifying glass and studied his jacket, and then she knelt down to examine the wool of his trousers with the same rigor.

“You always did tell me you had perverse predilections,” he murmured.

“I've never told you any such thing. And I have lost all respect for you, since you think my merely being on my knees in front of you is perverse.” She pulled a pair of forceps out of a penholder and removed several small, gleaming objects that had been embedded in the fabric near his cuff and dropped them onto a table.

“I see you have been to Claridge's again.” The bits of glass weren't ordinary shards, but fragments of photographic plates. “There was some sort of struggle, plates shattering all over the place. And then you ran—I assume you made your way out from a service door, to avoid being recognized running through the lobby. But you were pursued. You leaped over a gate into Grosvenor Square Park. Did your trousers get caught on a finial on the gate? No, that's not it. I see what must have happened. You looked back as you ran and tripped over a root. But eventually you shook loose your pursuer and came here. You do know, I hope, that I'm the youngest child at home and have no idea how to dress a skinned knee for anybody?”

“Of course I know that. I came not to get a bandage, but to sleep with you, since I almost died tonight.”

She blinked—was that her brain melting from a surge of extreme internal heat?

He laughed softly.

She rolled her eyes. “Very funny. So you came to warn me that they knew the plates had been stolen and were lying in wait for you?”

“Roger Shrewsbury called on me earlier. I happened to be in the
darkroom. He saw the photographs I was developing”—Lord Ingram took out one from an inside pocket and handed it to Charlotte—“and said he thought the pebble ridge was near Westward Ho!, which isn't at all far from Mr. Sackville's house.”

Didn't one of Inspector Treadles's reports state that a photographer and his assistant had come through the nearest village to Curry House, in the week before Mr. Sackville's death? If those two were Stephen and Frances Marbleton, then . . .

Charlotte set aside her magnifying glass and forceps. “Now I know why Mrs. Marbleton came to see me: Sherlock Holmes interfered with her otherwise perfectly orchestrated plans. If I hadn't written that letter, there would have been no scrutiny of Mr. Sackville's death, and certainly nothing linking his death to the other two.”

“There is
still
nothing linking those three deaths, other than that they knew each other in life.”

“There's something else now. There's Sophia Lonsdale.”

“Who is dead.”

Charlotte tapped her finger against her lips. “Unless she isn't.”

Inspector Treadles lost count of the number of times he'd paced the street before Lord Ingram's town house. He was about to give up and leave when a hansom cab disgorged his lordship, who seemed not at all surprised to find Treadles loitering and immediately invited him for a stroll.

Treadles gave a quick account of what happened at 18 Upper Baker Street. He braced himself for mortifying questions as to why in the world he had chosen to break into the home of an acquaintance, but Lord Ingram only nodded. “If you'll permit me a few minutes, Inspector, you might find that what took place tonight on Upper Baker Street has some bearing on Mr. Sackville's case.”

At first his narrative of Sherlock Holmes's mysterious client only baffled Treadles. But when Lord Ingram reached the part where Frances Marbleton was identified to have been in Westward Ho!, Treadles stopped in his tracks. “The photographer and his assistant—the two young people who had come through the village five days before. I'll bet they were the ones who swapped out the strychnine in the doctors' dispensaries.”