Sixteen
“You think your brother isdead?” Mrs. Watson and Penelope exclaimed in unison.
Over tea, Miss Holmes had recounted both what she had learned at Mrs. Woods’s this day and what she had uncovered the week before, working on a Vigenère code that Lord Bancroft had sent for her amusement, as part of his courtship.
“Lord Bancroft isn’t convinced yet. And I don’t blame him. There is no direct evidence. There is, so far, no reason why Mr. Finch should have been strangled and left in an empty house, wearing a coat that secretly warns of his killers. So first I must ascertain the identity of the dead man.”
Mrs. Watson felt as if someone had laid an icy hand at the base of her spine. “How?”
“I have written Lady Ingram and asked her to call on us this evening.” Miss Holmes extracted an envelope from her handbag. “There is a photograph of the dead man inside. I plan to show it to her.”
Lady Ingram’s hand shook.
Penelope couldn’t breathe. The dead did not discomfit her—she’d had too many dissection lessons for that. Photographs of the dead affected her even less. But this evening she could not manage to summon the detachment of a medical student. This evening she was thoroughly exposed to the violence of the death and the potentially just-as-violent effect on the one who loved the departed.
Lady Ingram lifted the flap of the envelope. She let it drop without removing its contents. She lifted it again—and let the whole thing fall to her lap.
“You must excuse me but I’m not sure I understood anything you said just now.”
Her voice quavered. The crystal beads on the skirt of her elaborate gown clinked together, a minor symphony conducted by her trembling knees. It was very late—she had sent around a note earlier saying that she would not arrive at Upper Baker Street until near midnight, when she could steal a few minutes away from a ball she was attending—and the lamps of the room seemed to shine too harshly on her chalky face.
“The last time we met, you told me Mr. Finch was doing well. You said he was taking holidays and charming his landlady. Why did you go to the police all of a sudden?”
Penelope had explained the photograph as having been obtained by a contact inside the Criminal Investigation Department, which, come to think of it, was not entirely false. “Since you insisted that we had the wrong Mr. Finch, we decided to take your judgment seriously. What if we did have the wrong man? What if something had happened to the real Mr. Finch? If the worst had befallen him, then the police would likely learn of it, sooner or later. There was no record of Mr. Finch’s death. So we made arrangements to see the bodies that had been brought in and had not yet been identified.
“This particular gentleman was young and seemed to have been in respectable circumstances before his unfortunate demise. He wasan unlikely sort of candidate for a man missing with no one knowing who he is.”
“And where was he found?”
“We’re not privy to that—it was a great deal of trouble just to obtain this photograph. But we thought it would be easier for you to see the picture here rather than having to go to Scotland Yard.” Penelope paused for a moment. “Surely you have contemplated the possibility.”
Lady Ingram looked away. “Of course I have. And after what you said last time about his recent carefree ways, I have wished again and again that he were dead instead. Now—now I think I have cursed him.”
Penelope, caught in the undertow of Lady Ingram’s despair, felt her own eyes sting with tears. “I’m sorry to cause you such distress, ma’am. Please remember that it may not be Mr. Finch in the picture. We only wish to eliminate that possibility.”
Lady Ingram’s lips quirked, but without humor. “So my choices are that he is dead or that he is having the time of his life without me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No need to apologize. I knew that in the end you couldn’t possibly discover anything good. But I held out hope that perhaps there was a one in a thousand chance that...”
Her hands balled into fists. She grabbed the envelope and yanked out the photograph. The expression on her face was indescribable, halfway between revulsion and utter euphoria. “This—this isn’t Mr. Finch!”
Penelope gulped down air. “It isn’t? Thank goodness!”
Lady Ingram tossed aside both envelope and photograph. Her breaths came in like bellows, her eyes tightly shut. “I never thought I’d see the day when I’d prefer that he forgot about me. But here we are.”
Penelope retrieved the picture from where it had fallen,shuddered at the dead man’s grotesque expression, and shoved it back into the envelope.
To her surprise Lady Ingram took the envelope from her. She pulled out the photograph, flipping it around as it had come out facedown, and stared. After a few seconds she panted again. “I’m sorry. For a moment I was assailed by doubt. What if I hadn’t looked carefully enough? What if in my desire for him to be alive I’d made a mistake?”
She gave the envelope back to Penelope. “But no, that truly isn’t Mr. Finch.”
Penelope wondered if the ordeal hadn’t been too much for her. After all, she was a sheltered woman who, despite her heartaches, had never dealt with the rougher elements of life. She didn’t know what to say, so she stirred her tea and let Lady Ingram be.
After a few minutes, Lady Ingram rose and winced at the pain the motion must have caused her bad back. “I should go, or my absence will be noticed.”
“Of course.”
