“I wonder about the reek the ladies noticed,” murmured Mr. Holmes. “Curious, isn’t it?”
When they reached the third antechamber, the cold bit into Treadles’s face. He wound his muffler tighter about his neck.
The space, which functioned as a cold larder, was both wider and higher than the two previous ones. To the left hung game birds, sides of beef, and other butchered carcasses that he, not having spent much time in the country, couldn’t readily identify. To the right, neat shelves held fruits, vegetables, and cheeses. Overhead, cured hams and sausages swayed gently from Fowler’s exploratory touches.
In the middle of the antechamber lay an overturned wheelbarrow, the handle of which had fallen in such a way as to tip over a bucket of milk. Or so Scotland Yard had been informed—Sergeant Ellerby had allowed for the spill to be cleaned up.
The entire structure was windowless. At the opening of each door they had to light tapers. Inside the domed space that held the actual ice well, several lanterns had been brought in to add to the luminosity of the wall sconce.
Treadles lit all the light sources and then hastened to put his gloves back on. The cold of the ice chamber grew denser and sharper with every passing minute.
The initial report gave that Lady Ingram was lying atop a layer of wood shavings. Treadles had expected to find her halfway down the ten-foot-deep ice well; instead she was only eighteen inches or so below floor level, a great deal closer than he had anticipated.
“This is ice from last winter? Did it not melt at all?” he marveled.
“The construction here appears superb. And the bigger the volume, the longer the ice stays frozen,” said Fowler. “Icehouses are usually built to hold enough ice for two years, in case any single winter is too feeble for proper replenishment.”
“You are knowledgeable about icehouses, Chief Inspector,” said Mr. Holmes.
“My father was in service, a member of the outdoor staff. It was among his duties to cut ice from the pond and resupply the icehouse.” He indicated Lady Ingram with his walking stick. “At least ten inches of wood shavings on top, I’d expect. A good thing for us, or her ladyship would be stuck to the ice and we’d have a devil of a time getting her out.
“In fact, even less ice has melted than you suppose, Inspector. Some would have been removed for use.” Fowler turned to Mr. Holmes. “Would you agree, sir?”
“I would indeed. Although recently the need for ice have been minimal. The family—and a good portion of the staff—left for London shortly after Easter. Normally, upon their return, there would be guests. But this year, given Lady Ingram’s absence, there have been none. Until now.”
Mr. Holmes gave an absent-minded pat to his ample stomach. “I spoke to the staff. Before yesterday, the last time anyone came to fetch ice was when Lord Bancroft visited, some five weeks ago.”
Treadles jotted down a reminder in his notebook to ask the servants to confirm this. Even though he wanted Lord Ingram cleared of any wrongdoing, he did not entirely trust Mr. Holmes,
“My wife enjoys perusing fancy housekeeping books,” said Fowler. “If you listened to her, you’d think that in manors like this one, iced puddings and fruit ices are served year-round.”
“It’s expected that when a dinner is given, in town or in the country, that some kind of ice—or a number of them, depending on the scale of the occasion—will be served,” answered Mr. Holmes. “And that is what ‘fancy’ housekeeping books concentrate on, those instances intended to impress others. But when people dine en famille, it’s a different matter.
“In the case of Stern Hollow, Lady Ingram grew up in a household where ices were seldom served and never developed a taste for them. Lord Ingram is in general not particular about his food. As for the children, ice cream—or ices of any kind—is an occasional treat rather than an expected item in the nursery.”
“The boy came yesterday to fetch the ice needed for last night’s dinner,” said Fowler. “But Lord Ingram’s guests arrived in Stern Hollow the day before. What about that dinner? Did no one come to the icehouse in preparation for that occasion?”
“According to the cook, when the exodus from Mrs. Newell’s house came, in one of the luggage carts they brought the slab of ice that was already in their ice safe, so that it wouldn’t go to waste. That slab was broken up, the resultant crushed ice put into freezing pots to facilitate the churning of various fruit ices for dinner. Therefore, there had been no need to visit the ice well the first day the guests were here.”
Mr. Holmes made no mention of Lord Ingram’s guilt or innocence, but it did not escape Treadles’s attention that he had mounted a forceful argument for the latter: If Lord Ingram had killed his wife and kept her in the ice well, confident that no one would go there, then why hadn’t he removed the body the moment he’d realized that large amounts of ice would be required for the guests abruptly thrust upon him? He would have had twenty-four hours to accomplish the deed.
Fowler said to Treadles, “Shall we take a closer look?”
The company climbed down into the ice well.
Lady Ingram was not frozen solid. Her clothes and the thick layer of wood shavings that covered the ice had kept her body at the ambient temperature, which, according to a thermometer on the wall, hovered a degree or two above freezing.
“No marks on her throat,” noted Fowler.
After death, blood obeyed the law of gravity and pooled in the lowest part of the body. A supine corpse such as Lady Ingram’s developed bruise-like discolorations on the back. But blood in the front of the body could be trapped by an injury to the flesh, depending on the nature of that injury.
“Was she lying in this exact position when she was found?” asked Mr. Holmes.
“Sergeant Ellerby reports that he turned her over briefly and then returned her as best as he could to the way he found her. And before that she had not been moved.”
“Would it be logical to assume whoever had put her here carried her until they reached the lip of the ice well and then dropped her straight down?”
Chief Inspector Fowler, still crouched over the body, played with the small brush of a beard on his chin. “That would probably not be wrong.”
