It would be the right thing to do. The proper thing to do. But it would require him to admit that Sherlock Holmes, whose help had been instrumental in several of his biggest cases, was not only a woman, but a fallen one unwelcome in any respectable drawing room. The very thought was enough to make his head throb.
Perhaps it was a good thing then that he had no time to think. They had scarcely settled themselves in the blue-and-white parlor, bedecked with pastoral paintings, when Miss Olivia Holmes was shown in.
“Miss Holmes, thank you for taking the time to speak to us,” said Fowler in his most avuncular voice.
Treadles hadn’t known what to expect, but it was not this stiff, unsure woman. She might be pretty enough if she smiled, but as she sat down, smiling appeared very much beyond her.She studied Fowler, her eyes devoid of trust. And they remained devoid of trust as she provided one terse answer after another.
After Fowler had inquired into every facet of the icehouse discovery, he said, “I am interested in your opinion, Miss Holmes. You were acquainted with Lady Ingram. Can you think of anyone who might have wished her harm?”
“I had beenintroducedto Lady Ingram,” said Miss Holmes, drawing that distinction with a trace of impatience. “So I could have claimed an acquaintance, I suppose, but I knew her very little.”
“I thought Society was small.”
“It isn’t big. But it would be akin to asking a constable in the street what he might know of you, Chief Inspector.”
“I see. But I understand that your sister Miss Charlotte Holmes is a good friend of Lord Ingram’s. Would that not have earned you a place in Lady Ingram’s circle?”
“Not in the least. A man’s wife is the one who issues invitations to functions that they host together. And Lady Ingram had never invited my sister—or myself—to any of her events.”
“Why do you suppose that was the case? Was she jealous of the friendship between Miss Charlotte and her husband?”
“I didn’t know her well enough to speak to that. If she was jealous, then it was over nothing. My sister and Lord Ingram have always conducted themselves with the greatest propriety.”
Treadles couldn’t help interjecting himself into the interview. “Yet I understand that Miss Charlotte has been banished from Society because of an act of impropriety with a married man.”
Miss Holmes stared at him, her expression at first dumbstruck, then furious. She took a deep breath. “And that man wasnotLord Ingram.”
“Thank you, Miss Holmes,” said Fowler, his tone soothing, “for your time and cooperation.”
Miss Holmes nodded curtly and rose. But instead of walking out, she stood in place. Fowler and Treadles, who had also come out of their chairs when she got up, stayed on their feet and exchanged a look.
“Did you remember something, Miss Holmes?” asked Fowler.
“No, but there is something that bothers me. I found Lady Avery searching my room yesterday. She later told me that she and her sister, Lady Somersby, were looking to see whether Lady Ingram might have left messages behind as to her whereabouts.”
“Yesterday, after Lady Ingram was discovered dead?”
“No, well before. Even her confession came while the icehouse was still in the distance.”
Fowler appeared to ponder this new information. “Where did ladies Avery and Somersby think Lady Ingram might have gone?”
“They weren’t sure, but they weren’t above suspecting Lord Ingram of keeping her under lock and key, possibly somewhere on this very estate.”
“Given that she was found dead on this very estate, perhaps that was not such an outlandish charge after all.”
“You are wrong, sir. Lady Ingram’s body in the icehouse makes those women’s assertions more outlandish, not less.”
Miss Holmes stood straighter now, her voice stronger, a fiercer woman than Treadles had first given her credit for. “People thought it was a little odd—perhaps very odd—that Lady Ingram had left for Switzerland without any notice. But they didn’t worry about her. No one worried about Lady Ingram, ever. Not even in the immediate aftermath of the rupture between her and her husband, when everyone learned that she had screamed that she’d only married him for his money. They didn’t worry about her because they knew him. They knew that his character was above reproach.”
“We do not always know people as we think we do,” said Treadles.
“We do not. But in Lord Ingram’s case, Lady Ingram lost absolutely nothing for confessing that she was a cold-hearted fortune hunter. She didn’t lose her pin money. She didn’t lose her accounts at London’s leading dressmakers. She didn’t even lose the yearly birthday ball in her honor. He continued to extend to her every courtesy and privilege that came of being his wife—and that was the only reason she was able to keep her place in Society. Because he didn’t withdraw his support.”
“Perhaps he was planning, even as he maintained a façade of gentility, the ultimate revenge,” suggested Fowler.
“And then he chose to make his wife disappear on the night of a crowded ball, in a way that could only ever lead to unsatisfactory answers? You think Lord Ingram couldn’t have done better than that if he had indeed been scheming?”
Fowler had no good answer for that.
