Not love.
He became aware that Fowler was still observing him. No point pretending that he wasn’t distracted, so he shook his head, as if to clear it. “A deuced business, this case.”
Now to redirect Fowler’s attention. He pointed at Sergeant Ellerby’s notes on ladies Avery and Somersby, which Fowler had been reviewing. “Something to keep in mind, Chief Inspector: I fear Sergeant Ellerby might have a mistaken impression of Lady Avery and Lady Somersby.”
“Oh?”
“He thinks them the town equivalent of a pair of village busybodies.”
“Sometimes busybodies stumble upon crimes. You needn’t worry that I wouldn’t take them seriously as witnesses, Inspector.”
“I didn’t worry about it at all, Chief Inspector. But it behooves me to mention that during the Sackville case, Lord Ingram himself had consulted them for pertinent information—though of course he didn’t tell them that he was the conduit through which the information would pass to Scotland Yard.”
Fowler tapped his fingertips on the desk before him. “So they are to a pair of village busybodies what the Reading Room at the British Museum is to the typical lending library.”
“Precisely.”
The Reading Room at the British Museum walked in just then, a pair of alert women in their early forties. Unlike most other witnesses Treadles had faced in his career, Lady Avery and Lady Somersby were neither nervous nor reticent: They came prepared to impart every fact they knew and a few theories besides.
For most of the interview, what they said did not add much to Sergeant Ellerby’s preliminary report—despite his doubts about their gossiping ways, he had taken copious and accurate notes. But Fowler’s ears perked up when Lady Somersby brought up the encounter between Charlotte Holmes and Lord Ingram near the end of the Season.
Treadles had seen Lord Ingram and Charlotte Holmes together more than once this past summer. Judging by the location the meeting was said to have taken place, it would have been around the time he and they met by chance outside a house in Hounslow that happened to contain a dead body, a case that was supposedly solved, though never to Treadles’s satisfaction.
He still didn’t know what they had been doing there. But the ladies, well, at least they didn’t insinuate; they said in so many words that it seemed a distinct possibility that Lord Ingram might have been keeping Miss Holmes as his mistress.
Treadles didn’t think that had been the case. He thought of the tension between Lord Ingram and Miss Holmes the night of his and Lord Ingram’s first visit to 18 Upper Baker Street. There had been a great deal of genuine disapproval on Lord Ingram’s part. Perhaps sentiments other than censure also fueled that tension, but overall their interaction had not come across as loverly.
When he’d met them in Hounslow, after the conclusion of the Sackville case, he had been more than a little taken aback—and upset—by Miss Holmes’s sudden and unexpected appearance at a murder site of which he had just been informed himself. But he should still have sensed the difference had they become carnally involved by then.
That said, he had no way of knowing whether that had changed since the end of summer, especially after Lady Ingram’s departure, if the latter had indeed absconded with her own illicit lover.
“You wouldn’t know how we could speak to this Miss Holmes, would you, ladies?” asked Fowler.
Treadles’s conscience twitched. He exhaled, relieved that his colleague wasn’t looking in his direction. But he knew that he was lying by omission—more so with every passing minute.
Lady Avery snorted. “Good luck with that, Chief Inspector. We have been trying to discover her whereabouts since she ran away from home.”
Fowler glanced down at his list of questions. “Now, if you don’t mind telling me, madam, did you immediately suspect that Lady Ingram’s departure had something untoward about it, or was it only after you accidentally learned that Miss Holmes had met with Lord Ingram after she became an exile?”
“Well, to be perfectly honest, neither. Shortly before I set out for the Isle of Wight, where I would meet the maid who had worked at the tea shop in Hounslow, we received a note, asking why we, who have made it our business to inquire into situations that do not seem right, hadn’t paid the slightest attention to Lady Ingram’s absence. Scolding us, one might say, for that lack of animal instinct.
“We were of a mind to disregard it. We receive a great many anonymous tips concerning all manners of individuals. And we had become proficient at distinguishing those that deserve further investigation from those that are merely pranks—or worse, malice in written form.
“Lord Ingram was one of the few good ones, we thought, a man whose integrity we need not question, because he was vigilant about it and never self-indulgent. But the meeting with Miss Holmes changed everything. Now he had a reason to want to be rid of Lady Ingram. A reason that could pass for noble sentiments, even: Were he a free man, he could rescue Miss Holmes from her state of exile.”
Chief Inspector Fowler nodded. He did not ask whether Miss Holmes needed—or indeed even wanted—to be rescued from that state of exile. “There seems to be a gap of a fortnight between when you verified with the maid that the woman with Lord Ingram had indeed been Miss Holmes and when you wrote to him about the matter. Were you further checking the facts during that time?”
“I wasn’t,” said Lady Avery. “As it so happened, my sister and I both fell ill. Even the most exciting exposé pales in importance when one’s health is at risk.”
“I see,” said Fowler, a hint of incredulity to his tone, as if he couldn’t believe that these two women would prize anything above gossip. “I hope you have both recovered satisfactorily?”
“Yes, very much so.”
“I’m glad to hear that. And if it’s not too much trouble, I would like to see the note you received.”
Lady Avery excused herself, left the room, and returned a few minutes later. The policemen inspected the stationery—good but not exceptional, postmarked near Euston Station in London—and the writing—done by a typewriter, every letter regular, crisp, and anonymous.
“We’d like to hold on to this, with your permission.”
