“If Inspector Brighton got the summons early in the day and started, he should already be back in town, directing inquiries,” mused Holmes. “I wonder what manner of man he is.”
“I’ve only ever said ‘morning, sir; good day, sir’ to him. But he’s said to be sharp as a tack.”
Sergeant MacDonald hesitated. When he spoke again, it was in a lowered voice. “And he’s also said to be thoroughly ruthless.”
Lord Ingram’s heart thudded unpleasantly.
The grandfather clock in the corner chimed the quarter hour. Sergeant MacDonald glanced at it and rose slowly. “I’d better report back to the Yard. Once Inspector Brighton has seen Inspector Treadles—and the bodies—he might want to speak to me.”
He spoke as if Inspector Brighton might put him to the rack.
“Have you thought about how you might handle Inspector Brighton, Sergeant?” asked Holmes.
Her tone hadn’t changed, but Lord Ingram heard concern. For the sake of his livelihood—and as a policeman sworn to uphold the law—Sergeant MacDonald was obliged to tell Inspector Brighton everything he knew. But out of loyalty to Inspector Treadles, he needed to say as little as possible, lest anything he gave away further incriminate his superior.
Tilt too much one way, and he might never advance his career. Tilt in the other direction, and he would further endanger the mentor he admired, the man who had done more for his career than anyone else.
The young man gazed at the remainder of his whisky, as if in it lay the secret of how to achieve this impossible balance. Then he squared his shoulders and looked back at Holmes. “I’ll look after myself. But I’ll also look after Inspector Treadles.”
An immense gratitude swelled up inside Lord Ingram. “Thank you,” he said.
Sergeant MacDonald gave a rather wan smile. “Don’t mention it.”
He shook hands with Holmes and Lord Ingram, thanked them, took a deep breath, and showed himself out.
Leaving behind two very quiet people.
“Mr. Sullivan,” Lord Ingram said at last.
The specter of the dead nephew, whose name Mrs. Treadles refused to speak, loomed large.
“Yes, Mr. Sullivan,” echoed Holmes. “One begins to wonder whether anyone involved in this situation wanted the real truth known, now or ever.”
Five
There was no time to lose.
Lord Ingram needed to be at Scotland Yard, where he would facilitate arrangements for Sherlock Holmes’s involvement in the case. What good was being a lordship, an independently wealthy man, and a well-connected figure in Society, if he couldn’t secure a few favors for himself and his friends?
“Not to mention that,” he said as he helped Charlotte into a secondhand mackintosh—she was going out dressed as a laundry maid, “Scotland Yard, having wrongly arrested me not too long ago, owes me some reparations.”
She regarded him rather cautiously, wondering if he meant to perform even more loverly feats—in days of antiquity, at the first house party he and his wife had attended as newlyweds, she’d witnessed him button up Lady Ingram’s overcoat with an overabundance of husbandly zeal, sinking down to one knee for the lowest buttons.
But he waited for her to do her own fastening and, when she was done, kissed her lightly on the lips. “I’ll see you at dinner.”
Her hansom cab headed to Mrs. Treadles’s house, where she had some pointed questions to ask her client. But as her vehicle bounced and swayed, her mind kept going back to his soft yet implacable declaration.
I didn’t give in to an impulse, Holmes. I made a choice.
What kind of choice?
With the cries of the newspaper boy and the arrival of Sergeant MacDonald, they had not spoken again on his choice. But she had a fair idea: He had come to give her what she wanted.
She had always been the one to make demands of him, of his body specifically. She wanted him to be her friend and her lover. He had always refused, first because he couldn’t possibly compromise her, and then because he’d been married, albeit unhappily so and no longer intimate with his wife.
That had been the stated reason: His honor forbade it.
She believed in his sense of honor—the man was practically a wellspring of honor. But she also knew it hadn’t been the only reason.
He’d been . . . Well, not afraid, exactly, but wary of her, despite their long-standing friendship.
Unlike Inspector Treadles, who needed to think of society as just and justifiable, Lord Ingram had always been deeply ambivalent about the world in which they lived. But he’d yearned to belong, to find a place for himself. For this acceptance, he became not only acceptable, but the very embodiment of gentlemanly virtues.
She had been, in a way, the mirror image of him. As he’d left his rebellious days behind, she, too, had learned to speak and act in ways that were socially acceptable. But unlike his transformation, hers was only superficial. And she’d regarded his profound changes not with awe or gladness, but with skepticism.
Is this really what you want? Is this really who you are?
She’d never posed those questions in the open, but over the years he must have heard them resoundingly. Had he approached a different woman, greater physical proximity might signify just that. But getting closer to her would force him to face his doubts, otherwise ruthlessly locked away, on whether there wasn’t another way to live, one that didn’t clap his soul in irons.
And now this man who had not wanted to examine his misgivings and who had therefore carefully kept his distance, had kissed her three times in a row.
What choice had he made? The choice to overturn all the other choices he had made in his entire life?
* * *
Miss Olivia Holmes groaned as she flexed her right hand. Her fingers were stiff and cold, which they often were in winter, but today every muscle in that hand hurt from having been made to labor since early morning.
On the desk before her lay ten more pages of her manuscript. She made sure the newest page was properly blotted. Then she rolled her wrist, rotated her shoulders, rose to her feet with another groan, and carried the pages across the room she’d once shared with Charlotte to hide them in a trunk.
Transferring her Sherlock Holmes story from the bundle of notebooks in which it had been drafted onto proper manuscript pages had seemed a monumental task. Yet in little more than eighteen hours of work, split between two days, she’d managed to reach the two fifths point in the . . . novel.
My novel, she tried to make herself say. I’ve written a novel.
A story seemed a small thing, but a novel had heft. If nothing else it testified to its creator’s persistence, that she was stubborn enough to string tens of thousands of words together in the fervent hope that they would form a cohesive whole that not only made sense, but entertained.