Charlotte, unsurprised, shook her head. She understood why Mrs. Treadles had not been able to bring herself to make this confession before her husband’s friends. All the same, it had been an unwise decision.
“Mr. Sullivan was, in other words, the ringleader of the disloyal opposition?”
“In retrospect, yes.”
Inspector Brighton’s tone turned more languid, as if his interrogation were but a chat between friends, over glasses of wine. “Why did you not let go of him?”
“I would have let go of the entire lot if I could,” said Mrs. Treadles bitterly. “But they would have had a field day shredding my reputation. And how could I be sure that the men I hired to replace them would be any better?”
Inspector Brighton flicked a nonexistent speck of dust from the cuff of his sleeve. “I didn’t ask why you didn’t get rid of the whole lot, Mrs. Treadles. I asked why you didn’t get rid of Mr. Sullivan, the ringleader.”
His voice remained dulcet, but the menace in his words had become unmistakable.
Mrs. Treadles tugged at her collar again. Charlotte had the sensation that had she been alone, she’d have been clawing at the closure to breathe better. “I—I didn’t wish to injure Mr. Longstead.”
“I thought you said Mr. Longstead was your ally.”
“Yes, but he was also Mr. Sullivan’s uncle.”
“Did you ever broach the problem of Mr. Sullivan with Mr. Longstead?”
“No.”
“Why not?” said Inspector Brighton silkily. “Would it also have injured him merely to have brought up the fact that Mr. Sullivan was stabbing you in the back?”
The aversion on Mrs. Treadles’s face was turning into pure fear: Inspector Brighton was drawing near what she most desperately wished to keep hidden.
“One wonders, Mrs. Treadles,” continued Inspector Brighton, savoring each syllable, “what Mr. Sullivan had on you.”
Mrs. Treadles’s hands dug into her skirts. “Nothing. He had nothing on me.”
“Not anymore, now that he is dead. But what could he have told Inspector Treadles that worried you so much that you dared neither to sack him, nor to confide your problems to your husband?”
“I did nothing remotely inappropriate with him!”
Her high-pitched words ricocheted around the room, at once a furious denial and an anguished plea.
In contrast to her risen volume, Inspector Brighton spoke ever more softly, more sinuously. “I am not saying you did, Mrs. Treadles. In fact, I very much do not believe you did. But what about Mr. Sullivan? Did he think to maintain propriety at all times?”
“I much prefer not to speak of Mr. Sullivan,” said Mrs. Treadles.
She pressed her lips together in a mulish line.
It pained Charlotte to listen to Mrs. Treadles’s futile refusal. She should have either lied convincingly all the way, or divulged everything from the beginning. To have the truth dragged out of her piecemeal helped neither her cause nor her husband’s.
“But you have no choice in the matter, Mrs. Treadles. Mr. Sullivan is dead and your husband was in the same room with a firearm in his hand. Notice that I haven’t even brought into consideration a certain small notice in the papers.”
Did Mrs. Treadles cringe? “Be that as it may, I still have nothing else to say about Mr. Sullivan.”
Charlotte winced. Dear woman, brace yourself. You have given your adversary his opening.
Inspector Brighton straightened in his chair and leaned forward, the king cobra at last ready to strike. “Then let me tell you what I think happened, Mrs. Treadles. You love your husband and value your marriage, but his willful spurning of your work at Cousins cut deep. And given that at Cousins you had to fight tooth and nail even to be heard, you felt embattled and alone.
“Into this desolate landscape strode Mr. Sullivan, by all appearances an excellent fellow. His virtues might have been only skin-deep, but you did not know this. What you saw, in your hour of desperation, was a sympathetic figure, someone who, even if he didn’t slay dragons for you, was at least willing to listen to your problems, and make such reassurances as ‘Let me talk to Mr. So-and-so. I’m sure he didn’t intend for it to come across quite like that.’”
He paused, as if taking a moment to bask in the incipient panic on Mrs. Treadles’s face. “Friendship has not been easy for you. The young women you once knew, the daughters of other industrialists, even some ladies of the landed gentry, perhaps, have largely chosen to let their acquaintance with you fade away. At the same time, because Inspector Treadles has been so sensitive about exposing his colleagues to his wealthy wife, you have been unable to make friends with the wives of those colleagues, who, under different circumstances, would have formed the bulk of your new social circle.
“You were already hungry for camaraderie and now you grew starved for support. Understandably enough, you mistook Mr. Sullivan’s seeming lack of enmity for friendship. And he, sensing your vulnerability, exploited it to the utmost.
“What did you confess to him? Probably not too much directly. You are, after all, a sensible woman. But he was a clever man and deduced the rest for himself, didn’t he? Did he make advances? Did he demand an affair?”
Mrs. Treadles, who had been shrinking farther and farther into her chair, flinched.
“He did, then. And when you refused, did he threaten to tell your husband lies that would have irreparably damaged your marriage?”
Inspector Brighton paused again, a craftsman studying his handiwork—in this case, the ashen pallor on Mrs. Treadles’s face.
“You yourself are not inclined to lie,” he mused. “Nor are you good at it. But you realized that Mr. Sullivan was a liar of a different caliber. You had believed him, when he’d feigned friendship. Why would your husband not believe him, were he to insinuate that you two had become closer than necessary?
“And that was why you were paralyzed by Mr. Sullivan’s betrayal—and his threats. Your husband already faulted you for trying to carve out a place for yourself at Cousins. And now this happened. Even if Inspector Treadles were sympathetic, what would be his counsel? To give up trying to change things at Cousins and come home—which you were loath to do.
“Furthermore, you worried that Inspector Treadles, a good investigator, would soon unearth the grain of truth in Mr. Sullivan’s story. You didn’t do anything with him. But could you have denied that before you discovered his treachery, you had looked forward to seeing Mr. Sullivan, that he had become the one you thought you could rely on, when everyone else, including your husband, had turned their backs on you?”
Had he been on a stage, Inspector Brighton would probably have taken a bow. Certainly he sounded enormously pleased with himself.