Unless the police believed it to have been an act on Inspector Treadles’s part.
Briefly Mrs. Graycott covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes wide with fear. When she had herself under control again, she asked in a low voice, “Miss Holmes, we’ve heard of Sherlock Holmes in this household, of course. Will he be able to bring the inspector back home soon?”
“I don’t know,” said Charlotte.
Mrs. Graycott swallowed.
Charlotte briefly set a hand on her arm. “It is thus at the beginning of any new venture for Sherlock Holmes and company. We cannot predict outright that we will succeed, but we also have no reason to expect failure. And we are determined to be as thorough and enterprising as Inspector and Mrs. Treadles would wish us to be, and to get to the bottom of the case as soon as possible.”
Which, of course, would be easier if Mrs. Treadles would tell the whole truth.
Seven
Papa, what are stars made of?” asked Carlisle, Lord Ingram’s son.
Lucinda, Carlisle’s elder sister, was usually the one who stayed awake longer at bedtime and had more questions. But tonight she was already fast asleep. Carlisle, though his eyelids drooped, still persisted in curiosity.
“Stars are mostly hydrogen,” said Lord Ingram.
Carlisle should have a fairly good idea what hydrogen was: Not long ago, Lucinda had asked what water was made of, which had necessitated a plunge into the basics of chemistry.
Lord Ingram wondered if he had better go fetch a volume of Encyclopedia Britannica in case his grasp of astronomical spectroscopy proved too shaky for Carlisle’s ensuing questions, one of which was bound to be “But how do you know?”
Carlisle frowned. “Can you wish on hydrogen?”
Lord Ingram almost laughed out loud. “Well, why not?”
It had to be just as valid as wishing on chunks of rock and metal, the composition of falling stars.
“But how do you know stars are made of hydrogen?” asked Carlisle, yawning widely.
As his father was still recounting Newton’s experiments with light and prisms, the boy fell asleep. Lord Ingram tucked his hands under the blanket and kissed him on the forehead. He then moved to the other bed and kissed his daughter on her cheek.
Outside the nursery, Miss Potter, who had once been his own governess, awaited.
“They are asleep now,” he said. “I’ll leave them in your care.”
She smiled at him. “Very good, my lord. And good evening to you.”
He arrived at Mrs. Watson’s afternoon parlor, where the windows and the mantelpiece were now draped in garlands of spruce and red cedar—Mrs. Watson and Penelope worked fast—just before Holmes entered in her dinner gown.
She loved a frock, Holmes. He wouldn’t say she loved her clothes as much as she loved her cake, but the love was just as sincere and unabashed. Her taste in clothes, well, he’d used to semi-dread what she might appear in; these days he rather looked forward to seeing her outfits, the way one didn’t mind encounters with cherished old friends, even if they now communed with fairies via games of dominoes.
Had his retinas not been seared by the Christmas tree dress, her dinner gown would have been the most outlandish thing he witnessed today. It had a red redingote with enormous black dots, and the exposed skirt was black with small red dots.
A dress that would have swallowed its wearer whole, were it not for her evident enjoyment of its flamboyance.
“Hullo, Ash.”
“Hullo, Holmes. New frock?”
“Indeed. The first I’ve commissioned since I left home—with money I made off you, in fact.”
“I am delighted that my pounds sterling have gone on to support so worthy a cause, madam.”
The other two ladies were also taken aback by the new dress. “A unique and sensational confection, my dear,” declared Mrs. Watson diplomatically, after a moment of gaping. And Penelope, with evident relish, exclaimed, “It’s a ladybird beetle dress!”
“It’s actually a black widow spider dress, if we must discuss its entomological inspiration. Did you guess that, my lord?” Holmes glanced at him, looking very ravishing but not remotely arachnid.
“No, ladybird beetle for me also.”
“I see. It evidently lacks menace. I wonder if the dressmaker can do something about that.”
He thought not. No costume, however sinister on its own, could reduce the initial impression she gave of resolute darlingness. On the other hand, for those who knew her well, not even her most riotous dresses could completely alleviate the twinge of apprehension they felt in her presence.
They did not love her less, but they loved her knowing that they could keep no secrets from her.
Mr. Mears, Mrs. Watson’s butler, arrived to announce that dinner was served. They descended together, Mrs. Watson on Lord Ingram’s arm, the younger women as a pair.
All the dishes had been laid on the table. Mr. Mears ladled soup, filled wineglasses, and left, closing the door behind himself.
“Oh, Miss Charlotte, do please tell us how it was done,” said Penelope immediately. “How was it that Inspector Treadles was locked in with the dead men?”
Holmes, who had been studying the dessert, a still-warm apple Charlotte to be served with sweet custard cream, lifted her gaze rather reluctantly. “Well, either he walked in on his own power or he was carried in and left there. As for how it was done . . . what do you mean by ‘it,’ Miss Redmayne? That the door was locked from inside? If there were only two dead men in that room, the question might prove somewhat curious. But Inspector Treadles was there and he was perfectly capable of locking the door.”
“But why did he wish to lock himself in a room with two dead men?” Penelope continued with her question. “And why didn’t he open the door even when the police came?”
Holmes took a sip of her soup. “I ask myself the same.”
“And?”
“Lord Ingram and I see him tomorrow. I plan to pose these questions to him directly.”
But if Inspector Treadles had satisfactory answers to those questions, his wife would not have enlisted Sherlock Holmes’s help in a panic, would she?
Since Holmes appeared unwilling to discuss the case in much greater detail, Penelope’s questions turned to their recent Parisian adventure, during which they had burgled a French château that turned out to be Moriarty’s stronghold.
It was probably in anticipation of this very topic that Mrs. Watson had served her dinner à la française—placed on the table as if at a buffet—requiring no servants in the room.