“How much time do you estimate passed between when you saw the woman enter number 33 and when guests started to leave because of the fog rolling in?”
Miss Longstead frowned slightly. “I apologize. I’m terrible at estimating the passage of time. When I’m bored, I’ll think an hour has passed when only twenty minutes have, and vice versa when I’m thoroughly absorbed.”
“Please don’t worry about that,” said Holmes, sounding very reassuring. “Tell me instead what Mr. Sullivan was doing, the last time you saw him—and the same for your uncle.”
“I think I saw Mr. Sullivan speaking to Mrs. Treadles at one point, before one particular dance. But at the end of the dance when I saw her again, she was in the company of another woman.
“The last time I saw my uncle was when I told him someone had entered number 33. He asked me if I was having a good time and I said that I was, far more than I expected to. At which he grinned and said, ‘See, I told you it would all go off splendidly.’ And—and that was the last I saw him alive.”
“You didn’t have need of him the rest of the party?”
“Before the party began he told Mrs. Coltrane and me he was going to stay up as late as he could but that he might not be able to last the entire length of the gathering. So when I didn’t see him at the end of the night, I simply assumed that he’d gone to bed.”
Holmes let some time pass, before asking very softly, “And then came the knock on the door?”
Miss Longstead reached toward her temple, as if wanting to adjust the position of her glasses. Belatedly she remembered she wasn’t wearing them and dropped her hand. “I’d gone to bed but couldn’t sleep. It had been an exciting night. A surprising night. I was astonished at how well it had gone. I’d felt—I’m sure it’s a shallow thing to say, but I’d felt . . . not accepted, per se, but that I had exceeded the expectations of those who’d met me and that acceptance was now a possibility.
“It was a very small thing to be so excited about, but one reason I had been content not to socialize much was because I understood that I was sheltered, that in this house my uncle’s acceptance protected me. I didn’t know how I would fare elsewhere. So the party was the first time I thought perhaps I might be able to negotiate the outside world on my own—and not too shabbily either.”
Her yearning for a place for herself struck a chord deep inside Lord Ingram. Looking back, so many of the wrong choices he’d made in life had been in search of that acceptance. And she had far greater hurdles to clear than he had faced.
“I finally fell asleep,” she went on, “and it seemed right away the commotion began. I was groggy and confused when I opened my eyes to see it was still dark. Mrs. Coltrane, our housekeeper, was by my bedside, telling me things that I couldn’t believe then and still can’t believe now.
“I stared at her awhile after she said that the police had requested someone from the household to identify the victims next door. She said she would go, but I told her that no, if anyone was to go, it had to be me. And then I walked to my uncle’s room and knocked on the door—and opened it to see that his bed was empty . . . and still perfectly made.”
He could only imagine how she’d held on to her disbelief and marched to her uncle’s room, intending to show Mrs. Coltrane that Mr. Longstead was fast asleep in his own bed and that all was well with him. With this little world that had existed peacefully under his aegis.
But her disbelief must have cracked at the sight of the empty and still perfectly made bed.
“I went back to my own room, dressed, and took my keys—not realizing that I wouldn’t need them at all as all the doors that required those keys were already open,” said Miss Longstead, her face blank, her voice disembodied, as if she were narrating the experience of a stranger—as if that was the one way she could get through her account. “And then Mrs. Coltrane and I went together to number 33. When we got there, we were asked if we knew anything about the attic of that house. I told them what I did in the studio. They said that it had been destroyed.
“I—” She passed a hand over her face. “I couldn’t care at all about the studio. And then somebody pointed out Inspector Treadles and asked if I knew him. I just nodded. I was in such a state of shock that I didn’t ask myself what he was doing there. Even after I’d identified my uncle and Mr. Sullivan for the police, and come down and seen him again, it still didn’t occur to me that he might have had anything to do with it. I even asked him if he knew what had happened. He shook his head.”
Holmes gave her time to drink tea and eat another half biscuit. “Why do you think anyone would have wanted to kill your uncle?”
“I cannot understand it. My uncle is—was a wonderful man, a truly kind, generous, loving soul. I find it mind-boggling to even contemplate the possibility that it might have been Inspector Treadles, of all people, who might have done it.”
She leaned forward. “You see, my uncle wanted very much for Mrs. Treadles to succeed. He saw it as patently unfair that the managers and directors stood in her way. Their task should have been to assist her, not to keep her from the company that was rightfully hers.”
“He spoke of the goings-on at Cousins to you?”
“Not too much. But sometimes, after a meeting, he would be in a rather disheartened mood. When I asked him, that was what he would tell me, that he didn’t like what was happening to Mrs. Treadles.”
“Is there any chance that he was pretending to be Mrs. Treadles’s ally, but was in fact opposed to her presence?”
The incredulity on Miss Longstead’s face was complete. “No, that wouldn’t be like him at all. If he didn’t think Mrs. Treadles should be at Cousins, he would have told her so himself.”
At least Mrs. Treadles had been correct in thinking of him as an ally.
Lord Ingram exhaled. The relief he felt seemed out of all proportion with the confirmation he’d received. But Mrs. Treadles had already been cruelly disappointed by the men in her life and he desperately did not want Mr. Longstead to be yet another such man.
“He saw in her something of her late father,” said Miss Longstead with great conviction. “He thought the world of Mr. Cousins, who, even though he’d been a man of commerce, had possessed a generosity of spirit that he’d greatly admired. He felt that Mr. Cousins’s son hadn’t inherited those traits, but that Mrs. Treadles had in her an abundance of intelligence, sensitivity, and nobility of character, everything that was needed both to succeed in commerce and to not lose one’s soul along the way.
“He was very pleased when she asked him to be her adviser. He considered her a true heir to her father and looked forward to a renaissance at Cousins.” Tears once again filled her eyes. “Perhaps it will yet happen. Perhaps I will witness it for him.”