“Mr. de Lacey to see you, Miss Holmes,” said Mrs. Watson.
Charlotte rose with a becoming smile. “How do you do, Mr. de Lacey? Were you the one who wrote me in the first place?”
And how long have you been at your current appointment?
Moriarty’s chief lieutenant in Britain was referred to as de Lacey, but she had her suspicions that the man who had held the position the previous summer had not survived the year.
De Lacey bowed. “That is correct, Miss Holmes. I wrote on Mr. Baxter’s behalf—I look after his interests in the British Isles.”
He had a clear, careful enunciation. Mrs. Watson would be able to pin down his exact origins. Charlotte, without as expert an ear, could still tell that much effort had gone into the taming of his vowels, turning them round and polished.
She offered him a seat. A round of obligatory small talk ensued as their tea steeped in the teapot. Mrs. Watson had gone into Sherlock Holmes’s room on the pretext of looking after the invalid sage, so it was only Charlotte and de Lacey in the parlor.
She poured a cup of tea and gave it to him along with her answer. “After much consideration, we have decided to accept Mr. Baxter as a client.”
“Mr. Baxter will be pleased to hear that. Will you be departing today?”
Charlotte and Mrs. Watson were prepared for an imminent departure—everything they had packed for the purpose of fleeing Moriarty would come in handy for a forced excursion to Cornwall. But de Lacey’s bald question still gave her pause.
She took a sip of her very hot tea. “Before I go, I have some questions.”
“I would be glad to answer them for you, Miss Holmes,” said de Lacey earnestly.
His helpfulness seemed genuine. For a moment Charlotte didn’t know which was worse, a Moriarty, whose ruthlessness had ambition and megalomania at its root, or someone like de Lacey, content to be a henchman to the Moriartys of the world.
“My questions are of a sensitive nature, best posed to a family member. If Mr. James Baxter himself is not available, perhaps Mr. Stephen Baxter can step in for him—assuming, that is, the younger Mr. Baxter is also related to Miss Baxter.”
“Mr. Baxter is indeed otherwise occupied. Mr. Stephen Baxter is gallivanting about London, not expected back until the afternoon. Every moment counts and I assure you, Miss Holmes, that I have been authorized to dispense all necessary information. “
Mr. Marbleton, gallivanting about London?
If de Lacey—or Moriarty, by extension—didn’t want Charlotte to speak to Mr. Marbleton, they could come up with a number of excuses other than that Mr. Marbleton was out enjoying himself. A good liar always lied as little as possible. Did this mean de Lacey was telling the truth?
“Very well, then, Mr. de Lacey. I would like to know what Mr. Baxter believes to be the reason for Miss Baxter’s initial interest in and commitment to the Garden of Hermopolis. In particular—my apologies in advance—I would like to know whether there were any romantic attachments on her part.”
“That is possible, of course, but we do not believe so.”
People had a tendency to perform certain actions when they had trouble stating the truth. De Lacey’s gaze, however, did not shift to some corner of the room. He did not fidget. Nor did he make the sort of shoulder-rounding movement that would cave in his chest. Instead he smoothed a hand down his lapel, but that seemed more a gesture of enjoyment than one of nerve, as if he still couldn’t believe that he was wearing garments of fine cashmere.
“What makes you think that wasn’t the case?”
“For one thing, in its most embryonic stage, the Garden had only female residents.”
“That there were only other women did not preclude the possibility of a romantic attachment on Miss Baxter’s part.”
De Lacey didn’t so much as twitch an eyelid. “We have no reason to believe that Miss Baxter possessed sapphic leanings.”
“I see,” said Charlotte, though all she saw was that this line of inquiry would yield her little. “Mr. Baxter made the point that Miss Baxter, despite her decision to join the commune, is an otherwise intelligent and discerning woman. Does he not have any theories about why she still opted for the Garden of Hermopolis?”
“He does, though it pains him to admit it. On the whole, he believes that Miss Baxter, as a child, was deeply unhappy to be removed from her grandmother’s care. That unhappiness never dissipated and transformed itself into a resentment against her father.”
“But however pointed a resentment, once she won his permission to return to her grandmother’s house and live on her own, would that not be enough distance between father and daughter?”
De Lacey coughed rather delicately. “Her late grandmother was some years departed by that time. And the house’s former staff had also dispersed to other places of employment. The new staff put into place had been selected by Mr. Baxter.”
“Ahh,” said Charlotte.
“You must also see then, how it was the proper thing to do on Mr. Baxter’s part, to make sure that his daughter was surrounded by personnel he trusted?”
“I can certainly understand a father’s anxiety. So you believe that Miss Baxter felt her old home still did not afford her enough autonomy, and therefore she must decamp even farther.”
“I do.”
Charlotte tapped her fingers against the side of her teacup. “The staff would have realized that she’d left and immediately reported it to Mr. Baxter?”
“Yes.”
“And yet, according to Mr. Baxter himself, he did not learn that she had absconded from her grandmother’s house until some months later.”
Moriarty’s precise words had been, When she was twenty-one she did just that, moving to England and taking up residence in the old house. But she did not stay there for long. Some months later, I learned that she’d packed up her worldly goods and joined a group of Hermetists who had formed their own community in Cornwall.
That some months later could be interpreted to mean that Miss Baxter had stayed some months in her grandmother’s house before leaving or that Moriarty did not learn of her flight until after some months.
De Lacey blinked a few times before saying, “Perhaps you misunderstood, Miss Holmes. I’m sure Mr. Baxter meant something else.”
“Oh?”
De Lacey considered the fireplace to Charlotte’s left then looked back at her. “I’m sure he meant that he met with Miss Baxter months later, not that he only learned of her departure then.”
Interesting.
Charlotte nodded, letting this particular detail go—for the moment. “To go back to our point, I can imagine Miss Baxter heading into the commune in a state of rebellion. But at some point, one must think of one’s welfare and not just the satisfaction of chopping off one’s nose to spite one’s face, no matter how irritating said nose must seem at first. Does Mr. Baxter believe that Miss Baxter remained in the Garden of Hermopolis, to her own eventual detriment, solely because of her continued resentment of him?”
De Lacey stroked his neatly groomed beard. There were scars on his hand, but otherwise the hand appeared well cared for, at least in recent years, with soft-looking skin and beautifully clean nails. “If her circumstances worsened dramatically, she might have been jolted out of that false sense of security. But I have observed that people can become accustomed to almost anything. When changes are subtle and gradual, they adjust to the new state of affairs and carry on until the moment it becomes too late for them to do anything.”