The coast was high, but not forbiddingly so, the sheer cliffs largely bare, with patches of moss green here and there. They sailed past inlets and stony coves, mostly empty except for an occasional scavenger, hunched over among the rocks.
Mrs. Watson had the rudder in hand, Mr. Mears sat by the mast, and Charlotte, not much use on a sailboat, occupied the bow to stay out of the way. From time to time, the coastline lowered to near sea level, and a village would appear, a few dozen red-roofed houses nestled against the slopes. And then another expanse of unclaimed nature, white foam caps crashing into the base of the crags, while above, green moorland stretched into the distance.
Delightful day, delightful scenery, yet other than Mrs. Watson’s comment on the weather, the company had been almost entirely silent, their attention on the coastline not so much enjoyment as watchfulness.
The inclusion of Mr. Mears Charlotte had half anticipated. The dossier concerned itself almost exclusively with what took place inside the Garden of Hermopolis; they needed someone in the village of Porthangan to gather more context. Just as importantly, given all the known and unknown dangers, they didn’t want their nearest ally hundreds of miles away.
Mr. Mears had already proved his usefulness by being a good sailor, a skill he and Mrs. Watson had acquired together, she as the late duke of Wycliffe’s mistress, he as His Grace’s then new valet, upon her recommendation. He read the wind, adjusted the sails, and scanned the coastline with an unhurried competence, as if he were at home in the domestic offices, polishing the silver while waiting for the water to boil for Mrs. Watson’s afternoon tea.
“I see it,” he cried.
At first sight, the Garden of Hermopolis reminded Charlotte of nothing so much as a private asylum she’d once visited, a seemingly idyllic country dwelling made subtly sinister by the presence of unusually high walls.
On the map, the south coast of Cornwall extended roughly east to west-southwest. But this particular stretch was oriented north to south; the high bluff on which the Garden sat overlooked the sea to the east. The bluff dropped nearly vertically to an inlet to the north, but on the seaward side it dipped like the side of a bowl toward a promontory, flattening out in a shallow depression that resembled the palm of a slightly cupped hand, then rising again on the other side to two thirds the height of the bluff, before plunging into the waves.
“I think there’s someone on the little promontory,” said Mrs. Watson. “Actually, I see two people.”
The wind was rising. Mrs. Watson not only raised her voice, but stood up and leaned forward, and still her words barely reached Charlotte.
Charlotte looked through her binoculars. “It’s a woman and a man.”
The woman was elderly—Miss Fairchild, perhaps? The man appeared young. He spoke intently to the older woman, who listened with a grave expression.
Charlotte and company had meant to pass by close to the cliffs beneath the Garden of Hermopolis, but if those were indeed residents of the compound, then that would verge too much on trespassing. Mrs. Watson was already steering the boat seaward. Charlotte handed the binoculars to Mr. Mears, who looked through them for a moment before offering them to Mrs. Watson.
“There’s someone on the wall also,” she reported. “I hope it’s because the day is glorious and not because they are on the lookout all the time.”
The day had become less glorious—clouds gathered on the horizon. Charlotte was no old seaman able to predict storms with a look at the sky, but she would not be surprised if the weather took a hard, tempestuous turn.
When the binoculars came back to Charlotte, she saw that the person on the wall was a woman, also holding a pair of binoculars. She waved, but the woman did not wave back.
Their coastal voyage ended three miles farther south, at the village of Porthangan. There Mrs. Watson and Charlotte disembarked with their valises.
They were met by Mrs. Felton, a large-boned, ruddy-faced woman who was the source of much of the intelligence in Moriarty’s dossier. According to the file on her in the dossier, she was a native of Porthangan, but had spent nearly twenty years in domestic service in Exeter, before returning to her natal village to take up cleaning at the Garden of Hermopolis.
“Oh, but I’m glad you’ve come, ladies. I’ve been feeling so uneasy that I didn’t want to go into the Garden no more. Mr. Baxter’s man said I must carry on as usual. But how do I do that when I’m worried sick about Miss Baxter?”
These words were whispered to Charlotte and Mrs. Watson as Mrs. Felton led them to a shiny, lacquered dogcart trimmed in green.
“Nice conveyance,” said Mrs. Watson, taking the hand Mrs. Felton held out to help her up to the driver’s box. “Is it the Garden’s?”
“No, it’s me own,” said Mrs. Felton proudly. She handed a carriage blanket to Charlotte, who had taken the rear-facing seat, then got up on the driver’s box herself and sat down next to Mrs. Watson. “The horse is me own. And I’ve me own house, too.”
As women who cleaned for a living didn’t usually receive much compensation, it stood to reason that de Lacey paid generously.
The road climbed up and out of the inlet. Fields and pasture rolled away before them, their grassy scent mingled with that of the tang of saltwater. The sun dipped near the horizon, its pale yellow light elongating the carriage’s shadow toward the now-choppier sea.
The dogcart was the only vehicle on a lane that was merely two parallel lines of shorter grass, worn down by regular but sparse traffic. Mrs. Watson cleared her throat. “Now that we are at last away from potential eavesdroppers, Mrs. Felton, will you give us a full account of everything?”
* * *
Lord Ingram and Miss Olivia returned to London early in the afternoon. They visited two newspaper archives and Snowham was barely mentioned in any indexes as a locale, let alone as anything else. Afterward, Miss Olivia expressed a desire to consult another archive and Lord Ingram took his leave of her: He had someone to see before he left London, his second-eldest brother, Lord Bancroft Ashburton.
Bancroft had once looked after the Crown’s more clandestine concerns. But he had betrayed both the Crown and Lord Ingram and was now under confinement, though in surroundings that most prisoners would consider luxurious: two rooms to himself in a house with mahogany wainscoting and cream-and-rose toile wallpaper, books and newspapers at his disposal, and a view of a garden outside his—albeit barred—windows.
Lord Ingram had not visited him since the previous autumn, when Bancroft was first stripped of his office and his freedom. A betrayer had this power: He had held the trust of the betrayed, while never extending the same. To see Bancroft again was to feel the same vulnerability, the same anger against both Bancroft and himself.
“What brings you here, Ash?” asked Bancroft, a trace of suspicion to his otherwise colorless tone. “And how goes the divorce?”
“It will be granted soon, thank you.”
“A good thing. One should keep one’s friends close and enemies closer—but not under the same roof, if at all possible.”
Bancroft, of course, knew all his soft spots. Lord Ingram made no answer.
After a while, Bancroft said, “And thank you for the wine and pastry at Christmas. Alas, they were finished far too soon.”