Bancroft shifted in his chair. “She didn’t leave any means of contact, so why would I rush to tell you anything?”
Lord Ingram wondered whether Madame Desrosiers took a look at Bancroft, decided he was going to be a most unreliable messenger, and therefore left no means of contact. But why had she approached Bancroft, rather than himself? Was it because she thought that Bancroft was less likely to be under Moriarty’s surveillance?
He rose to leave. At the door Bancroft’s voice came, his tone almost conciliatory. “I wouldn’t worry too much about your investigator, if I were you. To you she might not be an agent of the Crown, and to herself even less, but she has worked with our other brother and you know how he is.”
Lord Ingram’s hand, raised to knock at the door to be let out, stilled. Remington was a better man than Bancroft, but Remington would indeed consider Holmes a spare agent of the Crown, one currently on furlough, perhaps, to be summoned when the need presented itself.
“Therefore,” continued Bancroft, “for this person to harm her would be the same as for him to pit himself against our other brother. Would he take on that sort of trouble for your investigator? I think not. Not yet, in any case. So rest easy, little brother.”
* * *
Mrs. Watson had been wary of Mrs. Felton—after all, she worked for Moriarty. But Mrs. Felton was a chatty woman who enjoyed talking about herself and who seemed to have no idea of the sinister web at the center of which sat her clandestine employer.
To her, Miss Baxter was simply an heiress. And heiresses, especially heiresses who chose to live in communes that practiced dubious foreign religions, absolutely needed an extra pair of eyes on them. She felt fortunate to have been chosen for this task—“Miss Fairchild wanted someone from Porthangan and Mr. de Lacey’s man found me in Exeter”—and was grateful for the income and the prestige that it brought—“It sure feels nice, oh, it does, to drive into the village for church on Sunday morning in this here fine cart and with a proper hat with feathers.”
Mrs. Watson nearly gasped at her proud indiscretion—was this any way to be an agent of Moriarty’s? But since Mrs. Felton did not bother to conceal her income from De Lacey Industries, then her true function must be known to everyone at the Garden of Hermopolis, or at least to Miss Baxter herself. Which would also explain, in part, why Miss Baxter could never be pleased with her work.
“And Miss Baxter, she does make my knees knock when she stares at me,” continued Mrs. Felton blithely, giving the reins a shake, her butter-colored driving gloves looking as smooth and supple as the pair on Mrs. Watson’s own hands. “She can kill with a glance, that one. But when I tell folks in the village about her, they are right curious and right envious, too.”
The idea of Miss Baxter being openly bandied about as a topic of conversation came as an even bigger shock to Mrs. Watson, she who was accustomed to speaking as little as possible of Moriarty—and everyone and everything associated with him. “What do you tell the villagers about her?”
“Everything,” said Mrs. Felton with a grand wave of her hand. “Her parlor is like nothing I’ve ever seen in Exeter. Her clothes—oh my, but everyone’s seen her fine clothes when she came into the village. It’s what she puts on at home what’s got me all dazzled. They don’t look that different from what other ladies wear, but they just look better on her, for some reason. Even when she cleans she looks like she ought to be in a picture—an oil painting.”
“She cleans?” marveled Mrs. Watson.
“Light cleaning,” Mrs. Felton clarified. “Not everyone in the Garden wants their house cleaned every other day, the way the Steeles do. Some don’t want my help at all as they’ve already got servants of their own. Miss Fairchild and Miss Ellery has me over twice a week. Miss Baxter needs me only once a week.
“I’m paid to do the heavier cleaning. So most often, if she is there when I clean her place, she’ll dust the ornaments, wipe down the wardrobe, and polish the looking glass.”
Mrs. Felton fell silent. Ahead of them, her docile mare plodded on good-naturedly, its mane tossing in a gust of wind. “But it’s been a while since I saw her do any of these things.”
Her sadness felt genuine.
If you saw a tiger lying on the ground, being badly off, even if you were scared of tigers, you’d still feel bad for it, wouldn’t you?
“You did mention in your reports that the last few times you saw her, she was always unwell.”
Mrs. Felton nodded heavily. “There are ladies like that. I once worked for two sisters and one of them had lost so many husbands and children, it was frightful how many hair ornaments she had lying about, all made from the locks of the departed. And she herself, God grant her strength, was exhausted by grief and I never saw her except huddled in a rocking chair. But Miss Baxter wasn’t like that at all. She was . . .”
She looked up, as if seeking the right words. A pair of seabirds, their black-tipped wingspans three feet across, wheeled overhead.
“A force of nature?” supplied Miss Charlotte from the back. She’d chosen the spot because Mrs. Watson was better at putting people at ease and drawing out confessions. But that might not have made any difference today, given how keen Mrs. Felton was to tell them everything she knew.
“Yes, that’s it!” cried Mrs. Felton. “She was a force of nature, before she took to her bed.”
“If I understand your reports correctly,” said Miss Charlotte, “you saw her once a month for three months, with her incapacitated each time, and then you never saw her again but only heard her?”
“That’s right.”
They crested a small rise. In the distance, the stone walls of the Garden of Hermopolis came into view, tall and golden in the light of the setting sun. A rather unsettling sight, such high walls in the middle of nowhere. Yet Mrs. Watson could not deny that there was also something spectacular about this remote bridgehead of Hermetism.
Miss Charlotte continued with her questioning. “Can you describe for me what transpired when you heard but didn’t see her?”
“Yes, miss,” said Mrs. Felton with alacrity. “The first time it happened, she asked, ‘Is that you, Felton?’ when I entered the lodge. I was relieved to hear her voice after all that time. She hadn’t spoken to me at all the previous three times, when she was unwell—might not have even known I was there. So this time, even though she sounded weak and a little hoarse, I still thought that was an improvement.
“I said it was me and she said, ‘The grates need attention. I don’t think you’ve done them properly of late. Make sure they are bright and spotless before you leave today.
“She wasn’t wrong about the grates. Since she hadn’t admonished me for a while, I’d been a bit lax. So I set to rub and shine the grates something fierce. And when I was done I called her so she could see that I’d heeded her. But nobody answered. I walked through her lodge twice, calling her, but the place was empty.
“At the Garden, there are cabins and there are lodges. A lodge is larger than a cabin but it isn’t enormous. On the ground floor there be a parlor, a dining room, and a study. Upstairs are Miss Baxter’s bedroom and a sitting room. There are two house doors, one in the front, one in the back, but backdoor is always bolted shut and the entire time I was polishing the grates, I didn’t hear either door open or close. I didn’t hear anyone moving about at all. And I certainly didn’t see her going out.”