The company took some time to safely get down from the wall. By the time Mrs. Watson set foot on the ground, her fingers felt as if they would lose all sensation from gripping the ladder’s piercingly cold side rails.
Lord Ingram was waiting for her at the bottom; Mr. Peters had departed with the mischief-makers.
“Let’s disperse,” said Miss Ellery. “It’s going to rain.”
Mrs. Steele, whose shoes had been drenched earlier, held on to her husband with both hands for warmth. “Well, when—when it rains,” she said, stuttering from the cold, “at least nothing else will catch on fire.”
* * *
Back at their cottage, Charlotte put water to boil and changed out of her wet clothes. Most of the water went into the hot water bottles, but Mrs. Watson also made tea. She gave Charlotte a cup as Charlotte pulled on her gloves.
“Should I come with you?” asked Mrs. Watson a third time. “I won’t be able to sleep anyway.”
Charlotte had the opposite problem. She would have been able to sleep soundly, but the events of the night were such that she could not permit herself to go back to bed yet. “I don’t have an extra hot water bottle for you, ma’am, and it’s too cold a night to remain out for long without any heat source. Rest if you can. If not, keep an eye on what you can see of the Garden.”
She took a sip of the tea and gave Mrs. Watson a quick hug. “And thank you for shielding me from Mrs. Crosby.”
How fortunate she was, to have come into this remarkable woman’s orbit.
At least the cold air outside, cutting across her face, made her feel more awake and alert. She found Lord Ingram near the meditation cabin, where he’d been watching Miss Baxter’s house.
She handed him a hot water bottle, a canteen of hot tea, and a flask of whisky. “Has Dr. Robinson left?”
“I don’t believe so. Careful.”
A ray of light shone down from the eastern wall and zigzagged along the carriage path. Then it swept toward Miss Baxter’s lodge and missed them by only a few feet.
Charlotte would have preferred to take another look at the woodpile, but even without the light beaming down from the wall, it would have been no easy feat for her to approach Miss Baxter’s house. But she’d prepared an alternative: She could try to get into the homes of Mrs. Crosby, Mr. Peters, and Dr. Robinson.
Of those three, Dr. Robinson’s cottage was her first choice: Mrs. Crosby and Mr. Peters both lived near Miss Baxter, but the physician’s place was in a different corner of the Garden, in the same huddle as Miss Fairchild and Miss Ellery’s lodge. For that reason she had asked Lord Ingram to keep an eye on Dr. Robinson’s whereabouts.
“The light coming down from the walls is passing too close to this spot. I need to move,” said Lord Ingram.
Theoretically they were free to stroll through the Garden, but still, as nighttime observers, it was better to remain unseen. And Charlotte had come up with a barely plausible excuse if they were caught by a Mr. Peters or a Miss Stoppard: They would claim to be looking for other spent firework shells, to eliminate the fire hazard they posed.
“Be careful, Holmes,” continued her lover. “And go back inside soon. Both of us don’t need to be out here.”
“You be careful, too,” she said.
He pulled her close, kissed her on the lips, and disappeared into the night.
She set out in the opposite direction, toward Dr. Robinson’s accommodations. Earlier, in the middle of the fireworks fiasco, houses had been lit and lanterns had swung about freely. But now the Garden was almost entirely dark.
It hid her, but also rendered her progress slow. The carriage path would have made for a far smoother walk, but another beam of light swept down its length just now, before streaking away toward Miss Baxter’s lodge again. She stole forward carefully. Two minutes later she barely avoided pitching face first into a sharp dip in the ground—and almost rolled her ankle on the very next step.
But even as she sat down to scoot on her bottom, she wished for greater darkness. Miss Fairchild and Miss Ellery’s lodge still had a lamp in a window. Its light was too far away to illuminate the terrain underfoot, but just might prove bright enough, up close, to let her be seen by the observer in the cottage next to her own, should she set herself before Dr. Robinson’s front door.
The lamp kept burning. She got up, stumbled again, and went on. The lamp kept burning. She stopped—she’d come as close as she dared to Dr. Robinson’s place. The lamp kept burning. She rubbed her gloved hands together. Despite the hot water bottle tucked into her shirt, her extremities were losing their warmth.
Hoofbeats. Wheels bumping and cutting. A carriage approached. Instantly two lanterns came to light, one on the north wall, the other on the south wall. The one on the south wall extinguished quickly. The other, however, remained lit, traveled to the western wall, and descended the ladder.
Its light illuminated the gate swinging open. Mr. Peters had returned. Three miles to the village and three miles back, he must have driven at a breakneck speed, kicked Mr. Young and the boy off the vehicle, and turned around with the same urgency.
In daylight, the carriage lane on the headlands was not treacherous. But at night, with a storm brewing, she would not have operated a vehicle at such speeds, not even if she had one lit like a Christmas tree. And what was his rush? Had he no interest in verifying her claim that A Tide of Hope, the boat Mrs. Watson had hired, was still in port?
Also, with his return, would Dr. Robinson head back home before Charlotte could have a look inside his cottage?
Her fingers dug deeper into the pockets of her mackintosh. She expelled a long breath, then another. The air still smelled faintly of minor explosions, underpinned by the tang of the sea. The waves, whipped by a turbulent air, walloped into the cliffs—crash, rumble, a sharp retreat like an indrawn breath before the next assault.
Darkness. Utter darkness. Someone had at last snuffed out that lamp.
Another beam of light shone down from the walls. When it dissipated, Charlotte moved.
Dr. Robinson’s cottage had been unlit this entire time—the tapers inside had likely been extinguished when he’d first stepped out to see what was going on. Mrs. Watson had left their cottage in enough of a hurry that she hadn’t locked the door. If Dr. Robinson had been in as much of a rush . . .
Gently, she turned the door handle. It gave. She slipped in, then closed the door just as gently—or at least as gently as she could with the wind threatening to blow it wide open again.
She took out her pocket lantern, let out a smidgeon of light, and looked about. This cottage seemed to be of the same design as the one she was currently occupying, but with a change to the orientation. In her cottage, the fireplace was to the right of the door, here it was to the left. Beyond the fireplace, curtains that hung on curved rods obscured an entire corner—an examination area, most likely.
On the same side as the fireplace but nearer to the door stood a large glass-front cabinet. She walked closer and set the pocket lantern almost directly against the panes to read the labels affixed to the items inside. On the shelf most convenient for a man of Dr. Robinson’s height were arrayed supplies such as carbolic acid, chloroform, and other antiseptics and anesthetics necessary for surgical procedures. Other shelves held tablets for reducing fever, tonics for the stomach, strychnine for those with heart problems, tinctures for pain and sleeplessness such as laudanum and morphine, and even a stimulant like cocaine.