Charlotte looked at Lord Ingram. “Sir, I believe you heard Mr. Craddock’s voice the night of the fireworks?”
“It was about one thirty in the morning. Mr. Peters was guarding Miss Baxter’s lodge from the veranda. He called out ‘Who’s there?’ A man answered ‘Craddock.’ Mr. Peters told him to go home. It was too dark for me to see whether Mr. Craddock did as he was asked, but nothing more was said between them.”
Lord Ingram set a finger on top of a walking stick in the umbrella stand—not his, but one with a carved-eagle’s head handle that purportedly belong to the unseen Sherlock Holmes. He picked up the stick and set it back down gently. “Later, after Mr. Peters and Mrs. Crosby drove out, I climbed up to the ramparts to see the direction they were headed. A man came up after me.
“At some point during the night I’d seen all the other male residents of the Garden, Mr. Peters and the stable boy close up, Mr. Steele, Mr. McEwan, and Dr. Robinson from a distance. But this man, though his face was covered, didn’t seem to be any of them. At the time I thought he was Mr. Craddock. Assuming that we’ve been told the truth about how many men currently reside in the Garden, I still believe that to be correct.”
Livia didn’t know whether she ought to be reassured or even more anxious. “If you are right, then he was out and about as of two nights ago.”
“If I am right. But I may be right about only the most superficial aspects concerning Mr. Craddock.”
All the same, this meant that Lord Ingram was certain about the exchange he’d heard between Mr. Peters and Mr. Craddock and, by a process of elimination, he was equally sure that the man who’d been admonished by Mr. Peters to go home had later showed up on the wall.
Livia pushed away from the desk and settled herself next to her sister on the window seat. “Maybe—maybe it will turn out similarly to your search for Miss Baxter, Charlotte. Maybe you’ll return to the Garden of Hermopolis and Mr. Craddock would be right there.”
Charlotte didn’t say anything. After a moment, she proffered an envelope to Lord Ingram. “Here’s a picture of Mr. Craddock that de Lacey left for us. Does this look like the man you saw on the wall?”
Lord Ingram came forward, took the envelope, and examined the photograph inside. He frowned. “The man I saw had a muffler drawn across his face, so I’m not able to say with any certainty whether the two are the same. Still, the man in the photograph . . . Put it this way: if I came across this man, I would be wary. I wasn’t as alarmed about the man on the wall.”
He handed the picture to Livia and she saw what he meant. The subject of the photograph had a sharp, opportunistic look in his eyes that made her feel uncomfortable.
Lord Ingram, ever considerate, took the envelope to Mrs. Watson too. Mrs. Watson put down the poker in her hand and rubbed the space between her brows. “Are you implying, my lord, that the man you saw was an imposter?”
“I don’t know enough to suggest that, especially as I have no idea whom I saw on the wall. But with de Lacey claiming something isn’t right with Mr. Craddock, the idea has crossed my mind.”
“It is also possible that Mr. Craddock decided to throw in his lot with Miss Baxter. But even if that were the case, he still should have reported about the night of the fireworks,” said Charlotte.
“In his place, I would have,” said Mrs. Watson. “I would not have done anything to draw Moriarty’s attention.”
Charlotte rose, went to the sideboard, and retrieved a newspaper. “Livia might not recognize this, but it is the gazette we bought at a local newsagent’s. I took it with me to Miss Baxter’s place so that she could take a picture with it, to prove the picture’s recent vintage.
“When Miss Baxter saw the gazette, she suggested I read it. I went through it twice and the only thing of note was a small notice that said I’m glad to see you well. And that you are carrying on as usual.
“We don’t know whether that was Mr. Craddock’s means of making his reports, but let’s suppose that it was. Let’s further suppose that Miss Baxter observed the regular occurrence of such a small notice and realized that should she rid herself of Mr. Craddock, she could make it appear as if he were still around, still submitting his reports.”
Charlotte gave the gazette to Livia and pointed at the exact spot for the small notice.
Livia bit her lower lip. “But why would Miss Baxter get rid of Mr. Craddock? She didn’t get rid of Mrs. Felton.”
“Perhaps Mr. Craddock learned something about Miss Baxter that she did not wish her father to know,” said Charlotte, sitting down again on the window seat.
Mrs. Watson sucked in a breath, her expression almost comical. “You don’t mean Miss Baxter reverted to her habit of collecting unsuitable fiancés?”
Charlotte looked toward Lord Ingram. Livia and Mrs. Watson’s gaze followed.
“You know the answer, my lord?” asked Mrs. Watson uncertainly.
Lord Ingram’s face seemed to color. “I have guesses, but I would prefer for Holmes to broach the subject.”
Charlotte nodded. “I see our thoughts have progressed in the same general direction. Let me ask you, my lord, on your way to Cornwall, what did you suspect we’d find out?”
“That Miss Baxter was dead—or at best, that she’d left the Garden of Hermopolis of her own will.”
“Did you think she was in the lodge that was putatively hers?”
“No.”
“When did you change your mind?”
Livia heard a crinkling sound—she was crushing a corner of the gazette in her hand. When Mrs. Watson had told the story, it was clear that even when she called on Miss Baxter, at first she suspected that she might be meeting a substitute, a hired actress. But Lord Ingram—if Livia caught Charlotte’s drift, Lord Ingram had shed his original theory well before that.
Charlotte, too.
What had they seen?
“I began having second thoughts when it turned out that Miss Baxter’s lodge was still tightly guarded after Mr. Young, the fireworks-igniting troublemaker, had been dispatched back to the village,” said Lord Ingram, his head bent, his chin between thumb and forefinger. “I became convinced that someone was in it when a person, possibly Mrs. Crosby, began running back and forth between her house and Miss Baxter’s.”
“All that running would indeed have been unnecessary if they’d been guarding an empty house,” said Charlotte. Softly, she pried open Livia’s still clenched fingers from the gazette. “Shortly after midnight, when Mrs. Crosby claimed that Miss Baxter was sleeping too soundly to be awakened, and refused to allow anyone to carry her out—while flames licked at the wall of her lodge—it seemed more likely than ever that there was no Miss Baxter inside and that all Mrs. Crosby and her cohorts guarded was the paper-thin fiction of her presence. But…”
She inclined her head at Mrs. Watson. “Ma’am, if you’ll forgive me, I did not tell you about my visit to Dr. Robinson’s cottage the night of the fireworks. This was after everyone in the Garden had been sent home and Lord Ingram and I went out again. While I was inside Dr. Robinson’s cottage, he came back.”
Mrs. Watson emitted a small cry.