By this time, Lord Ingram had caught up with her. So had Mr. Peters.
“Miss Holmes, are you planning to disturb Mr. Craddock?” he asked with a tilt of his head.
Before he’d threatened Mrs. Watson and Charlotte on the wall, their first night at the Garden, Mr. Peters’s boyishly good-looking face had appeared convivial and occasionally mischievous—Mrs. Watson would have characterized that mischief as malicious. Now there was no trace of playfulness—malicious or not—left in his countenance and no round cheeks or mop of hair could soften the iciness of his gaze.
“Mr. Craddock does not observe his retreat strictly.” Charlotte made her counterargument. “He was out and about, wasn’t he, the night of the fireworks?”
“Therefore?”
“Therefore I am going to inform him of my deep interest in his welfare. I don’t believe I will be allowed to return to London unless he proves himself to be in good condition.”
She pulled out a folded piece of paper from her reticule and slipped it under Mr. Craddock’s door. Then she headed toward Miss Baxter’s lodge.
Mr. Peters caught up with her on the lodge’s veranda. “Miss Baxter will not receive you.”
“Perfect, as I am only leaving a calling card, now that we are back.”
She folded a corner of one of Sherlock Holmes’s cards and left it under the door.
“Aren’t you going to leave one for Miss Fairchild, too?”
Normal rules of card-leaving stipulated the acknowledgment of one’s hostess.
Charlotte rose and turned around. “Would that help me depart here sooner?”
Mr. Peters said nothing. He glanced at Lord Ingram, who stood against the handrail of the steps leading up to the veranda, two steps behind him.
“Mrs. Crosby is still not back yet?” asked Lord Ingram.
A pause. “No,” answered Mr. Peters quietly.
“Miss Baxter is lucky to have her,” said Charlotte.
Mr. Peters regarded her with narrowed eyes.
Charlotte headed toward the kitchen garden. “Does Miss Baxter know what’s happening outside?”
Mr. Peters fell in step beside her. “Yes.”
Charlotte took Lord Ingram’s arm—he was on her other side—and waited, in case Mr. Peters had anything else to say. But the young man only glanced toward the western wall, his jaw set.
He was afraid. This was the first time she’d sensed fear in him. Did this mean that Miss Baxter was also afraid?
“The campers arrived mid-morning,” he said eventually. “And looked around for some time before they erected the first tent.”
The “campers” had to have come on the overnight train. De Lacey had given no hint that such a thing was being planned. Had it been decided only after he had called on Charlotte the second time yesterday?
But why? Lord Ingram had asked earlier.
Why indeed.
They reached the shade hut, under which Lord Ingram had stood long hours the night of the fireworks. The hut’s two support pillars in the back were in fact two small storage sheds. Charlotte opened the door on the support shed to the north, took out a long, sharp wooden stake meant for building trellises, and marched toward the kitchen garden.
Mrs. Steele, who stood at the edge of the kitchen garden, said from underneath her creamy lace parasol, “Why, hullo, Miss Holmes. Hullo, Mr. Hudson. You came back on a lovely d—”
She leaped back in surprise as Charlotte struck the stake directly into the kitchen garden’s tilled, loosened soil. “Miss Holmes, what are you doing?”
“How do you do, Mrs. Steele? And yes, indeed, since we must come back, we’ve at least come on a lovely day,” said Charlotte, pushing the stake further into the ground. “By the way, Mrs. Steele, have you heard the local wisdom that a body tossed off these cliffs would wash up in due time in Fetlock Cove not too far from here?”
“Ah, no, I’m—I’m sure I’ve never heard of that.”
Mrs. Steele, her eyes bulging a little, stared at Mr. Peters, as if he could furnish an explanation for Charlotte’s macabre question.
“I have, from multiple sources.” Charlotte pulled up the stake and sank it into a different spot. “Therefore, if one wants to get rid of a body, one cannot shove it into the sea. But a vegetable patch might not be a bad place for it, don’t you think? Much easier to dig up a vegetable patch than an unimproved spot of headland.”
Mrs. Steele’s lips flapped. Once again she stared at Mr. Peters, who glowered at Charlotte but didn’t say anything.
Charlotte was about to pull the stake up again when Lord Ingram said, “Allow me, Miss Holmes. I found this in the storage shed.”
This was a hammer. He struck the stake straighter and deeper into the ground, before pulling it up and repeating the action two feet away. Memories of long-ago summers came to mind, halcyon days when she used to watch him drive small stakes into the ground, and then mark the peripheries of his dig by tying strings to those stakes. The man always knew his way around a hammer.
“Excellent work, Mr. Hudson.”
He smiled at her. “I have dealt with a kitchen garden or two in my time.”
“Indeed, I am very fond of your kitchen garden. And no disrespect to the Garden of Hermopolis, of course, but truly your fruit trees are vastly superior.”
“Do fruit trees mean something different these days?” Mrs. Steele asked her husband, who had just arrived at the vegetable garden, and responded to her question with a look of thorough confusion.
She took him by the hand. “Let’s go. I’m going to ask the campers why they couldn’t set up their tents a mile south or a mile north, rather than exactly in front of our gate.”
Mr. Steele didn’t look at all eager to accompany his wife but allowed himself to be led toward the gate.
“Before you leave, Mr. Steele, Mrs. Steele,” Charlotte called out, “when was the last time you saw Mr. Craddock?”
“Not since he went to see his friends before Christmas,” said Mr. Steele. “Why, is anything amiss with him?”
Mrs. Steele too, turned around.
“No,” said Charlotte. “I just realized that I haven’t met him, that’s all. I’ve met everyone here except him.”
Mr. Peters’s countenance grew even darker.
Charlotte was never going to omit him in her questioning. “Mr. Peters, when was the last time you saw Mr. Craddock?”
“Three nights ago.”
“It was dark that night. Did you see his face?”
Mr. Peters’s voice became ever brusquer. “No.”
Dr. Robinson sauntered to the edge of the plot, glanced around, and said, “Oh, have we already started spring planting?”
* * *
“I hear you are a sworn enemy of Moriarty, Miss Fairchild,” said Mrs. Watson.
With Miss Ellery having gone with Dr. Robinson to see what was happening around the kitchen garden, Mrs. Watson invited Miss Fairchild for a walk. John Spackett, who had just closed the gate after the Steeles went out, opened it for them again.
The two women rounded south of the compound. Mrs. Watson kept her gaze on the uneven ground underfoot—she did not want to add a bad stumble to her list of troubles. Miss Fairchild, however, glanced several times behind them, at the men who were still putting up one last tent, her expression not so much one of fear as one of consternation, as if she faced not agents of Moriarty, but an infestation of weevils.