A tiny bit of light spread. Miss Baxter had brought a pocket lantern the shutter of which she raised slightly. She looked rather ghostly in this light. Charlotte imagined she herself did not appear very different, a somewhat chubbier ghost.
She took the chair next to Miss Baxter’s and handed her a hot water bottle, keeping the other one for herself. With Mrs. Crosby gone, fires hadn’t been lit in her cottage. It was cold and damp.
“Thank you,” said Miss Baxter. “And we meet again.”
Charlotte nodded. She hadn’t dropped off only a calling card for Miss Baxter this afternoon. Underneath the calling card had been a carefully folded note. I may have glimpsed something in the magazines you wished me to read and would like a meeting. But first we must have a different meeting. I noticed last time that your parlor window was open a crack to let in fresh air. Please make sure of the same tonight.
She wanted theater. And between the two of them they had mounted a veritable spectacle.
“Did you not go a little too far, though, Miss Holmes?” murmured Miss Baxter. “Even knowing what you meant for us to portray, I was still not best pleased with you.”
“If it would make you feel better, I don’t know where the new baby is and would never have been able to threaten you with that knowledge.”
Miss Baxter sighed. “My poor child. But you didn’t come to talk about my children.”
“No, I am here because you approached me to be your ally.”
With immense subtlety, because the risks involved were those of life and death.
“You have accepted then?” Miss Baxter’s lips barely moved as she uttered the question.
It became Charlotte’s turn to sigh. “I would have liked to decline, but I do need an ally. And, well, once I saw what you wanted me to see, I could no longer refuse you, could I?”
She had first wondered whether Mr. Finch wasn’t somehow involved when Miss Baxter had used the same story that Lady Ingram had. Granted the story had been Miss Baxter’s first, but the effect was the same: to make Charlotte think of Mr. Finch.
Then, as it turned out, the small notices in the magazines Miss Baxter kept in her private collection, the ones Mr. Mears had copied down and sent Charlotte via cable, had been instantly familiar: They were but a slightly more complicated version of the cipher Mr. Finch had used to inform her, in the most general of terms, of his well-being and whereabouts.
The man for whom this woman had risked so much was none other than her half brother.
Charlotte sighed again. She didn’t think what she felt could be called emotional, but it was a far stronger sentiment than what she normally experienced. The woman before her had known fear, anguish, and sacrifice on a scale she could scarcely imagine—and remained unbowed.
“Did you meet my brother because he worked for your father?”
Miss Baxter shook her head, her expression softening a little. “We met because of fate. He went to work for my father after my father caught me heavily pregnant, even though I’d left not only my grandmother’s house, but the Garden, in order to hide. It was by the grace of God that Myron wasn’t there the day my father came.
“Before that happened, we had discussed very seriously what we would do if we were snared, together or singly. From the very beginning, I told him that I would not be able to endure captivity, not even for the sake of my own child. And he told me that if I were caught by myself, then I should leave my father however I could, and he would bring our child back to me.”
Charlotte remembered her brother at their last meeting, a taciturn man whose calm demeanor revealed little of his experiences in life. She’d believed then that he had joined Moriarty’s organizations because of what it promised to a man of illegitimate birth—and had later become disillusioned and left. That would have been difficult enough. But to have chosen his path, knowing that he was entering an abyss of danger . . .
I hope he is all right and I hope he does not regret everything he has had to endure for me.
“Mr. Marbleton said Mr. Finch wanted information on das Phantomschloss. Whatever else the place may be, is it also where your child is?”
“Yes.” A rueful laughter emerged from Miss Baxter. “We knew, when we realized that my father had double-crossed his paymaster, that we wouldn’t be able to use that against him until our son is safely back with us. But in my euphoria, and knowing that the coup I’d helped Madame Desrosiers plan was on the horizon, I got carried away. I wanted another child, a child I wouldn’t need to give up, the thought of whom wouldn’t always bring with it a stab of pain.”
She hugged the hot water bottle Charlotte had given her close to her chest. “Every day I think of our reunion. But with each passing day, I dread it a little more. He has never met Myron and he would have forgotten me. What would I say to him? I had to leave you so that I could unseat your grandfather, so that we could all live free in the future? Children do not understand the idea of the future. They only understand now. Today. And we haven’t been there for any today that he can remember.
“And the coup on which I’d pinned so much of my hope? We had to hasten it because we were in danger of being discovered, which led to it being only partially successful. When Monsieur Plantier, Madame Desrosiers’s brother, came to see me last November, under the guise of being the new solicitor from my father, we had some difficult choices to make and I don’t know that we chose altogether correctly.”
The light flickered on her barely lit face. She looked translucent, carven. “Perhaps we should have killed him. Perhaps we should have demanded my son in exchange for his freedom. We were all hoping for the ideal solution, for his paymaster to get rid of him. But without the access Myron had given up when he became a fugitive, even though we knew how my father cheated his master, we couldn’t obtain evidence.”
Charlotte held on tighter to her own hot water bottle. “The Marbletons will be disappointed when they realize that he has no evidence.”
“No more disappointed than we are.”
She spoke softly, but her words were heavy with long years of striving that had yet to bear fruit.
They fell silent.
Perhaps because of the near complete darkness inside the house, the sounds of the coast were muffled. No rumble of the sea crashing against the cliffs, no howling of night gales tearing into roofs and rattling windowpanes. It was so quiet that she could hear the hissing of the tiny flame inside Miss Baxter’s pocket lantern, and the sound of her boots sliding across the carpet.
Except Miss Baxter had not moved.
There was another person in Mrs. Crosby’s parlor.
“Is Mr. Finch here tonight?”
“Yes,” came a man’s voice from an unseen corner of the room, a rather unwilling voice.
“Please don’t mind him,” said Miss Baxter. “He’s still peeved that I never told him I was with child again.”
“You said I couldn’t be here because Craddock had seen me before. I’d never have known Craddock was dead if Miss Fairchild wasn’t desperate for someone the Marbletons had already vouched for to pretend that he was still alive.”
He did sound unhappy.
“I told you, Father had already regained his freedom by then and could find out any day that I was involved with the coup. It was not safe for you to be near me. Besides, I didn’t know you were the new Mr. Craddock. How was I supposed to tell you?” Miss Baxter took a deep breath. “Anyway, I apologize, Miss Holmes. Your brother and I will argue to death on the matter later, in our own time. What were we discussing?”