A Ruse of Shadows, page 16
Ten more minutes passed. Mrs. Watson, on her feet, her hands braced against the top of a chair, tried to breathe deeply and not imagine the beautiful Mrs. Claiborne in mortal peril.
Or herself, in the midst of a trap.
The door opened. Mrs. Watson gasped, but the young woman walking in, dressed unobtrusively in a light brown jacket-and-skirt set, was not Mrs. Claiborne, only Miss Charlotte.
“I saw the note you left in our hotel suite,” said she. “I take it Mrs. Claiborne has not come yet?”
Mrs. Watson gave a tight shake of her head. “I’ve been here since quarter to four.”
“Let me make some inquiries,” said Miss Charlotte, and left the room.
When she returned, the tea Mrs. Watson had poured for her had already cooled to room temperature, but the results of her investigation were even more tepid: No reception clerk or server had seen anyone of Mrs. Claiborne’s description this afternoon.
To distract herself, Mrs. Watson requested an account of Miss Charlotte’s day—and had to ask the dear girl to repeat herself several times because her concentration kept slipping.
Time froze, the second hand taking an eon to complete a journey around the clock face. And yet time also surged, like floodwater bursting forth: Every time Mrs. Watson looked up, another ten or fifteen minutes would have passed, with Mrs. Claiborne neither honoring the appointment she herself had set nor delivering any excuses for her failure to attend.
At quarter to six, a server came in. With many apologies, she informed them that the next party who had reserved the private room would be arriving soon.
Mrs. Watson’s head throbbed. The slow progression of their hackney, caught in the usual congested evening traffic, did not help matters: It gave her too much time to examine the tide of pedestrians for a sign of Mrs. Claiborne, while wondering whether the latter was even now headed to the hotel from some other direction.
She forced herself to think of the bigger picture. “What if Lord Bancroft was wrong in his assessment that Mr. Underwood’s personal enemies were responsible for his disappearance? What if it was about the work they did for the crown and the secrets they’d sold against the crown’s interest? And what if Mrs. Claiborne wasn’t as ignorant concerning these men’s work as she claimed to be? She could very well be in as much danger as Mr. Underwood.”
But before Miss Charlotte could respond, an even wilder possibility struck Mrs. Watson. “What if I’m worried over nothing? What if Mrs. Claiborne and Mr. Underwood are in this together, the two of them? Maybe this whole thing is simply Mr. Underwood wishing to get away from Lord Bancroft without making the latter suspicious that he’d been abandoned. Maybe this song and dance that Mrs. Claiborne has put on is all so that she, too, could disappear without anyone thinking that she orchestrated it herself.”
A placid Miss Charlotte nodded. “There is merit in that notion.”
Mrs. Watson did not typically comment on Miss Charlotte’s implementation of fashion; Miss Charlotte returned that courtesy by not evaluating Mrs. Watson’s every speculation concerning their investigations. Therefore, if she stated outright that a concept had merit, then it had merit.
Mrs. Watson’s heart fluttered—there was nothing better than a compliment from an expert. “In that case, I have an even more outlandish idea. What if the depth of Mrs. Claiborne’s knowledge concerning Mr. Underwood’s secrets isn’t the only thing Mrs. Claiborne lied to us about? She was Lord Bancroft’s mistress, after all. What if the love affair with Mr. Underwood had been by her design—or Lord Bancroft’s?”
“You mean, she might have seduced Mr. Underwood very artfully while making him believe the entire time that he’d been the one in pursuit?” murmured Miss Charlotte.
“Precisely. And it was not for romance or even curiosity but at Lord Bancroft’s behest, so he could keep a better eye on his chief lieutenant.”
“Diabolical,” pronounced Miss Charlotte. “Not to mention, that would go a good way toward explaining why Mrs. Claiborne, of all people, undertook conjugal visits to Lord Bancroft.”
They had not asked that question of Mrs. Claiborne—it would have been far too indelicate—but Mrs. Watson had not failed to notice the downright peculiar arrangement.
Maybe they only exchanged information chastely during those conjugal visits. But if Mrs. Claiborne was truly, at heart, the old-fashioned woman she claimed to be, one who longed for nothing so much as married bliss, then it would have been wiser not to spend time alone with Lord Bancroft.
Unless it had been Mr. Underwood’s idea and he trusted his fiancée completely.
Even so, Mrs. Watson wouldn’t put it past Lord Bancroft to take advantage of a beautiful woman. Out of his rampant self-regard, he might not force Mrs. Claiborne into anything, but he could very well make advances and not take kindly to rejections.
Mrs. Watson rubbed her temples. Too many thoughts collided inside her skull; her head pounded like a drum. “Now I don’t know whether I ought to be sympathetic toward her or extremely wary of her.”
The slowly fading light of the day limned Miss Charlotte’s soft features, a profile worthy of a cameo brooch. “We can be both, my dear Mrs. Watson,” she said quietly. “We can be both.”
* * *
The decrepit-looking woman shuffled down the steps carrying a large bucket of water. At the bottom of the steps was a short, narrow corridor with six padlocked doors, three on the left, three on the right.
On the floor beside each door—except one—was a wooden tray that could slide in and out of a narrow opening in the door. At the sound of the old woman’s approach, five trays slid out, each holding an empty wooden water bowl and an empty wooden food bowl, with a wooden spoon inside.
With a groan, the old woman bent down and retrieved the food bowls. Those were hers to wash. But really, did a dungeon need clean bowls?
Once she had stacked the bowls and the spoons, she ladled fresh water into the water bowls.
“Bonjour, madame,” said the voice of a young man from behind the last door on the right. “Vous avez l’heure?”
The old woman did not have a watch on her, but even if she did, she wouldn’t tell him the time. What good was knowing that for a prisoner? He only asked so that they would strike up a conversation, however short.
And she had been warned against speaking to the prisoners. She did not want to be let go from her position. She brought water and food. She emptied a few piss buckets. There were far more difficult ways to make a living.
The young man switched to a different language, presumably still asking about time.
She continued to ignore him. Eventually he quieted.
The old woman proceeded to the first door on the left. This one didn’t have anyone inside but led down to a cellar. She’d heard that sometimes old wines fetched exorbitant prices, a mountain of gold.
But she had better not think about gold that did not belong to her. That way lay dismissal.
The old woman placed the used bowls and utensils into her now-empty water bucket, slowly climbed up the stairs, and locked the heavy door behind her.
Fifteen
“It’s so much warmer here than in Paris,” said Miss Redmayne.
The sun was behind rooftops, sinking toward the horizon. But stored heat from cobblestone streets, which had baked all day, rose and swirled.
Livia sweltered.
No one loved heat more than she did. But after Bernadine became Lord Bancroft’s hostage, Provence’s high register on the mercury began to make her feel parched. Fevered, at times.
She had been astonished to receive Miss Redmayne’s cable, informing her that she would venture south on Le Train Bleu, the express service that linked Paris and the Côte d’Azur. Except instead of going all the way to Nice, she would get off at Marseille and take another train to come to Aix-en-Provence.
Livia was thrilled to learn from Miss Redmayne that Lord Ingram wasn’t really injured after all. The two young women commiserated over their worries for everyone. And Livia couldn’t be more grateful that with everything else Miss Redmayne had to look after, she’d found the time to travel seventeen hours by rail to Aix-en-Provence, so that Livia could have a detailed account of what was going on in Paris.
But this couldn’t be the sole reason for Miss Redmayne’s long journey, simply to reassure Livia that everything had been done for Bernadine, up to and including the presence of the mysterious young Fontainebleu.
And when Miss Redmayne suggested that they dine at a place she had heard about, somewhere off the beaten path, Livia became even more convinced that she was up to something.
Miss Redmayne’s venue of choice took them north of the Cours Mirabeau, on streets that after a while acquired a noticeable upward slant. They found themselves in a small square where, turning around, they beheld the entire town spread out beneath them, all tall trees and ochre roofs, bathed in sunset.
Miss Redmayne asked her way to a tiny restaurant where the wife cooked, the husband served, and there were all of six tables, arranged in a little courtyard that had lanterns hung in the trees.
And there, waiting for them, was a man Livia immediately recognized. Forêt, the butler at the Parisian hôtel particulier that had hosted Sherlock Holmes and company when they had been in France last December to burgle Château Vaudrieu.
But Miss Redmayne introduced Forêt as Lieutenant Atwood. Livia shook his hand in astonishment. He smiled and told her that he was related to Lord Ingram on his mother’s side and that he was pleased to offer his assistance to their endeavor in Aix-en-Provence.
No explanation was given for his former identity as a very French, albeit very good, butler.
They drank a young red wine and ate grilled aubergines, stuffed tomatoes, and chicken that had been braised with rosemary, olives, and anchovies. Lieutenant Atwood, who was apparently stationed in India, of all places, offered anecdotes of life on the Subcontinent. Miss Redmayne found some humorous incidents from her time as a medical student that would not turn anyone’s stomach. And Livia, after listening without quite understanding what was happening—or why—for a solid quarter hour, eventually joined in and gave what she thought to be a rather rousing account of her voyages this past summer, especially that of the tackling of a murderer aboard the RMS Provence.
The night cooled enough to become pleasantly breezy. The stars were out; the lanterns in the trees twinkled. The entire courtyard hummed with conversation and laughter. Livia, slightly inebriated, her stomach uncharacteristically full of cake and ice cream at the end of the meal, thought it one of the most delightful evenings she’d ever spent.
But she still had no idea why they’d met Lieutenant Atwood.
And she said so to Miss Redmayne as they stood on the railway platform, waiting for the train that would take Miss Redmayne back to Marseille, where she would catch the northbound express service to Paris at half past midnight.
Miss Redmayne glanced at the gate of the platform, outside which Lieutenant Atwood waited to escort Livia to her hotel. “He is in charge of operations in Aix-en-Provence, and Miss Charlotte had a note she wanted me to give to him.”
A note so important that Miss Redmayne had come all this way…
Mr. Marbleton. Did Livia dare let herself believe that Mr. Marbleton was really here, that every day she passed underneath his window?
Without quite meaning to, Livia threw her arms around Miss Redmayne. “Thank you for coming. Thank you for all your help!”
Miss Redmayne hugged her back fiercely. “It will be all right, Miss Olivia. You’ll see. Everything will be all right.”
* * *
Mrs. Claiborne’s town house, while cooler at night, remained completely airless. Charlotte fanned herself with a small notepad that Lord Ingram had brought. Her lover, meanwhile, bent over the typewriter in the house’s small study, scanning the row of keys in the light of a pocket lantern.
She loved observing him in a state of concentration. When they’d been children spending summer afternoons together at his minor digs—or to be completely accurate, when he had been excavating and she had been his uninvited guest—she used to look up from the book she was reading and watch him brush away encrusted dirt from all kinds of artefacts.
And then her gaze would travel to the forearms exposed by his rolled-up sleeves, the triangle of skin at the open collar of his shirt, and then back to his very serious, almost frowning face, this boy who radiated a palpable appeal she couldn’t quite understand but responded to in all-too-visceral a fashion.
For years she waited for that fascination to go away. Spending time alongside him, propositioning him when she’d been just a bit short of seventeen, even their long, fruitful correspondence—she did everything to gratify herself, but also in the logical expectation that familiarity would eventually lead, if not to outright contempt, as in the case of her parents, then at least to tedium.
Little could she have predicted that sometimes familiarity led to a more profound appreciation, or that their friendship would prove to be one of the great anchors of her life.
She studied his profile, something that at last she no longer needed to do surreptitiously. He was not in disguise, the contours of his young visage bold and sharp-hewn. Over the summer, his hair had grown longer and brushed over his collar in a way that made her want to place her hand at his nape to tickle the center of her palm.
“We are alone in a dark house, and we are not doing anything scandalous,” she murmured. “I am consternated.”
Her lover glanced at her, set down his pocket lantern, pulled her to him, and kissed her—but only a skimming of the tip of his tongue against hers. Then he pulled back and said, “Why consign scandalous acts to the dark? They can and should be committed in good light.”
Charlotte batted her eyelashes. “Is that a promise, Ash?”
He smiled, his teeth a flash of excellent enamel. “That, Holmes, is practically a threat.”
Charlotte smiled, then shook her head. She wouldn’t call it an empty threat, but given how infrequently they had been in the same place at the same time of late, and how much of that precious little time had been consumed by non-amatory concerns…
“And you are right,” said he, bent over the typewriter again. “This is the device that produced the notes Bancroft sent you.”
It made sense that Mrs. Claiborne had been the one to type up Lord Bancroft’s letters, as she had been the one to visit him at Ravensmere, and prisoners there were typically not allowed to communicate with the outside world.
Like Mrs. Watson, Charlotte did not trust Mrs. Claiborne entirely—or much at all. But if Mrs. Claiborne had lied about her flight, at least she hadn’t made the elementary mistake of still lurking about in the same house.
They had found an unmade bed in her boudoir, a half-finished glass of water on the nightstand, and half a bag of provisions in the kitchen—all consistent with a hasty, unplanned departure. And other than the attic and the coal cellar, all the other interior doors had been unlocked, which had made the search relatively straightforward—and Lord Ingram had made short work of the few padlocks.
Mrs. Claiborne was not here. And neither was Mr. Underwood, dead or alive.
“Shall we go then?” asked her lover.
They still had other places they needed to be.
On their way out, the final lines of his prewritten letter came to mind. Or maybe they’d never decamped but remained like a trio of country cousins in the recesses of a ballroom, awkwardly yet patiently waiting for the more prominent guests to leave so that they might have a chance to at last pay their respects to the host.
The man stared at the closing door.
The painting was finished some time ago, and he suspected that she knew it.
Where did that leave him then?
She had felt his astonishment and hers as a single reverberation. His, because he realized what it could be read as; hers, that it had come so early in a reunion.
Their circumstances dictated that they spent far more time apart than together. Upon partings that preceded long separations, they had made various confessions and pledges. But by tacit agreement, their subsequent letters never referred to those words of commitment. Then, after weeks or months apart, when they met again in person, that tacit agreement somehow held, a garment for their sentiments, so that they did not need to bare too often the naked heart.
But this had been an instance of exposed emotions on his part, when hers still had on not only corset and combination but a full promenade gown and a pair of gloves besides.
Perhaps he had felt mortified to be unshielded. She could not quite explain it, but she had been almost as self-conscious about her state of emotional overdress, her desire to shed a few layers running smack into her inexperience at this kind of disrobing.
She did not do that here either but asked a lesser question. “You haven’t said much about your Society summer.”
As little as a year ago, he had been dead set on maintaining the outward appearance of a man who had achieved all the mandated markers of manhood—marriage, children, property, and the respect of his peers. Now, even if his personal popularity had not diminished, he was in the curious and uncomfortable position of being a divorced man, one who had no intention to marry again.
He set his hand on the small of her back to steer her away from the sharp corners of a console table. “It’s odd, I will not deny that. But…in a way it’s not as discomfiting as I thought it would be. You know what I’m sometimes reminded of?”
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