“What will you do then?” asked Mrs. Treadles, her fingers now clutched tightly together in her lap, around a white handkerchief.
“We will try a different course of inquiry,” said Holmes calmly. “My lord, I can hear the newspaper boy’s progress on Upper Baker Street. Will you be so kind as to fetch a copy for us?”
He did and was back in the parlor in two minutes flat, still scanning the paper, an early-afternoon edition printed around noon, shortly after the daily meteorological forecasts had been received and typeset. “No accounts of sensational murders or arrested Scotland Yard inspectors. I also don’t see any mention of Mr. Longstead, Cousins Manufacturing, or indeed anything to do with Inspector Treadles’s current difficulties.”
He looked up. “But one minute, Mrs. Treadles. What is Mr. Longstead’s address in town?”
“31 Cold Street.”
At the answer, something flickered across Holmes’s face. An almost unnoticeable change, and yet for her, this counted as genuine surprise.
His fingertips tingled. “The house next door got a mention. ‘A disturbance erupted at 33 Cold Street in the early hours of the morning. The police were called for. The house was apparently unoccupied and the nature of the disturbance has not yet been disclosed. It is not known whether the events of the night had anything to do with the nuisance of fireworks in the district previously reported in these pages.’”
“What was the nature of the gathering at Mr. Longstead’s house?” inquired Holmes.
Mrs. Treadles twisted her handkerchief between her fingers. “It was a dinner, followed by a dance. A coming-out soiree for Miss Longstead, his niece.”
The London Season ran from late spring to high summer; it had no definitive beginning but ended absolutely before the first day of grouse shooting. Granted, the season was for the Upper Ten Thousand, but Lord Ingram was under the impression that the merely wealthy emulated their “betters” and set their social calendar to similar dates. Besides, the weather in May, June, and July was simply more conducive to merrymaking.
A coming-out soiree, in town, in December—he wouldn’t go so far as to say it wasn’t done, but it wasn’t done often.
Mrs. Treadles echoed his thoughts. “A bit of a strange time to be having a debutante party. I would have organized a New Year’s ball, instead of a dance a few days before Christmas. Mr. Longstead was introducing his niece not to scions of the landed gentry, for whom leisure is a mark of gentlemanliness, but to families similar to his own, the fathers and sons of which were both needed at their businesses the next day to see to the closing of the year.”
“How long did the gathering last?” asked Holmes.
“That I don’t know. I felt a headache coming on after midnight and by one o’clock I was in my carriage, driving away. At the time I wouldn’t have been surprised if the dancing went on until dawn—Miss Longstead looked splendid and the guests were enthusiastic. But as I reached home, a fog was rolling in. So it’s possible—perhaps even likely—that the party dispersed not too long after my departure.”
“Were you aware of anything unusual going on either at Mr. Longstead’s gathering or in the house next door?”
Mrs. Treadles dropped her eyes to her handkerchief and shook her head. “No.”
“And of course you never saw Inspector Treadles at any point that night?”
“No.”
Lord Ingram glanced at Holmes. He did not have her observational powers. But he didn’t need observational powers of such magnitude to doubt Mrs. Treadles’s last two answers.
It was far more difficult to tell when Holmes lied, because nothing else about her changed as she shifted from truth to fiction, not tone, not posture, not eye movements or facial flickers. Part of it, he was sure, was because of her copious mental capacity, which easily accommodated the calculations and calibrations required for lying that strained the ordinary mind.
Another part, and he wondered how large this part might be, was attributable to the fact that she was impervious to the dictates of moral absolutes. Like most everyone else, she must have been told again and again that lying was bad. Unlike with most everyone else, it had left little impression on her and she viewed telling the truth as a situational, rather than an ethical, choice.
Mrs. Treadles, on the other hand, lacked both Holmes’s talent for fibbing and her moral fluidity, and was clearly uncomfortable with her most recent declarative answers.
“I’d mentioned that I thought my husband was out of town, not expected for some more time,” she went on. “In hindsight, he must have returned to London at some point during the night, if not sooner. Perhaps he entered the house neighboring Mr. Longstead’s—I have no way of knowing. I can’t tell you anything about his movements—or the rationales for them.”
People who lie often say too much. With Mrs. Treadles’s additional explanation, Lord Ingram grew more convinced that she could tell them something important on both accounts, if she chose to.
Or was forced to.
Holmes took a sip of her tea and did not say anything.
Silence fell.
Over the years, Lord Ingram had experienced a great deal of silence in Holmes’s presence. In fact, he was certain that if a tally were made, their acquaintance would turn out to consist of more silence than speech.
This was, however, the first time he’d ever known her to wield silence as an interrogation technique, an intentionally unsubtle signal that she found the witness less than creditable.
Mrs. Treadles shifted in her chair. She picked up her hitherto untouched tea and drank. And drank. And drank.
“That the murder hasn’t been reported by the papers is a blessing, I’m sure,” said Lord Ingram, breaking the silence. “But at the moment we need more information.”
Mrs. Treadles’s teacup shook visibly. “Please let me know what else I can tell you.”
Holmes was still silent, but her silence was not pointed or reproachful. He’d left most of the questioning to her—it was her investigation, after all—but she’d have known that he would not let Mrs. Treadles squirm in discomfort for too long. She’d issued a warning, that was all.
“Did Mr. Longstead go in to work every day?” she asked. “Would his absence have been already remarked upon?”
“No, he didn’t come into work every day,” said Mrs. Treadles, setting down her teacup. “It was understood from the beginning that he would serve only in an advisory capacity. I would see him on a Thursday, then perhaps not until the Tuesday of the following week. He made sure to be present when I met with the managers as a group, for which I was immensely grateful, as they became less dismissive of me out of respect for him.”