She laughed a little, mirthlessly.
Lord Ingram felt a surge of self-reproach. Great upheavals had taken place in his life around the time Mrs. Treadles inherited Cousins Manufacturing. Still, he could have spared her more thoughts, perhaps even a letter or two, asking after how she fared in her new capacity as the owner of a complex going concern.
He’d been pleased for her, as he’d thought that the running of a large enterprise, while demanding, would suit her well, given her energy and intelligence. And that after an initial period of adjustment, she would wrap her hands firmly around the reins of the company.
But the undertone of bleakness in that not-quite-laugh—of outright despair, even—made it clear that the initial period of adjustment had been far rockier than he’d supposed, that she still did not have control of Cousins, and that she had just lost her greatest ally.
Possibly her only ally.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said.
Mrs. Treadles sighed shakily. “Just when you think things couldn’t possibly get worse, you immediately find that yes, indeed, they can. Far, far worse.”
Silence fell again, until Holmes spoke. “You are here, Mrs. Treadles, in the hope that Sherlock Holmes can help make things better. Or at least, prevent the situation from further deteriorating. But in order to help, we must know much more than we do now.”
It became Mrs. Treadles’s turn to be silent.
Holmes regarded her for some time. “Very well, Mrs. Treadles,” she said, clearly deciding on a different approach. “Can you give me a summary of the inspector’s movements in the seventy-two hours before the party?”
“Seventy-two hours . . .” echoed Mrs. Treadles slowly. “The party was yesterday, Monday. Seventy-two hours earlier would have been the Friday before. He left for an investigation in the Kentish countryside that afternoon. And he was gone until . . . until his arrest, I suppose.”
Not very helpful, as far as summaries of movements went.
“Did anyone go with him?”
Mrs. Treadles hesitated. “I can’t be sure. I’d assumed Sergeant MacDonald would accompany him. But when I spoke to the sergeant this morning, he assured me he’d been in town all the while.”
Holmes pitched a brow, a deliberately exaggerated expression for her. “You didn’t ask, Mrs. Treadles?”
Mrs. Treadles smiled apologetically. Uncomfortably. “I was rather distracted at work, I’m afraid.”
Lord Ingram had to refrain from raising his own brow.
Not long ago he had envied the Treadleses for their affectionate and harmonious union, while he himself endured an embittered domestic situation. When he last saw them together, in summer, in the middle of Holmes’s first major case, they were still devoted to each other, a couple who glanced at each other out of care and consideration, and leaned together without even being aware of the gesture.
The cooling of friendship between Lord Ingram and Inspector Treadles coincided more or less with the beginning of a chaotic period in Lord Ingram’s life. He didn’t see Inspector Treadles again until Scotland Yard dispatched the police officer to Stern Hollow in the wake of a murder.
Such circumstances did not lend themselves to intimate conversations between the investigator and the investigated. Near the end of the case, when they were able to speak as friends again, he’d inquired after Mrs. Treadles’s doings, and received the distinct impression that Inspector Treadles spoke with pride at his wife’s accomplishments.
But Mrs. Treadles told them just now that her husband had not approved of her foray into the world of business and manufacturing. Not for months on end.
Words Holmes had once spoken came back to him, words concerning Inspector and Mrs. Treadles. I only hope his wife fares better, if she ever breaks any rules he deems important.
He had the sinking feeling that Mrs. Treadles had not fared any better against her husband’s judgment. But they had reconciled, had they not? And if they had, would she not have asked, even if only in passing, whether he was taking Sergeant MacDonald with him?
Mrs. Treadles fidgeted. Lord Ingram began to wonder if there were any avenues of inquiry that wouldn’t make her squirm.
Perhaps Holmes had the same thought, for she indeed opened another avenue of inquiry. “Do you know, Mrs. Treadles, who would benefit the most by Mr. Longstead’s death?”
Mrs. Treadles exhaled, as if relieved to be asked this particular question. “He never married and had no children of his own. His niece lived with him and they doted on each other. I understand that he is also survived by a sister and several nephews.
“As for who would be the greatest beneficiary of his will, I guess it would be his sister and his niece. I once heard him say that men should make their own way in the world, but that women, not being able to work for success in the same manner, should be given as many resources as possible, so that they do not depend on the mercy of men who do not have their best interest at heart.”
“Did his nephews know they were not to expect much from his will?”
“I would imagine so. Nothing more significant than small annuities.”
Nothing worth murdering for.
Although, if a discontented nephew knew that the bulk of his uncle’s fortune would go to two women, who was to say that he wouldn’t kill Mr. Longstead in the hope that he could persuade the women to let him have a lot more of the money?
“Is there anyone else, besides blood relations, who might want him dead?”
Mrs. Treadles bit her lower lip. “If he weren’t dead, but had simply left, I would have thought that those at Cousins who oppose me had finally succeeded in persuading him that it was in everyone’s best interest to let me fail. But as overwhelming as my own problems seem to me, I don’t believe that is why he died.”
Lord Ingram’s interlaced fingers tightened around one another. The weary reluctance in her words—it cost her to speak the truth. She would have preferred by far to be the picture of confident vivacity, and present her tenure at Cousins Manufacturing as one of brilliant success. But for the sake of the investigation, she must swallow her pride and admit that she was foundering.
“It is early in the investigation,” said Holmes, “too early to dismiss any possibilities, even ones that seem unlikely. Any other reason you know of, Mrs. Treadles, why someone might want Mr. Longstead dead—or gone?”
Mrs. Treadles shook her head. “He could be blunt, Mr. Longstead—it was the very reason that he and my father got along so well. My father used to say that one could depend on Mr. Longstead for the unvarnished truth, because he had no vanity and therefore no desire to embroider results or shift blame onto others. For the same reason, one could tell him the unvarnished truth, because he would never take offense at being informed that his work needed improving.