“After I found those two discrepancies, I went back and checked the envelopes of all the letters he’d ever written me when he was away for work, including during our courtship. Thankfully, in all those other instances, the postmarks on the envelope accorded with the locations he’d given in the letters themselves.”
She expelled a long breath. “A relief, of course. Which only made it more troubling that he did lie in this instance.”
“You mentioned two things that made you wonder about the inspector, Mrs. Treadles. What is the other one?”
In a gesture that was beginning to seem reflexive, Mrs. Treadles raised her teacup to her lips again—only to set it aside with a small grimace: The cup was already empty. “Before I went to Scotland Yard, I thought I should at least gather a change of clothing for him. But when I went inside his dressing room, I—I saw that his service revolver was missing.”
Lord Ingram sucked in a breath.
Holmes continued to be unruffled. “Does he normally carry his service revolver?”
“He does not. He said that sometimes night patrols encounter dangers but as a member of the Criminal Investigation Department, he did not really have cause to fear for his safety.”
Mrs. Treadles’s expression, that of someone about to dive off the headland into the pounding surf below, made Lord Ingram brace himself for what he might hear next.
“I’m afraid earlier I didn’t give a complete account of what I learned when I went to Scotland Yard. When the constable I spoke to told me that Inspector Treadles would not be in that day, I pretended to be distressed and said I knew I should have come to town sooner, and now I’d missed my opportunity. The constable consoled me by saying that I wouldn’t have seen Inspector Treadles earlier either, as he’d been out on leave for the previous fortnight.
“The constable didn’t appear to be telling anything except the truth as he knew it. But if my husband had been on leave, then it was truly news to me. He was away a good deal recently. But when he wasn’t traveling for ‘work’, I said goodbye to him in the morning when I normally did and saw him again in the evening when I normally would.
“Which makes me wonder—what if I’m not the only one he lied to? What if he was also lying to Scotland Yard? Could that be why they were so swift to arrest him, because he’d been caught so plainly in a lie?”
The hurt and bewilderment on her face at having been so excluded from her husband’s life . . . Lord Ingram’s chest constricted.
Holmes, not so easily distracted by sentiments, merely asked, “Is there anything else you can tell us?”
“Sergeant MacDonald said he would come by to pay his respects to Mr. Sherlock Holmes later today and ask that you would please receive him. Other than that . . .” Mrs. Treadles shook her head.
“In that case, would you mind, Mrs. Treadles, if I asked you a question?”
“No, of course not.”
Yet she tensed. As did Lord Ingram.
Holmes picked up a piece of holiday cake and took a leisurely bite. “Mrs. Treadles, what is it you would like Sherlock Holmes to do for you? Are you more interested in the truth or in Inspector Treadles’s freedom?”
Three
Lord Ingram stared at Holmes. The dichotomy in her question, as if the truth and Inspector Treadles’s freedom were mutually exclusive . . .
Mrs. Treadles’s jaw worked, then she squared her shoulders. “Both, Miss Holmes. The truth of the matter will lead to the arrest of the true culprit and my husband’s release from police custody.”
She said it with a fervency that seemed to be more than conviction. She needed for her husband to be thoroughly exculpated by the thoroughly above-reproach Sherlock Holmes.
“Everything that you have just enumerated—Inspector Treadles’s lies to you on his whereabouts, his missing service revolver, and his omission of the fact that he had been on leave from Scotland Yard—do they not cast doubts as to what Sherlock Holmes might find out, if he looks closely enough?”
The thoroughly above-reproach Sherlock Holmes sounded skeptical.
“They are not what makes my husband guilty. They are only what makes his innocence difficult to prove,” said Mrs. Treadles with a stubbornness that Lord Ingram found inexplicably touching. “Which is why we need Mr. Holmes’s genius, to bring the matter to a satisfactory conclusion.”
He cast a look at Holmes. She had managed to get to the truth of the matter in every case that had been entrusted to her. But truth had a vicious way of upsetting everything else on its way to the surface. And he was hard-pressed to say, as someone whose existence had been repeatedly convulsed by recent overdoses of truth, whether there had been anything satisfactory to the aftermaths.
“In that case, if you will excuse me, I will consult my brother.”
She left in a flounce of velvet and lace. Lord Ingram stared for a moment at the bedroom door, closing behind her, then took a sip of his tea, which had become thoroughly lukewarm. He undertook the making of a fresh pot, glad for an excuse not to sit still.
But something as undemanding as putting a kettle over a spirit lamp didn’t excuse him from conversation. He was racking his brains for a suitable topic when Mrs. Treadles said, in an exhausted voice, “This is a very nice parlor.”
It was a nice parlor. Mrs. Watson, Holmes’s benefactress, possessed excellent taste and any room she had a hand in decorating was bound to be both lovely and comfortable. There were still rooms at Eastleigh Park, the Duke of Wycliffe’s country seat, that the current duchess had not bothered to alter, because when Mrs. Watson had been the late widower duke’s official mistress, she’d remade them so admirably.
But at this moment, Mrs. Treadles could scarcely have any real interest in the color scheme or furnishings of 18 Upper Baker Street.
Even with the catastrophic turn of her own fortunes, she didn’t want him to feel awkward.
“Yes,” he said. “A very cozy place.”
Although—the last time he was in this parlor, Holmes had managed to overturn his life.
“Have you eaten anything since Sergeant MacDonald’s visit?” he asked.
When she had first appeared in Mrs. Watson’s home, wild-eyed and short of breath, he’d thought she must have just learned of her husband’s arrest and rushed over. But hours had passed since that heart-stopping moment.
She shook her head. “No, but I’m not hungry.”
“I understand not feeling hungry. And I understand that at the moment, everything else feels more important than nourishment. But please believe me when I tell you, Mrs. Treadles, that these will be some of the most demanding days of your life. And it is the least you must do, to treat yourself with as much care and courtesy as you would a horse carrying you on an arduous journey.”