A Study in Scarlet Women (Lady Sherlock #1)(15)
“Oh, because it’s brilliant?” She laughed. He pulled her to him for an affectionate kiss.
Mere weeks after that Treadles plucked up his courage and wrote to Lord Ingram to request help from “Holmes.” His career was on a healthy path. Had he married a woman of his own social class, he would have been content to let promotions come in time. But Alice had given up a life of luxury to become his wife. He was never going to be a rich man; the least he could do was to become highly successful and respected in his profession—in as little time as possible—and make her proud.
The case in question concerned a body discovered aboard a P&O liner that had set sail from Port Said. The passenger was identified as an Egyptologist named Rendell. He had been dead at least a day and by his side was a note that, according to his family and friends, was most certainly written in his own hand.
The note read,
The curse of the pharaohs is real. Wilkinson has leapt overboard in a fit of madness and now I feel its grip on me. A darkness descends. I can’t breathe. Can no one help me?
The mummies that had been brought back in the cargo did not look particularly menacing to Treadles, as far as mummies went. And the sarcophagi that contained them seemed pedestrian, remarkable in neither beauty nor worth.
One of the ship’s officers recalled that approximately thirty-six hours before the steamer’s arrival in Southampton, an agitated Rendell had demanded that the vessel be turned around to search for his friend. He declared that Wilkinson had been in a state ever since Gibraltar and had remained confined to his room, shaking in terror at the mummies’ specters. But now he was nowhere to be found and Rendell was convinced he was bobbing in the Atlantic.
The officer had pointed out that Wilkinson might have been nothing more than seasick. And perhaps, having recovered, he had taken to shipboard society with fervor, to make up for lost time. It was scarcely unheard of for passengers to be found inebriated in nooks and crannies—or in the company of friendly widows. Rendell, miffed that his concern wasn’t taken seriously, stormed off. And the officer was now experiencing remorse. Perhaps he ought to have believed the poor man.
Treadles was not one to dismiss the supernatural out of hand, but neither was he convinced that malevolent spirits lingered for millennia, waiting to ambush hapless Egyptologists.
He sent Rendell’s body to the coroner and laid out the facts of the case for Lord Ingram to pass on to Holmes. A response came the next day.
Dear Inspector,
I have received the following from Holmes, quoted verbatim.
It is possible there is more than one intrigue at play.
The first involves a deception. Two young men set out for Egypt with high hopes of a tremendous find. They returned with sadly ordinary artifacts. There would be no fame and fortune waiting in England, only the disappointment of fathers who had financed the expedition. What to do? Ah, yes, the curse of the pharaohs. If they could stage something dramatic—Rendell comatose and Wilkinson missing—the public might be intrigued enough to pay to see those objects, the removal of which incited the wrath of the spirits.
Rendell’s conversation with the ship’s officer was clearly meant to give the impression that Wilkinson had leapt overboard. Since no one saw that happen, the possibilities are twofold: One, Wilkinson disembarked in Gibraltar; two, he did so at Southampton.
The likelihood is that Wilkinson remained on the ship to tamper with the draught Rendell was to take. Rendell went to his death in blithe ignorance of his friend’s treachery. Wilkinson then disembarked with the rest of the crowd, before Rendell was found dead.
As for why Wilkinson cooked up this entire elaborate scheme to do away with Rendell, since no financial trouble or professional jealousy has been mentioned, let us say, Cherchez la femme.
Wish you success in your endeavor,
Ashburton
The dead man’s fiancée turned out to be a very beautiful young woman. Wilkinson was found in Southampton, waiting for an opportune moment to pretend to have lately reached England. And Holmes was almost exactly right about how it had been done, except that the curse of the pharaoh had been Rendell’s idea, which Wilkinson co-opted for his own purpose.
The case had firmly secured the favor of his superiors for Treadles and he had very much wished to thank Holmes. But Lord Ingram had refused all offers of gratitude on Holmes’s behalf. “Holmes wants only an occupied mind. Everything else is secondary.”
“What does Holmes do then, when there aren’t perplexing riddles to be solved?”
“You do not wish to know,” said Lord Ingram. And then, after a moment, “Perhaps I should have said, ‘I do not wish to know.’”
An answer that did nothing to dispel Inspector Treadles’s conviction that Lord Ingram and Holmes were most likely one and the same.
Since then, he had consulted Holmes, via Lord Ingram, two more times, still surprised on each occasion by the resolute agility of the mind on the other end of the correspondence. Holmes was becoming—had become, if Treadles were entirely honest with himself—an institution in his life.
A venerated institution.
And now that institution had crumbled.
Treadles pushed aside the evening newspapers littering his desk and pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d found no article about any Holmes suffering from a carriage mishap, a tumble into the Thames, or a botched medical procedure. A discreet inquiry to his colleagues had yielded similarly barren results: no dispute taken too far, robbery gone wrong, or attempted murder that left a man in a deep coma.