A Study in Scarlet Women (Lady Sherlock #1)(42)
“Can you give us some knowledge as to why he retired from Society?”
“No, I cannot.”
Cannot or will not? Lord Sheridan spoke with a casual impatience that was surprisingly difficult to decipher. “And is that related to the reason the two of you became estranged?”
“You leap to conclusions, Inspector. My brother and I were not close, but I never suggested that we were estranged.”
This gave Treadles the opening he had been looking for. “My apologies, my lord. My perceptions might have been colored by having read a statement, made by someone in Mr. Sackville’s employ, that you would be glad if he were to drop dead.”
Lord Sheridan’s expression did not change. “I recommend that you give no credence to such statements, Inspector. I took no delight in Harrington’s passing. I was much older than he—at one point I was his guardian—both father and brother. There is no joy to be had at the death of someone I watched growing up. Now, if you have no more questions . . .”
His tone carried more than a hint of sternness. Treadles pressed on. “I do happen to have one more. Forgive me if the question borders on vulgar, my lord, but if I understand correctly, in families such as yours, the eldest son inherits the bulk of the family wealth. Yet the impression I receive seems to be that Mr. Sackville had been the one with the larger fortune.”
“Your impression is correct. Harrington is my half brother. His mother brought a great deal of wealth into her marriage. But while tens of thousands of pounds from her dowry were used in shoring up the estate, upon her death she willed almost all of her remaining assets to Harrington, her only child. So yes, he was wealthier and his wealth was never bled by the ancestral pile.”
His recitation of facts was . . . smoother than his avowal that he found no pleasure in his brother’s death. But how should Treadles interpret this observation? Was it because Lord Sheridan was not an accomplished liar—or was it because it in fact distressed him to have lost someone who had once been both brother and son?
“Would you happen to know, sir, who would benefit most from Mr. Sackville’s will?”
“His lawyers have informed me that I stand to inherit his fortune.”
“Did you know that before he died?”
Lord Sheridan’s expression turned forbidding: He was quick—too quick, perhaps?—to realize the thrust of the question. “Of course not. We are finished here, gentlemen. I trust you will see yourselves out.”
“Not worried about what the law might think of him, is he, Inspector?” asked Sergeant MacDonald as they walked out.
“He is a peer. He can only be tried in the House of Lords and he enjoys privilege from arrest. If I were him, I also wouldn’t burden myself too much with what a pair of lowly policemen might think of my statements.”
MacDonald scratched his reddish, slightly scraggly beard. “So who do you think is lying then about how happy he’d be to see his brother dead, his lordship or the dead man?”
“Hard to say, without knowing what had made them grow apart in the first place. That is, provided the girl wasn’t making it up out of whole cloth.”
Treadles wished now he’d done the questioning himself. So much could be gleaned from face-to-face observation. Nuances in tone, changes in expression, and postures of the body added up to a rich symphony of information, as opposed to this thin, tinny tune derived from typed words.
To Sergeant MacDonald’s surprise, instead of leaving the premises altogether, Treadles led them down to the service entrance and knocked. But his ambush of Lord Sheridan’s staff, though successful in one sense—he managed to speak with both the butler and the valet—did not yield any useful information in the end.
Except in the negative category: His lordship did not leave London in the time period of interest to Inspector Treadles. In fact, he had attended a wedding and a dinner in the twenty-four hours immediately preceding his brother’s death, not to mention went to sleep and woke up in his own bed.
This time, when they left the Sheridan house, they walked away—and turned onto the street where Lord Ingram lived. It was of a similar arrangement to Lord Sheridan’s, a row of elegant town houses all of the same style and construction, except these houses faced a small park surrounded by a hedgerow, with swings and a duck pond in its interior.
They were approaching Lord Ingram’s home when a gleaming brougham drew up by the curb and disgorged a beautiful and stylishly dressed woman. At the same moment Lord Ingram stepped out of the house. They greeted each other with cool nods. Treadles would have thought the woman was perhaps a neighbor Lord Ingram did not know very well, until his lordship said to the coachman, “I will need the carriage at seven tonight.”
The woman was Lady Ingram.
Treadles did not move in Lord Ingram’s circles. Nor had Alice ever done so, though her father had been a wealthy industrialist. It had not struck Treadles as particularly odd that Lady Ingram did not accompany her husband on digs or attend his lectures at Burlington House—he’d simply assumed that things were different for the very upper echelons of Society and that she must have been busy with her own duties.
That greeting between spouses, however, implied such a vast distance. What Treadles was looking at was not any kind of upper-class stricture against displays of affection, but a resolute lack of affection altogether.