A Study in Scarlet Women (Lady Sherlock #1)(83)

Instead they’d been given a perfectly safe window of three-quarters of an hour from the man who defended the empire against threats from without and within.

Lord Ingram only shook his head.

“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,” Charlotte said, feeling a little apologetic. “You called in a favor, I take it?”

In spite of his brother’s assurance that no Marbleton would return during the allotted forty-five minutes, Lord Ingram approached a window and peered down to the street. “It’s the only currency Bancroft understands.”

“You can’t possibly have that many favors left to call in.” Charlotte knew something of this trade between brothers.

A faint regret tinged his answer. “Used my last.”

From time to time he would leave England for a while, ostensibly for a dig. But Charlotte could always tell whether he’d been to an excavation—and when he’d been somewhere else entirely.

Archeology, as it turned out, was an excellent excuse for all kinds of foreign jaunts. Once he returned on a crutch and attributed his injury to a large statue falling over. Another time he came back with a heavily bandaged hand and said that there had been feral dogs at the site.

The scar on his hand hadn’t remotely resembled the marks of canine teeth or claws.

Does your wife never have any suspicions? she’d asked him once.

No.

To have suspicions, one would have to pay attention. After their falling out, Lady Ingram had not bothered with any more false affections.

There must be ways to find temporary escape without risking your life, Charlotte had told him.

You have fewer choices, Charlotte, he’d answered. It doesn’t mean I have many.

She let her gaze linger on him another second, then ventured farther inside the suite, carefully opening drawers, wardrobes, steamer trunks. When she’d taken a mental inventory of everything, she went back to a cupboard that housed a portable darkroom, several cameras, and a large stack of photographs.

Mrs. Marbleton did not stay alone. Also registered to the suite were two young people, Stephen and Frances Marbleton, her children, ostensibly, with Frances Marbleton being none other than Miss Ellie Hartford from the Dog and Duck in Bywater, the woman who had wanted to claim Mrs. Watson as her mother.

And judging by the photographs, the young Marbletons had been traveling.

Many of the pictures featured only scenery but some had captured one of the young Marbletons in the frame—they were probably traveling alone, taking each other’s pictures.

In those images they seemed to have deliberately chosen not to include any landmarks. There was the sea and there was open landscape. But the coast could have been any stretch of British headland. And the rolling countryside was as likely to have been plucked from Sussex as Derbyshire.

“If you can afford to live at Claridge’s Hotel,” called Lord Ingram from the next room, “would you still seek employment?”

He had found a list of employment agencies. “I believe they specialize in helping women, don’t they?”

Charlotte sucked in a breath. On the list was Miss Oswald’s employment agency, where Miss Oswald had all but accused Charlotte of being a journalist going about trying to write an exposé on similar agencies.

Briefly, she recounted that conversation to Lord Ingram. “I wonder whether Frances Marbleton went around to all these fine establishments—and what she might have been doing there.”

“Since they have a portable darkroom, they must have photonegatives. I can make prints of her images and find out.”

“You do that, dear sir. I’m afraid I must go and prepare for my next client,” says Charlotte.

“A client you need to prepare for?”

“Oh, yes. At least an hour of preparation.”

He rolled his eyes. “You are up to no good, Charlotte Holmes.”

“You should try it sometimes. Or more precisely, you should return to it sometimes—you used to be excellent at being up to no good, your lordship.”

He did not rise to her goading, but asked, “Why did you ask me to wait for you on a street corner last night? And why did you look back several times after I got in the hackney? Are you again suspecting that you might be followed?”

“I was being followed. I changed vehicles three times before I could be sure I’d shaken my tail loose.”

“You think it’s the Marbletons?”

“I’d much rather it be someone you hired. Why would the Marbletons follow me?”

“Why did Mrs. Marbleton counterfeit a case for you to begin with? It isn’t safe, this Sherlock Holmes business.”

“Well, this next client is definitely safe,” she promised him. “Sherlock Holmes would give up the business altogether if this one proves anything but safe.”




A subdued Roger Shrewsbury walked into Sherlock Holmes’s parlor.

In advance of his visit, a hole had been drilled in the wall between the parlor and the bedroom—then concealed in such a way as to allow Charlotte to see into the parlor without herself being seen. But all that had been completed the day before, with help from a friend of Mrs. Watson’s who invented magic tricks. The one hour’s preparation Charlotte mentioned to Lord Ingram involved no further work on the flat, only further work on Mrs. Watson, begging her to not to be too hard on Roger Shrewsbury.