Murder on Cold Street (Lady Sherlock #5) - Sherry Thomas Page 0,116
a look. Charlotte followed her.
On the other side of the desk, a hidden drawer had been revealed. Mrs. Sullivan pulled it open.
Only the left side of the drawer was occupied: four thick envelopes. Mrs. Sullivan’s eyes rounded as she opened one envelope. “This must be—this must be—”
Charlotte took it from her and fanned out the crisp banknotes. “A thousand pounds.”
The next envelope held five thousand dollars, the near equivalent of one thousand pounds. And the remaining two envelopes proved to contain a thousand pounds in francs and marks, respectively.
“Is . . . is this why he didn’t want me to come in here?”
Charlotte did not answer, but took the hidden drawer’s dimensions with a measuring tape.
“What am I to do with all this money?” murmured Mrs. Sullivan.
“Leave what you owe Mrs. Portwine for today’s visit on the desk and take the rest, of course—I doubt this money will be mentioned in Mr. Sullivan’s will.”
Mrs. Sullivan hesitated only slightly before doing as Charlotte suggested, setting a generous amount on the desk—likely far more than Mrs. Portwine’s fees—before tucking the envelopes into her reticule.
Charlotte examined the desk again. Only when she was sure it had given up all its secrets did she and Mrs. Sullivan return it to its original state.
Mrs. Sullivan peered at Charlotte, her expression unusually diffident. “Will you accompany me back to my house, Miss Holmes? I don’t know that I feel safe traveling across London with this much cash.”
“My carriage is outside; I will see you home. But before that, I have a few more questions.”
Mrs. Sullivan sighed. “I’ll tell you what I did that night. Mr. Sullivan told me that Miss Longstead’s coming-out party would be a circus. He said that he’d sent a note to Inspector Treadles and that the inspector would go into number 33, see how his wife conducts herself in his absence, and fly into a rage. But it wouldn’t stop there. Mr. Sullivan anticipated that Inspector Treadles would then march into the party, make a nasty scene, ruin Miss Longstead’s night, and forever rupture relations not just between himself and his wife but between his wife and Mr. Longstead.
“Mr. Sullivan lied as easily as he breathed and I didn’t really believe him. But such was what passed for excitement in my life.” Mrs. Sullivan pushed her lips to one side, an expression of forlorn resignation. “Besides, he’d never promised anything of the sort before, an actual scandal. I went to Cold Street with bloomers underneath my skirt, so I could climb over the garden gate if I had to.
“Which I did, when the front door of number 33 proved to be locked. But the back door was open. It was dark inside the house. I groped my way from floor to floor, hoping for an open room with windows that would give me a good vantage point.
“All the rooms were locked. I came back down to the ground floor, where the windows didn’t face those of number 31 directly. But even with an oblique view, I saw that Mr. Sullivan had lied to me again. He said Mrs. Treadles fancied him. But when he approached her, she couldn’t get away fast enough.”
The toe of her boot dug into the large Aubusson carpet that covered most of the study. Her voice became barely audible. “He was an awful person. But I still wanted someone, besides me, to care about him. To like him a little, at least.”
Her fingers plucked at the black crape of her mourning reticule. “I left via the front door, because I wasn’t going to climb the gate again. Whitmer drove me here. But later, well past two o’clock, when Whitmer came back alone, I wondered whether Mr. Sullivan hadn’t told me some truth after all. What if he had indeed summoned Inspector Treadles? What if, instead of turning his wrath on his wife or Mr. Longstead, Inspector Treadles had gone after the true culprit?
“I wanted to go back to Cold Street but Whitmer said it was too dangerous and took me home. I fretted and paced. I never imagined that my husband would be dead—I thought he’d be lying on a pavement, hurt and bleeding, after a solid beating from Inspector Treadles. But I couldn’t go out and get him in the fog, so I took some laudanum and went to sleep. And, well, you know the rest.”
She tried to give an insouciant toss of her head, but only looked like a child pretending not to care.