Murder on Cold Street (Lady Sherlock #5) - Sherry Thomas Page 0,123

of the operation bothers me more than a little. This was the first of the three factories acquired and renovated during the younger Mr. Cousins’s tenure. They didn’t entrust the work to anyone they’d used before. And this Mr. Fox, whom they did choose, was as quick as an assassin. Normally that would be good, except the end result Mr. Fox delivered, at least according to Mr. Bloom, was far less than what it should have been.”

“And Mr. Fox was responsible for overseeing the modernization of all three factories?” asked Charlotte.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Watson. “Because the crew worked so fast, there was an elevated rate of injuries on site. We spoke to a physician who saw to some of the men who were brought in. He studied medicine in Zurich and considers himself fluent in German. He said that one man, who died after an entire day in a delirium, kept saying in German, though in an accent he couldn’t quite place, ‘Two more, then Sheffield, then home.’”

She frowned—and did not smooth her forehead this time.

Miss Redmayne crossed the room to the sideboard and added a splash of rum to her own hot cocoa. She held out the bottle inquiringly toward Charlotte. Charlotte, who had been standing by the door of the afternoon parlor, joined Miss Redmayne at the sideboard. She didn’t lace her cocoa, however, but poured a dram of rum into a small glass and tipped it back.

“In the places you went to, did you ask, Mrs. Watson, whether anyone had come before you to ask the same questions?”

“Are you wondering whether Inspector Treadles had been in Reading ahead of us? We wondered the same,” said Mrs. Watson, her brow still furrowed. “But no, no one reported being asked similar questions, at least not anyone we spoke to.”

An oppressive silence fell.

Mrs. Watson stared at the remainder of her whisky. Charlotte leaned against the sideboard. She should say a word or two of comfort to Mrs. Watson, but she was tired. And the night, in terms of the work they still had to do, was only beginning.

Miss Redmayne was the first one to speak. “Let me ring for supper. We can all do with a proper meal. And on a full stomach, things never appear quite as bleak.”

Charlotte found herself smiling a little. There was a natural valor to the young woman, allied with energy and good sense.

Seeing Miss Redmayne take charge, Mrs. Watson sat up straighter—with a small groan—and set aside her glass. “In that case, let me put away all these letters for Sherlock Holmes.”

Charlotte had seen Miss Redmayne convey a considerable heap of letters into the house in the afternoon—the public had responded to Sherlock Holmes’s appeal for information on the murders of Mr. Longstead and Mr. Sullivan. The quantity of the missives had doubled, at the very least, in the hours since: The mound on the occasional table before the settee was an epistolary landslide waiting to happen.

“Anything useful?” she asked

“Not yet.” Mrs. Watson blew out a breath. “A bit overwhelming, isn’t it? It’s been a while since we’ve done this.”

Late in autumn, they had left London for a stay in the country, because Livia was to take part in a house party at a nearby estate. Before their departure, announcements had appeared in the papers, informing the public that Sherlock Holmes would be unavailable until further notice.

Since then, they’d investigated a case at Stern Hollow and taken a weeks-long trip to France. The small notices in this morning’s papers were the first notification of Sherlock Holmes’s return.

“A little odd, after all these weeks,” continued Mrs. Watson, “to be back at what we used to do almost every day.”

Charlotte’s pulse quickened. “Mrs. Watson, do you still keep all the correspondence that has ever come for Sherlock Holmes?”

“Yes. Why—”

Charlotte was already out of the afternoon parlor.

* * *

The study had once been the late Dr. Watson’s domain. To this day, no one else used it regularly and his medical books still took up most of the space on the shelves. But for the enterprise of Sherlock Holmes, detective, and the volume of letters she received, Mrs. Watson had commissioned new storage drawers.

Even though Sherlock Holmes had officially been on a sabbatical, letters still trickled in. Charlotte opened the drawers and took out everything that had arrived after the end of the case at Stern Hollow.

Until then, Inspector Treadles had not asked any questions of his wife about her work, and had been thoroughly divorced from the