Murder on Cold Street (Lady Sherlock #5) - Sherry Thomas Page 0,124

goings-on at Cousins. Afterward, less so.

The letters had all been opened and read—most likely by Mrs. Watson, possibly by Livia, who had also spent some time in this house during that interval.

Standing before the storage drawers, Charlotte first scanned each letter, then checked the stated location inside against that on the postmark. To her disappointment, there were no mismatches.

Nevertheless, two letters caught her attention.

The penmanship on the two was not similar. One was done in block lettering, the other, a highly awkward script, that of someone who could barely hold a pen—or that of someone right-handed writing with the left hand.

The letters had not been forwarded to Charlotte’s attention not because of their handwriting, per se, but because their contents were so transparently unoriginal. The one likely written by its sender’s left hand purported to be from a young man who needed help deciphering clues from his beloved concerning what she wanted for a birthday present. The one in block lettering was even more obvious, the writer claiming to be the youngest of three elderly sisters who lived together and had their peace of mind regularly disturbed by seemingly rhythmic noises emanating from the attic.

Sherlock Holmes’s first official client had been a young man trying to work out what his beloved wanted for her birthday. Sherlock Holmes’s most famous non-murder-related case had been the discovery that a trio of septuagenarian sisters did not have spirits in their attic, communicating via Morse code, but deathwatch beetles making tapping sounds.

Both cases had been referred to in a newspaper article in the past summer, which wondered about what Sherlock Holmes had been doing since his thunderous arrival on the scene, and made the mischievous and perhaps malicious speculation that now his days would mostly be spent reassuring little old ladies about wood-boring insects.

Charlotte had not minded the article at all: It had provided excellent publicity and let people know that Sherlock Holmes was happy to deal with minor domestic cases, not just those the criminality of which shocked an entire city. The women around her, however, had been annoyed on her behalf. Both Mrs. Watson and Livia would have immediately interpreted the intention of the letter-writers as merely to mock Sherlock Holmes.

On the other hand . . .

If this was Inspector Treadles at work, and if he feared prying eyes, it could have been his way of making sure that these two letters were thought of as pranks.

What information had required him to take such care, so that it passed to her and only to her, undetected by any except her?

Should she steam open the gummed seams of the envelopes? Peel off the stamps? Perhaps even run a hot iron over the letters, in case he had written in milk or some other such substance that would darken at the application of heat?

Instead, she glanced again at the letters and headed for a shelf of atlases.

* * *

Charlotte’s emergence from the study coincided with Lord Ingram’s arrival. To her inquiring gaze, he nodded solemnly: He had done what she’d asked him to do.

The company sat down to their very late dinner, where it took Charlotte a steaming bowl of mulligatawny soup, several beef-and-potato croquettes, and a modest slice of boiled mutton in caper sauce to give a condensed version of what she had learned this day.

“I can’t judge, Miss Holmes, whether you learned a great deal or a great deal of nothing,” said Miss Redmayne, sounding honestly baffled. “This case is like an underwater monster from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, full of tentacles that writhe and splash everywhere.”

Mrs. Watson shuddered. “I dare say the dissection of the Sullivans’ marriage made me feel as if I’ve been embraced by a giant cephalopod.”

She pushed a croquette around on her plate. “We saw a few more of those flailing appendages today, between all of us. Does that, in fact, help?”

“To an expert in marine biology,” said Lord Ingram, “the view of a single tentacle makes it clear what kind of monster lurks underneath.”

As if remembering something, Mrs. Watson leaned forward. “Miss Holmes, Lord Ingram is of the opinion that you already know, with some certainty, what happened the night of the murders. Is—is he correct?”

Charlotte turned toward Lord Ingram—his confidence in her was very gratifying. But her attention was waylaid by the bûche de Noël that had been set near him, a splendid concoction, its chocolate buttercream striated to resemble tree bark, adorned with meringue mushrooms and real sprigs of holly. When her gaze