Murder on Cold Street (Lady Sherlock #5) - Sherry Thomas Page 0,125

finally reached Lord Ingram, he looked as if he were trying not to laugh out loud.

Alas, despite the covetousness she felt toward Madame Gascoigne’s latest masterpiece, Charlotte knew that she needed more roughage.

“I have a hypothesis that does not conflict with any known facts,” she said, spearing a brussels sprout with her fork, wishing that roughage tasted more like cake. “I believe that this hypothesis has merits, but I don’t have enough evidence to present to the police and I don’t know that I ever will.”

“We are still gathering evidence every day,” said Miss Redmayne. “Let’s hear this hypothesis.”

Charlotte ate her brussels sprout, the taste of which had been greatly enhanced by having been drenched in a lemon-and-parsley butter sauce. “I have been investigating the veracity of Mr. Longstead’s appointment book. It’s clear he was up to something in the final weeks of his life. I propose that his doings were related to the malfeasance at Cousins Manufacturing and I further propose that Inspector Treadles was assisting him in that endeavor.”

“But Mrs. Treadles said that they’d only met twice,” Miss Redmayne pointed out.

“That she knew of,” Mrs. Watson answered for Charlotte. “Mrs. Treadles has been in the dark lately as to her husband’s movements.”

Charlotte inclined her head at Mrs. Watson. “Precisely. And because Mrs. Treadles doesn’t know, and Inspector Treadles refuses to talk, we can’t say with complete certainty what Inspector Treadles was doing at 33 Cold Street in the first place. Was he responding to the taunting notice in the papers that questioned his wife’s fidelity, or was he there for something else?

“No matter his reasons, the fact is that he walked directly into that house, as did a number of other individuals that night. And this was normally a carefully locked house because two young women spent long stretches of time there by themselves.

“Four people were known to have keys to the back door of number 33. Miss Longstead did not approach number 33 that day. Mrs. Coltrane did at half past six in the evening, but only to check that all the doors were locked. A neighbor’s butler also had a key but he assured me that the door was already open when he got there. That leaves Mr. Longstead.”

Miss Redmayne whistled softly. Mrs. Watson might have reprimanded her under different circumstances, but Mrs. Watson was too busy setting down her knife and fork and pulling her chair closer to the table.

Charlotte calculated that she needed to ingest at least four more brussels sprouts before she considered herself virtuous enough for bûche de Noël. Thankfully, as an adult, she found vegetables increasingly tolerable, sometimes even enjoyable. Alas, not brussels sprouts in particular. Not yet.

“Mr. Longstead’s evening jacket had jetted pockets and in one of them there was residue that smelled of peppermint,” she continued. “He regularly visited an establishment of pharmaceutical chemists that does a brisk trade in confectionary. They sold peppermint lozenges. A similar powder clung to his set of keys, and his niece reported that, when he looked in on her as she was getting ready, something bulged in his jacket, to the dismay of their housekeeper.

“At this point it would be irresponsible not to conclude that Mr. Longstead had opened the back door of number 33. I further propose that he did it before the party started, so that it wouldn’t interfere with his duties as the host. Who would he have opened it for? Everyone else we’ve spoken to was there illicitly. So he could only have opened the door for either Mr. Sullivan or Inspector Treadles.

“I inquired repeatedly into whether he could have been in league with Mr. Sullivan, and those closest to him repeatedly assured me he was not that kind of person. I was already leaning toward the notion that he opened the door for Inspector Treadles when Mrs. Treadles rushed in here this morning, all distraught, and said that her husband warned her, in no uncertain terms, from looking too deeply into the accounts at Cousins.

“Why would he warn her of such a thing unless he has been looking into them himself? And why would he, in the first place, when he didn’t even ask any questions about her work for the longest time?

“The simplest explanation for Inspector Treadles’s involvement? Mr. Longstead. But he was an engineer, not an accountant. He counseled Mrs. Treadles to have greater patience. His involvement with Cousins, even after his return, veered toward minimal. Why did he, out of the blue, develop an interest