Mr. Marbleton, but he had always said that no matter where he found himself, he would be on the lookout for her Sherlock Holmes stories.
If her story was published in a popular magazine, tens of thousands of copies would be printed and distributed to all corners of the world, making it that much more likely that one would find its way into his hands. And when he held it, this story that he had first met as a seedling, he would know that she had not forgotten him.
“Anything else, miss?” asked the clerk, handing over her stamps.
“Thank you, that will be all for now,” she said.
For now.
“Happy Christmas, miss.”
She gazed upon the clerk’s ordinary but sincere face, and imagined that he was someone else’s Mr. Marbleton. “A very happy Christmas to you, too.”
Today and always.
* * *
Charlotte had needed to speak to Mrs. Treadles and Mrs. Cousins as early as possible in the day because she had wanted them to learn the worst from her, before they heard rumors from other sources. By the time she left Mrs. Cousins’s house, paperboys were already abroad. An hour after early editions blanketed the city, a petty criminal confessed to stealing Inspector Treadles’s service revolver on Mr. Sullivan’s orders.
Two hours later, another petty criminal came forward to admit that he had entered 33 Cold Street—because the front door was open—on the night in question, hoping to steal something, only to see two dead bodies inside. When Inspector Treadles entered, claiming to be the police, the miscreant was so terrified of being arrested for murders he hadn’t committed, he’d shoved the inspector from behind into the room and claimed he’d kill him, too! And then he fled after Inspector Treadles very logically locked the door against him.
Charlotte chuckled at the creativity of this account.
At noon she met Lord Ingram’s train at Euston Station.
Since Inspector Treadles had given actual addresses in his two seemingly ersatz letters to Sherlock Holmes, Lord Ingram had decided to see those spots for himself. He reported that at the address in Sheffield, he’d had an excellent view of a large, modern factory, but had been far away enough that even had Moriarty’s minions seized the letter, they might not have connected it to the factory, which had a large plaque that proudly declared, De Lacey Industries.
In nearby Leeds, the address Inspector Treadles had furnished had led Lord Ingram to an even larger, even more modern-looking factory, also under the umbrella of De Lacey Industries. Moriarty didn’t simply siphon funds from Cousins—and likely other companies—he used the money to build himself new sources of wealth.
Charlotte remembered the photographic plates she had taken from Moriarty’s stronghold outside Paris. There had been factories among those images. How many of them had been built this way, by draining the lifeblood of law-abiding enterprises?
She didn’t want to dwell too long on the subject, so she turned to kissing Lord Ingram instead, a much more pleasant way to pass time.
Their carriage drew up before Scotland Yard. Lord Ingram planned to inform Inspector Treadles that Sherlock Holmes had done what Sherlock Holmes typically did. Then he was going to see about securing the inspector’s release as soon as possible.
“What are you doing later in the afternoon?” asked Charlotte rather hopefully.
She didn’t have a tea gown yet but he could still come by for tea—and for what the tea gown was infamous for.
“It’s Christmas Eve, Holmes. I need to find my children some presents.”
How could she argue with that? But she quickly brightened again. “Are you going to give me a Christmas present this year?”
They rarely gave each other presents.
He raised a brow. “Are you going to give me one?”
“Yes.”
He stared at her for a moment. “Good heavens, I’m getting a hot water bottle cozy, am I not? The one you were knitting right in front of me in Paris!”
She laughed at his expression of mock horror. Her cheek in her hand, she said, “But I haven’t the slightest idea what you are going to give me.”
“The exact equivalent of a hot water bottle cozy,” he warned darkly. “The exact equivalent, Holmes.”
She was still smiling when the carriage drove away.
* * *
Charlotte had barely reached home when a message from Lord Ingram caught up with her. The coup de grâce had come: a mountain of evidence of Mr. Sullivan’s evildoing had been delivered to Scotland Yard, evidence not only of brazen embezzlement, not only of the poisoning of the younger Mr. Cousins, but of the murder of Mr.