Murder on Cold Street (Lady Sherlock #5) - Sherry Thomas Page 0,137

not one but two analytical chemists, attesting to the presence of arsenic in Barnaby Cousins’s hair, which Mr. Longstead had obtained from his widow.

After that Treadles had no choice but to be involved: Whoever had done this to his brother-in-law could do the same to Alice.

Mr. Longstead continued to speak, and it became obvious to Treadles that Alice had told him very little of the opposition she’d experienced at work. But at least her suspicions about the financial health of Cousins, as related by Mr. Longstead, formed the starting point of his investigation.

An information-gathering trip, visiting other factories that had been built by the main contractor who had renovated the Cousins properties, had led him to De Lacey Industries, at the sight of which his alarm grew to the full blare of fog horns.

He could not be sure this de Lacey was the same as Moriarty’s chief lieutenant in Britain. But he made sure to notify Sherlock Holmes, however circuitously. And he met with Mr. Longstead to discuss the possible dangers they now faced.

They decided to inform the ladies in their lives after the first of January—let them enjoy Christmas and New Year free from Moriarty’s shadow. Mr. Longstead hastened to arrange a debut for his niece, even as he redoubled his efforts to decipher the other small notices and telegrams in the notebooks, to uncover as much evidence as possible.

Treadles undertook another trip, to reconnoiter two other sites that had been worked on by the same main contractor. He’d found yet another De Lacey Industries holding in Manchester, but in Cornwall—he still wasn’t sure what he had come across in Cornwall, other than that he’d barely escaped being captured.

He and Mr. Longstead had agreed that they ought to be more careful in meeting each another, but they had also agreed that a rendezvous at 33 Cold Street on the night of Treadles’s return to London should be both safe and secretive, even if Mr. Longstead had to slip out of his niece’s party. Treadles gave Alice a later date of return—he thought it might be a nice surprise for her to find him already home when she came back from the party.

But on the rail journey back he realized he was being followed. He changed trains rapidly and randomly. This delayed his return by several hours, but he thought he’d at last shaken his pursuer loose.

Only to be accosted a stone’s throw from number 33.

The nightmare that had followed . . .

He opened his eyes—no point trying to sleep more—only to see, instead of bare walls and iron bars, a creamy bed canopy and flax-colored bed curtains, three quarters drawn. The air smelled not of the pervasiveness of vomit and other human wastes, but faintly and pleasantly of lavender water and floor wax, of a clean and well-maintained home.

Very carefully he turned his head. So the warmth next to him was also no illusion—Alice truly was in his arms. And he really was in his own bed, a free man once again.

Because of Charlotte Holmes. Bless that woman and every excessive flounce on her skirts.

It felt as if he was dreaming again, to recall his release from Scotland Yard. That lovely, lovely carriage ride home. The renewed grieving for Alice’s father and brother, especially her father. The long, long talk they’d had, admitting to everything they’d been too afraid, too ashamed, and too unnerved to tell each other in all the weeks, months, and years before.

He’d felt clean and unburdened afterward, but also scoured raw, almost too shy to meet her eyes. He suspected that she felt the same, which was probably the reason she’d turned the topic to Sherlock Holmes.

“Do you suppose, Robert—I mean have you ever wondered whether there is any evidence, any real evidence, that there is an unwell man inside that bedroom at 18 Upper Baker Street?”

He’d chortled and poured them each a glass of whisky. “Let me tell you what I know, my dearest Alice.”

Beside him Alice stirred. She opened her eyes and many of the same emotions he’d experienced just now charged across her face. From an initial, automatic dismay, to the rush of relief at the realization that his arrest was now behind them and that they were together again.

She turned to him. “Robert, Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas to you too, Alice.”

She cupped his face. “Today is the first day of the rest of our lives.”

She had said this the morning after their wedding. He took her hand, kissed it, and gave the