Murder on Cold Street (Lady Sherlock #5) - Sherry Thomas Page 0,14

when your husband has been arrested for murder,” he still argued. “There is always the chance that there will be a miscarriage of justice, that an innocent person will be convicted of crimes he didn’t commit.”

She rose and brought back a glass of whisky for him. “True. But Inspector Treadles is a respected and respectable man. He is considered one of the more promising young officers at Scotland Yard. Not to mention, he is married to a woman in control of a considerable personal fortune: He is assured of the most formidable barristers for his defense, should it come to that. He even has Sherlock Holmes in his corner.

“All these advantages, and she was still petrified with fear. At this point it would be irresponsible not to assume that she is hiding something. Something that in her eyes, at least, is hugely incriminating.”

His hands around the glass of whisky, he suddenly remembered. “Wait. I meant to ask this earlier. When she said Mr. Longstead’s house was on Cold Street, you recognized that location, didn’t you?”

“I did,” she said slowly. “You know I have been keeping track of the small notices in the papers since summer.”

He nodded. Lieutenants of Moriarty, a dangerous enemy, had used the papers to communicate with their minions, though those notices had ceased at the end of summer. But she still kept an eye out, not only for any movement on Moriarty’s part, but also for any news from Mr. Myron Finch, her half brother, now on the run from Moriarty.

“I don’t have my notebook with me now—it’s in the other house. But yesterday morning there was a coded notice in the papers that said, ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, on Cold Street one finds a wife no longer true.’”

He sucked in a breath. “Do you think Mrs. Treadles knows about it?”

“She doesn’t strike me as the kind with time to decipher small notices in the papers—certainly not these days. And something tells me the notice was aimed not at her, but at her husband.”

“So . . . a young woman in distress, a chivalrous older man, and a husband made suspicious by a notice in the papers . . .” His words came reluctantly, even though it was not the first time he’d had the thought.

“She admitted that her husband was not enthused about her new responsibilities at Cousins. And now we know that the situation at Cousins was difficult. We can be sure that she would have felt isolated both at work and at home. But as for what exactly transpired under those circumstances . . .” Holmes shrugged. “It may be something as simple as her drawing closer to a man who should have remained only a father figure. Or it may be something else altogether.”

His pulse quickened. “And what might that be?”

She took a sip of tea and finished her slice of cake. “The nature of what exactly transpired almost doesn’t matter, only that it’s something that she believes would lead a man to kill.”

* * *

A silence fell.

After a while, his attention shifted from the problem at hand to the silence itself.

Their interactions had always been full of silences. The leisurely, almost opulent silence of entire afternoons spent together as adolescents: he busy with his interests, she with hers. The inexplicably awkward silences after she’d first propositioned him—inexplicable only to him, too young to understand that he’d refused her not out of virtue, but out of fear of what she and her autonomy represented—rejection of the very hierarchy he was still trying to embrace.

Then there had come years of silences extraordinary in their complicatedness. He’d been unhappy in his marriage yet clinging on to his vows, and any moment alone with Holmes had been a pleasure so dark and bittersweet it was at times indistinguishable from pain.

Lately, however, things had changed again. His marriage had effectively ended in summer—and soon it would end entirely, with a divorce to be granted by the High Court in the first half of next year. And the silences between him and Holmes, well, sometimes, like now, they could almost be called comfortable.

Almost.

If he were not so keenly aware of her presence, her soft, even breaths, the wisp of golden hair that had escaped the confines of her lace cap, the slowness with which her fingertip traveled the circumference of her now-empty plate.

“Have you been well, Ash?” she asked.

At her quiet question, he tensed: She would not have forgotten that he’d arrived at her doorstep out