Murder on Cold Street (Lady Sherlock #5) - Sherry Thomas Page 0,82

the two women had engaged in discussions having to do with Mrs. Treadles’s situation.

The path wended around a cluster of trees. “There!” said Miss Longstead. “That’s my uncle’s favorite spot in the garden.”

Charlotte could make out the ground swelling into a small knoll.

“You probably can’t see it,” continued Miss Longstead, “but there is a bench on top of the rise, and he loved to sit on it in summer. Some of our neighbors were equally keen to occupy that seat. And there was eventually a meeting held among its devotees on how to equitably divide time on the bench.

“That was seven years ago. Afterwards I called the gathering the bench conclave. My uncle enjoyed that name so much that he adopted it, too, and we began to refer to the bench conclave as if it were a watershed event in our lives. ‘Do you remember when that happened?’ I’d ask him about something. And he’d say, ‘Oh, that was a good fifteen years before the bench conclave.’”

She laughed softly to herself, but the last note of her laughter sounded like a sob.

Charlotte looked down at the path and waited until it turned. “Mrs. Treadles has told me that Mr. Sullivan was a false friend to her. He pretended to be sympathetic, but was in fact actively undermining her efforts at taking control of her own company. Do you think it was possible that your uncle learned about this, and confronted Mr. Sullivan?”

“And Mr. Sullivan killed him?”

“Let’s set aside who killed whom for now. We are still trying to find an understandable motive for why your uncle and his nephew have both been shot dead. Are you aware of any tension between Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Longstead, old or new?”

“My uncle was indifferent to Mr. Sullivan,” said Miss Longstead, still sounding mystified at the direction of Charlotte’s inquiries. “I believe Mr. Sullivan resented him for that, but that had long been the case.”

“Why did Mr. Longstead not like Mr. Sullivan?”

“Mr. Sullivan, as a young man, tried to flatter my uncle. My uncle did not care for flattery; he considered it an offshoot of chicanery.”

Charlotte pressed her point. “Since your uncle already did not like Mr. Sullivan, what was to prevent that casual dislike from sharpening into loathing, should he learn of what happened between Mr. Sullivan and Mrs. Treadles?”

Miss Longstead stopped. “Did Mrs. Treadles tell my uncle anything?”

“No, she said that she never told anyone anything until the police started asking questions. But your uncle could have perceived it, no?”

Miss Longstead shook her head vigorously. “My uncle was a simple man. It was his great virtue. But it was also . . . his great limitation. He was such a decent man, and life had been so decent to him, that he often did not perceive things, even if they were blindingly obvious to others.”

“Such as?”

Miss Longstead resumed walking, but did not answer Charlotte’s question. They covered nearly half the length of the garden before Miss Longstead said, “I think—I think I can trust you, Miss Holmes. I don’t know you very well but I feel that you are not a person given to . . . preconceived notions.”

Charlotte liked to think so herself, but she’d never been evaluated in this manner by someone she interviewed in the course of a case. “Thank you.”

Her answer sounded more like a question than a statement.

Miss Longstead drew an audible breath. “You asked me what my uncle did not perceive. Whenever we were in town, we always dined with Mr. Sullivan and his wife. But in all these years, my uncle never grasped that I hated to be anywhere near Mr. Sullivan. He continued to see this nephew for whom he had no affection, because Mr. Sullivan was the son of his favorite sister, and it was the right thing to do.”

Charlotte began to understand why Miss Longstead had hesitated for so long—and why she broached the subject only after she’d decided that Charlotte could be trusted not to hold certain views.

“My father was my uncle’s youngest brother. On my mother’s side, her father was an Anglican missionary, and her mother, a Sierra Leone Creole. My mother was born in Freetown, but spent most of her life in London. This was where she met my father, where they were married, and where they are buried.

“My mother was a keen reader of history. Although she died when I was very young, I remember her telling me that I must know history, personal, tribal, national, and