Murder on Cold Street (Lady Sherlock #5) - Sherry Thomas Page 0,93
lap with an air of defeat. “I found it in a park on Rosmere Road, not far from where my charges and I live. And I found it three days ago, when I took the girls out for their morning constitutional.”
Three days ago. In the morning. The day of the party, but before it had taken place.
Charlotte had brought a pocket map of London with her to the morning parlor. She opened it to an already-familiar page: Rosmere Road was four streets to the east of Cold Street.
“This park?” She pointed to a spot of green.
“Yes, that one.”
Charlotte wrote down the information on a piece of paper, as if she really were making the inquiry for someone else. “Is there anything else you can tell me about the finding of the comb, Miss Hendricks?”
Miss Hendricks shook her head.
Charlotte looked at her a moment, then handed over the ten pounds promised in the small notice. Miss Hendricks stared at the banknote for a while. Again, with no covetousness, only pain.
She murmured a quiet thank you and bade Charlotte a pleasant day.
* * *
When Miss Redmayne returned to the morning parlor, Charlotte was standing before a window, watching Miss Hendricks and her charges squeeze into a hansom cab.
“Did you find out the children’s address?”
“Yes,” answered Miss Redmayne. “They live on Rengate Street.”
Rengate Street was one of the four streets that enclosed the private garden 31 and 33 Cold Street backed onto. Houses on Rengate were across the garden from houses on Cold Street. Depending on where on Rengate Street Miss Hendricks lived, she might have a decent view across the garden to number 31 and number 33.
Charlotte handed over Mrs. Treadles’s jeweled comb to Miss Redmayne, who turned it around in her hand. “But what could this Miss Hendricks possibly have been doing at number 33 that night? She doesn’t appear to be the sort to sneak out after dark.”
“Mr. Longstead and Mr. Sullivan died in a bedroom,” said Charlotte. “I examined the bed. Or rather, the mattress. It bore signs of having been repeatedly used for coitus.”
“Miss Hendricks?” Miss Redmayne caught the comb as it slipped from her fingers. “But aren’t governesses expected to be entirely abstemious? And if she had been caught, wouldn’t it have led to her dismissal?”
“It would have. But sometimes that isn’t enough of a deterrent,” said Charlotte, whose current occupation stemmed directly from her own dismissal from society, due to having been caught while not being abstemious.
“But surely it was reckless to hold an assignation next door to a party in full swing.”
“Quite so,” said Charlotte.
Miss Redmayne held the jeweled comb up to the light. “Why do you think Miss Hendricks gave it back? Ten pounds is a nice sum but she could have pawned this for significantly more money.”
Charlotte stretched her arms over her head—all the hours hunched over the accounts the night before had left her shoulders sore. “Perhaps she had no rendezvous with her lover that night. Let’s suppose that she lived in a room with direct sight to number 33 and that she happened to look out of her window. At least four men, if we count the one who leaped to the street, went into the house that night. What if she saw one of those men enter the house? From the back, from that distance, might it not be reasonable to conclude she assumed that man to be her lover?
“If this was your lover, going into your place of assignation, without having alerted you ahead of time, what would you do? Go back to sleep?”
Miss Redmayne chewed her lower lip. “So the poor dear went to investigate and, as she was feeling her way across the dining room, kicked the comb, crouched down, and felt around for this object, only to close her hand around something that she could immediately ascertain, even in the dark, to be an item of female ornamentation, something that did not belong to her.”
“And stumbled out, back to her place, convinced that she’d been played for a fool.” Charlotte pulled her right arm across her chest—ah, that felt better in her shoulder blades. “Miss Hendricks came today not for the reward, but to see the woman the comb belonged to.”
Charlotte pulled her other arm across. “What I don’t understand is, why wasn’t she at all concerned about the murders?”
“I can answer that,” said Miss Redmayne eagerly. “The children went to their cousin’s birthday party in Cambridge recently. They left early in the morning after the