Murder on Cold Street (Lady Sherlock #5) - Sherry Thomas Page 0,94

murder and started their return trip only this morning. They reported that Miss Hendricks purchased a paper at the train station in Oxford and was reading the small notices on the way back. And, once in London, she hailed a cab to take them not home but here to this house.”

“So she doesn’t know yet?” murmured Charlotte. “She has a shock waiting for her then.”

Miss Redmayne emitted a whistle. Not at all a ladylike action, but Charlotte enjoyed it precisely for that reason.

“Do you think we’ll ever be able to get the truth out of Miss Hendricks?” asked Miss Redmayne, giving the jeweled comb back to Charlotte.

“We may not need to. We may already know enough to find out the identity of her lover,” answered Charlotte, rising to her feet. “Cold Street beckons. I must be off.”

Miss Redmayne stood up, too. “And I should head out to the British Museum.”

They still needed to check whether Mr. Longstead had spent as much time at the Reading Room in the days and weeks before his passing as his household believed he had.

The doorbell rang, loudly and insistently. The two women glanced at each other. Had Miss Hendricks returned?

The caller Mr. Mears showed in was Mrs. Treadles, looking even worse than she had upon emerging from her interrogation with Inspector Brighton the day before. As soon as Mr. Mears left, closing the door behind himself, she blurted out, “I don’t know why, Miss Holmes—Inspector Treadles wouldn’t give me a reason—but he has begged me to please not look too deeply into the accounts at Cousins. He’s—he’s frightened.”

Charlotte poured a glass of cognac and pressed it into Mrs. Treadles’s hands. “I imagine he must be. That’s the reason he’s said nothing to anyone.”

“But—”

“Besides,” said Charlotte calmly, “it’s too late. Mrs. Watson and Lord Ingram are already looking into the matter.”

Fifteen

Livia climbed over a stile, careful to avoid a puddle as she set her Wellington boot down. It had stopped raining, but the ground remained muddy in places. She crossed the empty pasture, breathing in the cold, pure air.

The sky was a pale blue. The sun was out, a sight that usually lifted her spirits. But today her spirits refused to buoy, her heart as heavy as an anvil.

Last night she’d dreamed of Mr. Marbleton—without being able to see his face. Instead he was endlessly walking away into an all-obliterating fog. Her dream self had run after him, calling his name, except she’d been running as if in a vat of glue and her cries, too, had been stuck inside her larynx, silenced, never emerging.

She shook her head. It was just a dream. He was fine—of course he must be.

She made her way over another stile. Now she was on a lane not too far from the Holmes house—and her mother trampled toward her!

Livia had left the house when she’d heard her mother stirring, for the express purpose of avoiding Lady Holmes as long as possible. Experience had taught her that, deprived of a target for her ire yesterday, Lady Holmes would not let Livia escape so easily today.

Panic swamped her. Her steps faltered. She wished she could turn around and flee in the opposite direction—at least she would have no problem outpacing her mother.

And then where would she go, in her old coat and muddy boots, without even a coin in her pocket for buying a cup of tea at the village pub?

Lady Holmes stomped nearer, her face screwed in displeasure. Livia stood paralyzed.

“Where have you been, Olivia Holmes?” shouted Lady Holmes. “Is it not enough that I am stuck here in this godforsaken village. Now I have to go outside on a cold day to see my own daughter?”

This was but the overture to the operatic diatribe to come. No, not even that, this was the orchestra barely warming up.

Of the three Holmes girls Lady Holmes deigned to speak to, Henrietta, the eldest, had been clever enough to flatter her—and had escaped home via marriage more than a dozen years ago. Charlotte, the youngest, had possessed the fortitude and detachment not to let Lady Holmes’s tirades bother her.

Livia, however, had always been both too proud to get along with her mother and too sensitive not to be hurt.

“Mamma, I’m terribly sorry for your ordeal,” she blurted out. “I really am.”

Her mother stopped mid-step, blinking.

A confounded Lady Holmes was better than an angry one.

“I mean, I can see how dull it is for you here,” Livia hastened to add. “And there are so many