Longstead whether she couldn’t read in the studio in the interval before a new tenant moved in. She didn’t make many requests of him and he said yes immediately. The letting agent was told to give advance notice, so that Miss Longstead had time to make her way out of number 33, ahead of any prospective tenants being shown around.
“Then Mr. Longstead saw how much she enjoyed her new space and instructed me to have a word with Mr. Cornwall, our letting agent. He wanted Miss Longstead to have free use of the studio, for as long as we were in London. So his solicitor told Mr. Cornwall that we wouldn’t be putting the house up for let until we decamped to the countryside. We asked for the keys back at the same time. Mr. Cornwall is a trustworthy man, but we preferred not to take any risks.”
Mrs. Coltrane leaned forward, her expression earnest. “You see, Miss Holmes, we do have all the keys here.”
Do you? “Miss Longstead’s set is with her, true,” said Charlotte. “But we still haven’t seen Mr. Longstead’s.”
“I’m sure they must be in his study somewhere,” said Mrs. Coltrane. “In the meanwhile, I can show you the keys in my keeping.”
She rose and opened a locked key cabinet on the wall. Inside, among a congregation of keys, all carefully labeled, were the two sets for number 33, one large and one small.
“Have these keys ever left your keeping?”
Mrs. Coltrane began to shake her head but stopped. “Now that I think about it, in September, Mrs. Norwich, who lives on Rengate Street, called on Mr. Longstead in a rush. She is a widow, you see. A good woman, but a bit of a penny-pincher, as all she has is her house and her annuity.
“She’d ordered coal. But with the coal wagon standing there, it was discovered that her coal hatch couldn’t be opened. The coal company said that she would need to pay them the delivery fee and then the same fee again after the coal hatch was repaired, because they’d made their delivery and it wasn’t their fault that her coal hatch wouldn’t open.
“As I said, a bit of a penny-pincher, Mrs. Norwich. She asked Mr. Longstead if he wouldn’t mind taking delivery of this coal. Except we’d just had a delivery ourselves and our coal cellar was full. Mrs. Norwich proceeded to ask after the cellar at number 33, which was empty, so we took her coal after all—and paid for it, too, as the coal was now ours.
“I had a fever that day and stayed in bed. Miss Longstead came herself to get the key for the key cabinet from me—since the big ring of keys was needed to get to the coal cellar. I thought she would go and open the doors for Mrs. Norwich, but later, when she came to return the cabinet key and to let me know everything was back in its proper place, she told me that she’d given the keys to Mrs. Norwich instead. And Mrs. Norwich had her butler handle everything.”
Charlotte’s heart leaped. “How long were those keys in Mrs. Norwich’s hands?”
“An hour or so, I’d guess.” Mrs. Coltrane’s expression turned a little uneasy. “But she couldn’t possibly have done anything with them, could she have?”
“No, I dare say she wouldn’t have,” said Charlotte.
But what about her butler?
* * *
Charlotte would have liked to speak with Miss Longstead, but her aunt, Mr. Longstead’s last surviving sibling, had arrived in London and she had gone to condole with that lady. Charlotte returned to Mrs. Watson’s carriage. There, after consulting Miss Redmayne’s notes from her many interviews the day before, she asked Lawson, Mrs. Watson’s coachman, to drive to a nearby street. And then she composed a message and entrusted it to Lawson to deliver.
Dear Mr. Woodhollow,
I have reason to believe you were at 33 Cold Street on the night of Mr. Longstead’s death. Pray discuss the matter with my representative in the town coach parked before 48 Miniver Lane.
Yours,
Sherlock Holmes
As she waited, Charlotte closed all the curtains inside the carriage, extracted a piece of fruitcake from her handbag, and took a meditative bite. She was perfectly capable of thinking without cake, but having one in hand was like adding a splash of kerosene to the grate. And on a day when she’d had less than four hours of sleep, a few splashes of kerosene might prove necessary to keep the fire going.
She’d finished her first slice and