Page 38 of The Vanished Sister

The butler himself, an apprehensive-looking Mr. Gables, led the way to a far corner of the estate. Inspector MacDonald used the walk to ask about how the ground had been dug up in the first place.

The Carstairses, who had purchased High Burrow solely as a holiday villa, had opted not to keep livestock. But being neighborly, they allowed the adjacent farm to graze sheep on the otherwise underutilized pastures that had come with the property. A young farmhand, responsible for herding the sheep to and fro through a gate, had found a quadrans, a humble Roman bronze coin worth very little to collectors, and given it to Mr. Gables, knowing he loved such things.

Mr. Gables proved unable to resist the siren song of discovery. After obtaining his mistress’s permission, he’d hired the farmhand and the farmhand’s brother to scoop out a considerable amount of earth.

Charlotte already knew the gist of the story—Mr. Gables had happily recounted a barebones version to Lord Ingram a few days ago. Today, to satisfy Inspector MacDonald, he went into greater detail. But this time there was no pleasure in his answers, only a dread that his professional dignity could not entirely conceal.

“Well, here we are,” he said, a good distance from the house.

Inspector MacDonald crouched down; Charlotte did likewise. The spot, had it been a grave site, would have been large enough for two coffins to be placed side by side. The filled pit was a low mound that resembled the above-the-pan portion of a misshapen loaf of bread, claggy clay-heavy soil mixed with lumps of grassy turf that had been dug up and put back.

The ruddy young constables set to work. Inspector MacDonald and Mr. Gables watched nearby. Charlotte and Lord Ingram stood some distance away.

“Has this place been disturbed since it rained last?” she asked him.

The last time it rained was the day of Mrs. Carstairs’s disappearance.

“Doesn’t look like it.”

But that didn’t eliminate the possibility that Mrs. Carstairs could have been placed inside overnight, before the rain came down.

“Thoughts on your interview subjects this morning?” he asked her in return.

“Each rather formidable in his or her own way.”

“Even Mrs. Albright?”

She leaned closer, her sleeve nearly touching his. “Mrs. Albright sported a large and very beautiful handkerchief today. Bear in mind that anything I consider beautiful would likely strike a large segment of the population as absurd, or at least a little outré. What’s unusual about her handkerchief is that the embroidery is double-sided, red and gold dahlias on one side and a landscape of a steep river valley on the other in green and black. Chinese imports are not the most fashionable these days, but still, such a piece of handicraft can’t be either common or cheap.

“And the cameo brooch she wore is also more expensive than it looks. It’s carved from sardonyx shell, for one thing, and features a design not of a woman but of Remus and Romulus—very unusual. For a poor relation, she has not done too badly in life for herself.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” murmured Lord Ingram. “And how is young MacDonald holding up?”

“Sergeant Perkins will be inquiring at lodging places along the coast for recent travelers that match the physical description of the deceased. Our inspector’s focus is likely to shift away from the Carstairses.”

A mysterious drowning was a police matter. A lady leaving her privileged existence behind, however incomprehensible the choice might appear, did not require the scrutiny of the law.

“And your focus?” asked her lover.

Charlotte heard more concern than curiosity in his voice. She did not respond to pressure in quite the same way as most other people, but she felt Mrs. Watson’s anxious bewilderment. And she felt an inner reluctance to peel back all the layers of the case.

Not that she’d succumbed to that reluctance yet, but it caused an internal strain.

She exhaled out of the side of her mouth. “My focus—I will first need to speak to Mrs. Watson.”

Mr. Carstairs arrived on the scene when the constables were shoveling dirt back into the cavity, having unearthed nothing of note. Inspector MacDonald asked him about his visit to the Barnstaple jeweler’s, which Mrs. Albright had mentioned but he himself hadn’t.

Mr. Carstairs shrugged. “Hardly worth bringing up, was it, when the one my gift was intended for was no longer there.”

He invited them to the house for a cup of tea. Lord Ingram declined and took his leave, but the party that had driven in from Ilfracombe accepted. While they helped themselves to biscuits and sandwiches in High Burrow’s lovely drawing room, Mr. Carstairs excused himself. When he returned, he had with him a bracelet and a receipt. “There wasn’t much in the shop. This was the best of the lot, but not precisely worthy of the missus.”

The gold-filigree bracelet that he disdained would have made many a poorer man’s wife weep with joy. But he was not wrong: To Justina Carstairs, accustomed to finer things, it would have been only a trinket.

One of the constables had been dispatched to call on the adjacent farm to verify Mr. Gables’s claim about the farmhand spotting a Roman coin. Inspector MacDonald handed the receipt to the other constable so that the young man could make a trip to Barnstaple to speak to the jeweler.

He then proceeded to the next item on their agenda: speaking to Emaline Carstairs, Reginald Carstairs’s wife. A servant, tasked to carry his summons upstairs, returned to say that she was not feeling well and could not receive him at present.

Having been forewarned by Sherrinford Holmes that this might be the case, Inspector MacDonald left a note and asked that Emaline Carstairs’s response be posted or hand-carried directly to the constabulary at Ilfracombe.