Page 48 of The Vanished Sister

“Right,” said Mrs. Hawthorn. She swallowed one more time. “How can I help you do that, Miss Holmes, Inspector?”

Miss Holmes lifted her teacup to her lips. In official police matters, she preferred to listen and observe, rather than be the one to direct the questioning. But Treadles would always feel a little amateurish, conducting an investigation before Sherlock Holmes.

Nevertheless he must begin. “All we know is that, according to Mr. Broadfield, her son, Mrs. Whitehill, who hardly ever traveled, started abruptly for the Devon coast. And left behind a note in case she didn’t return on time—a note that disappeared mysteriously. Given all that, her death warrants closer scrutiny.”

Mrs. Hawthorn worried her upper lip for a moment. “I might need to make a slight correction to that, Inspector. Mr. Broadfield, you see, I’m afraid he does—did not know his mother very well.”

As she spoke, she glanced up at a different oil portrait of Mrs. Whitehill. In this one, she stood beside a bay horse in a tartan riding habit and showed off a figure that could have graced a fashion plate in La Belle Assemblée.

Treadles pitched a brow. “Oh?”

“Well, his ignorance was not entirely his fault—he left home at a rather early age, you see, and visited only at Easter and Christmas.”

“And what was it that he did not know about his mother?”

Mrs. Hawthorn coughed delicately. “After Mr. Whitehill passed away eight years ago, Mrs. Whitehill and I went away on holiday at least twice a year. Mrs. Whitehill felt very much at ease being away from home. But Mr. Broadfield had a difficult time on his grand tour. When Mrs. Whitehill first wrote him about her intended journeys, he sincerely advised her against taxing herself. So she simply never mentioned them again.”

“But did all the traveling she wanted?”

“Indeed.”

Treadles studied the equestrian portrait of Mrs. Whitehill. Yes, he could see this woman ranging everywhere and saying nothing of it to her less peripatetic son. “So the odd part about this journey was not that she went but that she went by herself, without you. Is that so, Mrs. Hawthorn?”

Mrs. Hawthorn tugged at the edge of her large white cap. “I did—I did flatter myself that I looked after her better than anyone else. And Mrs. Whitehill, she liked being looked after and she appreciated my efforts.”

In other words, the housekeeper had been astonished to be left behind.

“Did she say why this time she chose to go alone?”

“No, sir. And it wasn’t my place to ask, so I didn’t. Now I wish I’d insisted on going with her—or at least insisted that she give me a reason.”

The housekeeper’s eyes filled with tears. She gamely dabbed at them with a handkerchief and waited for Treadles’s next question.

“When did Mrs. Whitehill broach the trip to you?”

“The day before she left. We don’t keep horses ourselves anymore but have one third share of Squire Greeley’s. On that day she asked me to go to the squire and let him know that she would need to be driven to the railway station the next morning. That was when I learned she intended to go on a trip.”

Mrs. Hawthorn smoothed her already perfectly ironed apron. “I was disappointed, but I was more worried that I’d given offense without knowing it. I didn’t say anything of course but she was apologetic about it, Mrs. Whitehill, and promised that she’d take me with her next time.”

“Did it strike you as out of the ordinary that she left a note for her son?”

“It did at first, when I was feeling all confused about her taking the trip and leaving me home. But then, on the way to the railway station, she looked so nervous yet excited, I wondered on the way back whether she had to go alone because she was eloping.”

Treadles glanced at Miss Holmes, not without a measure of surprise, which a few years ago would have been several measures of astonishment. When he’d asked her beforehand what she thought could be the key to Mrs. Whitehill’s disappearance, she’d said, Cherchez l’homme.

Years ago, for the first case on which he’d appealed to Sherlock Holmes for help, part of the response he’d been given had been Cherchez la femme.

Look for the woman.

This time, Miss Holmes thought they ought to Look for the man to explain the unusual action of a staunch churchwoman.

And the churchwoman’s housekeeper just confessed that she’d had the same thought.

He flipped back a page in his notebook. No, he was not mistaken. Mrs. Whitehill was fifty-seven years of age.

“You served Mrs. Whitehill for how long, Mrs. Hawthorn?”

“Twenty-two years, Inspector. She engaged me as an upper maid shortly after she married Reverend Rutherford, her second husband.”