Page 5 of The Vanished Sister

“You think she’s from that house?” Mrs. Watson asked, staring. Something about the woman was familiar. Too familiar. The figure. The air of authority. That head of shiny chestnut hair, not a strand out of place despite the air currents.

“Could be,” answered Lord Ingram. “I’ve not met the family.”

Abruptly, the woman turned around and walked away, disappearing rapidly. Mrs. Watson let out a breath, released her fingers from around the gunwale, and slowly turned around. “So who owns High Burrow?”

“The Carstairses of Lincolnshire,” said Miss Charlotte, looking directly at Mrs. Watson. “Have you heard of them?”

Lord Ingram’s seaside cottage was a cottage in roughly the same sense that Chatsworth House was a house. He had bought it as a present for his former wife, who, as it turned out, had no use for it. For years it sat empty, seldom visited by either husband or wife, and certainly not the two together with their children. At one point it only had a single elderly caretaker who could barely keep up with the grounds, let alone cook and clean for visitors.

But things had changed since Lord Ingram’s divorce. Or rather, since he took up with Miss Charlotte. Lord Ingram, thoughtful man that he was, quickly realized that while Miss Charlotte could visit him occasionally in disguise at Stern Hollow, his country seat, it was much more convenient for everyone if she didn’t have to run the gauntlet of a large manor house that was both full of servants and surrounded by curious neighbors.

Subsequently, this long-neglected spot on the Devon coast became their love nest. It now boasted modern plumbing and a well-ventilated new kitchen, as well as new floors, new flues, new windows, and a new name. Mrs. Watson wasn’t sure what the place had been called earlier, but Miss Charlotte had dubbed it Sans Souci—French for Without Worries—and Lord Ingram had had the name engraved upon a plaque and affixed to the gate.

Mrs. Watson, prone to fretting, had felt unusually carefree at Sans Souci. But as the company reached the cottage at the end of their otherwise idyllic excursion, she was anything but happy and assured.

In fact, she made sure not to look toward High Burrow, now a looming presence in the distance.

Mrs. Watson had not needed to answer Miss Charlotte’s question, for Miss Olivia had piped up at that moment, My goodness, that’s the family Philana Newell will be marrying into! I knew that they had a place somewhere on the Devon coast, but I had no idea it was so close to Sans Souci.

For the past three years, though Miss Olivia spent a good bit of time with Mrs. Watson and Miss Charlotte, she officially resided with Mrs. Newell, distant cousin and great friend to the Holmes sisters. The world believed her to be Mrs. Newell’s companion, though in truth she was more the latter’s guest at her dower house in Derbyshire, not far from Lord Ingram’s estate.

And so Mrs. Watson learned that Philana Newell, Mrs. Newell’s granddaughter, had become engaged recently to none other than the Carstairses’ younger son. Moreover, the Carstairses, who made use of their holiday house only sporadically, would presently be hosting the Newells at High Burrow to celebrate the engagement.

Miss Olivia deemed that the house party would not affect them and they’d continue with their own holiday as planned. But Mrs. Watson felt a tightening of her collar.

On the eve of this important social occasion for Justina, Mrs. Watson had blithely sailed by High Burrow, her grown-up daughter by her side, surrounded by their friends. Would Justina see that as merely the coincidence it had been, or would she extrapolate a wholesale insurrection on Mrs. Watson’s part?

The tea that welcomed the ramblers back to Sans Souci was a substantial spread. As everyone else tucked into cakes and sandwiches, Mrs. Watson badly wanted to fortify her cup with a dram of whisky, or at least some brandy. But such a beverage would be difficult to explain on a warm day…

Penelope was already proposing a game of tennis. When the cottage was renovated, Lord Ingram had added a tennis court and his guests had made good use of it.

“I’m still surprised that you do, in fact, play tennis.” Miss Olivia laughed as she addressed her sister. “You always wrote that ‘Games of tennis were played,’ and I always imagined that someone was conscripted to play with Ash while you sat nearby with a Victoria sponge and a stack of books.”

“You’re not wrong about the Victoria sponge,” answered Miss Charlotte while biting into a slice of Victoria sponge. “Ash knows how to dangle a carrot. He always promises a grand picnic, but only after games of tennis or long rambles for which we must start at dawn.”

Miss Olivia tittered. “So you were the conscripted one.”

They scattered amid peals of laughter—which were beginning to take on a fey and brittle tone in Mrs. Watson’s ears—to change into tennis costumes. Mrs. Watson did so grimly and sat in her room for a quarter hour, her head in her hands, before she went down to join the company at the rear of the house.

Newly shorn grass, smelling of green sap and deep summer; fresh lines of chalk dust, laid down to mark the boundary of the court; young people in tennis whites stretching and limbering up—nothing but peace and unmarred contentment everywhere Mrs. Watson looked. Yet fear swirled in her heart.

“Where’s Ash?” asked Penelope.

As if to answer her question, their host emerged from the house and headed straight for Mrs. Watson, a slight frown on his face. “Ma’am, Mrs. Carstairs from High Burrow is here to see you. Are you at home to her?”

Mrs. Watson did not remember what she said to Lord Ingram in turn. It didn’t even occur to her, until she was walking into the house, that he must already know, from a single look at Justina, that the two women were closely related.

Inside the drawing room, her caller, clad in a simple white dress cinched by a green sash—the same attire as the woman on the precipice—stood before the mantel. She looked up at a charcoal drawing of a Greek temple in ruins set against a stony mound that resembled nothing so much as a half-melted sugar loaf. Mt. Cynthus on the island of Delos, where Lord Ingram had recently carried out excavations on behalf of the French School of Athens.

Her silhouette was fashionably slender—how did she manage to maintain such a trim figure? But everything had its cost, did it not? Without a little padding on the body, a woman of their age was liable to be gaunt in the face.

Justina turned around. Yes, she had aged, and yes, her face was lean. That lack of youthful plumpness, however, only made her more deep-eyed and finely chiseled. Even the few strands of grey in her hair did not make her look old, only more distinguished.

But Mrs. Watson did not see the Taj Mahal this time. No, Justina was a dark forest. What could be more alluring than a dark forest, with its promises of firefly-lit paths and mischievous fairies? And what could be more dangerous?

“What do you want?” she asked, without preliminaries and certainly without offering her sister a seat.

But Justina took one anyway, in a leisurely manner. Refreshments had been brought in, making it impossible for Mrs. Watson to deny her the cup of tea she was already pouring for herself.