Page 52 of The Vanished Sister

“Yes.”

“How did she look then?”

Miss Osmond bit her lower lip. “Oddly enough, rather similar to how she looked after Mrs. Whitehill left.”

Inspector Treadles appeared baffled. Mrs. Watson felt his perplexity. None of them knew Mrs. Osmond’s purpose. The daughter hadn’t seen Mrs. Whitehill on that day. So in what other direction could they take this inquiry?

“Miss Osmond,” said Miss Charlotte, “were you surprised when your mother asked Mrs. Whitehill to come and see her?”

Mrs. Watson caught the emphasis on Mrs. Whitehill’s name.

A little color came into Miss Osmond’s cheeks. “Yes, I was. She’d always admired Mrs. Whitehill and they wrote regularly. I just never thought of their friendship as one of such compelling intimacy that she’d be the one chosen above all others as the one Mother wished to see at the very end of her life.”

Inspector Treadles’s eyes widened. He, too, had read the letters Mrs. Osmond had written Mrs. Whitehill. But had he thought the correspondence perfectly warm and devoted, while Miss Charlotte had discerned the slight distance that separated good friends from true confidantes?

“You did not ask your mother about her choice?” Miss Charlotte pressed for more information.

“I did ask her—why Mrs. Whitehill and not the two very dear friends she’d known since childhood.” Miss Osmond’s voice, as she warmed up to her subject, had also become more audible. “She was silent for a long time. When I thought she wouldn’t answer, she said, ‘Certain things you entrust to certain people, and not others.’ I was surprised by that and said that we, her children, were capable of doing anything for her that Mrs. Whitehill could. But she only shook her head.

“After Mrs. Whitehill left, I wanted to ask my mother whether Mrs. Whitehill agreed to it, but in the end I didn’t, as it didn’t seem to be something she wished to discuss with me. I thought someday I’d ask Mrs. Whitehill, but…” Miss Osmond sighed. “But with Mrs. Whitehill no more, that’s also no longer possible.”

Suddenly her hand came up to her throat. She emitted a soft gasp. “You—my goodness, are you here because you think Mrs. Whitehill’s death has something to do with the request my mother might have made?”

Seventeen

Eastleigh Park, where Lord Ingram grew up, held countless memories for him. In recent years, however, its hunting lodge, which he’d rarely visited as a child, had become his favorite spot on the estate.

Three years ago, Holmes had hired the lodge as her hiding place and stayed out of view for months—and from there she’d successfully ambushed him when he arrived for his annual Easter visit.

Last Christmas, she managed to surprise him again and every night for a week they’d spent hours together, sometimes in bed, sometimes crisping crumpets on a toasting fork while reading side by side.

At the moment there was no chance that he’d be happily caught off guard a third time—she was in Shropshire alongside Inspector Treadles and Mrs. Watson. Nevertheless he glanced in the direction of the hunting lodge, its weathered tile roof visible through a gap in the trees.

“Harry was amazed,” chirped Carlisle, his son, talking about his cousin. “He has a rock collection, but he didn’t know you could have a seed collection. And we gathered so many seeds to start his collection.”

“I don’t think he’s ever taken a proper look at a tree before.” His daughter, Lucinda, laughed from several paces ahead on the wooded path. “But Carlisle also found some lovely pebbles for his rock collection.”

She was now nine, still ready to take life by the horns every waking moment. Carlisle, eight, remained a little on the timid side—when no one else was watching, he still held on to Lord Ingram’s hand, as he did now.

Someday he would negotiate the world on his own. But now he didn’t need to, not yet.

Lord Ingram was not at Eastleigh Park to take Lucinda and Carlisle home, but to give them permission to stay longer. He could have sent a letter, but he wanted to see his children and to explain in person that something had come up and he was going to be busy for a few days.

“Papa,” said Carlisle softly, when Lucinda had gone too far ahead to hear, “will we have a stepmamma?”

Lord Ingram had expected the question in the wake of his divorce but now, three years later, its arrival startled him. “I don’t believe so—not in the near future.”

“But Harry says every man needs a wife.”

“Harry is forgetting that your Uncle Remington has never married, but I see his point.” They passed a bench set beside the path. Lord Ingram sat down and pulled Carlisle close. His heart pinched at the shadow of worry in his son’s eyes—and the trust that shone in them. “Harry, as someone who is very fond of you, probably feels it his duty to prepare you for big changes. But I am even more fond of you and would prepare you even more assiduously for any permanent change to your life. Does that make sense?”

Carlisle thought for a moment and nodded solemnly.

Lord Ingram smiled. “In that case, what does it mean that I haven’t prepared you for a stepmamma?”

“That I won’t be having one—not in the near future, at least.”

“Exactly.” Lord Ingram patted the boy’s small shoulder and rose—they’d better catch up to Lucinda. “Are you relieved that you won’t need to deal with any big changes, young man?”