Page 61 of The Vanished Sister

Miss Charlotte rarely resorted to feminine wiles, and here she didn’t either: Under most circumstances, a woman as pretty as she did not need to do anything besides being soft-spoken and sympathetic to have the desired effect on a man.

And Mr. Broadfield, who must understand intellectually that she was very much in league with Inspector Treadles, nevertheless responded to the apparent kindness of her question.

“Allow me to assure you, miss, that we met at a strictly chaperoned dance in Birmingham. I was there because I’d promised my mother to look for a wife, and Emaline because her own marital prospects had been delayed again and again by caring for her parents and then withdrawing from Society to mourn for them.

“From the very beginning, it felt as if I’d always known her—and we’d always be part of each other’s lives. Perhaps for that reason I didn’t treat her as other young men might their sweethearts. We bickered as much as we talked, and I pooh-poohed at the idea of flowers and valentines because those seemed more bribes than anything else and of course she was allergic to chocolate. We understood each other, I thought, and that was worth more than all the frills and furbelows.”

Mrs. Watson didn’t know whether to feel sorry for this awkward and contrary young man or to smack him upside the head. Staying true to oneself should not automatically translate into saying the first thing that came into one’s head, especially if one didn’t understand the purpose of social speech. And for him to disdain frills and furbelows? They existed precisely so he could show the care and regard in his heart, as he was too inept at other forms of communication!

Miss Charlotte made no remarks, but only listened. Encouraged by her attentiveness, Chester Broadfield went on another ten minutes without a pause. He remembered anecdotes Emaline Carstairs had told him, the dates of their meetings, even the color and cut of her dresses and the ornaments she’d worn in her hair.

“But then Reginald Carstairs came through town.” He pulled at the mourning band on his arm as if it was cutting off his circulation. “He was superior to me in almost every way: better-born, better-looking, better-dressed, better-spoken. But I foolishly thought I still held the greater advantage as I loved Emaline more. But how could I prove such a thing, especially when I scorned flowers and valentines and was more likely to tell her that she was wrong about something than to tell her that she was everything to me?”

Mrs. Watson reflexively tallied all the ways she could have helped this young man, if she’d had his ear in those early days. However, would he and Emaline Carstairs have been happy together?

“She chose him. And it was a terrible blow. But two months after her wedding, I wrote to her, because I did believe that we would always be part of each other’s lives, even if I was now but a distant friend. And we kept up that correspondence ever since.”

His silence signaled that this was all they’d get out of him, nothing else.

“I admire your chivalry and I commend you for it, Mr. Broadfield,” said Miss Charlotte, after half a minute. “Now, given that you and your mother happened to be on the exact same stretch of Devon coast at the exact same time, how confident are you that your purposes did not also coincide?”

Mr. Broadfield recoiled as if Miss Charlotte had punched him in the stomach. “But I’d never said anything to my mother about Emaline, not even when I’d hoped to marry her,” he cried, his voice rising half an octave. “Mother was a staunch churchwoman and Emaline has always been a bit of an agnostic—as am I. And once Emaline married Carstairs, of course I kept mum about her. Mother had tremendous faith in marriage. She would have been outraged if she knew that—that—”

He gripped his hands together. “Anyway, if she had any inkling, Mother would have written me and demanded that I attend her in Boxton. She wouldn’t have rushed to Devon, not when even I didn’t realize I’d be headed there, until a day or two before.”

“Yet for what purpose could Mrs. Whitehill have rushed to the Devon coast,” pointed out Inspector Treadles, “if not to stop any further association between you and Mrs. Emaline Carstairs?”

“Then wouldn’t she have at least come to Combe Martin and excoriated me in person?” cried Mr. Broadfield, plunging his hands in his hair in dramatic frustration.

The next moment he shrank into his chair, his arms slack by his sides. “But I’ve been asking myself, from the moment Sergeant Perkins told me I ought to go with him to the constabulary, what if she did rush off to the coast because of me? What if she knew I was somewhere on the coast and, in her opinion, about to commit a grave error, and then, as she was searching for me, met with this terrible misfortune?”

His eyes filled with tears. “What if it was my fault after all?”

Twenty

The interview with Emaline Carstairs was arranged for the next morning at 18 Upper Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes’s residence and place of business.

Ever since Charlotte found the letter from “de Lacey” to Mrs. Carstairs, informing the latter that Sherlock Holmes was none other than the disgraced Charlotte Holmes, she’d avoided London during the Season: London in summer thronged with too many people who once knew Charlotte Holmes, and the continued success of Sherlock Holmes depended on Charlotte Holmes not being associated with him.

But Mrs. Watson’s staff made sure that 18 Upper Baker Street remained ready to receive petitioners for help. The décor of the parlor, in its first iteration strictly masculine, had since softened with the addition of a large beige-and-gold Aubusson rug and the reupholstering of armchairs in a leafy chintz.

The year before Mrs. Watson had hung a large painting above the mantel. Charlotte had advocated for a Dutch still life of a laden table, preferably with a gleaming pear tart front and center. But she would have been happy with big pewter pitchers and giant baskets of fruits.

Mrs. Watson, however, overrode her pleas and selected a very British tableau of a fox hunt in progress, full of red-coated riders and overexcited hounds, and not a single picnic basket anywhere in view.

“However, I must admit,” said Charlotte to her lover, “that the fox hunt was the better choice. Now rumors have it that the world’s premier consulting detective had been injured during precisely such a large-scale chasse, adding a considerable amount of poignancy to his great mystique.”

Lord Ingram poured himself a cup of coffee. “A better pathos than if he’d been felled by a giant pear tart, as the still life you wanted would have suggested?”

Charlotte’s lips twitched. He’d arrived at number 18 the night before, shortly after she did, with a supply of biscuits from Eastleigh Park and a newly confected jar of strawberry jam, which she was enjoying right now with butter over her toast.

“What did Lucinda and Carlisle think about their now-extended holiday at Eastleigh Park?” she asked.

He looked up in surprise. She did ask after his children, but almost always referred to them as Miss Lucinda and Master Carlisle, the formality implying a certain distance.

They still wrote each other frequently and volubly, as they spent most of the year apart. And in their correspondence they touched on everything from the latest styles of millinery to the health of his favorite horse, alongside news of mutual acquaintances and the occasional musing on the meaning of life.

But by unspoken agreement, they steered clear of discussions of their future. He, she felt, did not want to ask for more than she could give. And she, perhaps, did not want to commit to anything she might wish to take back at a later date.