Page 63 of The Vanished Sister

Slowly, Emaline Carstairs straightened. Her face was splotchy. Her right hand opened and clenched, then gripped on to the edge of her seat. “Chester and I, we—we’ve known each other for four years. I’ve always been fond of him, but he was too argumentative and self-willed for me to consider him seriously for matrimony.

“My husband, when he first appeared in Birmingham, felt like the answer to all my prayers. He was eminently presentable in every respect. He appeared thoughtful and profound. And he was the heir to Noble House. I was twenty-five, past the first blush of youth, not notably wealthy or notably beautiful. To even meet such a man seemed too good to be true, let alone be the recipient of his attention.”

For a moment she looked wistful. Not, thought Charlotte, for Reginald Carstairs but for how happy and optimistic she’d felt in those days.

“Alas, my hopes for a peaceful, contented life foundered soon after we were married. His quietness turned out to be a disinclination to speak to me, and his reserve but a mask for his distraction. But that disappointment, great as it was, I could bear. A marriage was built over a lifetime, and I believed we had many years left to grow closer.

“Then Mrs. Wellesley came home.” Her eyes dimmed. She might have since written off her marriage, but that kind of devastation left a deep mark. “She came home and within days I understood that my husband married late not because he couldn’t find anyone but because it had taken him that long to finally give up on Mrs. Wellesley. Yet there she was, once again in his life, once again eligible.”

She yanked the drawstring on her reticule until the cord must be hurting her fingers. “The part of me that had been raised to love and honor my husband did not surrender then and there. I rather naïvely hoped that when Reginald and I went off to London for the Season, leaving Mrs. Wellesley behind at Noble House, we’d be able to mend things and make a new start. But come spring I found out that Mrs. Wellesley would be in London for the duration of the Season, too, even though she wouldn’t attend most functions—and that it was at my husband’s insistence that she’d agreed to come.

“Chester and I had become correspondents after my marriage, but I’d refrained from mentioning this very real crisis I was facing. On that day, however, I couldn’t hold back anymore. I poured out my frustration to him. And he, to his great credit, did not tell me that he’d told me so. In his reply he simply let me know how sorry he was that my life was not what I’d wished for and that I could trust in his friendship and his discretion.

“For the entire Season I struggled with choices for the future. And then one day, after we’d left London for Cowes, my husband was out with Mrs. Wellesley from morning to afternoon, accompanying her to various shops. I resigned myself to the fact that he would not remember to get anything for me. For once, I was wrong: He got me a box of chocolates. But that was far worse than if he’d forgotten any tokens of affection: I’d told him more than once that I was allergic to chocolate and he had not remembered.”

Emaline Carstairs released the cord of her reticule and pulled at the closure so that it didn’t look so strangled. “I knew then that we’d never grow closer or be anything other than two people trapped together by unhappy circumstances. We were about to leave Cowes to go to High Burrow. I asked Chester if he could take a room in Combe Martin so that I could at least discuss my future with a sympathetic friend.

“He came right away. But the demands of a house party were such that I couldn’t get away to see him. So he came to High Burrow several nights in a row and we met in the library.”

“Several nights?”

“Three nights. But we only talked, and not even of my predicament.” Emaline Carstairs’s tense expression softened a little. “I’d forgotten how good it felt to have someone’s undivided attention, to not occupy a distant second place in their esteem.

“Our last night in the library, someone tried to come inside, which was a moment of terrifying suspense.” She pressed a hand over her heart, as if it still pounded from fright. “That night Chester left not from the front gate but via the pastures south of the house, then cut across fields and slopes to reach Combe Martin from the other end. I didn’t know that, of course. I didn’t learn how he’d had to scramble and struggle until I showed up at his lodging the next day.”

The day Mrs. Carstairs was found missing. But that morning nothing appeared amiss yet. With some guests leaving, the rest conscripted to work on home theatrics, the master of the house away escorting Mrs. Albright home and the mistress not coming out of her room, Charlotte could see how a newly lovestruck Emaline Carstairs had been unable to resist the opportunity.

“Chester was shocked to see me.” Emaline Carstairs’s face flamed. “But my mind was made up. We—we became more than friends on that day.”

Her jaw worked. She stared at the floor, as if the Aubusson rug might offer her a hiding place. On Upper Baker Street an itinerant hawker loudly advertised his hot jacket potatoes; in the parlor the grandfather clock ticked.

Emaline Carstairs exhaled, a long, trembling breath. Her worst sins confessed, she seemed to grow steadier. “It was only then that we spoke of our future for the first time. Chester fretted that he would give his mother an apoplectic attack and that she would disown him—he didn’t want to become a burden to me. But he also hoped that she might forgive him after ten or fifteen years. He was convinced she was going to live to a hundred and that we had plenty of time, if we loved each other well, for her to change her mind.

“At tea time I headed back to High Burrow—even if I’d made up my mind to leave Reginald, in the meanwhile I had to maintain some appearances. I was braced for censure upon my return, only to learn that my stepmother-in-law had disappeared and the Newells had been ordered to leave. My absence had registered on no one except my husband, and he, too, paid it little mind.

“I wrote a note to Chester. The next morning I got up very early, walked into Combe Martin, and posted it. I didn’t want to be seen at the Red Schooner again, not when there was a crisis at High Burrow. I told Chester to leave Combe Martin. We’d meet again either when Mrs. Carstairs had returned or until enough time had passed that life must go back to a semblance of normalcy.

“That was the day Mrs. Whitehill’s body was discovered—I’d just got back to High Burrow when the constable came. But of course we had no idea then it was Mrs. Whitehill. I can tell you this much: I was with Chester most of the previous day and he spoke as a son worried about retribution from his mother, not as one scheming to get rid of her.

“In fact, he wrote me from the train and debated the idea of going to see her in Boxton, to broach the matter as early as possible so as not to shock her with some kind of fait accompli.”

Emaline Carstairs glanced from Inspector Treadles to Charlotte. Her hands were trembling again, but possibly more from the release of tension than fear, for her eyes shone with a fatalistic courage. “It may not amount to the strongest defense, but I truly believe that Chester had no idea Mrs. Whitehill was in the area or that she’d died. He was anticipating a terrible confrontation and imminent impoverishment, not freedom or wealth. And certainly not for his private life—and mine—to become a matter of police investigation.”

Twenty-One

In Sherlock Holmes’s bedroom, Lord Ingram stood near the window, listening to Emaline Carstairs’s confession. He could only hope that Emaline Carstairs and Chester Broadfield, should they overcome their current difficulties, would always remember how much they trusted and valued each other in this moment, and not fall back to those habits and tendencies that had cost them the first time around.

If, that is, they had nothing to do with his mother’s death in the first place.

Holmes had one last set of queries. “Mrs. Carstairs, do you or does anyone else at High Burrow embroider?”

They’d debated back and forth on whether to pose the question to any Carstairs and decided to try their luck with Emaline Carstairs, who had her intentions elsewhere. Still Lord Ingram tensed.

Emaline Carstairs sounded taken aback. “I’m sure all the ladies could, but I certainly do not excel at needlework.”

“And the other ladies?”

“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen them at it.”