Page 65 of The Vanished Sister

“Do you think you can charm Mrs. Wellesley?” she whispered earnestly. “Or better yet, beguile her?”

“No,” he said immediately. Were it not for the presence of Inspector Treadles by the bow window, still looking down at the street, his no would have been a fair bit louder.

He’d never been a charming man, let alone a beguiling one.

“Well.” She gazed up at him, her eyes endlessly limpid. “Try at least.”

Reginald Carstairs might have accompanied his stepsister to Upper Baker Street but when Lord Ingram answered the bell, a black-clad Mrs. Wellesley stood alone before the door of number 18. In her stockinged feet, she was probably two inches shorter than him. But with the towering plumes on her hat, she had to duck her head to pass under the lintel.

Her surprise at seeing him passed like a slight swell at sea, creating no waves because it did not break against any particular expectations. She frowned slightly upon being introduced to Inspector Treadles. But again, Lord Ingram felt the mental shrug on her part: The policeman’s presence, too, was only incidental to her purpose.

He gave the usual explanation about Sherlock Holmes’s “condition” and need for intermediaries. Mrs. Wellesley remained uninterested. “My best wishes for Mr. Holmes’s health and swift recovery.”

Lord Ingram exhaled. Good thing he’d made no promises to Holmes on charming, let alone beguiling, their caller.

“You asked for an appointment with Sherlock Holmes, Mrs. Wellesley. How may he be of service to you?”

“Ah, that.”

She opened her mourning reticule, which glittered with an abundance of polished jet beads, and took out a stack of invoices. As she did so, he spied a monogrammed, ivory-handled derringer.

“Shortly after I became married, I learned that my husband had been disowned years earlier. I, the fool, began to support the habits and tendencies that his own family refused to put up with anymore.”

Her lips thinned; her voice took on an edge. “Every year on our anniversary he bought me jewelry—with my funds, of course. He picked them out, I paid the invoices. After I wore the pieces once or twice, he supposedly put them into safe deposit boxes at the bank. I always believed that he sold them back to the jewelers and pocketed the money, but only after he died did I realize that the jewelry had ended up in the hands of his mistress.

“My friends in both Naples and Alexandria have written to me to say that they believe she is now in London. However, I have not been able to locate her. I’d like to entrust the matter to Sherlock Holmes, to find her and secure the return of my jewelry.”

Lord Ingram blinked. That was what she wanted? “Would your objective not be better achieved by lawyers?”

Mrs. Wellesley’s earlier apathy had evaporated. Her nostrils flared; her jaw worked. “I don’t have firm evidence that she’s in possession of the jewelry, only the absence of the jewelry from the safe deposit boxes and the lack of evidence on what else my husband could have done with nearly five thousand pounds. Therefore a consulting detective is preferable—at least to my putting a gun to her head and demanding the handover.”

So she was aware that he’d seen the firearm in her reticule.

“And don’t worry. If I had it in me to shoot her, I’d have done so years ago.”

He took the stack of invoices from her. “Let me show these to Sherlock Holmes.”

A few minutes later he returned to the parlor, minus the invoices. “Mr. Holmes is most sympathetic to your desire to regain possessions that are rightfully yours. However, he begs your understanding that as he himself cannot leave his sickbed, and his lieutenants are currently stretched thin, it might be some time before he could devote sufficient attention and manpower to your inquiry.”

“Understandable,” pronounced Mrs. Wellesley. “But now I am in the queue?”

“You are in the queue behind Mrs. Whitehill’s case,” Lord Ingram reassured her. “As it is now also in your interest that the case is solved as soon as possible, would you mind answering a few questions for Inspector Treadles here?”

“I would be most obliged,” said Inspector Treadles.

Rebecca Wellesley frowned. “I already spoke to your colleague in Devon, Inspector.”

“And he was most grateful for your time, I’m sure,” replied Inspector Treadles smoothly. “If you would, Mrs. Wellesley, are you aware of any connections between the deceased, Mrs. Whitehill, and the Carstairses?”

Mrs. Wellesley sighed, resigning herself to this imposition as a cost to be paid for Sherlock Holmes’s future services. “I saw Mrs. Whitehill’s son the other day when he came to view her body. I’d never met him before in my life. I still have never set foot in Shropshire. I’m sure his mother was a perfect stranger to me, too.”

“Do you know of anyone else at High Burrow who might be acquainted with either Mrs. Whitehill or Mr. Broadfield?”

“No.”

“You are not aware that Mr. Broadfield was once Mrs. Emaline Carstairs’s suitor?”

“Really?” A flicker of amusement animated her features. “I can see why she chose Reggie, then.”