Page 71 of The Vanished Sister

Mrs. Watson glanced at Miss Charlotte, who was meticulously tying Mr. Arbuthnot’s letters back into a neat stack. “Were I Mrs. Whitehill, I probably would have stowed these letters in a safe deposit box somewhere, rather than leaving them with an undeclared—albeit devoted—suitor.”

In fact, Mrs. Watson was more likely to have burned the letters to prevent their falling into the wrong hands: She might be sentimental, but never too sentimental to act decisively.

Inspector Treadles, following Miss Charlotte’s example, tidied the correspondence from the Panama Canal physician. “Should we take this to mean that by entrusting these letters to Mr. Arbuthnot, Mrs. Whitehill had a greater purpose than avoiding possible scorn and mockery?”

Miss Charlotte was still in the black dress she’d worn to the funeral. It made her look somber, yet also quite young, her skin fine-grained, her hair gleaming. “Inspector, can you find out the name of Reverend Broadfield’s physician, the one who would have known about the injury that made it impossible for him to sire a child?”

Inspector Treadles and Mrs. Watson exchanged a look.

“You think that’s what the note Mrs. Whitehill left for her son would have mentioned?”

The letter that had disappeared from the house, according to Mrs. Hawthorn.

Miss Charlotte arrayed the three bundles of letters in the center of the table. “We seem to have fallen into a habit of elegant theories, so what’s one more? We know from multiple sources that Mrs. Whitehill had been in a grave mood following her visit to Mrs. Osmond: Her housekeeper said so, Mrs. Morgan said she had been distracted when she arrived before the congress of Christian women, and today Mr. Arbuthnot confirmed that for us again.”

“So solemn that he suspected a pessimistic medical diagnosis,” Mrs. Watson recalled.

Miss Charlotte nodded. “Can we say, then, that the action she’d taken during that span of time had been out of a sense of caution, perhaps even foreboding? She was preparing for an unhappy, possibly malevolent turn of events.”

Which was exactly what had happened, in the end.

“However, when she told Mrs. Morgan her plans had changed and she’d be leaving Ludlow a day early, Mrs. Morgan thought her much cheered. And before she left for the coast of Devon, at least according to Mrs. Hawthorn, her mood had become very nearly buoyant. So when she penned the note to her son before her departure, would it have been with dread in her heart—or hope?”

Inspector Treadles adjusted his cuffs, which peeked out exactly one-quarter inch from the sleeves of his lounge suit—trust Mrs. Treadles to always have everything perfectly tailored for her husband. “I wondered about that. Especially as she already had a letter in her lawyer’s keeping from years ago, which Broadfield would receive upon the event of her death, as he did today.”

Mrs. Watson sucked in a breath. “Remember when Mr. Broadfield bemoaned that he’d long known that he was Reverend Rutherford’s son? Is it possible that Mrs. Whitehill also guessed that he knew, even though it was a topic she’d found impossible to discuss—or even to approach obliquely—without great resistance from him?”

“I think that’s not only possible but likely,” said Miss Charlotte. “And that which he admitted during his eulogy, that he’d opposed her plans to travel because he worried that she’d meet yet another husband while roaming abroad? She probably knew that, too—or at least suspected it.”

Inspector Treadles closed his fingers one by one, as if trying to capture stray thoughts. “In which case, would it not be possible that she also knew that the real impasse in her relationship with her son was his belief that he’d been conceived in an extramarital affair? He never brought it up so she could never address it. And she probably couldn’t broach this rather—unconventional bit of history just like that.”

Mrs. Watson half rose. “You think, Miss Charlotte, that in Mrs. Whitehill’s moment of great optimism, with a fourth husband potentially on the horizon, she decided to point Mr. Broadfield toward the physician who had once looked after Reverend Broadfield, so that he would at last know the truth of Reverend Broadfield’s injury?”

“That would be, as we’ve said, yet another elegant theory. But yes, I do consider that a possibility.”

“But why do you want to know the identity of Reverend Broadfield’s physician?” puzzled Mrs. Watson, sinking back down into her chair again. “To check the veracity of what Mrs. Whitehill told her son?”

Inspector Treadles leaned forward and gripped the edge of the table. “Or is it because you think, Miss Charlotte, that whoever took the letter from Mrs. Whitehill’s house would have paid a visit to the physician’s office, as Mrs. Whitehill must have directed her son to do?”

Mrs. Watson would have liked to send some cables immediately.

But it was past nine o’clock in the evening. Set aside the extra fees for disturbing the postmaster and the telegraph clerk in their hours of repose, it was still too much to trouble Mrs. Hawthorn with an alarmingly timed telegram that would oblige her to mount a late-night search through Mrs. Whitehill’s old documents.

If, that is, Mrs. Hawthorn had not yet rushed off to start her new life as a woman of independent means.

Mrs. Morgan, Mrs. Whitehill’s friend in Ludlow, might also know the identity of the physician. But she had traveled to attend Mrs. Whitehill’s funeral today and must already be abed, exhausted.

Inspector Treadles sighed. “I’ll go to the post office as soon as it opens in the morning.”

Miss Charlotte nodded. “Much obliged, sir.”

A knock came at the door. It was Tilly Brownstone, one of the two innkeepers. She had a long face and a bony build and did not look terribly approachable, but in fact she took a greater interest in their guests than did her sister, who was primarily occupied by the organizational challenges of hot meals and fresh linens.

Tilly Brownstone poured tea for her guests. “Anything I can do for you, ladies, sir, before my sister and I retire for the evening?”

“Yes, indeed, Miss Brownstone,” answered Miss Charlotte. “The first time we came to this lovely establishment with questions about Mrs. Whitehill, you were most helpful. We wanted to know whether you had any guests who registered on the same day as Mrs. Whitehill and you told us that there were three parties.”

Tilly Brownstone was obviously not averse to picking up where they had left off the other day. She nodded. “That’s right, two ladies—mother and daughter—who stayed three nights, an old gent who stayed two nights, and a husband-and-wife pair who came and left as Mrs. Whitehill did.”