Page 85 of The Vanished Sister

“Answers will be forthcoming, but not yet,” said Treadles. “We’re still in the thick of the investigation. Has anyone here heard from the senior Mrs. Carstairs?”

“No, unfortunately,” said Charles Carstairs, now looking wary.

Emaline Carstairs shook her head.

“And from Mr. Everett Carstairs?”

“Not since he cabled to say he was leaving High Burrow to look for Mother,” replied Charles Carstairs.

“Same,” said Emaline Carstairs.

Treadles glanced at the door, but no one else seemed to be arriving. “Mr. Reginald Carstairs and Mrs. Wellesley are not home?”

Charles Carstairs swallowed and tried not to look at his sister-in-law. “I haven’t seen much of them in the past day or two.”

Was he assuming that they had become more than stepsiblings in the meanwhile?

“Should they not return before we leave, please let them know that Scotland Yard would like to be kept abreast of any communication received from either of your parents.”

“But why?” Charles Carstairs’s voice rose. “None of us know Mrs. Whitehill.”

Treadles only nodded. “Kindly remain in this room. I thank you for your cooperation.”

He would have held off searching the Carstairses’ residences, in the hope that Mrs. Carstairs might reemerge sooner.

But the cable MacDonald had wired from Lynton pointed out a different aspect of the case and asked that the London house be examined immediately. MacDonald himself was headed to High Burrow, as soon as he dropped Miss Holmes and Mrs. Watson to Barnstaple, where they would begin their journey to Lincolnshire.

Suggestions from MacDonald, at this point, were suggestions from Sherlock Holmes. Although Treadles did not entirely understand her urgency, experience had taught him that it would not hurt to act on her recommendation. He beckoned his men inside, stationed a constable in the drawing room to keep an eye on the Carstairses, and assigned the rest to various sections of the house.

High Burrow, according to Mrs. Watson, was beautiful in a more relaxed manner, befitting a holiday house. This large town house, then, served as a reminder that the Carstairses had been a distinguished family for centuries.

There was a solidity to the furnishing, everything either already hundreds of years old and still handsome and serviceable or, if it was of more recent creation, meant to be still handsome and serviceable in hundreds of years. But all the artworks were—as had been the case in the drawing room—idealized depictions of classical antiquity, contemplative men and women against a backdrop of white marble and Mediterranean Sea, with great expanses of bright blue skies that injected an airiness to the mood and enlivened rooms that might otherwise feel too restrained.

Mrs. Carstairs’s golden touch at work then.

Did she ever think about the husband she poisoned? Or did she look upon her work and believe that Reverend Robinson had been an acceptable sacrifice for the life she was meant to lead? And the poor man, had he realized, or had he gone to his death believing that he had been loved and cared for?

And how did Everett Carstairs deal with this murderous aspect in his wife? When had he learned? Was that why he always wanted her to prove her love for him, because if she loved him madly and deeply, then she wouldn’t do away with him as she had Reverend Geoffrey Hammond Robinson?

Treadles closed yet another drawer and frowned. He’d personally gone through Mrs. Carstairs’s private quarters twice and found very little that was useful in general and certainly nothing in the specific vein of what Sherlock Holmes wanted.

“Inspector, Inspector!” called one of his subordinates from the door. “There’s a gentleman to see you. He said his name is Lord Ingram Ashburton and he’s waiting outside.”

“My lord!” Treadles ran out to the pavement.

Lord Ingram stopped pacing. “Inspector. I have an address.”

Finally.

The two men got into a hansom cab together. One of Treadles’s men would remain behind; the rest would follow in the police wagon.

“Fast as you can,” Treadles shouted to the cabbie. And then, to his friend, he said, “Excellent work.”

Lord Ingram shook his head and tapped his fingers on his knee. His lordship was not prone to fidgeting. And even when he didn’t bother to keep completely still, his motions tended to be deliberate rather than staccato, nerve-driven.

“Work we’ve put in,” he said. “I have doubts about its excellence, though.”

He gave Treadles a quick account. Everett Carstairs had returned to his Lisson Grove hotel at quarter past ten in the morning. Around one o’clock, he’d left the hotel again. This time, Lord Ingram happened to be watching the exit he used and managed to follow him to a villa in St. John’s Wood.