Page 86 of The Vanished Sister

Everett Carstairs entered the villa. Lord Ingram, worried that he might be using the place as a pass-through, rounded to the back of the property, but did not observe the man leaving.

At this point, he was in a quandary: He had a likely address but could not inform anyone else without leaving it unguarded.

“Eventually I went to a nearby post office and cabled you at Scotland Yard. I returned to the villa and watched it for a while. Nothing seemed to be happening; I went back to the hotel. My men reported that they had not seen Everett Carstairs return. I left two men there and took two others with me back to the house, so we could watch it front and back and have a spare person to send messages, should the need arise.

“But you never came. I finally dispatched a fellow to Scotland Yard, only to learn that you’d left some time ago.”

Treadles sucked in air through his teeth. “Miss Holmes asked me to have someone from the Lincoln Constabulary meet and escort her to Noble House. I didn’t know anyone suitable so I called on Chief Inspector Talbot for help. After that, I telephoned Scotland Yard and my men met me directly at the Carstairses’ house.”

“That was how my man learned where you were. I decided to come myself.” Lord Ingram took out his watch and glanced at it, his expression grave. “The longer I loitered outside that villa, the more…ominous everything seemed. But as this is an official investigation, I did not want to knock on the door—or break and enter, for that matter—without your say-so.”

Treadles also took a look at Lord Ingram’s watch—it was past six o’clock. “He left the hotel at about one o’clock this afternoon, you say? I received Miss Holmes’s telegram at roughly the same time, perhaps a bit earlier. I wonder if Mrs. Albright wired him, to warn him that the police had interviewed her again.”

“And if she also told him that her callers had gone down the slope, he would know that they suspected the worst,” murmured Lord Ingram.

Then Everett Carstairs had rushed out of his hotel to where his wife had been hiding. To do what?

The yew hedge that surrounded the property was eight-foot high, dark green and densely grown. The area it enclosed was larger than Treadles had supposed, with a circular rose garden at its center, and a drive that girded it, passing under a porte cochere that shaded the front door of the villa.

Treadles knocked. When he received no response, he knocked harder. Still nothing. Reflexively he tried the door handle. The door opened.

It hadn’t been locked from the inside.

He exchanged a look with Lord Ingram and pushed the door open some more. “Anyone home?”

Behind him Lord Ingram cocked a revolver.

The sun had yet to set but the day had become overcast and the inside of the house was dim. No lamps had been lit.

Lord Ingram opened the first door on the right side of the entrance hall. It was a study, empty of occupants. The next one opened into a cloak room. Beyond that, the staircase hall. And beyond that, an empty dining room.

A fairly typical arrangement for the ground floor of a London town house.

Cautiously, they made their way up the staircase. The first door to the left of the landing was ajar, revealing a parlor beyond.

Treadles stopped. Through the opening of the door, he could see part of an upholstered armchair. Was that a honey-colored skirt extending beyond the seat of the chair?

“Mrs. Carstairs?”

Her name echoed from the silk-covered walls.

Treadles strode across the corridor and pushed the door fully open. The skirt, elegantly ruffled, was on a woman who also wore a white blouse with puffed sleeves. The blouse was stained with blood.

Mrs. Carstairs, dead from a bullet to the temple.

Twenty-Seven

The rain started a few miles outside of Derby, where Mrs. Watson and Miss Charlotte—now once again disguised as Sherrinford Holmes—changed trains. From that point onward the countryside outside the windows became a watery blur. Sometimes the rain ceased for a few minutes here and there, but streaks of water still crawled across glass panes, distorting the view beyond.

At Lincoln, near dinnertime, they were met by Inspector Paulson, a taciturn man with a heavy mustache who had spent ten years at Scotland Yard and worked under Chief Inspector Talbot. Together they embarked on a branch line. At the end of their locomotive journey, a nervous-looking local constable had a carriage waiting.

By the time they reached Noble House, it was too dark to see much of anything in the light of the carriage lanterns—only threads of rain and the gravel drive that glistened faintly. It had been so long since Mrs. Watson’s previous visit. All she remembered was a meandering, man-made lake, bright and sunlit, and a parkland made orderly and comforting by generations of manpower bought with generations of wealth.

At the manor, she saw something familiar. Here the English garden gave way to a formal French one. As was the case at High Burrow, great topiaries of chess pieces stood by the door like sentries. But in the flickering light from the sconces, they were shadowy and menacing.

An astonished and uneasy Mr. Gables received them. The interior of the manor was ecstatically baroque: marble columns, gilded friezes, and painted ceilings that might as well have illustrated the entire history of western civilization.

How dwarfed Mrs. Watson would have felt, how insignificant, had she stepped into this palatial hall on that long-ago visit. But as she looked about now, she could only think of Reverend Robinson on his deathbed. Did memories of his feverish skin, his mumbled syllables, and his helplessly dilated pupils ever interrupt Justina’s daily routine, like a sharp rock digging into the soles of her slippers?