Page 90 of The Vanished Sister

He told me he loved a woman who would kill for him.

Fifteen years after we were married, one day he asked if I would still kill for him. Then he began to pay attention to a Lady Vardon in a public and obvious manner. After some time of this, he told me that he had incapacitated her and locked her in the dungeon of Warthorpe House, a minor Carstairs property that had been built on the foundation of a ruined castle. If I still loved him as I once had, he said, I would brick over the entrance to the dungeon, making it forever inaccessible.

I traveled to Warthorpe House intending to free the woman, but found the door to the dungeon heavier than anything I’d ever encountered, set in an archway of great granite blocks, the bolt secured with a lock that weighed a stone. Next to the door, I found bricks and instruction for mixing mortar.

I pounded on the door with the trowel that had been provided and was met with resolute silence. Yet as I began the masonry work, I kept thinking that I heard weeping and whimpering.

My husband arrived after three days and was extremely pleased with my work. He told me that there had been no one behind the door. And that Lady Vardon had already emigrated to the Cayman Islands.

I hired a private investigator to travel to the Cayman Islands. He found no one by that name, nor anyone matching her description who had moved there in the recent past.

I had him check other British islands in the Caribbean. Still nothing.

Three years later I heard that she’d in fact gone to Bermuda. I sent the same private investigator. He found her alive and well and brought back photographic evidence. But it was too late. To this day I cannot help but believe that there is a woman behind the bricked-up archway at Warthorpe House.

If anyone is reading this, something must have happened to me. But the truth should be known. Yes, I killed Cordelia Carstairs, but would I have done it had I not been promised a great prize?

I think not.

Mrs. Watson held on to Lord Ingram with both arms. She didn’t know how long she’d been doing so—the carriage must have covered most of the distance from Euston Station to the house in St. John’s Wood—but her hold on him only grew tighter.

“I don’t think Everett Carstairs knows about Sherlock Holmes—about Charlotte Holmes being Sherlock Holmes, that is.”

Mrs. Watson shivered at Miss Charlotte’s voice. It had been quiet inside the carriage, only the clacking of horseshoes, the crush of iron wheels on macadamized surfaces, and the occasional neighing of passing horses.

“You’re sure about that?” said her dear boy.

“If he did, he should have approached me during our railway journey, to make a deal or to ask for my help, if he’s innocent.”

Innocent of what?

“Does he know what you’ve found out?” asked Lord Ingram.

“We haven’t told him. But it was unlikely that he was at Noble House by coincidence. I believe he went to find the same thing we did.”

Mrs. Watson suddenly recalled Everett Carstairs’s relentless climb up the steps, abandoning the most rudimentary courtesies of a host. And relinquishing even the most instinctive displeasures of a man who’d found his home invaded in his absence, just so he could keep going.

Had he killed Justina because he’d found out that she’d finally told the truth about him?

“But I’m not sure,” continued Miss Charlotte, “whether the message on Mrs. Carstairs’s wedding petticoat would pass muster in a court of law. Any barrister worth his salt could throw no end of doubt on it by arguing that the embroidered shapes conveyed no meaningful message. An unscrupulous lawyer could even assert that the evidence had been planted.”

Mrs. Watson must have trembled or jerked, for Lord Ingram rubbed her back and murmured, “It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine.”

She wished she could believe that.

The carriage stopped. She grunted, but forced herself to sit upright. They’d arrived at the house in St. John’s Wood.

The parlor looked eerily undisturbed. A murder scene should be more disorderly, shouldn’t it? One where a gun had been drawn should have puddles of blood and perhaps overturned furniture from the victim’s attempt to escape.

The armchair in which Justina had sat had only a few drops of blood, high up its padded back, dark spots upon a light green print of acanthus leaves. The blue-and-silver Persian carpet did not seem to have been sullied. And nothing else in the room appeared remotely touched by the act of violence that had taken her life.

“What is this place?” asked Inspector Treadles.

“A house for just us,” came Everett Carstairs’s voice.

Mrs. Watson started. She hadn’t realized how closely he stood to her. But he had eyes only for the bloodstains on the chair.

“For you and Mrs. Carstairs?”