Page 93 of The Vanished Sister

Charlotte was more or less persuaded of the limited nature of Mrs. Carstairs’s connection with anyone in Moriarty’s orbit. Unlike the former Lady Ingram, who had succumbed to Moriarty’s inducement, Mrs. Carstairs had committed too many atrocities to reach her position. She would not have done anything to jeopardize that position, unless it had been to keep those atrocities from coming to light. And Charlotte had seen no evidence that Moriarty’s minions or Lord Bancroft had known about them.

As for the letter to Tobias Hedge…

Inspector Treadles had learned that in Church Stretton, terrifically close to Boxton, Mrs. Whitehill’s village, at one of the inns, a guest had hired a horse for a bit of solitary stargazing on the exact night the doctor in Boxton, returning after a troublesome delivery, had come across a lone rider departing.

The good inspector had also found Reverend Broadfield’s physician, the one who must have known about his injury that precluded siring children of his own. Or rather, he’d found the practice, which had since been sold to a younger doctor. The younger doctor, cooperating with the law, had located Reverend Broadfield’s name on a file, but all records inside had disappeared.

If one assumed that Mrs. Carstairs had been responsible for both acts of pilfering, then she had been extremely busy in the first few days after she left High Burrow. In fact, ever since she received Mrs. Whitehill’s letter, it must have been one grim, relentless marathon of preparation. Perhaps Everett Carstairs, after he’d followed her out of Devon, could have taken on some of the tasks, but he’d been recalled by the discovery of Mrs. Whitehill’s body. And Mrs. Carstairs’s isolation had only deepened.

And Moriarty, with whom she had not deigned to associate earlier because of the questionable aims and even more questionable legality of his organization, now appeared to be a straw that might be worth clutching at.

Charlotte sat down, folded her newspaper neatly, scratched at her beard, and looked out of the window. They were already in Dorset, the green rolling landscape of which was not too dissimilar from that of Devon, its neighboring county to the west. Another forty minutes and they would reach the station closest to Warthorpe House, the site of Mrs. Carstairs’s ordeal. Also, where Reginald Carstairs might be, according to his brother Charles.

Charlotte, however, was no longer thinking of the case but of the Dorset coast, which she was currently too far inland to see.

Lucinda, Lord Ingram’s daughter, was in general more interested in flora than fauna. But she had a great fondness for fossils of all kinds. Carlisle, his son, was a budding geologist. Lord Ingram had been planning a weeks-long excursion for the next summer, on foot, to the Dorset coast, starting at Old Harry Rocks and culminating in a visit to Lyme Regis, famed for the many and varied dinosaur fossils found by Mary Anning.

She had changed, thought Charlotte. When she was younger, such a trip would have met her definition of torment. Now? Now she was almost tempted. In fact, after so many railway journeys of late, she was looking forward to a long walk more than she looked forward to her next slice of cake: She had not skimped on cake and other desserts recently, but had not had a proper walk since the day Mrs. Carstairs called on Sans Souci.

When this was all over, perhaps she and her lover could return to Sans Souci and go for a long ramble or two. Yes, when this was all over.

Her heart was beginning to buoy at the thought when Mrs. Watson emitted a distressed moan in her sleep.

Charlotte sighed.

Justina did this?

Mrs. Watson had asked when she first saw the bricked-up archway at Warthorpe House. She could not tell that the masonry had been put in place by a complete novice. This was the sort of solid construction that would still stand hundreds of years from now, when other parts of the house had fallen in on itself.

Of course, her husband had answered. Is—was there anything she did not do extremely well?

The brickwork was so deep and sturdy that the men Inspector Treadles had brought with him to break it down were taking their second break.

The property had been part of the first Mrs. Carstairs’s dowry. Her father had been fascinated by the Civil War, and the site had been a Royalist stronghold at the time. It was later captured and slighted, left to ruin. Whoever had subsequently built the squat house on the old foundation had done some shoddy work, but the house had not been the reason Cordelia Carstairs’s father had wanted it. He’d been interested in the oubliette, a dungeon accessible solely via a hatch in its ceiling.

Everett Carstairs ran his hand over the gouges that had been knocked into Justina’s handiwork. “The first time I saw this, the mortar hadn’t yet cured completely in some spots,” he said, with the same wistful tenderness another man might use to say She wore a crown of flowers and some of the buds hadn’t fully opened yet.

Was this what one got when one was willing to kill for happiness?

The men picked up their sledgehammers and resumed their thunderous work. Mrs. Watson was glad that it was too loud for her to think.

Miss Charlotte, who had disappeared for some time, came back and beckoned to Mrs. Watson and Inspector Treadles. They distanced themselves from the dim and now dust-filled basement corridor.

“Well?” asked Inspector Treadles.

The man at the property’s gatehouse had been astonished to see his master arrive with a battalion of strangers. After the demolition had started, Miss Charlotte had returned to the gatehouse to ask him about Reginald Carstairs and Rebecca Wellesley.

The two had arrived the day before. Because the house was usually closed-up, they’d headed for a small cottage on the property and were presumably still there.

“We’ll pay them a visit when we’re done here,” said Inspector Treadles, “if they’re still—”

Cheers erupted—the men had at last broken through—only to be followed by loud groans as they discovered the great big lock on the iron door. But in the end this needed less time—and effort—than the masonry.

Once the lock had been cut and the bolt thrown back, the door opened to an empty, windowless room with remarkably little dust—being tightly sealed all these years did confer some minor advantages.

They needed to move a heavy stone slab before the trapdoor beneath became visible. Thankfully, the trapdoor itself was unlocked. They lifted it and hooked a set of chain ladders on the lip of the opening, then Inspector Treadles, with a deep breath, went down.

Sherrinford Holmes, too. But Mrs. Watson could see, from the hatch, that there was nothing in the cramped space underneath. No skeletons, or any signs of a single soul having been imprisoned therein since the middle of the seventeenth century.