Page 94 of The Vanished Sister

“There was never anyone down there. I don’t know why she didn’t believe me,” murmured Everett Carstairs.

Why wouldn’t she believe you? The time before that, when she’d killed for you, you’d married her as promised. Why wouldn’t she have believed that you were just as deadly serious this time?

After Miss Charlotte and Inspector Treadles came up and everyone made their way out to the corridor again, Inspector Treadles asked, “Would you like us to brick up this place again or leave it as is?”

“You may leave it,” answered Everett Carstairs. “Mrs. Carstairs would probably have liked for you to demolish the whole thing altogether, but I will take it as it is.”

Everett Carstairs was subdued as they left the house. But as their path slanted up a slope he looked about and asked, “You want to see our cottage, too, Inspector?”

Before anyone could answer, ahead, where the path turned, Reginald Carstairs and Rebecca Wellesley appeared, clutching each other’s hand. Hollow-eyed, hollow-cheeked, they looked as if they hadn’t eaten in days and were barely able to remain upright.

Everett Carstairs stopped dead. “Reggie, Rebecca. What are you doing here?”

Mrs. Watson’s first thought was that the two had at last become lovers—they’d come by themselves to a remote place and their clothes and hair were rumpled. But they radiated none of the glow of a new love affair; Mrs. Watson had seen refugees with more hope in their eyes.

Reginald Carstairs stared at his father, his lips trembling with something close to terror. He fell to his knees on the stony ground. “Forgive me. I never meant to harm a hair on her head. And I am leaving to turn myself in.”

“No, it was my fault,” said Rebecca, standing entirely in the shadow of a hornbeam. She was still marvelously tall and proud-looking, but it was a forlorn and tattered pride. “If only I didn’t have that stupid gun with me, nothing would have happened.”

Mrs. Watson heard everything they said but she could not make sense of any of it. How could this harmless boy be the one responsible for Justina’s death—and not her husband who had made her into a twisted Cinderella, taken her to his castle, and twisted her some more for good measure?

The young man shook. “I swear—I don’t know what happened. All I wanted was some answers. That was all I wanted.”

He reached out a hand to his father. But Everett Carstairs stumbled back, one step, then another. “I thought,” he murmured, tears streaming down his face, “I thought it was that Broadfield boy. My God, why is it you? It cannot be you, Reggie. It cannot be you.”

Charlotte was tired. Now, when she imagined the end of the case, she no longer thought of long walks on the coast, but only a clean, soft bed to fall into. But no weariness that she’d ever known could compare to Reginald Carstairs’s empty-eyed exhaustion.

“When I was sixteen, I spoke to Mamma about Rebecca,” he said to the distant line of hills north of the moving train, treeless, yet green and shapely, bathed in the soft light of early evening. “I told her that even though marrying Rebecca might make pariahs of us both, it was a price I was willing to pay. Mamma turned white as a sheet. After a long time, she informed me that I must put away the idea and never think of it again. Marriage between us was impossible, she said, because Rebecca was not Papa’s stepdaughter, but his flesh and blood.”

His palms, on his lap, cradled a hand pie in a paper bag that Mrs. Wellesley had bought for him before they got on the train. Eat something, Reggie, please, she’d pleaded with him. Charlotte had been swimming in the aroma of curried beef and potato for the past ten minutes, but he had yet to take a bite, except to occasionally look down upon the growing grease spots on the paper bag with an expression of incomprehension.

Inspector Treadles, too, was in the compartment. He had refrained from peppering Reginald Carstairs with questions—had instead waited patiently alongside Charlotte for the young man to at last bring himself to speak.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever been completely at ease in my own skin, but I was definitely not the same after that day. I never told anyone, and I certainly never approached the subject with Mamma again. I didn’t want to know about the affair between her and Papa; I couldn’t even bear to think about it.”

Reginald Carstairs turned his head and looked at Charlotte. “A few days ago, Mr. Holmes, Rebecca called on your brother.”

Charlotte laced her fingers over her Sherrinford Holmes paunch. “That is correct.”

“When she came out from 18 Upper Baker Street, she asked me why I never spoke to her about marriage when we were young.” He pinched the space between his brows. “I should have kept my mouth shut. But the thing is, all along I’d assumed that she knew. That she’d known since before I did.

“You can imagine Rebecca’s shock. She had to speak to Papa right away. I saw that as a daunting prospect but Rebecca didn’t find Papa intimidating at all.

“I couldn’t persuade Rebecca otherwise so we went to High Burrow, only to have Papa swear up and down that there had never been anything improper between him and Mamma. I left High Burrow staggered. Papa didn’t seem to be lying. But what reason could Mamma have had for lying to me all those years ago? Why had she been so resolute that Rebecca and I not marry?

“I was desperate to speak to her. But Charlie and I had checked all the other Carstairs properties. Where was she? I remembered that a few years ago, when I was learning the ropes of the family holdings, I’d come across some unexplained outlays. I’d asked Papa about them and he’d said that it was a house that belonged to him, though not in his name, and that a man sometimes needed a place of his own.

“At the time I was hugely embarrassed—I thought he meant that he kept a mistress somewhere. But now I was willing to take a chance. It took me a while to find out the address, but when I finally had it in hand, Rebecca and I hurried over—”

“And that would have been?” asked Inspector Treadles.

Reginald Carstairs set aside the hand pie and clutched his hands together. “Day before yesterday. Middle of the afternoon.”

During the window when Lord Ingram had found the house but had to leave it to get more men. Her poor Ash. But she did not think he’d feel as badly about it as he would have when he was younger. These days he was a little less unforgiving toward himself.

“We knocked. The door was opened almost immediately. ‘What happened? Why are you back?’ said Mamma before the door was fully open. And then she stared at us in dismay. ‘What are the two of you doing here?’

“We were no less shocked to see her, even though she was the one we sought. She seemed all right—not in the best of spirits but in decent health, at least. Rebecca recovered first and pulled me inside. We tried to ask her why she ran away from home. She looked upset and told us that it was too complicated and that we’d best leave and say nothing to anyone of her whereabouts.