Page 97 of The Vanished Sister

Miss Charlotte posited that Justina could have told everyone she was less far along than she had been. That way, when she was close to confinement, she could still travel. To see, for instance, her fallen woman of a sister who was suddenly in dire need of help, a trip that must be made in great secrecy.

When the time came, his wife gave birth to a daughter, his partner in future crime, a son. Mrs. Watson could still hear Miss Charlotte’s voice, laying out the inexorable sequence of events. A switch was made. The fouler deed was also done. He was now a widower with an infant son. She went home to her husband with a newborn daughter.

Her husband’s death in eight months’ time from a case of apparent influenza was lamentable, but people perished all the time. And when Everett and Justina Carstairs married, two and a half years later, with her long out of mourning, no one was the wiser.

“This was always a latent problem in your marriage: The boy the world believed to be your heir was someone else’s son. Yet nothing must happen to him, or Noble House would be poor again.

“Perhaps because of that, Justina had believed her son safe in that stolen position. But Warthorpe House made her reevaluate what she knew of you. And when, not too long after, Reggie went to her, his heart on his sleeve, to tell her that he loved Rebecca…

“Another mother might have been thrilled, but not Justina. She foresaw her firstborn son’s death. If he were to produce some boys with Rebecca, what would prevent you from getting rid of him forthwith? Those boys would be, finally, heirs of your body. And no one would be able to wrest the Nesbitt fortune away from the Carstairses.”

Everett Carstairs at last leaned forward to take his cup of tepid tea. Something gleamed on his necktie—a golden ring held in place by a stickpin. Justina’s wedding ring. “Justina was wrong. If Reggie had married Rebecca and had sons, that would have been the most perfect outcome. Why would I not allow him to live? Even if he briefly held Noble House, the entire estate would still go on to my grandsons. If only she’d discussed the matter with me, she would have known.”

“For her to discuss the matter with you, she would have needed to trust you. And she couldn’t possibly after the games you played at Warthorpe House.”

“You think those were games? Throughout our marriage, I found myself regularly tallying whether I still had enough left to offer Justina such that I wouldn’t suffer the same fate as Reverend Robinson. But how could I know for sure?”

Mrs. Watson could not defend Justina on that front.

“You see now why I needed to be assured that she loved me? You may think me evil, and perhaps I am, but even the evil need to be loved. Sincerely, preferably, whether we deserve it or not.

“I could never be sure that Justina loved me for me and not for Noble House and all that it had brought her. I didn’t think of Warthorpe House as playing games; I thought of it as a crucial test. But she must have felt very differently.”

He touched Justina’s wedding ring. “I suppose we cursed ourselves to begin our marriage as we had. And then we cursed ourselves a little more each time our trust in each other eroded further.”

Everett Carstairs had come to seek a few favors from Mrs. Watson. But she still had questions to ask.

How exactly had Justina left High Burrow unseen by anyone? Their carriage had storage space built under the seats, a bit cramped for a grown woman, but doable. When he’d accompanied Mrs. Albright back to Villa Inglese, Justina had been in the same vehicle. Afterward he’d gone to Barnstaple, ostensibly to buy an apology gift, so that she could take the train out from there.

Had it been him, the old man at the inn in Ludlow? Yes, it had been him. He’d told Mrs. Whitehill that Mr. Gregory had another sister who was organizing a trip to the Holy Land. Would she care for that sister’s address?

And it had been Justina who’d stolen the note from Mrs. Whitehill’s house and then later slipped into the office of the Birmingham physician and removed Reverend Broadfield’s records. If only they’d found that earlier. The evidence that Reverend Broadfield couldn’t have sired his son would have silenced Mrs. Whitehill very nicely.

How had Justina learned to get past locked doors and such? Funny she should ask. Because adolescent Joanna Redmayne had loved to lock boxes and doors, her elder sister, terrified that she’d steal money from their grandfather or lose her virtue to the village ne’er-do-well, had learned to pick locks.

(Justina had not been wrong. Mrs. Watson had indeed pilfered a coin here and there from their grandfather—even adulterated attar of jasmine had not come cheap—and she wouldn’t have held on to her virginity if she hadn’t decided early on that it might be of some monetary value to a first-time demi-mondaine.)

What happened in the end, to the embroidered strips? He’d found them and, out of an abundance of caution, burned them along with Mrs. Whitehill’s clothes.

Had he rushed to Noble House to find the wedding petticoat—and how had he known about it?

This question made Everett Carstairs forlorn. Even with Sherlock Holmes’s involvement, it hadn’t occurred to him that Justina might expose him. When she’d finally realized that he was not going to abandon her, she’d confessed about the petticoat. But it had been too late.

So much regret in his voice. He did not say it aloud because he did not need to. If Justina had not brought Sherlock Holmes into this, after a month, Mrs. Whitehill’s unclaimed letter would have been sent to the Returned Letter Office. And there the harried clerks opened letters only to scan for addresses. Letters that didn’t have addresses inside were immediately destroyed.

Similarly, if Rebecca had not called on Sherlock Holmes, she might have never asked Reggie why he’d not brought up marriage to her. And there would not have been the fateful confrontation with Justina. Justina would have returned home after a while, the episode would have been papered over, and she would have reclaimed all the admiration that had once been hers. Moreover she would have seen that her husband had stood by her, loyal and steadfast, and that might have even undone some of the damage that had been wrought by Warthorpe House.

Yes, so much regret and wistfulness, but no remorse for all the lives he’d sacrificed along the way, or the inheritance he’d stolen from old Mr. Nesbitt’s cousins. Justina had been the same. Mrs. Watson kept wondering about the enormous guilt her sister must have felt because she would have been crushed by the weight of self-reproach. Justina had never demonstrated any such compunction.

Lord Ingram had once described the Carstairses as well matched. Indeed, how well matched they were, both beautiful, elegant, and corrupt.

Perhaps sensing the change in Mrs. Watson’s mood, Everett Carstairs rose and took his leave. At the door of the morning parlor he turned around. “I almost forgot: I was the one who demanded that Justina not have an illegitimate niece, and I can no longer remember why at the time it was important. Justina did not speak to me for a few days after she returned from seeing you. I apologize. Please do not hold it against her.”

Thirty-One

After Everett Carstairs’s departure, Mrs. Watson sat in place. A thunderstorm rolled in. Lightning flashed against a dirty-rag sky. Across the street, a stream of dark umbrellas flowed out of Regent’s Park. The foliage of its trees, peppered with the onset of autumn but still dense and luxuriant, whipped in the wind, a stormy sea of leaves.

How well he’d known how to play on her emotions, this brother-in-law. Had he really forgotten to tell her that crucial bit until he was on his way out? Or had he planned from the beginning to punctuate his visit precisely so?