A Conspiracy in Belgravia (Lady Sherlock #2)

He was glad when they got off the train and into a hackney. Not the entirety of the forty-minute journey had been mired in charged silence. Some of it had been productive silence: They had performed calculations to arrive at a rough estimate of the distance represented by one second of longitude at their current latitude.

A very rough estimate, given that to simplify the calculations, they supposed the earth to be perfectly round, rather than the oblate shape that it actually was. But they let that assumption stand. All they needed was an idea of how far from the point on the map they ought to search—to allow for errors on the part of everyone involved: the surveyors, the mapmakers, the cipher writers, and they themselves.

They started on a street that overlaid the spot specified by the decoded denary numbers. It possessed no features to suggest that anyone would take the trouble to create an elaborate cipher to hide its location. In fact, the entirety of Hounslow, its heath aside, could be used to illustrate the word unexceptional.

Not to mention they had no idea how old the cipher was. If Bancroft had taken something out of the vault from a generation ago, this part of town could have looked very different. If memory served, Hounslow had fallen into a decline after being passed by the railway. And only when another rail line came through did the community experience a revival.

Holmes snorted softly, sounding unimpressed with herself.

He looked at his pocket map, on which he had demarcated the search area, and told the cabbie, “Take us to all the surrounding streets. We want to see the whole area.”

They discussed how much of the area they wished to see, retreading much the same ground that had been covered when they’d performed the calculations. He was treating her lark of a quest with far too much seriousness—but better that than to lapse into silence again.

They passed yet another street. Brown brick houses, narrow doors, postage-stamp-size picket-enclosed front gardens that displayed a general lack of horticultural talents.

As they turned onto the next street, Holmes said, “Someone is coming out of a house in that lane we just passed. Perhaps I can ask a few questions.”

It seemed unlikely that a random neighbor would be privy to secrets that required several iterations of ciphering—or confirm that no such secrets existed—but Lord Ingram relayed the directions to the cabbie.

By the time they turned back onto the lane, three men stood outside. The one with his back to the houses was in uniform: a policeman.

“Interesting,” murmured Holmes. “This I did not anticipate.”

They alit. All three men turned in their direction. Now here was a development Lord Ingram did not anticipate: He knew two out of the three men, Inspector Treadles and his colleague Sergeant MacDonald, of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Metropolitan Police.

He exchanged a glance with Holmes. She appeared as unmoved as ever, but he could feel his own heartbeat accelerate.

Lord Ingram and Inspector Treadles had been friends for years—they shared a passion for archaeology. The inspector had known of Holmes for a while but had met her only recently, for the Sackville case. The successful untangling of the case had made Holmes’s name and it had also made the inspector look good both in the papers and to his superiors.

Therefore, as surprising as this reunion was, Inspector Treadles should be glad to see them.

A flicker of displeasure crossed the inspector’s face. This jolted Lord Ingram. Almost as shocking was the tightness with which the man held himself, as if preparing for an assault.

“Inspector, Sergeant, how unexpected,” said Lord Ingram, far more restrained than he would have been otherwise. “Trouble in these parts?”

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss police matters,” replied his friend, his voice flat.

A tall, red-faced man emerged from the house. “Ah, Inspector Treadles,” he said loudly. “You are here. The body’s inside and it’s not pretty.”

Lord Ingram didn’t know why this should stun him—Inspector Treadles primarily investigated murders—but stun him it did.

He hoped he did not betray too much agitation when he said, “Let me not keep you from your work. Inspector, Sergeant, good day.”



They drove to the nearest telephone station, which happened to be on the premises of a high street shop. The apparatus itself was located inside an armoirelike structure, with a large pane of glass on the door—a silence cabinet.

Charlotte was interested. She had never used a telephone—neither her parents nor Mrs. Watson had one. But it would have been the height of impropriety to squeeze into the cabinet with Lord Ingram—not that she hadn’t done worse with Roger Shrewsbury—so she stood outside at some distance and waited.

He had his back to the glass door, the earpiece pressed close. The silence cabinet wasn’t entirely soundproof. Occasionally she caught a few syllables that didn’t make any apparent sense—he was probably speaking in code.

When they met, she had not foreseen that he would become a clandestine agent of the crown—forgivable since at the time, she hadn’t been aware such entities existed. But she had soon concluded that his would not be an easy life.

He had been well-built and athletic even then, a young man with an assertive, lupine stride. His scowls were already legendary—at least among the children who knew him. And the rumors that had circulated about him . . . They would have made him at once the cleverest and the stupidest boy who ever lived, the most impulsively passionate and the most chillingly callous.

But then she saw him with her own eyes. Noticed the mud that stuck to his boots even after he had scraped them—and the traces of dirt that still clung to the lateral folds of his nails even though he’d scrubbed them until his fingertips were reddish and raw. Whatever he’d been doing, when nobody could find him, he hadn’t been making love to saucy maids.

She didn’t discount the possibility that he might be burying them—even though none had been reported missing. But then she traced the mud on his boots to the old quarry on the property and the unexpected Roman site he was painstakingly excavating.

By himself.

She was well aware of the whispers that he was not his father’s son but the result of his mother’s affair with a Jewish banker. And she was fairly certain that he didn’t know it yet—not officially, in any case. Which didn’t mean he hadn’t sensed the looks or the whispers that stopped when he entered a room, only that he could still pretend it was about something else.

But perhaps he was nearing the end of his ability to pretend. Perhaps that was why he had secluded himself amid the ruins of an ancient villa, reading the lives of the dead.

He was sensitive. And he believed himself to have been somehow responsible for the disgrace attached to his birth.