A Conspiracy in Belgravia (Lady Sherlock #2)

“It will not be necessary to cut Mrs. Watson. She was an acquaintance of our father’s. Ash is on excellent terms with her and even I have crossed paths with her on occasion. She strikes me as a sensible woman, not one to exploit your position to promote her own. I do not see why you shouldn’t be able to call on each other in the future, provided it is done discreetly.

“As for the business with Sherlock Holmes, I understand Mrs. Watson has invested in the venture. If you feel that she has not received a sufficient return against that initial outlay, I will be more than happy to compensate her as a part of our marriage settlement.”

In other words, she was to discontinue as Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective. “I thank you most warmly, my lord, for the honor of—”

He raised a finger, forestalling the no, thank you part of her answer. “However, given that mental exertion gives you pleasure, I shall be happy to supply the necessary exercises. After all, I come across them on a regular basis.”

He opened a leather portfolio he had brought, extracted a slender dossier, and set it before her. “These are but a small sprinkling of items that make their way to my desk. Do please examine them at your leisure.”

And with that, he rose and saw himself out.





Two





Charlotte and Livia Holmes approached life very differently.

Livia viewed everything through a lens of complications, real and imaginary. From where to sit at a tea party, to whether she ought to say something to the hostess if her table setting was missing a fork, her lugubrious and plentiful imagination always supplied scenarios in which she committed a fatal misstep that destroyed any chance she had at a happy, secure life. For her, every choice was agony, every week seven days of quicksand and quagmire.

Charlotte rarely resorted to imagination—observation yielded far better results. And while the world was made up of innumerable moving parts, in her own personal life she saw no reason why decisions shouldn’t be simple, especially since most choices were binary: more butter on the muffin or not, run away from home or not, accept a man’s offer of marriage or not.

Not necessarily easy, but simple.

But Lord Bancroft’s proposal . . . She felt like a casual student of mathematics faced with non-Euclidean geometry for the first time.

Her marriage would be a boon to her family. Her parents might be deeply flawed individuals who could not be made content by any means, but her continued status as an outcast certainly increased their unhappiness, both now and in the long run. They cared desperately about their fa?ade of superiority—and as shallow a fa?ade as it was, to them it remained infinitely preferable to being seen for their true selves: two middle-aged, less-than-accomplished people in a loveless marriage, their finances in tatters, and without a single child they could count on for comfort and succor.

Henrietta, the eldest Holmes sister, had distanced herself from her family almost before she returned from her honeymoon. Bernadine, the second eldest, had never been able to look after herself. Livia despised both her parents. And Charlotte, of course, had delivered the worst blow, a sensational and salacious fall from grace.

Should Charlotte regain her respectability, even partially, her parents would be able to walk around with their heads held high again—or at least without an overabundance of shame.

And it wasn’t only her parents. Charlotte’s infamy affected Livia’s chances at a good marriage. Livia had scoffed at the idea, declaring herself the biggest obstacle to matrimony that she would ever face. But Charlotte could not be so blithe about it.

Moreover, if she did marry Lord Bancroft, then she could provide shelter for Livia, who would no longer face daily belittlement from their parents. And Bernadine, too, if at all possible—she couldn’t imagine that the atmosphere at home was conducive to Bernadine’s well-being.

On the other hand, marrying Lord Bancroft would make her Lord Ingram’s sister-in-law, a situation so fraught even Livia’s imagination might prove unequal to the ramifications. Not to mention, he clearly required her to give up her fledgling enterprise—and she was rather attached to the income it generated.

She bit down on another slice of pound cake, her appetite for rich, buttery solace even greater when faced with intractable dilemmas.

Suppose she persuaded Lord Bancroft to settle five hundred pounds a year on her . . . She would have an independent income—enough to look after Livia and Bernadine. She would still be able to see Mrs. Watson. And if he should indeed prove the wellspring of intriguing and diverting cases . . .

She picked up the dossier he left behind.

It contained six envelopes. She unsealed the first envelope and pulled out a sheet of paper.

In 18__, Mr. W., a young widower whose wife had perished in childbirth, traveled to India to take a civil service position in the Madras Presidency. A few weeks after his arrival, he attended an afternoon tea party. Taxed by the heat—even though the rainy season had arrived and temperatures were cooler than they would otherwise have been—he sat down on the veranda and closed his eyes for a nap.

The party dispersed. As the family dressed for dinner, a servant informed the mistress that a sahib was still on the veranda, asleep. The lady of the house went to rouse him and, much to her shock, found him dead.

Mr. W. had no connection to power, prestige, or fortune. He held no position whereby his removal—or his cooperation, for that matter—would have given anyone any noticeable advantage. And in his personal life, he was vouched to have been timid and trouble-averse—no criminal tendencies or unwise dalliances.

How and why did Mr. W. die?

India. Monsoon. The answer seemed much too obvious.

Charlotte dug further into the envelope and found a folded strip of paper that said Clue on the outside and a smaller envelope marked Answer.

The clue read, Mr. W.’s death was declared an accident.

Well, that settled it. She opened the Answer envelope.

The physician who examined Mr. W.’s body found puncture marks on the latter’s wrist. Common kraits, highly poisonous snakes indigenous to India, sometimes enter dwellings to keep dry during monsoon months. Mr. W. was not the first, nor would he be the last, to be bitten in his sleep and never wake up again.

Snakebite, as she’d thought. She studied the sheets of paper and the typed words. The case might be old, but the construction of case-as-puzzle was recent. And it was meticulously done.

Not by Bancroft, obviously—he was too busy for that. A minion, then, one with access to the archives. What had been Bancroft’s instruction? Reach in and grab the first few records?

She shook her head. She was being unfair. Bancroft dealt with real life, and real life seldom made for particularly intriguing puzzles. Not to mention, the construction of puzzles was an art. A minion who had no prior experience in said art—and who had never met Charlotte Holmes—could very well consider Mr. W.’s case, as it was presented, a first-rate conundrum.