A Conspiracy in Belgravia (Lady Sherlock #2)

She opened the next envelope.

On the last Sunday of January 18___, the S___ family did not attend Sunday service. Mr. S. was a laborer, Mrs. S. a housewife who took in washing. They were poor but devout. Neighbors knocked on their door after church, concerned that they might have fallen ill. No one answered.

When the neighbors at last entered the dwelling, they found the entire family—husband, wife, and three children—dead in their beds.

What was the cause of death?

Where were the S___ family? Had they been in England, Charlotte would hesitate longer, but if they lived on the Continent . . .

This case also came with a clue, which read, The S___ family resided in Minden, Germany.

A guinea said that they perished from carbon monoxide poisoning.

The incident took place in a cottage, which happened to be the end house in a row of cottages, located directly above a disused mining shaft. All five members of the household, along with two cats and a caged songbird, died overnight. In the cottage opposite, also an end house, the occupants also fell ill, and they, too, lost family pets that night, though the humans eventually recovered.

The theory is that harmful gas from the mine shaft seeped upward through the dirt floors of the cellars. The cellars were fitted with doors that opened to the outside, but in the case of both houses, they had remained closed during the preceding weeks—it was winter and the families did not want cold air coming up into the house. The neighbors, when questioned, recalled that members of both families had complained of headache and nausea for a while. It then came to be viewed as a matter of luck. Similar conditions, similar dangers. One family succumbed, the other survived.

Charlotte would have thought it was simply due to insufficient ventilation for the stove—the composition of coal on the Continent made it more likely to emit carbon monoxide as a by-product of under-aerated combustion.

So . . . slightly more interesting, but hardly stimulating.

She had the next envelope in hand but made herself put it down. There were only six envelopes. No point finishing everything at once.

Instead she went to the bow window and picked up the slender volume that lay on the window seat. A Summer in Roman Ruins, Lord Ingram’s account of those adolescent days he spent exploring the remnants of a Roman villa on his uncle’s estate. It contained an oblique reference to their first kiss, but that wasn’t the only hint to her presence.

There was also, for example, this particular passage:

One day, I unearthed a stone object, nearly three feet across and a good ten inches thick, perfectly circular except for a protuberance that appeared to be a handle, except it was far too short.

Clearing the encrusted dirt from the surface of the object revealed a groove that had been etched around the circumference of this large disk, and straight down the center of the protuberance. Not a millstone then, as I had originally supposed.

The function of the artefact baffled me, until someone better read came along with a copy of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History and pointed to references of vineyards in olden times: It was a grape press—and the protuberance the spout from which grape juice would flow into a receptacle.

Grapes? He had frowned. Here?

She showed him the exact paragraph where the Venerable Bede described vines growing in various places in Britain.

What happened to all those vineyards?

Perhaps the climate or the soil turned unsuitable. Perhaps the plague wiped out everyone who knew how to work vines. Or perhaps French wines were simply better and cheaper, and it made sense to uproot the vine stock and grow something more profitable.

He was quiet for some time. My godfather owns some vineyards in Bordeaux. I’ve visited them. Hard to imagine that landscape here.

Did you frequent any patisseries when you were in France?

Don’t think so—don’t like sweet things. He glanced at her. You like French pastry?

I like the description of them. But I’ve never had croissants or mille-feuilles or cream puffs.

You still wouldn’t have tasted them even if I’d visited every patisserie in Paris.

But at least you would have been able to describe them.

I’ve had croissants. They aren’t bad. But I don’t remember anything particular about them.

She’d sighed and picked up her book again.

But two days later, she’d walked into her room to find a box of croissants, mille-feuilles, and cream puffs.

Neither of them ever mentioned the pastries, but this was the next paragraph in the account:

I hadn’t much cared for the consumption of books, preferring sports and the more physical aspects of excavation. But that moment I realized ignorance would ill serve me—and that if I wished to continue in archaeological endeavors, I must study the history passed down on library shelves, in addition to that evidenced by objects left behind by the long departed.

She closed the book softly.

No, she didn’t wish she’d married him—she was ill-suited to marriage, after all—but she did wish he hadn’t married someone else.

That he hadn’t married the former Alexandra Greville.

The doorbell rang. Charlotte raised her head. Mrs. Watson and Miss Redmayne would not yet have returned from church. Lord Bancroft had left nothing behind. And she herself had no other clients scheduled for the day. Who could it be?

A courier stood on the doorstep, an envelope in hand. He respectfully inclined his head. “I’ve a letter for Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”

“I’ll take it to him.”

The courier tugged his cap and left.

The envelope was of a familiar weight and material, the linen paper crisp yet strong. Charlotte also recognized the typewriter that had been responsible for the name and address on the front—typewriters, especially those that had been in use for a while, produced letters almost as identifiable as those written by hand.

Lord Ingram. They’d spoken in person only the evening before. What could have compelled him to send a letter by courier so soon afterward?

Dear Mr. Holmes,

I apologize for interrupting your day of rest, but I am in desperate need of help.

I beg you will receive me at four o’clock this afternoon.

Mrs. Finch

The handwriting on the note was not Lord Ingram’s. Nor was it one of the scripts that he, an accomplished calligrapher who had taught Charlotte everything she knew about the forging of penmanship, had developed.

Her spine tingled. There was someone else in Lord Ingram’s household who could have legitimately used the typewriter in his study and the envelopes that had been ordered from London’s best stationer.

His wife.



“Papa, have you ever danced all night?” asked Lucinda, Lord Ingram’s daughter.