She smiled weakly at Mrs. Watson. “I never used to fret about anything—and didn’t understand why anyone would. If there was something that needed to be done, that was different. Worrying about outcomes over which I have no control is punishing myself before the universe has decided whether I ought to be punished.
“Now I realize that in my former life I worried about nothing because I feared nothing. That equanimity, which was but a false sense of security, evaporated the moment true consequences appeared. I was unnerved by what might happen to me. Or my sister. And now, my father.”
She dipped her spoon into a bowl of fruit compote. “You’re right, Mrs. Watson, I mustn’t worry so much. But at the moment I don’t know how to stop.”
“You are looking at me with hope, Miss Holmes.” Mrs. Watson sighed. “It’s all I know how to do, saying ‘you mustn’t worry so much.’ I haven’t the slightest idea how to nip useless fretting in the bud. In fact, I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and worry, even though I am in circumstances that I would have considered enviable in my youth.”
They fell silent for some time. It was still raining, the rain drumming steadily upon the roof.
Charlotte speared a morsel of peach and pushed it around in the syrup. “In any case, much uncertainty will be removed tomorrow. Inspector Treadles will let us know the moment he learns of anything.”
Mrs. Watson likewise stirred the contents of her compote bowl. “Now that you’ve met the inspector in person, what do you think of him?”
“I like him. He is more or less the man he ought to be, though I hadn’t expected he would be so deferent to his ‘betters.’ Perhaps he conducts himself in such a manner because he doesn’t want it said that he forgot where he came from. Or perhaps he sincerely believes in the validity and authority of the hierarchy in which we live.”
“In other words, you believe you were right in continuing the pretense that Sherlock Holmes is a man.”
“Yes.”
Inspector Treadles was most respectful to Charlotte. But it was a respect that stemmed from gallantry, the kindness the strong owed to the weak, not the regard one held for an equal, and certainly not the admiration he felt for Lord Ingram, whom he clearly considered his superior.
“What about your friend, Lord Ingram?” asked Mrs. Watson. “He must know that you have no brother named Sherlock Holmes. Yet he seems to have no trouble accepting your powers of reasoning.”
“He’s long been a victim of my powers—he’s grown inured.”
“I’ve seen him at polo matches. The ladies are always fanning themselves—some men have that effect on women, even if they aren’t classically handsome.”
“Well, he’s married.”
Her statement sounded more like a grievance. An accusation.
“But not happily so, from what I understand.”
His marriage was his great mistake. But now that someone who only knew him via gossip had commented on his private life, Charlotte felt obliged to defend that mistake. “Happiness has never been the goal in a Society marriage.”
“Oh, I have long observed that. They are very much business arrangements, sometimes absolutely cold-blooded ones. But occasionally one comes across a union that has no reason to exist except for love and that overwhelming optimism love inspires. It’s for those matches that I hold my breath. And it is when they do not succeed that my heart breaks a little, for what might have been.”
Would there have been a might-have-been in Lord Ingram’s case? If Charlotte hadn’t warned him before his wedding that a perfect woman did not exist except in a man’s imagination, if she hadn’t pointed out that anyone who took the trouble to appear flawless must have an ulterior motive, would he have tested his wife, upon his godfather’s passing, by telling her that he received only a five-hundred-pound annuity, instead of the fortune stipulated in his godfather’s will?
For it was certain that had he told Lady Ingram the truth, she would have been overjoyed, rather than cold with disappointment and then hot with rage, blurting out that she only married a man known to have resulted from his mother’s affair with a Jewish banker because of what he stood to inherit. Why else would she have sullied the bloodline of her own children?
The question Charlotte asked herself concerned the weight of her own words. Had they planted the seed of doubt in his mind—or would the same suspicions have formed by that point in the marriage, regardless of whether Charlotte had said anything years before?
She took a deep breath. “His children are lovely, at least.”
Mrs. Watson ate a piece of strawberry from the compote, chewing thoughtfully. “Have you ever been in love, Miss Holmes?”
“No.”
It would probably have been more convincing if her answer hadn’t been as quick or emphatic, but Mrs. Watson only nodded slowly. “Sometimes that is a blessing, Miss Holmes. A blessing.”
Fourteen
At noon the next day a cable arrived for Charlotte, sent to 18 Upper Baker Street.