“A guinea.”
A guinea was twenty-one shillings, three times what they had agreed to charge. Charlotte gaped at Mrs. Watson. “But that’s a fortune!”
“Yes, but allow me to know better in this case. He confirmed that he is very well off, did he not, when you told him what you knew about him?”
The young man’s family was successful in manufacturing. But still, a guinea. “It isn’t so much about what he can afford but more about, well, not overcharging.”
Mrs. Watson pressed the heavy coin into Charlotte’s palm and closed her fingers around it. “Remind yourself that you’re far more likely to undercharge than overcharge, my dear, because you don’t yet understand your own value and you’ve never been taught to demand your full worth.” She smiled. “That’s why I appointed myself the bursar of this operation, because I’ve had to learn both.”
Their second client was a timid woman of about thirty who had misplaced an emerald ring her husband had given her and was desperate to find it before he returned home from a business trip. Charlotte located the ring at the bottom of the woman’s hatpin holder. Mrs. Watson charged her nine shillings plus outlay for their return trip in a hansom cab, which the client was more than happy to pay, besides gifting them with a ham pie, for “poor Mr. Holmes, who can’t leave his room.”
“If this keeps up, we might bring in more than five hundred pounds a year,” Charlotte marveled, as they settled into a cab.
Mrs. Watson patted the aigrette on her bonnet. “Five hundred pounds isn’t an astonishing sum, my dear Miss Holmes.”
“But it’s as much as I ever hoped to make, after many years of school, training, and experience!”
“Well, we may not bring in five hundred a year, since we may not always have a steady supply of clients. Or we could bring in much more, if we have a few dukes and princes whose secretaries I’ll bill fifty quid a piece,” said Mrs. Watson with great relish. “And don’t you worry that I’ll overcharge them. Not every nobleman is in dire financial straits. The Duke of Westminster has an income of two hundred fifty thousand pounds a year.”
Charlotte couldn’t help laughing. “My dear lady, I feared to impose on your kindness. I see now that I needn’t have worried. You are a shark!”
Mrs. Watson preened a little, evidently pleased by Charlotte’s observation. “A shark with a good nose for money in the water but, let’s say, rather soft teeth.”
“Miss Livia,” said the maid, “there’s a woman to see you. She says her name is Rajkumari Indira.”
Livia looked up from the frame of embroidery on which she hadn’t made any progress in days. “What?”
Occasionally one did see an Indian princess in London, but the Holmeses had few ties with the subcontinent and did not move in the kinds of circles that hobnobbed with foreign dignitaries. Why in the world would one call on her?
In the parlor, a woman draped in scarlet and gold silk stood at the window, her back to the room, her hair covered by a very long shawl that had already wrapped around her person once. At Livia’s entry, she turned around, the shawl drawn across her face, concealing everything except her eyes.
When she saw that Livia had come alone, she dropped her hand from the edge of the shawl. Charlotte!
Charlotte placed a finger over her lips, signaling Livia to be quiet. Livia ran across the room and embraced her sister.
“Oh, Charlotte!” Then she pulled back. “My goodness, you are practically naked!”
The blouse Charlotte wore ended just beneath her breasts. The shawl, drawn diagonally across the body from hip to shoulders and then back around, covered most of the exposed portions of Charlotte’s torso, but from the side one could easily see four inches of skin.
“It’s so nobody looks at my face.” Charlotte laid a hand on Livia’s arm. “Are you all right, Livia?”
“I’m well enough. People don’t actually believe that I did away with Lady Shrewsbury, but it gives them something to speculate about in the meanwhile.”
The situation was a little less promising than that. The discovery of arsenic had tongues wagging that while Mr. Sackville might have been murdered, he had to have been done in by someone local, most likely one of his servants—leading to the current consensus that his death had nothing to do with Lady Shrewsbury’s and Lady Amelia’s.
With the suspicion for those latter deaths once again falling squarely on Livia and Sir Henry, respectively—which must be the reason Charlotte had taken the risk to come see her.
“You’ve become too thin,” said Charlotte softly.