Strong hands lifted her to her feet. Lord Ingram. He took hold of her hand and wrapped an arm around her middle. Leaning on him, she slowly began to climb the steps.
Livia, too, had rushed down the stairs. She grabbed Charlotte’s other hand. “Oh, Charlotte. Are you all right?”
Charlotte both nodded and shook her head, and even she wasn’t sure whether this second motion was to tell Livia not to worry, or to negate what had been conveyed earlier with the nod.
Back in the parlor, Mrs. Watson pressed two fingers of whisky into Charlotte’s hand as soon as Lord Ingram and Livia lowered her into a chair. Charlotte’s nerves almost never needed shoring up, and certainly never needed shoring up with anything stronger than a slice of cake. But this time she drained half the whisky in one gulp, set down the glass with a heavy thunk, and then grabbed an éclair and devoured it in five seconds flat.
No one told her to eat more slowly. No one cautioned her not choke on her food. They stood stock-still, watching her wash everything down with a cup of cold tea.
Only then did Lord Ingram grab the kettle. “I’ll get more water.”
Mrs. Watson, next to the chair, draped an arm around Charlotte’s shoulders. Livia sank to her haunches, divested Charlotte of plate and cup, and took her hand with a grip strong enough to pulverize stone.
“Charlotte, did you hear anything I said? Are you all right?”
Clearly Charlotte was not. Were she all right, she would have carried on a conversation with Livia, kept abreast of a dozen other people in her vicinity, and given due attention to Lord Ingram’s superlative form as he left the room in a hurry.
And she would have noticed far sooner that Livia’s hands were ice-cold. “Go sit near the fire.”
Her voice sounded raspy, but steady enough.
Livia didn’t budge. “You come, too. We’ll all sit by the fire.”
Charlotte shook her head. “Not me. I might fall asleep if I became much warmer. In fact, I’ll go sit on the windowsill.”
But she didn’t move, neither did she let go of Livia’s hand. In fact, with her free hand, she took Mrs. Watson’s hand, too. When Moriarty had announced that he’d come for his daughter’s sake, she’d known that for the moment, at least, everyone who mattered to her would remain safe. But sometimes knowing did not offer the same solid reassurance as hands held together, palms against palms.
Only after Lord Ingram returned with the kettle did Charlotte at last decamp to the windowsill. At her request, he helped set chairs by the grate for Mrs. Watson and Livia, both of whom continued to hover around Charlotte. Next he went into the bedroom and came out with the large black shawl that had been left on Sherlock Holmes’s bed and draped it over Charlotte’s shoulders. “You may not want to be heated, but you shouldn’t be chilled either.”
Charlotte placed her hand over his, too, as he gave the shawl one last adjustment. On a different occasion, the gesture would have made him—and Livia and Mrs. Watson—feel self-conscious. But today he lifted her hand to his lips and the ladies didn’t bat an eyelash.
He let go of her hand and turned to Mrs. Watson. “I’m going to take a look outside and check on your household, ma’am. If all is well, would you like me to inform your staff that they can transport Miss Bernadine Holmes back to her room and return to their duties?”
“Yes, please,” said Mrs. Watson gratefully. “Thank you, my dear.”
He settled his hand briefly on her shoulder, glanced back at Charlotte, and left.
The parlor was silent for several minutes, until steam issued from the kettle and Mrs. Watson went to make tea.
“Ever since I first heard his name, I’ve always feared him,” Livia muttered, sitting down next to Charlotte. “I had no idea I’ve been afraid of the wrong things.”
Charlotte felt as if she were recovering from a high fever, limbs weak, mouth dry, temples faintly throbbing, but at least a conversation was no longer beyond her. “No, we were afraid of the right things all along. It’s just that now we have even more to fear.”
Livia laughed, a sound like sobbing. “I hope you didn’t mean to comfort me with that.”
Charlotte exhaled. “I am at least somewhat comforted by the fact that we learned a great deal about him without losing our freedom—or far more—in the bargain.”
More silence. Mrs. Watson used the poker rather forcefully on the coal in the grate.
The next moment Charlotte was on her feet, rising so fast she swayed.
Livia leaped up, too. “What’s the matter, Charlotte?”
Charlotte rushed to where Mr. Marbleton had been sitting and got down on all fours.
The slender chairs Lord Ingram had placed before the grate for the ladies had come from the bedroom. The two newly reupholstered armchairs had not been budged. One, they were far heavier. Two—and this was the more important reason—they had been carefully set in place so that images of the visitors who sat in them would be captured by the camera obscura set up between the rooms, and so that as clients in the parlor gave the details of their problems, observers in the bedroom would not only hear them, but have a good look at them as well.
The armchairs, after their recent improvement, boasted tasseled fringes on the bottom, a wink from Mrs. Watson to Charlotte, who adored frills and furbelows, and whose sense of fashion had been compared by her favorite great-aunt to a needlepoint footstool. Charlotte, needless to say, had been tickled by these additions.
Mr. Marbleton must have been overjoyed to see them, too.
She swept aside the fringes and—saw nothing. Only then did a biscuit-colored scrap of paper became visible against a stretch of carpet of a similar hue.
She got up, went to the desk, took out a pair of tweezers and a small wooden tray, and returned to the chair. Livia now knelt there, too, looking underneath. “Is that a railway ticket?”
“I believe so.”
The ticket on the tray, dirty and crumpled, showed signs of having been stepped on more than once. In that regard, it was a most ordinary stub, the kind that dotted railway platforms, dropped by those who no longer needed them and trampled underfoot by other harried travelers.
About a quarter inch had been torn away from one end of the stub. But otherwise the printed information let them know that it had been issued by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway, for travel between Snowham in Kent and Victoria Station, London, valid for a single second-class journey.
And when Charlotte turned it over with her tweezers, the reverse merely presented the conditions of travel and more boot marks.
After a while, the other two women turned their attention to Charlotte, who shook her head. “I can fathom no particular secrets from looking at this ticket.”
Livia frowned. “But is this left behind by Mr. Marbleton and not some previous client? We’ve traveled with him and more than once during those journeys I saw him tearing a stub to pieces and putting all the shreds into a rubbish bin before we left the station.”
“I saw him do that with ferry tickets from crossing the Channel,” said Mrs. Watson. “Luggage tags, too—he disposed of them as soon as they’d served their purpose. His habits made sense. At any moment he could have been coming from a place where his parents and sister had been staying. At any moment Moriarty could have found him. So he could never carry anything on his person that might give hints as to the location of the rest of his family.”