Charlotte did not dispute their accounts as she had observed the same with regard to Mr. Marbleton. Instead she asked, “Mrs. Watson, I believe the parlor was cleaned today. Shall we ask the Bannings whether they swept under the chairs?”
Mrs. Watson leaped up. “I will go do that. The two of you catch up.”
* * *
When the door closed behind Mrs. Watson, Charlotte set down the tray containing the possibly precious railway ticket and embraced Livia.
Livia held on hard. Charlotte hugged her back with almost as much ferocity. Livia could barely breathe, but she welcomed it, this wonderful suffocation.
They let go at last, and looked toward the torn ticket. Charlotte gave her head a small shake. “I don’t know how he managed to withstand Moriarty day in and day out, but I believe he has indeed managed to do so.”
Livia’s eyes welled with tears. When she thought of Mr. Marbleton, she always remembered his smiles, his innate kindness, and his irrepressible joie de vivre. But because he and his family had spent decades on the run, she didn’t often think of him as brave or strong. How wrong she had been. To have lived the life he had and still be capable of smiles, kindness, and joie de vivre was in and of itself a testament to his strength of character. And then, to have had enough nerve and tenacity to hold on to their secrets, keeping them safe . . .
“There was so much he didn’t tell us,” she murmured.
Charlotte rubbed her on her back. “Because you made him think of lovelier things. You made him think that perhaps a different life was possible, a normal life.”
Livia leaned against Charlotte. “That life is further away now than ever.”
“True,” said Charlotte. “We are at a greater disadvantage than we have ever been, vis-à-vis Moriarty.”
Livia’s anguish turned into a bark of bitter laughter—trust Charlotte never to call a spade anything except a spade. Needing something to do, she went to the grate and banked the fire. Heat radiated against her skin, an almost oppressive warmth. Yet even that could not stop the sensation of shadows spreading, of a sinister chill growing in the room. In their lives.
“But do you know who hasn’t given up, Livia?” came Charlotte’s voice, still a little raspy but growing stronger.
Livia, still on her haunches, turned around.
Charlotte once again held the torn ticket in a pair of tweezers, extending it toward Livia as if it were a torch to be passed. “Mr. Marbleton hasn’t. The effort he expended, the risks he ran, today, as a captive, as someone Moriarty already considers one of the defeated.”
Tears once again rushed into Livia’s eyes.
If he of all people hadn’t given up, then what reason did she have to despair?
* * *
Lord Ingram returned with the news that Bernadine was about to wake up and that Charlotte and Livia were needed.
Bernadine was not accustomed to sedatives and it was possible that as she regained consciousness, she would be become disoriented and distressed. But Bernadine, upon opening her eyes in her own bed, took a look at the crowd in her room, moved to her spinning station in the corner, and set to work on two spools and a wooden cogwheel.
When it became apparent that she needed no special attention, at least not right away, Mrs. Watson shepherded everyone to the dining room, where Mr. Mears had already laid out an early supper.
“It isn’t much, only what Madame Gascoigne packed for us to eat on the road,” said Mrs. Watson in apology.
But as far as Charlotte could judge, Madame Gascoigne had not forsaken her standards while preparing a meal for potential fugitives. On the table were sliced roast beef, potato croquettes, small ham pies, oyster patties, grilled mushrooms, and, for dessert, a fig pudding and a cheesecake.
Lord Ingram studied the railway ticket—he hadn’t been at number 18 when Charlotte had discovered it under the chair. Mrs. Watson informed them that she had spoken to her maids, the Banning sisters. Polly Banning had been certain she’d swept under the fringed chairs this morning and Rosie Banning corroborated her account, saying that she remembered teasing Polly about how she’d looked, with her bum up in the air.
The ticket could not have been left by anyone except Mr. Marbleton.
Livia was clearly breathing fast and trying to calm herself down with sips of wine. Lord Ingram studied the ticket again, a crease of concentration across his brow. Charlotte ate three potato croquettes in quick succession. It had been some time since they had been fried and they no longer had a perfectly crispy shell, but still they were delicious.
Lord Ingram put the ticket stub back in the small cloisonné jewelry case that had become its temporary container and closed it with a soft click. “It would have been nice if Mr. Marbleton had been able to convey something less cryptic.”
Mrs. Watson set down her utensils and turned a cameo ring round and round on her little finger. “On the other hand, Moriarty spoke a great deal. But can we believe a word he uttered?”
Charlotte speared yet another potato croquette and drizzled some of the hollandaise sauce intended for the oyster patties onto it. Let the valiant effort to fend of Maximum Tolerable Chins begin again on the morrow. Tonight she would devour everything.
Ah, the croquette slathered with hollandaise sauce tasted even better.
“I don’t believe in Moriarty as a loving father. However, I am inclined to believe at least a portion of the story concerning his daughter,” she said. “Remember, at Château Vaudrieu, Livia and Mr. Marbleton witnessed several men with their ears pressed to the floor, trying to hear something. And you, Lord Ingram, heard that something by chance because your path that night took you closest to the château’s dungeons. Those sounds you heard—and recorded—turned out to contain the combination to the safe that we eventually opened.
“Moriarty had to have been the one making those sounds. The transmission of the sounds was him fulfilling his end of a bargain, to give the code to those who were coming to rescue him. But he made sure that particular bargain would be completely useless to anyone who, one, wasn’t in the exact right place to overhear the sounds, and two, didn’t have an experienced cryptographer among their ranks.
“I used to think he had a twisted sense of honor. But having met him, it’s more likely he disdains lying as tactic for the weak. It must make him feel powerful to have his way while being truthful.”
Like Mrs. Watson, Livia had also put down her fork and knife, giving up all pretenses of eating. “You are saying that the tale he told about his daughter is the truth? But we don’t know that she has gone to live with a band of occultists. We don’t know that there is something amiss with this community. We don’t even have the means to verify that he has a full-grown daughter.”
Charlotte cut into a small ham pie, the crust baked to a beautiful golden brown. “Mr. Marbleton once mentioned that the first Mrs. Moriarty died in childbirth. He said nothing about whether the child survived. But it is not impossible, or even unlikely, for Moriarty to have a grown daughter. Whether such a community of Hermetists exists should not be difficult to ascertain, given a specific location, and that should be supplied by the dossier. And once we are standing before a real place, there will be nothing to prevent us from asking the residents whether Miss Baxter has long been one of them.