CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

REVOLUTION

“Marie, is everything all right?”

It was Jacob, hovering behind us. It was obvious what he was thinking, that Holmes and I were somehow threatening the lady. Perhaps that was indeed the effect of Holmes’s questioning, as he slipped easily from confidant to interrogator.

Opposite us, Lady Marie regained her composure. “Everything is fine, Jacob. Thank you. It has been a tiring morning, that is all.”

“And it’s not over yet,” the owner of the coffeehouse said, still viewing us with poorly disguised suspicion. “Would you like more coffee?”

“No. Just the bill, thank you.”

“It’s on the house,” Jacob said. “It’s good to see you again. Don’t leave it so long next time, eh?”

“Most kind of you,” Holmes said, laying on the Sherrinford charm, before turning back to Marie. “I apologise if I upset you.”

“I thought you wanted to help me,” she retorted.

“And we will.”

“By accusing Nelson? He would never hurt Father, no matter what he’s done.”

“I’m sure you are correct, but for now we shall never find Mrs Protheroe if we lurk underground. I suggest you return to Ridgeside. Dr Watson and I will proceed to the police station to look in on my brother. We can take the opportunity to avail ourselves of Inspector Tovey’s assistance and see what light he can shed on your mysterious midwife. If only my brother were awake. He would see through this mess in a moment.”

If only, indeed. We accompanied Lady Marie back up to the street and waited for her to depart in her carriage.

“What do you make of it, Holmes?” I asked as we set off back to town in our own conveyance.

“I think that I need to get out of these clothes.”

“Of the case, Holmes!”

“Lady Marie is a curious beast, Watson, adept at hiding what she is really thinking thanks to years spent in high society. She is also a woman who lives to break rules, and to shock. There are over a hundred cocoa and coffeehouses in Bristol; why take us to Jacob’s singular establishment?”

“Because it was a safe place to confess her shame?”

“Because of the pregnancy, you mean? Tell me, Watson, does Lady Marie strike you as a woman who feels shame? She is angry, that much is certain. Angry enough to conspire to kill her own father?”

“I’m not sure about that, Holmes. You saw the way she reacted when you accused her lover.”

“I saw shock, yes, but how are we to know that it was not an act? I would suggest she took us to old Packhorse Lane precisely because it was a singular experience; a theatrical one. Think of it, Watson. Bored with her old life, she throws herself into an affair with a man below her station, a man with an exotic heritage, a taboo in her father’s eyes. Forbidden trysts in forgotten streets? They obviously frequented the place as a couple, away from prying eyes. Her notion of class structure is breaking down. A lady brought up in a stately home, sitting at the next bench to anarchists and revolutionaries.”

“Anarchists? Surely not.”

“You have eyes but you do not see, Watson. The fellow at the next table had three cups of coffee in the time we had one. If the broken veins in his nose tell us anything he has swapped one addiction for another, from gin to caffeine. Coffee palaces, be they above or below the ground, are a breeding ground for radicalisation. Reformers and agitators are known to induct their followers into coffeehouse culture. Why?”

I was unsure whether Holmes’s questions were rhetorical or not, but I had no answer, either way. Holmes answered for me, as I knew he would. “Because coffeehouses do not serve alcohol, which, as every reformer knows, is the bane of the working class. How can the downtrodden masses revolt against their oppressors if they are sunk in a drunken stupor? No, keep them alert, and keep them sober, so they can read pamphlets promoting social upheaval such as that which was sticking out of our red-nosed friend’s jacket pocket.”

“Yes, yes, Holmes, you’ve made your point.”

“Have I? Lady Marie has begun to question the privileges and perils of her social station. You heard her talking about the

Worshipful League’s charitable works. You saw her walk into a slum, with no thought of the dangers that might befall her. She is railing against her breeding, and against the man who is the very personification of her place in society.”

“Her father,” I answered reluctantly.

“Her father. A man who now lies dangerously wounded in hospital. Watson, I checked every door and window I could in Ridgeside Manor. They were all locked, with no way of opening from the outside, especially on the side of the house that looks over the gorge. And yet somehow our attacker got in and out, with no one noticing.”

“Maybe he had a key?”

“Maybe he had an accomplice.”

“Lady Marie?”

“She is grieving for her lost child, trapped in a house with a family she despises. Her future is not her own. To make matters worse, her sister announces that she is with child. Tell me, Watson, how did Lord Redshaw respond to the news?”

“With joy,” I said, remembering the scene all too well. “As one would expect.”

“A man celebrating his first grandchild. But it wasn’t his first, was it? The heir to the Redshaw fortune had already been born, of the wrong stock, and, dare I say it, the wrong colour. What else could Redshaw do? Present his mixed-blood bastard of a grandson to his peers?”

“Holmes, really!”

“And there you have it, in your own reaction, Watson. Embarrassment. Shame. This is the world that Redshaw’s class has created and which the rest of us maintain.”

“The ‘Daughter of Eve’,” I said, struck by a memory.

“What’s that?”

“Something I said to Lady Marie on the night we first met. I was admiring a statue of a slave girl in chains. I suggested it was a reminder of how far we have come as a society.”

“And what did she say?”

“‘Or not, as the case may be.’ The look in her eyes, Holmes. She was haunted.”

“By what she had lost, and maybe by the realisation that the chains placed upon us by society are equally binding today.”

“But invisible.”

“Ever the poet, Watson. Is it too much a leap of the imagination to suggest that such grief and anger would boil over to hatred? Perhaps she had met with Powell after all to concoct their own revolution.”

“That Jacob fellow said he hadn’t seen either of them for some time.”

“As I have observed, there are other coffeehouses in which to plot a murder. On the night of my arrival, Powell came to Ridgeside Manor and found a door left open as planned. His prey was in the study and the rest of the house occupied. Powell slipped in, surprised Lord Redshaw in his sanctuary and, the deed done, disappeared back into the night. As for Lady Marie, she had the perfect alibi. She was with her soon-to-be-estranged fiancé.”

“But why, Holmes? What would they gain from such a barbaric act?”

“Revenge. Revenge against the man who stopped them being together. Revenge against the man who forced Marie into an engagement she neither wanted nor could stomach. Revenge against the man who took away their son.”

“A son Powell knew nothing about, remember.”

“We have only Lady Marie’s word for that. Either way, it’s a son she now wants back.” A shadow passed over his face. “That is the most tragic aspect of all, Watson. If my suspicions are correct, Lady Marie’s baby may well be long since dead.”