A Study in Charlotte (6 page)

When I arrived at her lab the next day after classes, Detective Shepard was stepping out of the door. I hadn't known that he could interrogate either of us without a parent there, but he must have found a way to talk to Holmes.

“Jamie,” he said heavily. “I'll see you and Charlotte on Sunday night at your father's house. We'll talk then.” With that, he fixed me with a pitying look and took off down the hall.

“Wait, you're coming to that?” I called after him, but he didn't respond.

Inside, on the love seat, Holmes was wrapped up in an avalanche of blankets. She looked like one of those Russian nesting dolls, like she was the smallest Holmes in a series.

Whatever words she'd exchanged with Shepard, they'd left her in a mood.

“Why did you let him in? What was that about, exactly?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing,” I repeated. “I thought you were giving him Dobson's infirmary records.”

“He already had them, of course,” she said. “He chided me for breaking and entering, and left.”

“So Dobson
did
go to have his symptoms treated.”

“He went to the infirmary often,” she said. “Mostly rugby-related injuries, Shepard said. He said they'd tested his hair for arsenic and found it, and didn't need any of my proof. Then he asked me to identify all the vials on my poisons shelf. And then he left, saying he'd see us soon, in a voice I think he thought was threatening. Amateur.”

“Wait, back up. You let the detective in here. You let him look at your poisons shelf.”

“Yes.”

“Poisons.”

“Yes.”

“And there's arsenic on that shelf?”

“Yes.”

“And he's interrogating us again this Sunday,” I said, feeling sick.

“Yes,” she said, drawing the word out like I was an idiot.

I stared at her for a long minute. She had to know something she wasn't telling me. “Right. We need to make a list of possible suspects. We need to find something
we can give them. Anything to make you—us—look less guilty.”

Turning away, I taped a sheet of butcher paper to the side of her bookcase and wrote “suspects” at the top.

“Watson,” she said, “you don't have any suspects.”

I glared at her. She brought her cigarette to her lips and took a long drag. We'd reached an unspoken agreement: she'd dump the pill bottles, and I'd stop checking for them. That's how I chose to read the new and constant presence of a lit Lucky Strike in her hand—that she was trying out a drug that wouldn't kill her, at least not as quickly.

But all that smoke meant the unventilated lab was starting to resemble some toxic back room of hell, edging me ever closer to my breaking point. And still Holmes sat, and smoked, and told me nothing.

“What about the person who checked out that copy of
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
from the library? There have to be records.”

“Correction. That particular copy was new and had never once been checked out from the library. Someone stole it off the shelf,” Holmes said. “Currently, the library database has it listed as ‘missing.' And as the physical copy is in police possession, I have no way of examining it.”

“What about enemies? We could list Dobson's enemies.”

“Go on, then. Put down every girl at the school.” Her eyes went dark. “Though I can tell you that, from the research I did last year, I know I'm the only one who had a . . . run-in with him.”

I swallowed. “We could list our enemies, then.”

“You haven't got any enemies.”

“I've got ex-girlfriends,” I countered. “English ones. American ones. Scottish
ones. I could so see Fiona with some sort
of tartan apothecary box for her poisons . . .” Although it was hard to actually imagine Fiona doing anything but dumping me in front of my entire class.

Holmes raised an eyebrow. “No,” she said, and exhaled.

I kept myself from pulling the cigarette from her hand and grinding it out on the floor.

“I haven't been sleeping,” I told her, “because I am worried that either you, or I, or some innocent lunch lady will bite it now that we've gotten ourselves a murderous fan club. So give me a hand, will you?”

Her eyes narrowed in concentration. “The Marquess of Abergavenny,” she said, finally. “I set fire to his stables when I was nine.”

“Fine,” I said, and then, in a smaller voice, “Can you spell that?”

She ignored me. “I suppose you could add Kristof Demarchelier, the chemist. The Frenchman, not the Dane. And the Comtesse van Landingham—Tracy never liked me. She didn't like my brother Milo either, for that matter, but then he did break her heart. Oh, and the headmistress of Innsbruck School in Lucerne, for beating her so often in chess, and the champion table tennis player Quentin Wilde. I suppose you might as well add his teammates Basil and Thom. Thom with an ‘h,' of course. Though I can't remember their surnames. Strange.”

“Is that it? Or are there peers and MPs that you're forgetting? Maybe a crowned head or two?”

She took a puff that sent her into a coughing fit. When
she regained her composure, she said, “Well, there's August Moriarty,” as if that shouldn't have been the first name out of her mouth.

“What,” I asked her slowly, “were you doing picking fights with a Moriarty?”

Professor James Moriarty was Sherlock Holmes's greatest enemy. In some ways, he was almost as notorious as the Great Detective himself. Moriarty was the first criminal mastermind of London, who famously died after fighting Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. After that fight, Sherlock faked his own death in order to hunt down the rest of Moriarty's agents in disguise. Even Dr. Watson thought Sherlock was gone for good. Though the official story says differently, I have it on good authority that when Holmes waltzed back into his consulting room three years later, my great-great-great-grandfather delivered one hell of a punch to his former partner's jaw.

Like I said before, I haven't had the best role models.

But then neither had Charlotte Holmes.

She dashed her cigarette out in the ashtray with a delicate, vicious hand. “It's irrelevant.” There was smothered hurt in her voice, but I couldn't afford to drop the subject.

“Professor Moriarty still has fans, Holmes. Followers. Did you know that some English serial killers still list him as their greatest inspiration? And they've never recovered all the art he stole. Not to mention the rest of his family actively attempting to live up to his legacy.” I drew a line under his name. August. I had never heard of an August Moriarty. “I mean, I know it's
been more than a hundred years, but—”

“I'd prefer to think,” Holmes said, cutting me off, “that we aren't all so mercilessly bound to our pasts.” She rose, shedding her blankets. Underneath, she wore a short pleated skirt, rolled at the waist to appear even shorter, and her white oxford was undone to the fourth button.

Had she dressed this way for the detective? Or for something else? What was she playing at?

I cleared my throat awkwardly. In one of her mercurial shifts of mood, she flashed me a smile and hauled a box out from underneath the love seat.

Inside was a collection of wigs. Dozens of them, stored in soft mesh bags and arranged by color. Holmes drew a hand mirror out from the box and peered at herself for half a second before smoothing her hair up into a knot.

“So this conversation is over,” I said, but I might as well have been talking to the air. It was no use; I'd been outplayed. She didn't want to talk about August Moriarty, and so she wouldn't, and nothing I could say would change her mind.

Getting to watch her transform herself helped soften the blow. She did it with all the cool efficiency of a violinist tuning her instrument. A stocking cap went over her hair, followed by the wig—long blond hair, curled at the ends—and makeup that she applied with an expert hand, balancing the small mirror between her knees. I didn't know the terms for what she did, but the face that looked up at me was doe-eyed and glimmering, her cheeks pink, her lips smudged with sticky gloss. She spritzed herself with perfume. Then, without a hint of
modesty, she pulled a pair of plastic inserts from a bag and slid them, one at a time, into her bra.

I turned away, my cheeks burning.

“Jamie?” asked a bright American voice as she stepped in front of me. “Are you okay?”

She was like textbook jailbait, all curves where there used to be straight lines. I hadn't registered before that Holmes had perfect posture, but I noticed the absence of it now, as she stood indolently in—dear God, knee socks. The blond wig and makeup lit up her gray eyes, imbuing them with a friendliness that I hadn't thought they could have. And the look those eyes were giving me was
criminal
.

“I'm Hailey,” she said, her pronunciation lazy and Californian. “I'm a prospective student? For next year? My mom's in town but I wanted to, like, see the campus for myself. Is there a party tonight?” She touched my chest with a finger. “Do you want to take me?”

I'd never been so turned off in my life.

I stepped back into her chemistry table. The beakers rattled against each other; one crashed to the floor and shattered. And then there Holmes was again, underneath all the false wrapping, severe and mysterious and . . . pleased.

“Good,” she said, in her usual hoarse voice, rapidly tossing things into a backpack. “If you hate Hailey, she'll do just fine for my purposes.”

“Which are?”

“Be patient,” she said. “I promise I'll tell you everything later.” She glanced at the suspects list, at the name at the
bottom.
August Moriarty.
“Everything, Watson. But not now.”

“This is completely unfair,” I pointed out.

“It is.” Holmes smiled to herself. “We can talk more at the poker game tonight. I'll be there as myself.”

“No one's going to come. Everyone thinks we're murderers.”

“Everyone will come,” she said, correctly, “because everyone thinks we're murderers.”

“Well, you'll be lucky if I'm there.”

“Yes,” she said simply. “I will be.”

“Fine,” I said, throwing up my hands. Because she'd won, check and mate.

She was already at the door, and, having taken those five steps, she wasn't Holmes anymore.

With a coy wave over her shoulder, Hailey said, “Bye, Jamie.”

And then I was alone, with nothing to do but sweep up the shards of the beaker from the floor.

I
WASN
'
T SURE IF IT WAS OUR DUBIOUS CELEBRITY
,
OR JUST
brewing excitement for homecoming weekend, but Holmes had been right about the crowd. When I arrived at Stevenson at half past eleven, the basement kitchen was already overflowing with people. Some freshman boys had spun off a satellite game of five-card stud in the common space, and I had to push past a group of giggling girls to get through the kitchen door. Instead of going silent at my presence, the way everyone else did, they giggled louder. Gritting my teeth, I finally got through to the card table at the back.

Holmes wasn't anywhere to be found, but Lena was holding court in an improbable top hat. I'd seen her around, but I hadn't paid much attention to her before. There wasn't any doubt that she was beautiful, in a way I'd heard Tom wax rhapsodic about late at night: long straight hair, inky eyes, brown skin. Tonight, she was flushed with excitement and something else—probably vodka—and she'd stacked her mountain of chips into a neat pyramid. When she spotted me, she waved me over.

The boy sitting next to her wasn't Tom, and he didn't look happy to see me. “Hey, killer,” he spat. I ignored him.

“Hi, Jamie,” Lena said, ignoring him too. “Do you want to play? We're out of chairs, but I can totally deal you in if you want to stand.”

“Actually, he can have my seat. I need another drink.” The girl on her other side—Mariella, I think her name was—pushed herself to her feet and tottered over to the counter, where I spotted a handle of Vodka-brand vodka and some dubious-looking pineapple juice. The freshman girl that had asked me to homecoming was playing bartender. I avoided her eyes, too. Was there anyone I wasn't avoiding?

“I'm happy Mariella left,” Lena told me conspiratorially. “At least fifty bucks' worth of this haul is hers. Was hers, I guess. Oops.”

If she were anything like the other Sherringford students I'd met, Mariella wouldn't miss her money in the slightest. I thought of the thirty-five dollars left in my checking account that I couldn't afford to lose and turned Lena down when she
offered to deal me in, telling her I didn't know how to play.

“I'll try to pick it up, though,” I lied. Really, I just wanted to keep my seat until Holmes arrived, since I didn't know anyone else here.

“Oh my God,” Lena said, putting a hand to her chest. “You're British, too? You two are adorable, I love it.”

In England, I was an American. Here, it was the opposite. “Actually, I was born here,” I said.

“Are we going to play or not?” the guy next to Lena asked.

“Not,” she said, pushing back her chair. “Or whatever, you guys play. I want to talk to Jamie.” She stuffed her chips into the pockets of her dress and pulled me aside. I didn't bother to correct her on my name; I'd just about given up on asking people to call me James.

“I just want you to know,” she said, over-enunciating each word, “that I don't think you and Charlotte killed Lee. Look at you! You're adorable, and now you're
blushing
,
that's even more adorable. It's like you were invented to get her over that whole August thing. I totally refuse to believe you guys have gone all Bonnie and Clyde on Lee.” She frowned. “He sucked, anyway.”