A Study in Charlotte (12 page)

“Right,” my father said, confused. “I had sort of thought all of that was a given. Do you have any actual proof that clears you?”

“Enough witnesses to prove that we weren't the people who attacked Elizabeth. Elizabeth herself, when she wakes up. But that's moot, anyway. In about an hour and fifteen minutes, I'll have the leverage we need to clear our names and get Shepard to involve us in his investigation.”

I didn't know anything about this. “What?”

She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, and said nothing. Across from us, I swear my father's eyes were sparkling.

I stared at him. “Shouldn't you be, you know, worried?”

But he was already pulling a bottle of champagne from the refrigerator. “A toast is in order, I think. A little glass couldn't hurt at this point.”

The cork popped, and steam fizzed out. Holmes and I exchanged a startled glance. She hadn't expected him to believe her. Very few people had the ability to surprise her, but apparently my father was one of them. I didn't care. I had a glass of champagne, possibly my last as a free man. I slurped the foam off the top of my glass.

Holmes, being Holmes, looked at my father and decided to investigate. “Oh, this is lovely, thanks much. But tell us why we're celebrating! You can't trust me
that
much. There has to be something more to it.” She leaned on one hand, drawing on the vast reserves of charm she kept hidden away for just this purpose. “That pie smells tremendous,” she added. “Can't think of the last time I had good comfort food.”

If my father noticed the show—and really, how couldn't he?—he didn't mind it. “It's Jamie's grandmother's recipe. I haven't had a chance to make it in a long time.” He beamed.
“I'm happy this worked out for you two. I'd worried it wouldn't.”

“What worked out?” Wherever this was headed, I was sure it was a bad, bad place. “If you're about to tell me you killed off Dobson to get me some detective practice, I swear to God—”

With a wave, he cut me off. “Jamie, don't be so melodramatic. Of course not.”

“Of course not,” Holmes said, under her breath. The machinery in her head was whirring to life. “It began before that.”

“Yes,” my father said, delighted. “Go on.”

She looked me over the way you might do a horse. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “And sport. It has to do with rugby.”

“Excellent.” He lifted his glass to her. “I'm sorry, Jamie, but I still can't believe you bought it. A rugby scholarship? Yes, you're a perfectly adequate player, no doubt, and certainly good enough for their team, but you have to admit that the idea was a bit far-fetched.” He took a meditative sip. “No, it was all something that we plotted up in our cups, last summer.”

“We?”

“You and my uncle,” Holmes said to my father, bypassing me entirely.

“What?” I said faintly. I was still trying to process the fact that I wasn't, in fact, a genius rugger, and that no one had told our poor captain. “Wait. You're going to solve
this
mystery. Not the Dobson-Elizabeth-drug dealer mystery. This one. And you're going to solve it now
.
” I stifled a semi-hysterical laugh. “When I didn't even know there was a mystery. God, what could I possibly have done in a past life to get stuck with someone like you?”

“Go on,” my father was saying happily. It was good that one of us was enjoying himself. “Tell me how you know.”

She ticked the deductions off on her fingers. “You were born in Edinburgh like the rest of your family, but you have an Oxbridge spin on your words. When you opened your cupboard to fetch these flutes, I saw a mug, top shelf, with the Balliol College blazon on. Oxford, then.”

My father spread his hands, waiting for her to continue.

“You hugged me with a surprising amount of familiarity when we met, but you didn't hug your son. Even with your difficult relationship”—my father's smile faltered for a moment—“if you were so prone to hugs, you would have made an attempt on him anyway. No, you felt you knew me. You must have heard of me, then, and not in the papers—or there would have been polite pity and no hug—but from someone who spoke highly of me, and with warmth. The first rules out my parents; the second, most of my relatives. My brother, Milo, doesn't believe in friends, and anyway, you'd have no reason to chat to a pudgy, secretive computer genius who leaves his Berlin flat only under extreme
duress. My aunt Araminta is nice enough, which means she's glacial by society's standards. Cousin Margaret is twelve, and Great-Aunt Agatha is dead, and that's the
tour de monde
of the effusive members of my family.

“Excepting, of course, my dear old uncle Leander, Balliol College '89, who gave me my violin, and is the first Holmes in known memory to host a party of his own free will. Of course you're friends.” She peered at him for a second. “Oh. And flatmates. For at least a year, no more than three.”

I poured another glass of champagne and drank it straight down.

My father, smartly, put the bottle away. “You're as clever as he is, Charlotte, and a great deal quicker. Though Leander, bless him, is lazy enough to solve a crime and forget to tell his client for months.

“He came to your seventh birthday party,” my father told me. “Don't you remember?” My seventh birthday party had been held at one of those roadside amusement parks with a go-kart track and a half-dozen arcade games. “He brought you a rabbit as a gift. Giant thing. Big floppy ears. Your mother, being your mother, sent it immediately to a nice home in the country.”

“Harold,” I said, piecing it together. That had been the rabbit's name. I had an impression of a towering man with slicked-back hair and a lazy smile.

“I roomed with him back before I met your mother,” he said. “Bachelor days, before I was lured away to London. Leander had set up as a private detective, and I was . . . well, I was very bored. We were introduced at an alumni event at a pub; I'm sure you've noticed how keen everyone is to introduce a Holmes to a Watson. He was chatting up the bartender. I think he brought him home in the end. Could turn on the charm, Leander, when the situation called for it.” He raised an eyebrow at Holmes, who didn't blush but looked like she might've liked to.

“And you're still friends?” I asked.

“Yes, of course,” my father said. “The two of us, we're the best kind of disaster. Apples and oranges. Well, more like apples and machetes.” He studied my face for a moment. “I thought you could use a little shaking up, Jamie. That school in London was too expensive for what a bloody toff factory it was, and even with what I could contribute, we couldn't afford to keep you there. I told Leander about my frustrations, and he mentioned that Charlotte here had just been deposited, friendless and alone, only an hour from my house. Did you really think this was a coincidence—the two of you winding up here, in America, at the same boarding school?”

I was fed up with all these ridiculous bombshells and rhetorical questions. “Yes,” I said pointedly. “Also, your pie smells like it's burning.”

Holmes sniffed the air. “It smells quite good, actually,” she said, and took it out to cool. I scowled at her. She made a helpless gesture.

“The tuition . . . well, Leander offered to pay it. When I said no, he told me that otherwise he'd just buy another Stradivarius. I tried telling him that he'd have to put an entire town through Sherringford to come close to the price of a Strad, but he held firm. I gave in. And so Leander arranged some sleight-of-hand with the board of trustees and offered you a ‘scholarship.' You didn't wonder why you didn't lose your scholarship when you were suspended from the rugby team?” He grinned. “That's why. The whole thing was quite fun. I think he enjoyed it immensely.”

“Yes,” I said, thinking of all my violent resentment at being sent away, of having to leave London, my friends, my kid sister. “Fun.”

“Well then.” My father clapped his hands together. “You've met! You're friends! You've found yourselves a murder! I couldn't have asked for more. Come, let's eat before the detective arrives.”

Holmes's phone buzzed. “I have to take this, excuse me.” She stepped out the back door, and I watched her through the glass as she paced in her dress, speaking rapidly to someone.

“Who could possibly be calling her?” I wondered aloud. “It must be her brother.”

My father kept slicing the pie. “I hope you're not terribly mad at me.”

“I'm not,” I said. “I'm furious.”

“It seemed to have worked out rather well, though, you have to give me that.” He handed me a heaping plate. I wished, badly, that I wasn't starving.

“
Well
?
This worked out well?” I choked. “God, I don't have to give you anything.”

“Jamie. Please don't be like this.” He was avoiding my eyes. “Aren't you happy you met Charlotte? She's lovely, isn't she?”

“Will you please stop side-stepping the point? This isn't about Holmes, it's about the strings you pulled to get me here. God, you don't even know
me! I hadn't seen you for years! How can you not understand that being bored isn't an excuse to reach in and fuck with my life for fun?”

“Language,” my father warned.

“You don't get to do that.” I heard myself getting loud. “You don't get to deflect every response you don't like. I'm in a horrible mess that you, for whatever reason, have decided to find
charming
.”

With shaking hands, he set down the knife. I was shocked to see his eyes glossed in tears. “You're right, Jamie. I don't know you anymore. God help me for wanting that to change.”

The doorbell rang.

“He's early,” my father said, and hurriedly plated some pie for Holmes. “I'll get it.”

When he left the room, I let out a ragged breath I hadn't known I was holding.

Holmes slipped back into the house. “Well, that looked rather brutal,” she said, eyeing me. It was an observation, not an attempt at sympathy, and so I didn't have to respond to it.

“Sit,” I said instead, pulling out a stool. “Who called you?”

My father walked in, Detective Shepard behind him. Holmes read something in their faces that I didn't, because her posture, always impeccable, went ramrod-straight.

“Jamie. Charlotte.” I noticed that Shepard had dark circles under his eyes. “I'd like to get you back down to the station. Now.”

“What are you charging us with?” I asked him.

“I'd like to get you back down to the station,” he repeated, a patented non-answer.

“You'll need to wait for my lawyer,” Holmes said coolly.
“He'll be representing both of us, but as his office is in New York, it could be several hours until he arrives. Do you mind if I phone him?”

The detective nodded, and she placed the call right there.

I felt a rush of relief. The worst possible outcome was happening. I could finally, finally stop dreading it.

My father, being my father, chose that moment to begin to worry.

“Do you mind if they eat in the meantime?” he asked, a plea in his voice. “I don't know how long they'll be down at—at the station, and dinner's on the table. You're welcome to join us, of course.”

Shepard hesitated. He took in Holmes's too-thin frame, the steaming plate in front of me, and I watched him give in. “Fine. They can eat, since we'll have to wait for their lawyer anyway. But be quick about it.” He set his bag down, and took a seat.

I made an effort with the pie, though I pushed it aside after a few bites. Shepard's scrutiny made me too uncomfortable to eat. For her part, Holmes decided to develop an appetite. Slowly, fastidiously, she picked the carrots from the crust one by one. Once removed, she sliced them into quarters and then halved them again. After spearing each piece with her fork, she dipped it into the mashed potato and transferred it to her mouth. She chewed each morsel seventeen times. And then she repeated the process. Across the table, my father watched her, one hand gripping the table hard.

I wondered if he was still enjoying himself.

Silence reigned. After twenty minutes, Holmes hadn't even
gotten to the steak, and the detective began to shift unhappily in his chair. I took the chance to catalog him, to try to draw some Holmesian deductions. He was in his late thirties, I decided. Clean-shaven, but in rumpled clothes. He clearly hadn't gotten home to change or shower since interrogating Holmes last night. There was a wedding band on his left hand. I couldn't tell if he had kids of his own, but his decision to let us eat dinner made me think he did. What I couldn't account for was the reluctance that radiated off him, the way he projected unease in his posture, in his frown, his furrowed brow. Like my father, he'd lost his eagerness.

“I understand why you did it. To Dobson,” he said quietly, watching Holmes eat. She didn't look up. “Every account I get says that kid was a bastard, and he was fixated on you. But what I don't get is why you didn't just tell the school about his abuse and get it to stop. And I don't get why the two of you would attack Elizabeth Hartwell. Bryony Downs, the Sherringford nurse, told me that you, Charlotte, had been behaving erratically at the dance all night—”

“Way to make friends,” I said to her.

“—and then the two of you chase some other guy down into these underground tunnels I've never even
heard
of, where we find you in a room straight out of a TV procedural, just
waiting
for us. I found these in there.” He dug a pair of trousers and a black shirt out of the bag, and shook them out for her inspection. “Yours?”

The clothes from the mattress.

She looked up uninterestedly. “Yes,” she said. “Though if
you've examined them, you'll see that they've never been worn.”