A Study in Charlotte

by Brittany Cavallaro

  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.”

  “August?” My voice caught on his name, and I winced. “Um. I don’t know any Augusts. Who’s that?”

  “Hold on,” she said. “Let me take another shot.”

  I may have been a terrible liar, but Lena was drunk.

  “Oh, you know. August. The guy back home. She was pretty upset about it when she got here last year. I mean, she didn’t say she was upset but I heard her talking on the phone about him. You know, through the door? Then her brother came to visit and they were all like CIA about it the whole time. I kept hearing his name, which is a weird name, so I remembered it. Anyway, Milo left, but before he left, he was all like, Rrr, I’m going to do something about this, and she was a lot happier after that.” She put a hand to her mouth. “Shit. Oh, shit. I probably shouldn’t have told you that. Girl code.”

  I wanted to ask her what, in fact, she had told me, except maybe about one of Milo’s drone hits. “It’s fine,” I said, drawing from the sane, imaginary place in my head, where no one was brutally killed down the hall and my only friend deigned to tell me the barest facts about her life. “I know all about it. Failed love. Tragic, really. And that house fire, with . . . with all the puppies.”

  “Exactly!” She pressed her hand against my arm. “You guys are going to homecoming, right? I ordered this dress from Paris—you know, we go there every summer, my family does—but then it didn’t fit right, and no one does alterations here. Not good ones, anyway. Charlotte has this beautiful black dress that I asked if I could borrow—Tom would totally flip out—but she said no, so I figured that she had a date.”

  Holmes probably had that dress made specifically for some Norwegian gala where she beat a foreign minister at chess, stole a French-Yugoslavian treaty, and then smuggled herself into the hotel clothes hamper so that she could escape through the laundry chute. I wondered what it looked like; it had to be pretty spectacular if Lena wanted it that badly. A long dress, I imagined. Black and slinky, something a Bond girl would wear. But Lena was wrong about Holmes having a date. The only boy she’d ever consider taking was—

  I cut off that line of thought. Where was she, anyway? It was past midnight.

  “Yeah,” I said, craning my head to look over the crowd. “Er, no. No. I don’t think Holmes does dances. Is it okay if I step outside and look for her? I can throw out your drink if you’re finished.” Lena was beginning to look a bit sick. As I eased the cup from her hand, a thought occurred to me.

  “Um, Lena?” I said. “Why did Holmes start having these poker nights? She doesn’t seem to like”—I was about to say anyone before I caught myself—“crowds. Isn’t it kind of weird for her to host them?”

  “Oh,” Lena said, surprised. “You know, her parents don’t give her any spending money or anything. And Charlotte burns through a lot. I think she does a lot of online shopping, she always has packages at the front desk.” I coughed to cover my laughter. I was positive those packages contained something more sinister than designer clothes. Lena really was the perfect roommate for Holmes, I had to give her that. “Anyway, you know. She always knows when people are lying, so I guess it makes sense for her to play poker for cash. I think it’s funny.”

  Tom snuck up behind Lena and put his arms around her. “Baby, you’re drunk,” he said, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek.

  “Bab
y, stop. I gotta poker. Charlotte’s not here, and I’m making a killing. I think I’m going to get a Prada purse.”

  “Better split it with me before you cash out.” Tom kissed her again, and she wrinkled her nose. “Since I’m your muse and all.”

  “Her poker muse,” I said, as seriously as I could manage.

  “I bet you Charlotte’s his,” Tom stage-whispered.

  “Oh my gosh, that’s so cute.” Lena touched my cheek and turned back to the game, depositing her chips on the table in handfuls. When she looked away, Tom filched a few and slipped them in his pocket.

  I pitched Lena’s drink in the trash and set off in search of Holmes.

  Since I was already in Stevenson, I snuck up to check her room first. It wasn’t hard at all to get past the hall mother, asleep on her pillowed arms at the front desk. I quickly found Holmes’s door on the first floor: Lena had covered it in paper flowers, and there was a notecard bearing her name in curly purple script. Holmes’s name was hastily scribbled in black ink below it. The door was unlocked—Lena’s fault, I was sure—so I let myself in.

  Unlike the room Tom and I shared, which could’ve won awards for its messiness, theirs was as neat and orderly as only a girls’ dorm room could be. Lena’s side was a riot of color, big pillows and bright tapestries, the shut laptop on the desk covered in stickers. She had photos of young Cary Grant pinned to her corkboard, nestled between song lyrics that she’d copied out onto sticky notes. She’d left her keys on the desk. More or less what I’d expected.

  I was much more interested in Holmes’s side, but it seemed that she had scrubbed all traces of herself from her room, saving her brilliant oddness for Sciences 442. Her desk was bare and clean, except for a digital clock, and the corkboard above boasted a single bright-blue Post-it that read luv u girlie xo Lena and had curled a bit with age. (That Holmes had left it up that long was surprisingly endearing.) On the shelf above her bed, her textbooks were all in a neat line, and on the bed itself was a navy coverlet—and below that was a sleeping Charlotte Holmes, wig askew, mascara already beginning to rub off below her eyes.

  I shut the door softly behind me. “Holmes,” I whispered, and before I could say it again, she sat up like a shot had gone off.

  “Watson,” she croaked, and reached blindly for her clock. “I just meant to lie down for a moment.”

  “It’s fine,” I said, sitting at the edge of her bed. “You’re probably still catching up on sleep. It’s not healthy to go three days without it, you’ll start hallucinating.”

  “Yes, but the hallucinations are always fascinating.” She stacked her pillows behind her back. “So?” she asked, in a Why are you here voice.

  “So,” I said, “how did it go? Did you learn anything? Who were you targeting?”

  She heaved a sigh, pulling off her wig and stocking cap. “Watson,” she said again, “really.”

  “I’m a murder suspect too,” I reminded her, “and I thought we were partners in this. You dress up in this whole ridiculous thing and then you don’t tell me how it went? Spill.”

  “I didn’t learn anything. Anything at all. I must’ve spoken to at least fifteen first-year male students—statistically, murderers are more often men, and anyway Hailey is useless with girls, they generally want to drown her in the nearest river—and none of them showed the slightest sign of being responsible.” She said it all in a rush, like she wanted to expel it from her system. “And I’m starving. I’m never starving. I ate yesterday.”

  “You had to have learned something,” I said, choosing to ignore that last part. In my short experience with her, Holmes had treated her body like an inconvenience, at best, and at the worst of times like an appendage she was actively trying to destroy.

  “No,” she said petulantly. “It was an utter waste of my time, and I used the last of my Forever Ever Cotton Candy perfume to do it. Which means I have to order more, and they only sell it on the Japanese eBay, and it’s not cheap for something that smells that foul. And God, the humiliation of getting those boxes in the post.” She stuck a hand under her pillow, producing a trio of wallets. “I was mad enough to pick three of their pockets, which should at least cover the cost, if not the emotional damage.”

  “Holmes,” I said slowly, taking one from her. The wallet itself was worth more than my mother’s flat, and it was stuffed with cash. “You can’t do that. We have to give these back.”

  She cocked an eyebrow at me. “These were the ones who tried to get me drunk so they could have their sordid way with me.”

  “Well then.” I pulled out five twenty-dollar bills and tossed them on the bed. “That’s more than enough for your perfume. Do you know what we’re going to do with the rest?”

  “Give it all back to appease your sudden fit of conscience?”

  “No,” I said. “There’s a car key on Lena’s ring. We’re going out for midnight breakfast. And then giving the rest to, like, charity.”

  “I’LL HAVE TOAST,” HOLMES TOLD THE WAITER, HANDING HIM her menu. “Two pieces, whole wheat. No butter, no jam.”

  “No, she’ll have the silver dollar special, with her eggs sunny-side up and . . . bacon, instead of sausage.” I fixed her with a scathing look. “Unless there’s something else on the menu she’d rather have. That isn’t under ‘side orders.’”

  She snorted. “Right, then. He’ll be having the same thing, except he wants sausage, not bacon, and please do keep on giving him decaf instead of regular. It’s a mistake on your part, but it works to my advantage. He’s quite cranky when he doesn’t sleep.”

  The waiter scribbled down our orders. “Happy fiftieth anniversary,” he muttered, and moved on to the next table.

  “Ignore him. He hasn’t had a girlfriend in three years,” Holmes said. “Did you see his shoes? White laces. That alone should tell you.”

  I couldn’t help it; I started snickering. Holmes graced me with one of her quicksilver smiles. She’d wiped most of the mascara from under her eyes and taken off her wig, but she was still done up like a Christmas tree. It was disconcerting, being able to see the thin gauze of persona laid over the real thing.

  “There are at least fifty people in this restaurant eating breakfast at two in the morning,” she said, sipping at her water. “All under the age of twenty. And forty-eight of them didn’t have it this morning, including Will Tillman, the freshman across the room who is never at breakfast and who is, in fact, most likely here to buy drugs. Why on earth is this place so popular? I don’t understand.”

  “That’s because you’re a bit of a robot,” I said fondly, and she rolled her eyes. “So, are you the only one who can go incognito, or do I get to wear the disguise next time?”

  “Do you have one in mind?” she asked, clearly struggling to take me seriously.

  “I don’t get to pull a Hailey on the new girl students?”

  She snorted. “Even if I wasn’t done pursuing innocent fourteen-year-olds, you really are just not pretty enough for knee socks.”

  “Well, I do a really good impression of a mindless rugger.”

  “No, you don’t,” she said. “Thank God. You should tell your therapist that rugby does nothing whatsoever to alleviate your very real anger issues.”

  “Not my therapist. My school counselor.”

  She hid a smile. “All the same. You really should take up boxing, or fencing—”

  “Fencing? What century are you from?”

  “—or solving crimes.”

  “Are you prescribing me your company, Doctor?”

  “Detective, you can read me like a book.” She lifted her glass, and I clinked mine against it.

  I was suffused with a sense of well-being. The restaurant was warm, and warmly lit. Someone in the kitchen was making us pancakes. And I was sitting across from Charlotte Holmes.

  I felt at home enough to ask her something that had been nagging at me for a while. “Right, so I have a question. Tell me if I’m out of line.”

  She tipped
her head.

  “My parents . . .” It took me a minute to find the right words. “Well, my grandfather very notoriously sold his inherited rights to the Sherlock Holmes stories to pay off his gambling debts. We’re just not important anymore. At least, we’re not in the public eye. We might be trotted out for the occasional press op, but my father does transatlantic sales—which is a lot lamer than it sounds—and my mum works in a bank. The Holmes family, though . . . I mean, you guys have been Yard consultants for generations. So why aren’t they helping us? Where are they?”

  “In London,” she said. Before I could protest her flip answer, she held up a hand. “In London, where they’ll stay. They won’t interfere.”

  “But why not?” I asked her. “Have you told them not to?”

  “No.” Holmes slumped against the back of our booth, rubbing the crook of her left arm. “Do you remember when I told you I’d been taught at home until I came to Sherringford? Did you ever find it strange that I came here in the first place?”

  “I didn’t, actually,” I told her. “I assumed your family had tossed your room for drugs, found out about your habit, and sent you to America to do penance. When Lena told me tonight that your parents had cut you off, it more or less confirmed it.”

  Holmes blinked at me. Then she started laughing, a rare and surprisingly unwelcome sound. The waiter brought our food, and I’m sure we made quite the sight: Holmes giggling into her hands, me glaring at her across the table.

  “Tell me the funny part isn’t my solving a mystery on my own,” I said, stabbing at a sausage.

  She managed to compose herself. “No,” she said. “I’m laughing because I was a fool to think you wouldn’t. You’re entirely right, of course.”

  “And they cut you off because they thought you’d use the money to buy drugs?”

  “No,” she said again. “They cut me off because I wasn’t fit to be their daughter.” She dipped a finger into her water, tinkling the ice cubes. “In their eyes, my vices got in the way of my studies.”