A Question of Holmes

by Brittany Cavallaro

  Watson’s eyes darted from Rupert to me. I’d never profess to reading Watson’s mind—I am not actually psychic—but I knew him well enough to guess what he was thinking. Wondering if I wanted to take the lead. I shook my head slightly.

  “I think I could help you figure it out,” he said. “Unrelatedly, adulthood kind of sucks.”

  Rupert set a mug in front of Watson, one in front of me. “I don’t know if our version does, actually. There are so many different kinds of adulthood—only depending on yourself for your survival, or supporting others with a small salary, or doing work you aren’t equipped for, or that you’re far too over-equipped for . . . responsibilities that we most likely won’t see, as Oxford students, for some time. We’re privileged. It’s best to be aware of that. If my worst problem is that I don’t know how to cook . . .”

  “Are you close with your parents?” I asked as Watson fetched the popcorn from the microwave, holding the bag at its edges.

  “Fairly close,” Rupert said. “Closer with my father than my mother. She runs the bulk of the business, you know. Wasn’t the case when they met—they married while my father was being groomed to inherit the company—but she has a head for it that he doesn’t.”

  “So she’s in charge, then?”

  “Right. And my father manages more of our day-to-day lives. I mean, I imagine he still does. I’ve been away at school for a while now.” Rupert shrugged. “I’ve never really understood businesses that pass down through a family. Financial reasons, sure. Fine. But it’s almost a kind of erasure, don’t you think? What if you could’ve cured cancer, or something, and instead someone before you were born decided you should make spreadsheets all day?” He jerked the bag open, and steam poured out. “For some reason they think I should step up, when my father got to dodge the noose. Bicker on the phone with bankers. Chase down payments from far-flung members of the royal family. Have you ever tried to get a royal to settle a past-due debt? Speaking of blood from a stone . . . of course it was just oversight, but . . .” His ever-running engine finally ran out of steam. Sighing, he stuffed a handful of popcorn into his mouth.

  His interview at the station this morning had rattled him. It was either that, or this is what Rupert was like away from the stifling presence of his friends: a thoughtful, anxious sort, someone whose mouth raced ahead of his brain. Still, I knew something about family businesses and unrealistic expectations and how those things could wear on you. “That’s hard. I hate that feeling. What would you be doing otherwise?” I asked. “If you weren’t working for your family?”

  He shrugged, chewing. “Theater?” he said finally. “I still can’t believe that casting. Of course, it’s not like the play will run now, it’s all moot . . . but to think that I could do Hamlet. Here. Last summer, I only helped out in the sound booth.”

  “That’s not easy,” Watson pointed out.

  “It is if the tech in charge won’t let you do anything. It was clear they’d just made space for me so I could hang around with Anwen and Theo. Kind of them, but a bit condescending.” He pushed the paper bag to the middle of the table, and I picked out a few kernels, held them in my palm. “I hate it, you know,” he said, looking at my hands. “That feeling of being . . . unneeded.”

  Sebastian Wallis had said more or less the same thing earlier. What was it, I wondered, about Anwen and Theo, their bright exclusivity, that kept even their best friend on the outskirts? And despite all that, Theo despised something about Anwen, something he couldn’t bring himself to say out loud.

  “You’ve escaped them, though,” Rupert was saying. “Your family.”

  “Have I?” I asked, with a tight smile.

  “Sure,” he said earnestly. “Of course you have. You aren’t studying . . . whatever you would study to be a detective.”

  “I’d be at training college,” I told him. “You begin as a uniform. Work your way up. Unless you’re my bohemian great-great-great-grandfather a century or so ago, in which case you do two years at Oxford, leave for unknown reasons, and take cases from Baker Street. But no. I’m not studying any of that. The more time I spend doing detective work, the less that I like it.”

  “Really?” Rupert asked, interested. Watson was watching me intently. “What don’t you like?”

  I was treading uncertain ground here. This wasn’t new, of course. My work often called on me to be a chameleon—my shape stayed the same while my skin began to shift colors.

  I’ve said before that the way to convincingly lie is to be convinced of what you’re saying. In the moment, you need to believe it. Thoroughly. To wit: in order to convince Rupert to trust me enough to come clean about his experience this morning with the police (and in doing so, unintentionally give up information he’d kept from them), I would need to persuade him that I, like him, wanted to escape my family business (detection).

  Why was this complicated?

  Because, perhaps, after escaping my family, after using my skills to escape Lucien Moriarty (if barely), I was finding that, maybe, I did want to escape my family business. At least this version of it. At least for a time. In order to uphold the law, I had to continually break it, and while I didn’t have personal compunctions about breaking into someone’s dorm room to sack it for clues, or to lie to someone to get them to tell you the truth, the more I did it, the more I started to lose the plot.

  Perhaps I wanted to be a chemist. Perhaps I wanted to be a gardener, or jewel thief, or a beekeeper. Perhaps I wanted to be a detective after all. But three months ago, I was an invalid, and three months before that, I was on the run from someone who wanted my head on a platter.

  All I knew was that I wanted Watson with me. But I also knew that the girl with informant status with the Thames Valley Police and a lockpicking kit in her purse was infinitely more compelling than the girl I was becoming now. Someone who wanted to eat Nutella toast on the sofa while rereading the encyclopedia article on waxwings, because she thought she’d seen one in the garden.

  That girl wasn’t nearly as compelling. Wasn’t as clever or as dangerous. Wasn’t the kind of girl you followed anywhere.

  I wasn’t giving Watson enough credit. I knew that. It didn’t stop me from being afraid.

  “Interrogations,” I was telling Rupert. “I don’t like them. The detective’s allowed to keep you there for hours. Leave abruptly. Come back. Dig into the most private parts of your life. Lie to you about your lover seeing someone else behind your back. Insist you were somewhere you know you weren’t and then convince you of it. Confuse you. Frighten you, badly, start you babbling. Or make you think that they’re your best friend, that they agree with everything you’ve done. That they understand the part of you that killed that girl, that she had it coming, yeah? The way she was looking at that other guy. Offer you coffee, then take the cup ‘to throw it out for you’ so they can test your saliva at their lab. All of it . . . the way the police operate is so foreign to me. It isn’t how my family solves crimes. I was taught to treat the suspect’s confession as a sacred act, as someone bringing you an offering. The two of you could decide together what you did with it.”

  My feelings on interrogation practices were far more complex than this little speech suggested. These methods were the kind that found missing girls like Matilda Wilkes. That said, there had, in fact, been many times when Sherlock Holmes had heard his culprit’s story and decided to let them escape into the night, rather than sending for Scotland Yard.

  Judge, jury, stay of execution.

  My father and my brother took a page from this book, but their decisions tended toward the bloodier side.

  Luckily, Rupert couldn’t see inside my head. He was nodding along, as I knew he would. “It’s all mind games. And these are the people who are supposed to protect us? Please.”

  Watson stretched; his back popped. “Trust me, Charlotte and I have been there. You should’ve seen the shady shit the American cops pulled on us, during the first investigation we helped solve.”


  “It’s just unfair,” Rupert said. “They separated Anwen and me and I could hear her crying in the next room. And the detective, she was asking all these questions about last year. I could tell she didn’t like my answers, but I was telling the truth! What do you say to that?”

  “Double down,” Watson said. “You know the real story. Don’t let them bully you into admitting to things you didn’t do.” He talked like he was rubbing Rupert’s shoulders in a boxing ring, playing to his sense of urgency.

  “It wasn’t even my story,” Rupert said, voice rising. “It’s like they were trying to . . . write me into something I didn’t know about. They kept asking if I’d spoken to Matilda!”

  “Have you?” I asked.

  “No!” he exploded, and there it was, the payoff. “No one knows where she is! She was Theo’s girlfriend, she was cold as ice, and even if none of that mattered, she’s gone! Anwen tried to send her a text last night about Dr. Larkin . . . none of us were thinking straight, and I don’t know, maybe Anwen forgot for a moment that Matilda was missing, and the police won’t let it go. Like that weird slipup means that she kidnapped her. Or like she knows that she’s alive, that she just ran away.” Rupert slammed a hand flat onto a table, a gesture so out of keeping with his usual bumbling pleasantness that Watson jumped. “They’re upsetting Anwen. They can’t do that.”

  The phrasing was odd. They can’t do that. Because they’re adults and should know better? Because treating Anwen this way would have consequences?

  What consequences?

  I stood and put a hand on Rupert’s shoulder, taking my mug to the kettle for more hot water. Now that Watson had him going, it was best to let him take the lead. “Are you worried Anwen’s going to bolt or something?” Watson asked. “It seemed like, last night, when you left together . . . was there something going on?”

  “She went to take a call right after we got outside,” Rupert said miserably. “I waited up for her, but it was hours before she got home. Hours. I tried texting her. I waited in the kitchen so I could tell if she’d gotten home safe, but . . .” He looked from me to Watson and back again, not wanting to ask, and then he steeled himself and said, “She came back up for Theo, didn’t she.”

  “Actually, no,” Watson said. “Theo passed out on our couch. He was there all night, we had breakfast together this morning. I think . . . Anwen was somewhere else.”

  Rupert bobbled his head up and down a few times, like a ball floating in a bath. “Okay,” he said jerkily. “Well. Good thing I told the detectives she did, then. That she went back and shagged him senseless. I told you, they wanted me to confess to something, they kept digging, and that was what I gave them. And it isn’t true? Good thing I embarrassed myself in front of them. No. It’s fine. I—”

  “Rupert—”

  He blew out a deep breath. “I’m worked up about nothing,” he said. “She’ll have a reason.” I could tell he believed it. “A good one. I’m just being a baby. But yeah. Yeah, I should look up some stir-fry recipes. I’ll be fine, Jamie, won’t need your help. Good. Excellent. I should get to it—I’ll go ahead and see you all later—”

  That was all we were getting from him today, that much was clear. Still, I watched him for a minute from the hall. Pacing, searching through recipes on his phone, heating up the sad little hotplate. His sweet, delicate face, his pointed chin, the slub neck of his too-expensive T-shirt.

  Though I knew it wouldn’t matter, I hoped that his stir-fry turned out brilliantly.

  “Anwen,” Watson said, as we walked out onto the quad, some distance from their open windows.

  “Anwen,” I echoed. “Always Anwen. I have a few thoughts about our next step . . .”

  But he was shaking his head. “Love,” he said—that word was new between us; I watched the way he said it, the slope of his shoulders, the slight step toward me—“I have a story due, beginning of next week, that I haven’t even started. I’m going to explore the Bodleian Library, I think. Find a spot to sit in there where no one has written anything brilliant before.”

  “It’s a very old library,” I said. “In Oxford. You might be setting yourself up for failure.”

  “Nothing new, then,” he said.

  “No,” I agreed.

  He snorted. “You’re awful.”

  “Yes, but you’re a bit silly.” I took a step forward, and only then did I realize I was presenting myself to be kissed. I tried very hard to keep from blushing.

  But Watson leaned down to brush his lips against mine. As he pulled away, I found myself listing forward, wanting more, wanting to follow him home like a shadow in the night. “No one,” he said softly, “sees you like . . . like this, do they?”

  “You do,” I said, though for how much longer I couldn’t say.

  Seventeen

  AS I WALKED BACK TO MY FLAT, I TOOK MY PHONE OFF silent and saw that I had a number of missed calls. Two messages. The first, from my aunt Araminta: “Lottie, hello. Leander tells me he’s spoken to you about my upcoming visit. I’m calling to say that my plans have changed; one of my potential clients has rescheduled for tomorrow, so I’ll be coming in tonight on the six forty-two from Eastbourne. I won’t be in your hair, of course, but I’d like to see you and your friend for dinner. Or perhaps a coffee? A drink? Ah. Perhaps I shouldn’t be suggesting that? . . . Give me a call . . .”

  The second, from DI Sadiq: “Holmes. Got a call back from George Wilkes. Told him about Larkin, and requested his presence at the station to go over some information. He’s on his way from London, but he won’t get in until tomorrow afternoon, when I’ll be off shift. Maybe you and I can work out a time to talk in the morning, run through any questions you think are pertinent?”

  I confirmed with Araminta for tonight; I confirmed Sadiq for tomorrow morning. I texted Watson about both, and then caught a bus home to clean up the flat before my aunt arrived and drew conclusions, accurate or not, about her niece’s lifestyle.

  There really had been a lot of rum last night.

  As I did the washing up, I ran through the list of investigative avenues I hadn’t yet gone down. Though I’d done cursory social media searches for everyone I’d met in this case, I hadn’t found anything more compelling than some general (quite natural) alarm about the attacks. Had I the resources, I’d be pulling phone records and sorting through suspects’ email accounts. But outside of DI Sadiq, my brother Milo was the only one I knew with that ability, and I wanted him and his methods nowhere near this case.

  Again it struck me, the difficulties of participating in a full-scale investigation of this kind with one hand tied behind my back, as it were. As I scrubbed another glass tumbler, I thought about what I’d told Rupert. How my forebear had said, to wit, fuck it all, and abandoned university to take cases from his armchair. Only those cases that were otherwise overlooked. Only those cases that only he, and he alone, could solve.

  Oh, it was tempting. Wildly tempting. I turned the tumbler in the light, looking for spots then scrubbing it again, and I told myself I wouldn’t make any decisions, not yet. Not when I had a case to wrap up and a flat to clean.

  An hour or so later, I took my cloth bags down to the market to replenish our pantry. Our “guests” the night before had cleaned us out, and I wanted to be a good host for my aunt, as well as cover my own ass, as it were. I’d texted to ask Leander when he was planning on coming home, and I hadn’t yet had a response, but it was better to battle two thousand armies in the driving rain than to face Leander Holmes having eaten all his Jaffa cakes.

  I finished my shopping an hour or so before Araminta’s train was set to arrive. Rather than heading straight home, I found myself taking a path through St. Genesius College. It was blocks out of my way, but the day was cool and clear, and I enjoyed the swing of the heavy bag along my side, the tap of my boots on the pavement. The theater, when I passed it, was bare of the blockades and tape the police had put up that morning.

  A constable was sitting on the marble ste
ps, extravagantly bored.

  Despite the incredible leeway DI Sadiq had been allowing me, my status as an official informant didn’t let me into crime scenes, and I found myself increasingly in no mood to bluff my way into places I shouldn’t be. Still, I checked my watch. I had the time. I tucked my bag under my arm and moved with purpose, past the constable on the steps, along the brick path that wound around the theater.

  The other day, as I’d explored the basement, I had heard wisps of sound coming from the street. There had been another way in; surely Sadiq’s team had found it as they’d locked down the building. As I walked, I traced the foundation of the theater with my eyes. As I’d suspected, it had been built on a hill, and the lower level was exposed around the back, covered in trailing vines.

  There was a pair of high windows covered in intricate grating, too small for anything but a squirrel to sneak through; there was a metal folding chair and an ashtray heaped with cigarette ends from whatever uniform had been out here last night. There were no doors, at least not that I could see, but there was also no one around. It was a matter of a minute’s search with my hands to find the utility door, hidden under the ivy like something from a children’s story. I made short work of the lock, but the door was surprisingly heavy. I had to brace my feet and power through it with my shoulder, and behind me the ivy swung out like the hem of a long, strange skirt.

  I thought again of Anwen and her strange collection of clothing, piled in her wardrobe like outfits pulled off a paper doll.

  With a growing sense of disquiet, I pressed my hands against the door until I felt it latch.

  Then I turned, only to rear back directly into the door.

  A forest?

  I had stumbled into a forest, somehow, the trees all hung with lanterns, the branches bending down like the longest fingerbones. Before me, a fir tree, another, a stone house in the distance. I reached out carefully, and as my fingers brushed against cloth, I pieced together what I was seeing.