A Question of Holmes (Charlotte Holmes #4)(33)

“Charlotte!” a voice said. Theo. He was sitting front row center, beside Rupert, and when Rupert saw me he began waving as though he were drowning in a paddling pool. I picked my way over people’s legs and backpacks and sat down in the seat Theo cleared for me.

I glanced at him—his broad smile, his even teeth—and, with an internal shudder, glanced away.

Thankfully, he interpreted my disgust as nerves.

“You decided to audition.” At my nod, he leaned in and said, quite matter-of-factly, “Don’t be nervous. Really. You have great presence. And even if you’re shit . . . well, you’re not as shit as what you’re about to see.”

“What’s that?”

Before Theo could respond, the man on the stage cleared his throat. “Attention,” he said, clapping his hands. “Attention!”

To my surprise, no one quieted down.

He cleared his throat again, and this time I took a better look at him, this man in suspenders and penny loafers, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He couldn’t have been older than thirty, but he was sending his shirts out to be starched, and his suspenders were moth-eaten a bit at their edges. His eyes and nose were far too petite for his face, but his smile, though nervous, was kind.

He looked, in short, like an easy mark.

“Attention!” he called again.

“Shut up, Quigley,” someone said from behind me, and the Dramatics Soc, as a whole, snickered.

Theo shot me a look—half amusement, half despair. “Someone’s feeling brave,” he said in an undertone.

“I understand that you are all unhappy,” Quigley was saying. “I know that the events of last summer were difficult for you all—”

“Where’s Dr. Larkin?” a girl from behind me called.

“She will be here this evening to give the lecture. As you all know.” Quigley cleared his throat. “And she’s also agreed to assist me in overseeing auditions.”

A ragged cheer.

“But, as you are all aware, I will be making up the final cast list on my own.” Into the heavy silence that followed, he said, “Please remember that I once sat in your same chairs. I too participated in the Dramatics Society—well, the full-fledged, academic year Dramatics Society—and I am very pleased to be back here, working with you all.”

I was fascinated by how he kept reminding the students that not only was he in charge, but that they knew it. I was also fascinated by the way he had casually insulted their program as a lesser cousin of St. Genesius’s undergraduate society. As I watched him fidget onstage, I thought he was on the verge of asking us not to eat him, please, if we would be so kind. He eased himself off the stage with a pasted-on confidence; his hands were clenched into little balls.

Theo turned to me. “So,” he said with a lazy smile. “This should be a shitshow.”

“Oh, come on. The man is trying,” Rupert said as we stood, gathering our things. Theo pointed to the back corner of the auditorium, up by the sound booth, and I followed him up the aisle.

“Yeah, but you can see him try,” Theo said. “It’s sad. You never want to see someone try.”

“‘There is no try,’” Rupert intoned, the voice of someone quoting something I didn’t know.

“Still,” I said. “Is there a reason Dr. Larkin is so popular? I mean, she couldn’t stop what happened last year.”

Theo flung himself down into the seat closest to the wall. “Are you talking about the accidents? Nobody could stop them. They came from everywhere and—and nowhere. But they definitely didn’t come from Dr. Larkin, and she was the one they hung for it.”

I had more questions, not the least of which was why we had moved to sit so far away from everyone else (and also why there wasn’t any such thing as “try,” when the word was right there, in the English language, for us to use) but Dr. Larkin was hurrying down the aisle, a legal pad in her arms. She settled down in the front row, empty now other than Dr. Quigley, and left a few seats between them. Still, despite this gesture of distance, the two leaned in together to discuss something briefly. Quigley shook his head, but Larkin pressed on, cupping her hand around her mouth to shield her speech.

Quigley shook his head a final time, and stood. “First up, we have Florence Keener,” he said. The room quieted, and a tall, strong-shouldered girl in the row popped up and ran down to the stage. “Let’s begin with some applause, please. It isn’t easy to go first.”

Theo clapped heartily. “Florence,” he said, “Florence is terrific,” and it was the first time I’d really seen him like that, glowing for someone else. Of course, he was objectively quite handsome, with his thick blond hair and full mouth. But when someone existed as Theo did, in opposition to everything around them, I spent so much time tracing the invisible lines of their personality out that I never thought to follow them in.

All of that is to say, I didn’t usually find murderers handsome. Was I imagining it, or was his smile not quite stretching across his face?

“She’s great, right?” Theo asked.

“What?”

“Florence. Try to pay attention—it’ll distract you, if you’re nervous about your audition.”

He’d utterly misread my fidgeting. “Thanks,” I said, but when I focused in, I realized that Florence was, in fact, “great.” She was reading for Gertrude, the role of Hamlet’s mother, and her height and the rich curvature of her voice lent themselves to queenliness, to the suggestion of danger. She would be an excellent choice.