A Question of Holmes (Charlotte Holmes #4)(52)

“From what I understand,” the man said coldly, “you’ll be at conservatory this fall. Why does this matter?”

Theo stared him down, his brow hardening. I remembered his easy grace during his audition, the force of his presence. I could see him bringing those things to bear now.

“You’ve never understood,” Theo said. “You’ve never understood. Matilda told me that about you, you know that? You make this big deal about being this insider, this true artist, but the work you’ve done was never onstage. You never breathed it the way we did. You never really understood the alchemy of it. Your blood turning to something better, right there on that stage. We make our art from ourselves. We’re the musician and the instrument—”

“Oh, for God’s sake, do I have to listen to this pretentious nonsense—”

“Yes,” Theo said, his voice breaking. “Yeah, you do. Because I got a call last Christmas from my girlfriend. My ex-girlfriend, I guess I should say, because she broke up with me the night before she ‘disappeared’—”

“How is that any of my business?”

“—because she insisted that I knew why people were being hurt. Why did she think that? Fuck if I know—not like I could ask her, because again. She disappeared. Until Christmas day, when I got a call from Matilda’s cell. I picked it up, and I just heard her breathing—”

“What a sad fantasy,” he said.

“—until she said my name. She said it twice—Theo, Theo—and then help. And then it sounded like the phone was being wrestled away from her. The line went dead.” Theo stared at the man, anguished. “How can I say this and have you not care? She could be chained up in some pervert’s basement! She could be anywhere, horrible things could be happening to her, and you don’t care—”

As he’d been talking, the man had begun to pace a tight, controlled path, back and forth in front of Theo like a tiger. And at that, he exploded. “You don’t know a thing about this, boy. You’re just some American piece of trash she picked up last summer! Our daughter, always hauling home the charity cases, I was used to that. But never someone like you. Do you know what she told me, so defiantly, before we came out to see her show last summer? ‘You’re going to meet Theo, my boyfriend, he’s bisexual.’ So smug, as though she’d invented acting out to get your parents’ attention. I don’t care what you do in bed, that’s none of my business, but I told Matilda, he’ll do that nowhere near my daughter—”

Theo had gone entirely white. In my hiding spot, I felt my hands begin to shake. I knew, intellectually, this kind of prejudice existed; I had seen it spewed about online, in the news, seen it bandied about like it was divine will to discriminate.

I had never seen it delivered at such close distance, with such personal hatred. I thought of my uncle Leander, and my hands tightened on my phone.

“—and so when she disappeared, I knew why. Because of you. Because of what you did to her, you—” He cut himself off with a curse.

“What did I do?” Theo said. It was almost a howl. “What the hell did I do?”

“We knew enough to tell Matilda that she was headed down a dark path,” Wilkes said. “And she decided to run rather than stay with you. So there’s your mystery solved. Are we finished now?”

“You’re a bigot,” Theo said, with a hard-fought calm that I admired. “And you would rather imagine that I had something to do with her disappearance than take this gigantic lead I’m handing you. I don’t trust the police. They want to pin me down for this. But I thought I could trust you.”

“You imagined that phone call,” George Wilkes said stoutly. “You’re a selfish little boy, trying to make this all about you. My daughter is missing, and you’re making light of it for your own perverted purposes.”

At the top of the stage, a door opened. I wanted badly to lean out to look, but I stayed where I was.

“Imagined it? I . . .” Theo dragged his hands through his hair. “What are you not telling me?”

“It sounds like,” a voice said, carrying down from the back of the auditorium, “the two of you are done discussing school business, or whatever it was you said you were doing. Both of you. Out. I don’t want to ask twice.”

“Yes, Officer,” Theo said, and with a final loaded glance at George Wilkes, he hopped off the stage. I ended the video and shrank back farther into the darkness of the wings, and not a moment too soon—George Wilkes cast one final, dismissive look around him before he passed out of my sight.

And as for Theo?

I was hard-pressed to see him as the guilty party, anymore.

I WAITED TEN SILENT MINUTES BEFORE I PADDED BACK down the backstage stairs into the bowels of the theater. After I’d made it out the utility door, I trotted out to the high road, my shopping bag over my arm. A girl on her way home to make dinner, nothing more.

Once I was safely in my flat, I texted DI Sadiq the video. Then asked, what is George Wilkes’s profession?

Theatrical costuming, Sadiq had said. Will review this before tomorrow. Thanks.

I thought, again, of Anwen’s cabinet of curiosities, of Theo texting her last Boxing Day to demand what she knew. I thought of George Wilkes’s fury at his helpless daughter. I thought of the stage light falling out of the sky like a bomb, and then I cleared the kitchen counter and laid out an elaborate cheese plate, because I was an adult, or at least, I was pretending to be.