A Question of Holmes (Charlotte Holmes #4)(62)

“Someone should probably go answer that,” Watson said, leaning back in his chair.





Twenty-Two


THE SNEERING PC USHERED US INTO THE INTERROGATION room. He was the one who’d told me I’d had an attitude; I didn’t think his disdain was an act. “Come on, missy,” he was saying.

Anwen stepped into the room like she was a princess visiting a pigsty. “How long will we have to wait?”

“We’ll get to you,” he said, and shut the door behind us.

Gingerly, she sat down next to me at the table. I was trying not to obviously catalog the room: where the camera was, where the smell was coming from. Something like rotting fruit.

“Did you know they were coming?” she demanded. “The police?”

The two of us had been read our rights, stuffed in separate cars, and placed here, together, in a room. All as I’d requested. I hadn’t seen Sadiq since we’d arrived, but I had the feeling she was on the other side of the “mirror” across from us, watching intently.

“No,” I said. “I mean, Jamie and I were here earlier with the orchid we found. I was worried he was in danger.”

She folded her hands. “Well. It seems like they suspect you now, too.”

“I don’t know why,” I said.

Anwen shot me a sideways glance. “From what I’ve heard, you’re supposed to be something of a psychopath,” she said. “Maybe that’s why.”

All that arrogance plastered over her pain. Knowing that didn’t make me like her any more. But it did make me understand.

We lapsed into silence. My chair had one leg far shorter than the others, and I rocked back and forth a few times experimentally. They’d really done everything they could to make this room as wretched as possible.

“Will you stop that,” Anwen said, rewrapping her silk robe over her pajamas. “I can’t believe they wouldn’t let me change.”

“You’re wearing clothes,” I pointed out.

“I’m wearing slippers.”

I rolled my eyes. “What you’re wearing,” I said, “is something like two thousand dollars’ worth of vintage Christian Dior. I imagine that’s fancy enough for an interrogation.”

Anwen paused. “You know clothes,” she said, sweeping my outfit with her eyes. As usual, I was wearing all tailored black. It wasn’t remarkable, but every piece was expensive.

As I’d dressed for tonight, I’d made sure of that.

“I do,” I said, straightening my shirt. “Is that surprising?”

“No. Yeah, maybe. Is that a Comme des Gar?ons jacket?”

“Yes,” I said. “How long have you been collecting vintage?” I reached out to touch the sleeve of her robe. “This is what, mid-fifties? Mint, right?”

She nodded, and glancing at the two-way mirror—Aha, I thought, she knows what that is—she shimmied out of the robe and handed it to me. “It really isn’t meant to be worn. I was sorting through my collection when . . . when I got your text, so I threw it on and came downstairs.”

That wasn’t exactly the timeline, but I’d get to that later. I gently held the robe up to the light. It really was a thing of beauty. All silk. Raw edged. “Something like this runs for, like, four hundred pounds on eBay.”

“I know,” Anwen said, with some pride. “It’s part of my escape fund.”

“Your escape fund?” I asked, casually checking the label inside the robe. Christian Dior, and underneath, in small handwritten letters, Larissa. I affected not to notice and began looking at the stitching.

“I have a fee waiver for Cambridge,” she said. “And a bursary, money to help support me when I’m there. And the rest of it is coming from these clothes. I got them for, like, nothing.”

I whistled. “You must have a good eye, to find all this thrifting.”

She reached out for the robe, and put it back on carefully. “I’ve been collecting since I was fourteen. It’s where I’ve put all my pocket money, paying one pound for a piece in a bargain bin, five pounds for designer shoes stuffed in with a bunch of trainers. Sometimes charity shops don’t know what they have. I wear it for a bit, and then I sell it online. I’ve made almost three thousand pounds.”

I thought about the clothing in her wardrobe, the pieces that hadn’t been marked with Larissa’s name. They had been nice, certainly, but nothing near as expensive as the rest.

“It’s a brilliant plan,” I said, and it was.

Anwen was warming, visibly, to me. Praise did that. “And I set up Tamsin with a place of her own—my sister. She has a job, now, in a bakery. I think we’re going to be okay.”

“She’s lucky to have you.”

Anwen nodded, cleared her throat. “I’m sorry you had to see that scene in there,” she said. “We’ve all . . . we’ve been a mess since Matilda’s gone. Lots of fighting. It’s been so awful.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve seen that before, when I’ve worked other cases. It seems like it’s been really hard on you. Knowing what you did about Matilda.”

I said it as naturally as I could, as though I’d just been finishing a thought.