A Question of Holmes (Charlotte Holmes #4)(65)

George Wilkes wasn’t one to be bossed around, especially by his daughter. He went to Oxford the night of her final dress rehearsal and plucked her directly off the street. The argument bystanders had heard was between the two of them. He and his wife bundled her into their car, and drove her home to London, where her grandmother was waiting.

She was put on a train and taken up to her grandmother’s house in Scotland, up in Caithness. Quite literally as far north as she could be sent. She’d been homeschooled. Had her baby. Was living there now, far away from her friends and the rest of her family, from her acting, from her life.

“She must have managed to get her hands on her old phone,” Watson said, “to call Theo last Christmas. God. I can’t imagine what kind of lock and key they had her under.”

“We’ll find out when we raid it,” Sadiq said. “A team should be breaking down the door right about now.”

“Was he . . .” This was a strange question for me, and I wasn’t sure why I was asking. “Was he sorry?”

Sadiq sighed. “He was insistent that she was a bad girl. One who needed to be punished. And as her father, he was the one to do it.”

“Got it.” I found myself staring at nothing. “Thank you for calling. I’m still very tired. I think I need to go back to bed.”

Watson touched my arm, and I turned to bury my face in his shirt.

“Thanks, Miss Holmes,” Sadiq said. “We’ll be in touch again soon.”

LEANDER AND STEPHEN RETURNED THAT NIGHT, AFTER I called to tell him the news. He insisted on tending to me like I was a child—making steak and kidney pie, tucking blankets in around me on the couch. Stephen and Watson played Scrabble at the kitchen table, and the television droned, and I slept. I slept, it felt, for days. And when I wasn’t sleeping, I was coming to some decisions.

And then, one morning, I woke to an empty flat. Watson was in his tutorial, discussing a new story of his. It was quite good. Elegant, and spare, and it had a peacock in it that appeared at opportune moments. With each new tale, he was getting better.

Leander and Stephen were down at the farmers’ market, and the street was quiet. I dressed myself and went for a walk.

I knew, by then, what I wanted to do.

MEET ME AT THE BOATHOUSE, I’D WRITTEN HIM.

By the time I’d made it there, Watson had already paid and was hauling a stack of cushions over to the punt.

“Leander could have paid,” I said, picking up the long metal pole and bracing it against my shoulder.

He grinned, tossing the cushions in one at a time. “I didn’t want him to tease us about what we were doing.”

It took some maneuvering to get the both of us in the boat—we pitched in our things, and he held the pole while he helped me in, and then I braced the pole and helped him in. The punt listed from side to side as the two of us got settled, him standing at the back, in the “huff,” while I settled down cross-legged to watch him.

He stuck the pole into the shallow water and pushed us off into the River Cherwell. “Can you dig into my bag?” he asked.

“For what?”

That smile again. “For my straw hat,” he said, and caught it one-handed when I chucked it at him.

“You’re very confident for someone who hasn’t ever been punting before,” I said, as he lazily maneuvered us down the river. The Cherwell had a current, but it wasn’t a strong one. Every now and then Watson dipped the pole back into the water to steer us back onto course.

“You do realize,” he said, “that most punters are drunk.”

I considered this. “Still.” He cut a dashing figure, like some Venetian gondolier who’d given up the striped shirt for a blue oxford and boat shoes. The hat was a bit silly, but Watson wore it at the back of his head, like the hipster he was always pretending he wasn’t. His thick hair curled up under the brim; his trousers were loosely cuffed. It was all endlessly charming.

“So you’re saying,” I clarified, “that you can punt only middling-well for a sober person.”

“Do I need to make this thing do backflips?” Watson asked, and dug the pole into the muck. Our boat tilted crazily to the right. I made a high-pitched sound, then clapped a hand over my mouth.

“You squealed. Did you just squeal?”

“If you have to ask,” I said, with some dignity, “then no, I did not.”

He dug in the pole again, and we spun in a neat circle.

I bit my lip while he laughed at me. “Jamie, I swear to God I will pull this boat over—”

He lifted the pole again, threateningly. I lunged forward, and Watson leaned backward, and then began windmilling his free arm to keep his balance. I considered pushing him in, but the water smelled a bit like bad fish, and anyway, I liked his shirt too much to ruin it.

“You were going to let me drown,” he protested, pushing us off again.

“Yes. In knee-deep water. It would take some skill, but I believe in you.”

The water was quiet this evening, so close to sunset. A pair of ducks paddled alongside us, and on the bank, I watched a stealthy little fox work the underbrush. The water was dappled green from the trees that listed low along the water. Watson must have seen me studying their canopies; he pushed the boat on an angle, and we drifted through the long, slim arms of a willow tree. I traced it with a finger. It left a handful of leaves in the bottom of the boat.