A Question of Holmes (Charlotte Holmes #4)(69)

The clients never liked when we did that.

The man today was that, a man, a few years younger than my dad and nervous in his business suit. I could tell he didn’t like how young we were, though I could also tell he didn’t know exactly how young that was. When my old wire-rim glasses had finally broken, I’d begun wearing a pair of tortoiseshell wayfarers. They’d been a cheap placeholder for contact lenses until I’d arrived at Cowley Road that week to find her looking at me with a warmth I’d almost forgotten. The glasses stayed. The warmth was gone the next Friday, replaced by the calm, kind regard I had grown used to, and I think the both of us were relieved. As for her, she had a few streaks of gray in her dark hair that would be surprising to anyone who didn’t know our past. But then, no one knew the whole of our past except for the two of us.

No matter. The man was speaking, and it was my job to take notes.

“She was someone I’d known for a very long time,” he was saying, eyes flitting back and forth between us. Focus on her, I thought at him, until finally he did, settling back into his armchair with studied ease. “Since we were children. I thought she loved me, but she’s seeing someone else behind my back, and I need to find out who, and why.”

“I need more than that,” she said, rearranging the fringe of her blanket.

“What do you mean?”

Her tone was patient. “I need more information than that, or I can’t take on your case.”

“Like where she goes? Or what she does for a job? That’s easy. She works mornings at the bakery on—”

“No.” She waved her hand to cut him off. “I meant that I’d like to know the depth of your relationship with her. Why you’re so desperate to keep her, or catch her out.”

The man looked at me, attempting to find an ally. I shrugged.

“I haven’t seen anything fit to write down,” I said to her. “I’m sorry.”

“Miss Doyle,” the man said, pinking in the cheeks. “You’re going to decide whether to take my case based on whether you like my story? I’m sorry, but I don’t know if you have the sort of name recognition to allow you to do that sort of thing. I didn’t even have to make an appointment to see you.”

Charlotte Doyle leaned forward on her elbows, sizing the man up. It had only been her name since she’d returned from her travels; she’d taken it then as an added layer of anonymity, but she’d legally changed it when she’d returned. Her family name neatly scratched through.

Though, looking at her now, there wasn’t any doubt whose descendant she was.

She steepled her fingers under her chin and said, “Other than the fact that you’re a barrister down on his luck with a large dog he can’t control and a number of friends from school that you see often and are hoping to impress today—male friends, I’d imagine, though of course I don’t know that for certain, I’m not a magician—the only thing I can tell you is that, from the way you lingered on the sidewalk for a full twenty minutes before coming up, this case means far more to you than your attitude suggests.”

He crossed his arms. “How can you possibly know that.”

“I saw you from the window,” she said impatiently.

“Not that,” he said. “The other things.”

“I saw you from the window,” she said again.

He looked at me mutinously.

“If she tells you,” I said, “you have to promise not to say it’s absurdly simple.”

“Do I really have to do this?” she muttered at me.

“You made your bed,” I said. “Now deduce it.”

She sighed and turned back to him. “You were up late last night working. That’s the jacket you keep at your office—it isn’t as pressed as everything else that you’re wearing, and though it’s similar to your pants, it’s a half shade darker. You have a good eye; both the pants and jacket are a decent cut, but the material they’re made from is cheap and thin. I can’t tell if the shirt is one you keep at your office, but I rather imagine it is as well—from that, and the shininess of the jacket’s elbows and the ink on the side of your dominant right hand, I can tell that you worked the night through and didn’t get home to shower. This is a common enough occurrence for you that you’ve laid in spare clothes for it. The clothes are cheap, so you’re not doing well, but your briefcase is beautiful, and it was a present on your law school graduation. Why else would your initials and credential be monogrammed on it? You’d never be so tasteless as to do so, but the bag is very fine, so you carry it. Another point toward your impecunity. As for your being a barrister—you really should know better than to have contracts sticking out of your bag in plain sight. And as for the rest, there’s a lick mark from a large dog on the back of your jacket at about the height that a mastiff could reach—clearly you’re not controlling it, if it’s licking your suit—and at first I thought you were in such a rush because you needed to get home and feed it, or get back to the office, but no, it’s Friday lunch, there’s a pub three blocks from here, and I saw you there last month with a gaggle of bros who clearly weren’t also lawyers. You don’t have time to make new friends. Ergo, from uni.”

The man looked uncomfortable, as everyone does when they’re called poor. “That was actually quite—er—it wasn’t difficult,” he amended, seeing the look on my face.