A Study in Charlotte (Charlotte Holmes, #1)(32)

But she was afraid. Of me.

Dobson had loomed over her too.

Holmes took another step backward, and stumbled over the little freshman girl’s body.





six


SHE’D BEEN DISCARDED LIKE AN AFTERTHOUGHT THERE IN THE dark grass. Stretched out on her back, her red dress pooled around her like blood.

God, I thought, it’s starting again.

I was so used to Holmes taking charge that I stopped and waited for her orders. But none came. Her eyes were fixed on a point somewhere over my shoulder, her hands shaking. Exhaustion, I remembered her saying, though I thought now that it was something else. Distress, maybe. Uncertainty. Whatever it was, she didn’t know how to master it.

It was down to me, then.

Gently, I knelt down beside the freshman. Her eyes were half-closed, as if she were just falling asleep. She didn’t ask for this, I thought. None of us did.

I realized that I didn’t even know her name.

Steeling myself for the worst, I pressed my fingers to her throat. There. A pulse.

“She’s still alive,” I said, leaning down to hear the girl’s breath. It came in agonized rasps. “But she’s having trouble breathing. We need to get help.”

Holmes nodded, but made no sign of moving.

“Hey,” I said to her, gently. “I need to keep an eye on her. Can you call an ambulance?”

She shut her eyes for a moment, collecting herself. Too long a moment. Beneath me, a shudder ripped through the girl’s body.

I had to get someone else’s help, then. “Hey!” I shouted to some girls cutting through the quad on their way back to the dorms. “There’s been an accident! Someone’s hurt! Call 911!”

They ran over. One girl pulled her phone out of her purse and dialed. The other saw who I was kneeling next to and began to scream.

“Elizabeth,” she sobbed. She put herself between me and the girl on the ground as if to protect her. “That’s my roommate! Elizabeth! What did you do to her?”

“I didn’t do anything,” I said, shocked. I hadn’t realized how this would look: the darkness, the body, the pair of us. “I found her like this. She was dancing with Randall and then . . . we found her here. Charlotte and I. We were . . . we were just walking.”

We were beginning to draw a crowd. Behind me, I heard murmurs. Angry ones. The sound of feet running toward us.

Elizabeth’s roommate turned her tear-streaked face to me. “Murderer,” she snarled. “Murderers.”

Behind us, the murmurs built to an angry roar.

I think it was that word that did it. How it’d been leveled at Holmes—and at me—in the weeks after Lee Dobson had died. How it was written down thousands of times in the notebook I had in my pocket, each stroke of the pen damningly precise. How, somewhere deep down, I knew there was the possibility that it was true. That Holmes had been sent here for killing a Moriarty. And she had read my thoughts from a glance.

No matter what the reason, Holmes reacted as if she’d been hit with an electrical shock.

She knelt down next to Elizabeth. “You need to go get an adult,” she said to the roommate, who stiffened. “Look, believe what you will about my motives, but either way, this crowd will make sure I don’t hurt your friend. Okay? So go get help and let me work. I’ve been trained for this kind of situation.”

“CPR?” the girl asked unsteadily.

Holmes’s smile was mirthless. “Something like that.”

“What do you need me to do?” I asked.

“I need you to hold her mouth open.” She tilted Elizabeth’s head back. “Keep her steady. Do you see it there, in her throat?”

The skin of Elizabeth’s neck was raised and ridged, the unmistakable sign of an object lodged there. With gentle hands, I pulled her chin down until her lips fell apart.

This girl had asked me to the dance. Maybe she’d even wanted something like this: the pads of my fingers against her lips, the shallow breathing, the two of us hitched up in the dark. My stomach roiled. All this—all this was so completely wrong.

“Her body’s in shock,” Holmes said calmly, reaching down into the hollow of Elizabeth’s throat with pincer-like fingers. I shut my eyes against it. The girl thrashed and gurgled under my hands.

“Good girl,” Holmes murmured, “good girl,” and when I opened my eyes again, she was holding a gleaming blue diamond up against the moonlight.

It gleamed because it was covered in Elizabeth’s blood.

I swallowed down bile. Behind me, someone threw up into the grass.

“It’s ‘The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle,’” Holmes murmured.

“I know,” I said as Elizabeth took a jerking breath.

“You.” Holmes tossed the diamond to a boy in the crowd. “Take this thing. It’s plastic, so don’t bother stealing it, but I’m sure the police will want to see it anyway, and as you’re all so keen to cast suspicion on me I’d rather not be held responsible for its safekeeping. Where’s Randall? You. Fetch him. Can’t you see that this girl has been manhandled by a rugby player? Look at those footprints. Look at her dress. I saw them dancing. Find him. I need to know if this was consensual. The sex, you idiot, not the paste diamond stuffed down her craw—yes, of course she’s had sex, or at minimum a very athletic snog. Look at the marks on the ground, are you blind? And where on earth are the chaperones? What about that bloody nurse?”