A Study in Charlotte (Charlotte Holmes, #1)(43)

She threw her bow down. “I have to wait until the school day is over to investigate. Two hours!” she said. “Do you think, if I set fire to the maths building—”

“No.”

“But—”

“Still no. Why don’t you help me with this poem?” I asked, an attempt to derail her. “It needs to be one that’s ‘difficult for me to write,’ whatever that means.”

“What do you have so far?” she asked.

“‘The.’ Or maybe ‘A,’ I’m not sure.”

“I’m bad with words.” She sat down next to me. “Too imprecise. Too many shades of meaning. And people use them to lie. Have you ever heard someone lie to you on the violin? Well. I suppose it can be done, but it would take far more skill.”

“Speaking of lying,” I said. “Who played your masked man, the other night?”

“One of Lena’s on-and-off hookups. I knew I needed a failsafe, and Lena was willing to play along. We’d laid the groundwork up a week ago. All she needed was the go-ahead. She’d been telling him she loved scary movies, and being afraid sort of turned her on, and asking him if he had a ski mask—that sort of thing. All she had to do was mention that I’d be away on Sunday night. He didn’t question it at all when she screamed and chased him out, and after, I had her put a fresh mask I’d taken from the athletics shed into the bin outside. Really, it’s a good thing she’s so completely insane. It means she can get away with anything.”

“And how is she holding up, after her ‘scare’?”

“Oh, fine,” she said airily. “I think she’s counting the days until her new handbag comes in the post.”

I put my pen down. “I thought you might pay her off. With what money?”

She bit her lip. “She wouldn’t take any. Which, to be honest, makes me nervous.”

“The fact that she likes you enough to help you for free? That makes you nervous?”

“I’d rather deal in quantifiable transactions,” she said. “But she said she’d made a killing at poker and reminded me that her allowance is staggering. After that, she sat me down in front of her laptop and made me help her pick out something called a minaudière. It looks like a bejeweled toad.”

“Oh,” I said, wondering what it meant that Holmes had never once offered to pay me.

“I have a rainy-day fund, you know,” she said, not quite looking at me. “Until recently, it was raining . . . rather a lot. But I . . . I’ve been trying to use an umbrella.”

“See, and you say you’re bad with words. I’m stealing that.” I scrawled it down.

She drifted over to her bookshelf and lit a cigarette. With the toe of her shoe, she tapped her copy of The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes before she leaned down to pick it up. I could tell I’d lost her to her thoughts.

It seemed as good a time as any to do the thing I’d been avoiding.

The hospital corridors were empty when I arrived, carrying a bunch of flowers. It wasn’t hard to find the right ward. They had it guarded like Fort Knox. Thankfully, Detective Shepard had had the wherewithal to put my name on the visitor list, and after showing my ID to two separate policemen, I was allowed into her room.

I’d been told that she was awake, but her eyes were closed when I came in. She looked terrible. Her blond hair was matted to her head with sweat, her arms wound in tubes and tape. Strangely enough, she was clutching a whiteboard to her chest in the way you would a teddy bear. As quietly as I could, I put the flowers on the table beside her bed and debated writing her a note. Was that what the board was for?

While I stood there, Elizabeth opened one eye, then the other.

“Hi,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind that I came.”

She shook her head no, though I wasn’t sure if it was No, I don’t mind, or No, actually, leave.

“May I sit down?”

A nod.

“How long until you get your voice back?” I asked. When Detective Shepard said that Elizabeth had been unable to speak to the police, I hadn’t thought he meant it literally.

Slowly, achingly, she pulled a marker out from the folds of her blanket and scrawled something down on the board. I peered over at what she was writing. Don’t know, it said.

I didn’t mean to interrogate her. That wasn’t why I’d come. Besides, Shepard had told us that Elizabeth’s parents had asked the police for a few days’ grace for their daughter. They said that she had been through enough without being forced to relive it all.

“I’m sorry,” I told Elizabeth, looking down at my hands. I’d come to apologize. It was why I hadn’t brought Holmes. Apologizing was the kind of thing that made her break out in hives.

A scribbling sound. For what?

“For what happened to you. You didn’t deserve this. Any of it. I’m sorry.”

I don’t remember all of it. But the detective told me you found me and got help. Thank you. Her exhausted eyes met mine. Exhausted, and gentle. I didn’t deserve that gentleness.

“I hope you feel better soon,” I said, standing to leave.

Scribbling again. Detective said “blue carbuncle” to my parents. He thought I was asleep. Explanation?

I sat back down. “Do you know the story?”