A Study in Charlotte (Charlotte Holmes, #1)(47)

For this, I didn’t have to look through Shepard’s records. It was as easy as plugging August’s name into Google and clicking a button.

The first article that came up was from his college at Oxford. August had presented some complicated theorem at an academic conference in Dusseldorf. The reporter took special care to mention his age: he’d been doing his doctorate in pure math at twenty. He must’ve been a genius to be doing that work so young. The article described his dissertation (fractals, imaginary numbers) in layman’s terms, and I still couldn’t begin to understand it.

But it was dated two years back. I needed newer information, to know if he was still at Oxford, if he’d graduated or been hit by a car or moved to, I don’t know . . . Connecticut.

The rest of the search results linked to academic journals and fellowship competitions, all dated that same year. Not a word about his personal life or about him dating Charlotte Holmes. Just a list of his achievements: August, recipient of a prestigious Institut Zalen grant. August, publishing on vector spaces and the cosmos in Mathematics Today. August, flown to the Arctic Circle to collaborate with scientists studying something called “ice fractals.”

After that, there was nothing. Not a word had been written about August Moriarty in the last two years.

I put it all up on the wall anyway.

At three o’clock precisely, Holmes swung open the door to 442, humming something under her breath. “Hello, Watson,” she said before she’d even seen me, “you’re here early,” and then she stopped in her tracks, staring at the wall.

I realized, too late, that I’d pretty much re-created the murder den we’d found in the access tunnels.

“Oh,” she said.

I waited for the explosion.

She sighed, dropping her backpack on the floor. “It’s a place to start. I came to tell you that Milo ran down John Smith’s prints in some of the more . . . unusual databases. He’s worked as a domestic for the last five years.”

“A domestic?”

“A servant, Watson. He was Phillipa Moriarty’s driver until his disappearance four months ago. There’s our link to the family, sorted. The question is if he was doing all this alone, or . . .”

“You don’t think he was. So, Phillipa then?”

We looked at the wall, side by side.

“Have you ever heard of a rat-king?” She reached out and touched the corner of Hadrian’s photo. “The Moriartys—their disgusting tails are all tied together. Let’s not try to separate them just yet. We’ll start by finding out which of them came into this country, and when.”

On her direction, ship manifests went up onto the wall, freighters that had traveled from England to Boston and the names of the sailors who manned them. (“Seaworthy,” she muttered, taping them up.) We went through lists of private airstrips and private jets. Helicopters. Rowboats. We scrolled through records in New England and in England both. Moriarty was a horrifyingly common last name, but things became even worse when we began running known aliases. Our series of papers grew, day by day, until they engulfed the wall.

Phillipa spoke at a gallery opening in Glasgow. Lucien was photographed with the British prime minister. Hadrian showed up on some German talk show to chat about the Sphinx. How could it be any of them? Were they taking care of business in Europe, flying by night to Connecticut to ruin our lives? It seemed absurd, even by our standards. I spent every moment in 442, working like a madman. (I was even growing the beginnings of a madman’s scratchy beard, which I secretly thought was kind of awesome.) And she worked right beside me with a fury I hadn’t yet seen. Almost everything else went out the window.

Especially for Holmes.

She’d stopped battling me on August Moriarty. Every time I tried to learn something, anything, about what happened between them, she regarded me with a weary tilt of her head, like I was a fly she couldn’t quite get rid of. I was relatively sure she wasn’t eating or sleeping. But it wasn’t just her attitude. Her eyes were somehow both glassy and dry, and as she scratched absently at her scalp, going over her millionth passenger manifest, her hair made a crackling sound that hair really shouldn’t make. I kept stifling the urge to ask her if she was okay, to touch her forehead to see if she had a fever. To take care of her.

I brought her food, but it stayed untouched on the plate no matter how I tried to cajole her into eating. When I caught her taking twenty minutes to eat a single almond, I began wondering if there was some kind of Watsonian guide for the care and keeping of Holmeses.

When I sent my father an email to that effect (subject line I Need Your Help, postscript Still haven’t forgiven you and won’t), he responded that, yes, over the years he’d written down an informal series of suggestions in his journal; he’d do his best to adapt and type them up for me.

When the list arrived the next day, it was twelve pages long, single-spaced.

The suggestions ran from the obvious (8. On the whole, coaxing works rather better than straightforward demands) to the irrelevant (39. Under all circumstances, do not allow Holmes to cook your dinner unless you have a taste for cold unseasoned broth) to the absurd (87. Hide all firearms before throwing Holmes a surprise birthday party) to, finally, the useful (1. Search often for opiates and dispose of as needed; retaliation will not come often, though is swift and exacting when it does—do not grow attached to one’s mirrors or drinking glasses; 2. During your search, always begin with the hollowed-out heels of Holmes’s boots; 102. Have no compunctions about drugging Holmes’s tea if he hasn’t slept; 41. Be prepared to receive compliments once every two to three years; 74. (underlined twice) Whatever happens, remember it is not your fault and likely could not have been prevented, no matter your efforts). I wondered if I should create some kind of subclause for when the Holmes in question was a girl and her Watson was a guy who liked girls. It’s not your fault if you care too much about her. If you want impossible things. It couldn’t have been prevented, no matter your efforts.