A Study in Charlotte (Charlotte Holmes, #1)(55)

“No.” I paused. “Well, a little. He referred me to a therapist.”

“Psychology.” She snorted. “All the same.”

I threw up my hands. “What about the other names on the suspects list? You know, the ones who aren’t Romanian royalty or pop stars. The Moriartys. What about August? Is he really dead?”

“Nothing to report.” Holmes drew on her cigarette, her eyes narrowing. “Honestly, sod all this, none of this is correct. We have the data and the access but we’ve made no progress, and I’ve smoked at least twenty of these horrible things today and I am developing a wretched dependency, just you watch, we’ll be out in the middle of some sodding field watching a perfectly captivating murder take place firsthand, and I’ll have to run off in the middle because I need to have a Lucky Strike right then or I’ll be the one doing the killing.” She stabbed out her cigarette against the love seat’s arm, and in the same gesture, lit another. I’d heard her run off on tangents before, but none this frustrated or angry.

“Then stop. Smoking.”

“Do you really want me to revert to the alternative?” she snapped.

“Maybe we should take the night off,” I said. “Go get pancakes, plan for tomorrow.”

I could have blamed myself for having wound her up in the first place, but Holmes had been itching for a confrontation from the moment I walked through the door. The look she gave me then was the one you saved for cockroaches, shoe in hand. “This is what I do. You want me to stop? You think you can talk about it like it’s a game?”

The acid in her tone ate away the last of my patience. “I’m saying that you should take a night off, not that you should abandon it completely.”

“You can’t handle the pace, then.”

“No! God, if we’re so stuck, why won’t we just call in your parents—”

“I refuse to have them involved—”

“Don’t you think that getting your head on straight can take priority, for once, to proving yourself to your family?”

She pulled herself up, as proud and straight as an ancient queen. Her face was a perfect blank. The only glimmer of Holmes I could see was in the anger darkening her eyes.

“Yes,” she said in a flat voice. “I hadn’t thought of that. I, of course, have no personal stake in this matter. Since this is all an exercise to please my parents.”

“Holmes—”

“So yes, take the night off. In the meantime, I’ll be tracking down the person who murdered my rapist and tried to murder your little girlfriend and then almost had us arrested for it. It might even move faster without you, as you’ve proven yourself so extraordinarily useless.”

It was the first time she’d ever said anything that cruel to me. The word useless hung between us, like a millstone on a piece of thread.

“How can I help you,” I snarled, “when you keep so much information to yourself? There’s a Moriarty plastered all over that wall that you refuse to talk about. You’ve told me nothing about your relationship with him.”

“With him? Don’t you mean to him?” she asked. “Is this about the case, or your jealousy?”

Her hand flew up to her mouth as if to stop the words from coming out. But it was too late.

“Okay, then.” There was nothing else to say. I put my coat on, not sure where I was headed but knowing that it was somewhere the hell away from here.

“Watson.” Holmes got to her feet.

“I’m fine.”

“I know I can be perfectly beastly—”

“You can,” I said. “And why don’t you just call me Jamie, like everyone else, since I’m too useless to be your Watson.”

Holmes’s mouth opened and snapped shut. I slammed the door hard enough that, behind me, I heard the satisfying crash of a beaker shattering on the floor.





eight


I PACED OUTSIDE OF MICHENER HALL, BLOWING ON MY hands to keep them warm. By the time I banged through the front door, I was mostly in control of myself again. Mrs. Dunham was manning the front desk—did she ever go home?—but I walked straight past her without a word, not wanting to test my hard-won composure.

Usually, my room was empty the hour before dinner, but that day Tom was watching a video on his computer, eating a chocolate bar. On the screen, a girl performed a burlesque routine to a song sung in French. I recognized a few of the words: leave it, leave it all. Biting her lip, she lowered one strap, the other.

“Are you okay?” Tom asked, hitting Pause. The girl in the video froze obediently.

“Fine,” I said. “Bad day.”

“You don’t seem to have a lot of good ones,” he observed. There was a smear of chocolate on his argyle sweater-vest, and I realized the wrapper on his desk was from the Flake bar Holmes had given me. It shouldn’t have been a big deal—Tom and I had standing permission to raid each other’s food stashes, within reason—but I took it like a blow to the gut.

“I don’t see why that’s shocking, considering,” I said, and willed him to go away.

Ever since I’d come to Sherringford, I’d existed in a state of constant loneliness without ever actually being alone. Privacy was an illusion at boarding school. There was always another body in the room, and if there wasn’t, one could enter at any moment. Being Holmes’s friend might have taken the edge off that loneliness, but it didn’t dissipate entirely. At best, our friendship made me feel as though I was a part of something larger, something grander; that, with her, I’d been given access to a world whose unseen currents ran parallel to ours. But at our friendship’s worst, I wasn’t sure I was her friend at all. Maybe some human echo chamber or a conductor for her brilliant light.