A Study in Charlotte (Charlotte Holmes, #1)(72)

“By the city, he means New York,” Holmes said, not taking her eyes off her brother. “And by Greystone, he means the mercenary company currently razing the Middle East. Which he owns—Greystone, that is—and which apparently works as his personal honor guard, if the breakfast knights back there are any indication.”

“Glad to be of service,” Peterson called. The other one grunted.

“You know, none of this explains the Moriarty agent practicing your handwriting,” Milo said conversationally.

“No,” Holmes said. “But my ruining August’s life does. His fiancée’s decided to play avenging angel on his behalf.”

“Two separate people out to get you,” he mused. “You really are popular. I’m just not sure why you won’t come to the obvious conclusion—that the two of them are working together. That this Bryony Downs creature is in August Moriarty’s employ.”

Holmes set her chin.

“Fine, Lottie,” Milo sighed. “We’ll focus on the nurse, at least for now.”

“How is any of this efficient?” I asked him, changing the subject. “What is this woman going to do when she returns and finds out her things are gone?”

Milo coughed politely to hide his laugh. “We’ll have proof enough before her interview with Detective Shepard is over to have him charge her with murder.”

“And you know the facts of the case,” I said. “You know what you’re looking for, in her things.”

“Obviously,” he said.

“Will you come up with real proof?” I asked. “Or manufacture it?”

Milo spread his hands wordlessly.

“Do you have to ask?” Holmes said to me.

“Well, now that that’s settled. Take this,” Milo said, handing me his cigarette. “I want to text Uncle Leander the adorable thing you just said about James.”

“Watson,” she and I said together.

“Of course,” he said. “Friend and colleague. I love it.”

Holmes snatched the phone away.

“So that’s it?” I asked, grinding his cigarette out on the floor. “Is this the end? Detective Shepard gets a confession out of Bryony Davis-Downs, and you take her stuff off to be freelance policed, and . . . what, roll credits?”

“It appears so,” Holmes said. Already she was beginning to slump into herself, something I identified now with back porches and mud and pain-pill misery.

I put a hand on her shoulder. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

She looked at it, and then up at me. Slowly, the color returned to her face. The corners of her mouth pulled up into a smile, one that stayed.

“Peterson,” she called, “won’t you tell your colleague there—yes, you, with the Persian cat and the basement flat in Berlin—to call the armored truck and have them turn around. I want everything back in this room just as it was. I suppose you took photographs of the original, or you’re a bigger fool than I’d imagined, disrupting the crime scene as you have. Really, why on earth would you have moved it to your headquarters except to allow this would-be Orson Welles—sorry, Milo, you’re not handsome enough to be Olivier—to pose in an empty room? How dull.”

I bit my lip against my smile.

“What I could have told you from the dust trails alone would have solved this case,” she continued. “As you’ve utterly ruined that possibility, I want any powders or creams you find brought straight to me. Cosmetics, of course, but do look for jars marked as protein powder. Any wires or tools, anything to suggest a bomb. And I want the receiver for whatever tracker you’ve affixed to Bryony’s car. Give it to me. No. Bring it here.” She held out an impatient hand. “I want to make sure that she’s actually arriving at her appointment and not, oh, dashing to the airport and then on to Fiji and thereafter, gone. Have I missed anything, Watson?”

As she examined the tracker she’d been handed, I made a show of surveying the room. “Were you going to tell him about the molted snakeskin under the chair cushion he’s sitting on, or should I?”

With an undignified yelp, Milo leapt to his feet.

“Oh, yes,” Holmes said blandly. “That. Peterson, do check the walls for a rattlesnake.”

THE TWO GREYSTONE GRUNTS BUSILY REARRANGED THE FURNITURE to Holmes’s specifications. Milo watched the proceedings, arms crossed, with a faint air of distaste.

That is, he appeared to, if you didn’t look closely. I did. I’d learned to do that much. Whenever Milo’s hard gaze fell on his sister, it softened the slightest bit. He could’ve stopped Peterson and Michaels at any point, ordered Bryony’s place stripped bare again, frog-marched Holmes onto the nearest London-bound plane.

He didn’t. He stood and watched his sister work.

It seemed safe enough for me to take the few minutes to gather my things from the dorm. Holmes had put me in charge of watching the GPS tracker on Bryony’s car, and other than two quick stops for coffee and for gas, she’d driven a straight course to the police station. There wasn’t really much else I could do, and honestly, I was looking forward to getting a clean set of my own clothes.

“I’ll be back,” I told her. She nodded and kept on directing traffic.

The day had turned out to be mild, so I left my father’s car parked on the street and walked the half mile up to campus. I was suffused with a sense of well-being, the kind I associated with waking up late on a lazy Sunday, no plans, no obligations. I had no doubts that Holmes would find the necessary evidence to implicate Bryony Downs for every terrible thing that had happened. It was over. Over. And Charlotte Holmes and I were still here.