A Question of Holmes (Charlotte Holmes #4)(36)

“Dead,” Rupert said again, and he sat right there on the rug, his back against the door. “I can’t believe it.”

“And Rupert—Rupert is playing Hamlet,” Anwen burst out, as though it were the worst thing of all.





Thirteen

“NOBODY SAY ANYTHING ELSE,” WATSON SAID, HEADING into the kitchen. He dropped the knife on the counter.

“Were you making something?” Rupert asked, confused. “Cooking shirtless can be sort of dangerous—”

“Rupert,” Anwen said despairingly, and then burst into tears, turning her face into Theo’s shirt. He recoiled slightly, and then brought his hands up to her shoulders. Rupert, chastened, stared at the floor.

In my experience, the teenage brain tended to go one of two ways in the aftermath of tragedy: one became either the animal or the child. Giving these three orders right now would satisfy that second impulse. And, under the guise of taking care of them, I might be able to ferret out some information.

“Jackets,” I said, and as they shucked them off and hung them in the entryway closet, Watson came from the kitchen with three glasses of water cradled between his hands. “Shoes, too.”

Once the water was distributed, Watson produced a stack of fresh towels from the bathroom and handed them out, and the three of them gathered shakily on the couch.

I sat in the leather club chair, tossing the end of my blanket over my shoulder. Watson perched on its arm. “What on earth happened?” I asked. For Theo’s benefit, I kept my voice at its natural register, though I was certainly not going to play this round as myself.

Blindly, Theo drained off his water, then fetched the bottle from his paper bag, affecting a mad scientist’s squint as he refilled his glass with brown liquor.

“That,” Watson said, “is a lot of rum.”

“That,” Theo said, “is the point,” and took a gigantic swig, then sputtered. Anwen reached to take the glass from him, but he batted her away like a child.

“Please forgive Theodore’s theatrics,” she said. “Dr. Larkin is dead.”

With a low groan, Rupert buried his face in his hands. Theo tossed back his rum.

Watson shot me a horrified look, and I reached out to take his hand, to steady myself as much as him. One would think, perhaps, that recent years would have hardened me to the possibility of death. But Dr. Larkin hadn’t seemed in any danger. She’d been a harried academic at my uncle’s party, asking for my help to protect her students.

Though part of me was reeling, another, abstract part knew that it was important to catalog Anwen’s and Theo’s and Rupert’s reactions before they could begin to paper them over with what they wanted me to see. But grief did strange things to you. Made you see yourself at a distance. Theo’s drinking was clearly taken from something he’d seen onstage, or in a movie, a portrait of a young man prettily losing control; perhaps he’d had practice in the weeks after Matilda’s disappearance. Anwen’s grief was laced with the resentment I’d still yet to see her shake.

Rupert? His seemed genuine, which in its own way made me suspect him more.

“What happened?” I asked quietly, though more than that, I wanted to ask, why did you come here first?

Theo tilted his head to the side, locking eyes with mine. “Tonight, while she was onstage, explaining to us the idea of betrayal in Hamlet, a light fell out of the grid.”

“Oh my God,” Watson murmured. “Onto her?”

Anwen nodded. My heart seized, but I said nothing more. I owed it to Dr. Larkin to stay silent, to let them talk.

“We were all watching. We were all there.” Theo scrubbed at his face. “People were screaming. Running out of the theater like there had been gunshots, or like there was a fire . . . no one went up to help her, so I climbed onto the stage and I got down there beside her and I didn’t want to move the light in case—in case—you know, on the television shows, they tell you not to move them—”

“You did the right thing, mate,” Rupert said, reaching out to touch Theo’s knee.

He batted away Rupert’s hand, struggling to sit up on the couch. “And because I was up there when the police came, they took me back to the station and questioned me. Some bitch of a detective named Sadiq, she went at me for hours. I had been the last person to see Matilda before she disappeared. I had been unhappy about her casting. I had been onstage when Larkin was—was—and because these things keep happening around me, because my life sucks, I keep being the one they go after.” With shaking hands, he tried to topple more rum into his glass.

“Stop, Theo,” Anwen said, though I didn’t know whether she meant the drinking or the talking.

“We need to get some food into him.” With a sigh, Rupert stood and padded over to the kitchen. “Is it all right if I raid your fridge?”

Too much was going on. Was he moving away to hide his reaction?

“Was there anyone near the lighting grid?” Watson was asking Theo. “Do they have any suspects?”

“Why does your fridge smell like anchovies?” Rupert asked, popping his head over the door. “Why is it filled with toasts? Were you having a party?”

Watson shrugged. “Maybe. Or is this a wake?”

“Theo?” I prompted, “The lighting board,” but he was staring somewhere over my shoulder.