A Question of Holmes (Charlotte Holmes #4)(38)

“Fine,” Theo said again, and then, “fine. I’m sorry. Look, I wouldn’t’ve met Gael if—if Matilda hadn’t ended things with me. Her disappearing . . . I couldn’t do anything about that. But it was all I could think about. The only thing, figuring out where she’d gone, that maybe she’d given me some clue and I’d been too stupid to see it for what it was, and then, these last few months, thinking about coming back here . . . I kept thinking, and it was so stupid, but . . .”

None of it seemed rehearsed. It looked and sounded genuine—the confusion, the grief, the sad, soft eyes.

But I had seen Theo do Shakespeare that afternoon. I knew what he could do with words.

“You thought maybe she’d come back,” Anwen murmured to him. “Like magic. Maybe you’d both come back here, to Oxford in the summer, and it would all be the same as it was.”

It was a wild thing for her to say to a boy in the throes of grief. I expected him to fire back with renewed outrage. But Rupert hung his head, and Anwen turned to tuck her face into his shoulder, and Theo stared up at the ceiling, the vein in his neck still showing, and I watched in fascination, the three of them rearranging their dynamic once again.

“What was it like?” Watson asked, pulling a leg up to his chest. “Last summer?”

“It was—” Anwen sighed. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

But she did begin, and Rupert picked up when she trailed off, and even Theo, finally, joined in, his head tipped back on the couch, words spinning up into the air. The three of them together on the floor of Theo’s room, Anwen hemming a skirt she’d bought at a charity shop while Rupert read his economics textbook out loud, asking, periodically, if he had in fact forgotten how to speak English or if the author had. The first time they’d seen Theo perform, not onstage but in the bathroom of their suite, jumping up to balance on the clawfoot tub while he did a blistering monologue from This Is Our Youth, Rupert throwing popcorn at his face to see if it would faze him. It didn’t; Theo caught a kernel in his mouth and yelled so loudly in triumph that their downstairs neighbors hammered at the ceiling with a broom. The second week, when they discovered they could take out punts from the boathouse, Anwen had brought a Bluetooth speaker and played experimental jazz as Rupert maneuvered them through the River Cherwell. They did it every afternoon, the three of them on the water, the three of them at their Italian restaurant, the rituals they developed by accident and then held to because they were theirs. Anwen adding ruffles to her socks, adding a lining to a coat, buying silk scarves from Oxfam and making them into pocket squares for their blazers, all three of them, in complimentary shades of green, paisley. And nights, then, at the St. Genesius theater, where Theo met Matilda.

“We can show you videos,” Rupert said, tugging his phone from his pocket. “I took a few last summer, back before things went wrong.”

Theo turned his head. “Go on,” he said hoarsely. “Show them your evidence.”

Watson and I exchanged a look.

There it was. Why they had come to us first, before they had even gone home.

We knew the two of us weren’t entirely anonymous; even before the Lucien Moriarty case ended up in the tabloids, our last names made us conspicuous targets. And it wasn’t precisely a secret that I’d been brought in by Dr. Larkin to help.

But I didn’t want them to think of me as a detective. Not yet. I wanted them to think of me as a friend. To confide in me as a friend.

“I’d love to see her,” I said quietly.

“Aha,” Rupert said, scrolling. Watson pulled his chair forward. “Here’s a good one. At the Parks, last June.” He held the screen out between us.

The camera shakily panned over a long grassy expanse, trees shimmering in the distance. The light was red and soft, as it was the hour after sunset or before sunrise. Anwen came into frame, her hair an exuberant mess. She held a hand over her face. “Rupert, don’t, I’m a shambles,” she said, laughing, and the camera jerked over to Theo. He was bundled in a letterman jacket, too big for him in the shoulders, and he was turned on his side with his arm thrown over—

Matilda.

“Rupert,” she sighed, stretching her arms over her head, “what are you doing?” There were the remains of a picnic basket beside her: cupcake wrappers, a few empty bottles of wine. They’d been drinking.

“Making something to watch later,” he said. “Tell me a secret.”

(Anwen and Rupert, on my uncle’s sofa, exchanged a significant glance. Was this the video they thought they’d show me?)

“You first,” Matilda said sleepily. “I’ve been in the sun all day. I’m wiped clean.”

Rupert, always obliging: “Sure,” he said. “Let me think. Hmmm . . . ha! How about, when I was twelve, do you know what I asked for, for Christmas?” A triumphant pause. “Backup singers!”

Anwen giggled, pulling at a bottle of wine. “Too many music videos.”

“It’s not a secret,” Matilda’s voice said, and she pushed herself up on her arm, her dark eyes knowing. “A secret is something embarrassing. Something compromising, something with power. Secrets are what we make art from.”

Theo couldn’t tear his eyes off her.

(I understood it. Her words were pretentious, but the way she spoke them—slowly, deliberately—all I wanted was to look at her. When Rupert’s camera panned back to Anwen, I made a tiny sound of disappointment.)