A Question of Holmes (Charlotte Holmes #4)(44)

I let the silence hang between us. “I’m worried,” I said finally, as we approached the ticket window. There was a short line, as it was a weekday: a girl in a Ramones shirt, a man wearing a baby in a sling, juggling her as she fussed. At the gate, we showed our student IDs—Sebastian still had his in his wallet from last summer—and paid. “My boyfriend is living with these Dramatics Soc kids, and there’s something off about them.”

Sebastian slowed, then sped up, shouldering past the people ahead of us. I followed. We ducked through a wrought-iron gate and into one of those wonderful wide-open spaces that Oxford had in abundance—an expanse of vivid green wound through with walkways, and beyond, a hedge maze. Watson would tell you more, I’m sure, but I wasn’t considering the flora.

A fountain burbled water up into the air, and I cut across the grass toward it. After a moment, Sebastian followed.

“Is that what you were talking to the police about?” he asked, sitting beside me on the wet marble. “His roommates?” I nodded.

“Are they . . . Theo Harding? And Rupert Davies? And Anwen Ellis? Just by chance?”

I nodded again.

“Huh,” he said, and I said nothing.

The fewer words while drawing someone out, the more you were often given in return.

Sebastian Wallis held out a good long while. He was a small boy—small feet, small ears, a small upturned nose. He had a sprightliness to him that suggested its root word, sprite, and I wondered if he had been cast as one of the fairies in Midsummer before that production had fallen apart. I’d been surprised by his burst of fellow-feeling that had led him to suggest gardens; the most I’d hoped for was a brief conversation on the street, a suggestion of the next tree I needed to shake. And yet he’d led the two of us here, and nothing about him suggested malicious intentions.

He had something he needed to say. That was a commonality I was finding amongst the players in this case—this need to express, to speak, to be seen.

Sebastian squinted straight ahead, massaging his small hands. “I can’t tell you much,” he said. “Especially since the police still want to talk to you. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that there are consequences for doing the right thing.”

I nodded. I, too, was familiar with this lesson.

“Last summer, they wanted nothing to do with me. I wasn’t rich, or some artistic genius, or a hot girl. I was just their stupid suitemate who worked theater tech and stayed out of their way.” He stood. “The day after Matilda disappeared, I was in Anwen’s room, and I had this . . . feeling. I looked around. I found some . . . weird things in there. Have you been there yet?”

“I haven’t been to the dorms yet,” I said, cursing myself. Why on earth hadn’t I gone there first? “My boyfriend’s been staying with me.”

The stakes had shifted only last night. It wasn’t even noon. And still it felt like I was running out of time.

“It doesn’t matter now,” he said. “Matilda’s gone for good. Dead. Locked in someone’s garden shed. Who knows. And everyone else . . . they’ll just drop one at a time, until there’s no one left.”

Above us, the sun took its watery light behind a cloud. In the sudden wash of shadow, the birds went louder, louder, calling for something that refused to answer.

“Go look in Anwen’s room,” he said, already walking away. “Then get your boyfriend out of there.”





Fifteen

I SAT IN THAT GARDEN LONGER THAN I’D LIKE TO ADMIT.

Meet me in the main quad, I’d texted Watson, and he was there as I made my way over the freshly trimmed grass. He nodded his head toward his building, and the two of us ducked inside, out of the late morning.

“I thought I was going to the station with you,” he said, holding the door.

“You were sleeping,” I said. He was put out, I could tell, so I continued. “You were very handsome while you were sleeping.”

His lips quirked. “Too handsome to be useful?”

“One can’t have everything,” I told him, and he caught my hand and squeezed it.

“It’s fine. It gave me a chance to talk with Theo this morning, over coffee. I pressed gently on the Anwen thing from last night, but he’s all clammed up. He changed the subject to orchids.”

“What about them?”

We’d reached his stairwell and paused at the door; his common room was within earshot.

Watson adjusted the straps of his backpack. “Well, we haven’t really considered the . . . finickiness of orchids.”

“‘We,’” I scoffed. “I certainly have. Did you know that only older forests grow the sort of fungi that feeds the variety of orchid called Goodyera pubescens—”

“You’re making that up.”

“I promise you, I’m not making up mushroom facts for your amusement.”

“Pubescens? Pubescent orchid?” He snorted. “Has it grown a little stupid mustache? Does it skateboard?”

“Watson.”

“You were the one suggesting that I haven’t stopped to consider one of the key aspects of this case—”

“You hadn’t,” I said mildly.

He groaned. “So, this morning, Theo and I were talking, and like . . . right, some of them only eat really old mushrooms. You have to feed some of them with an eyedropper. With honey. Some of them can’t deal with shade or sun. And they’re bloody expensive. It’s not like there’s just a garden patch of these that the Orchid Killer—”