A Question of Holmes (Charlotte Holmes #4)(45)
“Has he been officially promoted from Orchid Attacker?”
“—that the Orchid Killer is harvesting them from,” Watson said. “Someone is spending a lot of time in a greenhouse, or stealing them from someone who does.”
“Well,” I said. “When that sheet-ghost fell on me, the culprit thought it funny to hang an orchids calendar beside the door. Someone didn’t have access to their flowers anymore. Or we’re dealing with someone else entirely.”
He shifted his weight foot to foot. “I brought my backpack,” he said. “I can act like I’m here to switch some stuff out, though almost everything I own is over at your flat. Is there anything you need me to do?”
“If Theo or Rupert is home, we’ll need to roust them from their rooms. I don’t want any witnesses.”
“Gotcha,” he said, and opened the door. “After you, pumpkin.”
The rooms in St. Genesius were arranged this way, in stairwells that connected a small number of bedrooms to a common area with a kitchen and a few worn-in couches. We came through the kitchen first, which was unoccupied, though an electric kettle was switched on on the counter. The shelves were largely bare, as you’d imagine from summer students in undergraduate housing, but a sad-looking little saucepan was drying upside down next to the sink. Quickly, I searched the cabinets for a pair of drinking glasses, and we headed upstairs before someone could come down to find us.
We stopped off first in Watson’s room so he could drop his empty backpack. I took a minute to marvel at the space he’d been given. Tall ceilings that sloped with the ceiling of the turret. A full-sized bed, chairs and a coffee table, a pair of casement windows that overlooked the St. Genesius chapel. The walls were plastered white. A fireplace at the far corner was heaped with wood, and I walked over to touch it. It looked a hundred years old.
Watson leaned against the wall. “I want to use that to dramatically burn a letter at least once before this program’s over.”
“Fireplaces,” I informed him, “are wasted on teenage boys.”
“I’m not arguing with you there.” He dropped his voice. “They requested the same rooms they’d had last year. Theo’s to the left, Rupert to the right. Anwen has the little room at the very top next to the bathroom.”
I handed him one of the drinking glasses. “You take Theo,” I said, and put the mouth of mine against the closest wall.
“Really?” he said, interested. “This works?”
I held a finger up to my lips, leaning forward and backward until I came across a decent spot to listen. I could hear the radiator rattling away, the creak of a window sash in the slight wind. After a few minutes, I straightened.
“Nothing,” I murmured, and joined Watson at the other wall. His brow was furrowed with concentration; he was still moving the glass against the wall as one would a stethoscope against a human chest. But if Theo were in there, he was sleeping. The only sound either of us could hear was the quiet chatter of the students on the quad, someone beginning to strum a guitar.
“Upstairs,” I said, and Watson followed.
There, I put my glass to Anwen’s door, but her room was quiet except for the whirring of her fan, something I noted uneasily. White noise; I couldn’t listen around that. The door was locked—another difficult detail to explain away if we were caught inside. Sighing, I pulled my picks from my bag and got to work.
“To think,” Watson said, “I used to wonder why girls carried purses.”
“We need somewhere to keep our mace.” I smiled as the lock shifted and gave under my hands. “Will you keep watch on the landing? Think of some suitable explanation if we’re caught.”
He leaned to look inside. “As long as your plan isn’t to go out that window,” he said, taking in the fourth-story view.
“My father trained me for every eventuality,” I said, and left the door cracked as I slipped inside.
While Watson’s cavernous room was as bare as when he’d moved in, Anwen’s was small and alive. At first, I had the confusing impression that I’d stumbled into a spiderweb: her walls were electric with ragged, moving white. I moved closer, extending a hand, and as my hand touched the wall, my eyes finally recognized a pattern. A series of patterns. She’d hung layers and layers of vintage lace, cut down to handkerchief squares, and pinned them with wooden clothespins to wire that she’d extended across the wall. Her windows had been left open, and the breeze coming through shuffled and reshuffled them, lifted the fringe on her window seat cushions.
There wasn’t much else in that space. A twin bed, heaped in light blankets, with a stack of pillows arranged for reading. A desk, bare but for the oscillating fan I’d heard outside. A shelf of books above it. (She hadn’t left her laptop, though I didn’t imagine I’d be able to crack into it in the time I had now.) And a wardrobe that spanned the length of the remaining wall, stuffed so full that its wooden doors wouldn’t latch across its contents.
I opened it with care.
This, I realized, would take longer than five minutes.
I’d known Anwen had designed costumes, made her own clothes and bits and bobs for friends; I’d taken the lace wallpaper she’d concocted as a tasteful way of storing a number of fabric samples. But still the closet in front of me was shocking in its exuberance.