A Question of Holmes (Charlotte Holmes #4)(46)

Before I did anything else, I snapped photos with my phone to keep as a reference. And then, in the quick, neat-handed way I’d been trained, I removed the evidence and cataloged it on the floor.

A peacock-blue silk dress with a drop waist and a rhinestone-embellished Peter Pan collar. A vintage 1960s majorette costume, with full skirt and brass buttons. A marabou-feathered flapper dress with a belt, and behind it a second, identical, except made up in red instead of champagne.

It was wild, all of it, more costumes than clothing, and I could feel my deductive faculties rioting against the restrictions I’d placed on myself. I badly wanted to hunt for patterns, to figure out the girl from the clothes. Instead I forced myself to focus on minutiae: Did these have designer labels? Was there any hint that they weren’t what they seemed to be, a closet full of vintage “finds” assembled with a sniper’s accuracy—were they instead purchased at huge markup from a London resale shop or similar?

Nothing that I could tell from my cursory inspection. I was furious that I didn’t have more time, not the least for myself. My profession calls for me to be an artist of a different kind, and below my searching hands were a hundred different selves I could slip on to wear like weapons.

But I’d taken too much time already. Before I returned each piece to the wardrobe, I examined it thoroughly, then around its sides and back; had it held secrets, I would have found them. Cursing quietly, I put back the clothes the way I’d seen them and shut the doors.

I could hear Watson lean heavily against the wall.

“No one’s coming?” I asked.

“We’re clear,” he said.

I opened the drawers under the bed (a pair of jeans with the tags on, tights in their packaging, black boots shined to a polish), the drawers to the desk (a jewelry box, locked; a notebook with pages trimmed in rose gold—blank; three blue pens—new; a cloth bag full of ribbons; a pair of sunglasses). Her toiletries would be in the bathroom.

Shutting the final drawer, I realized that there wasn’t a single thing in this room to remind Anwen of a place outside its walls.

No photographs. No cards from friends. No notes, no ephemera, no trinkets. Nothing that had the slightest bit of wear, the slightest bit of story. Nothing but those clothes.

I wasn’t unfamiliar with this aesthetic, or with how it unnerved me. There had been girls back at Sherringford who kept their rooms like pristine film sets for their Instagram shoots. I don’t doubt that this made them happy. I understood, too, that a six-week summer program like this wasn’t necessarily long enough to want to bring your whole life along. But as someone who spent her life reading history into trifles, walking into a room washed clean of its owner made me feel as though I’d stepped right through a ghost.

I moved through these thoughts quickly as I stood at the window. Sebastian Wallis had told me to check Anwen’s room, and I had. It was, indeed, strange, but it wasn’t as strange as his terse warning had implied.

Below, the quad had emptied out, students having rushed off to lunch or to their next lecture. All except for a brunet boy ambling along the path that bisected the lawn, his hands in his pockets. I knelt on the window seat and put my head out to make sure of who he was.

“Watson,” I said, turning. “Rupert’s on his way.”

“Hurry up, then,” he whispered back.

I leaned back to put a foot down on the floor when I heard the window seat groan below me. Frowning, I stood, pushing off the pillows, the raw-edged silk covering below them.

The seat was a storage bench.

I’m not sure what I expected; largely, I try not to expect anything at all. Life is emphatically disappointing to those who expect it to be otherwise. Still, I was put out to find another stack of improbable clothing folded neatly in a series of garment bags.

I unzipped them, quickly, one by one. Velvet shifts; wide-legged corduroy pants; a faux-fur jacket with oversized lapels. Winter clothing, all of it too unseasonable to wear. It was odd for it to be here, but not incredibly so—she might have a job away from home between the end of her time at Oxford and when she began at Cambridge; she might not have storage at her house; she might be estranged from her family, as I was, and not welcome to keep her things at their house.

I was tucking the final piece back into its bag when I felt a sharp prick in my finger. A pin, most likely. I stuck my finger into my mouth and attempted to wrestle the coat back in one-handed. I had no intention of leaving bloodstains.

“Holmes,” Watson said, low. The stairwell door had just slammed shut.

“Just a moment,” I said, leaning forward to straighten it with my elbow. My brain was listing away what it saw, the way it always did: the cut of the coat, the name on the lapel (Guy Laroche), the bit of stitching that had come undone in the lining, the—

The name penned onto the label, in the tiniest possible handwriting.

Larissa.

Footfalls up the stairs, slow ones.

“Holmes,” Watson said.

Cursing, I lifted up the garment bag and checked the one below. The corduroy pants. A different store on the label. The same name on the tag.

Larissa.

The dresses, the silk blouses, the cashmere sweaters—the name, or the initial. Larissa; L; L.

“Hallo!” Rupert, calling from downstairs. The kitchen. “Anyone home? I’m making popcorn! Beastly time with the police . . .”