A Question of Holmes (Charlotte Holmes #4)(64)

“But Anwen,” I said, far more gently than I felt, as the girl settled herself down in her chair. “She didn’t go home. She just disappeared.”

“I know,” she said, her eyes tipping shut. “Isn’t that strange?”

I waited a long moment to see if she would slip into sleep. Her actions had been callow and desperate, and I wish I could say that no part of me understood them.

Except I had once been the girl who’d framed August Moriarty for a felony, and all because he didn’t love me back. I was still that girl. Just tonight, I’d insisted that I was.

I stood, brushing myself off, and walked to the two-way mirror. “Is that enough?” I asked my reflection. “Is that enough, now?”





Twenty-Three

SADIQ USHERED ME OUT OF THE INTERROGATION ROOM. She looked exhausted, but then, we all were. Watson was still in with Theo and Rupert, she told me, but he hadn’t gotten much out of them.

“Did you dust Rupert’s hands for pollen?” I asked. “He was touching the decoy orchid I brought over, but there should be at least one other kind under his fingernails.”

Sadiq dropped her glasses to the end of her nose. “Any particular reason?”

“You know . . .” I smiled. “Actually, don’t. Don’t dust him. Just have someone tail him the next few days. The Davies family owns a plot of land outside of town. They’re farmers. I’ll bet you anything that there’s a greenhouse there, and that you’ll find—”

“Orchids inside,” Sadiq said. “Noted.” She smiled at me. “Nice work, Charlotte. You live up to your reputation.”

That usually wasn’t a compliment. I found myself smiling back. “Thanks.”

“You know,” she said, leaning back against the wall, “I didn’t think that Rupert boy was up to any of this.”

“His friends brutally underestimated him,” I said. “Counted on his good nature. I can’t tell you if he helped Anwen because he’s just that obliging, or because he’s in love with her, or because, secretly, he wanted to have some of the power that everyone was denying him.”

Watson padded up behind me. “Hi,” he said, and tucked his arm around my waist. “Got her?”

“Got them both. Her and Rupert,” I said.

Watson sighed. “Everyone except Matilda, then. Where is she? And who killed Dr. Larkin?”

The detective gave us a measured look. “Larkin,” she said, “was injured by that falling light. Badly injured. She’s currently under guard in the ICU.”

She had hinted at this before, but I was still surprised. Watson shot me a look. “It’s sort of cruel,” he said tightly, “to let all those students think their teacher is dead.”

Sadiq raised an eyebrow. “It’s crueler to let a criminal go unpunished. She agreed to it, you know, as soon as she woke up after surgery. That we let everyone think she had died. Tear the bandage off. Throw everyone into a panic. Confuse the real culprit, make them paranoid.”

“And?” Watson said. I could tell he was still angry; I didn’t blame him. We’d had enough deception for one lifetime. “Does she know who did it?”

“There was a power surge in the college,” she said. “The lights flickered. The lighting board was being raised and lowered without an operator, since that tech was in hospital. Dr. Quigley had been playing around with the settings.”

“It was an accident,” I said wonderingly. “I never would have guessed.”

“It was,” she said. “We just made hay while the sun was shining.”

So to speak. “And Matilda?”

Sadiq smiled again, more toothily this time. “I have an appointment with George Wilkes in the morning, remember? Shall I call you after?”

“You’ve put quite a lot of trust in me,” I told her, and reached out to shake her hand. “Thank you.”

“Help is help,” she said. “Go get some sleep, you two.”

WHEN DI SADIQ CALLED, IT WAS NEARLY NOON, AND WE were both still asleep. I shook Watson’s shoulder and put her on speaker, and the two of us dragged ourselves up to sit against the headboard.

George Wilkes was in custody, charged with a number of crimes. Conspiracy, fraud, kidnapping.

After learning that his daughter was pregnant, Wilkes had tried to drag her home from the program. But she’d refused to go. She was going to get an abortion, she told him; she had the appointment already. She would stay and perform her role and come home that fall to apply to conservatory programs, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

Why?

Because Matilda had blackmail. The year before, she’d come home early from a rehearsal to find her father in flagrante (Watson’s phrase, quite excellent) with another woman while her stepmother was out running errands. Her stepmother, nervous and gentle and rich; her money supported her father’s costuming business, which had prestige but not a lot of cash flow.

“Convenient,” Watson said, “that Anwen asked for payment in clothes.”

Matilda threatened to tell her stepmother if her father so much as suggested he’d bring her home. She would have her torrid affair with the boy her father despised, and she would return to her childhood bedroom and go off to conservatory the next year. And he would pay.