A Study in Charlotte

“We?”

“You and my uncle,” Holmes said to my father, bypassing me entirely.

“What?” I said faintly. I was still trying to process the fact that I wasn’t, in fact, a genius rugger, and that no one had told our poor captain. “Wait. You’re going to solve this mystery. Not the Dobson-Elizabeth-drug dealer mystery. This one. And you’re going to solve it now.” I stifled a semi-hysterical laugh. “When I didn’t even know there was a mystery. God, what could I possibly have done in a past life to get stuck with someone like you?”

“Go on,” my father was saying happily. It was good that one of us was enjoying himself. “Tell me how you know.”

She ticked the deductions off on her fingers. “You were born in Edinburgh like the rest of your family, but you have an Oxbridge spin on your words. When you opened your cupboard to fetch these flutes, I saw a mug, top shelf, with the Balliol College blazon on. Oxford, then.”

My father spread his hands, waiting for her to continue.

“You hugged me with a surprising amount of familiarity when we met, but you didn’t hug your son. Even with your difficult relationship”—my father’s smile faltered for a moment—“if you were so prone to hugs, you would have made an attempt on him anyway. No, you felt you knew me. You must have heard of me, then, and not in the papers—or there would have been polite pity and no hug—but from someone who spoke highly of me, and with warmth. The first rules out my parents; the second, most of my relatives. My brother, Milo, doesn’t believe in friends, and anyway, you’d have no reason to chat to a pudgy, secretive computer genius who leaves his Berlin flat only under extreme duress. My aunt Araminta is nice enough, which means she’s glacial by society’s standards. Cousin Margaret is twelve, and Great-Aunt Agatha is dead, and that’s the tour de monde of the effusive members of my family.

“Excepting, of course, my dear old uncle Leander, Balliol College ’89, who gave me my violin, and is the first Holmes in known memory to host a party of his own free will. Of course you’re friends.” She peered at him for a second. “Oh. And flatmates. For at least a year, no more than three.”

I poured another glass of champagne and drank it straight down.

My father, smartly, put the bottle away. “You’re as clever as he is, Charlotte, and a great deal quicker. Though Leander, bless him, is lazy enough to solve a crime and forget to tell his client for months.

“He came to your seventh birthday party,” my father told me. “Don’t you remember?” My seventh birthday party had been held at one of those roadside amusement parks with a go-kart track and a half-dozen arcade games. “He brought you a rabbit as a gift. Giant thing. Big floppy ears. Your mother, being your mother, sent it immediately to a nice home in the country.”

“Harold,” I said, piecing it together. That had been the rabbit’s name. I had an impression of a towering man with slicked-back hair and a lazy smile.

“I roomed with him back before I met your mother,” he said. “Bachelor days, before I was lured away to London. Leander had set up as a private detective, and I was . . . well, I was very bored. We were introduced at an alumni event at a pub; I’m sure you’ve noticed how keen everyone is to introduce a Holmes to a Watson. He was chatting up the bartender. I think he brought him home in the end. Could turn on the charm, Leander, when the situation called for it.” He raised an eyebrow at Holmes, who didn’t blush but looked like she might’ve liked to.

“And you’re still friends?” I asked.

“Yes, of course,” my father said. “The two of us, we’re the best kind of disaster. Apples and oranges. Well, more like apples and machetes.” He studied my face for a moment. “I thought you could use a little shaking up, Jamie. That school in London was too expensive for what a bloody toff factory it was, and even with what I could contribute, we couldn’t afford to keep you there. I told Leander about my frustrations, and he mentioned that Charlotte here had just been deposited, friendless and alone, only an hour from my house. Did you really think this was a coincidence—the two of you winding up here, in America, at the same boarding school?”

I was fed up with all these ridiculous bombshells and rhetorical questions. “Yes,” I said pointedly. “Also, your pie smells like it’s burning.”

Holmes sniffed the air. “It smells quite good, actually,” she said, and took it out to cool. I scowled at her. She made a helpless gesture.

“The tuition . . . well, Leander offered to pay it. When I said no, he told me that otherwise he’d just buy another Stradivarius. I tried telling him that he’d have to put an entire town through Sherringford to come close to the price of a Strad, but he held firm. I gave in. And so Leander arranged some sleight-of-hand with the board of trustees and offered you a ‘scholarship.’ You didn’t wonder why you didn’t lose your scholarship when you were suspended from the rugby team?” He grinned. “That’s why. The whole thing was quite fun. I think he enjoyed it immensely.”

“Yes,” I said, thinking of all my violent resentment at being sent away, of having to leave London, my friends, my kid sister. “Fun.”

“Well then.” My father clapped his hands together. “You’ve met! You’re friends! You’ve found yourselves a murder! I couldn’t have asked for more. Come, let’s eat before the detective arrives.”