A Study in Charlotte

Holmes’s phone buzzed. “I have to take this, excuse me.” She stepped out the back door, and I watched her through the glass as she paced in her dress, speaking rapidly to someone.

“Who could possibly be calling her?” I wondered aloud. “It must be her brother.”

My father kept slicing the pie. “I hope you’re not terribly mad at me.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I’m furious.”

“It seemed to have worked out rather well, though, you have to give me that.” He handed me a heaping plate. I wished, badly, that I wasn’t starving.

“Well? This worked out well?” I choked. “God, I don’t have to give you anything.”

“Jamie. Please don’t be like this.” He was avoiding my eyes. “Aren’t you happy you met Charlotte? She’s lovely, isn’t she?”

“Will you please stop side-stepping the point? This isn’t about Holmes, it’s about the strings you pulled to get me here. God, you don’t even know me! I hadn’t seen you for years! How can you not understand that being bored isn’t an excuse to reach in and fuck with my life for fun?”

“Language,” my father warned.

“You don’t get to do that.” I heard myself getting loud. “You don’t get to deflect every response you don’t like. I’m in a horrible mess that you, for whatever reason, have decided to find charming.”

With shaking hands, he set down the knife. I was shocked to see his eyes glossed in tears. “You’re right, Jamie. I don’t know you anymore. God help me for wanting that to change.”

The doorbell rang.

“He’s early,” my father said, and hurriedly plated some pie for Holmes. “I’ll get it.”

When he left the room, I let out a ragged breath I hadn’t known I was holding.

Holmes slipped back into the house. “Well, that looked rather brutal,” she said, eyeing me. It was an observation, not an attempt at sympathy, and so I didn’t have to respond to it.

“Sit,” I said instead, pulling out a stool. “Who called you?”

My father walked in, Detective Shepard behind him. Holmes read something in their faces that I didn’t, because her posture, always impeccable, went ramrod-straight.

“Jamie. Charlotte.” I noticed that Shepard had dark circles under his eyes. “I’d like to get you back down to the station. Now.”

“What are you charging us with?” I asked him.

“I’d like to get you back down to the station,” he repeated, a patented non-answer.

“You’ll need to wait for my lawyer,” Holmes said coolly. “He’ll be representing both of us, but as his office is in New York, it could be several hours until he arrives. Do you mind if I phone him?”

The detective nodded, and she placed the call right there.

I felt a rush of relief. The worst possible outcome was happening. I could finally, finally stop dreading it.

My father, being my father, chose that moment to begin to worry.

“Do you mind if they eat in the meantime?” he asked, a plea in his voice. “I don’t know how long they’ll be down at—at the station, and dinner’s on the table. You’re welcome to join us, of course.”

Shepard hesitated. He took in Holmes’s too-thin frame, the steaming plate in front of me, and I watched him give in. “Fine. They can eat, since we’ll have to wait for their lawyer anyway. But be quick about it.” He set his bag down, and took a seat.

I made an effort with the pie, though I pushed it aside after a few bites. Shepard’s scrutiny made me too uncomfortable to eat. For her part, Holmes decided to develop an appetite. Slowly, fastidiously, she picked the carrots from the crust one by one. Once removed, she sliced them into quarters and then halved them again. After spearing each piece with her fork, she dipped it into the mashed potato and transferred it to her mouth. She chewed each morsel seventeen times. And then she repeated the process. Across the table, my father watched her, one hand gripping the table hard.

I wondered if he was still enjoying himself.

Silence reigned. After twenty minutes, Holmes hadn’t even gotten to the steak, and the detective began to shift unhappily in his chair. I took the chance to catalog him, to try to draw some Holmesian deductions. He was in his late thirties, I decided. Clean-shaven, but in rumpled clothes. He clearly hadn’t gotten home to change or shower since interrogating Holmes last night. There was a wedding band on his left hand. I couldn’t tell if he had kids of his own, but his decision to let us eat dinner made me think he did. What I couldn’t account for was the reluctance that radiated off him, the way he projected unease in his posture, in his frown, his furrowed brow. Like my father, he’d lost his eagerness.

“I understand why you did it. To Dobson,” he said quietly, watching Holmes eat. She didn’t look up. “Every account I get says that kid was a bastard, and he was fixated on you. But what I don’t get is why you didn’t just tell the school about his abuse and get it to stop. And I don’t get why the two of you would attack Elizabeth Hartwell. Bryony Downs, the Sherringford nurse, told me that you, Charlotte, had been behaving erratically at the dance all night—”

“Way to make friends,” I said to her.

“—and then the two of you chase some other guy down into these underground tunnels I’ve never even heard of, where we find you in a room straight out of a TV procedural, just waiting for us. I found these in there.” He dug a pair of trousers and a black shirt out of the bag, and shook them out for her inspection. “Yours?”