A Study in Charlotte

Tom stuck his earphones back in with a sigh.

So you didn’t find anything on Nurse Bryony? I texted her.

No. Sciences 442 at lunch. I heard her footsteps retreating down the hall. We’ll make a plan for Wheatley then.

I LINGERED BY MR. WHEATLEY’S DESK AFTER CLASS, WAVING an inquisitive-looking Tom on to his next class. I had a free period at the end of the day, so I wasn’t in a rush.

Wheatley was talking to one of our class’s better poets, a shy, small girl who wrote exclusively about communing with nature in her native Michigan. As I waited, he gave her a series of book recommendations in his meandering, sleepy voice, and she scribbled them down. Our journals were identical. I tucked mine discreetly back in my bag, feeling a little cliché, and tried to focus on remembering the strategy that Holmes and I had hammered out at lunchtime.

Finally, he turned to me. “Ah, Mr. Watson,” he said to me. “What can I do for you?”

I shuffled my feet. “I wanted to talk to you about my poems,” I told him. “I’m having some trouble putting them together. They’re a lot harder than stories. I was wondering if you had any books I could borrow to do some outside reading.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “I have something in my office I could lend you. Follow me.”

Wheatley’s office was the kind of book-lined cave that, in other circumstances, I would’ve let myself get lost in. There was a hooded copper lamp on his desk that spotlit a stack of our manuscripts, and I recognized my most recent short story on the top. In the corner, a stand-up globe was turned so that a dusty Europe faced out. I sat gingerly in a chair and took a harder look around.

I didn’t have the facility for observation that Holmes had, I knew that. But I’d always liked cataloging the details of a place and its people, using it as grist for my stories. Maybe that interest was more about romanticizing my surroundings than deducing from them, but it still spurred me to look closely at the authors of the books on his shelves (Kafka, Rumi, some Scandinavian mystery writers), the kind of rug on his floor (it had a folksy, hand-woven feel), the kind of coffee he was drinking (he’d brought it from home, in a stainless steel mug). I’d been too muddled and, frankly, scared to look that closely at Nurse Bryony when I was in the infirmary, and I was determined to have more to show for my efforts this time.

Wheatley hummed to himself as he ran his finger along a bookshelf. Though he was a nervous teacher—a pacer, a hand-wringer who started each sentence two or three times—he seemed at ease now, in his office, and I wondered if it was the confidence of a man who knew he had me in his power. Or maybe he just liked me, and was more comfortable speaking one-on-one. It was impossible for me to tell. I wished that Holmes were there.

“Found them,” he said, pulling a few books from the shelf to hand to me. “There’s a book of poetry prompts, in case you’d like to practice, and a collection of essays by contemporary poets that you might find useful in thinking about the impetus for writing a poem.”

“Thanks.” I tucked them in my bag.

“Your fiction is good, as I told you at homecoming,” he said. “Clean and sharp, and very readable. Some of your plots are a bit far-fetched, but I don’t mind the wish-fulfillment aspect of it. I think it runs in your blood, maybe. I read all your great-great-whatever-grandfather’s stories when I was a boy. Wonderful. The movie adaptations from the thirties were very good, too.”

I’d always hated those films—they’d portrayed Dr. Watson as a bumbling idiot, and Sherlock Holmes as an automaton. But I saw my opening, and took it. “They’re great, aren’t they? My favorite is the one about the snake. ‘The Speckled Band.’”

“I know that story.” Mr. Wheatley shuddered. “I hate snakes. My brother keeps them on his farm, and I—well, I make him visit me. Can’t do it. After I heard what happened to that Dobson boy, I couldn’t sleep for days.”

His distress seemed genuine, but I couldn’t be sure. “He was attacked by a snake?” I asked innocently.

“After he died,” Mr. Wheatley said. “I’m surprised you don’t know. Didn’t the police talk to you about it?”

“They talked to you about it?”

He squirmed a little in his chair. It was strange to see an adult act so squirrelly. “I keep a close tab on the news. I have a friend on the force. You know.”

I could tell he was lying. But it didn’t mean I knew what the truth was.

“That reminds me,” I said, trying a different tack. “I wanted to know about how to write from our lives, especially when things get weird and . . . unbelievable. Can you still do it? Write about them? You talk a lot about how we need to write from our own experiences, but when awful things happen—”

“You can talk to me about it, if you need to,” he cut in. “It might help you organize your thoughts. You could even write me a story about it. For extra credit. After all, you’ve skipped almost a week’s worth of classes.”

I looked at my hands, wondering what he’d try to get out of me. It might be useful to play along.

Also, I could use the extra credit.

“Sure, I could try that,” I said.

He pulled a legal pad out from under the stack of papers on his desk and balanced it on his knee. “So,” he said, lifting a page or two and sliding a piece of cardboard beneath it. “What are you finding so unbelievable?”