A Study in Charlotte

“Well,” I said, “it’s a little weird that my best friend is a Holmes. I never really expected that to happen.”

“Hm,” he said, making a note. “Tell me more about your relationship with Charlotte Holmes?”

Even though I’d led him to the topic, I still found his tone obnoxious. I gritted my teeth. “Like I said, she’s my best friend.”

“And yet you went to the dance together. She could have more complicated feelings. It’s important to consider these kinds of things,” he said, slipping into teacher mode. “For character development.”

If anyone had complicated feelings, it was me. And those were none of his fucking business. “We’re talking about Charlotte Holmes here. I think she has complicated relationships even with the skeletons in her lab. Nothing is straightforward to her.”

I thought I’d dodged the question, but his eyes lit up. “She keeps skeletons in her office,” he said, scribbling it down. “Interesting.”

“Her lab,” I corrected him. Too late, I remembered what Holmes had taught me, about how easy it is to get people to correct you.

“Where’s her lab?” he asked, not looking at me.

“I can’t remember,” I lied. “She doesn’t let anyone in there.”

“Very private,” he said. “Good. She has kind of a goth look to her, doesn’t she? Is it cultivated, do you think?”

“Holmes wears what she wants to wear. Like I do.” I frowned. “She’s not some agent of death. Or a cartoon. I always thought she looked very London, that’s all. I don’t understand how this would help me write this story.”

“Character development,” he repeated. “Tell me, when she investigates, does she behave much like her famous forebear?”

“Sherlock?” I asked. “I don’t know, I haven’t exactly met him in the flesh.”

Mr. Wheatley laughed, then abruptly stopped. “No. Really. Does she?”

It went on for a long time. I let him draw me out bit by bit, noting carefully to hear where he directed the conversation. I told him that I’d been struggling to write down the story of Dobson’s death and the police’s investigation into my life, but Mr. Wheatley didn’t want to talk about Dobson at all. I took it as a sign that he already knew all there was to know about “that poor boy” and his murder. And though everyone on campus knew now that Holmes and I had found Elizabeth unconscious in the quad, he didn’t even ask about her either. But Holmes? Mr. Wheatley wanted to know everything: about her childhood, about her older brother (whose name he readily knew), about the circumstances of her coming to Sherringford. Thankfully, my own knowledge of her was patchwork enough that I could plead ignorance. But it was all incredibly damning, watching him write down her whole dossier. Why could he possibly want that information except to use it against us?

That is, until he ripped the sheet he’d been writing on from his legal pad and handed it over to me. I stared at it for a minute, not understanding. “There. Sometimes it helps to say it all aloud before you start shaping your piece. But it all sounds very hard to deal with, Jamie, like I’d said before.” He leaned over to scribble something at the top of the paper. “If you’d prefer to talk to someone else, here’s the name of the school therapist. She’s very kind, and you shouldn’t be ashamed about making an appointment. Most people eventually do.”

I folded the sheet and put it in my pocket, feeling distinctly ashamed. He’d just been trying to help after all, if a little ham-handedly. Mr. Wheatley was a good man, and he was concerned about me, and still I had been imagining him to be out for my blood. Wondering if he had lowered that rattlesnake onto Dobson’s convulsing form.

Was this what it was always like, doing detective work? How could you ever let yourself get close to anyone? No wonder Holmes was so determined to keep herself apart.

When I left Wheatley’s office, I went straight to Sciences 442. It had only taken an hour alone for Holmes to trash her lab. The carpet was an explosion of open file folders, their pages spread out like snow. Something bright green was frothing over on a Bunsen burner, and the entire room smelled of cilantro. In the midst of all this chaos, Holmes was slumped on the floor in her uniform like a black-and-white bird, smoking a cigarette and reading The History of Dirt. It was so gigantic that she had to brace it against her knees. Above her, the vulture skeletons swung lazily on their strings. During one of our marathon research sessions, I’d decided to name them Julian and George, and today, Julian’s skull sported a small knife that looked as if it’d been stabbed there. I shuddered.

“Your book looks great,” I said, picking a path across the room. “What’s the sequel? Worms and You?”

“Don’t tease, I know nothing about American soils. And the idea of tracing a murder victim by the contents of their shoe soles is hardly far-fetched.” She turned a page, and I could see that she was incredibly tense. “You sound disappointed. You don’t suspect Wheatley, then.”

“I don’t,” I said. “Or Nurse Bryony. Or maybe I suspect both of them because we have a disappeared dealer, and I want someone concrete to suspect. I’m in some muddled state where I can’t tell what I think.”

“It’s because you care,” she said. “About nearly everyone. It’s remarkable, really, but in this instance, it clouds your judgment. It’s why I try to avoid sentiment.”