A Study in Charlotte

Holmes held us back another ten minutes. “Patience is a virtue, Watson,” she said. “Besides, she might have forgotten something.”

When the coast remained clear, it only took us moments to get to the front door, leading up to both Bryony’s flat and the one above it. It was unlocked. As we crept up the steps, I said a quiet thank you for not having to pick her locked door right there on the street. When we reached it (#2, like the mailbox by her door, printed BRYONY DOWNS) I went down on one knee to inspect the lock. “It’s a Yale,” I said casually, “like the ones I practiced on with you. Do you think I could—”

With a disgusted sound, Holmes turned the knob.

“I see that you’re still scratching your locks,” she said to the man sitting there.

ten

I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT I WAS LOOKING AT.

The room in front of us was almost empty. As in, no tables, no sofas, no rugs, nails where pictures used to hang—empty. From where I stood, I had the clear view through a doorway to where two dark-suited men with Bluetooth earpieces were methodically sorting through boxes of breakfast cereal. One at a time, they opened them, dumped their contents in a bowl, and then tossed it all into a garbage bag. One of them actually whistled while he worked.

It was distinctly possible that I had dreamed myself into a surrealist film, or that Holmes was pulling some elaborate prank. I might have even believed it, too, if it wasn’t for the man sitting in front of us.

He, or one of his minions, had dragged a velvet tufted chair into the center of the bare room. But he wasn’t sitting on it the way you’d have expected. He didn’t cross his legs, or lean lazily into the wing of the chair, stretching out one arm to check the time on his admittedly very nice watch. Those poses wouldn’t have worked on him, anyway: the man was too much of a nerd. A handsome nerd, a very sleek, well-dressed nerd, but a nerd nonetheless. Instead, he sat at the edge of his ridiculous chair, tidily smoking a cigarette.

I sized him up: that was what he clearly wanted, presenting himself in the empty room like an art exhibit. Buddy Holly glasses, a sixties ad-man haircut—a hard side part, tapered at the sides—and from what I could tell, his suit was straight off Savile Row, where James Bond would get fitted for a bespoke jacket, if he were real. Holmes had said he was pudgy, but what I saw instead was a sort of softness from hours spent in front of a computer screen.

None of this would have been all that remarkable on its own. But written invisibly all over him, like white ink on white paper, was power. Electric power. The kind that snapped its fingers and brought a government to its knees. What had Holmes said? MI5? Google? Private security? How much of that was true? Drones, I thought uneasily. He controlled drones.

And I was the genius that had brought him here.

“Where are Nurse Bryony’s things?” I asked, trying to sound like I knew the answer already and was just asking to confirm.

Milo Holmes ignored me. “I don’t scratch locks,” he said in a sonorous voice, smooth where his sister’s was rough. “That was my man Peterson. Wanted to have a go, and I thought there wasn’t any harm. We weren’t in a rush.”

He’d had all of ten minutes to clean out the living room. I hadn’t even seen him go in the door. No rush. Right.

“You’re very kind, sir,” one of the men said from the back, and resumed whistling. They were cracking open Bryony’s eggs now.

Holmes crossed her arms. “You do scratch. Every time. I do a very pretty one, as you well know. You should’ve waited for us.”

He drew on his cigarette. “You look better than I was expecting. My sources led me to believe that it was very bad, this time.”

I swallowed.

“Yes, well, it’s much less razor blades and three a.m. phone calls now, isn’t it, and much more saving my own neck from the noose.” It was easy for me to imagine them as children: Milo, inexorable as a tank, and Holmes, the dervish circling him. She was so restrained, most of the time, but when she wasn’t . . . well. Then, she said things like, “Tell me right now what you have done with my evidence or I will tell Mother about you spying on our fencing instructor in the shower.”

“You won’t. And you know very well what I’ve done with your evidence.”

Holmes cast one hateful look around the room. “New York? Honestly? And you’ve missed all the important parts. I was handling this. It was handled.”

“Handle August Moriarty’s ex-fiancée? Lottie, really.” (Lottie, I thought gleefully, despite myself. Lottie.) “You’re emotional. You really should have left this to the adults. Now that this idea of Mother’s has run its course, let’s bring you home. Boarding school? All wrong. We’ll put you in the London flat. I’m sure I could convince Professor Demarchelier to tutor you—”

“Milo, he hates me, and—”

“No, you aren’t thinking. What if they try to throw you in jail? Americans, with their prisons. My men would get you out before that, of course, but such a hassle. You always did like the skiing in Utah. I would want you to be able to come back. I’d want that, for you.”

It was becoming abundantly clear why Holmes didn’t want her family involved. Emotional? Leaving things to the adults? Sending her away? Skiing?

I was an idiot for calling him in. He could go straight to hell.

“I’d like to know what you’ve done with the evidence,” I said. It came out as a growl. “And how you knew to be here, at this flat.”