A Study in Charlotte

But she knew that. So what could she mean?

Last night—a hand on my forehead, a deliberate, closed-mouth kiss. Roses. And her smile as she walked out the door, telling me not to die before I could use it as a bargaining chip.

Oh.

I let my eyes fall closed. I willed my breathing to slow. And I fell, heavily, out of the chair onto the thick pink carpet.

“Watson!” Holmes cried, a perfect parody of the last time she’d thought I was dead.

Stumbling. Footsteps. Bryony saying, “Oh, damn,” as she crouched above me. I could smell the Forever Ever Cotton Candy. A man’s cold fingers on my cheek, then moving to my neck to take a pulse.

“He’s alive,” Milo announced. “He’s alive, but barely.”

“Don’t move him,” Holmes said. “I’ll get the blanket from the bed.”

I opened my eyes to slits. Bryony was still crouched over me, an unexpected look of concern on her face. “Jamie,” she said. “It’ll be okay. This will be over soon, as soon as your girlfriend agrees to let me go.”

I was actually beginning to think that wasn’t the worst idea.

More footsteps. Milo saying, “Couldn’t you take a look at him, Bryony? For his sake?” Bryony’s bit lip as she took her eyes off the bedroom door and fixed them on me.

The sound of a handgun being cocked.

“Get up,” Holmes snarled. “With your hands behind your head.”

Nurse Bryony got to her feet, stiffly.

“You’re wearing a wire,” Holmes said. “It’s wrapped around your handgun holster, which is in and of itself very clever, as most of us would notice the gun and then instantly avert our eyes. I am not most people, as you well know. So yes, hello Lucien, I’m happy to know that you’re well and having your crony deal drugs to the Sherringford milieu, and as I’ve said in the many letters I sent you in prison, I am very sorry for my part in your two months’ incarceration, though I’d wager that one of the dozens of other children you sold coke to would’ve ratted you out eventually. I hope that you’ve enjoyed being an accessory to murder.”

She walked forward, the gun steady in her hands. “I’d suggest that you don’t attempt to blow the suitcase bomb that I found in the linen closet, as I’ve already defused it. I didn’t even need to take to Google for that one. But then, thanks to my father, I imagine I’ve forgotten more about designing explosives than you’ve ever learned.”

She was close enough now that she and Bryony were eye to eye. With wild eyes, Bryony opened her mouth, and Holmes lifted one black boot and stomped the heel of it onto the nurse’s foot.

“Now, now. Speaking out of turn. I’m afraid that I’m not as tolerant of that as you. I really should be taking lessons.”

Bryony whimpered against the pain, her hands still tucked behind her head. Swiftly, Holmes pulled the pistol from under Bryony’s coat and tossed it to Milo, who caught it neatly.

“Bryony Downs,” Holmes mused. “What can I say? If I could apologize to August, I would.”

I noticed that she was still maintaining the fiction that August Moriarty was dead, even now, when throwing the truth into Nurse Bryony’s face would be the ultimate punishment.

But Holmes was still speaking. “I’ve been through three separate rehabilitation programs. I may, in fact, simply be a terrible person at heart, but the difference between you and me is that I fight it. With every single atom of my being I fight against it. I might be an amateur detective but you are a bloody psychopath, and I would rather put this gun in my mouth than let you skip away to St. Petersburg where you can prey on teenage boys on my brother’s blood money. You orchestrated my rape, and you call me a whore? No. This is the absolute end of the line.”

“And you’re just going to leave your friend to die,” Nurse Bryony said in a harsh whisper.

It was what I’d asked her to do, after all. To keep herself out of jail at any cost. I tried to breathe through the panic clenching my lungs.

Holmes sighed. “No, of course I’m not,” she said, and I almost died right there from relief. “My brother’s men are retrieving the antidote from Watson’s dorm room as we speak. It’s a clever place to hide it, isn’t it? The same place where you infected him? Wanted us to really be kicking ourselves when we found it. But it was easy enough to deduce from the university keys sticking out of your pocket, and not your handbag, and the glass shards embedded in your boot soles. Those, I confirmed when Watson here so obligingly fainted and you got to your knees to examine him. Shards of one-way glass, specifically. Any second now, Peterson will text me that he’s found the antidote.”

As if on cue, her phone chirped.

“How could you know that,” Bryony said. “How could you know that for sure,” and I was surprised to hear an element of jealousy in her voice.

“Because, right now, you look furious,” Holmes said. “So thanks for the confirmation.”

Nurse Bryony spat on the floor.

Holmes rolled her eyes. “It was a bloody stupid place to hide it anyway, far too close to your flat—which is perfectly awful, by the by. So close, in fact, that we’d have fetched it and injected Watson before you had proper time to make your getaway. Why, really, would we let you abscond with three million dollars’ worth of my brother’s money when you had no further cards to play?

“Though I suppose you had Lucien as a last resort. Hello again, Lucien.”