A Study in Charlotte

“For—for what I did to August. For me not telling you the whole truth, again. You know, in the future, stop me when I think I’m being clever. Because I’m shooting myself in the foot. If we’d both had all the facts at the beginning of this mess—”

“If,” I said. “That’s a big if. Look. I’ve forgiven you. You have my implicit forgiveness, you know, even when you’re driving me crazy.”

“You got dragged into this because of me,” she said. “Nurse Bryony was making me do my penance. She used you to get to me.”

“So the next crime will have nothing to do with either of us. It’ll be a very benign car theft. In another country. A warm one. We’ll solve it very lazily, lie on the beach between interrogations. Drink margaritas.”

“Thank you,” she said, very seriously.

“Don’t thank me, you’re buying the plane tickets.” I stretched out on the couch with my head in her lap. “Fiji is expensive.”

“I don’t want Fiji. I want home.” She put her hands in my hair. “Jamie.”

“Charlotte.”

“Do come home soon. It won’t be London without you.”

“You never knew me in London,” I said, smiling.

“I know.” Holmes looked down at me with gleaming eyes. “I intend to fix that.”

Epilogue

AFTER READING WATSON’S ACCOUNT OF THE BRYONY DOWNS affair, I feel the need to make a few corrections.

Perhaps more than a few.

First off, his narrative is so utterly romanticized, especially as regards to me, that the most efficient way of breaking down its more metaphorical misconceptions would be in a list.

To wit:

1.When I speak, I don’t sound like Winston Churchill. I sound like Charlotte Holmes.

2.Why on earth would he name my vulture skeletons? They aren’t deserving of names. They’re artifacts. And one of them tried to kill Mouse (Californian vacation, very lazy cat, vultures have no sense of smell), which made me rather upset, and which is why the two idiot things were hanging in my lab until they exploded. Which, for the record, I am fine with.

3.I took Watson to the homecoming dance because Lena’s friend Mariella would have certainly asked him if I didn’t, and she eats boys like him for breakfast before flossing with their bones. (See entry two, re: California condors.) I told Lena I’d take him and then forgot to tell Watson until very late not because I’m shy about my enjoyment of dancing and/or pop music, but because I was busy. To be precise, I was busy studying how quickly blood congeals within an iPhone. I had to draw rather a lot of my own for my test sample, and then I was forced to sleep due to its loss, and then I had to pay Lena back for her bloody mobile. (She didn’t mind. She even let me draw some of her blood, too. Mine is O negative and hers is O positive, which made for a pleasing symmetry.) It was all very interesting, and homecoming is not, and I only went to find him when my test beaker exploded. The blood never quite came out of the ceiling.

4.Tom looked frightful in his powder-blue tuxedo. In this, as in many things, Watson is far too kind. I never corrected him on the subject because at least one of us should be. Kind, that is.

I suppose the rest of his account is more or less bearable, if I ignore the proliferation of adjectives. But it appears that I am willing to put up with many things for the sake of Jamie Watson. He is fond of watching old episodes of The X-Files, which is, to the best of my understanding, a show about a rather appallingly dumb man who is nevertheless very attractive, and aliens. It’s tolerable if I pretend there isn’t any sound. We began when he was still in hospital, and now we’re three seasons in and he shows no sign of giving it up. He was the same way about curry shops in London during our first few days home. I heard quite a bit of rot from him about the curative powers of chicken jalfrezi. He is incapable of eating Indian food without getting red sauce on his clothing; I’ve taken to carrying a bleach pen.

I am doing all kinds of chemical researches on snake venom. I aim to know everything about it by the end of the month. While Watson was ill I learned all there was to know about oysters, because Watson’s father gave them to us at a dinner at his house, and they were delicious. At that dinner, Abbie Watson asked me to watch her two young sons while she did the shopping the next day, most likely because I happen to be a girl and she assumes that this is what girls do for spending money. I agreed, and taught them how to make bombs from dung, and where best to hide them. She didn’t ask me again. Watson’s father thought it very funny, and Watson did too, though he refuses to admit it. I can tell he’s hiding a laugh when he curls his mouth in like he’s eating a lemon. Sometimes I say terrible things just to see him do it.

There haven’t been any more murders, which makes things a bit dull, though I suppose it’s only been a week since we wrapped up our last case. There was an official inquiry into Mr. Wheatley’s actions that resulted in his termination; for his part, Tom was merely suspended. Watson has insisted on forgiving his old roommate, which I consider rather foolish. He and Tom had an obscenely long and emotional phone call that I heard every word of from the next room. That said, I don’t like to see Watson upset, and so I have withheld my opinion on the matter. As the Americans say, we have bigger fish to fry.

I am fairly sure that Bryony Downs is dead, though I allow Watson to go on believing that she is in Milo’s custody. I do think that my theory may be the kinder one. For his part, August Moriarty sent me a card on my birthday. Verbum sap.