“We had a lot of fun,” I told her, giving her daughter a dirty look. Her mother seemed to be doing her best. I felt bad for her, all dressed up in this ridiculous room when she clearly wished she was back in bed. “Walked along the Thames. Saw a lot of bookshops. Nothing too demanding.”
“I always think it’s nice to take a break after a difficult semester. From what I’ve heard, yours was especially so.”
I laughed. “An understatement, actually.”
Her mother nodded, eyes half-focused. “And remind me. Why was it, again, that you and my daughter were immediately suspected for that boy’s murder? I understand that he attacked her. But why on earth were you involved?”
“I didn’t volunteer to be a suspect, if that’s what you’re asking.” I tried to keep my tone light.
“Well, the reason I’d been given was that you’d been nursing some ridiculous crush on my daughter, but I still don’t understand how that demanded your involvement.”
It was as if I’d been hit across the face. “What? I—”
Charlotte continued rearranging her food. Her expression hadn’t changed.
“It’s a simple question,” her mother said in that quiet voice. “A more complicated one would be, why are you still shadowing her if those circumstances have resolved themselves? I don’t see why she has any use of you now.”
“I’m fairly sure she likes me.” I enunciated my words. Not out of spite—I was terrified that I would stutter. “We’re friends, spending time together over the winter holiday. It’s not a new concept.”
“Ah.” There was a wealth of meaning in that syllable: doubt, derision, a healthy dose of scorn. “And yet she doesn’t have friends. It hardly hurts that you’re handsome, or that you’re from reduced circumstances. I imagine you’d follow her anywhere. That combination must be catnip for a girl like our Lottie. A ready-made acolyte. But what could possibly be in it for you?”
Had we been anywhere else, with anyone else, Holmes would have barreled into this conversation like an armored tank. I knew how to defend myself, but I was so used to her quick, fearless wit that, in its absence, I found myself speechless.
And it was absent. Holmes herself was absent. Her eyes had gone dark and faraway, her fork still tracing patterns on her plate. How long had this been broiling under Emma Holmes’s skin? Or was it something concocted on the spot, a punishment for Charlotte mouthing off to her mother?
Emma Holmes turned her lantern eyes to me. “If you’re planning something. If you’re in someone’s employ. If you demand things from her that she cannot give—”
“You don’t have to—” Finally, her daughter spoke. Only to be cut right off.
“If you hurt her, I will ruin you. That’s all.” Emma Holmes raised her voice to the rest of the table. “And on that subject, Walter, why don’t you tell us about the exhibit you’re working on? I thought I heard the name Picasso tossed around.”
It wasn’t meant as punishment. It was love for her daughter, and it was terrifying.
I watched as a shudder ground through Charlotte’s shoulders. No wonder she never had an appetite, if mealtimes had always been as tumultuous as this.
Down the table, the curator was dabbing his mouth with his napkin. “Picasso, yes. Alistair was just telling me about your private collection. You house it in London? I’d love to see it. Picasso was quite prolific, as you know, and gave away so many sketches as gifts that new pieces are always coming to light.”
Holmes’s mother waved a hand. I recognized the gesture from her daughter. “Call my secretary,” she said. “I’m sure she can arrange a tour of our holdings.”
At that, I excused myself. I needed to do that clichéd movie thing where I splashed cold water on my face. To my surprise, Eliska dropped her napkin on her chair and followed me down the hall.
“Jamie, yes?” she asked in accented English. When I nodded, she peered over her shoulder to make sure we were alone. “Jamie, this is . . . bullshit.”
“That sounds about right.”
She stalked into the bathroom to check her reflection in the mirror. “My mother, she tells me we go to Britain for a year. Not too long to miss my friends back in Prague. I will make new ones. But everyone is a thousand years old, or stupid, or silent.”
“Not everyone here is like that,” I found myself saying. “I’m not. Charlotte Holmes isn’t. Usually.”
With a finger, Eliska wiped off a bit of stray lipstick. “Maybe somewhere else, she is better. But I go to these family dinners in these big houses and the teenagers are silent. The food is very good. At my home, the food is terrible and the teenagers are much more fun.” She looked at me over her shoulder, considering. “My mother and I go back in one week. She has a new job in the government. If you are in Prague, come see me. I feel—how should I say?—sorry for you.”
“I always appreciate a good pity invite,” I countered, but my heart wasn’t in it. Eliska could tell. She flashed me a smile and left.
When I got back to the table, Emma Holmes had already gone up to bed. Dessert had been served, an architectural piece of cheesecake the size of my thumbnail, and Alistair Holmes was asking his daughter a series of softball questions about Sherringford. What have you learned in your chemistry tutorial? Do you like your instructor? How do you think you’ll apply those skills to your deductive work? Holmes answered in monosyllables.
After a minute, I found I couldn’t listen to the questions anymore. I couldn’t, not when Charlotte Holmes was pulling one of her magic tricks right across from me. She wasn’t pulling a rabbit out of a theoretical hat or transforming herself into a stranger. This time, without moving a single muscle, she was disappearing completely into her high-backed velvet chair.
I DIDN’T RECOGNIZE HER. NOT HERE. NOT IN THIS HOUSE. I didn’t recognize me.
Maybe this is what happened when you built a friendship on a foundation of mutual disaster. It collapsed the second things righted themselves, left you desperate for the next earthquake. I knew, deep down, there was more to it than this. But I wanted an easy solution. It was awful to wish for a murder case to fall at your feet, and I found myself wanting it anyway.
Holmes left dinner without saying anything to me. When I caught up to her, she’d already locked her bedroom door. I knocked for a solid five minutes without any reply. For a long, pointless moment, I stood there in the hall. Upstairs, I heard the edges of a male voice, shouting. They can’t do that to us. They can’t take that from us—and then a door, slamming.
“We can’t have that,” a voice said behind me. I jumped. It was the housekeeper, who’d found me waiting in the hall like some pathetic dog. She showed me to my room. From her kind, impersonal manner, I got the idea that she must have been used to finding strays around.
I spent that night in a giant bed across from a set of giant windows that rattled every time the wind whipped by. “Spent the night” was the right term—it’d be a lie to say I slept there. I couldn’t sleep at all. I knew now that I wasn’t the only one who wished for awful things. Every time I closed my eyes I saw a slump-shouldered Holmes willing herself into nonexistence across the dinner table. It kept me up because I knew that if she made up her mind, she was determined enough to follow through, to take a handful of pills and lock the world out. I’d seen her do it once already, under my father’s porch. I couldn’t watch it happen again.