Maybe Charlotte Holmes was still learning how to pick apart a case; maybe I was still learning how to write. We weren’t Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. I was okay with that, I thought. We had things they didn’t, too. Like electricity, and refrigerators. And Mario Kart.
“Watson,” she said, “you don’t need to pretend that you’ve forgiven me.”
This came out of nowhere. “For what?”
“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.
Lucien Moriarty has been spotted in Thailand. I asked my brother to fit him with a microchip, like the kind they have for dogs, and he categorically refused. Ergo, we are relying on Milo’s operatives to trace his movements.
We will be back at Sherringford in the spring. Watson’s scholarship meant he was paid up through this year, so we have decided to stay. His family hasn’t any money and I don’t much care where I study, as my most important work is independently accomplished. Milo agreed that it was best to remain here, for now, though naturally my parents were displeased.
I’m rather beginning to enjoy displeasing them.
I am one week clean and don’t wish to say any more on the subject.
A final note on Watson. He flagellates himself rather a lot, as this narrative shows. He shouldn’t. He is lovely and warm and quite brave and a bit heedless of his own safety and by any measure the best man I’ve ever known. I’ve discovered that I am very clever when it comes to caring about him, and so I will continue to do so.
Later today I will ask him to spend the rest of winter break at my family’s home in Sussex. (I must remember to tell my parents, though I’m sure they’ve already deduced my intentions.) My always-amusing uncle Leander is due in for a visit. We will look for a good murder or, at the very least, an interesting heist to solve. Watson will say yes, I’m sure of it. He always says yes to me.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First of all, so many thanks to my wonderful editor, Anica Rissi, for her keen eyes and edits and her belief in this book. I am so indebted to you. Thanks too to Alexandra Arnold and everyone else at Katherine Tegen Books and HarperCollins. I feel so incredibly lucky to be a Katherine Tegen author.
To Lana Popovic, my amazing agent, editor, and friend—you have encouraged me every single step of the way. I know for sure this wouldn’t be a book without you. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for taking a chance on me.
Many thanks to Terra Chalberg for championing this book abroad and to everyone else at Chalberg and Sussman, wonder agency.
Thank you to my friends Chloe Benjamin, Rebecca Dunham, Rebecca Hazelton, Emi
ly Temple, and Kit Williamson for being amazing, encouraging readers, and to my professors Liam Callanan and Judy Mitchell, who told me I could. And to Ted Martin, for his endless patience for discussing Sherlockiana with me.
I’m deeply indebted to William S. Baring-Gould for his Sherlock Holmes scholarship—his Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street was invaluable, and I’ve littered this novel with loving reference to his work. Endless thanks to Leslie Klinger; his New Annotated Sherlock Holmes has sat dog-eared on my desk for the last two years. I’m greatly indebted, too, to all the other scholars and writers who have played the Game before me.
Thanks to my parents, for being my biggest champions from day one. To my grandfather, for giving us the Holmes stories in the first place. Thanks and love to Chase, for his love and patience while I’ve filled my hours and covered our walls with this book. I never thought I’d find somebody like you. I am so lucky I did.
And finally, and most importantly, thanks to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for giving us all Holmes and Watson in the first place. This is, more than anything, a work written for love of them.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Kit Williamson
BRITTANY CAVALLARO is a poet, fiction writer, and old-school Sherlockian. She is the author of the poetry collection Girl-King and is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She earned her BA in literature from Middlebury College and her MFA in poetry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Currently, she’s a PhD candidate in English literature at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. She lives in Wisconsin with her husband, cat, and collection of deerstalker caps. Find her at her website, www.brittanycavallaro.com, or on Twitter @skippingstones.
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CREDITS
Cover art © 2016 by Dan Funderburgh
Cover design by Katie Fitch
COPYRIGHT
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
A STUDY IN CHARLOTTE. Copyright © 2016 by Brittany Cavallaro. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cavallaro, Brittany.
A study in Charlotte / Brittany Cavallaro. — First edition.
pages cm
Summary: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson descendants, Charlotte and Jamie, students at a Connecticut boarding school, team up to solve a murder mystery.
ISBN 978-0-06-239890-1 (hardback)
EPub Edition © February 2016 ISBN 9780062398932
[1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Murder—Fiction. 3. Love—Fiction. 4. Boarding schools—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.1.C42St 2016 2015015669
[Fic]—dc23 CIP
AC
16 17 18 19 20 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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A Study in Charlotte Page 26