It took forty-five seconds for me to trot to the bottom of the aisle, minimal effort to hoist myself up onto the stage. I stepped into the wings and traced a path past the lighting board to the set of stairs in the back, for the actors and crew to access the dressing rooms in the basement. The stairs were painted black, as Dr. Larkin had said, and the fluorescent tape at their edges looked new. Twelve steps down, a small, spare hallway at the bottom. No other obvious exits other than the one back up through the theater. Anyone who had crept in to deliver orchids to their victims had, on first blush, to have been backstage already to do so.
Still, there was something different about the quality of the air than I expected. Basements, as a rule, were cooler than the floors above, especially basements made of cinderblock, as this one was, and yet I could feel a whisper of hot air on the back of my neck.
I shut my eyes to listen.
A bicycle bell. A man laughing. Not loud, not obvious. For me to hear those sounds in a building whose walls could have happily survived a siege, there had to be another exit to the outside. Perhaps walled off, perhaps hidden, but there.
Later I would have time to investigate further, but for now I had to peer back into the human element of this case. When I reemerged onto the stage, it was just past noon, and I hurried back out the front doors to look for Anwen. I had no intention of upsetting her this early in our relationship.
Well. This early in the case. I wasn’t here to make friends. (Which was something I couldn’t say anymore, as Watson said it made me sound like a reality television star.)
But I pushed through the doors to find the street empty. A family of tourists straggled by, listening to a walking tour on headphones and pointing silently at the imposing building across the square; a girl I recognized from my biochem lecture walked by with a golden retriever on a lead. I was temporarily distracted by this—how was she allowed a dog? Where was she keeping it? It was a bit too large and happy to have been kept in a closet—and then I realized that she was on her way to the Sainsbury’s on the High Street to do her grocery shop (set of canvas bags, water bowl for dog waiting on street). She lived here, as I did.
Ten minutes had passed, and no Anwen. I turned on my heel to see if I had possibly missed her inside the theater (though the aisle carpet had no prints other than mine since it had last been vacuumed). Then stopped short when I came to the second set of doors.
A note. I’m in the sound booth upstairs. Meet me there?
I studied it, a bit bemused. I hadn’t seen it when I’d left, which didn’t mean it wasn’t there—but it was certainly taped up after I’d first arrived. Which left a ten-minute window. We’d just missed each other. The handwriting didn’t look particularly feminine, but neither did mine, and anyway, I was the one who was running late.
I took the note and put it in my bag.
There was another set of stairs here in the vestibule that I had imagined went up to Dr. Larkin’s office, and when I climbed them, they proved to do just that. As well as to a door that read SOUND BOOTH.
I paused, my hand on the knob, before I barged in. You are being very stupid, Holmes, I thought. Behave like yourself. Pay attention.
There wasn’t any sound inside. The building was still. I looked down to examine the floor beneath my boots, and it was hardwood, old and creaky. Had there been anyone waiting beyond the door, I would have heard their shoes, or their chair. No one stayed perfectly still, waiting.
Hardly anyone, anyway.
I knocked. No answer.
Next to the door was a bulletin board, and on it, a calendar. ORCHIDS OF THE WORLD.
It looked new.
“Anwen?” I called again, and I may have been many things, but I wasn’t an utter fool. Anyone trying to murder me would at least need to put in some effort. When I yanked the door open, I took a quick series of steps back and to the side.
In time to keep the blood-soaked figure from falling directly on top of me.
It was fair to say that, after the events of the past few years, my nerves were still somewhat shot. So I hoped I would be forgiven for yelling, “ABSOLUTELY NOT,” before I leapt quickly backward.
After a long moment in which I was not beheaded, I straightened. The figure was still on the floor. A cursory inspection showed that it was in fact made of bedsheets knotted together into the shape of a body—head, shoulders, and so on—and fallen faceup. A photograph of a girl’s face had been pinned in the appropriate place. At a glance, I thought it to be Matilda Wilkes, and a quick search on my phone (Facebook; infinitely useful) confirmed my supposition. Hardly surprising.
What was: the piece de resistance, a plastic dagger stuck into the figure’s chest.
It was stuck in the wrong side of the figure’s chest, but then, I supposed the perpetrator’s heart was in the right place.
(I took note of that joke to repeat it to Watson later. I was on something of a crusade to prove to him that I had a sense of humor.)
“Amateurs,” I said as I bent beside it, snapping on a pair of latex gloves; I kept them in my bag for such occasions. I ran my hands over the figure, then lifted it slightly, both to gauge its weight (less than ten pounds; easy enough to prop up inside the door, no matter the perpetrator’s size) and to see if the dagger would fall out. It didn’t. It had been wedged into a knot, which kept the plastic blade stable, and I wasn’t about to dislodge the evidence. The knife itself was a standard costume shop prop; they could have bought it anywhere, taken it from the basement of this very theater. Still, I found its serial number, then photographed it. Then sniffed the splatter of ketchup around it, made to look like blood.
A good corn syrup mixture was much more realistic.
The knot itself was more interesting. I examined it, photographed it, and made a note to look into it later. I’d just leaned back to take some shots of the scene when I heard footsteps on the stair.
“Holmes.” Watson pelting down the short hall, his trainers squeaking on the hardwood. “I heard you yell—I—” He pulled up short.
“Not a body,” I said.
“No.” He looked down at it. “More like a dead sheet monster.”
“Anwen stood me up.”
“She’s actually right behind me,” he said, squatting down next to the figure. “With Dr. Larkin. She’d gone to meet her to get the keys, in case the theater wasn’t unlocked. But I guess she had to run around to track her down, Dr. Larkin was in a meeting in another building—”
“With the Soc’s new director, actually,” Dr. Larkin said, stepping into the hall, Anwen just behind her. “You’ll meet him tomorrow night. Dear God, Charlotte, what happened?”
A clumsy but effective announcement that this campaign of fear hasn’t ended, I thought, but what I said was, “I don’t know, I’m all shaky,” and threw myself into Watson’s arms, my fists tucked up against his chest. Quickly, I pulled off my gloves and stuffed them between the buttons of his shirt, then down. He stifled a yelp. I suppose it would be surprising, having a ball of warm latex shoved under your clothes without warning.
“Pretend I’m upset,” I whispered.
“She’s had a scare,” he told them as I pushed my face into his shirt. “I don’t know if there’s someone you need to report this to, or what, but I think I should get Charlotte out of here.”
I looked up tearfully at Dr. Larkin, whose brow was furrowed—Who do I call, I saw her think, what do I say that can keep the program open—and at Anwen, whose face was a perfect blank.
“They’re going to cancel the show,” she whispered finally, and there was something different about her voice, about her accent.
Dr. Larkin jumped in before I could place it. “Don’t say that,” she told Anwen. “I’ve called in help, you know.”
“But you’re not—”
“Even if I’m not the director, I still care,” Dr. Larkin said, because of course she did. She wanted her job back. “We’re working with some really excellent consultants to get to the botto
m of this, and I’m sure . . . I’m sure . . .”
She trailed off, perhaps in part because the consulting detective she had hired was still sobbing prettily into her boyfriend’s arms.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry. I lost someone close to me last year, and—”
Watson stiffened. I suppose it was in poor taste to bandy around August Moriarty’s death like this, but I also thought that August himself would probably not have minded. Any port in a storm.
“I can still run lines,” I told Anwen. “I think. Maybe? But can we just go somewhere else?”
“I’d prefer that the both of you leave,” Dr. Larkin said. Her eyes flickered down to the faux body, and she thought, They’ll cancel the program entirely, we’ll lose our endowment, my car payments will keep being late, I’ll lose my flat—
How did I know? She said a version of those things to me when she asked me to take on the case. When faced with our worst nightmares, we don’t tend to think new thoughts.
“Are you calling in the police?” Anwen asked the professor, and her voice was back to normal: Welsh, feminine, musical.
“No. Why would I? Harmless prank, really. No, the two of you go off and run lines—perhaps at Charlotte’s flat? I visited her uncle there. He’s lovely. Nice big space. Yes, excellent—” and she began casting around for the supply closet.
Anwen uncrossed her arms, adjusted her skirt. She glanced from me to Watson. “If it’s not an imposition,” she said. “You can come too, Jamie. If you want.”
At that, I pinched his leg.
“No!” he yelped. “No, go on. I, ah. Have a lecture.”
“Are you sure?” I asked him, sniffling.
“I’m sure,” he said, and reached out, very gently, to brush away a tear from my face. His dark eyes softened. He really was a better actor than I gave him credit for. “I’ll see you later, pumpkin.”
As I led Anwen out to the street, I texted from my bag: Watson?
Yes, pumpkin?
New condition: you cease and desist all gourd-related nicknames.
Done. But pinch me again, and I’ll start calling you pickle.
Do that, and I will find and then publish your diaries on a website with a vociferous comments section. Though I was not a gourd, I was most definitively not a vinegar-soaked phallic object.
Noted. Good luck with Ophelia. Dinner tonight?
Yes.
Somewhere nice? I’d like to take you somewhere nice.
“Coming?” Anwen asked.
Fine, I said to Watson, and “yes,” I said to Anwen, though the shake in my voice was from a fear of something visceral, something terrifying and strange.
A date with Watson.
Eight
HAD IT BEEN MY DECISION, I WOULD HAVE NEVER ASKED Anwen back to my flat.
Why on earth would I give a suspect access to my living space? At the very least, they might be able to draw conclusions about me or my habits that might blow my cover (I would, for instance, have a hard time justifying the brick-sized moisture-analyzing machine I kept on the radiator, which was still not providing accurate information on why my cat Mouse had developed an alarming little cough). At most, the suspect would be able to sabotage me where I lived. I had recently spent a year of my life ripping apart each room I lived in for recording devices, small explosives, itching powder, and similar; I was rather invested in never having to do that again.
Even then, I had learned very little about Anwen that was immediately alarming. Humans are simple creatures; the most highly accomplished of us even more so. When you pair intellect with the sort of razor-sharp focus that brings you to a school like Oxford, you’re more or less slapping a pair of blinders on the human horse. Your goal is dead ahead; distraction is all around; it does not behoove you to think of anything but your heaps of homework and whatever small hobby you’ve adopted to keep you from losing your mind. You don’t have time to consider things like the psychological profile of a girl (me, for instance) who owned both a complete professional-grade chemistry set and a pair of well-worn velvet loafers with embroidered alpacas on the toes.
Anwen, however, was different.
I’d noticed her caginess the night before, at dinner, when she’d continually drawn our attention back to Theo and Rupert. I’d noticed her slip from a perfectly unremarkable Welsh accent into something far rougher and burrier in the theater. I hadn’t drawn any conclusions yet, though I’d been tempted to. If nothing else, I’d learned my lesson about theorizing in advance of having all the facts.
It was tempting, though, to wonder why Anwen looked so taken aback as she walked into my flat.
Watson, in his previous accounts of our adventures, has fussed about the strangeness of my previous living quarters. As they were my quarters that I had arranged how I pleased, I can’t comment on their eccentricities. (Plenty of people collect spoons, of all things. Why on earth am I not allowed to collect skulls?)
Really, the space I shared with Leander was quite standard. The living room was floor-to-ceiling books, largely texts that interested my uncle (mysteries, true crime, botany, Leander’s full collection of Evelyn Waugh novels), some of mine (my childhood encyclopedia set and a well-thumbed copy of The History of Dirt), a memento or two from our journeys (the aforementioned skulls). Sofas. Blankets. A bay window. A kitchen with nothing untoward boiling on the stove.
I had boiled a pair of socks that past weekend for an experiment, but she could hardly know—
“This is all yours?” she asked, casting herself down on the sofa with rather more force than necessary.
In the few steps it took to join her, I had completely rewritten my persona to suit her comment.
“It’s my uncle’s,” I said, with a bit of an eye roll. “He’s richer than God and never here, which works out just fine for me. This place is like a weird-old-man palace.”
There was an expected response to that statement: ugh, or did your parents make you stay with him? or some other opening into a conversation about how, while my uncle was wealthy, I was not. (Which was, at this point in my life, true.) Anwen would be able to laugh off her discomfort at my social class, and—
“Oh,” Anwen said, twisting a red curl around her finger. Her face had gone blank again. “Don’t be self-conscious about it, you should see Rupert’s ancestral home. It goes on forever, and even though his family’s massive, you can wander it for days and see no one. No, I was wondering if you lived here with Jamie.”
I raised an eyebrow. “We’ve been dating for a long time, but we aren’t there yet.”
“No? I thought you were serious.” She smiled. “It sucks that you have to live with your uncle. I always thought that that was the best part of graduating, that you got to be on your own.”
Since when was Anwen running this interrogation?
“It’s nice not to pay rent,” I said, “especially when you’re taking too many courses to have a job. And as for me and Jamie . . . we’re eighteen. We don’t need to shack up together right away, especially when he’s off to London for uni this fall, and I’m staying here. Anything else you need an answer for? I could go change my clothes, if they’re not to your taste?”
Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly, and too late I realized what I’d done: fallen directly into one of my customary traps. Find someone’s sore spot and press down hard enough, and they’ll reveal far more than they ever intended.
I had just, more or less, told Anwen that my relationship with Watson was my own personal bruise.
“I suppose this means you’re living with Theo,” I went on, a bit desperately. “The two of you seemed friendly last night.”
“I told you he has a boyfriend,” she said, and pulled a dog-eared copy of Hamlet from her bag. “We all live in the same stairwell, but we aren’t dating.”
She was attempting, again, to rile me up. “Oh. I’d gotten the impression that something else was going on,” I said.
“No, just a friend.” Her voice was calm.
She was, in fact, far more composed than I was, sitting on Leander’s sofa (velvet, gray, vastly impractical) with her tattered paperback on her knees.
I felt silly, suddenly, for thinking even momentarily that this girl had wanted to be my friend. Anwen was playing her own game, and it wouldn’t end with the two of us online shopping until four a.m. while drinking tea. (I missed Lena rather badly.)
Still, I had to reset this conversation somehow.
“Which monologue did you want to run?” I asked, standing. “I’ll just put the kettle on. Jasmine? Earl Grey?” My voice was frosted over, but then that couldn’t be helped.
“Do you have English breakfast? Twinings?” Anwen followed at my heels.
“We do,” I said, and set out two Sherringford mugs. Leander really had to get rid of those.
Anwen wandered over to the window above the sink and looked down onto the street, like some improbably beautiful vulture. “I’m sorry if I was weird, just then,” she said at length.
Had I been someone else, I would have perhaps dropped the teakettle. I hadn’t been expecting such an admission from her. Something about this cool, unflappable girl was confounding me.
It was important that she keep talking, and the best strategy for that was to let the silence hang until she felt she had to fill it.
“It’s just—we haven’t talked about that thing? In the theater? The . . . sheet body?”
When I saw her trying to meet my eyes, I reached into the cupboard for the creamer, the sugar caddy, two ramekins for our tea bags.
“I’m just . . . scared,” she said, but she didn’t sound scared in the least. Was she shamming? Was she playing me the way that I had played her? “Whatever that was, it’s a threat, and I feel like I barely escaped last summer as it was. I quit the play right after the accidents began happening . . .”
“Mm,” I said. What else could one take for tea? I took a lemon from the fridge, then returned it in favor of whole milk and half-and-half.
“Maybe you don’t know why it’s important? Or what happened at all, maybe? I know it got awkward last night, when Rupert brought it up . . . but we had such a good thing going, the three of us, until then, and everything got so messy and complicated, and Theo was spending every night at the police station and Rupert wasn’t talking to me . . .”
A Question of Holmes Page 6