She had her arms wrapped around herself, the sleeves of her silk robe hiding her hands.
“You never stayed anyplace long. Bounced around Wales. Cardiff, mostly. Right? No. I know I’m right. You got top marks. Maybe you were determined to get yourself out. Maybe you were just naturally gifted, or it was some combination of both. But your sister got in trouble. Shoplifting, things like that. I’ve seen the records.”
At the foot of the stairs, Theo ducked his head.
At the table, Rupert softly fingered one of the orchid petals. “You never mentioned her,” he said. “Last summer. This summer. I kept waiting for you to mention her, but you didn’t.”
“She got pregnant,” she whispered. “Had the baby.” Theo took a step forward, searching her face.
Rupert nodded to himself. “Figured it was something like that.”
“Why didn’t you tell us any of this?” Theo asked.
She barked out a laugh. “Like you’d listen,” she said. “I tried to tell you. So many times! But you never wanted to hear it. Next to Matilda, I was boring to you, and all the while I was dealing with real things, Theo, not just . . . fucking posh-people problems! Do you know last Boxing Day, when you called me losing your mind over that phone call—”
Rupert sat up straighter. This was news to him.
“—that was someone just fucking with you, Theo, someone who called you with a dummy number and pretended to be your dead ex-girlfriend, my sister and I were being thrown out of our foster home? The baby was too loud. The baby was too much. Those assholes. I ended up . . .”
“Calling me for help,” Rupert said.
Anwen turned to him gratefully. “And you didn’t ask me why. Just put us up in a hotel until I got ahold of my caseworker, and we got another placement.” Her pale face hardened. “But you found out anyway.”
“My father did,” he said. “It was his money. He had someone look into it, when I asked.”
Rupert Davies. The only boy at this program with a Moriarty connection. It would have been as easy as snapping his fingers to get that information.
“It isn’t your fault.” She reached out to touch his shoulder, but he shied away.
Theo groaned. “I’m sorry, Anwen,” he said, and there was bitter irony in his voice. “I’m sorry you didn’t think you could trust us. But what does this have to do with Matilda?”
“Everything,” she murmured. “Everything.”
And just like that, I had my solution.
There was a hammering at the stairwell door. “Police! Open up!”
The three of them looked wildly at each other. Rupert stood and backed up against the wall, and Theo shivered in his T-shirt, and only Anwen had the presence of mind to look at me.
I tried very hard not to smile.
The second text I’d sent had been received. DI Sadiq really did have impeccable timing.
“Someone should probably go answer that,” Watson said, leaning back in his chair.
Twenty-Two
THE SNEERING PC USHERED US INTO THE INTERROGATION room. He was the one who’d told me I’d had an attitude; I didn’t think his disdain was an act. “Come on, missy,” he was saying.
Anwen stepped into the room like she was a princess visiting a pigsty. “How long will we have to wait?”
“We’ll get to you,” he said, and shut the door behind us.
Gingerly, she sat down next to me at the table. I was trying not to obviously catalog the room: where the camera was, where the smell was coming from. Something like rotting fruit.
“Did you know they were coming?” she demanded. “The police?”
The two of us had been read our rights, stuffed in separate cars, and placed here, together, in a room. All as I’d requested. I hadn’t seen Sadiq since we’d arrived, but I had the feeling she was on the other side of the “mirror” across from us, watching intently.
“No,” I said. “I mean, Jamie and I were here earlier with the orchid we found. I was worried he was in danger.”
She folded her hands. “Well. It seems like they suspect you now, too.”
“I don’t know why,” I said.
Anwen shot me a sideways glance. “From what I’ve heard, you’re supposed to be something of a psychopath,” she said. “Maybe that’s why.”
All that arrogance plastered over her pain. Knowing that didn’t make me like her any more. But it did make me understand.
We lapsed into silence. My chair had one leg far shorter than the others, and I rocked back and forth a few times experimentally. They’d really done everything they could to make this room as wretched as possible.
“Will you stop that,” Anwen said, rewrapping her silk robe over her pajamas. “I can’t believe they wouldn’t let me change.”
“You’re wearing clothes,” I pointed out.
“I’m wearing slippers.”
I rolled my eyes. “What you’re wearing,” I said, “is something like two thousand dollars’ worth of vintage Christian Dior. I imagine that’s fancy enough for an interrogation.”
Anwen paused. “You know clothes,” she said, sweeping my outfit with her eyes. As usual, I was wearing all tailored black. It wasn’t remarkable, but every piece was expensive.
As I’d dressed for tonight, I’d made sure of that.
“I do,” I said, straightening my shirt. “Is that surprising?”
“No. Yeah, maybe. Is that a Comme des Garçons jacket?”
“Yes,” I said. “How long have you been collecting vintage?” I reached out to touch the sleeve of her robe. “This is what, mid-fifties? Mint, right?”
She nodded, and glancing at the two-way mirror—Aha, I thought, she knows what that is—she shimmied out of the robe and handed it to me. “It really isn’t meant to be worn. I was sorting through my collection when . . . when I got your text, so I threw it on and came downstairs.”
That wasn’t exactly the timeline, but I’d get to that later. I gently held the robe up to the light. It really was a thing of beauty. All silk. Raw edged. “Something like this runs for, like, four hundred pounds on eBay.”
“I know,” Anwen said, with some pride. “It’s part of my escape fund.”
“Your escape fund?” I asked, casually checking the label inside the robe. Christian Dior, and underneath, in small handwritten letters, Larissa. I affected not to notice and began looking at the stitching.
“I have a fee waiver for Cambridge,” she said. “And a bursary, money to help support me when I’m there. And the rest of it is coming from these clothes. I got them for, like, nothing.”
I whistled. “You must have a good eye, to find all this thrifting.”
She reached out for the robe, and put it back on carefully. “I’ve been collecting since I was fourteen. It’s where I’ve put all my pocket money, paying one pound for a piece in a bargain bin, five pounds for designer shoes stuffed in with a bunch of trainers. Sometimes charity shops don’t know what they have. I wear it for a bit, and then I sell it online. I’ve made almost three thousand pounds.”
I thought about the clothing in her wardrobe, the pieces that hadn’t been marked with Larissa’s name. They had been nice, certainly, but nothing near as expensive as the rest.
“It’s a brilliant plan,” I said, and it was.
Anwen was warming, visibly, to me. Praise did that. “And I set up Tamsin with a place of her own—my sister. She has a job, now, in a bakery. I think we’re going to be okay.”
“She’s lucky to have you.”
Anwen nodded, cleared her throat. “I’m sorry you had to see that scene in there,” she said. “We’ve all . . . we’ve been a mess since Matilda’s gone. Lots of fighting. It’s been so awful.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve seen that before, when I’ve worked other cases. It seems like it’s been really hard on you. Knowing what you did about Matilda.”
I said it as naturally as I could, as though I’d just been finishing a thought.
“It wa
s so strange,” Anwen said, the words slipping out quietly. She was exhausted. She’d just allowed herself to relax, a bit. “Being the only one who saw . . .”
“. . . that she was pregnant.”
Slowly, Anwen realized what she’d done. “How did you know that?” she hissed.
I put up my hands. “You know who I am,” I said, and it was true. “I put it together when Rupert was talking about your twin sister. It made sense, having seen Tamsin’s pregnancy up close, that you might recognize someone else’s.”
Anwen buried her face in her hands. “Oh my God,” she said, muffled. “You can’t tell anyone.”
The irony of where we were—an interrogation room covered in cameras—had escaped her. “I won’t,” I said.
“I wake up early,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “I always have, that’s why I’m so knackered right now—I’ve been up since five. Sometimes I go down to that coffee shop, Blackmarket, to study. It’s how I fit all my work in. Anyway, last summer, I’d be getting ready in the bathroom. And Matilda . . . she stayed over with Theo most nights. Three mornings in a row, at like, five thirty in the morning, she burst in there to throw up.”
I nodded, listening. I hoped that Sadiq was taking copious notes.
“We were three weeks into the program, and all that crap with Midsummer had already happened, them canceling the show because of Matilda’s feelings. Titania’s an amazing role. Amazing costumes—she’s a fairy queen.” Anwen shook her head. “Larkin pretended she couldn’t get the rights to the show. Please. It’s not like we’re idiots—it’s Shakespeare! So they stuff everyone into a production of Earnest, and Theo . . . he knocks her up.”
“It must have happened almost immediately,” I said.
“I think it did,” she said. “They’d hooked up the first or second night, but it wasn’t until later that they started dating.”
I took a deep breath. “Maybe she was using him,” I said. “Maybe she knew she was pregnant immediately. Some girls do. And then she decided to trap him.”
I hated everything I was saying. It was the worst part of this job: telling criminals what they wanted to hear.
“Yes,” Anwen said, slamming her hand on the table. “Exactly! Everyone was so up her ass that they couldn’t see it. But I knew that if he got any more attached to her, that he’d be roped in for life. And Theo’s a genius. You saw him audition, right? Matilda was overrated, but Theo is just as good as everyone says.”
“Matilda would have ruined his life,” I said. “You had to intervene.”
“It’s not like it was hard.” Some door inside her had been unlocked. From exhaustion, or from my sympathetic ear, or from both. “Rupert was working in the sound booth. He knew the theater techs well, had them teach him a few things. And you know Rupert. He’ll do anything I ask.” Anwen waved a hand. “He showed me how the lighting rig worked. Where they kept the props. Where the back entrance to the theater was, and where Larkin hid the spare key.”
“You didn’t hurt anyone.”
“Well.” Anwen laughed. “I didn’t do in Dr. Larkin, this year. That one was bizarre. And really sad. No, I didn’t hurt anyone except that cow, Harriet. She was so disgusting, couldn’t shut up about her family’s money. Nothing like Rupert, you know, who’s so modest. I thought—two birds, one stone. I didn’t do anything to her that doctors couldn’t fix.”
“People like that should know better.” After all this was over, I was going to need a shower.
“But they didn’t cancel the show.” She stifled a giant yawn. “I couldn’t understand it. Dr. Larkin just refused. I liked her a lot—we all liked her—but it was just ridiculous. And Theo and Matilda were inseparable. I was running out of time.”
“So,” I said, laying down my final card. “You called Matilda’s father.”
“George,” she said. “Dear old George. He’s a homophobic piece of shit, you know, but everyone has their uses. Matilda was always admiring herself in clothes from his costuming business. ‘This was used in the Old Vic production of The Crucible. Isn’t it witchy and amazing? I made him give it to me.’ She was always acting like she had something on him.”
“Did she?”
“I’m sure she did. Who cared? She was born on third base and acted like she’d earned a home run.” Anwen snorted. “Theo said that once. Not about her, of course, but isn’t it amazing?”
“Amazing,” I echoed. “So you called him?”
“I did,” she said, and yawned again, fit to split her face open. “I made him a deal. In exchange for information on his daughter, I wanted a payout. Not money. You can trace money. No, I wanted—”
“Clothes.”
“Exactly. I already had the online shop. And he wouldn’t give me anything from his shop directly, so he took things from Larissa’s closet. Things he’d set aside to give to her. Not like she’d notice they were missing, she was all drugged up. My plan was, I wouldn’t sell them all at once, of course. I’d do it bits at a time. And in exchange, he’d drag Matilda home by her hair.”
“But Anwen,” I said, far more gently than I felt, as the girl settled herself down in her chair. “She didn’t go home. She just disappeared.”
“I know,” she said, her eyes tipping shut. “Isn’t that strange?”
I waited a long moment to see if she would slip into sleep. Her actions had been callow and desperate, and I wish I could say that no part of me understood them.
Except I had once been the girl who’d framed August Moriarty for a felony, and all because he didn’t love me back. I was still that girl. Just tonight, I’d insisted that I was.
I stood, brushing myself off, and walked to the two-way mirror. “Is that enough?” I asked my reflection. “Is that enough, now?”
Twenty-Three
SADIQ USHERED ME OUT OF THE INTERROGATION ROOM. She looked exhausted, but then, we all were. Watson was still in with Theo and Rupert, she told me, but he hadn’t gotten much out of them.
“Did you dust Rupert’s hands for pollen?” I asked. “He was touching the decoy orchid I brought over, but there should be at least one other kind under his fingernails.”
Sadiq dropped her glasses to the end of her nose. “Any particular reason?”
“You know . . .” I smiled. “Actually, don’t. Don’t dust him. Just have someone tail him the next few days. The Davies family owns a plot of land outside of town. They’re farmers. I’ll bet you anything that there’s a greenhouse there, and that you’ll find—”
“Orchids inside,” Sadiq said. “Noted.” She smiled at me. “Nice work, Charlotte. You live up to your reputation.”
That usually wasn’t a compliment. I found myself smiling back. “Thanks.”
“You know,” she said, leaning back against the wall, “I didn’t think that Rupert boy was up to any of this.”
“His friends brutally underestimated him,” I said. “Counted on his good nature. I can’t tell you if he helped Anwen because he’s just that obliging, or because he’s in love with her, or because, secretly, he wanted to have some of the power that everyone was denying him.”
Watson padded up behind me. “Hi,” he said, and tucked his arm around my waist. “Got her?”
“Got them both. Her and Rupert,” I said.
Watson sighed. “Everyone except Matilda, then. Where is she? And who killed Dr. Larkin?”
The detective gave us a measured look. “Larkin,” she said, “was injured by that falling light. Badly injured. She’s currently under guard in the ICU.”
She had hinted at this before, but I was still surprised. Watson shot me a look. “It’s sort of cruel,” he said tightly, “to let all those students think their teacher is dead.”
Sadiq raised an eyebrow. “It’s crueler to let a criminal go unpunished. She agreed to it, you know, as soon as she woke up after surgery. That we let everyone think she had died. Tear the bandage off. Throw everyone into a panic. Confuse the real culprit, make them paranoid.”
�
��And?” Watson said. I could tell he was still angry; I didn’t blame him. We’d had enough deception for one lifetime. “Does she know who did it?”
“There was a power surge in the college,” she said. “The lights flickered. The lighting board was being raised and lowered without an operator, since that tech was in hospital. Dr. Quigley had been playing around with the settings.”
“It was an accident,” I said wonderingly. “I never would have guessed.”
“It was,” she said. “We just made hay while the sun was shining.”
So to speak. “And Matilda?”
Sadiq smiled again, more toothily this time. “I have an appointment with George Wilkes in the morning, remember? Shall I call you after?”
“You’ve put quite a lot of trust in me,” I told her, and reached out to shake her hand. “Thank you.”
“Help is help,” she said. “Go get some sleep, you two.”
WHEN DI SADIQ CALLED, IT WAS NEARLY NOON, AND WE were both still asleep. I shook Watson’s shoulder and put her on speaker, and the two of us dragged ourselves up to sit against the headboard.
George Wilkes was in custody, charged with a number of crimes. Conspiracy, fraud, kidnapping.
After learning that his daughter was pregnant, Wilkes had tried to drag her home from the program. But she’d refused to go. She was going to get an abortion, she told him; she had the appointment already. She would stay and perform her role and come home that fall to apply to conservatory programs, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
Why?
Because Matilda had blackmail. The year before, she’d come home early from a rehearsal to find her father in flagrante (Watson’s phrase, quite excellent) with another woman while her stepmother was out running errands. Her stepmother, nervous and gentle and rich; her money supported her father’s costuming business, which had prestige but not a lot of cash flow.
“Convenient,” Watson said, “that Anwen asked for payment in clothes.”
Matilda threatened to tell her stepmother if her father so much as suggested he’d bring her home. She would have her torrid affair with the boy her father despised, and she would return to her childhood bedroom and go off to conservatory the next year. And he would pay.
A Question of Holmes Page 19