A Study in Charlotte(18)

John H. Watson might have been many things—a doctor, a storyteller, and by most accounts a kind and decent man—but he clearly wasn’t a zoologist. There’s no such thing as a swamp adder. And the idea that Sherlock Holmes deduced its existence from a saucer of milk is ridiculous—snakes have zero interest in milk. They also can’t hear anything but vibrations, so they wouldn’t hear a whistle. But they do breathe, so a snake couldn’t survive in a locked safe.

When I was younger, my father and I liked to speculate about what actually happened on that case to drive Dr. Watson to that much invention. My pet theory is still that he slept late that day in Baker Street, missed both the client and the investigation entirely, and was only half-listening when Sherlock Holmes broke it down for him later.

At least, that sounds like something I would do.

“Whoever they are, they’re taunting us,” Holmes was saying, pacing the length of her lab like a caged cat. “The arsenic would have done Dobson in on its own. The snake is just a ridiculous flourish, there to send a message. Of course, our culprit couldn’t find a swamp adder, because your great-great-great-grandfather made those up.” I rolled my eyes at her clear disdain. “But honestly, Watson, why would Dobson have a glass of milk? There wasn’t a mini-fridge in his room; he’d have to carry it back from the dining hall after dinner. And while I suppose it’s possible that Lee Dobson had discovered a passion for folk music, having a slide whistle is too strange in the context of everything else. The presence of these items is just plausible enough that the police wouldn’t see them as significant, and so, in planting them there, the killer must have known we would make our own investigation.”

“We’re being toyed with,” I said. “But why would he want us to know he’s after us?”

“Us, specifically.” She arched an eyebrow. “Dobson was after me all last year, and nothing happened to him. Then you show up, and all this starts. We’ll begin by investigating people who arrived in the area since the summer, or those who have a particular stake in bringing the both of us down.”

Why would anyone be after me? Holmes, I understood. She was so clearly smarter than, faster than, braver than—there had to be someone on the other side of that equation to make it work. Maybe I was just collateral damage. Maybe there had been some mistake. Because, no matter how badly I wanted my life to be interesting, it wasn’t. There was no reason for anyone to target me.

But if Holmes realized how unimportant a role I actually played in all of this, she might send me packing. Back to chemistry homework and Tom’s dirty jokes and all the other trappings of my American exile. Back to dreaming about her at night while she went on, unmoved, with her life. But it would be worse this time, because I’d know exactly what I was missing.

I decided to keep my mouth shut.

Holmes stopped pacing to lean against the wall for support. I remembered that she hadn’t slept at all last night. I had no idea how she was still on her feet.

“The police aren’t going to let us help them, not if Shepard’s any indication,” she said. “Idiots. I suppose that they don’t like that I tampered with their crime scene.”

“We’re also their prime suspects,” I reminded her. “That sort of puts a damper on our working relationship.”

She shrugged, as if that were beside the point. “That’s it, then.”

“What is?”

“That’s all I have to tell you. I’ll think on our next move.”

It was a dismissal. Whatever use she’d had for me had expired, and our investigation was done for the day. I got to my feet, wondering if I’d made a misjudgment in thinking that I was starting to mean something to her.

Because it seemed that Holmes had already forgotten me. She brought down her violin case from its shelf and drew from it an instrument so warm and polished that it nearly looked alive. I remembered listening to a special on BBC 4 in my kitchen that past summer, in such a profound sulk at leaving that my mother had begun a campaign to cheer me up. That day, she was making cinnamon buns by hand, rolling out the dough in long strips that dangled off the edge of our tiny countertop, and I’d crept from my room, drawn by the smell of the sugar. She looked up at me with floured hands, a brown curl stuck to the side of her face, and before either of us could speak the radio presenter announced a feature on the history of the Stradivarius. Underneath his voice played the famous recording of Sherlock Holmes performing a Mendelssohn concerto on his own Stradivarius for King Edward VII. The music was scratchy and still tremendously alive through the static. I’d drawn nearer, and my mother had pursed her lips but didn’t change the station, and so we spent the afternoon that way, icing the rolls she’d made as they cooled and listening to the announcer speak of the violin’s shape, the density of its wood, how Antonio Stradivari had stored his instruments under Venice’s canals.