“Right,” my father said, confused. “I had sort of thought all of that was a given. Do you have any actual proof that clears you?”
“Enough witnesses to prove that we weren’t the people who attacked Elizabeth. Elizabeth herself, when she wakes up. But that’s moot, anyway. In about an hour and fifteen minutes, I’ll have the leverage we need to clear our names and get Shepard to involve us in his investigation.”
I didn’t know anything about this. “What?”
She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, and said nothing. Across from us, I swear my father’s eyes were sparkling.
I stared at him. “Shouldn’t you be, you know, worried?”
But he was already pulling a bottle of champagne from the refrigerator. “A toast is in order, I think. A little glass couldn’t hurt at this point.”
The cork popped, and steam fizzed out. Holmes and I exchanged a startled glance. She hadn’t expected him to believe her. Very few people had the ability to surprise her, but apparently my father was one of them. I didn’t care. I had a glass of champagne, possibly my last as a free man. I slurped the foam off the top of my glass.
Holmes, being Holmes, looked at my father and decided to investigate. “Oh, this is lovely, thanks much. But tell us why we’re celebrating! You can’t trust me that much. There has to be something more to it.” She leaned on one hand, drawing on the vast reserves of charm she kept hidden away for just this purpose. “That pie smells tremendous,” she added. “Can’t think of the last time I had good comfort food.”
If my father noticed the show—and really, how couldn’t he?—he didn’t mind it. “It’s Jamie’s grandmother’s recipe. I haven’t had a chance to make it in a long time.” He beamed. “I’m happy this worked out for you two. I’d worried it wouldn’t.”
“What worked out?” Wherever this was headed, I was sure it was a bad, bad place. “If you’re about to tell me you killed off Dobson to get me some detective practice, I swear to God—”
With a wave, he cut me off. “Jamie, don’t be so melodramatic. Of course not.”
“Of course not,” Holmes said, under her breath. The machinery in her head was whirring to life. “It began before that.”
“Yes,” my father said, delighted. “Go on.”
She looked me over the way you might do a horse. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “And sport. It has to do with rugby.”
“Excellent.” He lifted his glass to her. “I’m sorry, Jamie, but I still can’t believe you bought it. A rugby scholarship? Yes, you’re a perfectly adequate player, no doubt, and certainly good enough for their team, but you have to admit that the idea was a bit far-fetched.” He took a meditative sip. “No, it was all something that we plotted up in our cups, last summer.”
“We?”
“You and my uncle,” Holmes said to my father, bypassing me entirely.
“What?” I said faintly. I was still trying to process the fact that I wasn’t, in fact, a genius rugger, and that no one had told our poor captain. “Wait. You’re going to solve this mystery. Not the Dobson-Elizabeth-drug dealer mystery. This one. And you’re going to solve it now.” I stifled a semi-hysterical laugh. “When I didn’t even know there was a mystery. God, what could I possibly have done in a past life to get stuck with someone like you?”
“Go on,” my father was saying happily. It was good that one of us was enjoying himself. “Tell me how you know.”
She ticked the deductions off on her fingers. “You were born in Edinburgh like the rest of your family, but you have an Oxbridge spin on your words. When you opened your cupboard to fetch these flutes, I saw a mug, top shelf, with the Balliol College blazon on. Oxford, then.”
My father spread his hands, waiting for her to continue.
“You hugged me with a surprising amount of familiarity when we met, but you didn’t hug your son. Even with your difficult relationship”—my father’s smile faltered for a moment—“if you were so prone to hugs, you would have made an attempt on him anyway. No, you felt you knew me. You must have heard of me, then, and not in the papers—or there would have been polite pity and no hug—but from someone who spoke highly of me, and with warmth. The first rules out my parents; the second, most of my relatives. My brother, Milo, doesn’t believe in friends, and anyway, you’d have no reason to chat to a pudgy, secretive computer genius who leaves his Berlin flat only under extreme duress. My aunt Araminta is nice enough, which means she’s glacial by society’s standards. Cousin Margaret is twelve, and Great-Aunt Agatha is dead, and that’s the tour de monde of the effusive members of my family.
“Excepting, of course, my dear old uncle Leander, Balliol College ’89, who gave me my violin, and is the first Holmes in known memory to host a party of his own free will. Of course you’re friends.” She peered at him for a second. “Oh. And flatmates. For at least a year, no more than three.”