And Holmes? Not sick at all. He faked his symptoms. Starved himself for three days until he was skin and bone, then applied a convincing coat of stage makeup to make himself appear at death’s door. As for the box—well. He wasn’t in any danger. He reminds Watson that he always thoroughly examines his mail.
Charlotte Holmes had stripped the “Dying Detective” for details and rearranged them to make her own narrative, pulling Lena in on her scheme to sell the story. I wondered who the man in the ski mask was. Tom? Unlikely. Still, it was just the sort of story that our Sherlock-obsessed murderer would’ve seized on and used against us.
The part I couldn’t get over, that distracted me from even this show of Charlotte Holmes’s powers, was remembering how much my great-great-great-grandfather had trusted hers. Oysters, I remembered. Between the instructions he’d given Dr. Watson, Sherlock Holmes had been ranting, in his “hallucinations,” about oysters.
And his partner had still followed his directions exactly.
I thought about the piped-in interrogation in the police station. About the little notebook that still lay open between us on the table. About how my own doubts about Holmes’s innocence ran alongside my doubt that she could get us out of this mess.
She had just gotten us out of this mess. And no matter what my head wanted to tell me, I knew in my bones that she wasn’t a killer.
“I’m sorry I didn’t trust you,” I said to my Holmes, in a low voice.
She shook her head. “I needed your shock to be genuine for me to sell it.”
“I don’t mean about the details. I don’t need to hear the details.” I reached across the table to put my hand on hers. “I meant to say that I won’t doubt you again.”
I watched her catalog me. The planes of my face, the tilt of my head, how I sat in my chair, my fingers’ heat and the ruck of my hair: she took it all in, deduced from what she saw, and came up, in the end, with something she hadn’t expected.
“You won’t,” she said with flat surprise. “You really won’t, will you?”
Next to me, my father cleared his throat. I didn’t spare him a glance.
When Shepard returned from speaking to his team, we gave him the background on the Culverton Smith story. And he told us what we already knew. They had, in fact, found a spring loaded into the ivory box, poised to strike when it was slid open. That spring was coated in an infectious tropical disease; the police lab weren’t sure of its exact origin, but they guessed it to be Asia. Samples of this kind were tightly controlled, and so far, their search into local scientists who had requested access to them had ended in an absolute null.
(I asked Holmes, much later, how she got her hands on the sample. She said something about Milo, an ex-girlfriend at the CDC, and “catching as catch can.”)
“This blows my list of suspects wide open,” Shepard said. “So we’re back to option one. Someone trying their damnedest to frame you two. We’ll need to talk about who out there in the world wants to get you. And I’ll have to notify the station that I won’t be needing a pair of cells. At least not tonight.”
So his plan had been to arrest us.
“Let us help you,” Holmes said. “I’m an official informant for Scotland Yard, and between Watson and me”—I was gratified to be back on a last-name basis—“we’re experts on the killer’s MO. Sherlock Holmes stories? We’re the obvious choice. Not to mention that we can informally question anyone at Sherringford without arousing suspicion, or that you’re getting an excellent chemist and a relatively fearless pugilist in the bargain. We’re not a bargain. We’re luxury goods.”
“No,” he said. “Absolutely not.”
Holmes shrugged; she’d anticipated this response. “Then I’ll conduct my own investigation, and deal with the culprit, after I catch him or her, as I see fit.”
“You actually think that threatening vigilante justice will make me want to take you two on?” Shepard demanded. “You’re a child. I don’t know how desperate the police are across the pond, but we play it by the book here. Isn’t it enough that you’re not suspects anymore? I don’t see any reason to put you and Jamie in the line of fire.”
“Really. Then perhaps call Scotland Yard again and ask them about what transpired after I sat through this exact conversation with DI Green. If she’s reluctant to speak to you, tell her you know all about the deep freezer, the meat hook, and how I found her two minutes before the killer returned. Honestly, I might’ve gotten myself there sooner if she hadn’t been such a cow about it. Just the year before I’d recovered three million pounds’ worth of jewels and given her all the credit.” She yawned. “Do it in the morning, though. I’m knackered.”
“But—”
“Mr. Watson, this was a lovely dinner. Would you mind taking us home now?” Without waiting for a response, Holmes disappeared into the garage, her gown trailing after her.
In her flair for the dramatic, she’d left behind my jacket and her phone. I collected them, trying not to feel like her valet.