I was pretty sure there wasn’t strictly a “we” involved in this gossip-filled concern, but Mr. Patel’s troubled youth was exactly when he had known my mom, and I was desperate to learn more about that. “Troubled?”
“Aye,” she said, patting my back with more vigor as she leaned in to drop her voice even lower. “In with a wrong crowd. I trust you won’t be doing the same?”
I risked a glance and caught the woman searching the table.
“I could have sworn there was a photo here,” she muttered. “Female at the center of it all.”
“A girl?”
The woman clicked her tongue and sighed. “Ah, but there always is. And this one had the face of a cherub. On the street she was the picture of innocent beauty, but inside lived a wolf.” The woman shifted her gaze to my face before I could cover with the tissue. “Ah, there now.” She paused. “You look a bit like her, you know.”
Her gaze dropped to the table, and I shot a look over my shoulder. People started to rise from their pews, including Sherlock, who was beelining through the crowd for me.
“If I could just find the photo, I’d show you.”
“I’ve got to go,” I mumbled, stepping into the first surge of people making their way out front. I spilled out onto the street and turned back just as John Watson was walking a stiff, unemotive Lily away from the chapel. Her mother stared after her but quickly turned back to greet the attendees.
“Well, this was a waste of time,” Sherlock pronounced from his sudden appearance at my side.
I frowned and started to walk in the opposite direction of John and Lily, toward our Tube entrance.
“Do I take from your silence that you learned something?”
“There is always something to learn,” I said.
Sherlock pulled out a cigarette and lit up. I felt my scowl deepen.
“Not here. Just a bunch of stories, most of which are likely fiction, meant to show the dead man to be far greater than he was. Typical.” He took a deep drag and blew it out to the sky.
I stopped walking. In my mind, he kept walking without me, beating me to the station so that I could take a different train. In my mind, he evaporated so that I could be alone with the picture of my mother, free to study it at my leisure without his prying eyes. No one ever does what I want.
“What is it?” His eyes brightened as they met mine. “You know something! Tell. It’s the rules.”
I shook my head. “Don’t get your hopes high. It’s nothing a quick search wouldn’t have uncovered.”
I paused but was too distracted to think of something to tell him. I was determined not to touch my handbag, or look at it too much. Then again, I didn’t want to be seen to avoid it. And the more these directives spiraled around my mind, the fewer ideas I had for some great reveal. In the end, I said, “I just heard a bit of gossip, which may not be true. But this woman said Mr. Patel had been in trouble when he was a kid.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“She made it sound like his trouble was with the police.”
The light left Sherlock’s eyes and he took another long drag from his cigarette, and then tossed it into the gutter. “Nothing of note. Still, a wasted day.”
I didn’t know why his declaration upset me like it did, but I couldn’t even speak to him after that. I took perhaps too much time to offer him a directed glare, and then I stormed down the road, leaving him the way I’d just wished he would leave me.
Unfortunately, I stormed in a direction opposite the train and ended up walking the six blocks to the stop at Monument. It, of course, didn’t have my line, so I ended up taking the bus, walking to Moorgate, and catching a late train back to our station. By the time I got to Baker Street, I could think of nothing I wanted less than to go home. I walked to the park instead, as if I were hearing its call.
I practically fell onto my beloved bandstand. I resisted the urge to crawl across it to my seat on the other side, but I was tempted. Later, I would blame the fact that I was too exhausted from the day to explain how I could fail to notice my smoking gent standing in the shadows beyond. When the scent of Sherlock’s cloves finally did strike me, it sent me into the foulest of moods.
I decided to pretend he wasn’t there, which worked for a while. He smoked, and I stared out across the lake, wishing the light from the rising moon would strike him into oblivion like a million bolts of lightning all at once. Violent fantasies aside, the longer we stood in silence, the less worked up I became, until finally he rubbed out the filter of his clove and walked over toward me.
“I’m sorry,” he said with finality, as though his words were the solution to something and not the opening of our conversation.
I shrugged and kicked my feet out a few times, letting my heels fall back to strike against the cement with a rubbery flop.
Sherlock cleared his throat and came around to face me. “I am sorry.”
I slid down from my perch so that we were eye to eye—or would’ve been were he not eight inches taller than me. “For what?”