A Question of Holmes by Brittany Cavallaro

Author:Brittany Cavallaro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-01-22T16:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

IT WAS SOME TIME BEFORE I FELL ASLEEP.

When Dr. Larkin had originally approached me, her worry had been for the health of the Dramatics Society, not her own. She’d wanted her position back as their director, of course, and she’d wanted the attacks to stop. But her main concern had been not knowing who the true target was, whether it was her, her students, or—as tonight’s murder suggested—the institution itself. The killer had had all of last summer to do away with Dr. Larkin, but they waited until now to try. Tonight’s “accident,” then, was meant as a warning—but to who?

Really, I was searching for the identities of both the culprit and the target, which put me out. I was used to having mystery at one end of my case, not both.

One detail I found interesting: a light had fallen from the grid the summer before, though no one had been injured. This killer’s bag of tricks, then, had a bottom. It would be worth nosing around the theater’s lighting rig in the morning.

I didn’t sleep well. As a child, I found the notion romantic, staying up sleeplessly recounting the day’s events. But the world goes warped and strange in the hours before dawn, as the birds, with their voices, remind you how they spend their days loitering above, unseen.

A stranger was sleeping in our living room. My uncle wouldn’t be making eggs on the stove. The boy I loved slept away from me, and I resisted the selfish urge to creep into the other room to wake him, to see what secrets I could glean from him in the dark.

Am I still interesting to you, now that you finally have me the way you wanted? Or, Now that we aren’t running for our lives, is this still enough to keep you?

Around four, I gave it up. The refuse trucks had begun down the road, and I could smell the morning cold and sharp through the window. I put my cigarettes and a pair of tweezers in the pocket of my robe and took my bag to the living room.

“Jamie,” I whispered, rousing him in the armchair. He’d been sleeping all twisted up and tangled; he wouldn’t be able to turn his neck in the morning. “Go to bed. I’ll look after Theo.” He mumbled something like thank you before he made his way to my bedroom, and I took up his post watching Theo drool into a towel he’d balled up into a pillow.

As he slept, I unloaded the scraps I’d collected the last few days—the newspaper pages from the bus, the note from the theater door—touching them only at their edges. Then I went to Anwen’s translucent mackintosh in the closet, and, using my tweezers, retrieved the papers I’d seen in the pockets. Two were receipts, from Blackmarket café and from Pret A Manger, and the last a wrapper from a candy bar. On the coffee table, I lined them up and then turned them over, tweezers in hand.

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