“What a sad fantasy,” he said.
“—until she said my name. She said it twice—Theo, Theo—and then help. And then it sounded like the phone was being wrestled away from her. The line went dead.” Theo stared at the man, anguished. “How can I say this and have you not care? She could be chained up in some pervert’s basement! She could be anywhere, horrible things could be happening to her, and you don’t care—”
As he’d been talking, the man had begun to pace a tight, controlled path, back and forth in front of Theo like a tiger. And at that, he exploded. “You don’t know a thing about this, boy. You’re just some American piece of trash she picked up last summer! Our daughter, always hauling home the charity cases, I was used to that. But never someone like you. Do you know what she told me, so defiantly, before we came out to see her show last summer? ‘You’re going to meet Theo, my boyfriend, he’s bisexual.’ So smug, as though she’d invented acting out to get your parents’ attention. I don’t care what you do in bed, that’s none of my business, but I told Matilda, he’ll do that nowhere near my daughter—”
Theo had gone entirely white. In my hiding spot, I felt my hands begin to shake. I knew, intellectually, this kind of prejudice existed; I had seen it spewed about online, in the news, seen it bandied about like it was divine will to discriminate.
I had never seen it delivered at such close distance, with such personal hatred. I thought of my uncle Leander, and my hands tightened on my phone.
“—and so when she disappeared, I knew why. Because of you. Because of what you did to her, you—” He cut himself off with a curse.
“What did I do?” Theo said. It was almost a howl. “What the hell did I do?”
“We knew enough to tell Matilda that she was headed down a dark path,” Wilkes said. “And she decided to run rather than stay with you. So there’s your mystery solved. Are we finished now?”
“You’re a bigot,” Theo said, with a hard-fought calm that I admired. “And you would rather imagine that I had something to do with her disappearance than take this gigantic lead I’m handing you. I don’t trust the police. They want to pin me down for this. But I thought I could trust you.”
“You imagined that phone call,” George Wilkes said stoutly. “You’re a selfish little boy, trying to make this all about you. My daughter is missing, and you’re making light of it for your own perverted purposes.”
At the top of the stage, a door opened. I wanted badly to lean out to look, but I stayed where I was.
“Imagined it? I . . .” Theo dragged his hands through his hair. “What are you not telling me?”
“It sounds like,” a voice said, carrying down from the back of the auditorium, “the two of you are done discussing school business, or whatever it was you said you were doing. Both of you. Out. I don’t want to ask twice.”
“Yes, Officer,” Theo said, and with a final loaded glance at George Wilkes, he hopped off the stage. I ended the video and shrank back farther into the darkness of the wings, and not a moment too soon—George Wilkes cast one final, dismissive look around him before he passed out of my sight.
And as for Theo?
I was hard-pressed to see him as the guilty party, anymore.
I WAITED TEN SILENT MINUTES BEFORE I PADDED BACK down the backstage stairs into the bowels of the theater. After I’d made it out the utility door, I trotted out to the high road, my shopping bag over my arm. A girl on her way home to make dinner, nothing more.
Once I was safely in my flat, I texted DI Sadiq the video. Then asked, what is George Wilkes’s profession?
Theatrical costuming, Sadiq had said. Will review this before tomorrow. Thanks.
I thought, again, of Anwen’s cabinet of curiosities, of Theo texting her last Boxing Day to demand what she knew. I thought of George Wilkes’s fury at his helpless daughter. I thought of the stage light falling out of the sky like a bomb, and then I cleared the kitchen counter and laid out an elaborate cheese plate, because I was an adult, or at least, I was pretending to be.
Eighteen
I SENT WATSON TEN QUID FOR A CAB, AND THE VIDEO I’D taken in the theater. Watch on your way over, I said. I want your opinion.
I live to do your bidding, he responded.
Thanks, I said. Pumpkin.
It was a twenty-minute walk from the station to my door, and my aunt had always believed in a “constitutional” after train travel of any length, which meant that she would arrive, with military precision, at two minutes past seven.
And she did. When she let herself up into the building, I was waiting at the door to our flat to take her jacket.
In appearance, the Holmeses fell into one of two camps: those with a severe, clean-lined beauty, and those who looked like badly boiled eggs. In her youth, Araminta had been the former. I had seen pictures of her when she’d worked as a codebreaker for the Home Office: a tumble of black curls, her eyes glittering like jeweled knives. But in recent years, her face had begun to give way to gravity (we all do, in the end), and now the long bags underneath her eyes made her look startlingly like my great-aunt Mildred. She was slim, in sensible shoes with a sensible suitcase, but despite her neatness, she looked years older than the last time I’d seen her.
Though, when I thought about it, it had in fact been . . . years.
“Lottie,” she said, wheeling her suitcase smartly against the wall. “Let me have a look at you.”
I stepped forward to present myself. (A small, horrified part of me wondered if this had been what I’d done this morning to Watson—presented myself for inspection, as I’d learned growing up.) For a long moment, she studied me with those cut-glass eyes she’d had as a girl.
“You had a party last night,” she said.
“Of sorts.” I’d known there was no point in cleaning up. “You’re not going to make me work out how you knew, are you?”
Araminta snorted. “I’m not your father.”
“Thank God for small mercies.”
“And this—” She swept past me into the flat, and I could hear her judgment as she looked it over. Its overstuffed chairs and bookshelves, its bright throw blankets, its television. “This is quite nice, actually.”
I blinked. “I think so,” I said cautiously.
“You seem happy,” she said over her shoulder, as she floated into the kitchen like the indefatigable ship she was. “Your boyfriend—James—he stays over most nights?”
I followed behind her, trying not to stomp my feet. “Jamie. Watson, rather. And only since Leander’s been out of town.”
Watson, in his previous accounts of our “adventures,” has spoken of the frustration inherent in holding a conversation with someone (ostensibly me) who knows all your secrets at a glance (I don’t—well, not always). He’d said once it was like playing chess one-handed. I disagree. I can play chess perfectly well one-handed. Conversing with my aunt Araminta was, at times, like playing speed chess with both hands tied behind your back while someone screamed obscenities into your ear.
“Uncle Leander,” Araminta said, sitting down at the counter. She eyed the spread I’d laid out, then picked up a cheese knife. “Honorifics, Lottie, are never wasted words.”