Page 5 of The Art of Theft
?The next day, Miss Charlotte Holmes, who made her living as oracle to her fictional brother Sherlock, was regretting the fact that she was a far more inept oracle where her real-life sister Bernadine was concerned.
Sir Henry and Lady Holmes had four daughters. Bernadine, thesecond eldest, had been born closed off to the world. She was not mad or violent, but she could not look after herself, nor be made presentable in public. And because of that, her existence had been all but erased.
Charlotte, who had run away from home this past summer, had concocted a ruse and removed Bernadine from their parents’ home as soon as she’d saved up enough funds from helping clients as Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective. Her small enterprise flourished thanks to Mrs. Watson, her partner and benefactress.
Charlotte also lodged with Mrs. Watson, and Bernadine seemed to like the room that had been prepared for her—it contained an entire rack of gears and spools on rods, and she loved nothing more than spinning objects. But she still wasn’t feeding herself, and Charlotte could not get her to eat more than half of a small bowl of porridge.
She tried to tempt Bernadine with a slice of cake. Charlotte very much wanted to consume it herself. But alas, she must refrain from such blatant gourmandise only an hour after lunch. And even more unfortunately, this moist, buttery morsel with the gravitational pull of a major planet—to Charlotte, at least—somehow managed to repel Bernadine, who spun another spool and turned her face resolutely away.
Charlotte exhaled—and wished that she had Bernadine’s distaste for cake. Not always, of course, but for brief and intense spells that made it easier to give up extra servings in times of impending Maximum Tolerable Chins.
Charlotte preferred to indulge herself perennially. Alas, her love of cake and other sweet confections sometimes conflicted with her vanity: at around 1.5 chins the shape of her face changed. But Maximum Tolerable Chins wasn’t merely a matter of features; it was also the point at which her garments became restricting. And beyond that, uncomfortably tight.
She had a great many uses for her money and didn’t have room in her budget for outgrowing her entire wardrobe.
Charlotte tried one last time to offer the cake to Bernadine. This final overture was also rejected.
“She’s got a mind of her own, our Miss Holmes,” said Rosie Banning, one of Mrs. Watson’s servants, who’d been sitting with Bernadine. “Don’t you think, Miss Charlotte?”
Bernadine was the eldest unmarried Miss Holmes. Since her arrival in this house, her sister had been addressed as Miss Charlotte, as befitting a younger daughter.
“A very firm mind of her own,” answered Charlotte.
But the rest of the world was not privileged to know what was in, or on, Bernadine’s mind. Even Charlotte could only guess ineffectually. She watched for a while as her sister tirelessly spun spool after spool. Then she took out a notebook and shook open a newspaper.
Ever since summer, she’d kept a careful track of the small notices in the papers. Moriarty’s organization had disseminated keys to ciphers via small notices. She and Livia had sent coded messages to each other. She had also communicated with the Marbleton family in this manner.
But at the moment she was waiting for news from a different quarter. The small notices were thick as ants and about as legible. But she’d been at it for so long that she could spot the new ones right away, even among the dozens and dozens of coded personal messages.
There was nothing from Mr. Myron Finch, her half brother, whom she’d last seen at the end of the Season. She’d received two small-notice messages from him, one in early September, the other roughly four weeks later.
The two were identical. After decoding, both read,Dear Caesar, how fares Rome? Here in Italy all is well. 3 N N.
The mention of Italy meant that he was in Britain. The number indicated the level of danger he was in: 3 out of 10 was the best one could hope for, if one had betrayed Moriarty. The first N signaled that he was north of London, in relative position. The second N meant that no, the message would not be followed by a more detailed letter, which Charlotte would call for at the General Post Office under a previously agreed upon alias.
But now two months had passed by without any news and Charlotte was beginning to feel uneasy about his chances. Had he been captured by Moriarty, which would indeed account for his silence? Or was it far more likely that he was on a fifty-day voyage from London to Adelaide via the continental United States, which would also explain his lack of communication?
As she was about to set aside the newspaper, a knock came on the door. It was Mr. Mears, Mrs. Watson’s butler, with the latest correspondence that he had retrieved from Sherlock Holmes’s private box at the General Post Office.
Charlotte and Mrs. Watson had been absent from London recently. Before they left, they had advertised Sherlock Holmes’s sabbatical in the papers. During their time away, they unexpectedly handled a case at Stern Hollow, Lord Ingram’s country estate. Miss Redmayne, Mrs. Watson’s niece, rushed back from Paris, where she was studying medicine, to help with the investigation. And Mrs. Watson, who had seen Miss Redmayne only briefly, had wished to spend some more time with her. Soon after she helped Charlotte move Bernadine to London, she’d taken off for Paris.
Charlotte had also not been in a great hurry to resume her work: Bernadine had been moved around a great deal in a short time, and Charlotte wanted to make sure that her sister was properly settled down before she took on any tasks that might require her attention elsewhere.
So they had not made it known to the public that SherlockHolmes was back. Therefore not many letters came for the consulting detective. But today there were a few, and she was glad to see them: She could postpone, for a little more time, the reply she owed Lord Ingram.
There should be nothing difficult about writing to him—they’d corresponded since they were children. The nature of that correspondence had changed upon his marriage, the wide-ranging, sometimes digressive discussions of their youth narrowing to concrete and immediate subjects. He wrote about his archeological digs, his children, and his other responsibilities. She gave accounts of the gatherings she attended, her minor chemical experiments, and occasionally, very occasionally, Bernadine’s unhappy bowels.
Both their lives had changed dramatically in the past six months. Yet now that their correspondence had resumed, he still stuck to the same topics. She supposed she could easily tell him about her cases, Madame Gascoigne’s latest foray into fine pastry, and occasionally, very occasionally, Bernadine’s still tormented bowels.
But she didn’t want to. And she didn’t want to with a force that surprised her.
With a flick of her wrist, she sliced open the letters that had come for Sherlock Holmes.
Half were early Christmas cards, wishing the great detective and his very helpful sister the joys of the season. Two more were clearly pranks, composed by those who didn’t have enough cunning or experience to make a convincing go of it.
The last letter in the stack came on stationery from the Langham Hotel.
Dear Mr. Holmes,
