When Russell got back to Baker Street, Charlotte was sitting in the sitting room with a fresh file open in her hands.
"You're back?"
She asked it without lifting her head, her eyes still on the papers.
"Mm." Russell answered and dropped onto the sofa beside her.
"What are you reading?"
"A statement," Charlotte said. "Emily Collins's."
Russell raised an eyebrow at that.
"You've been to Scotland Yard?"
"This afternoon," Charlotte said. "I questioned her myself."
"And? The result?" Russell pressed.
"She and Pilsen knew each other long before this. They'd had a brief affair years ago. Call it an old flame rekindled — hardly Lestrade's fault that he couldn't dig it up," Charlotte said.
"She was the one supporting Pilsen the whole time he was on the run. Selling that fake story about Moriarty committing the murders to the papers was his idea, incidentally.
When Pilsen went to Hannigan for help, part of his purpose was actually to meet Emily Collins.
Only things took an unexpected turn after that. Pilsen killed Hannigan.
In the panic, Emily Collins told Pilsen to lie low in the flat in Walworth for a while, and to come back through the rear door once the police had sealed off Hannigan's house."
"So…" Russell mulled it over for a moment. "She did all that for Pilsen. What was she after?"
"A future made of thin air," Charlotte said, dripping contempt.
"Sentiment with no logic behind it, hormones holding the high ground. What sort of rational judgement do you expect from a woman whose head has been turned by love?"
"All right." Russell shrugged. "Anything else besides that?"
"Such as?"
"Such as anything about the Professor. Did Pilsen ever mention him to Emily Collins?"
"No." Charlotte shook her head. "Why would he tell any of that to a lover he intended to use and discard?"
"Fair point, I suppose." Russell stretched and let himself sink back into the sofa.
"Then there's nothing useful to be got out of her at all, is there?"
"She knows very little more than we do." Charlotte tossed the statement aside.
"She doesn't even know who Pilsen was working for before, or what the Lloyds Bank business was really about.
All she knows is that Pilsen wanted to run, that he needed money, and that once he had it he'd promised to take her away from London with him. That's the whole of it."
"So on the subject of the Professor —"
"Not a thing."
"…" Russell was quiet for a moment, then sighed.
"Then that thread's been cut too."
"To a degree, yes." Charlotte didn't deny it. "Emily Collins was an outsider from the start. It's perfectly natural that she knows so little."
"And where is she now?" Russell asked. "Still locked up at Scotland Yard?"
"Mm." Charlotte nodded.
"Lestrade says her mental state is very unstable at the moment, so for now they can only keep her in custody.
Once she's calmed down, they'll decide whether to charge her with obstruction or turn her into a witness for the Crown."
"What about Pilsen's other associates? The ones who used to run with him?" Russell asked.
"Lestrade's already sent men to look into it, but I doubt they'll turn up anything useful.
The Professor's return and the strike on Lloyds Bank were both lucrative work. He wasn't going to run his mouth about it.
Apart from the few we brought in earlier, the rest of them almost certainly knew nothing."
"Then our last hope rests entirely on Charles Brown?"
Russell leaned back into the sofa and picked up his teacup for a sip.
"There's no telling when that fellow will come back to his senses again. What if we go over there and he's raving?"
Charlotte fell silent at that, as though something had surfaced in her memory, and her gaze drifted toward Russell without her meaning it to.
"Then we'll have to trust to luck," she said flatly.
After a pause, she went on. "Never mind that. How is your body?"
"Hm?" Russell raised an eyebrow. "What about my body?"
"You fought Pilsen yesterday. In the corridor.
The fight was over by the time I arrived, but you didn't look as though you'd come through it well," Charlotte said. "There was blood all over the floor."
"Oh, that." Russell thought about it. "Not bad, actually. Flesh wounds, nothing serious."
"Good." The girl gave a small nod and looked away.
And then her brow drew together again, and her eyes went back to Russell of their own accord.
Not bad, really?
He said it so lightly.
Charlotte lowered her eyes, and Pilsen's file rose slowly to the surface of her mind.
A discharged soldier, dismissed after a vicious assault during his service.
Even in his years knocking about Southwark, the number of savage brawls he'd taken part in was far from small.
A man like that — even she wouldn't claim she could handle him comfortably in a straight fight.
To say nothing of the cane, struck against him so many times in succession that the whole shaft was bent out of any recognisable shape.
The fight had already ended when she got there, and Pilsen was already dead. She had no idea what exactly had happened.
But however she turned it over…
"You're truly all right?" Charlotte asked again, and beneath the concern in her voice there was something probing.
Russell set down his teacup, lifted his head, and met her eyes.
"Truly all right." He smiled, then raised an arm and rolled his shoulder.
"See? Perfectly sound. I could do twenty back handsprings in a row — believe me?"
Charlotte studied him closely for a long moment, as if weighing his words for truth, hunting for even the smallest sign that he was putting on a brave face.
She found nothing.
The ease on Russell's face didn't look manufactured, and the roll of his shoulder was smooth and natural, without a trace of strain.
"…Good, then."
In the end Charlotte could only look away, lifting her own teacup and using its rim to hide an expression that had grown complicated.
Perhaps he really was all right.
Or perhaps he was simply hiding it too well.
Either way, neither answer was good news for her.
A university student with no professional training whatsoever — by what right did he trade blows on even terms with a veteran soldier of years' experience, a man with blood already on his hands?
There were not many circumstances or answers that could explain such a thing, and not one of them was something she could accept.
Charlotte felt her mind beginning to slide toward somewhere she couldn't control.
No. This couldn't go on.
She drew a deep breath, then stood abruptly.
"I'm going upstairs."
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