"Ahem... w-well, let's change the subject."
Cloris cleared her throat, trying to steer the conversation back on track.
"About Miss Charlotte Holmes - you mentioned in The Times that she likes to play the violin in her spare time.
Besides the violin, does she have any other habits?" Cloris asked.
"You know how it is. Charlotte Holmes is a student at Imperial College too, but she's always... well, you know.
So a lot of students are still very curious about this legendary detective. Could you tell us a bit more?"
Russell thought it over.
"Does staying up all night count?" he asked. "And when she stays up, she likes coffee. The stronger the better."
"She just... powers through?" Wilson blinked.
"Right," Russell nodded. "More than once I've walked in at seven in the morning to find her just getting up out of her chair, and then she tells me she's only just woken up."
He said it with the weary resignation of a man long since used to it.
Cloris scribbled rapidly in her notebook: [Miss Holmes likes to stay up late, drinks strong coffee, has a habit of going without sleep entirely.]
"Do you try to talk her out of it?" she asked.
"I've tried," Russell said. "Doesn't work."
"Doesn't work?"
"She says," Russell cleared his throat and dropped into an imitation of Charlotte's voice,
"'Sleep is a waste of time. The brain only maintains peak operating efficiency while awake.'"
Cloris burst out laughing.
Wilson laughed along with her.
Mary laughed too, though hers was fainter than the other two.
"And you?" Cloris looked at Russell. "How do you deal with it?"
"Deal with it?" Russell raised an eyebrow.
"I mean... Miss Holmes doesn't sleep, so what do you do?"
"I make my breakfast, she drinks her coffee." Russell shrugged. "She'll come down and find something to eat when she gets hungry."
"That's it?"
"What else? You can't exactly force her to do anything." Russell shrugged again.
So Cloris added another line to her notebook.
[Student Watson prepares breakfast for Miss Holmes. Their daily routines complement each other.]
She looked up, letting her gaze rest on Russell's face for a moment while she weighed her words.
"Um... Student Watson, I have a... well, a possibly rather forward question."
"Go ahead."
"You live together with Miss Holmes, correct?"
"Correct."
"Then..." Cloris bit her lip. "What do the two of you usually talk about, outside of work?"
Russell paused.
"Talk about?"
"I mean-" Cloris made an effort to sound professional. "The way you get along in private. What do you talk about over dinner, for example? Or what do you do on weekends?"
"Generally speaking, we each mind our own business," Russell said. "Now and then I help her sort through some material."
"And weekends?"
"For her, a weekend is no different from a working day. The only difference is that I don't have to go to school, so it's more convenient for her to order me around."
Cloris nodded and wrote: [The two maintain a dynamic close to that of old friends of many years.]
Sitting off to one side, Mary shifted slightly.
She seemed to want to see what Cloris had written, but from that angle all she could see was the back of the notebook.
"So," Wilson spoke up, working up the courage for a question, "Student Watson, what sort of person do you think Miss Holmes is?"
Russell looked at him.
Wilson found that gaze somewhat unnerving, but he pressed on anyway. "I mean... we all know she's brilliant, that she's solved a great many cases. But what's she like in private? You've spent so long around her, you must know best."
Russell was silent for a moment.
"Her, hm..."
He lifted his head, his gaze drifting out the window as if recalling something.
"She's a great deal of trouble."
Cloris's hand stopped.
That assessment - she felt certain she'd heard it somewhere before.
That was it. The Times. In their interview, Charlotte Holmes had described her own assistant in exactly the same terms.
Did these two even describe each other the same way?
"Trouble?" Wilson asked cautiously. "Meaning, specifically...?"
"The kind," Russell said, drawing his gaze back in, a trace of rueful amusement in his voice,
"who says she doesn't need anything, but remembers every last thing.
Who says leave me alone, when if you did leave her alone she'd sit there until sunrise.
Who says sleep is a waste of time, but still eats the breakfast every time you make it and set it down in front of her."
He said it casually, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
But listening to him, Cloris found it... strange, somehow.
She lowered her head, frowning at the notebook in her hands.
After a moment's thought, the girl picked up her pen, crossed out the [old friends of many years] she'd just written, and replaced it with [an old married couple].
Yes. That was more like it.
Cloris nodded, satisfied, then raised her eyes and let them settle on Mary.
She'd more or less exhausted her questions about Russell and Charlotte.
So Cloris considered for a moment, then said,
"Er, Miss Morstan?"
"If you don't mind, might I ask you a few questions?" Cloris said, gathering her courage.
Mary blinked, then nodded with a gentle smile.
"Of course."
"Then..."
Cloris hesitated, then asked,
"What do you think of Russell Watson?"
Wilson's pen stopped on the paper, and he looked up at Mary before he knew he was doing it.
Russell blinked too. He hadn't expected the fire to spread back around to him.
He turned his head as well, looking at Mary beside him.
The girl simply held her composed smile, not the least bit flustered by the sudden question.
"Russell, hm..."
She murmured the name once, softly, as though tasting it.
Then Mary tilted her head slightly, letting her eyes travel over the person beside her, up and down.
Only then did she look back at Cloris with a small smile.
"I think... he's a very special person."
Cloris's pen went flying across the page.
"Special?" she pressed, terrified of missing a single detail. "Could you be more specific?"
"Mm..." Mary thought for a moment, as if searching for the right word.
"He always looks lazy, like nothing can hold his interest. He likes to sleep through lectures, and he likes to say things designed to annoy people."
As she spoke, she cut a sidelong glance at Russell, a faint note of complaint in her voice.
"But he's... mm, he's very clever," the girl said.
"Not the clever of someone who buries himself in books. Not the clever of someone who gets into Imperial College in three months, either."
Mary paused. "It's the kind where, when you talk to him, he actually listens, actually thinks about it, and then gives you an answer you never saw coming."
Cloris nodded, writing furiously.
"And he's interesting, too."
"Interesting?"
"It's the sort where," Mary sketched a shape in the air, "when you're with him, you never feel bored. He can take the most ordinary thing and make it sound fascinating."
As she said it, her eyes drifted toward Russell again, quite beyond her control.
"Anything else?" Cloris pressed, the fire of gossip blazing in her eyes.
Mary thought about it.
"And... he's dependable." Her voice dropped a little softer than before, but grew more earnest. "The kind you read about in storybooks - if you need help, he'll be there. That kind of dependable.
Like the warm fire in a hearth in winter," she said quietly.
"You don't always notice it. But when you truly need warmth, you find it's been there all along, burning away quietly, driving off all the cold for you."
When her voice faded, the classroom was completely silent.
Wilson's mouth hung open, his fountain pen nearly slipping from his fingers.
Cloris's eyes had gone wide, those sharp reporter's eyes darting frantically back and forth between Russell and Mary.
She had the sudden feeling she'd stumbled onto something she was never meant to stumble onto.
Beyond the excitement and the thrill, only one question remained in her head:
Can I actually print this?
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