That set the tone for the next wretched hour.
“Do you prefer New England oysters?” Phillipa was saying, toying with her tiny fork. “I do, but it’s so hard to ship them across the ocean, and what’s the point, really, when we have such lovely Italian shellfish close at hand?”
“Where is Leander?” I asked, in the tone someone takes with a small child. “I know you know.”
“Fine,” Phillipa said, ignoring her, “I’ll choose them myself,” and raised her finger again. She rattled off an order that might as well have been in Italian, for all I understood it.
“Where,” I said, “is Leander.”
Grimacing, Phillipa adjusted her scarf. “They really could turn up the heat in this place, couldn’t they? Brrr.”
“Where is. Leander.”
This had been our plan, insomuch as we had one: I would hammer away at Phillipa with the question she wouldn’t answer until she laid out her reasons for meeting us. If she’s going through the trouble of arranging a lunch, Holmes said, she’ll want to pretend at civility. That gives us time to maneuver. Hammer away at her. It’ll give me time to learn her tells.
“Where is Leander,” I said. Then I ordered a soda from the waiter. Holmes was still pretending to study her menu, but I was sure she’d found a way to study Phillipa’s face. The older woman wouldn’t stop fidgeting. It was subtle—she’d smooth a piece of hair, or tug at a sleeve—but her hands were in constant motion.
Five minutes passed. Ten. Phillipa seemed to be waiting for something. I would’ve worried that our meeting was a diversion, but for what? It wasn’t like Greystone HQ would be made vulnerable by our absence.
The oysters arrived on a shallow platter, on a bed of ice. Holmes’s eyes narrowed, for a moment, in pleasure. She’d had them for the first time at my father’s house in Connecticut when Abbie, my stepmom, had brought home a sack from the fish market, and Holmes had eaten nearly a whole tray. I knew her well enough to know she liked the ritual of it, the strange, beautiful meat, the tiny tools used to prize it out.
Almost reverently, Holmes lifted an oyster and studied it. “How are your orchids?” she asked Phillipa in a polite voice.
And just like that, Phillipa’s mask slid off her like oil.
“I’ll give you one chance to bargain with us,” Phillipa said, placing her hands on the table. “It’s more than you deserve, and you know it. Tell me where August is, and I’ll negotiate on your behalf with Lucien. Hadrian isn’t interested in treating with you, but I am. Surely that’s why you called me here to this farce of a lunch.”
“It’s too bad that your gardener quit, and so suddenly,” Holmes said, lifting the shell to her nose to study it. “That was just this morning, wasn’t it? Milo did need someone to tend to his . . . carnations.”
“There are other orchid gardeners,” Phillipa said. “Here are my terms. I’ll ask Lucien to give you two years. Two years’ amnesty from the death sentence he’s put on you—long enough for you to grow up, come of age, finish school. And then you’ll disappear. Choose a new identity. A new name.”
“Milo chose that gardener on my recommendation,” Holmes said, turning the shell in her hands. “Oh, these just smell like the ocean, don’t they? Makes me wish I was at home. In Sussex.”
Phillipa paused. “In Sussex.”
“Yes. With my very sick mother. And my missing uncle. Tell me,” Holmes said, and reached across the table to pluck the tiny oyster fork from Phillipa’s plate, “have you seen Leander Holmes recently? The last I saw him he was concerned about my . . . very sick mother.”
“The better question would be where you’re keeping my baby brother,” Phillipa snapped. “Don’t toy with me.”
“Your brother,” Holmes said.
“My brother.”
“Which one? The child-murderer hiding out on a beach in Thailand? Or the antiquities thief with the receding hairline?”
“Did nobody teach you any respect?” Phillipa exploded. “No one! Did nobody tell you that being clever isn’t enough? You need to be willing to work with people. I’m attempting to offer you an out.”
“I will never work with you.”
“I’m willing to call in men, right now, to take you to Lucien,” she continued. “He might be done taking it slow. I’m sure he’d be willing to speed things up. Break your hands. Kill you. Let’s see if I can get you out of the country and to Thailand before your bear of a brother can stop them.”
“The waiter is texting someone,” I told Holmes, not bothering to whisper. “He pulled out his phone the second she started yelling.”
Holmes leaned forward. “August might be alive. And my uncle might be just taking a short jaunt across the Swiss Alps and forgot to tell us. Listen—there’s no time, you’ve made sure of that. These are my terms. You order your brother Lucien out of hiding. You and Hadrian go to England. You apologize to my parents. And you tell me where my uncle is. And then perhaps I dig August up and see if he still wants anything to do with you.”
“Apologize to them? For what—having the misfortune of producing you?”
“For poisoning my mother,” she said quietly. “For trying to kill me. For taking what was a mistake and blowing it up into a horrible international war.”