A Study in Charlotte

James wakes up to find the dorm in an uproar. The police have arrived and want to question him because he was seen fighting with Dobson the previous day. Detective Ben Shepard says that he’ll contact James’s father so that he can be present at the interrogation. This news upsets James because he tries to avoid his father. Since it’s still before dawn, Shepard tells him to get some rest prior to the interview. Instead, he goes in search of Charlotte: “I didn’t even know what I’d say when I found her. What possible reason did she have to believe I was innocent? The last time she saw me, I was beating the daylights out of the victim” (25).

Charlotte finds James wandering the campus and enlists his help to climb into Dobson’s room to investigate the crime scene. She points out that people heard her threaten to kill Dobson, so she and James are currently the prime suspects in his death. Once inside Dobson’s room, Charlotte collects various samples in her specimen jars and takes these back to her lab for analysis. When James meets her there later, he realizes that her lab is actually a large supply closet that she has adapted for her personal use: “It was the real deal, the kind I’d only seen in movies—tall beakers, and big fat ones, smoke coming off of the strange green substances inside. Bunsen burners all lit like a row of stage lights” (33).

In addition, the room contains an old-fashioned loveseat and a collection of books, including the complete works of Dr. Watson related to Sherlock Holmes. Once Charlotte completes her analysis, she concludes that Dobson was poisoned with arsenic and possibly a second toxic substance. She explains that her family tutored all their children in the deductive arts and that chemistry formed a large part of her early curriculum. Sherringford agreed to allot her space to set up a lab on the school grounds.

James falls asleep while Charlotte continues analyzing the crime scene evidence. When he awakens at noon, he finds several voicemails instructing him to meet his father and Detective Shepard for questioning in his dorm room. Charlotte accompanies him across campus while other students point and stare at them. As they walk, she tells him everything she has deduced about his family background and current relationship with his family, including his estrangement from his father.

When the two amateur detectives arrive in James’s room, they receive a hearty greeting from Mr. Watson. He’s delighted to see his son and to know that he has forged a friendship with Charlotte. Shepard quickly establishes that both Charlotte and James had alibis for the time of Dobson’s death. However, the police still view them as persons of interest in the case. During the interrogation, Charlotte reveals that Dobson had been harassing her to have sex for the past year and that he raped her on one occasion when she was under the influence of oxycodone. James is so upset by this disclosure that he goes to the nearest bathroom and punches a hole in the wall. Charlotte tells him, “You just choose to feel all the things that I can’t, or don’t. It’s overwhelming. We’ve been friends for less than a day. […] Though I suppose we’re neither of us very normal” (53).

After the interview, Mr. Watson invites his son and Charlotte to have dinner with him on Sunday evening. The two students then return to the lab, where Charlotte announces that someone is trying to frame the two of them. She adds that the real culprit systematically began to poison Dobson starting on the day of his fight with James, gradually increasing the dosage until the night he died.

Additionally, Dobson was bitten by a rattlesnake, possibly after death. Then, his dorm room was staged to contain items relating to a Holmes story entitled “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” including a glass of milk, a sliding whistle, and a swamp adder: “‘Whoever they are, they’re taunting us,’ Holmes was saying, pacing the length of her lab like a caged cat. ‘The arsenic would have done Dobson in on its own. The snake is just a ridiculous flourish, there to send a message’” (57).

Charlotte assumes that the killer wants the teens to conduct an investigation of their own. She suggests that they look into people who arrived on campus for the current semester and have some grudge against both Charlotte and James. Having delivered this news, Charlotte says she must think further about their next move. Dismissing James for the day, she picks up a violin and begins to play.