The Schoolgirl Affair (A Sherlock Holmes and Serena Norton Story #3)

Chapter Ten

I knew the best way to appease my father would be to keep up my grades, and I tried my best to pay attention that day. As hard as I tried, however, I was constantly thinking about my two cases. Would Alice Woods' death remain unsolved because I was not old enough to go where I needed to learn the right clues?

Of course, my last class of the day had my full and complete attention: Mr. Barrington's art class. The pastel flower landscape he set before the class was the same one—at least, I thought it was the same one—he had brought the last class I had. My muddled attempts at copying looked nothing like it.

Mr. Barrington, his face lined and pale, walked the room. He paused beside me and shook his head. "Miss Norton, really. Do you need to be closer to the painting? Perhaps a better view of the details will help you."

"Thank you, sir, but I can see it just fine," I said cheerfully. I dabbed some pink on the canvas. "Thank you, sir. I've never been good at copying someone else. Perhaps later on in the curriculum I will be able to express myself with my own composition."

The expression on his face twisted. "Perhaps," he said, his voice sounding a bit strangled. "I recall you did an interesting sketch of a boot earlier this year."

"Actually, it was a boot print," I corrected. A boot probably would have earned me a better grade, but I had found the boot print in the gardens. It hadn't matched any of the gardners' boots. I had never solved the mystery of who had made the print but I kept the sketch anyway.

"Proof you are capable of copying something, then."

My next application of pink smudged the blue I had painted earlier. "Oops," I said as the colors merged into nothing resembling a flower. "Ah, well. From far away, it will look well enough, won't it?"

Mr. Barrington winced as though he were in pain. "Perhaps if you spent less time talking and more time studying the brush strokes the artist used, you will have better success."

"Yes, sir." I hesitated for all of a second before adding, "At least I can never be accused of being a forger."

On the verge of walking on, the art teacher went very still. "Indeed," he managed to say. And then he hurried to the front of the room.

I'd rattled him by mentioning the topic. I had confirmed my suspicion that he had some tie to forgery, but had speaking up merely warned the man? He didn't look at me for the rest of the lesson, so it was hard to tell what he was thinking.

When our time was up, I hung at the back of the room, hoping not to be noticed. My classmates' canvases were left to dry, and Mr. Barrington took charge of putting everything away. Much to my chagrin, he noticed me and told me to go to my next class.

It was a clever scheme; I had to admit. Young ladies are expected to paint, even if they are not good. By utilizing unsuspecting girls to make forgeries, he could use the best copies to sell and the girls would never be the wiser.

Unless they were clever, like Helen Davies, but while she had used the situation for her own purposes, she didn't realize what was really happening.

"What's happened?" Abby asked as she joined me. "I don't like that look on your face. It usually means you're about to do something reckless and dangerous."

"No. I am about to send a message to my father."

"You're not going to be disrespectful, are you?"

Surprised by the note of anxiety in my friend's voice, I glanced over. "I don't think so," I said carefully. "I simply have to make my feelings known to my father. Why do you think I will be disrespectful?"