Charlotte Holmes Quotes

“She was altogether colorless and severe, and still she managed to be beautiful. Not the way that girls are generally beautiful, but more like the way a knife catches the light, makes you want to take it in your hands.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, A Study in Charlotte

“John H. Watson might have been many things - a doctor, a storyteller, and by most accounts a kind and decent man-but he clearly wasn't a zoologist. There's no such thing as a swamp adder. And the idea that Sherlock Holmes deduced its existence from a saucer of milk is ridiculous- snakes have zero interest in milk. They also can't hear anything but vibrations, so they wouldn't hear a whistle. But they do breathe, so a snake couldn't survive in a locked safe.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, A Study in Charlotte

“did you just call me a cow, you whale?”
― Brittany Cavallaro, A Study in Charlotte

“Did you know that only older forests grow the sort of fungi that feeds the variety of orchid called Goodyera pubescens—”

“You’re making that up.”

“I promise you, I’m not making up mushroom facts for your amusement.”

“Pubescens? Pubescent orchid?” He snorted. “Has it grown a little stupid mustache? Does it skateboard?”
― Brittany Cavallaro, A Question of Holmes

“Holmes, my patron saint of trapdoors and fail-safes, of always remembering to pour the foundation so that, later, if you needed to, you could build a brilliant house on top.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“The police aren’t going to let us help them, not if Shepard’s any indication,” she said. “Idiots. I suppose that they don’t like that I tampered with their crime scene.”

“We’re also their prime suspects,” I reminded her. “That sort of puts a damper on our working relationship.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, A Study in Charlotte

“What haunted me most wasn’t the ropes, or the chair, or the gasoline, though those played recurring parts in my nightmares. It wasn’t Alistair, or Hadrian’s crisis of conscience. It was that we’d had the time, Holmes and I. Three long minutes before the police made it to us, enough for her to turn to me and say, This is what you have to do, and why you have to do it.

No, what haunted me most was that I knew, had I confessed to August’s murder there on the lawn, Holmes would have found a way to clear my name. But she was letting her brother walk free for his mistake. She’d given up Bryony Downs to God knows what fate. She’d played judge and jury for Hadrian and Phillipa. And now she was letting herself be led away for a crime she didn’t commit, and she would walk away from it unscathed, and there would be no one doing time for August’s death.

It wasn’t hers to decide. It wasn’t mine, either. Charlotte Holmes had told me once that she wasn’t a good person. That day I’d begun to believe it.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Case for Jamie