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“Sherlock is nonverbal today,” I announced as I followed her into the crime scene. “I’ll be helping her communicate with you while we’re here, and if you need to reach her after we’ve gone our separate ways, please use text messaging.”
“Oh for the love of god,” muttered Gregson. “I don’t need this.”
Sherlock wheeled to fix him with her inky glare, holding eye contact with Gregson until he looked away.
“Sherlock thinks that if you didn’t need her, you shouldn’t have called her. If you do need her, you’ll have to take her as she is, and today she’s nonverbal.”
I looked to Sherlock, and she nodded and bounced an eyebrow to emphasise my explanation.
“So you two have just gone whole hog and are sharing a telepathic link, are you?” Gregson grumbled, still unable to drop his ableism even momentarily.
“We don’t need to be psychic,” I snapped. “I understand her because I pay attention to her. Could we get on with the crime solving, please?”
Sherlock let out a little snort of laughter and touched her hand to her chest when I looked at her questioningly.
“Oh, ha, yes I suppose I do sound like you.”
Sherlock gave my shoulder a brief squeeze, then turned back to Gregson and tapped her left wrist.
“Yes, well, let’s get on with it,” said Gregson, holding out a pair of nitrile gloves. Sherlock pulled them on and waved Gregson back, pointing at the floor lamp with her other hand. Gregson only stared at her, “What?”
I rolled my eyes, “Stand back. You’re in her light.”
Gregson stepped back into a shadowy corner of the room.
Sherlock began with the floor. She knelt beside the bed and pulled out her magnifying glass from her pocket, then brushed at the carpet with her gloved fingers before waving me over.
I peered over her shoulder at her fingers, “Cigarette ash.” Sherlock nodded and held up three fingers. “Three cigarettes?” Sherlock shook her head. “Three kinds of ash?” She nodded. “Oh, well that suggests multiple people in the room on the night of, doesn’t it? Who smokes three different brands of cigarettes at once?” Sherlock smiled at me and tapped her nose. I pulled out my notepad and began jotting down what she’d pointed out to me, while Sherlock went and looked at the bracket in the wall where the body had been found hanging. She looked to Gregson and mimed a noose.
“Where’s the rope?” I asked, at Gregson’s blank look.
“Oh, there wasn’t a rope. He used the bedsheets,” Gregson handed over an evidence bag stuffed with some strips of cloth.
Sherlock stepped forward to take the bag and frowned at it. She looked at me and made a stabbing gesture.
“You think he was stabbed? But there wasn’t any-” Sherlock shook her head. “Oh, knife!” She nodded eagerly. I turned to Gregson, “Was there a knife in the room? Or scissors?”
Gregson frowned, “Knife? No. Nor any scissors.”
Sherlock waggled her eyebrows at me and resumed her investigation by righting the chair lying on its side next to the bracket. Presumably what the victim had stepped onto. She stepped onto the seat, but once on it, the bracket only came to her chin. With a hum of interest, she hopped down and upended the little bin next to the bed.
After digging through a mound of used tissues, Sherlock unearthed a newspaper. She flipped through it excitedly and sniffed it, then got to her feet, holding the paper out to me and tapping excitedly at a point on the page. I read aloud the bit she was pointing to.
“‘Prison Break! Blessington Gang Escapes Custody!’ Suspect?” Sherlock nodded and pointed to the notebook in my hands. “Oh, sure.” I handed over the book and my pen, and Sherlock began scribbling eagerly. “Shall I read the rest of the article, Sherlock?”
Sherlock nodded, still scribbling, and I ran my eye quickly over the newspaper. We finished around the same time, and Sherlock handed my book back.
I looked at her notes, “Oh, you’ve solved it! Shall I tell him all about it?” Sherlock nodded. “All right, DI Gregson,” I cleared my throat importantly, like Sherlock sometimes does before beginning a particularly obvious deduction.
With a sigh, Gregson heaved himself up from the wall he’d been leaned against, “Yeah?”
“We’ve got a solution for you, if you’re still interested.” I waited until Gregson had crossed the room to us before beginning, “The victim here was the fourth Blessington. When they were pinched last month, the late Mr Blessington here turned informant and gave up enough on the rest of the gang to get himself probation, while the rest went away for twenty years. Supposedly. The other Blessingtons escaped while being transported to high security prison after their trial. First order of business, tracking down this guy. No forced entry; they’d have had a key-oh,” I turned to Sherlock. “Might have paid off the landlord? Or threatened the landlord, more likely. There was something about that being their MO in the article.” Sherlock gave me the thumbs up. “It was basically an execution. They tried him, or at least talked at him for a long time. Sherlock reckons they each smoked more than one cigarette while they were here. Anyway, obviously they found him guilty.
“They hanged him from the bracket, there. It was meant to look like a suicide. See the chair there? He couldn’t have actually stood on the chair, because the seat was too high. His head’d’ve been higher than the bracket, if he stood on it. Sherlock found impressions of a box in the carpet under the bracket. They brought the knife to cut the sheets into strips and the box to stand him on and took them both away with them when they left. More evidence they’d got a key as they must have been here before to work out how they’d manage it, then Sherlock?” I looked from Gregson to Sherlock and she nodded.
Gregson nodded, writing furiously in his own notebook to keep up with our little dialogue, “Thanks. Brilliant.”
I smiled at Sherlock, “Yeah, she is, isn’t she?”
Sherlock ducked her head, then pressed a hand to her heart and held her other hand out toward me, like a singer acknowledging her accompanist at the end of a concert.
I grinned at her, my face heating, “I hardly did anything. Anyway, I learnt from the best.”
Sherlock peeled off her gloves and squeezed my elbow, then my shoulder.
Gregson cleared his throat, “Right, well. We can all have a nice old flirt some other time, but now I’ve got a murder family to arrest. So if you ladies will excuse me.”
With a little sigh and a toss of her head, Sherlock took my hand and pulled me from the room.
…
“Feeling better?” I asked when Sherlock and I had finished our dinner and installed ourselves in our armchairs by the fire. Sherlock nodded, smiling sleepily and reached out to press my stocking foot with her bare one. It made me giggle. “That’s good.”
Sherlock cocked her head consideringly. She pulled her locs into a topknot, then rose from her chair and went to her music stand. She lifted her violin out of its case and raised it to her chin. Sherlock turned and looked steadily at me. “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. I want to hear the music, silly.”
Sherlock tossed her head and raised her bow to the strings. I will never quite have the words to describe Sherlock’s music. The piece began thin and sharp and sort of wailing. Just on the edge of grating. Gradually it became sweeter and richer, finally mellowing into a contented sort of humming, almost like purring. It couldn’t have gone on more than a minute or so, and when it ended, my eyes were more than a little wet. Sherlock kept her violin clutched to her until the last notes had faded from the air, then returned her instrument to the case and turned to me.
I wiped my silly eyes on my sleeve, “That was just beautiful, Sherlock. That was so lovely.”
Sherlock smiled broad at me, but there was something sort of. It looked mingled with something, like Sherlock’s bow stroking two strings at once. Sherlock edged a bit closer to me so that we were toe to toe again and clasped both hands over her heart, still smiling that oddly stirring smile.
“I.” I shuffled my feet on the carpet, feeling very hot in the face and both too big and too small at once. “That was lovely.”
Sherlock’s smile faded a little so that the something else was a bit brighter than the happiness. She blinked hard, then turned and made for the stairs. I watched her off, feeling vaguely guilty. At the foot of the stairs, Sherlock paused and half turned, “Thank you, John.” Her voice was very small and even sweeter than usual. “Good night.”
“Of course,” I said. “Anything you like, I’m there.”
She nodded once, her smile lifting again, just for a moment. Then she ascended the stairs and was gone.