Work Text:
“You don’t need to leave,” said Mrs. Hudson.
“I do.”
So he took a flat in a cheaper part of town, one with a grubby little kitchen and bedroom and sitting room. The paint was discolored by a creeping line of damp, and it didn’t take very long for his bedding and jumpers to take on a faint musty stench that he rarely raised the will to combat. At night the pipes groaned ineffectually, and he was frequently woken by teenagers shrieking and fighting with each other below his tiny window.
It may have sounded strange, but it gave him a kind of melancholic satisfaction: it felt like an appropriate place for him, the right place just then. It matched his mood. The Baker Street flat had been chaotic and stimulating: strange wallpaper, strange furniture, and strange scents ground into the carpet, which sometimes had annoyed John but just as often had given him the sense of being somewhere interesting, an epicenter of things that happened. All of that had been Sherlock, his fingerprints all over everything in Baker Street. John’s dull personality had hardly left a trace.
He doubted that Mycroft would be interested in the plebian business of sorting out a deceased brother’s earthly possessions, so John hadn’t bothered to call him. He took what he wanted: Sherlock’s skull, his violin, and a couple of pieces of furniture that would have been inconvenient to replace. All of it was dented or stained, but as he could trace most of the flaws to specific memories of Sherlock (dropping acid onto the sofa to see how long it took to eat through, slicing thin rounds off the ends of the table legs, a few millimeters at a time, over the course of weeks) he felt something in common with the things he dragged out of Baker Street. Sherlock damaged the objects (and the people) around him, but they still clung to him, unwilling or unable to tear themselves a way.
He found a new job, another part-time clinic gig, and he worked overtime as often as he was able, especially when it gave him an excuse to skip his therapist’s appointment.
He called Mrs. Hudson diligently every two or three weeks: she took to complaining about the impossibility of letting the flat, given all the strange things Sherlock had done to it (a blatant lie, it was prime real estate and probably could have gotten let with a giant hole in the wall) and hinting at a willingness to lower the price if it would induce John to come back.
Once he tried to stop by Bart’s to see Molly, but she wouldn’t make eye contact with him, shifting nervously about as he tried awkwardly to ask how she was doing. Finally she blurted something about an appointment and nearly fled the room.
He kept up occasional drinks with Lestrade, evenings inevitably filled with much lying to each other about how well things were going in their respective lives. On rare occasions they let themselves get drunk, and then spent hours laughing and shaking their heads as they took turns reminding each other about mad things that Sherlock had said and done. It was telling that they had been going like that for nearly a year and only rarely repeated a story.
Once he passed Sally Donovan in the park. She pretended not to see him.
And then Sherlock came back, and there was adrenaline, panic, and wonder, running through the streets of London as if they’d never stopped, tracking down the last of Moriarty’s syndicate for three terrifying, amazing days that ended with three bullets in the back of the head of a wax doll that looked like Sherlock, and one more bullet in the very real head of Sebastian Moran.
Afterwards, Sherlock moved himself back into the flat in Baker Street as easily as if he’d been on vacation rather than dead.
John stayed away, though.
He had changed his number, but obviously that would be no deterrent to Sherlock. So he imagined over and over what he was going to say when Sherlock contacted him: all he knew was that he was angry, and betrayed, and he wasn’t going to apologize for that. He needed to tell Sherlock that he’d thought he was dead and there was no possible excuse for what he had done; that he possibly actually believed now Sherlock wasn’t even human, because lying to people who’d thought they were your friends in that way just wasn’t something any human being with even an ounce of compassion would ever do.
Sherlock didn’t call.
Days dragged into weeks, and still John sat on the sofa, just watching his cell phone, waiting for it to ring. When it did, it was only ever Sophie at the clinic reception desk, asking him if he could pick up another shift.
He refrained from checking ‘The Science of Deduction’, or looking at new comments on his own blog. When he turned on the telly one day and caught a glimpse of Sherlock’s face, he turned it off again immediately. Just the tiny glimpse of sound and color had set his heart racing. He put on a jacket and took a brisk walk around his dodgy neighborhood to work the stress out of him. It kept him out on the streets until two, when his leg froze up and he found himself nearly trapped, a kilometer from the flat, with no money for cab fare.
The next day there was a message on his phone.
John. I have a case. –SH
He gritted his teeth and deleted it.
The next morning, Sherlock sweetened the pot.
Two girls drowned. Locked room, no water, no signs of forced entry.
John stared at it for a long time, had a drink and blocked the number. That, of course, did nothing to stop the messages.
Two sisters, twins. Each sleeping with the other’s husband.
Mrs. Hudson says I am intolerable, will evict me unless you agree to move back in.
John threw the phone across the room, breaking it.
He hadn’t any money for a new one, so after that there were no more messages for a while.
Then one day he came back from a particularly trying day at the clinic - he didn’t generally have to stand much, but when he did, his leg gave him pains – to find a young man huddled on his doorstep. He was wearing an inexpensive suit and not very good shoes, still obviously not from that neighborhood, but John was too tired to inquire. He was about to squeeze around him to get into the building when the man looked up and said, “John Watson?”
“Can I help you?” John said, startled, and, to his surprise, the man started to sob.
“You have to help me,” he said. “The police, they think I’ve killed him. They’re coming to get me, and I don’t know where else to go.”
John bundled him up the stairs and into his sitting room, and made him a cup of strong tea.
“There,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me what’s happened?”
The man trembled. “My name is Hector McFarlane,” he said. “I don’t know if you heard, or saw-” He thrust a crumpled bit of newspaper in John’s direction.
John took the sheet and spread it out. It was from that morning, a small article whose headline read, “Prominent Developer Suspected Murdered.”
“Mr. Jonas Oldacre, of Lower Norwood, was reported missing early this morning, after a fire began in an out-building on his property. Mr. Oldacre could not be located at the time of the fire and human remains have now been discovered amidst the ashes. Oldacre, a prominent land developer in the district, was reportedly last seen with Hector McFarlane, a clerk in the law firm of Hammond and Greer. MacFarlane, who is wanted for questioning by the police, has not been seen since…”
“I just found that on the tube,” MacFarlane said, shakily. “That was sitting there in the seat next to me and ever since I’ve been-” he put his head in his hands. “I just don’t know what to do! What will I do if they arrest me?”
“Calm down,” said John, firmly. “Did you murder him?”
MacFarlane looked horrified. “Of course not!” but then he started to mutter again. “But it’ll look like I did. I was at his house last night. No one saw me leave; I must have been the last one to see him alive. What should I do? Oh my God, what should I do?”
“Calm down,” John said again. “Why did you come to me?”
“I always read your blog. You were the first one to come to mind. I called Baker Street and asked for you, but some woman said you’d moved here.”
John felt like banging his head against the wall. All his hard work to put Sherlock Holmes behind him, and now he bloody couldn’t, not without abandoning the obviously terrified boy shivering on his sofa. He stood up, and put his coat back on.
“Alright,” he said. “Come on. Let’s go.”
He used the man’s phone to Sherlock a text on the way over. I’ve got a case.
Understood. –SH
Stepping out of the cab in front of Baker Street shouldn’t have felt like coming home. John put his hand on MacFarlane’s shoulder, ostensibly to steady him but more, perhaps, to steady himself, and then took a deep breath and rang the bell.
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Hudson, it’s me, John.”
“Oh!” He could practically here the flutter in her voice “Come in, come in, John!” She pressed the buzzer and he opened the door, and gestured for MacFarlane to go up the stairs. Before he could get past the landing, though, Mrs. Hudson’s door opened, and she came hurtling out.
“You’ve come back,” she asked, breathlessly.
“Just for a consultation,” John said, nodding his head towards the man ahead of him.
“Oh,” she sounded disappointed. “It’s good to see you, John.”
“You too,” he smiled at her.
“Come by later and we can have a chat?”
It was painful to see her again. “Of course,” he said, smiling, although he would avoid her if he could. He slipped by her and up the stairs, until he was standing in front of 221B.
He was just raising his hand to knock – firmly, he told himself, no hesitation – when the door swung open. Sherlock looked at him, wildly.
“John,” he said, and that was all. His name was like a single note struck on an untuned piano, vibrating uneasily in the air between them.
“May we come in?” John asked, and Sherlock looked uncertain for a moment, and then opened the door wider so that they could enter.
The flat looked worse than John remembered: worse, maybe, than when he’d first moved in with Sherlock. It was painful jumble: beakers half full, something that looked like a dressmaker’s dummy upside down in a corner… John had to relocate a pile of reference books with disturbing illustrations to make space for him and MacFarlane to sit.
Sherlock sat down across from them, and steepled his fingers. He looked directly at John.
John coughed. “Tell him,” he told MacFarlane, “what you told me.”
MacFarlane spoke, this time a bit more coherently, adding layers of detail to his story. Sherlock continued to stare at John as he spoke. John tried to act unaffected, but he found himself watching Sherlock too: he was even skinnier than John remembered: his once perfectly tailored clothing hung a bit loose around him. His face was a gaunt and his eyes had the slightly glassy look John associated with extreme exhaustion, a case, or drugs.
“I’ll take it,” Sherlock said, interrupting MacFarlane. “Oh, why bother? I’d have taken the case if you were a seven year old girl come to ask me why your puppy had been sent to the countryside. This is a favor to John. Also, obviously, you didn’t do it.”
“Thank God you believe me,” said MacFarlane.
“Please. You’re a recently graduated law clerk with a girlfriend you’re about to propose to, as soon as your position is made permanent at the end of this year. You live with an aging mother to whom you’re impressively devoted, and your fingernails have been manicured in the past week. If you’d killed an old man and then dragged his body to a shed and set fire to it, they’d be considerably chipped, I’m sure. However,” he tore his gaze away from John long enough to give McFarlane a cool stare, “you do have a motive.”
“What?” asked John. Sherlock eyes snapped back towards him. “Please, John. A man shows up on your doorstep, distraught, convinced the police are about to arrest him. Why? Being the last person to see the victim alive and seeing his name in a newspaper isn’t enough. There must be some reason that the police will soon discover why he might have done it.”
“There is,” MacFarlane said, nearly breaking down again. “There is, but it’s so bloody strange! I hardly believe it myself, I don’t know whether anyone will believe me-”
“Stop blubbering and tell me,” Sherlock said sharply. John nearly smiled, remembering how his friend hated whiners.
MacFarlane seemed to respond well to orders, though, because he wiped his nose and explained.
“The reason I went to see Oldacre. It was odd. You see, last week he called up the office and asked to speak to me. He said he was an old friend of my Dad’s… Well, to make a long story short, he asked me to come up to see him. He said he had something terribly important to say, but he didn’t like to do it over the phone. He seemed old-fashioned, but he said he was a friend of my parents, so, I thought, I’d better go. Only he told me not to mention to my Mum about it.
So I went up there, and found him in this big old house. There were just the two of him, him and his wife, rattling around in there. It was a bit out in the country, I thought that seemed rather hard on them.
And then he told me the strangest story. He said he and my Dad had been friends in school, on through University and afterwards, and that he knew my Mom as well. He and Dad had fought over something years and years ago, and he’d always regretted it.
But he’d gone on to make a bit of money, and he and his wife had never had children, and he’d seen the news about my Dad’s death in the papers and they’d talked about it and decided that they wanted to leave some money to me. Then he told me how much, and-” McFarlane’s eyes bugged out. “I couldn’t believe it! I mean, I don’t mind telling you, but, it was over a half a million pounds!”
He paused, and took a breath. “I mean, it’s not like my Mom has been able to save much. Money like that would… would mean a lot, you know?
Anyway, he told me all that, and then he said he wanted us to eat dinner together. It was already pretty late, and I hadn’t planned on staying the night, but he’d just said he was going to give me a half a million pounds, it wasn’t like I was going to say no! So we had a late supper and then he and his wife got to talking, and it must have been near midnight before we finally finished. By then, obviously, I’d missed all the buses, and the train - and I hadn’t made plans to spend the night either, so that was bloody inconvenient!”
“He didn’t offer you a bed?” Sherlock asked. MacFarlane shook his head.
“He didn’t seem to think of it, and I didn’t want to say anything. After he showed me to the door I walked into town: about four kilometers down the road. I didn’t see anybody. Luckily I found a hotel with a room. By then, you can imagine, I was dead tired. I had to work the next morning, though, so I set my alarm for five, got up early, and took the first train back to London. Then I went to work and it was only on the way home this evening that I, uh, saw the newspaper article. Apparently the fire started in the early morning, after I’d gone.”
“Strange sort of motive,” John observed. “Why would you kill the man who’d just promised you a half a million pounds?”
MacFarlane looked at him hopefully. “It’s just – it sounds so strange, doesn’t it? Who would believe me?”
“It does sound strange,” John said. In truth, he had wondered, as MacFarlane had gone on, whether it was true or not. Old men promising strange fortunes to people they hardly knew… it did seem more likely that MacFarlane had gone out there for some other reason.
Sherlock opened his mouth, but then, a pounding on the door below caught all of their attentions.
“Who is it?” They heard Mrs. Hudson quietly ask, and then Lestrade’s voice, answering. “Good evening, Mrs. Hudson, but I’m here on police business.”
John looked at Sherlock, who frowned and shook his head slightly. Reassured, John stood. Lestrade rapped hard on the door, and John went to open it.
“Bloody Sherlock!” Lestrade said, and then, startled. “John!”
“Geoff,” John ducked his head.
“What are you doing here?”
John tilted his head towards Sherlock and MacFarlane. “Here about a case, it seems.”
“Right.” Lestrade looked confused, but when he saw MacFarlane on the couch, he moved forwards.
“Sorry, John,” he said, “Sherlock. I’m taking him in for questioning.”
“I didn’t do it!” MacFarlane quavered.
Lestrade frowned, and called Donovan, who’d been wavering in the doorway, to come in. “We’re just going down to the station,” she said, clicking the handcuffs onto MacFarlane’s wrists, “for a chat.” She led him from the room. He went mostly un-protesting, but sending frantic glances at John and Sherlock all the while.
“Lestrade,” Sherlock drawled, once Sally was gone and the door safely shut behind her. “Incompetent as ever, I see.”
Geoffrey shot an aggrieved look at John before replying. “We thought you were dead,” he hissed at Sherlock, who rolled his eyes in response.
“And I have told you, several times, that I wouldn’t have let you believe so had it not been necessary.”
“Necessary,” echoed Lestrade angrily, before turning to John. “Have you forgiven him, then?”
It took John a moment to answer.
“No.”
“Well,” said Lestrade. “He’s making it hard to forgive him, the way he’s been acting. At least this case won’t interest you, Sherlock. Very straight-forward: the murderer you’ve been interviewing killed the old man late last night, then dragged his body to a small shed, where he doused it in gasoline and torched it. It seems he owed quite a bit of money and was unable to pay it back.”
“Really?” Sherlock said, sarcastically. “Where did you get that piece of information?”
Lestrade ground his teeth. “If you must know, Anderson found Oldacre’s ledger in a safe by his desk. The man was old-fashioned. He kept everything in account-books, doesn’t seem to have owned a computer at all.”
Sherlock snorted. “Wrong, Lestrade,” he said. “Whoever killed the old man, it wasn’t MacFarlane. Keep in mind, an account-book is easier to alter or replace than an email: take the old one away, put the new one in its place, and there’s no way of knowing whether or not those debts were there all along.”
“So,” Lestrade said, folding his arms over his chest and looking down at Sherlock, who was still lounging on the sofa. “You’re going to prove he didn’t do it?”
Sherlock paused. “For John,” he said.
Lestrade looked at him, and shook his head, more disappointed, it seemed than annoyed. “Well, go, then,” he said. “Good luck to both of you.”
He left, and John and Sherlock were left alone together, in the jumbled sitting room.
“John,” Sherlock said. “Don’t go.”
John looked at him, and sighed, and turned around and looked away, and turned back to Sherlock. Finally, he put himself down on the sofa besides Sherlock, and put his head in his hands.
“I can’t do this,” he said.
“John,” Sherlock sounded strangely tentative. “I am sorry. I meant what I said – I wouldn’t have done it if there had been any other way.”
“You just don’t understand,” John said, still looking down. “We thought you were dead, Sherlock.”
“I know.” Sherlock sounded faintly puzzled. “That was the point. If you thought I was dead, you’d be protected. It was the only way to keep you, and Mrs. Hudson, and even Lestrade safe.”
“No,” John repeated, “No, you still don’t understand.” He lifted his head and looked at him. “Sherlock, I thought you were dead!”
Some of his anger and grief must have come through, because Sherlock started back as if he’d been hit.
“I’m sorry,” he said – sounding like a man at a funeral, trying to comfort John for a real loss. After a pause he added, in a small voice. “Will you forgive me?”
John shook his head. “I don’t know. You can probably deduce that better than I can.”
“I don’t know if I can deduce you at all anymore,” Sherlock admitted. “You’ve grown too close to me.”
John went back to his dreary little apartment. He wasn’t sure until the moment he put his hand on the door, leaving, that he would go back to Baker Street, but he did, and so he and Sherlock took the second train to Norwood that morning.
As the train crept north, the day grew grayer, until, finally fat drops began to scatter on the window glass. John kept his gaze steadily pointed out at the landscape, away from Sherlock, even though he could feel Sherlock’s eyes, always tracking him.
At the station they waited, and eventually boarded a bus, which rambled along before depositing them at the end of a long, little-tended drive.
At the end of the drive was a largish house, also neglected. The garden looked as much weeds as flowers, and the ivy crawling up the walls needed cutting back. Sherlock bypassed the front door in favor of wandering towards the back of the house: sighing, John followed.
There had been two outbuildings, one remained. The other was a charred-out skeleton, with only a few blackened beams remaining, and the earth around it was a circle of ash. The fire that had woken the neighbors around one in the morning the previous night must have been impressive. Sherlock knelt to touch the earth, and then examined the ash on his fingertips.
“So this is where Oldacre’s body was found,” he said. “The fire was fierce, but localized, and burned itself out before the fire-fighters arrived. Lestrade said the body had been doused in gasoline, so I assume that very little of it now remains.”
John was looking back towards the house, feeling a bit nervous that the owner of the house might see them. Sure enough, one of the French door opened, and an elderly woman in a tweed skirt and gray jumper began making her way down the garden path towards them. She was gaunt, almost skeletal, and her thin gray hair was pulled back tightly, making her seem even more severe.
“What are you doing?” She asked very sharply.
Sherlock rose smoothly, sizing the woman over so quickly that, had John not been trained to look, he might have missed it. Then he began speaking in a pleasant and professional tone quite unlike his usual manner.
“Mrs. Oldacre, I assume? My apologies for surprising you. My name is Sherlock Holmes, I’m a consultant with Scotland Yard. I’d like to ask you a few questions about the unfortunate death of your husband. My sincere apologies for your loss,” he ended.
John suppressed a snort. Neither did the old woman seem gullible enough to fall fully for Sherlock’s little farce. “Is that right?” She asked, peering at them both suspiciously. “I didn’t hear anything about any consultant.”
“Of course,” Sherlock pattered on smoothly, “it will just be a few minutes of your time. It’s about the visit last night made to you by John MacFarlane.
The old woman considered that.
“Alright,” she said grudgingly, and turned back towards the house.
Despite the French windows and the good light, the study into which she led them had a moldering, depressive atmosphere. The furniture was old and heavy, the curtains faded, and the floor was covered by an old, tan-colored carpet that looked infrequently vacuumed. They passed through the study into an equally dreary little sitting room.
“Suppose you tell me what happened with Mr. MacFarlane,” said Sherlock.
She looked at him shrewdly. “He owed Jonas some money,” she said. “Jonas was an old friend of his father’s. When he heard that his friend had passed away, he got in contact with the family to offer his condolences. Somehow or other the young man managed to indicate that he needed a considerable amount of money. He said it was to cover the funeral expenses, or some such lie. Jonas felt badly for him, so he made him a loan.”
She pursed her lips. “If you want my opinion, I thought that boy meant to take advantage of Jonas all along. He saw us as two old people, lonely and easily duped. Well. Jonas waited a while, and when a few months had passed without hearing a peep from MacFarlane, he wrote to him. He wanted to work out some sort of repayment schedule.
The boy turned up right away. He was,” she sneered, “so pleasant, while he tried to convince Jonas to forgive the loan entirely. Saying nonsense about how his father was practically Jonas’ brother, and that therefore Jonas ought to see him as more like a son. Utter nonsense, of course. When finally it became clear to him that Jonas wasn’t going to budge, he dropped that charade and became nastier.”
“What happened then?” Sherlock prompted.
“Well!” She said, and then she sighed. “I don’t know what happened after that, exactly. They’d been quarreling for hours already and I was tired. I left the two of them there, in Jonas’ study, to sort the business out. Of course I didn’t like the young man, but I never thought he’d resort to-” her chin quavered for a moment, and then she stopped it by clenching her jaw more tightly. “The next thing I knew, it was early morning, and I’d woken because the neighbors were yelling outside. The shed had caught fire and someone noticed, but by the time they came to put the fire out the whole structure was burnt. As you saw it,” she added. “I didn’t know where Jonas was, and then I heard them say they’d found something in the ashes.” She looked harshly at Sherlock. John felt badly for her: at first she seemed cold, and rather callous towards her husband’s death, but now he wondered if it was all she could do to keep a sane front up for the world, while her grief threatened to consume her.
“I’m terribly sorry for your loss, Mrs. Oldacre,” Sherlock repeated. He looked genuinely touched as well; John wondered if perhaps his recent experiences had actually taught him something about human sympathy. Then Sherlock stood up to go. John followed obediently, almost from habit.
“I am sorry,” Sherlock repeated, looking down on the sad old woman in front of them. “But I feel you should be prepared, Mrs. Oldacre, for the possibility that your husband’s murderer will go free.”
“What?” She said, fiercely, raising her eyes up to him.
“The evidence is far too circumstantial,” Sherlock said. “We know that Mr. MacFarlane visited you for dinner, but you didn’t see him leave, so we have only the hour that he arrived at the Inn to use to estimate the time at which he left here. He might have had very little time to commit the crime, if he walked as he claims, or several hours in which to quarrel with your husband, if in fact he managed to flag down a car or borrow someone’s bicycle. The fire burned away any evidence that would have allowed a coroner to estimate the time or the cause of death more precisely.
In other words, Mrs.Oldacre,” he concluded gently, “without signs of a struggle, or anything further to suggest that MacFarlane killed your husband, how are we to know that your husband didn’t just take a walk in the garden after the boy left, and perhaps met with a tramp there?” He shook his head. “I judge the chance of the boy being convicted as very low indeed.”
Mrs. Oldacre stared up at him as if stricken.
“I did,” she cleared her throat. “I did hear them arguing after I went up to bed. I heard Jonas’ raising his voice, and what I thought was a scream.”
Sherlock’s eyes were piercing. “You didn’t go downstairs to investigate?”
“No,” she admitted.
“Why not?”
She looked at expressionlessly. “As I told you, I didn’t believe the boy was capable of such a thing. I thought perhaps I’d misheard.”
Sherlock reflected upon her a moment longer. “Of course, Mrs. Oldacre,” he said, “you must not blame yourself for what happened. Of course you had no way of knowing. Good day.”
She showed them to the door. John thought that she looked like a thin gray ghost, with her drawn face and strict refusal to show emotion.
However it had happened, it wasn’t an easy thing to lose a husband.
“I am sorry for your loss, Mrs. Oldacre,” he said, just before she closed the door behind them.
Her eyes flickered to him for a moment.
“Thank you,” she said.
Sherlock was already striding away down the road, long legs moving him at such a pace that John had to jog for a moment to catch up.
“Well?” John demanded. “What now?”
“Now?” Sherlock glanced about them. While it wasn’t raining just then, it seemed likely to start again at any moment. “Now we walk.”
They followed the road back towards the village, by the route that Hector MacFarlane claimed to have gone.
John could imagine that it must have been unpleasant, especially late at night, if he hadn’t known the area well. There were farmhouses dotted here and there, but most of them were a distance in from the road. Very few cars seemed to be passing them, although it was now midday. He doubted that anyone would have seen MacFarlane.
Sherlock was still walking quickly. It was a bit irritating: his pace was faster than was comfortable for John’s slightly shorter legs. Before, John would have found himself striding along just to keep up, his limp, more often than not, forgotten. But now, just looking at the back of Sherlock’s coat was tiring, and his leg, which had hardly given him any trouble at all that morning, began to twinge. He hung back, deciding he could just as well meet up with Sherlock at the village, if he got ahead of him.
But then Sherlock looked back, and turned around, waiting for John to reach him. Again, he wore an uncertain expression. Although John had seen Sherlock play nearly a hundred roles, he was rarely unsure of himself; it was an expression John hardly knew how to interpret. He hobbled up to Sherlock, until they were standing face to face.
“Well?” John asked.
Sherlock looked down at him, meeting John’s eyes. The cold damp atmosphere seemed charged then, John had the thought that, were he to raise his hand towards Sherlock’s, a spark would jump between them.
Sherlock pressed his lips into a thin line, and looked away. Then he turned to tuck himself into place next to John. When John started walking again, Sherlock matched his pace.
John’s leg still hurt, and when Sherlock finally spoke, he was glad of the distraction.
“Clearly she’s lying.” Sherlock said.
“I’m sorry?”
“That much should be obvious even to you.”
“Well, it’s isn’t.” John said flatly. Then, his curiosity peaked (doubtless, as Sherlock had intended) he asked grudgingly, “why do you say so?”
Sherlock looked down at him, his gray eyes bright. “Think, John.”
John sighed. “It does seem a bit strange that she would have left her husband alone with MacFarlane when she claims to have distrusted him so much. On the other hand, regardless of what she felt about MacFarlane at the time, now she thinks he murdered her husband. It’s normal that she’d play up any misgivings she had about him. So maybe that isn’t it,” John muttered, watching Sherlock to see what his reaction would be, “it must be something else she said. Was it when she said that she heard them arguing?”
Sherlock beamed at him, as bright as a schoolboy. “Very good!” He agreed. “And why was that important?”
John shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. In truth, he was only thinking about the problem with about forty percent of his brain. The rest of him was worrying about Sherlock, who, in just one morning and with a few words, had somehow caused John to begin to slip into his old role one again: dogging Sherlock’s heels, nodding at what Sherlock said, impressed by Sherlock’s deductions, and irrationally pleased when Sherlock complimented him. He had to beware. That wasn’t what he wanted anymore – it couldn’t be, not after he’d let Sherlock crush him once and knew that he was capable of doing so again.
On the other hand, living a protected life, away from Sherlock – it was like living in black and white, while Sherlock was taste and color and sound. Maybe he ought to take what he could get, offer his heart up even though he knew it might be cut out again at any moment. He wouldn’t be able to go through that again. But he didn’t want to live outside the world that Sherlock created either.
Sherlock hummed impatiently, and John was pulled back from his thoughts. Why was it important that Mrs. Oldacre said that she had heard her husband arguing with Hector MacFarlane, but hadn’t gone down to see what was going on?
Why hadn’t she mentioned that right away, instead of waiting until Sherlock had prompted her by saying that MacFarlane might go free?
“Oh,” John said. “You were testing her.” Sherlock nodded absently, and John felt irritated. “And here I thought you actually cared for the poor woman!”
Sherlock looked at him in mild bemusement. “Why would I care about her?”
John ground his teeth. “I don’t know, because she just lost her husband? Because her whole world’s been turned upside down and she’s trying desperately to hold onto her dignity?”
Sherlock continued to look at his as if he were peculiar. Then, his face brightened, as if he’d solved the small mystery of John’s behavior.
“She reminds you of yourself,” he observed.
John felt his mouth open and close, and he clenched his jaw to prevent any more gaping. He turned his head straight towards the road in front of him and sped up as well as he could; hobbling now that his leg was really frozen.
Sherlock lengthened his stride, keeping up with John effortlessly. A few fat drops fell on the pavement in front of them, and John looked up at the sky, wondering if getting caught in a downpour was about to be added to the day’s miseries.
“I do sympathize with her,” he said finally, still looking up at the sky instead of at Sherlock. “I suppose you don’t know what that’s like, to have someone you care about gone.”
“I do.”
“What?” That surprised him enough that he turned to look at him, even as the sound of a drop here and there became a steady rhythm, increasing in tempo. Sherlock was tucked inside his long coat, his pale face standing out against the gray landscape.
“I missed you,” he said, “when I was gone. I turned around to tell you things, and you weren’t there.”
“But you knew I wasn’t dead,” John objected, and wondered for a wild moment if people were mostly dead to Sherlock, if he stopped thinking about them entirely the moment they were out of his line of sight.
“I knew you thought I was dead,” Sherlock said, his eyes fixed on John’s. “I knew you would be going on without me, that I would become a memory, and that little by little your life would change, until it became something different, with no place for me in it.”
John shook his head. “You have no idea how human nature works.”
“Don’t I?” Sherlock frowned.
He reached in, unexpectedly, and took John’s hand, pressing it between his palms. John was shocked. He looked down at his rough, pinkish hand, in between Sherlock’s long, white ones, and shook his head, confused.
Abruptly, Sherlock dropped his hand again.
The sprinkle was becoming a shower, and Sherlock’s hair was slowly being plastered to his forehead. Droplets of water collected and rolled down the contours of his face. A few fat drops clung to his lower lip, poised ready to be kissed away.
Then the rain began to creep under the edges of John’s collar, cold and startling, and he shook off his daze.
“John,” Sherlock said. “You’re quite right, you know, to sympathize with Mrs. Oldacre. You should. It shows your natural intelligence. The two of you actually have a great deal in common.”
They walked along in the rain, which began to lighten just as they reached the edge of the village. John checked the time on his wristwatch: it had taken them just under an hour. It probably would have been a bit worse for MacFarlane, since he expected he had had to go slower in the dark.
He was wet through. Sherlock, with his excellent coat, was only a little better. They found the inn where MacFarlane had stayed without any trouble, and the bartender sympathetically offered them hot drinks, and confirmed that MacFarlane had arrived very late the night before, and checked out in the early morning. Oldacre’s murder was, understandably, the subject of much local interest, so that the bartender recounted the story of when MacFarlane had arrived, who had met him, and exactly what had been said as if it was already the third or fourth time he’d gone through it.
John sipped his tea and Sherlock, apparently becoming bored, began to twitch, and wandered about the room distractedly. Then the door opened and Lestrade entered.
He shook off his coat and putting his umbrella into the stand by the door.
“Bad luck for you boys,” he said. His jovial tone was belied by the harsh look he gave Sherlock. “We’ve been through the suspect’s belongings, and it seems that the business about the loan holds up.”
“What?” asked John.
“His bank account’s pretty low – looks like expenses related to his father’s illness and subsequent funeral had pretty well cleared him out- but when we started to look into expenses, we found that he’s paid for a number of significant costs in cash in the past several months. Now tell me, where’s that money coming from?
“Where does he say it came from?” Sherlock asked lazily.
Lestrade bared his teeth in a smile. “That’s the best part. Completely ridiculous story: he says he found a wallet on the bus one day, empty except for three thousand quid. No identification.” He rolled his eyes. “I’m sure even if there was identification, under those circumstances, it wouldn’t have stayed attached to the wallet for long. MacFarlane says he felt a bit bad about taking the money, so he didn’t mention the circumstances under which he found it to anybody. My bet is that he just made the story up. He couldn’t tell us that Oldacre had loaned him the money after he’d already claimed that the first time he’d met the old man was the night of his murder.”
He sat down next to them at the bar. “I don’t mind admitting that it’s not a bad feeling, putting one over on you, Sherlock.” He grinned at John, expecting sympathy. John managed a half-smile in return, unsure where his own loyalties lay in the matter. “You’ll be heading back to Baker Street before it gets too late?”
“Thank you!” said Sherlock, very sharply, “but you are completely wrong, and as useless as ever, Lestrade. I may not have gathered up all the necessary evidence as of yet, but it won’t take John and me very much longer, I expect.”
“Oh,” said Lestrade, “you and John, is it?” He looked over Sherlock’s shoulder at John, a question in his eyes. “Well, I’ll leave you two to your investigations, then.”
He finished his drink and went away again. John, looking at the clock behind the bar, was inclined to think that he had had the right idea: it was time to be getting back to London. Sherlock, however, showed no signs of moving. He looked, in fact, a bit like a cat that had found a place for itself that it very much liked and had no intention of giving up.
“Are we going?” John asked him.
“Not yet,” said Sherlock. He looked at the bartender. “What time is the last train?”
The man nodded amiably. “Seven.”
Sherlock smiled at John, small and quick. “Plenty of time yet,” he said.
John ignored the curious, mildly reassessing look that the bartender cast over them – not very different from Lestrade’s glance a minute ago – and played idly with his teacup instead, shifting it so that the last of the liquid and a few wet leaves sloshed back and forth.
“Are you going to eat?” Sherlock asked abruptly.
That surprised John, he looked up. True, it was already mid-afternoon, and now that he thought about it, he was rather hungry. But as long as he’d known Sherlock, Sherlock had never thought much at all about food, especially in the middle of a case. Rather, it was always John who forced them to take breaks to consume meals.
Sherlock plucked a menu from beside the counter, and passed it to him. John looked it over and then passed it back, but Sherlock made a dismissive sign.
“You don’t want anything?”
“No.”
His sausages and mash came fairly quickly – warm and filling, good food for a cold day – and they moved from the bar to a table. Sherlock took the liberty of ordering them a pint each; that was also rather unusual. He had put on what John recognized as an act: he was sitting differently, a bit casual, and had lost his perpetually haughty attitude. Now he looked approachable, even friendly. He smiled and tipped his glass slightly at a pair of men who entered the bar, and when they sat down nearby, started up a conversation.
“Nasty day, isn’t it?”
“It is,” one of the men responded amiably.
“Pretty town, though.”
They both shrugged, looking curious. Sherlock indulged them. “We’re up from London, about the Oldacre murder.”
That was all it took for the men’s eyes to light up. Clearly, the murder was a topic of considerable local interest, and they wanted to hear what they could about it. “We used to work for Oldacre,” one offered, and Sherlock smiled.
In such circumstances, if both parties possess a sufficient degree of tact, a friendly exchange of information can be negotiated without anyone saying a word about it directly. John watched as Sherlock, in the chummy façade he found slightly revolting, suggested a pint, and the men shifted easily over from their table to Sherlock and John’s.
“Terrible thing, isn’t it?” Sherlock said.
One of them shrugged noncommittally. The other smiled in a slightly macabre manner. “Terrible,” he echoed, without seeming to really mean it. “Mind you, I’m surprised it took this long for him to be murdered.”
Sherlock arched an eyebrow. “Not a very nice person?”
The man who had spoken before barked a laugh. “We’re still waiting to be paid from the job we did for him three months ago. Do you think the estate will cover it?”
“It had better,” his companion replied.
“Oldacre was a land developer, wasn’t he?” Sherlock asked, and they both nodded.
“He was about to start construction on a project just west of the town. An old farm; I think he was going to turn it into about a hundred quarter-acre lots.”
Sherlock looked at John as if he expected him to find this information to be interesting. “And who did he buy the farm from?” He asked.
“The man who lived there had Parkinson’s; he moved in with his daughter in the city. Oldacre didn’t give him a fair price for the property, but, well, that was their business.” The man took a long sip from his pint, and shrugged. “And this boy who murdered him?”
Sherlock outlined the case against Hector MacFarlane with sufficiently salacious details to please both the men, who shook their heads.
“First murder we’ve had here in…” they looked at each other, trying to remember past felonies. “Maggie Stevens? Her husband caught her with his brother,” the man nearer to John explained helpfully.
“No,” his friend interrupted. “There was that body that was found in the woods a few months ago.”
“It wasn’t,” the other objected. “That was a drug overdose.”
“Who was that?” Sherlock asked interestedly.
They both shrugged. “A girl,” one said, “no one from around here, maybe a runaway. Actually it was MacFarlane who found the body, now that I remember it: while he was out with surveyors looking over the site.” He glanced at his companion and laughed roughly. “MacFarlane was just annoyed about it because after the police came in and declared the wood to be a crime scene, it delayed his work by several weeks.”
The other slapped his knee, remembering. “Probably cost him a few thousand quid,” he said jovially.
“When was that?” Sherlock asked.
“Oh, not very long ago.” He frowned a minute, thinking. “July?”
John caught Sherlock’s quick, sidelong glance at him. He resisted the urge to shake his head. Clearly, all this was supposed to mean something to him, but it didn’t particularly.
“And how was it resolved, in the end?” Sherlock probed gently.
“Oh, that was all, I think. They never IDed the body, and I haven’t heard anything about it for a while.”
They chatted a while longer, and then the men excused themselves, and headed back out into the early evening. A wave of chilly, wet air hit John in the back as the door swung shut behind them. Sherlock dropped his friendly mien as easily as he might drop his coat on the floor, coming in from the rain: small laugh lines around his eyes smoothing and the corners of his mouth smoothing, until his expression took on its typical alert but unemotional expression.
The he looked at John, and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes appeared once again.
He pulled out his phone, and started to tap at its buttons. “What do you think of that?” he asked John, not looking at him.
John shrugged warily.
“What are you looking up?” He asked.
“That body in the woods.” Sherlock tapped a few more times, and then passed his phone to John. Their hands brushed as he passed it over, his fingers were warm and dry. John pretended not to notice.
“Body found on Greenwold property”
The article more or less repeated what the locals had already told them. The body of a young woman had been found by Oldacre while he was scouting out a newly-acquired piece of property. It was estimated that the body had been there several days before it was discovered. There were no signs of abuse, and the coroner’s office indicated that she had apparently died of an overdose. The article added that woman had been wearing grubby clothing and looked as though she had been homeless for a while.
John felt the bile rise in his throat. He passed the phone back to Sherlock, who began tapping at it again.
“Now look at this one,” he said.
Reluctantly, John accepted the device.
It was an article from several months ago, and several towns over. The subject was string of robberies that had taken place in the area, perpetrated by a man and a young woman who had apparently developed a system by which the woman distracted the shop keeper and the man incapacitated him. The couple had hit three small shops between London and Norwood in June of that year.
“You think it’s the same woman,” John said, not really asking.
Sherlock kept looking at him, a small smile playing at the corner of his lips. John felt the old conflicted feelings rising in him again: a desire to impress Sherlock by proving that he could be in on the joke; followed by a mulish urge to dig his heels in and admit defiantly that he didn’t understand.
“That was in June,” John had found that merely repeating the facts was his best available tactic in these situations, “and her body was July.”
“What else happened in July?” Sherlock said, eyes glittering, as he watched John too intensely – as if John was one of his clues, a puzzle box that he was on the verge of splitting open.
“In July?” John shook his head. In July Sherlock had returned to London, and that had taken up so much of John’s attention that it was most of everything that he remembered about the summer.
“Hector MacFarlane’s father died. Come on,” said Sherlock, rising from the table. “The rain has let up; let’s walk back to the station.”
It had grown dark while they sat in the pub. Sherlock walked briskly down the street, and then paused and slowed his gait again when John’s stiff knee caused him to lag behind.
The old Sherlock would never have done that; he would never have even noticed that John was lagging. But then the old Sherlock would not have taken John’s hand either – and just the memory of the feeling of their hands together was enough to make John’s heart race. God help me, he thought. He wasn’t going to have the strength to pull away from Sherlock, he was already sucked back into his old orbit.
Unreasonably, the thought made him smile.
Sherlock looked back and saw him then, and smiled too: a bit uncertainly, as if for once John knew the joke and he was the one out of it. His white face looked childish, like a little boy, glancing back for reassurance.
The train back was quiet and mostly empty. Sherlock played on his phone while John drowsily looked out the window; watching small gray houses with merry golden-lit windows pass them by in an endless procession. In each house there was probably a family, or perhaps a person alone. Any place there were more than two individuals together there were bound to be some mysteries. Small mundane ones, probably, by Sherlock’s standards, but nevertheless they grew like, little organic things, creeping into the spaces between two people’s separate recollections of the same events.
He must have drifted off for a while. When he awoke he was cold, his shoulder pressed against the window glass. The train had lurched to a stop, and he realized they were in London.
“Come back to Baker Street,” Sherlock murmured. His voice was lower and a bit more uncertain than it ought to have been, a change from his usual, casually arrogant tone.
“All right,” John said, and let Sherlock shepherd him into a cab to go across the city, and into the front door and up the stairs, as if he was afraid that John might change his mind and slip away at any moment.
The apartment was still the mess it had been on the afternoon of the previous day. He could feel Sherlock’s eyes on him as he walked through the room, letting his hand run over the table and the back of the chairs in the kitchen.
He went up the stairs to his old room, but somehow he had forgotten momentarily that he had taken his bed and the rest of his furniture away. The room was empty of everything except some dust in the corners. John turned around again, frustrated, trying to decide if it was still worthwhile to go back to his own flat, or if he had better sleep on the sofa.
Sherlock was still watching him.
“Sleep in my room,” he said.
John jumped. “What?” his impulse was to tell Sherlock he was being ridiculous, or to ignore the statement, or give Sherlock a quick remedial lecture in basic human interaction. But he was too tired, and he knew Sherlock would see through it all anyway.
“I don’t think I’m quite ready for that,” he said instead, weakly.
“But you will be,” Sherlock’s voice was quietly triumphant.
John shook his head, and went back down to the sofa for the night.
Was he the one giving in, or was he the one who was getting what he wanted? It was impossible to tell, their relationship was so mixed up. John didn’t know if Sherlock desired him, and he was powerless to resist; or if he desired Sherlock, and Sherlock was amenable because it was the only way he thought he could have John back again. That wasn’t true, though. John would have given up, at some point, even if Sherlock never made any a single conciliatory gesture. Maybe neither of them, having been separated, was willing to let it happen again, and this was merely the most natural way to hang on to one another.
In the morning, the light was still the orangey color of sunrise when Sherlock came bounding downstairs, apparently bored after a night of being forced not to disturb John while he slept. Sherlock very rarely kept to a usual sleeping schedule himself.
“You took my violin,” he told John peevishly. “Bring it back.”
John’s mouth tasted like grit and decay, and his leg was very sore. He got up slowly, regretting his decision not to return to his own flat for a proper night’s rest. But then, Sherlock was here, watching him with the same vigilance that he had had the night before.
“What will we do today?” John asked, after having gone to the bathroom, and padded into the kitchen to see whether Sherlock had any teabags (he had, left by Mrs. Hudson?) or milk (no).
Sherlock clasp his hands together. “Hector MacFarlane’s mother,” he pronounced.
She was a short, quiet woman with soft, doughy skin, and the same slightly nervous mannerisms of her son. She offered them tea repeatedly while Sherlock vibrated impatiently, anxious to begin his questioning. She looked like the sort of person who might burst into tears and become incapable of answering any questions at all if Sherlock was too hard on her.
“You knew Jonas Oldacre,” he began abruptly.
“I did,” she agreed, twisting her cup around without drinking from it. “We knew each other back in school. Ages ago.”
“How long?”
She peered at him. “More than forty years.”
“What did you think of him then?”
She frowned. “He always scared me a little. I was glad when we – lost touch with him, as it were.”
“So he was your husband’s friend?”
She looked at Sherlock, and then at John, confused. “He was one of those people, you know, who was always sort of – at the edge of our circle. I think for a while he... well, he used to joke that he wanted to marry me. He was always very upfront about it; said it was a matter of time before I came around to his way of seeing things. It would have been funny if he hadn’t been so… well, I don’t know. I tried to stay away from him. I used to ask my girlfriends to help me make sure we were never alone in the same room together.” She shook her head, remembering. “I never gave him any reason to think that he had any chance, really, and I half-thought it was just a game to him, because he seemed to enjoy making me uncomfortable.
But when Hector, my husband, proposed… Jonas was very angry. I mean, I thought he was going to attack me, or attack Hector. In the end, he only said some terrible things, and went away. I was so relieved. That…” she paused, thinking it through. “I was shocked, when I heard that Jonas had contacted our son. I think if Hector had told me what had happened, I would have told him not to go. But on the other hand, so much time has passed. How could he still be angry?”
“Your son went to see MacFarlane, who told him that he had heard about your husband’s death and wanted to leave your family some money.”
She peered at Sherlock uncertainly. “Maybe he felt badly about he had left things with us back then?” She didn’t sound convinced of it, though.
“Mrs. MacFarlane, your husband passed away in July, is that right?” John asked.
“Yes.”
“And is that when your son start having more money on hand than he had had before?”
She shook her head. “He never told me about that wallet; I only just heard about it, the same as you.” She paused. “I think it was around that time, July or August?”
“Thank you!” Sherlock said. Despite his abruptness, it sounded as though he really meant it for once. “That will be all.” He rose as if to go.
John glared at him, and Sherlock rolled his eyes.
“Thank you for your help,” he said to Mrs. MacFarlane.
“Thank you for trying to help my boy.”
They left the house. It was small and brown, on a street of identical homes. Sherlock scowled as if annoyed by its mediocrity.
“Now what do we do?” John asked.
Sherlock whirled around from the house, to look at him.
“Now we go back to Norwood,” he said. “And we wait.”
They arrived at Oldacre’s property to find it teeming with police officers. Lestrade stood in the midst of the commotion, legs planted solidly apart, issuing orders to half a dozen men and women.
He scoffed at Sherlock as he came down the path.
“What are you doing here? I didn’t text you.” Sherlock looked at him coolly, which seemed to irritate Lestrade, because he added, “anyway, well enough that you are here, because the evidence against your boy is mounting.”
“How so?” said Sherlock, sounding rather bored.
“I’ll show you.”
They passed down the walk and through the front door. As they passed a sitting room John saw Mrs. Oldacre there, her lips pursed tightly together, looking grim, as Sally Donovan sat with her in a vague simulacrum of concern. Lestrade led them on into Oldacre’s study.
“It’s embarrassing, but the forensics team seems to have missed it the first time around,” he said, gesturing to the study’s large French windows. The curtain that had hung in front of them had been pulled back, and a man in a white jacket was in the process of photographing what appeared to be a fingerprint on the wall.
“Blood,” Lestrade said, quietly triumphant. “Oldacre’s. It’s his print as well – reasonably clean, as it happens. Must have left it as he fought with MacFarlane. This clearly demonstrates that the murderer was in the house with Oldacre, doesn’t it?”
Sherlock sighed as if immensely irritated, and, without answering Lestrade, headed out the French doors into the garden. John, left behind, looked from Lestrade, to Sherlock’s retreating back, and then back to Lestrade again.
“Arrogant prick,” Lestrade grumbled. John found himself laughing unexpectedly.
“He is at that,” he agreed.
“Are you…” Lestrade began, and then hesitated. “You’re an adult, John, and I’d never want to interfere in your affairs…”
“Then don’t,” John said, mildly, walking towards the doorway and then leaning there, against his cane, watching Sherlock run about in the garden, his black coat flapping this way and that behind him.
“It’s just, he’s a bloody lunatic,” said Lestrade. “I’m not saying he’s a psychopath, but the way he hurt you…”
He stood and came to stand behind John, and then he sighed. “And yet, he’s exceptional, isn’t he?”
John closed his eyes briefly.
“He’s Sherlock,” he agreed.
Everyone hurt each other, didn’t they? The fact that Sherlock was a genius didn’t change things so fundamentally. Sometimes they hurt each other by blundering, and sometimes they caused pain intentionally, twisting the knife in so that it hurt.
Someone behind them called out for Lestrade, and he went away. John took a few more steps out into the garden. Sherlock had disappeared from view, possibly, he was somewhere behind the woodpile. It was sunnier than it had been the day before, and the warmth felt good on John’s scalp and hands.
Mrs. Oldacre emerged from the door on the other side of the building, and made her way slowly towards the study door. She looked at John coldly, and he nodded uncomfortably back to her.
“I suppose this will make the case against MacFarlane more conclusive,” she stated.
John nodded slowly. “I assume so.”
She nodded, evidentially satisfied. John thought for a moment, and then spoke.
“Did you know that your husband wanted to marry MacFarlane’s mother?”
Perhaps it hadn’t been the wisest thing to say. Oldacre’s wife immediately stiffened, seeming to draw in to her starched gray dress.
“I don’t know about that,” she said, curtly. Then, after a pause, as if unable to contain herself, she burst out. “She wasn’t fit to touch a hair on his head.”
John felt sympathetic towards the prickly old woman, as he had before. “But he still wanted her, didn’t he?” he suggested quietly. “Was that why he wanted to leave her son his money?”
Mrs. Oldacre’s eyes flashed again, and she seemed on the verge of spitting some reply out at John, when a commotion at the side of the house distracted them both.
“Fire!” one of the constables was yelling. “Fire, fire!”
He came running at a good pace from the back of the garden, where, sure enough, the undamaged outbuilding now appeared to be in flames which were increasing at an alarming rate. Someone must have poured gasoline around, John thought, wildly, as he watched the orange fire rapidly scaling the small shed.
John immediately moved in the direction of the shed, but Mrs. Oldacre outpaced him. She moved surprisingly fast for such an old woman. “Jonas!” she breathed.
Running forward, she flung herself towards the shed door, tugging at the padlock there until Lestrade came to help her. The soft wood splintered under their fingertips and the lock sprung free. The old woman lurched towards the flames and the pulled away again, covering her mouth, her eyes wide. Lestrade seemed to realize that she was close to some dangerous action; he grabbed her shoulders and hauled her away.
“Sherlock!” John said, spying the detective coming around the corner. “Where have you been?”
Sherlock looked down at John and smiled. Then both their attentions were diverted as a man came stumbling from the shed, gray-haired, sooty, and scowling, waving his hands to divert the smoke.
“Jonas!” Mrs Oldacre gasped, and John looked at Sherlock who smiled wider.
“May I present,” he announced to the assembled crowd in a loud, clear voice. “The late Mr. Jonas Oldacre.”
“It doesn’t make any sense!” Lestrade swore. He had offered them a ride back to London: mostly, it seemed, for the purpose of grilling Sherlock along the way. John looked out the window at the houses as they past, reflecting that places looked very different in the daytime, in good weather, than they did at night. Sherlock had opted to sit with John in the back seat. He was bored, and had thrown his head back, and it was becoming a struggle for Lestrade to extract answers from him which were more than monosyllabic.
The fire, as it burned, had revealed a trapdoor that led to a snug cellar beneath the shed. Certainly, it hadn’t been the coziest of places, but Oldacre and his wife appeared to have rigged it out with a cot, and an oil lamp, and some food and books to pass the time.
“God!” Sherlock snorted. “It isn’t that complicated, Lestrade! Once I told Mrs. Oldacre that the evidence in the case wasn’t conclusive enough to convince MacFarlane, she and her husband planted the bloody fingerprint to strengthen the case against him. As soon as I saw that, I knew Oldacre was still about, hiding somewhere on the property.”
“And so, logically, you decided to burn down their shed?”
Sherlock harrumphed, signally clearly that Lestrade’s question was uninteresting.
“Sherlock!” Lestrade prodded sharply.
The detective sighed dramatically, but finally deigned to reply.
“Oldacre had been involved in shady business dealings for years. Faking his own death was the simplest and most straight-forward way of freeing himself from a number of difficulties.”
“That I knew,” grumbled Lestrade. “Donovan was already onto that, more or less. He hadn’t paid any of his employees in quite a while, and seems to have been systematically funneling money away from his business into private bank accounts.”
“Donovan,” Sherlock groaned, and shut his eyes again. He waved a hand towards John. “I can’t be bothered. John, you explain it to him.”
John felt his face growing red. How on Earth was he supposed to know anything more than Lestrade? But then, rather unexpectedly, he felt bits and pieces of the information they’d gathered over the past two days clicking in his mind, like tumblers of the lock dropping into place.
It was immensely satisfying. Perhaps this was how Sherlock felt, most of the time.
“Two people, a man and a woman, were seen in the area at the beginning of summer,” he said, slowly. “The woman’s body was found, dead of an apparent overdose. But her companion’s body wasn’t. Presumably he’d moved on right after she died...”
Lestrade glanced at him in the rearview mirror. John met his eyes. Next to him, Sherlock was silent, and his eyes were closed. Nevertheless, John knew his attention was focused on him.
“Jonas Oldacre knew he was in up to his neck, but he wasn’t sure what to do about it. What if, that day when he was out in the woods, he had found not one body, but two? What if the man died too? Maybe his body wasn’t right next to the woman’s… maybe Oldacre found it, and got an idea. Maybe he didn’t tell anyone when he found the bodies, but waited until night, and came to take the man’s body away. Then later he alerted the authorities to the woman.”
Sherlock hummed in agreement, and John, reassured, continued to build his story.
“He took the body and… hid it? He was planning to use as a decoy for his own corpse. But for that, he would have to ‘die’ in a fairly dramatic way. Fire would be ideal, since the body wouldn’t be easily identifiable afterwards…” John trailed off, thinking for a minute. “Then, perhaps around the same time, or not long after, Oldacre learned that Hector MacFarlane senior had passed away. Maybe he’d been keeping tabs on the family for a while, from a distance? The death must have given him the idea of framing MacFarlane’s son for his own ‘murder’, as a kind of revenge.”
“The money?” Sherlock asked, his voice rich and lazy.
John frowned. “They put the cash into an empty wallet. Mrs. Oldacre… they probably worked out MacFarlane’s bus route. She sat down next to him – dropped the wallet – got off at the next stop?”
“Bit of a risk, isn’t it?” Lestrade grumbled.
“At worst, they lost the money. At best, MacFarlane spent it on something flashy, thus establishing their story that Jonas had lent him money before.”
“It’s ridiculous,” Lestrade grumbled.
Sherlock smiled, and reached out to cover John’s hand with his own.
“All the best murders are,” he agreed.
“Although no one actually died this time.”
John and Sherlock looked at each other, and John found himself laughing. Sherlock’s hand was warm on top of his. He ran his thumb lazily across John’s wrist.
John wet his lips, and Sherlock’s smile sharpened.
Lestrade looked at them in the rearview mirror. Something in John’s expression, or Sherlock’s, must have given them away, because he groaned loudly.
“Is that really necessary?” he groused.
John shook his head, still chuckling, and after a moment, Sherlock started laughing again too. Finally, reluctantly, even Lestrade joined in.
The world, John reflected, was starting to come into color once again.
FIN