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John resettled himself anxiously in his seat and watched the orchestra tune up to the first violinist’s note.
“Ooh, I am looking forward to this,” said Mrs Hudson gripping his arm, and John patted her hand more to reassure himself than her.
Greg, on his other side, looked as apprehensive as John felt, while Donovan’s expression appeared more than usually dubious as to the value of wasting police time by attending an orchestral concert. Although, John noted, that hadn't stopped her from dressing to the nines to fit in with the sumptuously attired occupants of the front row, thanks to the reserve tickets Sherlock had picked up for them. Even Lestrade had managed to scrounge up a suit that made John feel downright dowdy in his date shirt and slacks in between him and Mrs Hudson’s lavender ruffles and paste jewellery.
The first violinist took his seat, and scarcely a moment later Sherlock strode onto the stage, long fingers wrapped around the neck of his violin.
He acknowledged the thunder of applause with a distracted wave of his bow and a nod of his head, his mind obviously elsewhere, and he lifted his violin to his chin and set the bow to the strings without pausing for it to fade.
The conductor hurriedly raised his baton while the other musicians struggled to ready their instruments. John stifled a snort at the idea of what Sherlock must have been like in the single rehearsal he’d had time to attend to inspire that level of terrified certainty in the orchestra that, if they weren’t ready, he would begin without them.
The applause petered out in confusion and, with a more than usually dramatic sway to his posture, Sherlock began to play.
John had never really had much musical training. Neither, apparently, had Lestrade, Donovan, or even Mrs Hudson—who’d overheard Sherlock’s plan to get close enough into the orchestra to determine who’d killed the previous first desk cellist, and insisted that if Scotland Yard were getting tickets then she needed one too.
But John did know enough to know when someone was good, even when he was holding a pillow over his ears at 2 a.m. to block out the relentless barrage of noise, rather than looking up at a tuxedo-dressed soloist on stage in front of a symphony orchestra.
Sherlock was good. Given how eclectic the repertoire he actually played at Baker Street in order to to stimulate his thought processes, John was rarely made aware of just how good. But he'd never seen Sherlock play like this. Incomprehensibly complex, exquisitely accurate, and certainly himself, but… lacking in a touch of something that was usually there.
The utter immersion and the passion which usually expressed itself through his music—and was indeed sometimes the only thing expressed in the absence of what anyone else would call music—was strangely absent, as though he’d set the score on autopilot in his mind palace somewhere and was letting it play out without really concentrating.
He wandered as he played, apparently paying as little attention to the audience as to the performance. He moved around the front of the stage and meandered through the strings for a while, then climbed the risers to wend his way through the percussion and brass, adding flourish in dramatic moments with turns that made the tails on his suit swing out like his familiar coat—and pausing in the breaks where the orchestra played alone, bending to examine various musicians’ clothing more closely, or their shoes.
The conductor seemed a trifle appalled as his eyes followed Sherlock around the stage, but never enough that it seemed Sherlock must have missed an entrance. The orchestra kept their eyes on their music, accustomed enough to eccentric soloists—or simply scared enough of whatever Sherlock had done in rehearsal that they were trying to ignore him out of existence.
When the first movement crashed to a sweeping finish, Sherlock remained in the middle of the woodwinds, staring at a weedy looking oboist.
“Hold this,” he said, and thrust his violin at the bassoon player next to him, without breaking eye contact with the terrified-looking oboist on his other side. “It was you," he said, pointing. "You were having an affair with Kelly Blake, until she tried to break it off… just after your last concert, a week ago. Lipstick, just her shade and height, on the collar of your shirt, and another smudge on the cuff, where you hit her when she wouldn’t take it back. She threatened to go to the police, and you had to go through with killing her. You regret it—up half of last night crying, obviously—you think you loved her, that’s why you haven’t washed the shirt. As soon as you’re back at Scotland Yard you're going to confess. Ugh, and there’s going to be even more tears. Why are crimes of passion always so boring? Lestrade?” he called, and glanced out into the shell-shocked audience, unerringly finding the spot where John, Lestrade and Donovan had shot to their feet. “You can arrest him now: there’s two other oboes, we don’t need this one.”
Greg sent John a mildly horrified look as he squeezed out past, and Donovan gave John a vicious glare as though it was all his fault.
“What a shame,” tutted Mrs Hudson as they climbed the side stairs onto the stage. “They’ll miss the rest of Sherlock’s concert.”
“Mrs Hudson,” said John, shaking his head. “They’re arresting a member of the orchestra for murder. There can’t be—”
He broke off. Because even while the detectives were guiding the broken-seeming oboist off the stage, Sherlock had reclaimed his violin and retaken his position at the front of stage. He raised the violin and, apparently oblivious to the shocked murmurs that filled in the hall, began the second movement, all his usual fire and passion in playing returned at once.
He stopped abruptly after the first few phrases, apparently realising he was alone.
“Well, come on then,” he snapped at the conductor. “Or do you need me to keep talking? I don’t actually have to tell everyone about how that flautist earned first desk when he can barely carry a tune, let alone his section. Or how—”
Hurriedly, the conductor raised his baton and signalled the upbeat, letting the musicians scramble for their instruments to catch up.
John tried to exchange a wide-eyed glance with Mrs Hudson, but she was staring with motherly pride up at Sherlock—who finished the concerto to delight and rapturous applause from the audience, and took three encores before his last bow.
“Oh, Sherlock!” bubbled Mrs Hudson afterwards, throwing her arms around him. “You were wonderful! You can play that one any time of day or night, I’ll never complain, I promise!”
He let her kiss him, and then escaped by thrusting the flowers he’d been given by a cringingly apprehensive stagehand at her.
"Well?" he asked, turning to John while she was distracted by smelling them.
"Well, I hope you don't expect me to kiss you," said John.
"Obviously not," said Sherlock, and waved a hand around at the busy atrium around them. "Too public. People might talk. Save it for later."
John rolled his eyes at that, but pressed on, "And, of course, I don't know much about music." Then he grinned. "But I know I when I hear something extraordinary—and you've always been something quite extraordinary."