fic for silverblaze01: The Case of the Purloined Past
Title: The Case of the Purloined Past
Recipient: silverblaze01
Author: red_chapel
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Molly Hooper, Greg Lestrade; no pairings
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Summary: While browsing in a morgue, Sherlock and John find a case. And a way to help a friend.
‘Sherlock, what are you doing?’
‘Hmm?’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Just browsing.’
John looked about at the stainless steel tables, several draped with sheets covering masses of different sizes, and at the side benches stocked with the instruments of the pathologist’s trade.
‘It’s a morgue, Sherlock. We don’t browse in morgues.’
‘Mm, maybe you don’t…’ Sherlock lifted one corner of a draping sheet and considered the body beneath.
John puffed out a sigh. ‘Can you just get the information you came here for so we can go?’
‘Already got it’, Sherlock replied, moving to the other end of the body.
‘So what are we still doing here?’
‘Browsing.’
John strode to the table Sherlock leant over, a corner of the sheet pulled back to reveal a foot.
‘Nope’, he said tersely, pulling the sheet back in place and grabbing Sherlock’s elbow to spin him around. ‘Come on.’ John began marching Sherlock and his indignance toward the door. ‘You certainly don’t need any more toenails. The microwave still smells from the last batch. Besides, this isn’t Bart’s. You can’t just go waltzing around like you own the place.’
‘Does she look familiar to you?’ Sherlock asked, looking back at the draped figure.
‘Not browsing, Sherlock.’
As they emerged into the hallway, Sherlock asked, ‘When did you become squeamish around corpses?’
‘I’m not squeamish, I’m respectful’, John stated. ‘And hungry.’
‘I think I know her. She looked familiar.’ Sherlock stopped and turned back.
‘She’s dead, Sherlock. She probably just reminds you of a lot of other dead people you’ve known.’ John continued walking toward the exit.
‘No, there was something…’
John stopped and turned to see Sherlock close his eyes and raise his hands as if trying to pluck a memory from the ether. ‘You really think you know her?’ he asked, sobered by Sherlock’s certainty.
‘Yes.’ Sherlock opened his eyes and his face lit with recognition. ‘Molly.’
‘What?’ John asked, taking a step toward Sherlock. ‘Molly? Hooper? That was Molly Hooper on that table?’
‘No, that’s Molly’, Sherlock said nodding toward the far end of the hallway.
John turned to look. There stood Molly and a technician in a lab coat, just emerged from the stairwell doors. John slumped and sighed, ‘Christ, Sherlock’, then followed the man as he strode down the hall. The technician left Molly and stepped through another door.
Molly looked up at the sound of their approach. The usual downturn of her lips was intensified, her face drawn in grief.
‘Sherlock, John. Hi.’ She looked at them quizzically. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Case’, Sherlock stated. ‘Mother or aunt?’
‘What?’ Molly asked.
‘The dead woman with your nose and chin. Is she your mother or your aunt?’ he asked.
John glared at him. ‘Sherlock!’
‘Oh, um, she’s my Char-, my aunt Charlotte.’ She glanced between them both. ‘You saw her?’
‘Obviously.’
John put it all together in his head and laid a gentle hand on Molly’s arm. ‘Molly, I’m sorry for your loss’, he said quietly. ‘So’s he’, he added with a nod toward Sherlock, ‘even though he doesn’t have the manners to say so.’
‘Thanks.’
‘She was murdered’, Sherlock said.
‘Sherlock’, John cut in warningly. Sherlock ignored him and waited on Molly’s response.
‘Yeah. Well, they, um.’ Molly fidgeted and cast her gaze toward the floor. ‘They said someone broke into her flat, and...’
‘Oh, God, Molly.’ John put an arm around her shoulders in a half-hug of sympathy.
‘Why would someone murder your aunt?’
‘Sherlock, we have talked about these things!’
‘Well, why would someone murder Molly’s aunt?’ Sherlock demanded of John. ‘She wasn’t anybody in particular, and people who aren’t anybody in particular don’t generally get murdered unless there’s someone else who thinks they are someone particular. So, who thought your aunt was someone particular?’ he asked, turning back to Molly. ‘Or was she someone particular?’ he added, curious.
‘I dunno.’ Molly sniffed. ‘She’s my aunt. My mum’s oldest sister. History teacher. I don’t think most people would think she was anyone particular.’ She shook her head. ‘Most interesting things she ever did were accidently set fire to my mum’s hair when they were kids’, she said with a pained chuckle, ‘and take third place at Blackpool once.’
‘She was a dancer?’ Sherlock asked, intrigued.
‘Yes. Amateur. Classical ballroom stuff. She’s very elegant. Was.’
‘Assuming your mother harbors no festering need for revenge over the hair incident, is there anyone that you know of who would want her dead?’ Sherlock continued.
‘No. No. No one.’
At this moment, the door behind Molly opened again, and they all turned to see Lestrade.
‘Molly, I’m so sorry’, he began.
‘You’re handling the case?’ Sherlock asked.
‘I am.’
‘You are?’ Molly asked. ‘I thought it was-’
‘Finch. Yeah’, Lestrade nodded. ‘It was, but when I heard, I asked him for the case. I thought, you know, friendly face and all. Unless you’d rather I didn’t? I can give it back to ‘im.’
‘No, that’s OK. It’s nice of you’, Molly assured him. ‘Thank you.’
‘Sure. Well, you do what you need to do here. After, I’ll need you to look over some photos of the scene.’ He gestured with the folder in his hand. ‘It was a break-in, a few things got tossed around, but we’re not sure if there’s anything missing.’
As he spoke, Sherlock grabbed the file from him and started sorting through its scant offerings: a handwritten overview from the first officer on the scene; a small selection of photos showing a sitting room in disarray; two shots of a woman sprawled on the floor, her graying hair dark red with dried blood.
‘Are you interested in the case?’ Lestrade asked him. ‘Beyond it being Molly’s aunt, that is. Is there something weird about it?’
‘Don’t know yet. Just got the file.’
‘We were here on another matter’, John explained. ‘Saw Molly.’
‘Ah.’
The technician who had earlier been with Molly reappeared from the direction John and Sherlock had come from. He looked questioningly at the assembled group. ‘Are you all family?’ he asked.
‘No, just me’, Molly said. She gestured nervously at the others. ‘They’re um, not.’
‘Ah, well, if you’ll follow me, Miss Hooper’, he said, stepping away.
Molly started after him and John stepped quickly beside her. ‘No need to do this alone, eh?’ he asked. She smiled at him, miserable but grateful.
Lestrade waited while Sherlock scanned the file’s contents. ‘Anything?’ he asked when Sherlock finally looked up and handed the folder back.
‘I’ll need access to the scene.’
‘Yeah, forensics are already on it.’
Sherlock snorted. ‘There goes all the real evidence.’
When John and Molly returned, Sherlock presented one of the crime scene photos to Molly, ignoring Lestrade’s protests that he wasn’t supposed to just take things from official police files.
Holding the photo in front of her, Sherlock asked, ‘What’s missing?’
‘Missing?’ Molly’s eyes slid over the picture, registering nothing but the shine of metal and glass.
‘Right here, this shelf’-Sherlock pointed-’it looks like there’s room for another item.’
‘Those are her dance trophies’, Molly explained.
‘Yes, obviously. Are any of them missing?’
‘It’s hard to say. Maybe.’ Molly took the picture and attempted to make sense of it. ‘There should be…’ She closed her eyes and started counting imaginary trophies before her. ‘I think there should be eleven.’
‘There are ten’, Sherlock stated. ‘Tell me about the missing one.’
‘I don’t know which one it is. I could look in her scrapbook’, Molly offered in response to Sherlock’s scowl of annoyance. ‘She has photos and programmes. That sort of thing.’
‘The scrapbook is at her home?’
‘Yeah.’
Sherlock looked expectantly at Lestrade. Lestrade rolled his eyes and said, ‘I’ll make a call.’
At the door to her aunt’s flat, Lestrade told Molly that she would have to wait outside.
‘Is it bad?’ she asked.
‘It’s a crime scene’, he said gently. ‘You can’t go in. Just tell me where the scrapbook is.’
Without waiting, Sherlock had entered the flat. He looked all around, but headed almost straight for the display of trophies arranged on a glass shelf in the sitting room. A mix of cups and columns and pairs clasped in classical postures was surrounded by a ring of photos, all showing the same couple dancing across burnished hardwood floors. In front of all was a small cup showing that Molly’s aunt Charlotte had indeed once placed third in an amateur competition at the famous Blackpool Dance Festival. Five feet away the beige carpeting was washed in red.
While Lestrade collected the scrapbook, Sherlock moved lightly about the flat, reading the scene. It was clear that Charlotte had gotten in the way, not of the theft but more precisely of the thief’s retreat. Faint tracks indicated the intruder’s unimpeded path from patio door to display shelf. All of the trophies and photos were undisturbed but for the missing one. A slipper lay in the short hall between sitting room and bedroom. The blankets of the slept-in bed were folded back where Charlotte had thrown them, rising in the night in response to some stimulus that had awakened her. Papers and several books littering the floor around a desk, a lamp knocked askew, a pillow on the wrong side of the room, streaks of dirt ground into the carpet-all signs of a quick struggle between unmatched opponents. Finally, several pieces of hair caught on the corner of an end table and the grotesque stain below to show where the thief had become a murderer.
Sherlock examined the track of the sliding door and saw where the metal shone where grease should have lined it. He gave the door a slight tug, producing a brief metallic screech, and knew that, if the door had slid more quietly, or if the old woman had slept more soundly, she would still be alive.
Lestrade had meanwhile delivered the scrapbook and a pair of latex gloves to Molly, and they stood in the outer hall comparing its contents to that of the photo of trophies. Sherlock returned to the display itself and began reading off the names of the events they were from. The team quickly concluded that the missing item was a first-place prize from the 1980 Greater London Dance Festival.
‘Since she had the trophies displayed so prominently, I assume she wasn’t shy of talking about her dancing’, Sherlock said.
‘No. She talked about it. She liked to. She loved dancing.’
‘And yet the trophies show only a 9-year span of competition’, Sherlock pointed out. ‘Why did she stop?’
‘Her partner left.’
‘Randolph Pole’, John read from the scrapbook. ‘Where did he go?’
‘I don’t know. Just that he had to move for work’, Molly replied.
‘Were they romantically involved?’ Sherlock asked.
‘Just dance partners. They got on’, Molly explained, ‘and Charlotte thought he was handsome and a great dancer and all, but he wasn’t someone she’d get involved with.’
‘Why not?’ John interjected.
‘Because he got involved with everyone else. Quite the ladies’ man from what she said.’
‘Why didn’t she get a replacement after he left?’ Sherlock asked.
Molly thought about it. ‘I’m not really sure. I don’t remember her saying. I just figured she was into her career at that point, maybe didn’t have time for it so much anymore. She did still dance’, she pointed out. ‘Tea dances, that sort of thing. Just no more competitions.’
‘And where was she dancing these days?’
‘There’s a sort of schedule on the fridge. Places that hold regular dances.’
‘Find out where Randolph Pole is’, Sherlock instructed Lestrade as he went back into the flat.
‘Yeah, thanks’, Lestrade replied in a voice laden with sarcasm. ‘Hadn’t thought of that.’
‘Is he a suspect?’ Molly asked.
‘He’s someone to look into is all’, Lestrade explained. ‘Maybe if we find that there’s more things missing, we’ll have other avenues to explore. I’ll ask you to come back when SOCO are done with their part. We’ll contact her friends, co-workers. If there’s anyone you know of that we should be talking to, or anything that you think of…’
Molly nodded. ‘I’ll let you know.’
John withdrew the vibrating phone from his jacket pocket and looked at Sherlock just returning to join them.
‘You’re texting me from 20 feet away now?’ he asked.
‘Dance halls. I’ll take everything to the south and east of the Victoria line, you take the north and west’, Sherlock said, heading for the way out. ‘Find out who Charlotte danced with, when, how often. Anything notable happening at recent dances. Anyone asking about her. Whatever information you can glean. And do try to remember the things that you think aren’t important’, he added, turning briefly, ‘because they probably are.’
‘So you’re really investigating, then?’ Molly asked him. ‘Are you going to-’
‘Solve it? Of course’, Sherlock assured her.
Five hours later, John trudged up the stairs to the kitchen he shared with Sherlock and an inordinate amount of laboratory glassware. He set two aromatic carrier bags on the table and went to look in on Sherlock, who studied a modest collection of pictures and paper scraps he had pinned above the sofa in his habitual way.
‘Did you eat?’ he asked, tossing Sherlock a small notebook. Sherlock caught it without a glance and immediately started thumbing through John’s notes.
‘No, I didn’t’, John said after a pause. ‘Thanks for asking, mate. Don’t suppose you happened to pick us up a good curry on your way home?
‘Well, as a matter of fact, Sherlock, I did’, John continued in his solo conversation as he turned back to the kitchen. ‘Even picked up your favorite.’
‘And how much jalfrezi must a man eat in order to get some quiet?’ Sherlock called from the other room.
‘Just enough to keep him alive through the end of the case’, John answered.
John took food for them both and joined Sherlock at the sofa. Some of his information had already been added to Sherlock’s own.
‘Lestrade get anywhere on Randolph Pole?’ he asked.
‘Died two years ago in Edinburgh. Pancreatic cancer.’
‘Probably not involved then.’
‘Probably not’, Sherlock muttered. ‘What’s this say?’ he asked, trading John a notebook page for his dinner.
‘Wilma Ambrose, 24-Dance.’
‘Really?’ Sherlock looked at it in suspicion.
‘Look, I’m a doctor, not a calligrapher. She owns that studio. She wasn’t in, but the man I talked to there said she’d known Charlotte. They went back a long way. That’s her number in case we want to contact her.’
‘Nothing.’
‘Hm?’ John asked from the chair he’d fallen asleep in.
‘Nothing, John.’ Sherlock raised a frustrated hand to the wall of notes. ‘I have nothing.’
John stretched and looked at the wall. Sherlock had spent two days gathering up the minutiae of Molly’s aunt’s life, pairing it with pictures of the crime scene, the findings of the post-mortem, and commentary from an assortment of those who had known her, but he had not yet determined her murderer. ‘All that’s got to tell you something’, John said.
‘Oh, it tells me plenty. Miss Charlotte Waverly, teacher, ballroom dance enthusiast. A regular at several dance venues in the Greater London area. A few somewhat regular partners, but no firm attachments to any. No romantic involvements. A great help with beginners, always willing to offer guidance. No known grudges held by or against her. No current or former students with obvious criminal intent towards her. Over 48 hours after her death and I have all the ‘no’s one could want. But there’s also nothing to say why anyone would want to kill her. Or be willing to kill her to get away with a cheap dance trophy from a competition that took place over three decades ago. Why would anyone even want something like that?’
‘Maybe he just wanted a souvenir of the killing’, John suggested. ‘Most serial killers take souvenirs, right? So, maybe Molly’s aunt wasn’t an isolated murder. Maybe he’s a serial killer.’ John stood and stretched further. ‘She might even be his first victim and we haven’t seen his second yet.’
Sherlock had stopped still during John’s speech and now turned to him with an excited smile.
‘Yes, John. That’s it!’
‘It is? He’s a serial killer?’ John moved to the stack of newspapers piled by the door. Sherlock was now thumbing frantically through them, tossing each aside as it disappointed him.
‘No, of course not. Or if he is, it’s only by accident. But I don’t think- Hah! Here.’ Sherlock held up a paper in triumph so John could see one small headline buried deep inside an issue from last week.
‘“Bromley burglar breaks branches”. Definitely a slow news day in Bromley.’
‘He broke some tree branches when he broke in’, Sherlock explained. ‘But that’s not the interesting part. “Homeowner Gerald Simmons reported that the only item taken was a set of Thunderbirds Play Panels dating to the ’60s, with the burglar showing no interest in his extensive collection of Victorian-era milk glass worth approximately £15,000.”’
‘Lucky for Mr. Simmons.’
‘And last month, there was that woman, you know, with the feathers.’ Sherlock gestured at imaginary feathers about his head.
‘Right. An old Rolling Stones T-shirt had been stolen from her car when she’d been about to take some vintage clothing to a consignment shop.’
‘Her’, Sherlock confirmed, returning to the collection over the sofa.
‘You told her to stop wearing ugly hats and went back to burning toenails in the kitchen. You think these things are related to Molly’s aunt?’
‘Of course! Don’t you see? They’re souvenirs, John, memorabilia. Trinkets collected to commemorate the banalities of a mundane existence.’ He studied a photo of Charlotte with the missing trophy.
‘Taking third place at Blackpool isn’t entirely mundane or banal’, John pointed out. ‘And it certainly meant something to Molly’s aunt.’
‘Yes, it did. And so she put it in front of all of those other trophies as being the most meaningful to her, that third place prize even more important than first or second place prizes from other competitions. But the murderer didn’t take the Blackpool cup; he reached behind it for another that Charlotte had won for first place. Which makes me wonder: who came in second that day?’
To answer that question, John had suggested calling on Wilma Ambrose of 24-Dance. The walls of her studio had been hung with an array of photographs, most of couples in highly stylized costumes, striking dramatic poses as they danced their way through competitions. No small number featured Mrs Ambrose herself. If anyone could answer questions about competitions decades past, it would be her.
John and Sherlock now sat with her in the studio’s office.
‘I was shocked when Davy called to say that Charlotte Waverly was dead’, she said. ‘And murdered! She was such a lovely woman. And so graceful’, as if grace were protection against the evils of the world.
‘How long did you know her, Ma’am? John asked.
‘Oh, well... Well, I guess we really started to get to know each other in ’82, ’83? I took a year off when I had my Jamie, in ’81, and it was after that.’
‘You didn’t know her before then?’
‘I’d certainly seen her around. We competed against each other on a number of occasions. Her and Randolph against Charlie and I. I think the first time might have been at the Rose Festival in ’77 or ’78.’
‘Did you compete in the Greater London Dance Festival in 1980?’ Sherlock asked.
‘Oh, Charlie and I always entered that. It was quite an event back then.’
‘And how did you do that year?’
‘I can tell you we didn’t go home with any prizes that night. ’84 and ’87-those were our years. Second and third places, respectively.’
‘That must have been disappointing’, Sherlock suggested. ‘To enter every year and never win.’
‘Well, yes. It was. But I was pretty well used to it. Charlie and I were good’, she explained, ‘but nothing like Charlotte and Randolph. She was truly wonderful, and he was probably better.’As she spoke, she pushed herself away from her desk, stood, and crossed the room to a tall bookcase. ‘They even took a prize at Blackpool one year. But for Charlie and I-those two years at the Greater London were our high points.’
‘Why keep entering if you had no chance of winning?’ Sherlock asked, causing John to wince at the offense he expected Mrs Ambrose to take. But Mrs Ambrose surprised him with a scoff.
‘That’s like asking why I keep breathing when I know that eventually I’ll have to stop. Competition is exciting’, she said, taking down one of a set of boxes from the bookcase. ‘And it makes you work hard, and you get better. I wouldn’t have this studio now if I hadn’t worked so hard back then.’
‘Is Mr Ambrose not a part of the business?’ John asked.
‘Not anymore. He used to do all of the photography we needed-he was good at that sort of thing-but Jamie handles that now since his dad can’t see so well.’
‘He’s losing his sight?’
‘Macular degeneration’, she pronounced carefully, ‘which is the medical term for “I have to lead, now.”’
‘What’s this?’ John asked, as she placed the box in his hands.
‘You asked about the 1980 Greater London. I assumed wanted information on it?’
‘Yes. Oh, this is organized’, John commented on opening the box.
‘I was an accountant before I opened the studio. I know the value of keeping good records.’
Mrs Ambrose’s affinity for good records provided them with the exact information that Sherlock had wanted. He immediately set to discovering the whereabouts of everyone who had been in the competition, with a particular focus on the second and third place couples. Nothing very interesting revealed itself at first. They had uncovered six dancers deceased (Charlotte and Randolph included), twelve living in retirement communities in the London area, two others retired in Cornwall, one Consul General to Russia, two bakers (married), four dance instructors, one veterinarian, seven dentists, two secretaries, one career criminal (temporarily interesting until he was discovered to be six years into a fourteen-year sentence for possession with intent), and one Assistant Chief Constable.
And then John Skyped with Dr Julia Munro, currently serving with Doctors without Borders in Guinea-Bissau.
‘Oliver Smith’, she said. ‘One of the ones you don’t forget.’
‘I take it from your tone that they’re not the most positive of memories’, John commented.
‘Good dancer, decent manners, not bad looking, no hygiene issues. I didn’t have any objections when our instructor suggested we pair up and try some of the local dance festivals. And everything went fine until we entered our first competition.’
‘What happened then?’
‘We didn’t take first.’
‘How did he take it?’ John asked.
‘That man threw a wobbly that would have done a three-year-old proud. I’d never seen the like.’
‘I see’, John said, looking meaningfully over the top of his computer at Sherlock listening in.
‘Needless to say, that was our only competition together.’
‘Naturally’, John agreed. ‘I don’t imagine you have any idea where he is now.’
‘Pouting in a corner?’ she suggested.
While John chatted a few more moments with Dr Munro on the finer points of doctoring under less than ideal conditions, Sherlock redoubled his efforts to locate Mr Smith.
Locating him took another 26 hours, primarily because Oliver Smith was no longer Oliver Smith, but was now known as Maxwell Artherton. At the age of 37, Mr Smith had made a sudden change in the direction of his life that included a legal change of name. A close look as his first 37 years, through the lens of the recent crimes, gave Sherlock a good indication of why: Oliver Smith had excelled at being rather good. Never great, never exceptional, and certainly never the best. The child of a low-middle income family, he had collected an impressive number of second and third place awards in school sports and honorable mentions in essay contests. After college, he’d taken a job as an assistant bookkeeper. In his free time he had been second chair viola in a community orchestra for nine consecutive years (while four other violists held first chair in their turns) and entered a number of ballroom dance competitions, never doing better than second place at the 1980 Greater London Dance Festival.
Maxwell Artherton, in contrast, took second place to no one. He’d won honors for top sales at three different estate agencies and was now an entrepreneur with a growing collection of rental properties and a thriving real estate business of his own. Having served five years as president of the Regional Association of Estate Agents, he seem to consider himself qualified for a wider audience and was currently considering entering the local political scene. They couldn’t know just what had happened to transform Oliver into Maxwell, but he seemed to have found the key to success.
John took one look at a photo of Artherton with his wife and decided that the man really had no need of anyone else’s trophies.
During the piecing together of Smith-Artherton’s lives and the transition between them, the report of another small burglary caught Sherlock’s notice. A senior accountant at the firm where Oliver Smith had long ago worked had been relieved of the gold watch he’d taken home on his last day of work just six months previous. A quick visit allowed Sherlock to confirm that Smith had answered to the man, and that he had been found to have ‘adequate skills’, but ‘he wasn’t the sort of man that was ever going to go far in the practice.’
Sherlock stood before his wall of notes looking well-satisfied. The picture was now complete, the case solved.
‘Seems odd that he hasn’t got rid of his childhood home’, John noted, examining a photo of the house pinned to the wall. ‘Why hang onto it? At the very least he could let it out. Why does an estate agent let a property sit idle when he could make a profit from it?’
‘Why indeed, John.’
‘Sentiment?’ John tried. ‘But he’s sloughed off every other sign of his past life. Why not this-’
Sherlock looked expectantly as John caught on.
‘Of course. He stealing bits of other people’s lives in order to create a fantasy past for himself. Where else would he keep it all but in his childhood home?’
‘He certainly couldn’t store it in the home of Mr Maxwell Artherton’, Sherlock agreed.
‘So you’ve got him. The who and the where and the why. Time to bring Lestrade up to date?’
Sherlock frowned. ‘Little good it may do us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I know exactly what he’s going to say.’
‘Sherlock, it’s not enough’, Lestrade said. ‘The only thing you have connecting Maxwell Atherton to any of this is the fact that he came in second to Molly’s aunt in an amateur dance competition decades ago under a different name. You really think I’m going to find a magistrate that’s willing to issue a search warrant based solely on that?’
‘It’s not just the dance trophy’, Sherlock protested. ‘There’s the watch, too. And he’s stolen toys, clothes-’
‘Toys and clothes have been stolen’, Lestrade countered. ‘A lot of things have been stolen. But you have no reasonable proof that this man was the thief in any of those cases.’
‘This man is a murderer!’
‘Again, Sherlock, you have no proof, nothing that’s anywhere near proof. And so far SOCO haven’t come up with anything useful from the scene’, he added, pushing a file across his desk toward Sherlock.
‘I know that I am right’, Sherlock gritted out.
‘Well for what it’s worth, I think you probably are, too. You usually are.’
‘Usually?!’
‘Which is why I’ve put a flag on Artherton. If he ever comes under police scrutiny, I’ll be a part of it.’
Sherlock’s fury at the restrictions under which the Metropolitan Police force operated was evident in his brittle posture and the speed with he exited New Scotland Yard.
‘Sherlock’, John said, trotting to catch up with him, ‘Greg will fill Molly in. She’ll know Artherton’s being watched. It’s the best that can be done for now. She’ll understand.’
‘What? Taxi!’
‘It’s not like she’s going to blame you for what the Met can’t do. She’ll know you did your best with this.’
‘Why are you going on about Molly?’
‘I know you wanted to solve this for her, you told her you would. And technically you have. You can’t get to the guy-yet-but something might change. Meantime, Molly won’t think-’
‘Why would I care what Molly thinks?’ Sherlock protested as he got into the cab.
‘Right’, John said. Settled into his seat, he continued, ‘Sorry. I forgot. Sherlock Holmes doesn’t care what anyone thinks; he just needs to solve the puzzle.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And since you’ve solved it now, what does it matter that Artherton gets away with it? After all, justice is for the victims, not the puzzle solvers. You’d have to care about it to want justice.’
Sherlock’s ensuing silence persisted throughout the evening.
‘John! Up! Now!’
John bolted upright in bed. ‘What? Sherlock?’
‘Up! Up, up, up!’ Sherlock poked his head around John’s bedroom door. ‘We’re leaving.’
John looked around and didn’t see any impending doom and so asked, ‘Why?’
‘Case.’ Sherlock’s head disappeared.
‘It’s-’ John checked his phone for the time. ‘For God’s sake, I’ve only just got to sleep.’
‘Five minutes!’ Sherlock called as he descended the stairs.
John fell back against his pillow with a groan.
‘Up!!’
John awoke again when Sherlock nudged him to get out of the cab. He emerged, stretched, looked around, and saw nothing familiar, interesting, or more important than sleep. Sherlock simply started to walk.
After ten minutes of silence and little change in the scenery-they were traveling at Sherlock speed through a mostly residential neighbourhood dotted with the occasional shop or park-John suggested, ‘Maybe we could have taken the cab all the way to our actual destination.’
‘Not your best idea in this circumstance.’
‘Just what is this circumstance?’
‘Thought we should have a look at a piece of real estate.’ Sherlock gestured along the walk and John at last saw something familiar.
‘Oliver Smith’s old house? Tell me you did not roust me out of bed to burgle a murderer.’
‘I did not roust you out of bed to burgle a murderer.’
‘So what are we doing here?’ John asked low, his voice having grown progressively quieter as they neared the house. Sherlock glanced at John.
‘We’re burgling a murderer’, John whispered in resignation.
The back door locks fell easily to Sherlock’s skills, and they found themselves in the kitchen. John shielded his pocket torch and brought it to bear on various points around the room. What he saw felt like a flashback to his own childhood. Or a museum set piece commemorating the early ’80s. The appliances, the colors, the patterns and textures-all period perfect.
The dining room was set for a family meal: plates, flatware, serving bowls, glasses. The only thing missing was the food.
The living room was more of the same, with a console television featuring prominently in the layout and a carpet that made John cringe slightly. Several children’s toys were piled in a corner as if quickly tidied at the end of play. And, as Sherlock pointed out with a flash of his torch, Charlotte Waverly’s stolen dance trophy sat on one end of the mantel, a gold watch on the other.
Artherton wasn’t just assembling a few nice mementos for little Oliver; he was constructing the dream of his youth.
John looked up the stairwell and felt a shiver across his back.
‘Do we know what happened to his parents?’ he asked, wondering just how thorough Artherton’s obliteration of Smith’s past had been.
‘Retired to West Sommerset years ago. Father’s dead, mother’s nearly there.’
John was relieved to know he needn’t expect to find their mummified remains stuffed in a closet or on display in the master bedroom.
They completed their stealthy tour of the house in a boy’s bedroom. Various trophies, plaques, and ribbons covered the walls and shelves. A box of Thunderbirds Play Panels leant against a wall. A T-shirt from the Rolling Stones Tour of Europe ’76 hung from the doorknob.
‘It seems Oliver Smith felt he been cheated of an awful lot in life’, John said. ‘There’s all the evidence here you need. But unless we go tell the police that we just happened to find all of it when we broke in, I don’t see what value it is to us.’
Sherlock glanced around the room once more and headed down the stairs without making a reply. John followed and found him staring at the trophy that had begun the case.
‘If we take it, he can’t report the theft’, John said.
‘No, but he’ll know he’s been found out. Not acceptable.’
‘So what do we do?’
Sherlock scowled. Damn Scotland Yard and their rules. But in a moment, his expression lightened.
‘I think it’s time we make a little noise. Any good with stone?’ he asked with a glance outside. John looked out to the flower bed beneath the window.
‘I’m a doctor, not a bricklayer. What are you- Seriously?’ he asked, catching up to Sherlock’s madness. ‘Under cover of darkness, we successfully break into a house, find a bunch of stolen goods, and can easily sneak out again, all without making a sound or leaving any sign we’ve been here. And now you want to go throwing rocks and drawing attention to ourselves?’
‘John, if you heard the sound of windows breaking next door and knew the homeowner was seldom around, wouldn’t you be a good neighbour and call the police? And wouldn’t you, if you were a police officer arriving at the scene of such vandalism, want to step inside to check things out? Particularly if it looked like someone had tried to force a door?’
John’s mind boggled at Sherlock’s audacity, but he grinned and, without further question, followed Sherlock outside. He gathered several half bricks from the planting beds while Sherlock worked on the door. As soon as Sherlock was done, John gritted his teeth, then lobbed a brick at the living room window. The glass hadn't settled when a dog began barking two houses away, waking dogs the length of the street, and he quickly fired off the rest. Lights were going on in surrounding houses as they took flight.
Two days later, Molly showed up at 221B Baker Street. As she and John climbed the stairs, she began to tell him of the remarkable coincidence of a break-in at the very house where her aunt Charlotte’s stolen dance trophy was to be found.
‘Greg said he’d flagged the man’s name, well, names, because Sherlock had solved it. Told him who had stolen the trophy and-all the rest of it. So when the house was broken into, he went and there it was. Apparently there was a lot of other stolen stuff, too, but you probably know that because that’s how you figured it out, right?’
Molly was speaking to Sherlock by this point, but Sherlock had kept his attention on his computer.
‘Ah, that’s how he did it alright’, John said to fill the void. ‘Smith-Artherton-he put all that effort into remaking himself, became a genuine somebody, but he was still dwelling in the past. Looks like he put even more effort into trying to put together pieces from other people’s lives to make the life that he’d wanted back then.’
‘It’s kind of sad, really’, Molly said. ‘Not that that makes me hate him any less. Well, I just thought I’d drop by and say thanks.’ On so saying, Molly set down the bag she’d been carrying and withdrew a bottle of scotch with a spangled bow atop it, which she handed to John, and a small flat box..
‘Oh, ta’, John said. ‘And you’re welcome, Molly. We’re glad we could help out.’ After a short pause, he prompted, ‘Aren’t we, Sherlock?’
‘Mm, yes.’
‘Manners, Sherlock.’
Sherlock sighed and stretched just enough to accept the box Molly was holding out to him. He was about to set it down but, on hearing a slight rattle from it, he shook it twice and grinned broadly.
‘Oh, Molly. If only all clients were so appropriately grateful.’ He rose from the desk and gave her the quickest of pecks on her cheek as he strode by her toward the kitchen.
John looked questioningly at her as she blushed.
‘Toenails.’
Recipient: silverblaze01
Author: red_chapel
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Molly Hooper, Greg Lestrade; no pairings
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Summary: While browsing in a morgue, Sherlock and John find a case. And a way to help a friend.
‘Sherlock, what are you doing?’
‘Hmm?’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Just browsing.’
John looked about at the stainless steel tables, several draped with sheets covering masses of different sizes, and at the side benches stocked with the instruments of the pathologist’s trade.
‘It’s a morgue, Sherlock. We don’t browse in morgues.’
‘Mm, maybe you don’t…’ Sherlock lifted one corner of a draping sheet and considered the body beneath.
John puffed out a sigh. ‘Can you just get the information you came here for so we can go?’
‘Already got it’, Sherlock replied, moving to the other end of the body.
‘So what are we still doing here?’
‘Browsing.’
John strode to the table Sherlock leant over, a corner of the sheet pulled back to reveal a foot.
‘Nope’, he said tersely, pulling the sheet back in place and grabbing Sherlock’s elbow to spin him around. ‘Come on.’ John began marching Sherlock and his indignance toward the door. ‘You certainly don’t need any more toenails. The microwave still smells from the last batch. Besides, this isn’t Bart’s. You can’t just go waltzing around like you own the place.’
‘Does she look familiar to you?’ Sherlock asked, looking back at the draped figure.
‘Not browsing, Sherlock.’
As they emerged into the hallway, Sherlock asked, ‘When did you become squeamish around corpses?’
‘I’m not squeamish, I’m respectful’, John stated. ‘And hungry.’
‘I think I know her. She looked familiar.’ Sherlock stopped and turned back.
‘She’s dead, Sherlock. She probably just reminds you of a lot of other dead people you’ve known.’ John continued walking toward the exit.
‘No, there was something…’
John stopped and turned to see Sherlock close his eyes and raise his hands as if trying to pluck a memory from the ether. ‘You really think you know her?’ he asked, sobered by Sherlock’s certainty.
‘Yes.’ Sherlock opened his eyes and his face lit with recognition. ‘Molly.’
‘What?’ John asked, taking a step toward Sherlock. ‘Molly? Hooper? That was Molly Hooper on that table?’
‘No, that’s Molly’, Sherlock said nodding toward the far end of the hallway.
John turned to look. There stood Molly and a technician in a lab coat, just emerged from the stairwell doors. John slumped and sighed, ‘Christ, Sherlock’, then followed the man as he strode down the hall. The technician left Molly and stepped through another door.
Molly looked up at the sound of their approach. The usual downturn of her lips was intensified, her face drawn in grief.
‘Sherlock, John. Hi.’ She looked at them quizzically. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Case’, Sherlock stated. ‘Mother or aunt?’
‘What?’ Molly asked.
‘The dead woman with your nose and chin. Is she your mother or your aunt?’ he asked.
John glared at him. ‘Sherlock!’
‘Oh, um, she’s my Char-, my aunt Charlotte.’ She glanced between them both. ‘You saw her?’
‘Obviously.’
John put it all together in his head and laid a gentle hand on Molly’s arm. ‘Molly, I’m sorry for your loss’, he said quietly. ‘So’s he’, he added with a nod toward Sherlock, ‘even though he doesn’t have the manners to say so.’
‘Thanks.’
‘She was murdered’, Sherlock said.
‘Sherlock’, John cut in warningly. Sherlock ignored him and waited on Molly’s response.
‘Yeah. Well, they, um.’ Molly fidgeted and cast her gaze toward the floor. ‘They said someone broke into her flat, and...’
‘Oh, God, Molly.’ John put an arm around her shoulders in a half-hug of sympathy.
‘Why would someone murder your aunt?’
‘Sherlock, we have talked about these things!’
‘Well, why would someone murder Molly’s aunt?’ Sherlock demanded of John. ‘She wasn’t anybody in particular, and people who aren’t anybody in particular don’t generally get murdered unless there’s someone else who thinks they are someone particular. So, who thought your aunt was someone particular?’ he asked, turning back to Molly. ‘Or was she someone particular?’ he added, curious.
‘I dunno.’ Molly sniffed. ‘She’s my aunt. My mum’s oldest sister. History teacher. I don’t think most people would think she was anyone particular.’ She shook her head. ‘Most interesting things she ever did were accidently set fire to my mum’s hair when they were kids’, she said with a pained chuckle, ‘and take third place at Blackpool once.’
‘She was a dancer?’ Sherlock asked, intrigued.
‘Yes. Amateur. Classical ballroom stuff. She’s very elegant. Was.’
‘Assuming your mother harbors no festering need for revenge over the hair incident, is there anyone that you know of who would want her dead?’ Sherlock continued.
‘No. No. No one.’
At this moment, the door behind Molly opened again, and they all turned to see Lestrade.
‘Molly, I’m so sorry’, he began.
‘You’re handling the case?’ Sherlock asked.
‘I am.’
‘You are?’ Molly asked. ‘I thought it was-’
‘Finch. Yeah’, Lestrade nodded. ‘It was, but when I heard, I asked him for the case. I thought, you know, friendly face and all. Unless you’d rather I didn’t? I can give it back to ‘im.’
‘No, that’s OK. It’s nice of you’, Molly assured him. ‘Thank you.’
‘Sure. Well, you do what you need to do here. After, I’ll need you to look over some photos of the scene.’ He gestured with the folder in his hand. ‘It was a break-in, a few things got tossed around, but we’re not sure if there’s anything missing.’
As he spoke, Sherlock grabbed the file from him and started sorting through its scant offerings: a handwritten overview from the first officer on the scene; a small selection of photos showing a sitting room in disarray; two shots of a woman sprawled on the floor, her graying hair dark red with dried blood.
‘Are you interested in the case?’ Lestrade asked him. ‘Beyond it being Molly’s aunt, that is. Is there something weird about it?’
‘Don’t know yet. Just got the file.’
‘We were here on another matter’, John explained. ‘Saw Molly.’
‘Ah.’
The technician who had earlier been with Molly reappeared from the direction John and Sherlock had come from. He looked questioningly at the assembled group. ‘Are you all family?’ he asked.
‘No, just me’, Molly said. She gestured nervously at the others. ‘They’re um, not.’
‘Ah, well, if you’ll follow me, Miss Hooper’, he said, stepping away.
Molly started after him and John stepped quickly beside her. ‘No need to do this alone, eh?’ he asked. She smiled at him, miserable but grateful.
Lestrade waited while Sherlock scanned the file’s contents. ‘Anything?’ he asked when Sherlock finally looked up and handed the folder back.
‘I’ll need access to the scene.’
‘Yeah, forensics are already on it.’
Sherlock snorted. ‘There goes all the real evidence.’
When John and Molly returned, Sherlock presented one of the crime scene photos to Molly, ignoring Lestrade’s protests that he wasn’t supposed to just take things from official police files.
Holding the photo in front of her, Sherlock asked, ‘What’s missing?’
‘Missing?’ Molly’s eyes slid over the picture, registering nothing but the shine of metal and glass.
‘Right here, this shelf’-Sherlock pointed-’it looks like there’s room for another item.’
‘Those are her dance trophies’, Molly explained.
‘Yes, obviously. Are any of them missing?’
‘It’s hard to say. Maybe.’ Molly took the picture and attempted to make sense of it. ‘There should be…’ She closed her eyes and started counting imaginary trophies before her. ‘I think there should be eleven.’
‘There are ten’, Sherlock stated. ‘Tell me about the missing one.’
‘I don’t know which one it is. I could look in her scrapbook’, Molly offered in response to Sherlock’s scowl of annoyance. ‘She has photos and programmes. That sort of thing.’
‘The scrapbook is at her home?’
‘Yeah.’
Sherlock looked expectantly at Lestrade. Lestrade rolled his eyes and said, ‘I’ll make a call.’
At the door to her aunt’s flat, Lestrade told Molly that she would have to wait outside.
‘Is it bad?’ she asked.
‘It’s a crime scene’, he said gently. ‘You can’t go in. Just tell me where the scrapbook is.’
Without waiting, Sherlock had entered the flat. He looked all around, but headed almost straight for the display of trophies arranged on a glass shelf in the sitting room. A mix of cups and columns and pairs clasped in classical postures was surrounded by a ring of photos, all showing the same couple dancing across burnished hardwood floors. In front of all was a small cup showing that Molly’s aunt Charlotte had indeed once placed third in an amateur competition at the famous Blackpool Dance Festival. Five feet away the beige carpeting was washed in red.
While Lestrade collected the scrapbook, Sherlock moved lightly about the flat, reading the scene. It was clear that Charlotte had gotten in the way, not of the theft but more precisely of the thief’s retreat. Faint tracks indicated the intruder’s unimpeded path from patio door to display shelf. All of the trophies and photos were undisturbed but for the missing one. A slipper lay in the short hall between sitting room and bedroom. The blankets of the slept-in bed were folded back where Charlotte had thrown them, rising in the night in response to some stimulus that had awakened her. Papers and several books littering the floor around a desk, a lamp knocked askew, a pillow on the wrong side of the room, streaks of dirt ground into the carpet-all signs of a quick struggle between unmatched opponents. Finally, several pieces of hair caught on the corner of an end table and the grotesque stain below to show where the thief had become a murderer.
Sherlock examined the track of the sliding door and saw where the metal shone where grease should have lined it. He gave the door a slight tug, producing a brief metallic screech, and knew that, if the door had slid more quietly, or if the old woman had slept more soundly, she would still be alive.
Lestrade had meanwhile delivered the scrapbook and a pair of latex gloves to Molly, and they stood in the outer hall comparing its contents to that of the photo of trophies. Sherlock returned to the display itself and began reading off the names of the events they were from. The team quickly concluded that the missing item was a first-place prize from the 1980 Greater London Dance Festival.
‘Since she had the trophies displayed so prominently, I assume she wasn’t shy of talking about her dancing’, Sherlock said.
‘No. She talked about it. She liked to. She loved dancing.’
‘And yet the trophies show only a 9-year span of competition’, Sherlock pointed out. ‘Why did she stop?’
‘Her partner left.’
‘Randolph Pole’, John read from the scrapbook. ‘Where did he go?’
‘I don’t know. Just that he had to move for work’, Molly replied.
‘Were they romantically involved?’ Sherlock asked.
‘Just dance partners. They got on’, Molly explained, ‘and Charlotte thought he was handsome and a great dancer and all, but he wasn’t someone she’d get involved with.’
‘Why not?’ John interjected.
‘Because he got involved with everyone else. Quite the ladies’ man from what she said.’
‘Why didn’t she get a replacement after he left?’ Sherlock asked.
Molly thought about it. ‘I’m not really sure. I don’t remember her saying. I just figured she was into her career at that point, maybe didn’t have time for it so much anymore. She did still dance’, she pointed out. ‘Tea dances, that sort of thing. Just no more competitions.’
‘And where was she dancing these days?’
‘There’s a sort of schedule on the fridge. Places that hold regular dances.’
‘Find out where Randolph Pole is’, Sherlock instructed Lestrade as he went back into the flat.
‘Yeah, thanks’, Lestrade replied in a voice laden with sarcasm. ‘Hadn’t thought of that.’
‘Is he a suspect?’ Molly asked.
‘He’s someone to look into is all’, Lestrade explained. ‘Maybe if we find that there’s more things missing, we’ll have other avenues to explore. I’ll ask you to come back when SOCO are done with their part. We’ll contact her friends, co-workers. If there’s anyone you know of that we should be talking to, or anything that you think of…’
Molly nodded. ‘I’ll let you know.’
John withdrew the vibrating phone from his jacket pocket and looked at Sherlock just returning to join them.
‘You’re texting me from 20 feet away now?’ he asked.
‘Dance halls. I’ll take everything to the south and east of the Victoria line, you take the north and west’, Sherlock said, heading for the way out. ‘Find out who Charlotte danced with, when, how often. Anything notable happening at recent dances. Anyone asking about her. Whatever information you can glean. And do try to remember the things that you think aren’t important’, he added, turning briefly, ‘because they probably are.’
‘So you’re really investigating, then?’ Molly asked him. ‘Are you going to-’
‘Solve it? Of course’, Sherlock assured her.
Five hours later, John trudged up the stairs to the kitchen he shared with Sherlock and an inordinate amount of laboratory glassware. He set two aromatic carrier bags on the table and went to look in on Sherlock, who studied a modest collection of pictures and paper scraps he had pinned above the sofa in his habitual way.
‘Did you eat?’ he asked, tossing Sherlock a small notebook. Sherlock caught it without a glance and immediately started thumbing through John’s notes.
‘No, I didn’t’, John said after a pause. ‘Thanks for asking, mate. Don’t suppose you happened to pick us up a good curry on your way home?
‘Well, as a matter of fact, Sherlock, I did’, John continued in his solo conversation as he turned back to the kitchen. ‘Even picked up your favorite.’
‘And how much jalfrezi must a man eat in order to get some quiet?’ Sherlock called from the other room.
‘Just enough to keep him alive through the end of the case’, John answered.
John took food for them both and joined Sherlock at the sofa. Some of his information had already been added to Sherlock’s own.
‘Lestrade get anywhere on Randolph Pole?’ he asked.
‘Died two years ago in Edinburgh. Pancreatic cancer.’
‘Probably not involved then.’
‘Probably not’, Sherlock muttered. ‘What’s this say?’ he asked, trading John a notebook page for his dinner.
‘Wilma Ambrose, 24-Dance.’
‘Really?’ Sherlock looked at it in suspicion.
‘Look, I’m a doctor, not a calligrapher. She owns that studio. She wasn’t in, but the man I talked to there said she’d known Charlotte. They went back a long way. That’s her number in case we want to contact her.’
‘Nothing.’
‘Hm?’ John asked from the chair he’d fallen asleep in.
‘Nothing, John.’ Sherlock raised a frustrated hand to the wall of notes. ‘I have nothing.’
John stretched and looked at the wall. Sherlock had spent two days gathering up the minutiae of Molly’s aunt’s life, pairing it with pictures of the crime scene, the findings of the post-mortem, and commentary from an assortment of those who had known her, but he had not yet determined her murderer. ‘All that’s got to tell you something’, John said.
‘Oh, it tells me plenty. Miss Charlotte Waverly, teacher, ballroom dance enthusiast. A regular at several dance venues in the Greater London area. A few somewhat regular partners, but no firm attachments to any. No romantic involvements. A great help with beginners, always willing to offer guidance. No known grudges held by or against her. No current or former students with obvious criminal intent towards her. Over 48 hours after her death and I have all the ‘no’s one could want. But there’s also nothing to say why anyone would want to kill her. Or be willing to kill her to get away with a cheap dance trophy from a competition that took place over three decades ago. Why would anyone even want something like that?’
‘Maybe he just wanted a souvenir of the killing’, John suggested. ‘Most serial killers take souvenirs, right? So, maybe Molly’s aunt wasn’t an isolated murder. Maybe he’s a serial killer.’ John stood and stretched further. ‘She might even be his first victim and we haven’t seen his second yet.’
Sherlock had stopped still during John’s speech and now turned to him with an excited smile.
‘Yes, John. That’s it!’
‘It is? He’s a serial killer?’ John moved to the stack of newspapers piled by the door. Sherlock was now thumbing frantically through them, tossing each aside as it disappointed him.
‘No, of course not. Or if he is, it’s only by accident. But I don’t think- Hah! Here.’ Sherlock held up a paper in triumph so John could see one small headline buried deep inside an issue from last week.
‘“Bromley burglar breaks branches”. Definitely a slow news day in Bromley.’
‘He broke some tree branches when he broke in’, Sherlock explained. ‘But that’s not the interesting part. “Homeowner Gerald Simmons reported that the only item taken was a set of Thunderbirds Play Panels dating to the ’60s, with the burglar showing no interest in his extensive collection of Victorian-era milk glass worth approximately £15,000.”’
‘Lucky for Mr. Simmons.’
‘And last month, there was that woman, you know, with the feathers.’ Sherlock gestured at imaginary feathers about his head.
‘Right. An old Rolling Stones T-shirt had been stolen from her car when she’d been about to take some vintage clothing to a consignment shop.’
‘Her’, Sherlock confirmed, returning to the collection over the sofa.
‘You told her to stop wearing ugly hats and went back to burning toenails in the kitchen. You think these things are related to Molly’s aunt?’
‘Of course! Don’t you see? They’re souvenirs, John, memorabilia. Trinkets collected to commemorate the banalities of a mundane existence.’ He studied a photo of Charlotte with the missing trophy.
‘Taking third place at Blackpool isn’t entirely mundane or banal’, John pointed out. ‘And it certainly meant something to Molly’s aunt.’
‘Yes, it did. And so she put it in front of all of those other trophies as being the most meaningful to her, that third place prize even more important than first or second place prizes from other competitions. But the murderer didn’t take the Blackpool cup; he reached behind it for another that Charlotte had won for first place. Which makes me wonder: who came in second that day?’
To answer that question, John had suggested calling on Wilma Ambrose of 24-Dance. The walls of her studio had been hung with an array of photographs, most of couples in highly stylized costumes, striking dramatic poses as they danced their way through competitions. No small number featured Mrs Ambrose herself. If anyone could answer questions about competitions decades past, it would be her.
John and Sherlock now sat with her in the studio’s office.
‘I was shocked when Davy called to say that Charlotte Waverly was dead’, she said. ‘And murdered! She was such a lovely woman. And so graceful’, as if grace were protection against the evils of the world.
‘How long did you know her, Ma’am? John asked.
‘Oh, well... Well, I guess we really started to get to know each other in ’82, ’83? I took a year off when I had my Jamie, in ’81, and it was after that.’
‘You didn’t know her before then?’
‘I’d certainly seen her around. We competed against each other on a number of occasions. Her and Randolph against Charlie and I. I think the first time might have been at the Rose Festival in ’77 or ’78.’
‘Did you compete in the Greater London Dance Festival in 1980?’ Sherlock asked.
‘Oh, Charlie and I always entered that. It was quite an event back then.’
‘And how did you do that year?’
‘I can tell you we didn’t go home with any prizes that night. ’84 and ’87-those were our years. Second and third places, respectively.’
‘That must have been disappointing’, Sherlock suggested. ‘To enter every year and never win.’
‘Well, yes. It was. But I was pretty well used to it. Charlie and I were good’, she explained, ‘but nothing like Charlotte and Randolph. She was truly wonderful, and he was probably better.’As she spoke, she pushed herself away from her desk, stood, and crossed the room to a tall bookcase. ‘They even took a prize at Blackpool one year. But for Charlie and I-those two years at the Greater London were our high points.’
‘Why keep entering if you had no chance of winning?’ Sherlock asked, causing John to wince at the offense he expected Mrs Ambrose to take. But Mrs Ambrose surprised him with a scoff.
‘That’s like asking why I keep breathing when I know that eventually I’ll have to stop. Competition is exciting’, she said, taking down one of a set of boxes from the bookcase. ‘And it makes you work hard, and you get better. I wouldn’t have this studio now if I hadn’t worked so hard back then.’
‘Is Mr Ambrose not a part of the business?’ John asked.
‘Not anymore. He used to do all of the photography we needed-he was good at that sort of thing-but Jamie handles that now since his dad can’t see so well.’
‘He’s losing his sight?’
‘Macular degeneration’, she pronounced carefully, ‘which is the medical term for “I have to lead, now.”’
‘What’s this?’ John asked, as she placed the box in his hands.
‘You asked about the 1980 Greater London. I assumed wanted information on it?’
‘Yes. Oh, this is organized’, John commented on opening the box.
‘I was an accountant before I opened the studio. I know the value of keeping good records.’
Mrs Ambrose’s affinity for good records provided them with the exact information that Sherlock had wanted. He immediately set to discovering the whereabouts of everyone who had been in the competition, with a particular focus on the second and third place couples. Nothing very interesting revealed itself at first. They had uncovered six dancers deceased (Charlotte and Randolph included), twelve living in retirement communities in the London area, two others retired in Cornwall, one Consul General to Russia, two bakers (married), four dance instructors, one veterinarian, seven dentists, two secretaries, one career criminal (temporarily interesting until he was discovered to be six years into a fourteen-year sentence for possession with intent), and one Assistant Chief Constable.
And then John Skyped with Dr Julia Munro, currently serving with Doctors without Borders in Guinea-Bissau.
‘Oliver Smith’, she said. ‘One of the ones you don’t forget.’
‘I take it from your tone that they’re not the most positive of memories’, John commented.
‘Good dancer, decent manners, not bad looking, no hygiene issues. I didn’t have any objections when our instructor suggested we pair up and try some of the local dance festivals. And everything went fine until we entered our first competition.’
‘What happened then?’
‘We didn’t take first.’
‘How did he take it?’ John asked.
‘That man threw a wobbly that would have done a three-year-old proud. I’d never seen the like.’
‘I see’, John said, looking meaningfully over the top of his computer at Sherlock listening in.
‘Needless to say, that was our only competition together.’
‘Naturally’, John agreed. ‘I don’t imagine you have any idea where he is now.’
‘Pouting in a corner?’ she suggested.
While John chatted a few more moments with Dr Munro on the finer points of doctoring under less than ideal conditions, Sherlock redoubled his efforts to locate Mr Smith.
Locating him took another 26 hours, primarily because Oliver Smith was no longer Oliver Smith, but was now known as Maxwell Artherton. At the age of 37, Mr Smith had made a sudden change in the direction of his life that included a legal change of name. A close look as his first 37 years, through the lens of the recent crimes, gave Sherlock a good indication of why: Oliver Smith had excelled at being rather good. Never great, never exceptional, and certainly never the best. The child of a low-middle income family, he had collected an impressive number of second and third place awards in school sports and honorable mentions in essay contests. After college, he’d taken a job as an assistant bookkeeper. In his free time he had been second chair viola in a community orchestra for nine consecutive years (while four other violists held first chair in their turns) and entered a number of ballroom dance competitions, never doing better than second place at the 1980 Greater London Dance Festival.
Maxwell Artherton, in contrast, took second place to no one. He’d won honors for top sales at three different estate agencies and was now an entrepreneur with a growing collection of rental properties and a thriving real estate business of his own. Having served five years as president of the Regional Association of Estate Agents, he seem to consider himself qualified for a wider audience and was currently considering entering the local political scene. They couldn’t know just what had happened to transform Oliver into Maxwell, but he seemed to have found the key to success.
John took one look at a photo of Artherton with his wife and decided that the man really had no need of anyone else’s trophies.
During the piecing together of Smith-Artherton’s lives and the transition between them, the report of another small burglary caught Sherlock’s notice. A senior accountant at the firm where Oliver Smith had long ago worked had been relieved of the gold watch he’d taken home on his last day of work just six months previous. A quick visit allowed Sherlock to confirm that Smith had answered to the man, and that he had been found to have ‘adequate skills’, but ‘he wasn’t the sort of man that was ever going to go far in the practice.’
Sherlock stood before his wall of notes looking well-satisfied. The picture was now complete, the case solved.
‘Seems odd that he hasn’t got rid of his childhood home’, John noted, examining a photo of the house pinned to the wall. ‘Why hang onto it? At the very least he could let it out. Why does an estate agent let a property sit idle when he could make a profit from it?’
‘Why indeed, John.’
‘Sentiment?’ John tried. ‘But he’s sloughed off every other sign of his past life. Why not this-’
Sherlock looked expectantly as John caught on.
‘Of course. He stealing bits of other people’s lives in order to create a fantasy past for himself. Where else would he keep it all but in his childhood home?’
‘He certainly couldn’t store it in the home of Mr Maxwell Artherton’, Sherlock agreed.
‘So you’ve got him. The who and the where and the why. Time to bring Lestrade up to date?’
Sherlock frowned. ‘Little good it may do us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I know exactly what he’s going to say.’
‘Sherlock, it’s not enough’, Lestrade said. ‘The only thing you have connecting Maxwell Atherton to any of this is the fact that he came in second to Molly’s aunt in an amateur dance competition decades ago under a different name. You really think I’m going to find a magistrate that’s willing to issue a search warrant based solely on that?’
‘It’s not just the dance trophy’, Sherlock protested. ‘There’s the watch, too. And he’s stolen toys, clothes-’
‘Toys and clothes have been stolen’, Lestrade countered. ‘A lot of things have been stolen. But you have no reasonable proof that this man was the thief in any of those cases.’
‘This man is a murderer!’
‘Again, Sherlock, you have no proof, nothing that’s anywhere near proof. And so far SOCO haven’t come up with anything useful from the scene’, he added, pushing a file across his desk toward Sherlock.
‘I know that I am right’, Sherlock gritted out.
‘Well for what it’s worth, I think you probably are, too. You usually are.’
‘Usually?!’
‘Which is why I’ve put a flag on Artherton. If he ever comes under police scrutiny, I’ll be a part of it.’
Sherlock’s fury at the restrictions under which the Metropolitan Police force operated was evident in his brittle posture and the speed with he exited New Scotland Yard.
‘Sherlock’, John said, trotting to catch up with him, ‘Greg will fill Molly in. She’ll know Artherton’s being watched. It’s the best that can be done for now. She’ll understand.’
‘What? Taxi!’
‘It’s not like she’s going to blame you for what the Met can’t do. She’ll know you did your best with this.’
‘Why are you going on about Molly?’
‘I know you wanted to solve this for her, you told her you would. And technically you have. You can’t get to the guy-yet-but something might change. Meantime, Molly won’t think-’
‘Why would I care what Molly thinks?’ Sherlock protested as he got into the cab.
‘Right’, John said. Settled into his seat, he continued, ‘Sorry. I forgot. Sherlock Holmes doesn’t care what anyone thinks; he just needs to solve the puzzle.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And since you’ve solved it now, what does it matter that Artherton gets away with it? After all, justice is for the victims, not the puzzle solvers. You’d have to care about it to want justice.’
Sherlock’s ensuing silence persisted throughout the evening.
‘John! Up! Now!’
John bolted upright in bed. ‘What? Sherlock?’
‘Up! Up, up, up!’ Sherlock poked his head around John’s bedroom door. ‘We’re leaving.’
John looked around and didn’t see any impending doom and so asked, ‘Why?’
‘Case.’ Sherlock’s head disappeared.
‘It’s-’ John checked his phone for the time. ‘For God’s sake, I’ve only just got to sleep.’
‘Five minutes!’ Sherlock called as he descended the stairs.
John fell back against his pillow with a groan.
‘Up!!’
John awoke again when Sherlock nudged him to get out of the cab. He emerged, stretched, looked around, and saw nothing familiar, interesting, or more important than sleep. Sherlock simply started to walk.
After ten minutes of silence and little change in the scenery-they were traveling at Sherlock speed through a mostly residential neighbourhood dotted with the occasional shop or park-John suggested, ‘Maybe we could have taken the cab all the way to our actual destination.’
‘Not your best idea in this circumstance.’
‘Just what is this circumstance?’
‘Thought we should have a look at a piece of real estate.’ Sherlock gestured along the walk and John at last saw something familiar.
‘Oliver Smith’s old house? Tell me you did not roust me out of bed to burgle a murderer.’
‘I did not roust you out of bed to burgle a murderer.’
‘So what are we doing here?’ John asked low, his voice having grown progressively quieter as they neared the house. Sherlock glanced at John.
‘We’re burgling a murderer’, John whispered in resignation.
The back door locks fell easily to Sherlock’s skills, and they found themselves in the kitchen. John shielded his pocket torch and brought it to bear on various points around the room. What he saw felt like a flashback to his own childhood. Or a museum set piece commemorating the early ’80s. The appliances, the colors, the patterns and textures-all period perfect.
The dining room was set for a family meal: plates, flatware, serving bowls, glasses. The only thing missing was the food.
The living room was more of the same, with a console television featuring prominently in the layout and a carpet that made John cringe slightly. Several children’s toys were piled in a corner as if quickly tidied at the end of play. And, as Sherlock pointed out with a flash of his torch, Charlotte Waverly’s stolen dance trophy sat on one end of the mantel, a gold watch on the other.
Artherton wasn’t just assembling a few nice mementos for little Oliver; he was constructing the dream of his youth.
John looked up the stairwell and felt a shiver across his back.
‘Do we know what happened to his parents?’ he asked, wondering just how thorough Artherton’s obliteration of Smith’s past had been.
‘Retired to West Sommerset years ago. Father’s dead, mother’s nearly there.’
John was relieved to know he needn’t expect to find their mummified remains stuffed in a closet or on display in the master bedroom.
They completed their stealthy tour of the house in a boy’s bedroom. Various trophies, plaques, and ribbons covered the walls and shelves. A box of Thunderbirds Play Panels leant against a wall. A T-shirt from the Rolling Stones Tour of Europe ’76 hung from the doorknob.
‘It seems Oliver Smith felt he been cheated of an awful lot in life’, John said. ‘There’s all the evidence here you need. But unless we go tell the police that we just happened to find all of it when we broke in, I don’t see what value it is to us.’
Sherlock glanced around the room once more and headed down the stairs without making a reply. John followed and found him staring at the trophy that had begun the case.
‘If we take it, he can’t report the theft’, John said.
‘No, but he’ll know he’s been found out. Not acceptable.’
‘So what do we do?’
Sherlock scowled. Damn Scotland Yard and their rules. But in a moment, his expression lightened.
‘I think it’s time we make a little noise. Any good with stone?’ he asked with a glance outside. John looked out to the flower bed beneath the window.
‘I’m a doctor, not a bricklayer. What are you- Seriously?’ he asked, catching up to Sherlock’s madness. ‘Under cover of darkness, we successfully break into a house, find a bunch of stolen goods, and can easily sneak out again, all without making a sound or leaving any sign we’ve been here. And now you want to go throwing rocks and drawing attention to ourselves?’
‘John, if you heard the sound of windows breaking next door and knew the homeowner was seldom around, wouldn’t you be a good neighbour and call the police? And wouldn’t you, if you were a police officer arriving at the scene of such vandalism, want to step inside to check things out? Particularly if it looked like someone had tried to force a door?’
John’s mind boggled at Sherlock’s audacity, but he grinned and, without further question, followed Sherlock outside. He gathered several half bricks from the planting beds while Sherlock worked on the door. As soon as Sherlock was done, John gritted his teeth, then lobbed a brick at the living room window. The glass hadn't settled when a dog began barking two houses away, waking dogs the length of the street, and he quickly fired off the rest. Lights were going on in surrounding houses as they took flight.
Two days later, Molly showed up at 221B Baker Street. As she and John climbed the stairs, she began to tell him of the remarkable coincidence of a break-in at the very house where her aunt Charlotte’s stolen dance trophy was to be found.
‘Greg said he’d flagged the man’s name, well, names, because Sherlock had solved it. Told him who had stolen the trophy and-all the rest of it. So when the house was broken into, he went and there it was. Apparently there was a lot of other stolen stuff, too, but you probably know that because that’s how you figured it out, right?’
Molly was speaking to Sherlock by this point, but Sherlock had kept his attention on his computer.
‘Ah, that’s how he did it alright’, John said to fill the void. ‘Smith-Artherton-he put all that effort into remaking himself, became a genuine somebody, but he was still dwelling in the past. Looks like he put even more effort into trying to put together pieces from other people’s lives to make the life that he’d wanted back then.’
‘It’s kind of sad, really’, Molly said. ‘Not that that makes me hate him any less. Well, I just thought I’d drop by and say thanks.’ On so saying, Molly set down the bag she’d been carrying and withdrew a bottle of scotch with a spangled bow atop it, which she handed to John, and a small flat box..
‘Oh, ta’, John said. ‘And you’re welcome, Molly. We’re glad we could help out.’ After a short pause, he prompted, ‘Aren’t we, Sherlock?’
‘Mm, yes.’
‘Manners, Sherlock.’
Sherlock sighed and stretched just enough to accept the box Molly was holding out to him. He was about to set it down but, on hearing a slight rattle from it, he shook it twice and grinned broadly.
‘Oh, Molly. If only all clients were so appropriately grateful.’ He rose from the desk and gave her the quickest of pecks on her cheek as he strode by her toward the kitchen.
John looked questioningly at her as she blushed.
‘Toenails.’