Wormwood. Chapter Fifteen. Where It All Ends.

[ghislainem70]

Title: Wormwood. Chapter Fifteen.Where It All Ends.
Author: ghislainem70
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 3270
Warnings: reference to drug abuse, suicide; explicit sex, graphic depictions of violence (entire work)
Summary: Sherlock, John and Lestrade become entangled in a mystery of the London art and theatre worlds.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. All honours to Messrs. Gatiss, Moffat, BBC et al.


As it transpired, Irene was immediately permitted to return to the Duke of Marlborough stage for the remainder of the run of Hamlet, to rapturous reviews. Sherlock and John did not see her again, but she sent a note at the end of the run, thanking them again for their part in her rescue from Moriarty. She explained that she had been offered a unique opportunity in Geneva and hoped she would be able to see them, together and happy, soon.

Lestrade was engrossed in a particularly gruesome string of serial murders and did not contact Sherlock, or John, for a time. And Sherlock, for once, did not check his mobile incessantly in the hopes of receiving a summons from Scotland Yard.

So it was that about a week after the flight of Jim Moriarty and his amiable wife from the grounds of Pope's Grotto, that Mycroft paid Sherlock and John a morning visit at Baker Street.

He was astonished to find both them hard at work in the kitchen, apparently making some very limited progress toward cleaning it; but were at the moment in the grip of a heated argument about whether Sherlock could or could not properly use the toaster to preserve tissue specimens when Mycroft entered, tapping his umbrella against the door frame.

* * *

"Sorry to interrupt the -- may I say vital -- task at hand, shall I come back another time?"

Sherlock leaped at the opportunity to suspend the odious chore, and flopped into the leather chair. "Not at all. Your timing is, as is not usual in you Mycroft, impeccable. Tea?"

Mrs. Hudson, having seen the bags of cleaning supplies flowing into 221b that morning, was so overcome with joyful anticipation that she had just provided a fresh pot of tea and a plate of biscuits to restore their energies if they should flag. Mycroft inspected the plate minutely. Duchy Originals, he noted with approval, taking one and nibbling it delicately.

John, groaning with frustration, ignored Mycroft and continued his efforts at restoring the sink to utility. He was on his fifth round of cleanser and was wondering if he needed to rent sandblasting equipment.

"No news of the Moriartys, I'm afraid. But I need to write up my report. John, you are sadly behind in your blog, I see. Everything all right?"

John shrugged and kept scrubbing. He had no intention of telling Mycroft that he and Sherlock had hardly spent two straight hours out of bed since being reunited after their spectacular series of misunderstandings.

John had learned that a large part of the misunderstanding was down to Mycroft's perfidy in sending Sherlock the video of Lestrade kissing him in the lighthouse. John had privately communicated to Mycroft that said video must be deleted with absolute prejudice from all possible means of storage and retrieval. Mycroft assured him that Anthea had taken care of that.  John didn't really believe him.

"So, I am come straight to the source, then. Sherlock, will you enlighten us with how it was that you discovered where Miss Adler was being held, and our dear John as well?" Mycroft removed the Union Jack cushion from John's favorite chair with a slight frown. It was sacrilege to have the country's noble flag propping up one's posterior.

Sherlock rubbed his hands with relish. "Moriarty was still burning to revenge himself after I uncovered his forgery of the Vermeer. He may well be able to pass off the loss of thirty million pounds for what amounted to a mere game, a deadly game; but it was the fact that I was able to solve that one, the hardest one, that hurt his pride.

"I believe that he immediately set himself a new test, one that he knew would be harder for me to solve. I don't yet know how, but Moriarty seems to be intimately familiar with my personal life history to a very great degree. He knows that art and literature, per se, I paid little attention to in university and deleted what little I retained thereafter. So it was that I had almost nothing with which to work upon when he began sending me his little clues about Irene's abduction.

"First, of course, he had to assemble his collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings. I have no idea whether all of them are genuine or not, or whether he has been a longtime collector or whether he assembled the entire collection for the sole purpose of this particular game. I rather think the latter. Incidentally, Mycroft, I assume the Tate has been advised to examine the paintings as to their provenance, possible theft and forgery?" Mycroft indicated with a slight nod that naturally this was well in hand.

"Why the Pre-Raphaelites? Moriarty said so himself, in the note that he left at Highgate Cemetery: He enjoys death in all of its manifestations. And the Pre-Raphaelites, we learn just from seeing the exhibit at the Tate, if nothing else, had an obsession with images of death, erotic death.

"First clue: the postcard of the woman and the bathtub. I had no idea, then, what was coming. I knew Irene was back in London and appearing in Hamlet as Ophelia. I certainly witnessed the fatal scene in Hamlet wherein Ophelia's drowned body is mourned by Gertrude. But the drowning itself occurs offstage. The postcard was meant to be a warning that Irene would shortly be suspended in the tub, to possibly drown. Anyone who knew the history of the painting of Millais' Ophelia would have understood the allusion to the bathtub as it related to the Ophelia story. I didn't, not then.

"The Second and Third Clues: The wreath of poppies delivered the next morning, with a lock of blonde hair from a wig. Irene's stage wig from Hamlet. After the play that night, Moriarty had her abducted, drugged, and photographed in her Ophelia costume, lying in a tub filled with water and red poppies. The wreath signified sleep, and death, according to the Pre-Raphaelites. Nearly all of the exhibition's paintings of dead women, and some of dead men, contain the poppy image somewhere in the composition. Again, this was a hint meant to point to the Pre-Raphaelite women, and specifically, Elizabeth Siddal, who was painted repeatedly with poppies about her, and who also died of an overdose of laudanum - a distillation from opium, from poppies.

"And the lock from Irene's wig, was supposed to warn me of specific danger to Irene herself, the new Ophelia; who also -- as Moriarty somehow knew -- had once tried to commit suicide with heroin - the product of poppies. If he had used red hair, such as Elizabeth Siddal had, as her Ophelia portrait and other works depicting Siddal show, it would not have been as direct.

"The Fourth Clue: Actually this might really have been the first clue. When Moriarty caused the theatre to hire Irene, it was with the stipulation that she use the stage name "Beatrice Phillips." The name Beatrice, or Beatrix, has unique connotations to Dante Gabrielle Rossetti, who saw Elizabeth Siddal as an incarnation of the divine Beatrice of Dante, after whom he himself had been named. And Rossetti painted her as the dying Beatrix, "Beata Beatrix", with the sundial pointing at the hour of nine; warning me that the hour of Irene's death, likely by heroin overdose, would be 9:00 a.m.

"The Fifth Clue: Moriarty sent me an image of a Victorian playing card, the Queen of Hearts. This, again, to anyone familiar with the Pre-Raphaelites in general and Dante Gabriel Rossetti could not be more clear: The Queen of Hearts was a sentimental chalk drawing by Rossetti of his wife Elizabeth Siddal, memorializing their love.

"But also, it was the beginning of a taunt against me, a veiled reference to Alice in Wonderland. The magical substances ingested by Alice - the mushroom, the box labeled, "eat me," the bottle labeled, "drink me." Drug abuse.

Here John and Mycroft eyes met meaningfully, but they permitted Sherlock to continue without interruption.

* * *

"And so now it became clear - everything led back to Elizabeth Siddal. She was painted over and over by the Pre-Raphaelites, like a talisman. And she was, for a time. I believe Moriarty was drawing a parallel of sorts - me as Hamlet, as Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Irene as Ophelia, as Elizabeth Siddal. Both women committed suicide after the man they loved could not, or would not, return their love. Ophelia by drowning, Siddal by laudanum overdose, Irene tried to kill herself, once, with heroin."

Mycroft and John did not think that Sherlock would continue. But after a moment in which his memories of that long-ago time, and his self-reproach and remorse, were plainly visible on his face, his focus returned.

"Once I realized it was about Siddal, I knew I had to go to her grave, from whence her body had once been exhumed. Moriarty was daring me, in a fashion, to exhume Irene from her watery grave, if I could, by solving the puzzle in time.  Siddal is identified with two places in London: Millais’ studio, where he painted her lying in a bathtub warmed by oil lamps, posing as the drowning Ophelia; and her home with Rossetti, the place where she committed suicide. Millais’ studio still stands, it is a residence now, 7 Gower Street near the British Museum. Rossetti’s former rooms in 14 Chatham Place near Blackfriars Bridge have long since been pulled down; they are council flats now. Lestrade found Irene at 7 Gower Street. The "man of wealth and taste" preferred to lease 7 Gower Street for the duration. More privacy and cachet than the squalid council flats.

"Next, the clues regarding John." Here there was a long pause, and John was again not sure that Sherlock could continue, nor that he should. He stepped forward to put his hand out to indicate that Sherlock should leave it, but Sherlock’s face became cold and remote, and John stepped back.

"The painting, The Death of Hephaestion, was the first clue. He left it at Lestrade’s apartment where John was abducted. But if I had been truly , properly observing at the Tate, I would have noticed that this particular painting was quite unlike the others, although nominally I suppose of the same school. Moriarty arranged the entire exhibition, and arranged for this painting to be given special prominence. I should have understood why. But my ancient Greek history, as my recall of the classics, was hazy - I was seriously intoxicated for much of my university education, as Mycroft is well aware - and even if I had not been, it would seemingly have been an area that could safely be deleted.

"As it happens, I was very wrong. The stories of the great love of Alexander the Great and Hephaestion were meant to send me a signal of the threat to John. A threat I could have anticipated very easily, if anyone had cared to tell me that Mrs. Moriarty was warning John about his own funeral, that very day!! If I had known, just the word "funeral" together with the painting of that name would have sealed it for me." Neither Mycroft nor John had anything to say in their own defense, so Sherlock continued his remote recitation:

"I was sent a reference to Troilus and Cressida, the second clue. The play of which it is said, "In the fifth act, everything falls apart." That almost happened, here. In any event. Troilus and Cressida seemed plain enough - there, Shakespeare makes a direct reference to Achilles and Patroclus, and to Patroclus being Achilles’ lover - in most unflattering terms, unfortunately; Patroclus is called a "male whore" by old Thersites. And the story relates the rage of Achilles upon Patroclus’ death in the battlefield, how Achilles’ revenges himself upon Hector. And I thought that Moriarty was making a very direct comment upon John, a soldier, and myself - having too much brain and too little blood, as Thersites said. Perhaps mocking me for being too cerebral by far, contrasting me with John’s bravery.  Moriarty may be evil, but he is very - observant.

"But how did the painting, Death of Hephaestion, relate to Troilus and Cressida? I thought perhaps that Death of Hephaestion had to do with the funeral pyre offerings, the items from Afghanistan having to do with John, and partly that was it. But not all.

"When I got the third clue, it was a facsimile of the now-disused edition of Troilus and Cressida edited by Alexander Pope. This meant little to me; the language regarding Alexander and Patroclus was virtually unchanged between the editions; but here was where Irene was able to see what I could not. That the common link was not Alexander and Hephaestion, but Alexander Pope, who had both edited Shakespeare and Troilus and Cressida, but also translated the Illiad itself, the tale of Achilles and Patroclus. Alexander Pope was the common thread, but what had Pope to do with Alexander and Hephaestion? If you know your Greek history, you will know the famous story that Alexander and Hephaestion believed themselves to be the reincarnation of Achilles and Patroclus. Thus, the Funeral of Hephaestion could also be interpreted as, the Funeral of Patroclus.

"And then there was the artist. Juan Luna. I knew nothing whatsoever of him before this; but apparently he won prestigious prizes throughout Europe for his paintings, including the Funeral of Hephaestion. I had to believe that like the clues regarding Irene, that there was some identification Moriarty was trying to draw between myself, and the artist. And indeed he was again most observant; Juan Luna was obsessed with the idea that his wife was having an affair, and he shot and killed his wife and her mother, and gravely wounded her brother. He was acquitted, it being deemed by the French a "crime of passion." Incidentally it was never proved that the lady had ever been unfaithful, all that we know is that it was assuredly the artist's state of mind."

Here Sherlock looked up with what might have been the smallest trace of shame or regret at John, and John smiled back at him, so that Mycroft was sorely embarrassed ; he looked at the skull for want of anything better to distract him from their unseemly display of raw emotion. Finally he cleared his throat loudly and rattled his teacup to indicate that Sherlock should proceed without further demonstrations between himself and John.

"Well, then. Again, Moriarty clearly knew of my - ideas about John, then.  John and Lestrade.  From his lovely wife, apparently, who probably gave him the notion - well, never mind. Suffice it to say, Moriarty was trying to tell me that the painting related to John, and to me, because of the artist’s fatal jealousy.

"It all came together for me then, and after Irene insisted it all had to do with Alexander Pope; I remembered a news story a few years back, about the old Pope Villa having been converted into a private boys’ school, then having been bought by some mysterious magnate, who closed it and was putting it up for sale. I decided Moriarty would have taken John to Pope’s Villa, or intended to take him there.

"But then, I started to doubt myself. It was perhaps a little too easy. I thought it might be a trap. I even mistrusted Irene, a bit. And then, I found Moriarty’s gift of cocaine, labelled with the Alice in Wonderland card, the Queen of Hearts again."

Mycroft and John joined together in strict scowls in Sherlock’s direction, and he had the good grace to hang his head.

"I won’t go into that again. You know now why I did it.   I decided that I should emulate Achilles, not Juan Luna. I should meet Moriarty before the gates of Troy, or in this case, at Pope’s Grotto in Twickenham: and I should not go unarmed.  I decided to turn the tables, and let him know that two could play the game.

"I sent him Rossetti’s Proserpine, the prisoner Queen of the Underworld; clear enough - his wife.  And Luna’s Spoliarium - two dead gladiators - again, clear enough. It would be a fight to the death, Moriarty and I.  And the Death of Cleopatra, again Luna - his Queen would die unless John were freed.

"I sent the photo of his wife, for good measure. Little did I know, of course, I was playing right into his hands, giving him what he really wanted. What was possibly the sole purpose of the entire enterprise - to ensure that I brought Mrs. Moriarty out of Mycroft’s custody and into his power. I thought he would care for her, as I cared for John. Now I know better. I’m not sure I would have made that mistake, before knowing John. . . . but there it is.

"You know the rest."

* * *

They silently finished the tea. Mycroft and John looked at each other, and nodded. Mycroft brought out some glossy pamphlets from within his jacket, and spread them over the table.

Sherlock was instantly suspicious. He looked back and forth at each of them, their faces strangely implacable, then glanced more closely at the pamphlets: "St. Mary’s Retreat. The Manor House - A Private Convalescent Home. Angerwell Estate - A Private Hospital."

John said firmly, "Sherlock, Mycroft and I have been talking this over, seriously -"

Sherlock sprang back from the table and was retreating toward his bedroom, his face pale and full of a prideful sort of wrath which John deliberately ignored.

" --- and now I know everything, everything about before, about you and the drugs. And it’s not good. More than a bit not good. You could have died, just a few days ago. It was a very serious overdose, Sherlock.

"And Mycroft showed me what he found here in the flat, when you were in hospital so don’t try and lead me down the path of it was a one-time thing. You had plenty stashed away here for whenever you decided to start using again."

There was a long silence. Sherlock was gripping the back of one of the kitchen chairs so hard that the bones of his knuckles shown through his alabaster skin.

"Mycroft and I both agree. You need to address this. Now. You need to go to rehab."

The phone rang insistently. John ignored it, but when it stopped ringing it immediately started up again, so he picked it up.  It was Irene. She was in an airport she said, shouting over the crowd noise - she didn’t have long - could she speak with Sherlock?

John handed the phone to Sherlock with a firm gesture that made it clear that this was not a reprieve.

Sherlock took the phone and listened. "Yes, of course. We’ll be there. Text me." And hung up. He turned to Mycroft and John, his face wreathed in a sort of smug smile, one that only Sherlock ever had when he thought himself exceptionally clever, which was nearly daily, in fact.

"Will Switzerland do? We’re invited to a private villa in Lake Geneva. Villa Diodati. Surely you can’t object to that, Mycroft? How much trouble can one get up to in Switzerland?"

Mycroft and John had a hurried conference and agreed that if John kept a close watch on him, and if Sherlock would agree to random drug testing (here there was a howl of outrage, but petulant agreement), that a sojourn in Switzerland was perhaps just the thing.

Sherlock threw the pamphlets into the fire. Mycroft took his leave, muttering something about Swiss banks and issuing mysterious instructions to Anthea as he went out into Baker Street.

John looked back at the kitchen which was nearly untouched by their mighty efforts of the morning. He sighed, rumpling his hair resignedly. Sherlock grabbed John by the hand, and kissed the palm lingeringly.  He was in tremendous spirits now that he was to have his own way.  "Waste of time. And we'll be needing that hot water. I'll show you.  I have a much better idea," and kissed him all the way as he ushered John upstairs.

The End.

Back to Chapter Fourteen:

Author's Note:  Charles Augustus Howell, mentioned in Chapter Seven of Wormwood, was notorious for being an alleged blackmailer --  although this was never proven. It is true, however, that he (being Dante Gabriel Rossetti's agent) presided over the exhumation of poor Elizabeth Siddal's body in the dead of night in order to retreive Rossetti's book of poetry, tangled in her hair, for publication.  This gothic enterprise required application to the Home Secretary, which Howell apparently facilitiated on Rosetti's behalf.    In 1890, Charles Augustus Howell was found dead in Chelsea near a public house, his throat slit , and a ten shilling coin in his  mouth.  The official verdict was "pneumonic phithisis" with the wound being inflicted post-mortem; this was obviously to avoid an inquest.  Charles Augustus Howell was Arthur Conan Doyle's model for the character Charles Augustus Milverton in "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton."  So, this humble fic was my very oblique hommage to canon.

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To be continued in the next adventure, "Mad, Bad and Dangerous, A Frankenstein Tribute." No. 4 of Indestructible Series : Chapter One here:  http://ghislainem70.livejournal.com/13275.html