The Scottish Play - Act III of V
*****
Actus Tertius.
JOHN (into phone): Looks like he’s clean. We’ve tried all the usual places. Are you sure tonight’s a danger night?
MYCROFT: No, but then I never am. You have to stay with him, John.
A bell rings.
*****
After John had dressed the next morning the expected rap of Sherlock’s knock did not come. He gave it an extra ten minutes, then the disturbed feeling which had been growing in the pit of his stomach over the last days finally took over completely. He rapped sharply on Sherlock’s door. There was no answer. He rapidly strode off in the direction of the small library, and as he made his way down the hallway received confirmation in the form of the strains of what might possibly be deemed music (by someone with very odd standards) still emitting from the room. He slowed his pace, considering his options. He stopped short of the doorway, tapped his foot thoughtfully, then turned smartly on his heel and rapidly set off back the way he had come.
Sherlock was roused from an ever-deepening spiral of red dots dancing exploding running shouting death gun pain fear sharp grating burn the heart out of you grating sharp fear pain gun death shouting running exploding red dots dancing burn the heart out of you by the simple expedient of John slapping him across the face.
He looked up at him, startled and annoyed. “Really, John, was that actually necessary?”
“As I’ve been calling your name directly into your ear for ten minutes, yes, it was.”
Sherlock blinked. Oh.
John gently but resolutely took away his violin and his bow, then pushed firmly against his chest to topple him into a chair. He then thrust a plate containing eggs with soldiers into his hands and ordered, “Eat.”
Sherlock blinked at the food. One egg had already been cracked open and was being cradled by a little ceramic castle turret. The soldiers stood at attention in a line, riding on the back of a miniature horse.
“Eat it, Sherlock, I’m serious.” And he was; Sherlock recognized his ‘I’m serious’ voice, it was a near variant of his officer’s command bark.
Slowly, he began to eat. When he had finally cleared the plate he looked back up at John, who was leaning toward him and staring at him intently. Sherlock wondered idly if the force of his friend’s gaze alone had actually caused him to eat. He picked up the little ceramic horse and turned it over in his hands, tracing its edges and flicking crumbs onto the plate.
“Your father is a bully.”
Sherlock nodded once, jerkily.
“And your mother - jesus - has she ever actually touched you? If she did, did it hurt? Does her touch actually break the skin?”
Sherlock’s mouth quirked into a smile. “Likely not, it never injured any of the dogs.”
He apparently decided that in this case stating the obvious was necessary. “Neither of them is going to hurt you while I’m around.”
His felt his smile shift from sardonic to fond. “No, of course not,” he sighed. “Do be careful of yourself, though.”
John looked puzzled. “Why? I doubt your father’s going to haul off and belt me one for no good reason; I get the impression he saves that for people who are smaller than him. Oh, christ, does he have a stash of grenades or something? Honestly, if people are handing that man firearms there’s something wrong with them.”
“Not him, me,”
John only looked more puzzled.
“I’m dangerous too. You know that from experience,” Sherlock insisted.
“You’re - going to have to be clearer. What are you on about?”
“Jesus, John.” He shot up and paced across the room, his body demanding movement. “I - I hurt you. I hurt you unbearably. I - I traumatized you.”
“This is about the flashback? Sherlock, that wasn’t your fault.”
“Of course it was; it is also my fault that you spent nearly three years uselessly grieving; and somehow it is even my fault that this room has been completely changed!” John watched as his partner waved his arms wildly at the neatly furnished, inoffensive, actually quite pretty room they were occupying, then pointed accusingly at a perfectly innocent-looking table which lived against the back of the sofa and announced bitterly, “Because that is not my table.”
“Right.” He decided to address the greater issue at hand and, for the moment at least, leave the table out of it. “You do realize I’ve forgiven you for saving my life, yes? Along with Mrs Hudson’s and Lestrade’s.”
Sherlock sank into a chair, suddenly drained of energy and looking alarmingly lost. “You can’t possibly have done, it was unforgivable of me not to have sent you some word. Besides, you hardly let me out of your sight now; you follow me around the flat as if you don’t even realize you’re doing it.”
John hadn’t realized he did that; did he do that?
“Why do you actually think you decided to spend two weeks here with my family, John? It’s because you don’t trust me to come back,” Sherlock finished bitterly.
No, that wasn’t right; he was over that feeling, really he was. Wasn’t he?
Just as suddenly as he had wilted, he sprang up again wildly. “Moriarty! John I swear to you, if I could get my hands on him I would make him feel all of your pain, all of our pain, and more. I would make him hurt. I would make him grieve. I would carve your name into his skin and then flay it open,” he finished, practically hissing.
“Would you cut out his heart with a spoon after?” Sherlock, in his frenzy, missed John’s sarcastic tone.
“Yes! That’s actually a very good idea. I could show him what a burning heart looks like!”
John let out a sharp bark of laughter, because Sherlock telling him he’d had a good idea was so rare an occurrence, but in this case he was so completely wrong himself. He dug deep for the grounding practicality that his friend needed right now. “Dig out the dead man’s heart with a spoon and set it on fire. Oh, yes, that’s a very good plan; it’s very practical and would completely be worth all the effort.” Sherlock was regarding him uncertainly now. “Look, none of that would help,” he told him gently. “What’s done is done and we need to move forward. You’ve got me well and truly worried now; I can see that this breakdown you’re having is quite layered. To start with, you need to pull out of this spiral, Sherlock, and you need to do it right now. Do we need to leave here for you to do that? Because we can go home.”
Sherlock blinked at how easy he made it sound. We can go home, as simple as that; as if Sherlock hadn’t wilfully thrust home, and John himself, away from him with both hands, breaking his best friend into pieces as a result. His energy deserted him again and he sank once more, this time just catching the edge of a sofa. His voice was heavy with despair and an unspeakable weariness. “John, I don’t even know where home is.”
His reply was firm and came without any hesitation, “Baker Street. Home is 221B Baker Street. We can go home right now if that’s what you want to do.”
Sherlock, having drained himself completely, was finally at a point where this information could be taken in and his brain could begin to process it. Because he wanted to be told he was wrong, he said, “It cannot possibly be that easy.”
John told him gently, “That’s what home is, you nutter. It’s easy; it’s harder to lose than you seem to think; and in your case it’s me and it’s Baker Street and it’s Mrs Hudson and it’s even Molly and bloody Greg since you don’t seem to have noticed that.”
John hesitated now, not wanting to lie to his friend even if he did it thinking what he said was true. But while he might still worry about Sherlock, that was nothing new. He had always worried about Sherlock. You couldn’t help worrying about Sherlock if you cared about him at all. But he very definitely wasn’t worried that he might leave again, and he knew that Sherlock had suffered just as much during his absence as John had. Yes, he decided, worried and possibly traumatized by rooftop shenanigans, but not angry. “And I have forgiven you, honestly, though I see now you haven’t forgiven yourself. Work on that for me, eh?”
And hearing him say it helped; it helped quite a lot, actually, because John’s saying it out loud made it real. If John believed that his and Sherlock’s home was Baker Street then it must still be true on some level. Even if Sherlock had knocked over the blocks comprising the actual structure, the underlying foundation remained intact and the lean-to they were occupying while they got on with the new construction was only temporary. He had come home, and he had been forgiven. His brain took in this new idea like a grain of sand and began to worry at it, already working at adding layers so that the resulting pearl would eventually be magnificent enough to warrant prominent display in his mind palace.
He took a deep breath. “We should stay.”
John looked at him doubtfully.
“No, it’s fine.” Sherlock said it lightly, but he meant it. “Grandmère still wants to hear about our adventures and you were looking forward to my science lab. Also, you shouldn’t miss the Production, it is quite the highlight of the gathering. Besides,” he added, making the realization as he spoke, “home isn’t going anywhere without us.”
This cleared John’s mind of the best part of his doubt and he smiled, pleased that he had managed to teach Sherlock something. “Hm. Well that’s good, I wouldn’t want to deny Claude his opportunity to paint my portrait. He requested a second sitting.”
Suddenly recalling a certain proclivity of his uncle’s, Sherlock smiled. “Did he try to get you to pose in the nude?”
“Disturbingly, yes.”
“Oh, John, tell me you didn’t refuse! It’s just what we need over the mantel! What home is complete without a nude portrait of John Watson?”
“We compromised on shirtless.”
They giggled over this until the rest of the quartet arrived.
As he got up to leave, John used his ‘pulling rank’ voice and informed him, “This afternoon you’re sleeping if I have to pin you down myself.”
That started Sherlock giggling again, and Shay’s eyebrows shot up, but Carlton and Forester just looked pleased. They had noticed young Sherlock had been out of sorts and it was nice to see that the Good Doctor really did know how to take proper care of him.
His utterances still punctuated by giggles, Sherlock managed, “While shirtless, John? On my bed? What will people say?”
John rolled his eyes. “As we’re now engaged, I imagine they’ll think of all sorts of things to say, but they’d be hard-pressed to find anything new.”
“Oh! That’s right, I’d forgotten!” He earnestly insisted, “Then you should definitely sit on me in public, it’s perfectly appropriate now.”
John shook his finger threateningly. “Behave yourself, or I won’t tell you the bedtime story of how Simon shot himself in the foot.” He left Sherlock not just giggling, but howling with laughter. Mission accomplished, he thought as he walked away, then turned his focus to how much assault he could visit upon Sherlock’s father before the charges would definitely hold up.
*****
Enter Lady, reading a letter.
*****
She began to watch her boss more carefully, trying to suss out the best way to go about - whatever it was this was that she was going about. And that, right there, the fact that with one bout of laughter he had reduced her to forming sentences which didn’t make any sense at all, was why she was so put out by all of this.
They weren’t exactly friends, but they weren’t exactly co-workers either, and it had been years since he’d bothered to put on his public face when it was just the two of them. She knew more about him than she knew about anyone else in the world, parents and siblings included. She knew that he thought civilization was going to hell in a handcart and to him the casual erosion of polite manners was an evil greater than any he sparred with on a daily basis, nuclear weapons or no. She knew that he absolutely could not stand people who spent their time faffing about and dithering instead of getting things done. She knew just the way he would wrinkle his nose slightly before picking the tomatoes out of - well - anything at all, he despised them. She knew that when he really needed to relax he packed her into the DB5, put the top down and raced down country lanes at speeds which would have put his father’s shenanigans to shame. And now she knew that sometimes, very rarely, he could be made to laugh as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
The problem was that despite everything she did know about him, she had a complete lack of information regarding the more specific situation in which she now found herself. You see, she perfectly understood that it would be difficult to laugh like you meant it when you were considering how many innocents were also going to end up dead because of a necessary action you’d taken. Therefore, she had to capture his attention and hold it; make him see nothing but her and forget about everything else; then she’d see about getting him to laugh again. Of course she had seen plenty of situations draw Mycroft Holmes’s complete attention, and that intense focus was something to behold; the thought of it being aimed at her made her shiver (and she wasn’t the shivering type).
People, though, were a different story. Mycroft Holmes danced around people with the greatest of ease; he played them as if they were a board game (not chess, most people weren’t that intelligent; whilst England was chess, her citizens were only draughts). She had yet to see a single person engage her boss’s interest beyond the superficial; his brother was the exception which proved the rule, though despite his best efforts Mycroft would never understand Sherlock. Holmes Minor was simply an enigma wrapped in a shiny black coating which maddeningly deflected and reflected, making the man himself totally invisible unless you were Doctor John H. Watson.
And so, she wondered, what was a girl to do? Even a girl who can wittily banter with the best of them, a girl who need only flutter her eyelashes to attract a dozen men to her side, a girl who is very good with a crossbow, had so far failed to engage him beyond his appreciation for her professional skills. Still, until now she hadn’t really been trying.
*****
Flourish.
*****
The next morning, John knocked Sherlock up with the dawn. “Come on, we’re going on Peter’s nature walk.” He had decided to take an active role in making sure his friend remained occupied and in the presence of his more congenial relations.
A yawning Sherlock had begun a protest of sorts, but then, very suspiciously, turned all excited and bright-eyed and shoved John out of the room so he could get dressed.
After tea and toast, they found themselves on the lawn with Peter and a group of roughly a dozen children varying in age from early teens down to ‘am I going to end up carrying that one on the way home?’, as well as a matched set of golden-haired triplets that made John’s jaw drop. They were gorgeous, but unfortunately a few years too young to make chatting them up an option. He was getting increasingly aware of the creaky bits his body was developing and these girls were firmly on the wrong side of twenty-five for him at this stage. Unfortunately, at least one of them didn’t seem to be on the same page; the one dressed in a pink shirt and jeans (there really didn’t seem to be any way to tell them apart other than by their clothing) was eyeing him with interest and after Peter had instructed everyone to stay together (then passed out whistles in case that hadn’t worked) she sidled up to him.
“Morning, Sherlock. Hullo. I’m Angie.”
“Nice to meet you, Angie, I’m John. These are your sisters?” He gestured to the other two of her.
“This is John,” she announced to them as they all began walking forward, tailing the children who followed Peter as if he had a magical pipe. “Ashley” (yellow jumper paired unwisely for this activity with a skirt, he noted) “and Ainslie.” (also jeans, but a blue shirt).
“It’s nice to meet all of you. It’s a nice morning, yeah?”
They sounded a chorus of agreement.
“And how are you related to Sherlock?” A glance at his friend showed him to be studying the ground over which they were walking with considerably more attention than he was devoting to monitoring whether or not he was about to walk into a bush. John sighed and veered a little closer so that he could steer him round obstacles if necessary. This caused him to miss most of the reply which contained such familiar words as cousin and aunt, but he decided not to worry about it; it wasn’t as if it actually mattered, after all.
They walked companionably for a while, Angie burbling away. It seemed she was in the play, and she was full of gossip about everyone involved in it. Once they were clear of the grounds proper, the landscape opened up, and John’s concern that Sherlock might brain himself on a beech tree faded a bit. He shifted the majority of his attention to Angie who, while too young to tempt him with her flirting, was at least a good storyteller.
After they’d been walking for about ten minutes, Peter turned and announced to the group at large, “All right, everyone, do a bit of shouting now as we go, just anything which comes to mind, and we should get a treat.”
John looked around, confused. They were in the middle of a grassy hill midway to the woods they were ultimately headed for. He couldn’t see any possible reason to start randomly shouting. Then he realized that Sherlock was nowhere to be seen. “Oh, for the love of -,” He spun round in a circle, scanning the area for his partner. Around him, the children were whooping merrily. Annoyed, John strode away from the group and shouted, “Sherlock! Sher - lock!” Then he realized what he was doing. He was chasing down his friend because he unexpectedly couldn’t see him. Bloody hell, he’d been right, the bastard. John stopped abruptly and yelled once more out of absolute frustration with both himself and The Flatmate Who Knew Absolutely Bloody All, “Sherlock!”. As if by magic, a whirlwind of swirling air which battered his senses was the only warning as a pair of enormous chickens (!?) swooped in and landed practically at his feet.
“Bloody hell!” yelped John as the birds bounced down in front of him and cocked their heads, looking at him expectantly. Red Kites, his brain supplied belatedly, there’d been plenty of articles about the Chilterns and the birds over the last decade. He stumbled back and realized that his two were off the mark; a short distance away Peter and the children were happily throwing bits of something to a score of their fellow feathered friends. Regaining his equilibrium, John put his hands on his hips and retook control, asking the birds testily, “Do you both answer to Sherlock, then, or is one of you Sher and the other Lock?” As was normal when dealing with the human Sherlock, no verbal answer was forthcoming. “Shoo.” he tried, waving them off toward the others. His new friends regarded him skeptically, and more than a bit hungrily.
To add insult to injury, non-avian Sherlock then reappeared, shuffling along with his eyes still trained on the ground, having apparently simply lagged behind. John closed his eyes and counted to thirty before trusting himself not to explode at him. It wasn’t Sherlock’s fault that his brain had developed some sort of Sherlock proximity addiction. He needed to work on this, clearly; he couldn’t be dogging his friend’s steps for the rest of their days.
By the time he opened his eyes again, Sher and Lock had moved on to meatier pastures and Peter was telling the children, “...and it worked so well here that for a few years we took chicks from nests on your Uncle Rocky’s land and sent them to other places in England so that they can keep making more new homes and new baby kites.”
Once the kites had swooped and torn their way through the supply of dead rabbit parts, they were on their way again. Angie re-established herself at John’s side. A bit later, after they’d entered the wooded area, John realized that Sherlock possessed something akin to radar. He had just successfully navigated the better part of a mile without once looking up, and he was now skilfully weaving between trees as if each was somehow warning him off. Occasionally John had caught him slipping something into his pocket, but he hadn’t run into anything and he hadn’t needed any actual steering. Finally satisfied that he was fairly safe from giving himself concussion, he let him wander from the group, keeping up with his general location but deliberately allowing him out of his actual line of sight.
They had walked a little further and John was simply enjoying the nice weather and the nice outdoorsy scents in the fresh air while trying to gently discourage Angie from sticking to his side like a burr when suddenly, he realized that Peter was subtly motioning to the group for quiet. When everyone had hushed accordingly and the only sound came from the faint rustling of Sherlock off a little distance, he pointed very carefully into the underbrush and John realized there was a deer watching their group from inside a bush. Granted, it was eyeing them warily, and looked likely to bolt, but so far hadn’t. It seemed rather reassured once silence had been established and held for a handful of seconds.
It was a doe with beautiful soft brown eyes, and when she shifted slightly John realized that she had a fawn with her. The mother nuzzled her baby and, remembering Viola’s alarming darting motions toward her son, John’s heart broke for Sherlock all over again; as physically impossible as he knew it to be, he honestly felt it may have just cracked in two inside his chest.
To the delight of the children, who were now all crouched near to the ground in imitation of Peter, the naturalist pulled something from his pack and there was the crinkle of a wrapper - it was a cereal bar of some sort, John realized - then crept toward the deer and laid half the bar on the ground. He then retreated a step and a half and waited in complete and utter stillness. After what seemed an eternity, the doe stepped forward tentatively. Her fawn danced in place and one of the children stifled a gasp. The deer took another few steps, then lowered her head and extended her neck to sniff delicately at the offering. She lipped at the treat experimentally, then suddenly dug in, taking another step toward it so she was no longer having to stretch her neck. She was now within Peter’s reach, but he remained completely still.
When she had finished off the initial offering, she looked at her new benefactor expectantly, and John had to stifle a laugh because she was so clearly demanding, ‘Well? Got any more of that on you? Hand it over if you do.’ Very slowly, Peter palmed the other half of the bar then slowly, ever so slowly, he raised his hand into the air. The doe took a step back. He stopped moving. She settled again, and reached out to assure herself that her nose did in fact detect the presence of the implied treat and then held still, clearly considering her options. She was motionless for a long moment. Then she took two steps and began to eat from Peter’s hand.
The kids were all completely charmed, right along with John himself; but then the fawn decided that he or she would have a bit of a look in now that mum had checked it out first, and there was no stifling the outbreak of hushed, delighted, ‘oh!’s as he consequently danced right in front of the group of crouching children. The little guy stopped stock still and stared at them as if just noticing them for the first time.
“It’s okay, little one. Just settle like your mum, now, and we’ll see if you like this treat as much as she does.” Peter’s voice was low and soothing and the baby instantly responded to it, visibly relaxing. John was reminded of Sherlock’s dulcet apologies after his flashback the day after their arrival, and his own gentle, practical assurances the day before. The fawn glanced sidelong at the children, but resumed his dancing steps and moved to his mother’s flank.
It was simply miraculous what Peter was able to accomplish with soothing words and a few more of the bars. Each of the children was even able to creep close, one at a time, and stroke the fawn or the doe gently. When they had all had a turn, Peter motioned to the triplets and they proceeded to do the same. He then caught John’s eye and quirked a questioning eyebrow. John was a little startled. He was a lot bigger than the kids and the thought of frightening either of these creatures was offensive to him in the extreme. He shook his head nervously, but Peter’s eyes went soft and he smiled encouragingly, tipping his head in a ‘come on, they won’t bite’ sort of gesture. So, reluctantly, and extremely slowly, John lowered himself into a crouch, then lay down on the ground in order to commence a slow army-crawl in the direction of the deer; expecting every second that they would startle and run.
They didn’t, and John Watson found himself on the receiving end of what he could only term an amused regard, expressed clearly by lovely, liquid brown eyes as the doe, amazingly, lipped at his hand gently when he stroked her. He felt humbled, and as he and Peter sat back and scooted away from the creatures a moment later, the sight of the deer trotting away into the underbrush left him with a deep feeling of peace. After another moment he realized he was grinning like an idiot, but that was all right because so was Peter. The two men broke into laughter and Peter clapped his shoulder firmly.
“That will never stop being amazing, I swear it to you John.”
“I believe you.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “God, that was fantastic.”
After another moment of excited chatter now that the children had been released from the silence they had held so remarkably well, they set off walking again.
They were just leaving the heavy wood and emerging onto another magnificent chalk hill, when Peter paused to point out a patch of lemon disco on a fallen tree, there came a loud ‘thunk’ on John’s right, which happened to be the direction in which Sherlock was currently located, eyes still presumably on the ground. He looked over quickly and found his partner looking extremely put out, actively scowling at the ground now rather than just scanning it. He decided enough was enough and sidled over to him, shooting Angie an apologetic smile. “What are you up to?” he hissed.
Sherlock’s reply was irritated and dismissive. “Nothing. The damn squirrels are quicker than I recall them being.”
John looked down to see that Sherlock was holding a slingshot. Oh for the love of - he’d been collecting rocks - that’s what he’d been doing. “Why are you trying to kill squirrels?”
“Mrs Bale won’t give me a chicken.”
John failed to make any connection between the two issues, but realized further clarification was unlikely, as Sherlock was already back on the hunt and paying him no further mind. He considered the matter carefully, and rather reluctantly decided that squirrels were among the lesser of the evils with which Sherlock could be preoccupied. It wasn’t long after this that his friend declared, “Ha! Got you, you little bugger!”, then gleefully scampered a few yards to pick up what was presumably a dead squirrel, and pocket it. Instantly, John realized how very lucky he had been so far in his association with Sherlock Holmes not to have encountered a decaying rodent in any of the many pockets he had been required to dig through in search of his phone.
They had walked over a hill and descended into a dry valley a little while on, and John was trying to tactfully disengage Angie’s hand from his arm, when suddenly all hell broke loose.
-----
Enter first Murtherer.
-----
Directly to John’s right, one of the other triplets suddenly began screaming bloody murder. Once John had reached her side, it wasn’t difficult to determine why; partially hidden by a bush, a man lay dead, bloodily murdered. His head had been violently bashed in and consequently there was a bloody mess to go along with it.
John grabbed the screaming, pointing girl and swung her round. He pulled her to him, rubbing circles on her back and murmuring reassurances into her ear until the screaming turned to sobbing. He then swung her up into his arms. Swiftly, he carried her away from the body, and once he had reached the middle of the valley, put her back down on her feet. His arms went around her again, embracing her firmly and rubbing her back again. “It’s all right, calm down, it’s all right.” He kept this up as his jacket became excessively damp. Eventually she subsided to weak hiccoughs and he eased her down to a seat on the ground.
He looked up to take stock of what everyone else had been doing while he’d been occupied. He found the children already removed from the scene, presumably by Peter who was absent as well, two very worried-looking blondes hovering a few feet away, and Sherlock crawling about the body, searching the ground closely. He dropped into a crouch in front of - yellow, impractical skirt - Ashley - and said, “You’re all right now, yeah?”
She nodded, and the other girls swooped in to take over. John rose and walked over to Sherlock, dialling 999 as he went. After he’d rung off, Sherlock began narrating in rapid fashion.
“He brought a horse out here sometime during the night. He brought a portable light source,” he gestured toward a torch on the ground nearby, still lit but fading, likely due to the drain on its batteries, “and he took off his coat and placed it over that bush. Why did he do that? It was raining, why take his coat off? John, look at this and tell me what I’m seeing.”
John took stock of the tableau before him. “The head injury is the obvious cause of death.” He crouched down to take a closer look. “This cut on his thigh is relatively clean, so made by a sharp blade. It’s long but shallow; it wouldn’t have caused him to bleed to death.” Looking more closely still, he saw that the man had a knife clutched in his palm. “Hang on, I’m going to say the cut is self-inflicted. He’s got a cataract knife for some reason; bloody stupid to use that as a pocket knife.”
“Because it doesn’t fold.”
“Exactly. The wound was caused by the flailing of his body as a result of the head injury.”
“Hm. He did, at least, have the thing corked, though that didn’t help him in the end.” Sherlock gestured to a bit of cork lying on the ground then began searching through the dead man’s pockets. He filed all the data carefully.
“Oy! Come away from there!”
John and Sherlock looked up to find the authorities, in the form of a pair of uniformed policemen and a third in plain clothes, had arrived and were making their way down into the valley. They glanced at each other.
“Well that was quick,” John offered.
“Yes, it was,” Sherlock mused thoughtfully. “Our friend must have been missed early this morning. I wonder why the police have already taken an interest, though, he’s only been dead a handful of hours, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yeah, that seems about right.”
“Curious.”
John took a number of steps away from the body and Sherlock returned the contents of the man’s pockets to their former positions.
The detective in charge was clearly giving instructions to his men, waving his arms about and pointing, as they approached the body. He then broke away to stride over to John and Sherlock’s position as the uniformed men began to set out stakes to form a perimeter.
“Detective Inspector Gregory,” he announced upon arrival.
“Doctor John Watson. Pleased to meet you.”
“Sherlock Holmes.”
The detective, a tall, fair man with leonine hair and beard surrounding penetrating blue eyes, raised his eyebrows. “You don’t say! Fancy that.” Then he frowned. “Are you on a case?”
“As unlikely as it may seem, I was with the party which discovered the body completely by chance. Who is he, by the way?”
“John Straker, trainer over at King’s Pyland, the racing stable to the east of here.”
“And why is Mr Straker so very important that you’ve been searching for him all morning even though he’s been missing only since the wee hours?”
John recognized the tone Sherlock used when he asked a question to which he already knew the answer. The detective, however, was oblivious and seemed willing to share information with the celebrity investigator.
“Because the favourite to take next week’s Wessex Cup, Silver Blaze, went missing along with him. There’d been a fuss at the place yesterday around dinner time and this morning there’s a stable lad out cold and Straker gone along with the horse.”
“What sort of a fuss?”
“Stranger came round making noise about getting inside information on the race and the horses involved.”
Sherlock questioned sharply, “Yes, but what exactly happened?”
Gregory looked a bit wrong-footed (perfectly normal when one was dealing with Sherlock) but obligingly referred to his notes and informed them, “Oh, let’s see, well the maid was taking dinner on a tray out to the stable lad when she was accosted by a strange man. Got the party in custody, though he’s denying any involvement in the disappearances; one Fitzroy Simpson, and he’s already coming across as a disreputable sort of fellow, gambler turned bookie.”
Completely ignoring all the information about the suspect in custody, Sherlock fired off, “What sort of dinner?”
“Erm,” he scanned his pad. “I don’t know,” he admitted finally.
Sherlock made a noise which John knew meant - IDIOT.
“Go on then.”
Looking unsure now, Gregory glanced at his pad again and then eyed the detective askance before continuing on. “The girl, Edith Baxter,” he added, apparently unsure now how much detail he was meant to include, “was alarmed and she put him off and hurried on to the stable where she knew the lad - Ned Hunter - would be able to help her get rid of him.”
“And of course this Simpson followed her,” Sherlock prompted impatiently.
Realising he had overcompensated and was losing his audience, Gregory summarized, “Yeah, he followed her and it escalated to the point where Ned set the dog on him, chased him away. Edith swears he had a paper envelope in his hand and was waving it round the food at some point, but he claims it was a tenner.”
“Ned, of course, is your drugged stable boy. Anyone else about?”
“Two other lads asleep above the stable, it was Ned’s turn to sit up.”
“Hmm,” mused Sherlock. He smiled at Gregory in a friendly way and John rolled his eyes at the abrupt transition from interrogation to we’re-all-friends-here-tell-me-everything-you-know. “Say, there’s another stable around about this area, isn’t there?”
“There is indeed; Mapleton over to the west. We have people checking all the horses there, of course,” he assured him in his best official manner.
“Oh, of course,” Sherlock returned in his best of-course-I-believe-you-but-you’ll-still-muck-it-all-up-you-idiot manner.
At this point a neat-looking, dapper little man wearing specs came rushing up to them. “Is it him?” he demanded of Gregory.
“I’m afraid it is, Colonel, but I was waiting on you for confirmation.”
“Oh, god, where is he?”
Subsequently, the new arrival positively identified the body and grew worryingly pale as a result. “I just - I can’t believe any of this. Why would that villain take Silver Blaze? Poor Straker; oh, the poor man, how will I tell his wife?”
Sherlock rolled his eyes at everyone assuming that this Simpson character was involved in all this.
Abruptly, the Colonel seemed to register the presence of unknown parties. “Oh, hello, did you find the body? Colonel Ross, pleased to meet you.”
Since Sherlock didn’t appear inclined to either question or otherwise engage, John stepped forward. “Doctor John Watson. My colleague, Sherlock Holmes.”
“What, the fake detective?”
-----
Fight: Alarum
-----
What happened next was completely instinctive. John didn’t realize he’d punched the man in the face until after he’d already done it. He stared incredulously at the previously neat little man before him who was now clutching his nose which was gushing blood. His glasses had been knocked off by the blow as well.
“Here now!” exclaimed Gregory.
“Oh god, I am so sorry!” John, again, acted instinctively in apologizing, but then Ross’s words penetrated and he shook his head. “No, hang on, I take it back. I’m not in the least sorry.”
Next to him Sherlock, who had already been fighting hard against laughter, was tipped over the edge by this bald declaration.
Ross was recovered enough by this point to have begun spluttering indignantly in John’s direction, still pinching his nose with his fingers which made it hard to determine if he was uttering actual words or not.
John, arms crossed over his chest and having put on his best mulish expression, did not look inclined to discuss the matter reasonably. As amusing as this had the potential of becoming, Sherlock decided to step in. It would be inconvenient to have to go into town because John had decided a night in jail was a fair price to pay for the chance to defend Sherlock’s reputation. He put a lid on his laughter accordingly.
“Colonel Ross,” Sherlock’s voice had gone silky smooth in order to soothe the injured man’s ruffled feathers. “I am very sorry, even if Doctor Watson is not. Do let me make up for it by locating your horse for you.”
Ross eyed him suspiciously. Sherlock could hardly blame him considering his acknowledged colleague had just (snicker) punched him in the face, so he smiled reassuringly. “I realize that the word of a man who has been condemned by the media so very thoroughly might not be worth much to you; but I do assure you, Colonel, that Silver Blaze will run in the race for the Wessex Cup next week, and he will do so solely due to my efforts.” John was glaring at him now, but he ignored him. “I hope this will make up for the indignity you’ve suffered at my partner’s hands.” The glare turned into an exasperated eye roll at Sherlock’s blatant over playing of his role.
Ross gingerly let go of his nose as he glared at John; the blood flow seemed to have stopped for the moment. He turned his attention back to Sherlock and frowned heavily. “I’ll accept any help you can offer for the sake of putting Straker’s murderer in prison. I want the case to be completely air-tight, it’s the least I can do for his wife when he was killed trying to save my horse.”
“That is eminently sensible of you, Colonel,” Sherlock assured him silkily. “Do give me leave to question the occupants of King’s Pyland, if you please.”
“Yes, all right,” he responded somewhat grudgingly.
“Splendid, we’ll just take ourselves off, then. Good day to you, Colonel.” Sherlock had to haul a still-glowering John a few yards before he deigned to move under his own power.
“Explain to me why we’re helping that tosser.”
Sherlock scolded, “Honestly, John, you can’t go around assaulting everyone who still associates my name with my lie.”
“Yes I can,” he insisted.
Sherlock regarded him fondly; he was striding along angrily now, his expression downright mutinous. The reality of the fact that his friend actually would go around punching people for him was endearing. “Well, you shouldn’t, rather. You’ll get a reputation, and then where will we be? I’ll have to apologize for you and wheedle to get you in places and I just don’t have the time to waste on that sort of nonsense, John.”
“What, you mean our roles would be completely reversed? I suppose my punching people would mirror your verbally assaulting them.”
Sherlock grinned; it had worked. John let out an emphatic huff of breath and the thunder in his brow receded. “All right, so what are we doing? Why are we looking for the horse instead of the murderer; or aren’t we looking for the horse at all?”
“We are looking for the horse,” he confirmed. “The police have got it all wrong, and if Gregory can’t deduce that the horse killed John Straker without my help then he should be sacked on the spot.”
“The horse?”
“Of course,” Sherlock rhymed in a sing-song voice.
“Oh I see. That’s why you promised to find the horse; you’ll also be turning in the murderer when you do.”
“Precisely.”
“So where is the horse?”
“The horse is at one of the stables, more probably Mapleton. They aren’t solitary creatures; he will have headed straight for others of his kind. The real question at hand is why Straker took the horse out; what was his game?”
“Wait. What? What about the bloke in jail? Wasn’t Straker rescuing the horse?”
“Not in the least, consider the dog.”
John was thoroughly confused. “The dog?”
“Yes, the curious incident of the dog in the night, John!”
“What curious bloody dog, Sherlock?”
His friend made a noise which he clearly recognized as neatly categorizing him as an IDIOT but elaborated, “The dog which we know was kept in the stable because it was set on Simpson!”
John considered this carefully. The dog in question hadn’t made another appearance in the story. “As far as we know, the dog didn’t do anything during the night.”
“Exactly,” Sherlock said with supreme satisfaction. “That was the curious incident.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
Sherlock made the IDIOT sound again but did deign to explain, “There were two lads who hadn’t been drugged and neither of them was woken by the dog. No, Straker - whom the dog knew, John - was clearly up to something. We’ll poke about King’s Pyland later to see if we can sniff it out. But first we see if we can track the horse.”
“And why do we need to track him if you’ve already determined he’s at one of the stables?”
Sherlock tutted impatiently. “If we can track his path, so can the police.”
“Yeah, so?”
Now he turned an evil grin in John’s direction. “Well, I did give the good Colonel my word that his horse would be returned to him solely due to my own efforts.”
John let this sink in. After a moment it did, and he stopped abruptly. “You’re going to obscure the trail so the police can’t track the horse? Sherlock, that’s blatant obstruction of justice!”
“Nonsense, taking a walk in the country is simply good exercise.” Sherlock turned and skipped backwards gleefully as he crowed to his stationary friend, “There’s nothing illegal about that, John!”
*****
Enter a Messenger.
*****
It was John who saved them having to walk the horse’s trail twice over. After circling out and finding the first trace of it, they set off in the general direction of Mapleton - the rival stable to that which was the home of the missing Silver Blaze. The trail here was spotty and they lost it a few times, but working on Sherlock’s assumption that they would end at one stable or another they simply noted when they came upon it again as they made their way in the direction of Mapleton. John very carefully ignored the fact that Sherlock was merrily skipping and tripping along directly on top of any hoof impressions he found.
They had in fact almost reached the land belonging to the rival stable when Sherlock declared, “Ah ha!” and pointed triumphantly at the ground. John looked down and saw that they’d picked up the track again, and a man’s footprint could clearly be seen pressed into the dirt beside it in this spot.
“Someone caught him?”
“It would appear so; and changed his direction.” The trail turned abruptly, now heading for King’s Pyland rather than Mapleton.
John averted his gaze as Sherlock scuffed this evidence out of existence.
They began to follow along in this new direction, but after only a few yards John noticed that there was an identical trail headed back toward Mapleton just to his left. “Hang on, he’s doubled back.”
“What?” Sherlock had clearly been too busy obscuring the original trail to have noted the second. “You’re right.” He considered the original thoughtfully, looking as if he would really rather prefer to obliterate the whole of it, but after a moment shook his head sharply. “Yes, we’ll save ourselves the walk. Come along then, Mapleton again.”
When they finally did arrive at Mapleton, Sherlock’s keen eye easily picked out a likely candidate for initial interrogation in the person of a child sitting on a bale of hay, applying soap to the leather of a bridle.
“Hello,” he greeted the small boy cheerily then whipped out his slingshot. “Care to try your hand?”
John watched as the boy’s first shots went wild and Sherlock offered helpful suggestions in between wheedling out the information he wanted - who was normally the first person up and around the place in the mornings - answer: the owner, Silas Brown - and where this individual could now be found - answer: in his office in the main house. They then parted ways with a cheery wave on both sides, and John and Sherlock proceeded to knock on the door of the main house - where Mr Silas Brown refused to see them.
Sherlock frowned at the housekeeper who had delivered the news. “John - paper.” Obligingly, he handed over his book and pen. Sherlock then proceeded to scribble a note, tear the sheet from the book, fold it roughly in half and hand it to the blasted woman. “He’ll see me.” And, of course, he did.
“What’s the meaning of this!”
“Shut up. You have the horse, and I don’t care how you’re concealing it from the authorities, but I want you to keep doing so until the day of the Wessex Cup race. If you refuse I shall turn you in for horse thievery.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the fat man seated behind the desk blustered.
Sherlock snorted as he crossed his arms over his chest and rolled his eyes. He then proceeded to rattle off in a bored monotone, “You were the only one up this morning; it was just gone four. You ran across Silver Blaze running loose on the hill to the south. He came to you quite easily, and your first instinct was to walk him home to King’s Pyland, so you set off to do so; however, as you walked you realized that all you had to do to ensure a win for yourself was to secrete him away until after the race. You turned around and brought the horse here, where you proceeded to cover his obvious markings and take whatever other steps were necessary to keep the police from identifying him as the missing favourite. I imagine you tampered with the animal’s RFID chip. You came into the house, shed your coat, exchanged your shoes for slippers, had a fry-up and coffee for breakfast - you really should consider cutting back there, your cholesterol and blood-pressure are through the roof - and proceeded into your study where you have been sitting behind your desk since, alternately congratulating yourself and worrying you’ve done the wrong thing.”
From BORED to INTENSE in the blink of an eye, Sherlock leapt toward the desk and slammed his hands down onto it, shoving his face into Silas Brown’s, their noses practically touching. “You have the horse.”
John wanted to applaud, he really did, but he refrained because he thought it would seem unprofessional. Silas Brown had gone white and sweaty as Sherlock had dictated his actions back to him in such detail and he was now gaping at him in complete befuddlement. His mouth opened and closed a few times, making him look like a fish, but he seemed incapable of actual speech.
Sherlock stood, heaving a huge sigh as he did so. “Again, I haven’t the least bit of interest in turning you over to the police unless you refuse to do as I ask. Are you completely clear on what you need to do to avoid prosecution?”
“I - I - ,” he emitted a few gulping swallows.
“Are you clear?”
When he did manage actual words, they were no more than a whisper. “How did you know?”
“Are you going to do as I’ve asked or should I ring the police?”
“No!” He had gained some volume now, though he still looked rather as if he were about to drop dead of fright. “I’ll do just as you ask. I’ll keep him hidden.”
“Good. Produce him for the race, do you understand? Silver Blaze will run the race under Colonel Ross’s colours.” He paused, and his lips quirked up into a smile. “You can leave his markings covered though,” he instructed, his tone wry.
“Yes, yes. All right.”
The smile disappeared and he added threateningly, “And I’m sure I don’t have to point out to you how very important it is that the horse come to no harm while he is in your care.”
The man gulped again and weakly managed, “No, of course not, he’ll get the best of care.”
“Good.” Sherlock pivoted on his heel, producing the familiar dramatic whirl of coat. “Come along, John, we’re done here.”
As they walked John asked, “So, King’s Pyland next?”
“No, dash it, I’ve got to get to rehearsal or Forester will come hunt me down. I’m already late. This afternoon, though.”
John shook his head. “Can’t, I’m sitting for Claude.”
“Damn.”
“Tomorrow morning?”
“Rehearsal in the morning; science tutorial in the afternoon.”
John frowned. “Perhaps I can reschedule with Claude.”
“Yes, see if you can. Meet me in the small library at one.”
Actus Tertius.
JOHN (into phone): Looks like he’s clean. We’ve tried all the usual places. Are you sure tonight’s a danger night?
MYCROFT: No, but then I never am. You have to stay with him, John.
A bell rings.
*****
After John had dressed the next morning the expected rap of Sherlock’s knock did not come. He gave it an extra ten minutes, then the disturbed feeling which had been growing in the pit of his stomach over the last days finally took over completely. He rapped sharply on Sherlock’s door. There was no answer. He rapidly strode off in the direction of the small library, and as he made his way down the hallway received confirmation in the form of the strains of what might possibly be deemed music (by someone with very odd standards) still emitting from the room. He slowed his pace, considering his options. He stopped short of the doorway, tapped his foot thoughtfully, then turned smartly on his heel and rapidly set off back the way he had come.
Sherlock was roused from an ever-deepening spiral of red dots dancing exploding running shouting death gun pain fear sharp grating burn the heart out of you grating sharp fear pain gun death shouting running exploding red dots dancing burn the heart out of you by the simple expedient of John slapping him across the face.
He looked up at him, startled and annoyed. “Really, John, was that actually necessary?”
“As I’ve been calling your name directly into your ear for ten minutes, yes, it was.”
Sherlock blinked. Oh.
John gently but resolutely took away his violin and his bow, then pushed firmly against his chest to topple him into a chair. He then thrust a plate containing eggs with soldiers into his hands and ordered, “Eat.”
Sherlock blinked at the food. One egg had already been cracked open and was being cradled by a little ceramic castle turret. The soldiers stood at attention in a line, riding on the back of a miniature horse.
“Eat it, Sherlock, I’m serious.” And he was; Sherlock recognized his ‘I’m serious’ voice, it was a near variant of his officer’s command bark.
Slowly, he began to eat. When he had finally cleared the plate he looked back up at John, who was leaning toward him and staring at him intently. Sherlock wondered idly if the force of his friend’s gaze alone had actually caused him to eat. He picked up the little ceramic horse and turned it over in his hands, tracing its edges and flicking crumbs onto the plate.
“Your father is a bully.”
Sherlock nodded once, jerkily.
“And your mother - jesus - has she ever actually touched you? If she did, did it hurt? Does her touch actually break the skin?”
Sherlock’s mouth quirked into a smile. “Likely not, it never injured any of the dogs.”
He apparently decided that in this case stating the obvious was necessary. “Neither of them is going to hurt you while I’m around.”
His felt his smile shift from sardonic to fond. “No, of course not,” he sighed. “Do be careful of yourself, though.”
John looked puzzled. “Why? I doubt your father’s going to haul off and belt me one for no good reason; I get the impression he saves that for people who are smaller than him. Oh, christ, does he have a stash of grenades or something? Honestly, if people are handing that man firearms there’s something wrong with them.”
“Not him, me,”
John only looked more puzzled.
“I’m dangerous too. You know that from experience,” Sherlock insisted.
“You’re - going to have to be clearer. What are you on about?”
“Jesus, John.” He shot up and paced across the room, his body demanding movement. “I - I hurt you. I hurt you unbearably. I - I traumatized you.”
“This is about the flashback? Sherlock, that wasn’t your fault.”
“Of course it was; it is also my fault that you spent nearly three years uselessly grieving; and somehow it is even my fault that this room has been completely changed!” John watched as his partner waved his arms wildly at the neatly furnished, inoffensive, actually quite pretty room they were occupying, then pointed accusingly at a perfectly innocent-looking table which lived against the back of the sofa and announced bitterly, “Because that is not my table.”
“Right.” He decided to address the greater issue at hand and, for the moment at least, leave the table out of it. “You do realize I’ve forgiven you for saving my life, yes? Along with Mrs Hudson’s and Lestrade’s.”
Sherlock sank into a chair, suddenly drained of energy and looking alarmingly lost. “You can’t possibly have done, it was unforgivable of me not to have sent you some word. Besides, you hardly let me out of your sight now; you follow me around the flat as if you don’t even realize you’re doing it.”
John hadn’t realized he did that; did he do that?
“Why do you actually think you decided to spend two weeks here with my family, John? It’s because you don’t trust me to come back,” Sherlock finished bitterly.
No, that wasn’t right; he was over that feeling, really he was. Wasn’t he?
Just as suddenly as he had wilted, he sprang up again wildly. “Moriarty! John I swear to you, if I could get my hands on him I would make him feel all of your pain, all of our pain, and more. I would make him hurt. I would make him grieve. I would carve your name into his skin and then flay it open,” he finished, practically hissing.
“Would you cut out his heart with a spoon after?” Sherlock, in his frenzy, missed John’s sarcastic tone.
“Yes! That’s actually a very good idea. I could show him what a burning heart looks like!”
John let out a sharp bark of laughter, because Sherlock telling him he’d had a good idea was so rare an occurrence, but in this case he was so completely wrong himself. He dug deep for the grounding practicality that his friend needed right now. “Dig out the dead man’s heart with a spoon and set it on fire. Oh, yes, that’s a very good plan; it’s very practical and would completely be worth all the effort.” Sherlock was regarding him uncertainly now. “Look, none of that would help,” he told him gently. “What’s done is done and we need to move forward. You’ve got me well and truly worried now; I can see that this breakdown you’re having is quite layered. To start with, you need to pull out of this spiral, Sherlock, and you need to do it right now. Do we need to leave here for you to do that? Because we can go home.”
Sherlock blinked at how easy he made it sound. We can go home, as simple as that; as if Sherlock hadn’t wilfully thrust home, and John himself, away from him with both hands, breaking his best friend into pieces as a result. His energy deserted him again and he sank once more, this time just catching the edge of a sofa. His voice was heavy with despair and an unspeakable weariness. “John, I don’t even know where home is.”
His reply was firm and came without any hesitation, “Baker Street. Home is 221B Baker Street. We can go home right now if that’s what you want to do.”
Sherlock, having drained himself completely, was finally at a point where this information could be taken in and his brain could begin to process it. Because he wanted to be told he was wrong, he said, “It cannot possibly be that easy.”
John told him gently, “That’s what home is, you nutter. It’s easy; it’s harder to lose than you seem to think; and in your case it’s me and it’s Baker Street and it’s Mrs Hudson and it’s even Molly and bloody Greg since you don’t seem to have noticed that.”
John hesitated now, not wanting to lie to his friend even if he did it thinking what he said was true. But while he might still worry about Sherlock, that was nothing new. He had always worried about Sherlock. You couldn’t help worrying about Sherlock if you cared about him at all. But he very definitely wasn’t worried that he might leave again, and he knew that Sherlock had suffered just as much during his absence as John had. Yes, he decided, worried and possibly traumatized by rooftop shenanigans, but not angry. “And I have forgiven you, honestly, though I see now you haven’t forgiven yourself. Work on that for me, eh?”
And hearing him say it helped; it helped quite a lot, actually, because John’s saying it out loud made it real. If John believed that his and Sherlock’s home was Baker Street then it must still be true on some level. Even if Sherlock had knocked over the blocks comprising the actual structure, the underlying foundation remained intact and the lean-to they were occupying while they got on with the new construction was only temporary. He had come home, and he had been forgiven. His brain took in this new idea like a grain of sand and began to worry at it, already working at adding layers so that the resulting pearl would eventually be magnificent enough to warrant prominent display in his mind palace.
He took a deep breath. “We should stay.”
John looked at him doubtfully.
“No, it’s fine.” Sherlock said it lightly, but he meant it. “Grandmère still wants to hear about our adventures and you were looking forward to my science lab. Also, you shouldn’t miss the Production, it is quite the highlight of the gathering. Besides,” he added, making the realization as he spoke, “home isn’t going anywhere without us.”
This cleared John’s mind of the best part of his doubt and he smiled, pleased that he had managed to teach Sherlock something. “Hm. Well that’s good, I wouldn’t want to deny Claude his opportunity to paint my portrait. He requested a second sitting.”
Suddenly recalling a certain proclivity of his uncle’s, Sherlock smiled. “Did he try to get you to pose in the nude?”
“Disturbingly, yes.”
“Oh, John, tell me you didn’t refuse! It’s just what we need over the mantel! What home is complete without a nude portrait of John Watson?”
“We compromised on shirtless.”
They giggled over this until the rest of the quartet arrived.
As he got up to leave, John used his ‘pulling rank’ voice and informed him, “This afternoon you’re sleeping if I have to pin you down myself.”
That started Sherlock giggling again, and Shay’s eyebrows shot up, but Carlton and Forester just looked pleased. They had noticed young Sherlock had been out of sorts and it was nice to see that the Good Doctor really did know how to take proper care of him.
His utterances still punctuated by giggles, Sherlock managed, “While shirtless, John? On my bed? What will people say?”
John rolled his eyes. “As we’re now engaged, I imagine they’ll think of all sorts of things to say, but they’d be hard-pressed to find anything new.”
“Oh! That’s right, I’d forgotten!” He earnestly insisted, “Then you should definitely sit on me in public, it’s perfectly appropriate now.”
John shook his finger threateningly. “Behave yourself, or I won’t tell you the bedtime story of how Simon shot himself in the foot.” He left Sherlock not just giggling, but howling with laughter. Mission accomplished, he thought as he walked away, then turned his focus to how much assault he could visit upon Sherlock’s father before the charges would definitely hold up.
*****
Enter Lady, reading a letter.
*****
She began to watch her boss more carefully, trying to suss out the best way to go about - whatever it was this was that she was going about. And that, right there, the fact that with one bout of laughter he had reduced her to forming sentences which didn’t make any sense at all, was why she was so put out by all of this.
They weren’t exactly friends, but they weren’t exactly co-workers either, and it had been years since he’d bothered to put on his public face when it was just the two of them. She knew more about him than she knew about anyone else in the world, parents and siblings included. She knew that he thought civilization was going to hell in a handcart and to him the casual erosion of polite manners was an evil greater than any he sparred with on a daily basis, nuclear weapons or no. She knew that he absolutely could not stand people who spent their time faffing about and dithering instead of getting things done. She knew just the way he would wrinkle his nose slightly before picking the tomatoes out of - well - anything at all, he despised them. She knew that when he really needed to relax he packed her into the DB5, put the top down and raced down country lanes at speeds which would have put his father’s shenanigans to shame. And now she knew that sometimes, very rarely, he could be made to laugh as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
The problem was that despite everything she did know about him, she had a complete lack of information regarding the more specific situation in which she now found herself. You see, she perfectly understood that it would be difficult to laugh like you meant it when you were considering how many innocents were also going to end up dead because of a necessary action you’d taken. Therefore, she had to capture his attention and hold it; make him see nothing but her and forget about everything else; then she’d see about getting him to laugh again. Of course she had seen plenty of situations draw Mycroft Holmes’s complete attention, and that intense focus was something to behold; the thought of it being aimed at her made her shiver (and she wasn’t the shivering type).
People, though, were a different story. Mycroft Holmes danced around people with the greatest of ease; he played them as if they were a board game (not chess, most people weren’t that intelligent; whilst England was chess, her citizens were only draughts). She had yet to see a single person engage her boss’s interest beyond the superficial; his brother was the exception which proved the rule, though despite his best efforts Mycroft would never understand Sherlock. Holmes Minor was simply an enigma wrapped in a shiny black coating which maddeningly deflected and reflected, making the man himself totally invisible unless you were Doctor John H. Watson.
And so, she wondered, what was a girl to do? Even a girl who can wittily banter with the best of them, a girl who need only flutter her eyelashes to attract a dozen men to her side, a girl who is very good with a crossbow, had so far failed to engage him beyond his appreciation for her professional skills. Still, until now she hadn’t really been trying.
*****
Flourish.
*****
The next morning, John knocked Sherlock up with the dawn. “Come on, we’re going on Peter’s nature walk.” He had decided to take an active role in making sure his friend remained occupied and in the presence of his more congenial relations.
A yawning Sherlock had begun a protest of sorts, but then, very suspiciously, turned all excited and bright-eyed and shoved John out of the room so he could get dressed.
After tea and toast, they found themselves on the lawn with Peter and a group of roughly a dozen children varying in age from early teens down to ‘am I going to end up carrying that one on the way home?’, as well as a matched set of golden-haired triplets that made John’s jaw drop. They were gorgeous, but unfortunately a few years too young to make chatting them up an option. He was getting increasingly aware of the creaky bits his body was developing and these girls were firmly on the wrong side of twenty-five for him at this stage. Unfortunately, at least one of them didn’t seem to be on the same page; the one dressed in a pink shirt and jeans (there really didn’t seem to be any way to tell them apart other than by their clothing) was eyeing him with interest and after Peter had instructed everyone to stay together (then passed out whistles in case that hadn’t worked) she sidled up to him.
“Morning, Sherlock. Hullo. I’m Angie.”
“Nice to meet you, Angie, I’m John. These are your sisters?” He gestured to the other two of her.
“This is John,” she announced to them as they all began walking forward, tailing the children who followed Peter as if he had a magical pipe. “Ashley” (yellow jumper paired unwisely for this activity with a skirt, he noted) “and Ainslie.” (also jeans, but a blue shirt).
“It’s nice to meet all of you. It’s a nice morning, yeah?”
They sounded a chorus of agreement.
“And how are you related to Sherlock?” A glance at his friend showed him to be studying the ground over which they were walking with considerably more attention than he was devoting to monitoring whether or not he was about to walk into a bush. John sighed and veered a little closer so that he could steer him round obstacles if necessary. This caused him to miss most of the reply which contained such familiar words as cousin and aunt, but he decided not to worry about it; it wasn’t as if it actually mattered, after all.
They walked companionably for a while, Angie burbling away. It seemed she was in the play, and she was full of gossip about everyone involved in it. Once they were clear of the grounds proper, the landscape opened up, and John’s concern that Sherlock might brain himself on a beech tree faded a bit. He shifted the majority of his attention to Angie who, while too young to tempt him with her flirting, was at least a good storyteller.
After they’d been walking for about ten minutes, Peter turned and announced to the group at large, “All right, everyone, do a bit of shouting now as we go, just anything which comes to mind, and we should get a treat.”
John looked around, confused. They were in the middle of a grassy hill midway to the woods they were ultimately headed for. He couldn’t see any possible reason to start randomly shouting. Then he realized that Sherlock was nowhere to be seen. “Oh, for the love of -,” He spun round in a circle, scanning the area for his partner. Around him, the children were whooping merrily. Annoyed, John strode away from the group and shouted, “Sherlock! Sher - lock!” Then he realized what he was doing. He was chasing down his friend because he unexpectedly couldn’t see him. Bloody hell, he’d been right, the bastard. John stopped abruptly and yelled once more out of absolute frustration with both himself and The Flatmate Who Knew Absolutely Bloody All, “Sherlock!”. As if by magic, a whirlwind of swirling air which battered his senses was the only warning as a pair of enormous chickens (!?) swooped in and landed practically at his feet.
“Bloody hell!” yelped John as the birds bounced down in front of him and cocked their heads, looking at him expectantly. Red Kites, his brain supplied belatedly, there’d been plenty of articles about the Chilterns and the birds over the last decade. He stumbled back and realized that his two were off the mark; a short distance away Peter and the children were happily throwing bits of something to a score of their fellow feathered friends. Regaining his equilibrium, John put his hands on his hips and retook control, asking the birds testily, “Do you both answer to Sherlock, then, or is one of you Sher and the other Lock?” As was normal when dealing with the human Sherlock, no verbal answer was forthcoming. “Shoo.” he tried, waving them off toward the others. His new friends regarded him skeptically, and more than a bit hungrily.
To add insult to injury, non-avian Sherlock then reappeared, shuffling along with his eyes still trained on the ground, having apparently simply lagged behind. John closed his eyes and counted to thirty before trusting himself not to explode at him. It wasn’t Sherlock’s fault that his brain had developed some sort of Sherlock proximity addiction. He needed to work on this, clearly; he couldn’t be dogging his friend’s steps for the rest of their days.
By the time he opened his eyes again, Sher and Lock had moved on to meatier pastures and Peter was telling the children, “...and it worked so well here that for a few years we took chicks from nests on your Uncle Rocky’s land and sent them to other places in England so that they can keep making more new homes and new baby kites.”
Once the kites had swooped and torn their way through the supply of dead rabbit parts, they were on their way again. Angie re-established herself at John’s side. A bit later, after they’d entered the wooded area, John realized that Sherlock possessed something akin to radar. He had just successfully navigated the better part of a mile without once looking up, and he was now skilfully weaving between trees as if each was somehow warning him off. Occasionally John had caught him slipping something into his pocket, but he hadn’t run into anything and he hadn’t needed any actual steering. Finally satisfied that he was fairly safe from giving himself concussion, he let him wander from the group, keeping up with his general location but deliberately allowing him out of his actual line of sight.
They had walked a little further and John was simply enjoying the nice weather and the nice outdoorsy scents in the fresh air while trying to gently discourage Angie from sticking to his side like a burr when suddenly, he realized that Peter was subtly motioning to the group for quiet. When everyone had hushed accordingly and the only sound came from the faint rustling of Sherlock off a little distance, he pointed very carefully into the underbrush and John realized there was a deer watching their group from inside a bush. Granted, it was eyeing them warily, and looked likely to bolt, but so far hadn’t. It seemed rather reassured once silence had been established and held for a handful of seconds.
It was a doe with beautiful soft brown eyes, and when she shifted slightly John realized that she had a fawn with her. The mother nuzzled her baby and, remembering Viola’s alarming darting motions toward her son, John’s heart broke for Sherlock all over again; as physically impossible as he knew it to be, he honestly felt it may have just cracked in two inside his chest.
To the delight of the children, who were now all crouched near to the ground in imitation of Peter, the naturalist pulled something from his pack and there was the crinkle of a wrapper - it was a cereal bar of some sort, John realized - then crept toward the deer and laid half the bar on the ground. He then retreated a step and a half and waited in complete and utter stillness. After what seemed an eternity, the doe stepped forward tentatively. Her fawn danced in place and one of the children stifled a gasp. The deer took another few steps, then lowered her head and extended her neck to sniff delicately at the offering. She lipped at the treat experimentally, then suddenly dug in, taking another step toward it so she was no longer having to stretch her neck. She was now within Peter’s reach, but he remained completely still.
When she had finished off the initial offering, she looked at her new benefactor expectantly, and John had to stifle a laugh because she was so clearly demanding, ‘Well? Got any more of that on you? Hand it over if you do.’ Very slowly, Peter palmed the other half of the bar then slowly, ever so slowly, he raised his hand into the air. The doe took a step back. He stopped moving. She settled again, and reached out to assure herself that her nose did in fact detect the presence of the implied treat and then held still, clearly considering her options. She was motionless for a long moment. Then she took two steps and began to eat from Peter’s hand.
The kids were all completely charmed, right along with John himself; but then the fawn decided that he or she would have a bit of a look in now that mum had checked it out first, and there was no stifling the outbreak of hushed, delighted, ‘oh!’s as he consequently danced right in front of the group of crouching children. The little guy stopped stock still and stared at them as if just noticing them for the first time.
“It’s okay, little one. Just settle like your mum, now, and we’ll see if you like this treat as much as she does.” Peter’s voice was low and soothing and the baby instantly responded to it, visibly relaxing. John was reminded of Sherlock’s dulcet apologies after his flashback the day after their arrival, and his own gentle, practical assurances the day before. The fawn glanced sidelong at the children, but resumed his dancing steps and moved to his mother’s flank.
It was simply miraculous what Peter was able to accomplish with soothing words and a few more of the bars. Each of the children was even able to creep close, one at a time, and stroke the fawn or the doe gently. When they had all had a turn, Peter motioned to the triplets and they proceeded to do the same. He then caught John’s eye and quirked a questioning eyebrow. John was a little startled. He was a lot bigger than the kids and the thought of frightening either of these creatures was offensive to him in the extreme. He shook his head nervously, but Peter’s eyes went soft and he smiled encouragingly, tipping his head in a ‘come on, they won’t bite’ sort of gesture. So, reluctantly, and extremely slowly, John lowered himself into a crouch, then lay down on the ground in order to commence a slow army-crawl in the direction of the deer; expecting every second that they would startle and run.
They didn’t, and John Watson found himself on the receiving end of what he could only term an amused regard, expressed clearly by lovely, liquid brown eyes as the doe, amazingly, lipped at his hand gently when he stroked her. He felt humbled, and as he and Peter sat back and scooted away from the creatures a moment later, the sight of the deer trotting away into the underbrush left him with a deep feeling of peace. After another moment he realized he was grinning like an idiot, but that was all right because so was Peter. The two men broke into laughter and Peter clapped his shoulder firmly.
“That will never stop being amazing, I swear it to you John.”
“I believe you.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “God, that was fantastic.”
After another moment of excited chatter now that the children had been released from the silence they had held so remarkably well, they set off walking again.
They were just leaving the heavy wood and emerging onto another magnificent chalk hill, when Peter paused to point out a patch of lemon disco on a fallen tree, there came a loud ‘thunk’ on John’s right, which happened to be the direction in which Sherlock was currently located, eyes still presumably on the ground. He looked over quickly and found his partner looking extremely put out, actively scowling at the ground now rather than just scanning it. He decided enough was enough and sidled over to him, shooting Angie an apologetic smile. “What are you up to?” he hissed.
Sherlock’s reply was irritated and dismissive. “Nothing. The damn squirrels are quicker than I recall them being.”
John looked down to see that Sherlock was holding a slingshot. Oh for the love of - he’d been collecting rocks - that’s what he’d been doing. “Why are you trying to kill squirrels?”
“Mrs Bale won’t give me a chicken.”
John failed to make any connection between the two issues, but realized further clarification was unlikely, as Sherlock was already back on the hunt and paying him no further mind. He considered the matter carefully, and rather reluctantly decided that squirrels were among the lesser of the evils with which Sherlock could be preoccupied. It wasn’t long after this that his friend declared, “Ha! Got you, you little bugger!”, then gleefully scampered a few yards to pick up what was presumably a dead squirrel, and pocket it. Instantly, John realized how very lucky he had been so far in his association with Sherlock Holmes not to have encountered a decaying rodent in any of the many pockets he had been required to dig through in search of his phone.
They had walked over a hill and descended into a dry valley a little while on, and John was trying to tactfully disengage Angie’s hand from his arm, when suddenly all hell broke loose.
-----
Enter first Murtherer.
-----
Directly to John’s right, one of the other triplets suddenly began screaming bloody murder. Once John had reached her side, it wasn’t difficult to determine why; partially hidden by a bush, a man lay dead, bloodily murdered. His head had been violently bashed in and consequently there was a bloody mess to go along with it.
John grabbed the screaming, pointing girl and swung her round. He pulled her to him, rubbing circles on her back and murmuring reassurances into her ear until the screaming turned to sobbing. He then swung her up into his arms. Swiftly, he carried her away from the body, and once he had reached the middle of the valley, put her back down on her feet. His arms went around her again, embracing her firmly and rubbing her back again. “It’s all right, calm down, it’s all right.” He kept this up as his jacket became excessively damp. Eventually she subsided to weak hiccoughs and he eased her down to a seat on the ground.
He looked up to take stock of what everyone else had been doing while he’d been occupied. He found the children already removed from the scene, presumably by Peter who was absent as well, two very worried-looking blondes hovering a few feet away, and Sherlock crawling about the body, searching the ground closely. He dropped into a crouch in front of - yellow, impractical skirt - Ashley - and said, “You’re all right now, yeah?”
She nodded, and the other girls swooped in to take over. John rose and walked over to Sherlock, dialling 999 as he went. After he’d rung off, Sherlock began narrating in rapid fashion.
“He brought a horse out here sometime during the night. He brought a portable light source,” he gestured toward a torch on the ground nearby, still lit but fading, likely due to the drain on its batteries, “and he took off his coat and placed it over that bush. Why did he do that? It was raining, why take his coat off? John, look at this and tell me what I’m seeing.”
John took stock of the tableau before him. “The head injury is the obvious cause of death.” He crouched down to take a closer look. “This cut on his thigh is relatively clean, so made by a sharp blade. It’s long but shallow; it wouldn’t have caused him to bleed to death.” Looking more closely still, he saw that the man had a knife clutched in his palm. “Hang on, I’m going to say the cut is self-inflicted. He’s got a cataract knife for some reason; bloody stupid to use that as a pocket knife.”
“Because it doesn’t fold.”
“Exactly. The wound was caused by the flailing of his body as a result of the head injury.”
“Hm. He did, at least, have the thing corked, though that didn’t help him in the end.” Sherlock gestured to a bit of cork lying on the ground then began searching through the dead man’s pockets. He filed all the data carefully.
“Oy! Come away from there!”
John and Sherlock looked up to find the authorities, in the form of a pair of uniformed policemen and a third in plain clothes, had arrived and were making their way down into the valley. They glanced at each other.
“Well that was quick,” John offered.
“Yes, it was,” Sherlock mused thoughtfully. “Our friend must have been missed early this morning. I wonder why the police have already taken an interest, though, he’s only been dead a handful of hours, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yeah, that seems about right.”
“Curious.”
John took a number of steps away from the body and Sherlock returned the contents of the man’s pockets to their former positions.
The detective in charge was clearly giving instructions to his men, waving his arms about and pointing, as they approached the body. He then broke away to stride over to John and Sherlock’s position as the uniformed men began to set out stakes to form a perimeter.
“Detective Inspector Gregory,” he announced upon arrival.
“Doctor John Watson. Pleased to meet you.”
“Sherlock Holmes.”
The detective, a tall, fair man with leonine hair and beard surrounding penetrating blue eyes, raised his eyebrows. “You don’t say! Fancy that.” Then he frowned. “Are you on a case?”
“As unlikely as it may seem, I was with the party which discovered the body completely by chance. Who is he, by the way?”
“John Straker, trainer over at King’s Pyland, the racing stable to the east of here.”
“And why is Mr Straker so very important that you’ve been searching for him all morning even though he’s been missing only since the wee hours?”
John recognized the tone Sherlock used when he asked a question to which he already knew the answer. The detective, however, was oblivious and seemed willing to share information with the celebrity investigator.
“Because the favourite to take next week’s Wessex Cup, Silver Blaze, went missing along with him. There’d been a fuss at the place yesterday around dinner time and this morning there’s a stable lad out cold and Straker gone along with the horse.”
“What sort of a fuss?”
“Stranger came round making noise about getting inside information on the race and the horses involved.”
Sherlock questioned sharply, “Yes, but what exactly happened?”
Gregory looked a bit wrong-footed (perfectly normal when one was dealing with Sherlock) but obligingly referred to his notes and informed them, “Oh, let’s see, well the maid was taking dinner on a tray out to the stable lad when she was accosted by a strange man. Got the party in custody, though he’s denying any involvement in the disappearances; one Fitzroy Simpson, and he’s already coming across as a disreputable sort of fellow, gambler turned bookie.”
Completely ignoring all the information about the suspect in custody, Sherlock fired off, “What sort of dinner?”
“Erm,” he scanned his pad. “I don’t know,” he admitted finally.
Sherlock made a noise which John knew meant - IDIOT.
“Go on then.”
Looking unsure now, Gregory glanced at his pad again and then eyed the detective askance before continuing on. “The girl, Edith Baxter,” he added, apparently unsure now how much detail he was meant to include, “was alarmed and she put him off and hurried on to the stable where she knew the lad - Ned Hunter - would be able to help her get rid of him.”
“And of course this Simpson followed her,” Sherlock prompted impatiently.
Realising he had overcompensated and was losing his audience, Gregory summarized, “Yeah, he followed her and it escalated to the point where Ned set the dog on him, chased him away. Edith swears he had a paper envelope in his hand and was waving it round the food at some point, but he claims it was a tenner.”
“Ned, of course, is your drugged stable boy. Anyone else about?”
“Two other lads asleep above the stable, it was Ned’s turn to sit up.”
“Hmm,” mused Sherlock. He smiled at Gregory in a friendly way and John rolled his eyes at the abrupt transition from interrogation to we’re-all-friends-here-tell-me-everything-you-know. “Say, there’s another stable around about this area, isn’t there?”
“There is indeed; Mapleton over to the west. We have people checking all the horses there, of course,” he assured him in his best official manner.
“Oh, of course,” Sherlock returned in his best of-course-I-believe-you-but-you’ll-still-muck-it-all-up-you-idiot manner.
At this point a neat-looking, dapper little man wearing specs came rushing up to them. “Is it him?” he demanded of Gregory.
“I’m afraid it is, Colonel, but I was waiting on you for confirmation.”
“Oh, god, where is he?”
Subsequently, the new arrival positively identified the body and grew worryingly pale as a result. “I just - I can’t believe any of this. Why would that villain take Silver Blaze? Poor Straker; oh, the poor man, how will I tell his wife?”
Sherlock rolled his eyes at everyone assuming that this Simpson character was involved in all this.
Abruptly, the Colonel seemed to register the presence of unknown parties. “Oh, hello, did you find the body? Colonel Ross, pleased to meet you.”
Since Sherlock didn’t appear inclined to either question or otherwise engage, John stepped forward. “Doctor John Watson. My colleague, Sherlock Holmes.”
“What, the fake detective?”
-----
Fight: Alarum
-----
What happened next was completely instinctive. John didn’t realize he’d punched the man in the face until after he’d already done it. He stared incredulously at the previously neat little man before him who was now clutching his nose which was gushing blood. His glasses had been knocked off by the blow as well.
“Here now!” exclaimed Gregory.
“Oh god, I am so sorry!” John, again, acted instinctively in apologizing, but then Ross’s words penetrated and he shook his head. “No, hang on, I take it back. I’m not in the least sorry.”
Next to him Sherlock, who had already been fighting hard against laughter, was tipped over the edge by this bald declaration.
Ross was recovered enough by this point to have begun spluttering indignantly in John’s direction, still pinching his nose with his fingers which made it hard to determine if he was uttering actual words or not.
John, arms crossed over his chest and having put on his best mulish expression, did not look inclined to discuss the matter reasonably. As amusing as this had the potential of becoming, Sherlock decided to step in. It would be inconvenient to have to go into town because John had decided a night in jail was a fair price to pay for the chance to defend Sherlock’s reputation. He put a lid on his laughter accordingly.
“Colonel Ross,” Sherlock’s voice had gone silky smooth in order to soothe the injured man’s ruffled feathers. “I am very sorry, even if Doctor Watson is not. Do let me make up for it by locating your horse for you.”
Ross eyed him suspiciously. Sherlock could hardly blame him considering his acknowledged colleague had just (snicker) punched him in the face, so he smiled reassuringly. “I realize that the word of a man who has been condemned by the media so very thoroughly might not be worth much to you; but I do assure you, Colonel, that Silver Blaze will run in the race for the Wessex Cup next week, and he will do so solely due to my efforts.” John was glaring at him now, but he ignored him. “I hope this will make up for the indignity you’ve suffered at my partner’s hands.” The glare turned into an exasperated eye roll at Sherlock’s blatant over playing of his role.
Ross gingerly let go of his nose as he glared at John; the blood flow seemed to have stopped for the moment. He turned his attention back to Sherlock and frowned heavily. “I’ll accept any help you can offer for the sake of putting Straker’s murderer in prison. I want the case to be completely air-tight, it’s the least I can do for his wife when he was killed trying to save my horse.”
“That is eminently sensible of you, Colonel,” Sherlock assured him silkily. “Do give me leave to question the occupants of King’s Pyland, if you please.”
“Yes, all right,” he responded somewhat grudgingly.
“Splendid, we’ll just take ourselves off, then. Good day to you, Colonel.” Sherlock had to haul a still-glowering John a few yards before he deigned to move under his own power.
“Explain to me why we’re helping that tosser.”
Sherlock scolded, “Honestly, John, you can’t go around assaulting everyone who still associates my name with my lie.”
“Yes I can,” he insisted.
Sherlock regarded him fondly; he was striding along angrily now, his expression downright mutinous. The reality of the fact that his friend actually would go around punching people for him was endearing. “Well, you shouldn’t, rather. You’ll get a reputation, and then where will we be? I’ll have to apologize for you and wheedle to get you in places and I just don’t have the time to waste on that sort of nonsense, John.”
“What, you mean our roles would be completely reversed? I suppose my punching people would mirror your verbally assaulting them.”
Sherlock grinned; it had worked. John let out an emphatic huff of breath and the thunder in his brow receded. “All right, so what are we doing? Why are we looking for the horse instead of the murderer; or aren’t we looking for the horse at all?”
“We are looking for the horse,” he confirmed. “The police have got it all wrong, and if Gregory can’t deduce that the horse killed John Straker without my help then he should be sacked on the spot.”
“The horse?”
“Of course,” Sherlock rhymed in a sing-song voice.
“Oh I see. That’s why you promised to find the horse; you’ll also be turning in the murderer when you do.”
“Precisely.”
“So where is the horse?”
“The horse is at one of the stables, more probably Mapleton. They aren’t solitary creatures; he will have headed straight for others of his kind. The real question at hand is why Straker took the horse out; what was his game?”
“Wait. What? What about the bloke in jail? Wasn’t Straker rescuing the horse?”
“Not in the least, consider the dog.”
John was thoroughly confused. “The dog?”
“Yes, the curious incident of the dog in the night, John!”
“What curious bloody dog, Sherlock?”
His friend made a noise which he clearly recognized as neatly categorizing him as an IDIOT but elaborated, “The dog which we know was kept in the stable because it was set on Simpson!”
John considered this carefully. The dog in question hadn’t made another appearance in the story. “As far as we know, the dog didn’t do anything during the night.”
“Exactly,” Sherlock said with supreme satisfaction. “That was the curious incident.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
Sherlock made the IDIOT sound again but did deign to explain, “There were two lads who hadn’t been drugged and neither of them was woken by the dog. No, Straker - whom the dog knew, John - was clearly up to something. We’ll poke about King’s Pyland later to see if we can sniff it out. But first we see if we can track the horse.”
“And why do we need to track him if you’ve already determined he’s at one of the stables?”
Sherlock tutted impatiently. “If we can track his path, so can the police.”
“Yeah, so?”
Now he turned an evil grin in John’s direction. “Well, I did give the good Colonel my word that his horse would be returned to him solely due to my own efforts.”
John let this sink in. After a moment it did, and he stopped abruptly. “You’re going to obscure the trail so the police can’t track the horse? Sherlock, that’s blatant obstruction of justice!”
“Nonsense, taking a walk in the country is simply good exercise.” Sherlock turned and skipped backwards gleefully as he crowed to his stationary friend, “There’s nothing illegal about that, John!”
*****
Enter a Messenger.
*****
It was John who saved them having to walk the horse’s trail twice over. After circling out and finding the first trace of it, they set off in the general direction of Mapleton - the rival stable to that which was the home of the missing Silver Blaze. The trail here was spotty and they lost it a few times, but working on Sherlock’s assumption that they would end at one stable or another they simply noted when they came upon it again as they made their way in the direction of Mapleton. John very carefully ignored the fact that Sherlock was merrily skipping and tripping along directly on top of any hoof impressions he found.
They had in fact almost reached the land belonging to the rival stable when Sherlock declared, “Ah ha!” and pointed triumphantly at the ground. John looked down and saw that they’d picked up the track again, and a man’s footprint could clearly be seen pressed into the dirt beside it in this spot.
“Someone caught him?”
“It would appear so; and changed his direction.” The trail turned abruptly, now heading for King’s Pyland rather than Mapleton.
John averted his gaze as Sherlock scuffed this evidence out of existence.
They began to follow along in this new direction, but after only a few yards John noticed that there was an identical trail headed back toward Mapleton just to his left. “Hang on, he’s doubled back.”
“What?” Sherlock had clearly been too busy obscuring the original trail to have noted the second. “You’re right.” He considered the original thoughtfully, looking as if he would really rather prefer to obliterate the whole of it, but after a moment shook his head sharply. “Yes, we’ll save ourselves the walk. Come along then, Mapleton again.”
When they finally did arrive at Mapleton, Sherlock’s keen eye easily picked out a likely candidate for initial interrogation in the person of a child sitting on a bale of hay, applying soap to the leather of a bridle.
“Hello,” he greeted the small boy cheerily then whipped out his slingshot. “Care to try your hand?”
John watched as the boy’s first shots went wild and Sherlock offered helpful suggestions in between wheedling out the information he wanted - who was normally the first person up and around the place in the mornings - answer: the owner, Silas Brown - and where this individual could now be found - answer: in his office in the main house. They then parted ways with a cheery wave on both sides, and John and Sherlock proceeded to knock on the door of the main house - where Mr Silas Brown refused to see them.
Sherlock frowned at the housekeeper who had delivered the news. “John - paper.” Obligingly, he handed over his book and pen. Sherlock then proceeded to scribble a note, tear the sheet from the book, fold it roughly in half and hand it to the blasted woman. “He’ll see me.” And, of course, he did.
“What’s the meaning of this!”
“Shut up. You have the horse, and I don’t care how you’re concealing it from the authorities, but I want you to keep doing so until the day of the Wessex Cup race. If you refuse I shall turn you in for horse thievery.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the fat man seated behind the desk blustered.
Sherlock snorted as he crossed his arms over his chest and rolled his eyes. He then proceeded to rattle off in a bored monotone, “You were the only one up this morning; it was just gone four. You ran across Silver Blaze running loose on the hill to the south. He came to you quite easily, and your first instinct was to walk him home to King’s Pyland, so you set off to do so; however, as you walked you realized that all you had to do to ensure a win for yourself was to secrete him away until after the race. You turned around and brought the horse here, where you proceeded to cover his obvious markings and take whatever other steps were necessary to keep the police from identifying him as the missing favourite. I imagine you tampered with the animal’s RFID chip. You came into the house, shed your coat, exchanged your shoes for slippers, had a fry-up and coffee for breakfast - you really should consider cutting back there, your cholesterol and blood-pressure are through the roof - and proceeded into your study where you have been sitting behind your desk since, alternately congratulating yourself and worrying you’ve done the wrong thing.”
From BORED to INTENSE in the blink of an eye, Sherlock leapt toward the desk and slammed his hands down onto it, shoving his face into Silas Brown’s, their noses practically touching. “You have the horse.”
John wanted to applaud, he really did, but he refrained because he thought it would seem unprofessional. Silas Brown had gone white and sweaty as Sherlock had dictated his actions back to him in such detail and he was now gaping at him in complete befuddlement. His mouth opened and closed a few times, making him look like a fish, but he seemed incapable of actual speech.
Sherlock stood, heaving a huge sigh as he did so. “Again, I haven’t the least bit of interest in turning you over to the police unless you refuse to do as I ask. Are you completely clear on what you need to do to avoid prosecution?”
“I - I - ,” he emitted a few gulping swallows.
“Are you clear?”
When he did manage actual words, they were no more than a whisper. “How did you know?”
“Are you going to do as I’ve asked or should I ring the police?”
“No!” He had gained some volume now, though he still looked rather as if he were about to drop dead of fright. “I’ll do just as you ask. I’ll keep him hidden.”
“Good. Produce him for the race, do you understand? Silver Blaze will run the race under Colonel Ross’s colours.” He paused, and his lips quirked up into a smile. “You can leave his markings covered though,” he instructed, his tone wry.
“Yes, yes. All right.”
The smile disappeared and he added threateningly, “And I’m sure I don’t have to point out to you how very important it is that the horse come to no harm while he is in your care.”
The man gulped again and weakly managed, “No, of course not, he’ll get the best of care.”
“Good.” Sherlock pivoted on his heel, producing the familiar dramatic whirl of coat. “Come along, John, we’re done here.”
As they walked John asked, “So, King’s Pyland next?”
“No, dash it, I’ve got to get to rehearsal or Forester will come hunt me down. I’m already late. This afternoon, though.”
John shook his head. “Can’t, I’m sitting for Claude.”
“Damn.”
“Tomorrow morning?”
“Rehearsal in the morning; science tutorial in the afternoon.”
John frowned. “Perhaps I can reschedule with Claude.”
“Yes, see if you can. Meet me in the small library at one.”