The Scottish Play - Act IV of V
*****
Actus Quartus.
JOHN: You wanna remember, Sherlock: I was a soldier. I killed people.
SHERLOCK: You were a doctor!
JOHN: I had bad days!
Enter Fighting, and Macbeth slaine.
*****
It could have been the whim of chance which threw John into Hannibal Holmes’s path that morning, but it probably wasn’t. He had walked back from the cottage and was wandering through the house aimlessly, checking the various rooms he passed to see what sort of mad activities were taking place within each of them. He’d already encountered a yoga session, a painting lesson, a tableau which made him say ‘Oh, sorry!’ and exit swiftly, a game of Cluedo, eight couples doing the tango, the tweedy-looking gentleman from dinner the first night demonstrating for an audience of two how to properly taxidermy a beaver, a group lesson in Ikebana, a screening of Gone With the Wind, a roomful of women vociferously praising the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an acupuncture session, a full dress rehearsal of the ‘Out Damned Spot’ scene featuring a scantily-clad Not Anthea, a knot-tying tutorial, and three separate fencing matches.
He had just ended up in a hallway which doubled as a portrait gallery; windows lined the wall which wasn’t cluttered with framed canvases of all sizes. He was admiring some of them and considering how odd it was that Claude was going to produce a portrait of him. He’d certainly never considered having one done. The voice came from the opposite end of the hall.
“Ah. The good Doctor Watson.”
John froze. The dichotomy of that voice just flat-out slayed him every fucking time. He wanted to smile and turn to his friend. Instead, he grimaced and turned to his new arch enemy. It seemed a very long time indeed since he had wondered if people actually had arch enemies.
“Mr Holmes. What a pleasure to see you again.”
An elegant brow was raised, indicating he had caught the tone which gave lie to the words. “How fares my younger son this morning, I haven’t seen him.” Hannibal prowled over the ground between them, stalking toward him.
“Well, presumably that means he’s fine.”
The other man’s eyes glinted dangerously. Yes, he would be up for a fight at all times, John thought.
“And did the two of you have an enjoyable night?”
“Oh yeah,” John said, “Yes, we had loads of sex, so it was great. You know, gay sex, man on man, lots of it,” he added with relish - just for good measure.
It worked, and John found himself pinned to the wall between two windows by a humongous hand round his throat. Right then, he thought cheerfully, and kneed his future father-in-law hard in the groin.
Hannibal’s body reacted, and John found himself released and on his feet once more. He took the opportunity to dance a couple steps to his right and take up a defensive posture. His opponent recovered swiftly and came up swinging. John dodged his right hook and jabbed him in the gut as he continued to move to his right.
“You are,” he informed Hannibal, “a terrible fucking person.”
Hannibal managed to get in a glancing blow to John’s chin, but John’s left fist had already been on its way to smashing into Hannibal’s nose, and there was no stopping it.
John kept moving, dancing lightly as he’d been trained to do, ready to dodge and weave to avoid incoming blows. “I really should shoot you, but I’m not keen on going to prison for killing a man as small and petty as you.”
Hannibal voiced a purring growl in Sherlock’s silky tones and lunged at him. John performed a twirl worthy of an expert matador and the larger man missed him entirely, pulled up short, clearly enraged now. “How dare you,” he growled, “you excuse for a man, how dare you hold us up for public mockery as you do, publicizing Sherlock’s freakish abilities which he just sells to the highest bidder, inviting the world to laugh at us and buggering him into the bargain. You’ll sell all the sexual filth after you’ve left him behind, of course, dragging us through the muck one last time, trading on the Holmes name to make your fortune; what do they call you, a rent boy?”
John almost laughed, turned, and walked away; he honestly almost did. He actually dropped his fists slightly and surveyed the man before him. This was all so completely ludicrous. He felt as if he’d been dropped into a really terrible episode of Eastenders.
“Did you ever, even once, tell him you loved him?” He had no idea where the question had come from, but suddenly there it was, hanging in the air between them. Hannibal’s expression did not soften in the slightest. “No, of course you didn’t. You don’t love him, so why would you bother?” And with this realization, John’s patience ran out. He was done pretending that it was all right that Sherlock’s childhood must have resembled one of Dante’s rings of Hell. He was done pretending that a mother who petted her dogs but couldn’t be bothered to kiss her son’s cheek shouldn’t be shot without the offer of a last cigarette. He was very definitely done with this man who routinely threatened to blow up his friend, body and soul.
John Watson raised his fists again and gave his opponent fair warning. “I am going to hit you until you stop getting up and coming back for more.”
In response to this, Hannibal, with almost more contempt than John had ever before heard in his son’s voice asked, “Are you really, nancy boy?” with an infuriating smirk. John stepped forward. He smashed his left fist into his opponent’s gut and the right into his mouth, successfully replacing the contempt with shock and the smirk with a split lip.
For all his sleek, entitled bravado, Hannibal was no match for John’s army training and righteous anger. He fumbled, though he didn’t go down straight away. He tried to recover and swung at John with his right again. John dodged it neatly and pummelled the other man’s ribcage left-right-left-right-left-right and then a hard left hook to the jaw. Hannibal stumbled and went down for the first time.
He was soon up, but staggering, and John used the advantage to sweep his feet out from under him and send him down to the floor again, knocking the wind out of him. This seemed to make Hannibal angry, and he came up swinging, but he was sloppy in his rage and John easily hammered him in the gut and nose again, and now there was quite a lot of blood involved. Angry but controlled - oh so icily controlled - John followed up with another blow to the jaw, this time from the right and followed that up (followed him down) with a left to his kidney.
It went on like that for a while. Eventually, Hannibal stayed down.
John looked down at the man he had just beaten into submission, and the rage which was driving him demanded that he now proceed to kick the stuffing out of him. John blinked in surprise and realized that he was probably capable of beating this man to death at this moment. He mentally took a step back and considered the benefits of doing so. He really wanted to, quite badly; that was why he decided not to. Instead, as a parting gift he leaned down, gripped Hannibal by the lapels and shook him, hard, knocking his head against the wall. “Stay away from Sherlock or I might very well change my mind about shooting you. Mycroft would be able to get the charges dropped, you know, and I probably wouldn’t even have to say please if it was you I’d murdered.”
He left him there in a heap, a battered and bleeding personification of bigotry, hatred and cruelty.
*****
Flourish.
*****
After John had cleaned himself up, he ended up chatting with Jean and Lionel over lunch.
“Don’t let Alistair worry you, he’s harmless, really.”
“Well I wouldn’t say harmless exactly. He did send you a Gorillagram once.”
“Oh he did, didn’t he? Mostly harmless then,” pixie-like Jean amended with a giggle.
“Considering the rest of the family, mostly harmless is practically an award complete with statuette,” Lionel grumbled.
“We do love your blog, John,” Jean deftly switched the subject.
John smiled. He liked this pair. Lionel was almost as dour as his hang-dog appearance implied he would be, but Jean sparkled enough for the both of them. “Thank you,” he said.
“You should do a blog,” she said to Lionel, the thought clearly a new one.
“Oh god, here we go. Why on earth would I want to write a blog?”
“What do you mean, ‘Here we go.’? You make it sound as if I’m always throwing round crazy ideas like a character on a sitcom.”
Lionel looked at her incredulously. “You are always throwing round crazy ideas,” he insisted.
“Don’t be silly!”
“Jean, honestly -,’
“No, I’m serious. You should write a blog, you could reach a whole new audience.”
“I’ve never wanted to reach any audience,” Lionel insisted.
“Of course you do. You wouldn’t have written anything at all if you didn’t.”
“If I’d known how much trouble it was all going to be I certainly wouldn’t have.”
“He’s just being contrary on purpose. He does that,” Jean told John.
He smiled. “I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with your work, Lionel, what have you written?”
“I am the proud author of a volume entitled My Life in Kenya which sold approximately five copies despite a salacious cover picture entirely inappropriate to the content; it was, shockingly enough, all about my life in Kenya. I also wrote a script which was turned into a horrid mini-series.”
John controlled his laughter and asked, “What was the horrid mini-series about then? I’ve probably seen it.”
Jean sparkled. “Oh, that was all about our romance.”
“Really? You’ve got a good story then.”
“Oh yes,” Jean confided, “it’s a very good story indeed. You see, Lionel and I first met in the summer of 1953. He was doing his national service, and was Second Lieutenant Hardcastle while I was a nurse at Middlesex Hospital.”
His gruffness abating, Lionel put in, “I asked her the way to Kurzon Street.”
Jean giggled. “I didn’t know the way to Kurzon Street.”
“I didn’t really want to go there anyway.” Lionel reached out and covered Jean’s hand with his own. “It was just the first street which came into my head.”
Jean beamed at him fondly. “We had a whirlwind romance, but then Lionel was posted to Korea. It turns out that he did write to me, but the letter never arrived, and so I assumed he hadn’t written after all.”
“My letter; it’s in the Imperial War Museum now, just imagine.”
“The cheek!” John said.
“Yes, Her Majesty’s army didn’t take into account what that missing letter would mean for the two of us,” Lionel mused.
“Well, of course I was heartbroken, but life goes on.”
“We both married and, well, lived. Then I came back to England and completely by chance I hired Jean’s secretarial agency when I needed to put together the final draft of my book.”
“Thirty-eight years after we’d met, we met again.” Jean smiled at Lionel fondly. “It turned out my dashing Second Lieutenant had grown into a grumpy old codger with a fondness for custard tarts.”
“I was always fond of custard tarts, you’ve just forgotten.”
“So the book brought you together again,” observed John.
“Yes,” Jean said, “and that’s why you should start writing a blog,” she told her husband firmly.
“The two things have absolutely no connection,” complained Lionel, “unless you want me to reconnect with yet another long-lost love through an internet blog. Are you ready to be rid of me then? Going to pass me on to the next pretty girl who didn’t know the way to Kurzon Street forty-eight years ago?”
“Forty-seven, unless you were running another girl while we were seeing each other.”
“Certainly not.”
“Well then, that settles it.”
“What settles what?” he sputtered.
Ignoring him, Jean turned to John and asked, “What do you think Lionel should blog about?”
*****
Enter Macduffe, with Macbeths head.
*****
John was feeling quite optimistic about things when he left the dining room to meet Sherlock.. The morning had presented a case, a satisfying opportunity to punch Hannibal’s lights out, and an uplifting love story.
But it seemed Bartók hadn’t been done playing with Sherlock’s head.
When he entered it, the small library appeared to be empty. Hands on hips, he surveyed the space again, baffled. Then he heard a tiny sound, the sound of a plucked violin string. He frowned, and stepped further into the room. After a bit of a search, he found him, looking worryingly scrunched physically into the space under the table which seemed to offend him so much. He squatted down and poked at his friend to get his attention, which currently seemed to be engaged in finding a way to manoeuvre his violin into a position where he could do more than pluck at it.
“How on earth did you manage to squeeze yourself in there?”
Sherlock blinked, seemed to come back to himself, and then grimaced. “I’ve no idea, but it is intensely uncomfortable.”
John sighed. “Come on, let’s get you out.”
After quite a lot of wrangling, they managed it with both Sherlock and the table remaining in one piece. John confiscated the violin and sat his friend down firmly. “All right, let’s have it. What happened? Who do I need to shoot this time?”
Sherlock wondered how to explain that it felt as if the music of Béla Bartók had taken up residence inside his psyche and was now attacking him from the inside. Haltingly, he began speaking. “It - isn’t anything that happened right now.”
“Go on,” John urged in a calm tone. “You can tell me. Whatever it is, it’ll be fine.”
“It’s the music, John. I don’t - I can’t explain it, but it’s the music.”
“Yes, I can see that.” His friend leaned back and regarded him thoughtfully. “You take it inside yourself like you don’t anything else. You let it in and it runs riot inside you.”
He considered that thought, and nodded in agreement.
John went on, “Something in these pieces you’re working on has touched something particularly sensitive.” He paused again, considering Sherlock’s words. “It’s triggering memories.”
His friend nodded again.
“So we need to trigger some better memories for you.”
Sherlock blinked.
“Come on,” John urged, “there have to be a few good memories knocking about this place. You did spend Christmases here after all. Get any good presents? A puppy, maybe?”
“Plutarch,” he responded automatically.
John grinned, another mystery solved. “Of course you named the puppy Plutarch, you mad genius.”
Sherlock sniffed. “It was a condition that Mycroft and I agreed upon the name. It narrowed the choices considerably.”
A sharp bark of laughter greeted this assertion. “Yes, I can imagine it did. What else did you do while you were here? You’re not a joiner, so what did ickle Sherlock do over the hols?”
He wrinkled his nose at this, but gave the matter in question some consideration. “I read.” He shrugged. “I sat in trees and tried to avoid notice.”
“Go on, what else? I’m told you ambushed Simon frequently.”
He sighed. “I -,” Something suddenly occurred to him, something he had done that same holiday he had been six. “Oh, I composed,” he breathed. “I composed my first piece that year.” Just as suddenly that memory was chased off by another and he sagged, both physically and emotionally. “But we left - abruptly - and in the rush I neglected to retrieve the sheet music.”
John considered this. The Holmes clan was undeniably an arty lot and handwritten notes on proper sheet music seemed unlikely to have been simply tossed away; also some sort of distraction was most certainly called for. “Let’s hunt it up, then.”
“What?”
“Well surely this place has an attic? My mum had boxes stuffed with old school papers; people save every useless thing and shove it into the attic, so we’re in with a chance.” He stood decisively. “Come on, we’ll have a bit of a shufti and maybe we’ll find your lost symphony.”
“It was a sonata,” his friend corrected absently.
John rolled his eyes. “Yes, fine, the lost sonata of ickle Sherlock Holmes. Come on, lead the way.” He tugged his companion up from his seat and propelled him out the door.
He really should have anticipated the attic being both unbelievably large and stuffed with undeniably mad objects. He hadn’t, however, so the stuffed dodo bird startled him terribly.
Sherlock doubled over with laughter. “That sound you just made!”
“Yes, fine, Sherlock.”
“It was the same one you used for Simon!”
“Yes, I realize that, Sherlock, but thank you for pointing it out anyway.”
“But it was - just, you -,” He dissolved into helpless laughter.
“Yes! Thank you, Sherlock, again. I shrieked like a little girl, I realize that. Now shut the bloody hell up about it.” While he waited for the giggles to subside, John had a look round and tried to decide if there was any one point where it might be less daunting to begin their search.
He decided there wasn’t. Generations of Holmeses must have been acquiring and then abandoning objects to this room since time immemorial in order to create the layers of objects which had proven ephemeral and were now on display as if in some sort of insane museum of lost and found objects. John could see a hanging medical skeleton with one leg missing, a set of bagpipes, a box of gas masks and another of mining lamps, a harp with no strings, a dress form which was wearing something distinctly Edwardian, an astonishingly ugly coat rack, trunk after trunk lining the walls (each of which he suspected must be stuffed to the gills), a victrola, a golliwog alongside a statue of Vishnu, paintings propped against every available surface, an umbrella stand from which swords sprouted (pointy ends mostly down), furniture of every possible description which had all been piled high with boxes and stacks of papers, at least two grandfather clocks; and this was all just at first glance.
John realized a couple of things. The first was that since apparently the Holmes clan never binned anything, the odds were pretty good that the sheet music they were in search of was in here somewhere; the second was that the odds of their finding anything they were actually looking for were slim to none, so he instantly decided that he wasn’t actually trying to find Sherlock’s lost work, he was simply having a look around. He studied the dodo a bit more closely, and it occurred to him to wonder if this was the only example of taxidermy the room housed. The extraordinarily large space was dim and shadowy, and dust motes danced eloquently in the beams of light which fought through the masses of objects before him. The air felt a bit heavy and solemn, and John was reminded of the peaceful feeling one gets when visiting a Cathedral. He snorted to himself at the idea of a Cathedral where one worshipped the collection of dolly pegs which lived behind the door. He waded into the maze, choosing a direction at random.
He stopped in front of a trunk which had on top of it two large boxes. He opened one of them. It was full of wellies. Curious, John dug down to the bottom to make sure; yep, nothing but wellies, and chock full of them. The mass of dark green and black rubber all seemed to be odd, as well. The sizes ranged from humongous to downright dainty, but not one seemed to match any of the others. It was a boggling thought that this box and its contents existed in the world.
The next box he opened was full of daggers, some sheathed, others not. Most of the ones he could see were beautiful, works of art in metal meant to draw blood. He hesitated before carefully taking out one of the blades near the top and holding it up for a better view. It was gorgeous, the handle was done in ivory and it was warm in his hand, the grip perfect. He unsheathed it to find the blade itself sadly rusted and pitted and he frowned; such a shame, that. He returned it to the box and closed it up again.
He removed the boxes from the top of the trunk and opened that to find it full of ice skates which mapped the evolution of the object from its very invention up to a pair sporting a cheery-looking Hello Kitty. “This area seems to have been categorized at some point. I’ve got odd wellies, daggers and ice skates. What are you seeing over there?” he inquired.
Sherlock took in the contents of the trunk he was currently looking through. “This section has not received the same attention. This trunk contains a set of ivory game counters shaped like fish; five pairs of bi-focals; Great Aunt Vivianne's collection of cigarette holders; a matching cigarette case, clock, pen holder without the pen, and the lighter from her desk set; a cigar box filled with costume jewellery, half of the paste gems gone; a scrapbook full of theatre tickets; a hatbox full of small Victorian handbags; a single Persian slipper; and a nineteenth century air rifle of unusual design.”
It just went on and on like that. John opened a wardrobe to find the bottom of it full of mothballs and an assortment of furs ranging from a gorgeous, perfectly preserved silver stole which was so soft its touch felt like a breeze on his skin, to a ratty old brown coat large enough that it would have swallowed a bear alive, and might honestly have once been a bear. Sherlock unearthed, in a box lid slid under a dresser full of stuck drawers, a child's collection of river-smoothed oval stones and later; in a trunk, in a jewellery box, in tissue paper tied with a worn gold ribbon, a pair of unworn baby's shoes. He identified one of John’s finds as a rug beater, and the object it was propped against as a Victorian pump action vacuum cleaner. One trunk contained a pair of old ski boots, the kind that lace on, with all the laces in knots; also in that one was a book press and a glass display case of native insects, the last of which they confiscated to give to Peter.
Rolled up in a long canister, which had been put on top of a mirror with an elaborately carved frame (the symbols on which seemed to be trying to tell him something, though he knew not what) Sherlock found a set of plane spotting charts. Under a worn out wing chair, which must have proven slightly too wobbly even for the servants (when there were servants), John discovered a fly fishing kit which had turned too brittle with age for anything in it to be of use. Sherlock slipped into his pocket a beautiful antique bottle, mostly opaque, sealed with lead. John frankly admired a glorious, life sized watercolour reclining nude, boxed up to keep her from the light but unprotected from the temperature and her paint sadly cracking because of it; it was not signed and he wondered if it was Claude’s work.
An open area (which they discovered by clearing boxes [which proved to contain a truly astonishing array of feathers riotously representing every colour of the rainbow and possibly every bird on Earth] from the space under a grand piano and crawling underneath it) looked to have been used as some artist’s studio during some unknowable time period. An easel stood next to the window and was surrounded by a detritus of paints (dried), paint brushes, palettes, artists’ papers, charcoal sticks, and once-stretched canvas. This little carved-out space was also home to one lone silver and crystal coaster which had been used as an ash tray and was still half full of filters; a razor strop lay on the floor nearby. The wall around the window had been adorned with a matching set of badly done oils depicting scenes from either Greek or Roman mythology; the figures were too poorly rendered for a definitive verdict.
Forging ahead, they were able to leave this artist’s den by climbing a bookcase stuffed with volumes both thick and thin, then dropping gently to the ground on the other side, landing in an old rowboat which sat on a rug full of holes, some clearly burned into it, others eaten. One end of the boat was home to a box filled with mugs, plates, bells, coins, paperweights, various glassware, and bookmarks all celebrating a Coronation, Royal Wedding, or other anniversary (all the reigns John could name, and some he couldn’t, were represented); the other housed a mounted water buffalo head.
They found a wardrobe which contained nothing but hundreds of dusty, rusting trophy cups and a medicine cabinet which held seventeen jars of jam gone solid with age. A turn at a cast-iron mangler (which John swore had reached out and tripped him) seemed to mark the end of their progress, but then Sherlock found he could wriggle through a small window formed by a trunk (full of unboxed Meccano), a chalkboard locked into upright position, and a pair of huge decorative pillars which were too heavy to be shifted. Slithering after him, on his stomach over the trunk and under the board, John got stuck for just a moment, and Sherlock tugged him out by both hands.
They rummaged through trunk after trunk, moved through the attic wardrobe by wardrobe, their finds becoming ever more unlikely; and finally (Finally!) they came to a box which proved to contain (among other things) a racy manuscript which seemed to be a tell-all featuring the Holmes family members circa 1895; a pair of yellowed go-go boots; a creepy crawlers set, all the bottles empty; a bundle of children's writing exercises; an ancient pistol; a Spirograph; a compact encrusted with what John was fairly certain were real diamonds; a View-Master loaded with a Doctor Who disc and; miraculously, Sherlock’s lost sonata.
*****
Enter Lady, with a Taper.
*****
It was very late indeed, but that didn’t mean that the low-level hum of activity had ceased in Mycroft’s makeshift command post which he set up in one of the many parlours of his Uncle’s castle (unlike John, he did not shy away from the correct term) when he was in residence. Time zones, you see, meant that Mycroft tended to work round the clock. There was always something interesting going on somewhere, he found. This was why the dim firelight which suffused the room with warmth was supplemented by the glow of a handful of computer screens, some monitoring the premises, others - well - Mycroft would tell you what they showed, but then he would have to have you killed, of course.
It was late enough, however, that he had loosened his tie and allowed himself to look a bit mussed about the edges. He was sprawled in a wing chair, his usual posture worn away by the stress of the day. He was rather seriously considering taking off his shoes. Even in a houseful of Holmeses it was unlikely that anyone would be seeking him out at this hour. And yet, a flash of movement on one of the screens to his left told him that someone was walking down the hallway toward his position. He arched an eyebrow in curiosity and told the Premier he would ring him back at a more convenient time. Just as he rang off, the door opened and his assistant came in.
She was - he blinked - she was barefoot. Her hair was a dark cloud about her shoulders and she wore a robe of soft blue velvet loosely belted over a satin nightgown of a deeper, richer blue. She looked very much as if she had just slipped out of bed, and in one hand she held a crossbow.
“Bonus not what you thought it should be?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, and set the crossbow down next to the door.
“And you find stalking the halls patrolling for vampiric Holmeses soothing?”
Her eyes sparkled. “Well, I’d call it stimulating actually, but we certainly don’t have to agree on all points.” Witty banter with just a hint of suggestiveness - check. She fluttered her eyelashes a bit and added, “I’m very good with a crossbow.”
“Yes,” Mycroft said uncertainly, drawing the word into more syllables than were usually warranted. “I am aware of that.”
She wondered what he would do if she crawled into his lap.
It turned out that this caused him to jump up as if scalded, making said lap abruptly disappear.
Mycroft stared at the heap of deliciously tousled velvet and satin which had so recently been a rational woman whom he trusted with his life and, rather more importantly, various bits of information which could bring down empires.
“Ouch,” she complained as she glared up at him.
“It would be much simpler if you shot me.”
“Simpler, yes. More fun, no.” She decided to stay on the floor, but folded her legs up more comfortably and shifted a bit so the sofa supported her back.
“Fun? Good god, woman.”
“Mycroft,” she said sternly, “fun is not a naughty word.”
“Hm,” he intoned disbelievingly.
“Besides, shooting you would also be messier.”
“No,” he assured her emphatically, “it would not.”
“Certainly it would, think of the blood.”
He raised a single elegant brow at her.
She rolled her eyes. “This is all your fault,” she told him.
The squeak which emerged in response was so completely adorable that she would have been lost then even if she hadn’t already been dreaming about his laughter, honest laughter without a hint of his normal cynicism.
“My fault?”
“Yes, your fault,” she said crossly, seriously annoyed with him now. “You’re unreasonably attractive when you laugh,” she informed him scathingly.
“I’m - what? What are you talking about? I am never unreasonably anything, I assure you.”
“And when you squeak,” she added angrily.
“I most certainly never squeak!”
“You just did it half a moment ago! It was ridiculously adorable!” she yelled at him.
Inanely he shouted back, “You brought a crossbow!” because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. “And you’re,” he paused, stopped shouting, realized his mouth had gone rather dry. “You’re barefoot.”
Her eyes glinted dangerously for just a second and then she purred, “And do you find that unreasonably attractive?”
Mycroft found that he actually did.
Oh dear.
*****
Enter Murtherers.
*****
After determining that Sherlock wasn’t much the worse for wear following his rehearsal the next morning, John rejoiced in the fact that if was finally, finally time to witness his friend giving the children of the Holmes clan a science tutorial. For the occasion he was even introduced to a new room of the house, the schoolroom. When they arrived, John realized it was set up for a dissection lab. Of course, he thought, the dead bird and the squirrel hunting all suddenly made much more sense. Each desk had a dissection tray, a small container full of pins, and a set of tools; each tray held either a squirrel or rabbit. On the teacher’s desk was the same set-up along with John’s pheasant.
At precisely half past one a stream of children came into the room and after a bit of fuss and noise, settled into the chairs provided. A low buzz of conversation continued until Sherlock cleared his throat and rose to his feet.
“I will be demonstrating the art of dissection using this pheasant. You will then work in pairs to dissect the small mammals you have been provided. This will allow you to see how the insides of the animals are put together and will give you insight into how your own bodies work, how your muscles move your limbs, and the organs it contains. Doctor Watson and I will be on hand to assist you as you work. Does anyone have any questions before we begin?”
Hands shot up all over the room.
Sherlock sternly insisted, “Questions directly related to the dissections we are about to perform.”
About half the hands went down.
“Questions which absolutely cannot wait until you are turned loose on your parents after the dissections are complete.”
After a bit of hesitation and obvious debate, two hands remained.
“Yes. You first.”
“Where did the rabbits come from?”
“The grounds around the house. Now you.”
“You killed them?” The little girl sounded horrified, and John winced.
“Doctor Watson shot the pheasant; he very likely also shot the one you ate at dinner last night. Your cousin Peter Hannay snared the rabbits and yes, I killed the squirrels.”
“How did you kill them?” called an eager little boy out of turn.
“I used a slingshot. Look, none of these questions are relevant so we’re going to begin now. Please direct your attention to me.” He picked up his scalpel. “The opening incision will be very shallow, you simply want to pierce the skin so that you can pull it away and see the inside of the animal. It is a long incision which begins at the base of the throat and runs the length of the body. Because pheasants have a crop just here at the base of the throat,” he propped up his tray to indicate the position of the crop on his bird as he continued, “I will start below that point to avoid spilling out the contents of the bird’s last meal. Neither squirrels nor rabbits have a crop, so you may all begin a bit higher up when you start.”
And Sherlock proceeded to systematically cut up the bird. To John’s complete amazement, none of the children seemed overly uncomfortable (there were a few ‘yicks’ but not many) and exactly none of them fled the room. He demonstrated the correct way to pin the skin back and remove the organs so they could be individually studied and compared, and at the end he unpinned the bird and showed them how muscles could be pulled to make dead limbs move.
It should have been the most grotesque Frankenstein visual you could imagine; the plucked, cut-open body of the bird in stark contrast to the still-glorious plumage of its wings, its head lolling sickeningly, and Sherlock working it like a puppet. Instead it was beautiful; one of Sherlock’s graceful hands cupped the bulk of the creature, the other deftly manipulated some mysterious muscles and, despite its being dead, the bird spread its wings majestically, one last time.
There was a chorus of ‘oh’s and ‘ah’s, proving that it wasn’t only John’s imagination that his friend had somehow managed to transform this experience into something magical for the kids.
Afterwards, John and Sherlock walked up and down, helping tiny hands make tiny cuts in tiny dead animals. It was surreal in the extreme for John; medical school for tots, or some such. They were really fascinated, though; they wanted to understand how everything worked, and taking the tiny bodies apart piece by piece helped them do this. There was a tricky moment when little Suzy’s scalpel dug a bit too deep, but luckily they had an extra rabbit and she and her partner were able to start over.
Once each child was satisfied that there was no further knowledge to be gleaned from his or her tiny, disassembled corpse (Sherlock didn’t rush any of them and he answered each question put to him thoroughly; another amazing aspect of the experience for John) the children cleaned up and filed out, most of them chorusing, “Thank you Cousin Sherlock!” or, “Thank you Doctor Watson!” as they did so.
“That was bloody amazing,” John declared.
“Hm,” Sherlock mused. “This was a rather good lot. The last time I did dissection there were criers; God, I’ll never use kittens again,” he shuddered with disgust.
John paled and said incredulously, “You killed a litter of kittens for a dissection lab you gave to a bunch of under-twelves?”
“Don’t be silly, why would I go to that much effort? The mother died and the kittens didn’t survive.”
*****
Exit crying Murther.
*****
After the dissection lab, they decided it wasn’t too late to head over to King’s Pyland and get in a bit of detecting before dinner, see if they couldn’t suss out the dead man’s reason for taking Silver Blaze out of the stable in the middle of a rainy night.
King’s Pyland was a smaller affair than Mapleton, and Colonel Ross was out and about when they arrived. He eyed John, who glared at him, and observed coolly, “Took your time about it, didn’t you?”
Sherlock decided taking up his previous servile attitude would serve no useful purpose and simply stated, “I’ve come to question John Straker’s wife.”
Ross looked puzzled. “Don’t you want to speak with Edith and Ned?”
“Why the devil would I want to do that? Who are they?”
“They’re the ones who interacted with Simpson! The murderer!”
“Oh, that fellow; no, I’m not interested in him at all.”
Ross looked as if he wanted to hit something, and preferably someone. Incredulously, he asked, “You’re not interested in the murderer?”
In what was (for him) a patient tone, Sherlock explained, “Colonel Ross, the theory that this Simpson character murdered Straker is based upon nothing but circumstantial evidence. The police are free to conduct their investigation based on that assumption. I, however, will base mine on the facts of the case. Now please have me conducted to Mrs Straker.”
Ross sputtered, “But - but they found Simpson’s handkerchief in Straker’s pocket!”
“Hm. That explains that, at least.” When Ross continued to regard him with open-mouthed disbelief, he rolled his eyes and went on, his tone harsh and staccato now, “What precisely do you believe that proves, Colonel? Straker sneezed and Simpson very gallantly offered him the use of his hanky before violently bashing in his skull? Do use your brain. Mrs Straker. Now, if you please.”
Sherlock’s patience had clearly run out, but so had Ross’s. The man turned huffily and strode away from them, calling out for one of his employees to escort them to the Straker residence as he went.
This was how they found themselves in the presence of the recent widow, a woman whose face was haggard and thin and eager, stamped with the print of a recent horror. Somewhat to John’s surprise, Sherlock softened in response to her obvious distress. He gently asked her to tell them about the events leading up to her husband’s disappearance, and it was clear that relating the story yet again was actually soothing at this point and doing so calmed her considerably. By the time she had finished the tale of her husband’s accidentally waking her in the middle of the night and proceeding out into the rain despite her protests, she was steady as a rock, and Sherlock smiled at her approvingly. “Thank you, Mrs Straker, that is immensely helpful.” He hesitated, his smile softened, and then, his tone gone a bit sheepish, asked, “I’m terribly sorry, I’m awful with faces, but haven’t we met before? Surely I met you in Plymouth at a garden-party some little time ago.”
“Plymouth? No, sir; you are mistaken.”
Sherlock frowned. “But I can clearly recall a rather magnificent brooch you were wearing, in the shape of a dove.”
"I never had such a brooch, sir," answered the lady.
"Ah, that quite settles it," said Sherlock. And with an apology they took their leave. John couldn’t see that they’d accomplished anything, but Sherlock seemed satisfied, and he’d certainly not been to Plymouth recently, so there had to have been more to that. Hopefully his partner would be in an explaining sort of mood while they walked back to the estate.
The lad who had been instructed to take them to Mrs Straker had waited during the interview and now walked with them to the edge of the property. Just as they were passing out of the gate, though, Sherlock stopped abruptly and whirled around, eyes wide. “Sheep!” he declared.
The boy looked at John, clearly bewildered. John smiled at him reassuringly, recognizing the signs of his friend slotting something into place in his head.
Sherlock pointed into the distance, where John could just make out a couple of white blotches. They were too far away for him to have automatically assumed these were sheep, but he was willing to take his partner’s word for it. He whirled again, rounding on the boy. “Who tends the sheep?” he demanded, looking much more excited than anyone should when questioning someone about sheep.
“I - I do, sir,” stuttered the boy, and he was rewarded with an approving smile wider than the Sahara.
“Good lad,” said Sherlock, still beaming. “How have they been lately?”
The boy looked mystified, and he shot another glance at John, clearly seeking confirmation his friend was mad. John gave him his best ‘It’s all right, just humour the madman.’ smile.
“Well, fine, sir. They’re - sheep,” he finished a bit helplessly.
Sherlock, as he was wont to do, turned cross in an instant. “Nothing wrong with them recently, then?”
The boy blinked, and actually seemed to think about the question this time. “Oh. Well, yes, I suppose a couple have gone lame recently, but it doesn’t really matter with sheep, sir, so I hadn’t thought much of it.”
And there it was, the expression which he got when he’d solved it, the last piece of the puzzle had been fitted into place. His smile turned approving again, and he actually patted the lad on the head.
“Let’s go, John, we’re done here.” Sherlock practically skipped away, John following in his wake.
It was really delightful to see Sherlock so utterly pleased with himself after the emotional turmoil they’d been experiencing over the last week, and John allowed himself to really enjoy the moment when he gave his friend a chance to show off. “Why’d he do it, then?”
“Oh, John, it’s terribly boring!” he crowed in response, his delighted tone completely belying the words. “He did it for the money! It’s always about money, and money is so terribly boring!”
“And why did he need the money?” John prompted obediently.
“Second wife in Exeter with expensive taste in jewellery.”
“Ah, the brooch.”
“Yes, the brooch which he was still paying off in instalments.”
“Which you knew how?”
“Receipts in his billfold.”
“And the sheep?”
Sherlock laughed. “He was practicing on them.”
“He was going to lame the horse. Of course, I should have put that together when I saw the knife,” John chastised himself.
“Yes, you should have, that bit was fairly obvious,” his friend gloated.
John returned good-naturedly, “You didn’t know until just now.”
“It’s why he took off his coat, close work. He either took a bribe to make sure the favourite didn’t run, or he had some betting scheme set up.”
“But the horse startled,” John said, thinking, “because of the light?”
“Precisely.”
“And kicked him in the head.”
“A perfect reward for his intended actions.”
He thought about the case for a moment as Sherlock continued to hum along happily beside him. “What are we going to do about the innocent man currently sitting in a jail cell?”
“Release him of course. Lestrade will deal with it, though, my plan is to have a bit of fun with our dear Colonel on race day and then I’ll wash my hands of the matter. It really was a boring little case in the end,” he sniffed.
“Mmmm,” John agreed wordlessly. Boring or not, he was glad it had come along when it had.
Actus Quartus.
JOHN: You wanna remember, Sherlock: I was a soldier. I killed people.
SHERLOCK: You were a doctor!
JOHN: I had bad days!
Enter Fighting, and Macbeth slaine.
*****
It could have been the whim of chance which threw John into Hannibal Holmes’s path that morning, but it probably wasn’t. He had walked back from the cottage and was wandering through the house aimlessly, checking the various rooms he passed to see what sort of mad activities were taking place within each of them. He’d already encountered a yoga session, a painting lesson, a tableau which made him say ‘Oh, sorry!’ and exit swiftly, a game of Cluedo, eight couples doing the tango, the tweedy-looking gentleman from dinner the first night demonstrating for an audience of two how to properly taxidermy a beaver, a group lesson in Ikebana, a screening of Gone With the Wind, a roomful of women vociferously praising the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an acupuncture session, a full dress rehearsal of the ‘Out Damned Spot’ scene featuring a scantily-clad Not Anthea, a knot-tying tutorial, and three separate fencing matches.
He had just ended up in a hallway which doubled as a portrait gallery; windows lined the wall which wasn’t cluttered with framed canvases of all sizes. He was admiring some of them and considering how odd it was that Claude was going to produce a portrait of him. He’d certainly never considered having one done. The voice came from the opposite end of the hall.
“Ah. The good Doctor Watson.”
John froze. The dichotomy of that voice just flat-out slayed him every fucking time. He wanted to smile and turn to his friend. Instead, he grimaced and turned to his new arch enemy. It seemed a very long time indeed since he had wondered if people actually had arch enemies.
“Mr Holmes. What a pleasure to see you again.”
An elegant brow was raised, indicating he had caught the tone which gave lie to the words. “How fares my younger son this morning, I haven’t seen him.” Hannibal prowled over the ground between them, stalking toward him.
“Well, presumably that means he’s fine.”
The other man’s eyes glinted dangerously. Yes, he would be up for a fight at all times, John thought.
“And did the two of you have an enjoyable night?”
“Oh yeah,” John said, “Yes, we had loads of sex, so it was great. You know, gay sex, man on man, lots of it,” he added with relish - just for good measure.
It worked, and John found himself pinned to the wall between two windows by a humongous hand round his throat. Right then, he thought cheerfully, and kneed his future father-in-law hard in the groin.
Hannibal’s body reacted, and John found himself released and on his feet once more. He took the opportunity to dance a couple steps to his right and take up a defensive posture. His opponent recovered swiftly and came up swinging. John dodged his right hook and jabbed him in the gut as he continued to move to his right.
“You are,” he informed Hannibal, “a terrible fucking person.”
Hannibal managed to get in a glancing blow to John’s chin, but John’s left fist had already been on its way to smashing into Hannibal’s nose, and there was no stopping it.
John kept moving, dancing lightly as he’d been trained to do, ready to dodge and weave to avoid incoming blows. “I really should shoot you, but I’m not keen on going to prison for killing a man as small and petty as you.”
Hannibal voiced a purring growl in Sherlock’s silky tones and lunged at him. John performed a twirl worthy of an expert matador and the larger man missed him entirely, pulled up short, clearly enraged now. “How dare you,” he growled, “you excuse for a man, how dare you hold us up for public mockery as you do, publicizing Sherlock’s freakish abilities which he just sells to the highest bidder, inviting the world to laugh at us and buggering him into the bargain. You’ll sell all the sexual filth after you’ve left him behind, of course, dragging us through the muck one last time, trading on the Holmes name to make your fortune; what do they call you, a rent boy?”
John almost laughed, turned, and walked away; he honestly almost did. He actually dropped his fists slightly and surveyed the man before him. This was all so completely ludicrous. He felt as if he’d been dropped into a really terrible episode of Eastenders.
“Did you ever, even once, tell him you loved him?” He had no idea where the question had come from, but suddenly there it was, hanging in the air between them. Hannibal’s expression did not soften in the slightest. “No, of course you didn’t. You don’t love him, so why would you bother?” And with this realization, John’s patience ran out. He was done pretending that it was all right that Sherlock’s childhood must have resembled one of Dante’s rings of Hell. He was done pretending that a mother who petted her dogs but couldn’t be bothered to kiss her son’s cheek shouldn’t be shot without the offer of a last cigarette. He was very definitely done with this man who routinely threatened to blow up his friend, body and soul.
John Watson raised his fists again and gave his opponent fair warning. “I am going to hit you until you stop getting up and coming back for more.”
In response to this, Hannibal, with almost more contempt than John had ever before heard in his son’s voice asked, “Are you really, nancy boy?” with an infuriating smirk. John stepped forward. He smashed his left fist into his opponent’s gut and the right into his mouth, successfully replacing the contempt with shock and the smirk with a split lip.
For all his sleek, entitled bravado, Hannibal was no match for John’s army training and righteous anger. He fumbled, though he didn’t go down straight away. He tried to recover and swung at John with his right again. John dodged it neatly and pummelled the other man’s ribcage left-right-left-right-left-right and then a hard left hook to the jaw. Hannibal stumbled and went down for the first time.
He was soon up, but staggering, and John used the advantage to sweep his feet out from under him and send him down to the floor again, knocking the wind out of him. This seemed to make Hannibal angry, and he came up swinging, but he was sloppy in his rage and John easily hammered him in the gut and nose again, and now there was quite a lot of blood involved. Angry but controlled - oh so icily controlled - John followed up with another blow to the jaw, this time from the right and followed that up (followed him down) with a left to his kidney.
It went on like that for a while. Eventually, Hannibal stayed down.
John looked down at the man he had just beaten into submission, and the rage which was driving him demanded that he now proceed to kick the stuffing out of him. John blinked in surprise and realized that he was probably capable of beating this man to death at this moment. He mentally took a step back and considered the benefits of doing so. He really wanted to, quite badly; that was why he decided not to. Instead, as a parting gift he leaned down, gripped Hannibal by the lapels and shook him, hard, knocking his head against the wall. “Stay away from Sherlock or I might very well change my mind about shooting you. Mycroft would be able to get the charges dropped, you know, and I probably wouldn’t even have to say please if it was you I’d murdered.”
He left him there in a heap, a battered and bleeding personification of bigotry, hatred and cruelty.
*****
Flourish.
*****
After John had cleaned himself up, he ended up chatting with Jean and Lionel over lunch.
“Don’t let Alistair worry you, he’s harmless, really.”
“Well I wouldn’t say harmless exactly. He did send you a Gorillagram once.”
“Oh he did, didn’t he? Mostly harmless then,” pixie-like Jean amended with a giggle.
“Considering the rest of the family, mostly harmless is practically an award complete with statuette,” Lionel grumbled.
“We do love your blog, John,” Jean deftly switched the subject.
John smiled. He liked this pair. Lionel was almost as dour as his hang-dog appearance implied he would be, but Jean sparkled enough for the both of them. “Thank you,” he said.
“You should do a blog,” she said to Lionel, the thought clearly a new one.
“Oh god, here we go. Why on earth would I want to write a blog?”
“What do you mean, ‘Here we go.’? You make it sound as if I’m always throwing round crazy ideas like a character on a sitcom.”
Lionel looked at her incredulously. “You are always throwing round crazy ideas,” he insisted.
“Don’t be silly!”
“Jean, honestly -,’
“No, I’m serious. You should write a blog, you could reach a whole new audience.”
“I’ve never wanted to reach any audience,” Lionel insisted.
“Of course you do. You wouldn’t have written anything at all if you didn’t.”
“If I’d known how much trouble it was all going to be I certainly wouldn’t have.”
“He’s just being contrary on purpose. He does that,” Jean told John.
He smiled. “I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with your work, Lionel, what have you written?”
“I am the proud author of a volume entitled My Life in Kenya which sold approximately five copies despite a salacious cover picture entirely inappropriate to the content; it was, shockingly enough, all about my life in Kenya. I also wrote a script which was turned into a horrid mini-series.”
John controlled his laughter and asked, “What was the horrid mini-series about then? I’ve probably seen it.”
Jean sparkled. “Oh, that was all about our romance.”
“Really? You’ve got a good story then.”
“Oh yes,” Jean confided, “it’s a very good story indeed. You see, Lionel and I first met in the summer of 1953. He was doing his national service, and was Second Lieutenant Hardcastle while I was a nurse at Middlesex Hospital.”
His gruffness abating, Lionel put in, “I asked her the way to Kurzon Street.”
Jean giggled. “I didn’t know the way to Kurzon Street.”
“I didn’t really want to go there anyway.” Lionel reached out and covered Jean’s hand with his own. “It was just the first street which came into my head.”
Jean beamed at him fondly. “We had a whirlwind romance, but then Lionel was posted to Korea. It turns out that he did write to me, but the letter never arrived, and so I assumed he hadn’t written after all.”
“My letter; it’s in the Imperial War Museum now, just imagine.”
“The cheek!” John said.
“Yes, Her Majesty’s army didn’t take into account what that missing letter would mean for the two of us,” Lionel mused.
“Well, of course I was heartbroken, but life goes on.”
“We both married and, well, lived. Then I came back to England and completely by chance I hired Jean’s secretarial agency when I needed to put together the final draft of my book.”
“Thirty-eight years after we’d met, we met again.” Jean smiled at Lionel fondly. “It turned out my dashing Second Lieutenant had grown into a grumpy old codger with a fondness for custard tarts.”
“I was always fond of custard tarts, you’ve just forgotten.”
“So the book brought you together again,” observed John.
“Yes,” Jean said, “and that’s why you should start writing a blog,” she told her husband firmly.
“The two things have absolutely no connection,” complained Lionel, “unless you want me to reconnect with yet another long-lost love through an internet blog. Are you ready to be rid of me then? Going to pass me on to the next pretty girl who didn’t know the way to Kurzon Street forty-eight years ago?”
“Forty-seven, unless you were running another girl while we were seeing each other.”
“Certainly not.”
“Well then, that settles it.”
“What settles what?” he sputtered.
Ignoring him, Jean turned to John and asked, “What do you think Lionel should blog about?”
*****
Enter Macduffe, with Macbeths head.
*****
John was feeling quite optimistic about things when he left the dining room to meet Sherlock.. The morning had presented a case, a satisfying opportunity to punch Hannibal’s lights out, and an uplifting love story.
But it seemed Bartók hadn’t been done playing with Sherlock’s head.
When he entered it, the small library appeared to be empty. Hands on hips, he surveyed the space again, baffled. Then he heard a tiny sound, the sound of a plucked violin string. He frowned, and stepped further into the room. After a bit of a search, he found him, looking worryingly scrunched physically into the space under the table which seemed to offend him so much. He squatted down and poked at his friend to get his attention, which currently seemed to be engaged in finding a way to manoeuvre his violin into a position where he could do more than pluck at it.
“How on earth did you manage to squeeze yourself in there?”
Sherlock blinked, seemed to come back to himself, and then grimaced. “I’ve no idea, but it is intensely uncomfortable.”
John sighed. “Come on, let’s get you out.”
After quite a lot of wrangling, they managed it with both Sherlock and the table remaining in one piece. John confiscated the violin and sat his friend down firmly. “All right, let’s have it. What happened? Who do I need to shoot this time?”
Sherlock wondered how to explain that it felt as if the music of Béla Bartók had taken up residence inside his psyche and was now attacking him from the inside. Haltingly, he began speaking. “It - isn’t anything that happened right now.”
“Go on,” John urged in a calm tone. “You can tell me. Whatever it is, it’ll be fine.”
“It’s the music, John. I don’t - I can’t explain it, but it’s the music.”
“Yes, I can see that.” His friend leaned back and regarded him thoughtfully. “You take it inside yourself like you don’t anything else. You let it in and it runs riot inside you.”
He considered that thought, and nodded in agreement.
John went on, “Something in these pieces you’re working on has touched something particularly sensitive.” He paused again, considering Sherlock’s words. “It’s triggering memories.”
His friend nodded again.
“So we need to trigger some better memories for you.”
Sherlock blinked.
“Come on,” John urged, “there have to be a few good memories knocking about this place. You did spend Christmases here after all. Get any good presents? A puppy, maybe?”
“Plutarch,” he responded automatically.
John grinned, another mystery solved. “Of course you named the puppy Plutarch, you mad genius.”
Sherlock sniffed. “It was a condition that Mycroft and I agreed upon the name. It narrowed the choices considerably.”
A sharp bark of laughter greeted this assertion. “Yes, I can imagine it did. What else did you do while you were here? You’re not a joiner, so what did ickle Sherlock do over the hols?”
He wrinkled his nose at this, but gave the matter in question some consideration. “I read.” He shrugged. “I sat in trees and tried to avoid notice.”
“Go on, what else? I’m told you ambushed Simon frequently.”
He sighed. “I -,” Something suddenly occurred to him, something he had done that same holiday he had been six. “Oh, I composed,” he breathed. “I composed my first piece that year.” Just as suddenly that memory was chased off by another and he sagged, both physically and emotionally. “But we left - abruptly - and in the rush I neglected to retrieve the sheet music.”
John considered this. The Holmes clan was undeniably an arty lot and handwritten notes on proper sheet music seemed unlikely to have been simply tossed away; also some sort of distraction was most certainly called for. “Let’s hunt it up, then.”
“What?”
“Well surely this place has an attic? My mum had boxes stuffed with old school papers; people save every useless thing and shove it into the attic, so we’re in with a chance.” He stood decisively. “Come on, we’ll have a bit of a shufti and maybe we’ll find your lost symphony.”
“It was a sonata,” his friend corrected absently.
John rolled his eyes. “Yes, fine, the lost sonata of ickle Sherlock Holmes. Come on, lead the way.” He tugged his companion up from his seat and propelled him out the door.
He really should have anticipated the attic being both unbelievably large and stuffed with undeniably mad objects. He hadn’t, however, so the stuffed dodo bird startled him terribly.
Sherlock doubled over with laughter. “That sound you just made!”
“Yes, fine, Sherlock.”
“It was the same one you used for Simon!”
“Yes, I realize that, Sherlock, but thank you for pointing it out anyway.”
“But it was - just, you -,” He dissolved into helpless laughter.
“Yes! Thank you, Sherlock, again. I shrieked like a little girl, I realize that. Now shut the bloody hell up about it.” While he waited for the giggles to subside, John had a look round and tried to decide if there was any one point where it might be less daunting to begin their search.
He decided there wasn’t. Generations of Holmeses must have been acquiring and then abandoning objects to this room since time immemorial in order to create the layers of objects which had proven ephemeral and were now on display as if in some sort of insane museum of lost and found objects. John could see a hanging medical skeleton with one leg missing, a set of bagpipes, a box of gas masks and another of mining lamps, a harp with no strings, a dress form which was wearing something distinctly Edwardian, an astonishingly ugly coat rack, trunk after trunk lining the walls (each of which he suspected must be stuffed to the gills), a victrola, a golliwog alongside a statue of Vishnu, paintings propped against every available surface, an umbrella stand from which swords sprouted (pointy ends mostly down), furniture of every possible description which had all been piled high with boxes and stacks of papers, at least two grandfather clocks; and this was all just at first glance.
John realized a couple of things. The first was that since apparently the Holmes clan never binned anything, the odds were pretty good that the sheet music they were in search of was in here somewhere; the second was that the odds of their finding anything they were actually looking for were slim to none, so he instantly decided that he wasn’t actually trying to find Sherlock’s lost work, he was simply having a look around. He studied the dodo a bit more closely, and it occurred to him to wonder if this was the only example of taxidermy the room housed. The extraordinarily large space was dim and shadowy, and dust motes danced eloquently in the beams of light which fought through the masses of objects before him. The air felt a bit heavy and solemn, and John was reminded of the peaceful feeling one gets when visiting a Cathedral. He snorted to himself at the idea of a Cathedral where one worshipped the collection of dolly pegs which lived behind the door. He waded into the maze, choosing a direction at random.
He stopped in front of a trunk which had on top of it two large boxes. He opened one of them. It was full of wellies. Curious, John dug down to the bottom to make sure; yep, nothing but wellies, and chock full of them. The mass of dark green and black rubber all seemed to be odd, as well. The sizes ranged from humongous to downright dainty, but not one seemed to match any of the others. It was a boggling thought that this box and its contents existed in the world.
The next box he opened was full of daggers, some sheathed, others not. Most of the ones he could see were beautiful, works of art in metal meant to draw blood. He hesitated before carefully taking out one of the blades near the top and holding it up for a better view. It was gorgeous, the handle was done in ivory and it was warm in his hand, the grip perfect. He unsheathed it to find the blade itself sadly rusted and pitted and he frowned; such a shame, that. He returned it to the box and closed it up again.
He removed the boxes from the top of the trunk and opened that to find it full of ice skates which mapped the evolution of the object from its very invention up to a pair sporting a cheery-looking Hello Kitty. “This area seems to have been categorized at some point. I’ve got odd wellies, daggers and ice skates. What are you seeing over there?” he inquired.
Sherlock took in the contents of the trunk he was currently looking through. “This section has not received the same attention. This trunk contains a set of ivory game counters shaped like fish; five pairs of bi-focals; Great Aunt Vivianne's collection of cigarette holders; a matching cigarette case, clock, pen holder without the pen, and the lighter from her desk set; a cigar box filled with costume jewellery, half of the paste gems gone; a scrapbook full of theatre tickets; a hatbox full of small Victorian handbags; a single Persian slipper; and a nineteenth century air rifle of unusual design.”
It just went on and on like that. John opened a wardrobe to find the bottom of it full of mothballs and an assortment of furs ranging from a gorgeous, perfectly preserved silver stole which was so soft its touch felt like a breeze on his skin, to a ratty old brown coat large enough that it would have swallowed a bear alive, and might honestly have once been a bear. Sherlock unearthed, in a box lid slid under a dresser full of stuck drawers, a child's collection of river-smoothed oval stones and later; in a trunk, in a jewellery box, in tissue paper tied with a worn gold ribbon, a pair of unworn baby's shoes. He identified one of John’s finds as a rug beater, and the object it was propped against as a Victorian pump action vacuum cleaner. One trunk contained a pair of old ski boots, the kind that lace on, with all the laces in knots; also in that one was a book press and a glass display case of native insects, the last of which they confiscated to give to Peter.
Rolled up in a long canister, which had been put on top of a mirror with an elaborately carved frame (the symbols on which seemed to be trying to tell him something, though he knew not what) Sherlock found a set of plane spotting charts. Under a worn out wing chair, which must have proven slightly too wobbly even for the servants (when there were servants), John discovered a fly fishing kit which had turned too brittle with age for anything in it to be of use. Sherlock slipped into his pocket a beautiful antique bottle, mostly opaque, sealed with lead. John frankly admired a glorious, life sized watercolour reclining nude, boxed up to keep her from the light but unprotected from the temperature and her paint sadly cracking because of it; it was not signed and he wondered if it was Claude’s work.
An open area (which they discovered by clearing boxes [which proved to contain a truly astonishing array of feathers riotously representing every colour of the rainbow and possibly every bird on Earth] from the space under a grand piano and crawling underneath it) looked to have been used as some artist’s studio during some unknowable time period. An easel stood next to the window and was surrounded by a detritus of paints (dried), paint brushes, palettes, artists’ papers, charcoal sticks, and once-stretched canvas. This little carved-out space was also home to one lone silver and crystal coaster which had been used as an ash tray and was still half full of filters; a razor strop lay on the floor nearby. The wall around the window had been adorned with a matching set of badly done oils depicting scenes from either Greek or Roman mythology; the figures were too poorly rendered for a definitive verdict.
Forging ahead, they were able to leave this artist’s den by climbing a bookcase stuffed with volumes both thick and thin, then dropping gently to the ground on the other side, landing in an old rowboat which sat on a rug full of holes, some clearly burned into it, others eaten. One end of the boat was home to a box filled with mugs, plates, bells, coins, paperweights, various glassware, and bookmarks all celebrating a Coronation, Royal Wedding, or other anniversary (all the reigns John could name, and some he couldn’t, were represented); the other housed a mounted water buffalo head.
They found a wardrobe which contained nothing but hundreds of dusty, rusting trophy cups and a medicine cabinet which held seventeen jars of jam gone solid with age. A turn at a cast-iron mangler (which John swore had reached out and tripped him) seemed to mark the end of their progress, but then Sherlock found he could wriggle through a small window formed by a trunk (full of unboxed Meccano), a chalkboard locked into upright position, and a pair of huge decorative pillars which were too heavy to be shifted. Slithering after him, on his stomach over the trunk and under the board, John got stuck for just a moment, and Sherlock tugged him out by both hands.
They rummaged through trunk after trunk, moved through the attic wardrobe by wardrobe, their finds becoming ever more unlikely; and finally (Finally!) they came to a box which proved to contain (among other things) a racy manuscript which seemed to be a tell-all featuring the Holmes family members circa 1895; a pair of yellowed go-go boots; a creepy crawlers set, all the bottles empty; a bundle of children's writing exercises; an ancient pistol; a Spirograph; a compact encrusted with what John was fairly certain were real diamonds; a View-Master loaded with a Doctor Who disc and; miraculously, Sherlock’s lost sonata.
*****
Enter Lady, with a Taper.
*****
It was very late indeed, but that didn’t mean that the low-level hum of activity had ceased in Mycroft’s makeshift command post which he set up in one of the many parlours of his Uncle’s castle (unlike John, he did not shy away from the correct term) when he was in residence. Time zones, you see, meant that Mycroft tended to work round the clock. There was always something interesting going on somewhere, he found. This was why the dim firelight which suffused the room with warmth was supplemented by the glow of a handful of computer screens, some monitoring the premises, others - well - Mycroft would tell you what they showed, but then he would have to have you killed, of course.
It was late enough, however, that he had loosened his tie and allowed himself to look a bit mussed about the edges. He was sprawled in a wing chair, his usual posture worn away by the stress of the day. He was rather seriously considering taking off his shoes. Even in a houseful of Holmeses it was unlikely that anyone would be seeking him out at this hour. And yet, a flash of movement on one of the screens to his left told him that someone was walking down the hallway toward his position. He arched an eyebrow in curiosity and told the Premier he would ring him back at a more convenient time. Just as he rang off, the door opened and his assistant came in.
She was - he blinked - she was barefoot. Her hair was a dark cloud about her shoulders and she wore a robe of soft blue velvet loosely belted over a satin nightgown of a deeper, richer blue. She looked very much as if she had just slipped out of bed, and in one hand she held a crossbow.
“Bonus not what you thought it should be?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, and set the crossbow down next to the door.
“And you find stalking the halls patrolling for vampiric Holmeses soothing?”
Her eyes sparkled. “Well, I’d call it stimulating actually, but we certainly don’t have to agree on all points.” Witty banter with just a hint of suggestiveness - check. She fluttered her eyelashes a bit and added, “I’m very good with a crossbow.”
“Yes,” Mycroft said uncertainly, drawing the word into more syllables than were usually warranted. “I am aware of that.”
She wondered what he would do if she crawled into his lap.
It turned out that this caused him to jump up as if scalded, making said lap abruptly disappear.
Mycroft stared at the heap of deliciously tousled velvet and satin which had so recently been a rational woman whom he trusted with his life and, rather more importantly, various bits of information which could bring down empires.
“Ouch,” she complained as she glared up at him.
“It would be much simpler if you shot me.”
“Simpler, yes. More fun, no.” She decided to stay on the floor, but folded her legs up more comfortably and shifted a bit so the sofa supported her back.
“Fun? Good god, woman.”
“Mycroft,” she said sternly, “fun is not a naughty word.”
“Hm,” he intoned disbelievingly.
“Besides, shooting you would also be messier.”
“No,” he assured her emphatically, “it would not.”
“Certainly it would, think of the blood.”
He raised a single elegant brow at her.
She rolled her eyes. “This is all your fault,” she told him.
The squeak which emerged in response was so completely adorable that she would have been lost then even if she hadn’t already been dreaming about his laughter, honest laughter without a hint of his normal cynicism.
“My fault?”
“Yes, your fault,” she said crossly, seriously annoyed with him now. “You’re unreasonably attractive when you laugh,” she informed him scathingly.
“I’m - what? What are you talking about? I am never unreasonably anything, I assure you.”
“And when you squeak,” she added angrily.
“I most certainly never squeak!”
“You just did it half a moment ago! It was ridiculously adorable!” she yelled at him.
Inanely he shouted back, “You brought a crossbow!” because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. “And you’re,” he paused, stopped shouting, realized his mouth had gone rather dry. “You’re barefoot.”
Her eyes glinted dangerously for just a second and then she purred, “And do you find that unreasonably attractive?”
Mycroft found that he actually did.
Oh dear.
*****
Enter Murtherers.
*****
After determining that Sherlock wasn’t much the worse for wear following his rehearsal the next morning, John rejoiced in the fact that if was finally, finally time to witness his friend giving the children of the Holmes clan a science tutorial. For the occasion he was even introduced to a new room of the house, the schoolroom. When they arrived, John realized it was set up for a dissection lab. Of course, he thought, the dead bird and the squirrel hunting all suddenly made much more sense. Each desk had a dissection tray, a small container full of pins, and a set of tools; each tray held either a squirrel or rabbit. On the teacher’s desk was the same set-up along with John’s pheasant.
At precisely half past one a stream of children came into the room and after a bit of fuss and noise, settled into the chairs provided. A low buzz of conversation continued until Sherlock cleared his throat and rose to his feet.
“I will be demonstrating the art of dissection using this pheasant. You will then work in pairs to dissect the small mammals you have been provided. This will allow you to see how the insides of the animals are put together and will give you insight into how your own bodies work, how your muscles move your limbs, and the organs it contains. Doctor Watson and I will be on hand to assist you as you work. Does anyone have any questions before we begin?”
Hands shot up all over the room.
Sherlock sternly insisted, “Questions directly related to the dissections we are about to perform.”
About half the hands went down.
“Questions which absolutely cannot wait until you are turned loose on your parents after the dissections are complete.”
After a bit of hesitation and obvious debate, two hands remained.
“Yes. You first.”
“Where did the rabbits come from?”
“The grounds around the house. Now you.”
“You killed them?” The little girl sounded horrified, and John winced.
“Doctor Watson shot the pheasant; he very likely also shot the one you ate at dinner last night. Your cousin Peter Hannay snared the rabbits and yes, I killed the squirrels.”
“How did you kill them?” called an eager little boy out of turn.
“I used a slingshot. Look, none of these questions are relevant so we’re going to begin now. Please direct your attention to me.” He picked up his scalpel. “The opening incision will be very shallow, you simply want to pierce the skin so that you can pull it away and see the inside of the animal. It is a long incision which begins at the base of the throat and runs the length of the body. Because pheasants have a crop just here at the base of the throat,” he propped up his tray to indicate the position of the crop on his bird as he continued, “I will start below that point to avoid spilling out the contents of the bird’s last meal. Neither squirrels nor rabbits have a crop, so you may all begin a bit higher up when you start.”
And Sherlock proceeded to systematically cut up the bird. To John’s complete amazement, none of the children seemed overly uncomfortable (there were a few ‘yicks’ but not many) and exactly none of them fled the room. He demonstrated the correct way to pin the skin back and remove the organs so they could be individually studied and compared, and at the end he unpinned the bird and showed them how muscles could be pulled to make dead limbs move.
It should have been the most grotesque Frankenstein visual you could imagine; the plucked, cut-open body of the bird in stark contrast to the still-glorious plumage of its wings, its head lolling sickeningly, and Sherlock working it like a puppet. Instead it was beautiful; one of Sherlock’s graceful hands cupped the bulk of the creature, the other deftly manipulated some mysterious muscles and, despite its being dead, the bird spread its wings majestically, one last time.
There was a chorus of ‘oh’s and ‘ah’s, proving that it wasn’t only John’s imagination that his friend had somehow managed to transform this experience into something magical for the kids.
Afterwards, John and Sherlock walked up and down, helping tiny hands make tiny cuts in tiny dead animals. It was surreal in the extreme for John; medical school for tots, or some such. They were really fascinated, though; they wanted to understand how everything worked, and taking the tiny bodies apart piece by piece helped them do this. There was a tricky moment when little Suzy’s scalpel dug a bit too deep, but luckily they had an extra rabbit and she and her partner were able to start over.
Once each child was satisfied that there was no further knowledge to be gleaned from his or her tiny, disassembled corpse (Sherlock didn’t rush any of them and he answered each question put to him thoroughly; another amazing aspect of the experience for John) the children cleaned up and filed out, most of them chorusing, “Thank you Cousin Sherlock!” or, “Thank you Doctor Watson!” as they did so.
“That was bloody amazing,” John declared.
“Hm,” Sherlock mused. “This was a rather good lot. The last time I did dissection there were criers; God, I’ll never use kittens again,” he shuddered with disgust.
John paled and said incredulously, “You killed a litter of kittens for a dissection lab you gave to a bunch of under-twelves?”
“Don’t be silly, why would I go to that much effort? The mother died and the kittens didn’t survive.”
*****
Exit crying Murther.
*****
After the dissection lab, they decided it wasn’t too late to head over to King’s Pyland and get in a bit of detecting before dinner, see if they couldn’t suss out the dead man’s reason for taking Silver Blaze out of the stable in the middle of a rainy night.
King’s Pyland was a smaller affair than Mapleton, and Colonel Ross was out and about when they arrived. He eyed John, who glared at him, and observed coolly, “Took your time about it, didn’t you?”
Sherlock decided taking up his previous servile attitude would serve no useful purpose and simply stated, “I’ve come to question John Straker’s wife.”
Ross looked puzzled. “Don’t you want to speak with Edith and Ned?”
“Why the devil would I want to do that? Who are they?”
“They’re the ones who interacted with Simpson! The murderer!”
“Oh, that fellow; no, I’m not interested in him at all.”
Ross looked as if he wanted to hit something, and preferably someone. Incredulously, he asked, “You’re not interested in the murderer?”
In what was (for him) a patient tone, Sherlock explained, “Colonel Ross, the theory that this Simpson character murdered Straker is based upon nothing but circumstantial evidence. The police are free to conduct their investigation based on that assumption. I, however, will base mine on the facts of the case. Now please have me conducted to Mrs Straker.”
Ross sputtered, “But - but they found Simpson’s handkerchief in Straker’s pocket!”
“Hm. That explains that, at least.” When Ross continued to regard him with open-mouthed disbelief, he rolled his eyes and went on, his tone harsh and staccato now, “What precisely do you believe that proves, Colonel? Straker sneezed and Simpson very gallantly offered him the use of his hanky before violently bashing in his skull? Do use your brain. Mrs Straker. Now, if you please.”
Sherlock’s patience had clearly run out, but so had Ross’s. The man turned huffily and strode away from them, calling out for one of his employees to escort them to the Straker residence as he went.
This was how they found themselves in the presence of the recent widow, a woman whose face was haggard and thin and eager, stamped with the print of a recent horror. Somewhat to John’s surprise, Sherlock softened in response to her obvious distress. He gently asked her to tell them about the events leading up to her husband’s disappearance, and it was clear that relating the story yet again was actually soothing at this point and doing so calmed her considerably. By the time she had finished the tale of her husband’s accidentally waking her in the middle of the night and proceeding out into the rain despite her protests, she was steady as a rock, and Sherlock smiled at her approvingly. “Thank you, Mrs Straker, that is immensely helpful.” He hesitated, his smile softened, and then, his tone gone a bit sheepish, asked, “I’m terribly sorry, I’m awful with faces, but haven’t we met before? Surely I met you in Plymouth at a garden-party some little time ago.”
“Plymouth? No, sir; you are mistaken.”
Sherlock frowned. “But I can clearly recall a rather magnificent brooch you were wearing, in the shape of a dove.”
"I never had such a brooch, sir," answered the lady.
"Ah, that quite settles it," said Sherlock. And with an apology they took their leave. John couldn’t see that they’d accomplished anything, but Sherlock seemed satisfied, and he’d certainly not been to Plymouth recently, so there had to have been more to that. Hopefully his partner would be in an explaining sort of mood while they walked back to the estate.
The lad who had been instructed to take them to Mrs Straker had waited during the interview and now walked with them to the edge of the property. Just as they were passing out of the gate, though, Sherlock stopped abruptly and whirled around, eyes wide. “Sheep!” he declared.
The boy looked at John, clearly bewildered. John smiled at him reassuringly, recognizing the signs of his friend slotting something into place in his head.
Sherlock pointed into the distance, where John could just make out a couple of white blotches. They were too far away for him to have automatically assumed these were sheep, but he was willing to take his partner’s word for it. He whirled again, rounding on the boy. “Who tends the sheep?” he demanded, looking much more excited than anyone should when questioning someone about sheep.
“I - I do, sir,” stuttered the boy, and he was rewarded with an approving smile wider than the Sahara.
“Good lad,” said Sherlock, still beaming. “How have they been lately?”
The boy looked mystified, and he shot another glance at John, clearly seeking confirmation his friend was mad. John gave him his best ‘It’s all right, just humour the madman.’ smile.
“Well, fine, sir. They’re - sheep,” he finished a bit helplessly.
Sherlock, as he was wont to do, turned cross in an instant. “Nothing wrong with them recently, then?”
The boy blinked, and actually seemed to think about the question this time. “Oh. Well, yes, I suppose a couple have gone lame recently, but it doesn’t really matter with sheep, sir, so I hadn’t thought much of it.”
And there it was, the expression which he got when he’d solved it, the last piece of the puzzle had been fitted into place. His smile turned approving again, and he actually patted the lad on the head.
“Let’s go, John, we’re done here.” Sherlock practically skipped away, John following in his wake.
It was really delightful to see Sherlock so utterly pleased with himself after the emotional turmoil they’d been experiencing over the last week, and John allowed himself to really enjoy the moment when he gave his friend a chance to show off. “Why’d he do it, then?”
“Oh, John, it’s terribly boring!” he crowed in response, his delighted tone completely belying the words. “He did it for the money! It’s always about money, and money is so terribly boring!”
“And why did he need the money?” John prompted obediently.
“Second wife in Exeter with expensive taste in jewellery.”
“Ah, the brooch.”
“Yes, the brooch which he was still paying off in instalments.”
“Which you knew how?”
“Receipts in his billfold.”
“And the sheep?”
Sherlock laughed. “He was practicing on them.”
“He was going to lame the horse. Of course, I should have put that together when I saw the knife,” John chastised himself.
“Yes, you should have, that bit was fairly obvious,” his friend gloated.
John returned good-naturedly, “You didn’t know until just now.”
“It’s why he took off his coat, close work. He either took a bribe to make sure the favourite didn’t run, or he had some betting scheme set up.”
“But the horse startled,” John said, thinking, “because of the light?”
“Precisely.”
“And kicked him in the head.”
“A perfect reward for his intended actions.”
He thought about the case for a moment as Sherlock continued to hum along happily beside him. “What are we going to do about the innocent man currently sitting in a jail cell?”
“Release him of course. Lestrade will deal with it, though, my plan is to have a bit of fun with our dear Colonel on race day and then I’ll wash my hands of the matter. It really was a boring little case in the end,” he sniffed.
“Mmmm,” John agreed wordlessly. Boring or not, he was glad it had come along when it had.