The Scottish Play - Act V of V
*****
Actus Quintus.
SHERLOCK: Geek interpreter. What’s that?
JOHN: It’s the title.
SHERLOCK: What does it need a title for?
Exit Lady Macduff, crying "Murther!"
Exeunt Murtherers, following her.
*****
Successfully closing out a case seemed to have fortified Sherlock for the next morning’s rehearsal, and John collected him without incident as he headed out to Claude and Grandmère’s cottage.
“Finally! I was beginning to think you were avoiding me and that I would have to work from the sketches I’d already done.”
“No, no,” John said sheepishly. “Sorry, it’s just that we had a case on and that always complicates things, especially time management.”
“Sherlock! You came!” Grandmère bustled in, just pausing to set down the tea tray before embracing her grandson, then John in turn. She then twirled over to the piano where she played and sang a short tune in exuberant French.
Claude gestured to the tea tray. “You can sit and visit, John, I have what I need for the pose and I’ll just be doing studies today, getting your individual features. You’re ready?”
“Yes, go ahead, commence the creepy artistic staring. I can take it.”
“A brave man indeed,” Claude responded with a grin, “to take on all these Holmeses and their creepy artistic staring!”
John grinned back. “I am reliably informed that the group noun for Holmeses is an eccentricity of them.”
“Nonsense, it’s a complication of Holmeses, much more apt.”
“An inconvenience,” put in Sherlock.
“An extrapolation,” offered Grandmère.
“A Gordian bloody knot of Holmeses,” John decided.
“Which you’ve sliced through quite effectively,” Sherlock observed, then asked archly, “Shouldn’t you take off your shirt, John?”
Claude grinned. “No need, Sherlock, I’ve got that down.”
“I think he should take it off in any case,” Grandmère offered as she finished her tune with a flourish.
“Oh, so do I,” drawled Sherlock. “You really can never have too much shirtless John lying about the place.”
John rolled his eyes. “I’m not stripping off purely for your amusement. If Claude has what he needs I’ll keep my shirt on, thanks very much.”
Grandmère laughed and bounced over to the sofa nearest the tea tray. “Come, Sherlock, sit and keep us both out of trouble by telling me a story. Tell me about one of your cases, they’re always so exciting!”
“Hm. Which one shall we tell her about, John? What haven’t you written up recently?” Instead of sitting he strode across the room and plucked an apple from a bowl of fruit. He hesitated, took two more and tossed the first into the air, then with an air of laziness about it, began to juggle them.
Startled by the revelation of his possessing this skill, John answered distractedly, “I don’t - oh, do you read the blog, Grandmère?”
“Even Grandmères have laptops these days, Doctor.”
John blinked. “Right, I suppose so. Erm, let’s see, what’ve we been up to? There was the weird blue dress thing, and the redheaded bloke,” he offered.
Sherlock, however, waved his hand dismissively. “Boring.”
“Hm, okay, what about Violet Smith, the cyclist and all her suitors?”
His friend perked up. “Oh, yes that one did get exciting toward the end, didn’t it? Let’s do that one.”
“Right, well, this girl shows up at the flat one day, but we’ve actually been rather busy lately and at the time Sherlock was already in the middle of the Harden case.”
Sherlock interrupted, “But John insisted we hear her out; I suspect this had more than a little to do with her physical charms.” He underscored this statement by tossing one of the apples at John, who caught it neatly.
“She wouldn’t go away!” He tossed the apple back, and it was smoothly reincorporated into Sherlock’s rhythm. “Believe me, I offered to help her myself, but she insisted on seeing you.”
“As well she should have,” he preened.
“Yes, yes, you’re the brains of the operation; I’m well aware. So, anyway, she tells us that she and her mother are on their own, father died years ago. Up until a few months prior, she’d been working as a nanny in London but had been persuaded to take a better-paying job out near Farnham in Surrey and she’d been coming back to town on weekends to see her mother.”
Sherlock cut in and took over. “The circumstances under which she accepted the new position were odd. Months before this, nearly a year in fact, she had been contacted on one of those useless websites -,”
“Facebook,” John filled in and protested, “You love facebook, you use it all the time for cases.”
Sherlock took no notice of this aside. “-by someone who was claiming to be her dead father’s brother who had emigrated to Australia twenty years earlier and hadn’t been heard from since.” He plucked a china shepherdess from a dainty shelf and added her to the spin of apples.
“Now, honestly, who believes that story?” Grandmère snorted.
“Exactly,” concurred John. “But as it turns out, there was some truth to the tale. There really was an uncle, and he was rich.”
“Really?” Grandmère commented, “They never turn out to be actually rich!”
“This one was, really loaded.”
“Yes,” Sherlock allowed, eyes on apples and shepherdess, “but our inestimable Miss Smith was not yet aware that her uncle was in possession of a fortune. The man himself was not doing most of the actual communicating you see. He had been persuaded by two young ruffians of his acquaintance that he should make virtual contact with his niece -,”
“And heir,” John put in, “as he was a grumpy old sort who didn’t trust lawyers.”
“And did not, therefore, have a will, rendering his nearest relation heir to his fortune,” Sherlock re-hijacked the tale. “It wasn’t at all surprising that the old gentleman wouldn’t be familiar with computers. So the situation as it stood was that Miss Smith was being digitally wooed with a variant on the Cyrano model. These two young men, Woodley and Carruthers, acted as go-betweens but they very carefully didn’t mention anything about money and advised the uncle to avoid the subject as well in his rare direct communication with her. They informed him that the internet lent itself to financial frauds and that Miss Smith might be made uncomfortable if money was brought into their correspondence.”
“The bounders!” exclaimed Claude.
“Indeed,” said Sherlock. A decorative ceramic lemon joined his miniature circus ring. “Though of course in their communications with Miss Smith they were the very picture of helpfulness and good cheer, sending her digital media they’d acquired and emails containing what are imagined by some people to be funny jokes.”
“Then, after they’d gained her trust by keeping up the virtual relationship for almost a year, they hit her with the whammy that they were moving to England,” said John.
“Oh dear, that’s not good,” said Grandmère with concern in her voice.
“Certainly not,” said Sherlock. “But Miss Smith had been successfully lulled into believing these two scoundrels friendly and agreed that once they were back in the country she would be happy to meet her uncle’s good friends in person.” A Russian nesting doll was taken from its place and set in motion.
“Luckily, Miss Smith wasn’t silly enough to go and meet them on her own.”
“John, you see, was - out - of - luck.” He emphasized each word by tossing an apple at his friend, leaving just the colourful trinkets going round and round in the air. “The lady was already engaged to be married.”
“Me?” He took a bite out of one of the apples and asked around it, “What about the two blokes who were after her for her uncle’s fortune?”
“Yes, it was quite a hurdle for them as well.”
“So the four of them met up in a London pub; Miss Smith, her fiance Cyril Morton, Woodley and Carruthers.”
Sherlock picked up a teacup from the sideboard and tossed it into the air.
“Careful with that one, dear, it’s the last of Great-Grandmother’s wedding china,” Grandmère put in calmly.
Sherlock smiled at her fondly and added a compass which had been sitting beside it. He took up the story. “During the course of the evening Woodley, with the assistance of copious amounts of bitter, betrayed his nature as that of a scoundrel and earned himself a black eye and a split lip courtesy of Morton.”
“Carruthers did better,” John said. “With lots of apologies and a promise that he’d keep Woodley away from her, he managed to keep in Miss Smith’s good graces.”
Sherlock swapped out the china shepherdess for a pair of embroidery shears. “So much so, in fact, that three months later he convinced her to quit her job and become nanny to his own child.”
“He won over Morton because the couple is saving up for the wedding, and Carruthers is paying her twice what she was earning in London, and offering affordable room and board in a separate cottage next to his house. So this is where we came in, and where it starts to get dodgy.”
“Oh my, how exciting!” Grandmère bounced a bit on the sofa.
Sherlock added a small brass terrier to his floating collection. “We’d already been informed that Miss Smith was travelling back to town each weekend to see her mother. Now she went on to confirm that she has always been an avid cyclist and so it was the most natural thing in the world for her to cycle to and from the train station on this commute.” He put the lemon down and plucked a jade Buddha from its resting place.
“Two weeks before her visit to us, she happened to look back and see that she was being followed by another bicycle. This was strange because since she had moved she had realized how few neighbours Carruthers had out there. It was odd to be running into anyone at all, much less find someone taking the same route she was on. Then, the same bloke appeared when she came down from London to go back to work, so she knew it couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. It wasn’t as if the man had been on her train, he was just following her on her route between Carruther’s place and the station, then back again.”
The teacup was swapped out for a small brass oil lamp, and the terrier for a gorgeous inlaid netsuke. “She acted quite sensibly,” Sherlock allowed. “She slowed down, speeded up, tried to catch a closer look at a crossroad, but her efforts were unsuccessful.”
“The next week, the same thing happened when she cycled to the station. She got so frustrated that she came straight to us from the train that Saturday and refused to take no for an answer.”
“I, of course, was engrossed in the Harden matter, so I sent John down to observe her trip back on Monday.” Swiftly, he replaced the objects one by one, each to its proper place and then started again with a set of six turkish coffee cups, all soon circling in the air before him.
“Everything was exactly as she said it was. He was following her when she reached my hiding spot. She was so annoyed by that point that she had a little run at him, but still couldn’t get a good look at his face. The bloke disappeared completely after following her from the station.”
“Yes,” Sherlock remarked witheringly, “he came back with that enlightening information.” One cup became a small cut glass bowl.
“Now look, Sherlock, you specifically told me to conceal myself. You then told me to use my own judgement, and I decided that haring all over the countryside asking questions and attracting attention was a bad idea. What was I even supposed to ask people? You’d all but said it had to be an admirer from her past, and none of them was going to be living out there in the middle of nowhere.”
“John, please, the only conceivable place the bicyclist could have been disappearing to was the grounds of Charlington Hall.” The second cup became a perfume bottle.
Claude and Grandmère exchanged a fond look and tried to hide their matching amused smiles.
“Yes,” he returned just barely patiently, “and we’d covered that beforehand as well, and I’d poked round a bit, but there was nothing obviously to be done to determine who was in residence without marching up to the place, ringing the bell and asking.”
“Sometimes, John, you display a truly startling lack of imagination. It really is one of your only faults.” The third cup became a jewelled dagger; sheathed, John was glad to note.
He threw up his hands. “Well, anyway, Grandmère, what your oh-so-superior grandson is implying is that I should have had the brilliant notion of going down the local and chatting up the barmaid.”
“Which I then proceeded to do with much more useful results. I learned that the gentleman in residence at the Hall goes by the name of Williamson and he was possibly a defrocked priest.” The fourth cup became one of Claude’s charcoal sticks.
“You then got into a barney with Woodley before you could discover any more, other than the fact that he’d been down to visit the Hall.”
Sherlock sniffed. “I won the barney, and learning that Woodley was in the vicinity told me all I needed to know to move forward with the case.” The fifth cup became a very large, gaudy-looking ring.
John decided it wasn’t worth arguing the point. “The next day we got an email from Miss Smith. It turns out that her new boss, Carruthers, had finally made his play. He’d sat her down, explained that he’d fallen in love with her and wanted her to consider breaking off her engagement to Morton to give him a chance to win her over.”
“She, I believe the phrase is, ‘tried to let him down gently’. He’d taken it fairly well, and she had agreed to see out the week, but after that would be moving back to London as she felt things would be a bit strained after that revelation.” The sixth cup became a small Wedgewood vase.
“By now, of course, Sherlock had worked out what was going on with Woodley, Carruthers and the uncle, and the fact that Woodley was still on the scene was bad news.”
“My texts to Miss Smith were going unanswered, so it seemed prudent to go down yet again and check on her.” He began to work his way backwards, reclaiming the cups from their various positions about the room.
“And what did you find?” asked Grandmère eagerly, clapping her hands with excitement.
“Grandmère,” Sherlock drawled, “you really won’t believe it. Woodley had proven more of an idiot than even I could have predicted.” Neatly, he took the six whirling cups and one-by-one replaced them onto the matching tray from which he had originally plucked them, circling the pot.
“He’d kidnapped her,” John revealed.
“Good god!” exclaimed Claude, and Grandmère let out a shocked gasp.
Sherlock had taken up another set of nesting dolls, a bit larger than the one he’d included in his routine earlier, and proceeded to take out the individual pieces. He set them into motion, a whirling circle of red and gold as he continued, “Even more ridiculous, he believed he could actually force her to marry him and that the marriage would be legal. Have you ever heard anything so utterly stupid?”
“We knocked up Carruthers, who confirmed our suspicions and revealed that he was our mysterious cyclist. He’d been following Miss Smith because he knew Woodley was in the neighborhood.”
“When we discovered that she was indeed missing, the three of us stormed the Hall and found Woodley physically restraining a gagged Miss Smith as the villain forced her to go through a farce of a marriage ceremony.”
“You remember the defrocked priest?” asked John. Claude and Grandmère nodded. “Utterly insane, he was. He’d convinced Woodley he could perform a legally binding marriage.”
Sherlock rolled his eyes and said sarcastically, “But, John, they had a license, what more could they have needed?”
John laughed. “Right. Aside from a willing bride, you mean?”
“How the devil did they get a license?” demanded Claude.
“A forgery, Uncle Claude. Just something to wave around in front of Miss Smith’s nose.”
“Who was furious, by the way. She wasn’t fooled for a second, of course, knew she wasn’t in any danger of ending up married.”
Sherlock apparently got bored with the dolls and set them down in a line, largest to smallest. He paused in order to announce dramatically, “She was surprised when Carruthers shot Woodley, though.”
“Shot him! Oh my,” exclaimed Grandmère.
“Mmmm,” mused Sherlock, “it seems he fell in love with her somewhere along the way.”
“Oh, splendid,” Grandmère declared. “What are you going to call it on the blog?”
“Hm. I don’t know; The Suspicious Cyclist, maybe?”
Sherlock rolled his eyes, but forbore to comment.
*****
Musicke. The Witches Dance, and vanish.
*****
On Christmas Eve night, the quartet performed Bartók’s quartets four and two for a small but appreciative audience. John, of course, attended, and he was joined by Lionel and Jean as well as Marshall from the shoot, who he learned was married to the cello player. Grandmère and Claude had come up to the house especially for the concert, and the Hannay contingent of Richard, Mary and Peter was fully represented. Viola and Hannibal were rather notably absent, but Grandmother was in attendance. Claire of the Beatles conversation and the tweedy-looking taxidermist also turned up, as well as a few people John had not previously encountered.
As soon as the music began, John cursed himself for not simply attending one of the rehearsals. Lapsed amateur clarinettist though he was, even he could understand how the cacophony which was the work of Béla Bartók could stir up the emotions of someone as sensitive to music as Sherlock. It wasn’t bad, far from it; despite its tendency to shriek at times, it was quite beautiful, but it was also an emotional fistfight waiting to happen. The instruments argued amongst each other in full voice at times, and of course Sherlock’s brain - as wide open to music as it was firmly shut to so many other things - had got itself caught up in the musical back and forth, to and fro of it all.
Already unsettled over John’s pain and grief; on edge because of his parents’ presence; it was no wonder he’d fallen prey to the emotions of the music and - basically - flipped out in a spectacular fashion. Well, he reflected, at least he could stop being quite so worried about his friend now. The situation had been a perfect storm of sorts and things should go back to (well, their particular flavour of) normal once they got home. He wouldn’t actually have to set up some elaborate, Pythonesque scheme to try and trick Sherlock into speaking with a therapist, thank christ.
Though he was inclined to hold a grudge, the music won him over in the end. All the musicians seemed to be enjoying themselves while playing, and in a startling display of just what made Bartók’s work so original and delightful, there came a movement when all four of them put down their bows and plucked their way through it. It was amazing, like nothing else John had ever seen or heard.
When the performance had come to an end, Grandmother stood up dramatically and bestowed praise upon each of the members of the quartet, paying especial attention to Sherlock, in John’s view. She then joined John, Claude and Grandmère where they were seated. “I saw Hannibal and Viola off this morning,” she remarked conversationally.
“Oh, did you?” John inquired innocently.
Grandmother smiled a Cheshire Cat smile and purred, “Yes. It was quite the illuminating interlude.” She turned to Claude and Grandmère, who were looking curious. “I’m afraid Viola was quite distressed,” she informed them.
“That’s not terribly unusual,” Claude observed.
“No,” Grandmother agreed, “but in this case I would have to say she was quite justified.” She smiled again.
Grandmère rolled her eyes and prompted, “Do tell us why, Florence dear.”
Grandmother looked over at John, who was maintaining an air of polite expectancy.
“It seems Hannibal took one of the cars out and had a bit of a smash up.”
“Again?” commented Claude drily.
“Yes,” purred Grandmother. “He was rather banged up as a result.”
“Hm,” observed Grandmère.
“That’s too bad,” commiserated John soberly. “He should really be more careful.”
“Yes, he really should, you’re very right Doctor.” She paused, and beamed a smile at him. “We’re so glad you were able to attend our little gathering this year. I must say that the results have proven simply smashing. Your presence is very much appreciated.”
“Grandmother, your hospitality has been boundless and I can honestly say I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” John told her sincerely.
She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, and John felt warm, safe and completely happy for the first time in a very long while.
After they had drunk a Holiday toast, the audience slowly dispersed. Among the last to leave were Forrester and Carlton, the former absolutely replete from having done justice to his god. Carlton petted him fondly, as one does a purring cat, then bundled him off to bed.
John found himself in the relatively congenial company of Sherlock, Mycroft and Not Anthea; he briefly considered trying once more to find out what her name actually was, and wondered if Mycroft knew.
Then she got up and very deliberately curled herself cosily into Mycroft’s lap.
John gaped and his brain sputtered in protest.
Mycroft?
The universe was having him on, it had to be.
Half the people alive thought he, John Watson, was shagging (also engaged to, his brain reminded him) Sherlock, and Mycroft ended up getting the girl?
Mycroft????
For his part, Mycroft was feeling unsettled about this turn of events as well. It wasn’t every day that one found oneself very clearly claimed as he had been that night in the parlour cum command centre. He was still sorting out the consequences and new obligations which came along with the insertion into one’s life of a beautiful, intelligent, crossbow-wielding mistress who demanded foot rubs rather more regularly than one would have imagined she might, if one had previously given it any thought.
His chief concern was currently the absence of an appropriate holiday gift, and he had already had several panicky moments as he had attempted to order up some emergency fire opals from Guadalajara, Hanadama Grade pearls from Tokyo, several bolts of the finest hand-woven silk China had to offer, and an Arabian stallion - without the use of his assistant’s Blackberry (He wasn’t fooling anyone. She knew. He knew she knew. She knew he knew she knew. She was very excited about the silk; she had plans for it, naughty ones.).
What fussed him even more, however, was the fact that these were so clearly panic offerings. A good gift, a really good gift, was so very hard to give someone. It needed to take into account not only what the recipient believed she wanted, but also what she actually wanted; it must reflect the thought and care the giver had invested in choosing the gift. It should be something which would make her smile and think of him each time her eyes fell upon it or sought it out. The thing which angered Mycroft was that he was one of the few people in the world who could be bothered to offer up this sort of gift, one which would be appreciated and cherished, but there was simply no time in this case.
There was no time to arrange to relocate the Mona Lisa so that every day he could show her how much more beautiful she was. There was no time to fly to Rome and prowl through the antique shops until he was able to locate a perfectly preserved marble statuette, a lost work by one of the Masters to adorn her desk and delight her eye. There was no time to hunt down the piece by Faberge which featured jewels precisely matching her eyes. There was no time to secure a first edition of Burns from which they could trade off reading to each other.
And so he was reduced to this, giving a panic gift as his first offering at her altar. He was honestly ashamed of himself. He would do better next year; he promised himself that, and in the meantime he would make it up to her with gifts for waking up beside him and gifts for remembering to order his salads without tomatoes; he would present her with gifts for unsnarling the knot of his daily appointments without complaint and gifts for rolling her eyes when he asked her one more time how the v-lookup nested within an if-statement worked; he would offer up gifts for the way she scrunched up her nose when she was honestly considering shooting someone and gifts for not actually shooting most of them; also gifts for the ones she did shoot. He was going to have to start a spread sheet so that he didn’t duplicate himself.
Across the room, Sherlock was thinking deep thoughts; like his brother, they were leading him in a gifty sort of direction, but that was mostly a coincidence caused by the impending holiday. He started by thinking about the chance remark which had brought John into his life. ‘I must be a difficult man to find a flatmate for.’ He didn’t remember if those had been his exact words, but whatever they had been he thanked Science he had uttered them at exactly the right time and place, and that John had done the same. This led him to consider how very true those fateful words had been. Sherlock was perfectly aware that his simple occupation of the flat (not to even mention case-related activities) put John in constant danger of torture, accidental (All right, there was also the possibility of deliberate, but not by Sherlock himself!) poisoning; being shot at, stabbed, taken hostage, or exploded - the possibilities were endless, really.
And John put up with it all. He put up with the body parts in the fridge and in the tub and in the microwave. He put up with the sulks and the drama and the showing off. He had even managed to put up with Sherlock’s knocking over the blocks of their home and then forgiven him for it.
Tomorrow was Christmas.
If anyone in the world deserved a present, it was John.
He thought about it. He really did; he focused his entire brain on the problem of what gift it would be best to give John, because when Sherlock did something he did it correctly and exceptionally well. It didn’t actually take very long for him to crack it, and in just a few minutes he was striding across the room to where John sat looking gobsmacked and staring at Mycroft, who seemed to have acquired an innamorata.
“Paper, John,” he snapped.
His partner looked up, startled. “Oh.” He pulled out his ever-present notebook and pen and handed them to Sherlock.
He dashed off the note, stuck the pen in the book to mark the page, and handed it back to him. “I’m going up to bed. Are you staying up or will you walk with me?”
He glanced back at Mycroft and his lapful of Not Anthea, quickly averted his eyes, and stood up. “Going with you, definitely. Let’s go, right now in fact, move.” He gave Sherlock a bit of a shove, and they were out the door.
As had become routine, John hugged an extremely amused Sherlock firmly before they went into their separate bedrooms.
It wasn’t until he put his notebook down in order to begin undressing that John recalled Sherlock hadn’t torn out the page he’d written on. Curious, he opened the notebook.
His friend had written:
I, Sherlock Holmes, do promise to relieve John Watson of the chore of a single trip to the shop in order to get in groceries and supplies for the flat at 221B Baker Street. I will undertake this endeavour, without question, at whatever time I am instructed to do so by John Watson .
Happy Christmas, John.
*****
Enter a Doctor of Physicke, and a Wayting Gentlewoman.
*****
On the morning of Boxing Day, John was reading the paper in the library when a large group of people, buzzing with purpose, came in and assumed various positions of expectant attentiveness. Persons of the elderly persuasion were given the privilege of the proper seats and the younger specimens draped themselves artfully on sofa arms or sprawled on the carpet; one man seated himself in the middle of a round table and several others quickly joined him on his perch. John recognized most of these people in passing; the triplets were there as well as an indulgent-looking Richard who had given him a placid nod of greeting. Not Anthea had perched herself on the arm of the chair Richard was occupying and her Blackberry had reappeared. After a moment, he put together the thought that the group seemed to be made up of those who had been mostly absent from the activities and more concerned with rushing about from room to room and declaiming lines as they paced the halls. These were the actors.
After a few minutes, during which he finished the article he was reading, tiny Grandmother swept in at the head of a parade of others, and John realized that this was the most people he’d seen in one place since they’d arrived, the only exception being around the gargantuan dining table. Grandmother settled herself into her chair and the flood of people who had followed her in fitted themselves into the room wherever they could. John congratulated himself on his foresight in securing a seat, then realized that since he’d had no expectation of the library suddenly flooding full of people, the sentiment was rather misplaced.
Grandmother cleared her throat expectantly, and silence immediately fell. John’s paper made a little rippling noise that resounded like Big Ben’s toll in the wake of this invisible mute button having been pushed. All eyes turned to him. “Sorry! Sorry, I’ll just…” He folded the paper quickly and set it down on the table next to him. “Sorry!” he added for good measure.
Grandmother proclaimed, “Don’t be silly, Doctor. I’m so glad to see you here. I wasn’t sure how much interest you’ve been taking in our Production since your arrival.”
“Oh, erm, great interest; lots of interest on my part, of course.”
“Excellent. I am so pleased to hear it.” The tiny, ancient woman beamed at him. Then, with an air of getting on with things, she crisply opened the leather-bound book she held on her lap. She spoke in ringing tones which reached every eager ear in the room.
“As we will all experience this evening, I believe this year’s Production has proven truly inspired. It is an excellent example of its kind. And so, we now turn to the future. We look forward to next year and the improvements we will all make during that time before we gather here again to celebrate the Bard and his works. As is traditional, I have chosen a comedy to follow a tragedy.”
The atmosphere in the room was heavy with anticipation and it made John feel a little nervous for some reason. He wished someone would laugh and break the tension, but the extended Holmes clan was not treating what was going on in this room with even the slightest bit of levity. He shifted unconsciously in his chair.
“The coming year will see us exploring the genius of -,” It seemed the entire room leaned toward her in excited anticipation. “Much Ado About Nothing.” The result of this pronouncement was thunderous applause. John joined in since he would have been the only one not clapping if he hadn’t.
After allowing the enthusiasm of her audience to die away slightly, she continued, “And we will set this masterpiece in the milieu of the Regency period. There was more applause, though not quite as much as before.
Grandmother smiled happily as she surveyed her enthralled audience. She cleared her throat again, and everything else stilled in response. “Now, since he has confirmed his interest in our endeavour, and being a soldier himself, I wondered if our own Doctor Watson might condescend to accept the role of Benedick. I believe this would emphasize the warm welcome we wish to extend to him in joining the family and taking such good care of our Sherlock.”
The room buzzed with whispers and gasps and bursts of scattered applause, and all eyes turned once again to him. Mycroft, who he hadn’t noticed was present until now, cleared his throat and began, “Grandmother -,” but John’s mind was already racing and it very definitely didn’t seem like something he ought to refuse, so he broke in and assured everyone, “I’d be happy to. Love to, in fact. Much Ado, great show. That’s a really warm gesture, thanks!”
Grandmother beamed at him again. “Wonderful. Now then - ,”
Mycroft’s tone was gentle when he cut her off, “Sherlock, do come in. John has just kindly agreed to play Benedick in next year’s Production.”
Sherlock, who had apparently either been passing the door or intending to join this mass gathering, was framed in the doorway and went completely still for a split second; his eyes grew wide. “Oh, John, no; you don’t have to do that.”
“No, no. I want to,” he assured his friend.
In response, Sherlock began picking his way across the room, looking like a giant water bug as miniscule patches of floor were uncovered by shifted hands and knees to allow his progress on tiptoe. “No, really, John. It would be better if you ceded the honour to someone else.”
He reached John’s side and dropped awkwardly into a crouch next to his chair. John leaned over slightly and hissed in his ear, “It’s a warm gesture in order to welcome me to the family, you git. I can’t just say no.”
Just as intensely, Sherlock insisted, “You really don’t want to do this, John, trust me. It’s quite elaborate; everyone takes it extremely seriously.”
John rolled his eyes. “I will read the play a couple of times beforehand, you know. I’m not an idiot; I know the story, this isn’t a big deal. I don’t get stage fright; we put on a panto in uni once.” When Sherlock didn’t look convinced, he continued reassuringly, “Honestly, it’s fine if they want to put a sword belt round my waist for a couple of hours and product into my hair. I can’t respond to ‘welcome to the family’ with ‘bugger off, thanks but no thanks’; it’s your Great Gran for heaven’s sake, Sherlock!”
Sherlock regarded him intently for a moment and then his eyes lit with humour. For a second, John thought he might giggle. He certainly spoke through a bit of one when he asked, “You’re determined, then? Nothing I say will convince you otherwise?”
“Yes, I am determined; and no, you cannot talk me out of it,” he responded with finality.
Sherlock nodded. “Very well.” John noticed that his mouth twitched into an amused grin. He rose to his feet and placed his hand over his heart before announcing, “I humbly request the role of Beatrice.” This caused more excited buzzing noises, whispered speculation and gasps of surprise.
“Hang on!” John stood up. “I’d quite like a girl for that, if you please.”
“No, I’m very sorry, John, but it’s the only practicable way the thing can be done. You’ll need to rehearse with your Beatrice and I am the only one who could conceivably spend enough time with you to do so.”
“You’re off your trolley.”
Grandmother made a bid to regain control of the room. “Sherlock is correct. The roles of Benedick and Beatrice should go to persons who will have ample time to rehearse together. You are awarded the role, Sherlock, based upon both this pragmatic concern as well as your excellent and skilled Ophelia.” Sherlock bowed dramatically to the praise and the sprinkling of applause which broke out, apparently in remembrance of his Ophelia.
John suddenly wondered precisely how badly - and what, exactly - he had just cocked up.
*****
Thunder and Lightning. Enter three Witches.
*****
Dinner that evening was early and the fare was light compared to what had been on offer previous days. When John remarked on this, Sherlock supplied, “There will be another light meal served after the Production.”
The dining room was suffused with an air of keen anticipation, and the conversation was largely concerned with The Scottish Play. When the meal drifted to a close, the actors bustled off, and John and Sherlock ended up in one of the drawing rooms where they were recruited for a game of Charades - by someone who really should have known better.
“No, no, you blithering idiot! How could it be Black Beauty when he’s clearly indicated it takes place in Japan?”
“Sherlock, calm down. It’s just a game.”
“It’s a game for blithering idiots!”
“Well, yes, and right now we’re playing at being blithering idiots. Go on, try that scenario for a while. See how it feels to you.”
John was saved from having to find out how that would go over for any length of time when the clock chimed the quarter hour before nine. Instantly, everyone in the room stood and moved toward the door. There was a bit of a rush and a bottleneck as they all streamed out of the room. Sherlock and John lingered, allowing the congestion to clear before Sherlock rose to his feet. “Come on then, it’s sure to be good.”
He, quite surprisingly, led John to the front entrance. “Is it outside, then?”
“Yes, the theatre is beyond the maze.”
“There’s an actual theatre?” He’d been feeling increasingly nervous about all this since Sherlock’s scene in the library.
“Of course. They take it quite seriously, as I said.”
The remark was made in an ‘all innocence’ sort of manner and it did nothing to put John at ease.
The path was lit with fairy lights and as they approached the building groups of small children could be seen chasing each other among the young trees that surrounded it. It was a reproduction of The Globe. John knew this because he had seen a production at the one in London once, a handful of girlfriends ago. He gaped and unconsciously stopped in his tracks.
After a stunned moment, he realized a giggling Sherlock was plucking at his sleeve. “John, come on, we don’t want to be late; there won’t be any seats left.” He allowed himself to be propelled into the theatre and inserted into a seat.
Hazily, he took in the buzzing audience (Gordian bloody knot) of elegantly attired Holmeses. “You bastard,” he breathed. “You utter bastard. Seriously? They take it seriously? You failed to mention that they erected the bloody Globe in the back garden!”
Beside him, Sherlock snickered, but had the grace to muffle the sound with a hand. “You were quite determined, remember.”
The lights which had been softly illuminating the house blinked twice then went out.
John jumped in his seat when there was, out of nowhere, a violent CRACK of thunder followed by a blinding flash of lightning. A torrent of rain drenched the stage and a strong wind howled and pulled at the entire building as the glorious blond triplets, costumed in bits of fur and madly-coloured feathers pinned to skin-tight cat suits, crawled across the stage from opposing corners to meet in the middle, calling out their lines in defiance of the storm that battered at them and the rain which caused their hair to hang stringily in their faces. They clutched at each other and rose as one to stridently declare in unison, “There to meet with MacBeth!” The storm stopped instantly.
John’s throat went dry as Afghanistan. “Good production value there,” Sherlock whispered into his ear, and there was laughter in his voice, the bastard.
It only got worse.
Not Anthea made a truly terrifying Lady MacBeth. The murderous glint in her eyes as she declaimed, “Yet do I fear thy nature; it is too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way,” made John unconsciously reach for the pistol he didn’t have on him. He had absolutely no idea how it was done, but Birnam Bloody Wood came, and the ghost of Banquo was actually transparent; he knew this because MacBeth had thrust his hand through his chest. Even Richard, previously such a brother-in-arms, now betrayed him by laying on a MacDuff which an Olivier would not have scorned to praise. During the course of the Production, John accepted the fact that he was utterly fucked.
Sherlock, the bastard, giggled the entire walk back to the house. “Oh, don’t worry, John, that panto you did in uni will stand you in excellent stead. I’m not at all worried about your keeping up your end.”
“Neither am I, as I’m planning to find some unemployed West End swot and pay him to take my place.”
“Oh, come now, it will be fun. We’ll dress you in regimentals, put some product in your hair, a sword in your hand and you’ll be off and running.”
“Ha bloody ha, Sherlock. It’s a good thing we’ve been cast in a comedy; you’d be wasted in anything else.”
“It will be fine, John. We just need to prepare properly.”
The light meal which was served back at the house did nothing to allay John’s anxiety. Belatedly, he realized that at some point a programme (done in glossy full colour and containing actual adverts) had been thrust at him and he dazedly made the discovery that it included a feedback form. These were collected during the meal and afterwards Sherlock gleefully (the sodding bastard) steered him into the large parlour off the dining room - and then there was a Discussion of the Production.
Not Anthea was praised to the heavens, and the decision to set the play in an anonymous, emo-gothic-sort-of time and place which featured a stark black backdrop was (he got the feeling not for the first time) hotly criticised and just as hotly defended. Someone pointed out that the lighting had been slightly off during one of MacBeth’s soliloquies, and someone else remarked that the costuming had been superb this year before cattily sniping, “with the exception of Hecate’s headdress, of course.” The item in question had fallen apart rather spectacularly during her second appearance on stage. The blocking (whatever that was - it seemed to have to do with choreography, John thought hazily) of the opening scene met with approval while the same of the combat scene at the end was sharply torn apart.
All of this swirled around in John’s head, whipping up a growing whirlpool of terror. When MacBeth was called upon to defend his choice to play his character with a pronounced limp and he launched into an extemporaneous speech about historical accuracy and the code of the warrior, John abruptly stood up and practically ran from the room. He walked far enough that the ringing tones of MacBeth’s defence faded to nothing, then turned to the nearest wall in an attempt to ground himself; the cool of the plaster felt like heaven against his forehead.
After a moment, he realized someone was rubbing reassuring circles on his back. Sherlock, of course.
“You don’t have to do it.”
He sighed, taking the opportunity to pull a good deal of oxygen into his lungs. “Of course I have to do it. But I’m not bloody defending any bleeding limp!”
“John -,”
“No, don’t bother. I agreed to do it, and it’s your Great Gran for heaven’s sake. And -,” he paused, turning to look his friend in the eye. “It’s family, Sherlock. I feel connected to a family again for the first time in a very, very long time. It’s Grandmère and Claude and Richard and Peter, and I like them all. Even Mycroft bloody told me what I needed to know for once.” He snorted in disbelief. “And you know how unbelievably rare that is! We’re now apparently actually united in protecting you from your parents.”
Sherlock digested this. Thoughtfully, he responded, “How long, I wonder, has it been since I gained another brother? I unfortunately failed to note the exact moment.”
John smiled ruefully. “I’m afraid I did too. It seems we’ll never know for certain.”
“Do try to continue to be more useful than Mycroft.”
He sighed another deep sigh, then pushed himself away from the wall and started walking back the way he had come. “Let’s get back in there. I need to know what to expect.”
“You are the very bravest of men, John Watson.”
“At least when I invaded Afghanistan they gave me a gun. I don’t even know what they should issue someone infiltrating the Holmes family.”
“Alexander’s sword, of course. How does it feel to be the ruler of all Asia?”
“Hm. It’ll feel better once I start to see the profits rolling in from all those little plastic things they export.”
“Oh dear, I suppose now we’ll need a pre-nuptial agreement. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m marrying you for your money.”
John laughed, and that set Sherlock off as well, so they giggled all the way back down the hallway.
*****
Flourish. Exeunt Omnes.
FINIS.
*****
Thanks for coming along for the ride! The next part of this is still currently a WIP, but if this does not put you off you can continue along by hopping over here http://impulsereader.livejournal.com/51479.html and keeping up with Sherlock and John's prep work for their roles. :-)
Actus Quintus.
SHERLOCK: Geek interpreter. What’s that?
JOHN: It’s the title.
SHERLOCK: What does it need a title for?
Exit Lady Macduff, crying "Murther!"
Exeunt Murtherers, following her.
*****
Successfully closing out a case seemed to have fortified Sherlock for the next morning’s rehearsal, and John collected him without incident as he headed out to Claude and Grandmère’s cottage.
“Finally! I was beginning to think you were avoiding me and that I would have to work from the sketches I’d already done.”
“No, no,” John said sheepishly. “Sorry, it’s just that we had a case on and that always complicates things, especially time management.”
“Sherlock! You came!” Grandmère bustled in, just pausing to set down the tea tray before embracing her grandson, then John in turn. She then twirled over to the piano where she played and sang a short tune in exuberant French.
Claude gestured to the tea tray. “You can sit and visit, John, I have what I need for the pose and I’ll just be doing studies today, getting your individual features. You’re ready?”
“Yes, go ahead, commence the creepy artistic staring. I can take it.”
“A brave man indeed,” Claude responded with a grin, “to take on all these Holmeses and their creepy artistic staring!”
John grinned back. “I am reliably informed that the group noun for Holmeses is an eccentricity of them.”
“Nonsense, it’s a complication of Holmeses, much more apt.”
“An inconvenience,” put in Sherlock.
“An extrapolation,” offered Grandmère.
“A Gordian bloody knot of Holmeses,” John decided.
“Which you’ve sliced through quite effectively,” Sherlock observed, then asked archly, “Shouldn’t you take off your shirt, John?”
Claude grinned. “No need, Sherlock, I’ve got that down.”
“I think he should take it off in any case,” Grandmère offered as she finished her tune with a flourish.
“Oh, so do I,” drawled Sherlock. “You really can never have too much shirtless John lying about the place.”
John rolled his eyes. “I’m not stripping off purely for your amusement. If Claude has what he needs I’ll keep my shirt on, thanks very much.”
Grandmère laughed and bounced over to the sofa nearest the tea tray. “Come, Sherlock, sit and keep us both out of trouble by telling me a story. Tell me about one of your cases, they’re always so exciting!”
“Hm. Which one shall we tell her about, John? What haven’t you written up recently?” Instead of sitting he strode across the room and plucked an apple from a bowl of fruit. He hesitated, took two more and tossed the first into the air, then with an air of laziness about it, began to juggle them.
Startled by the revelation of his possessing this skill, John answered distractedly, “I don’t - oh, do you read the blog, Grandmère?”
“Even Grandmères have laptops these days, Doctor.”
John blinked. “Right, I suppose so. Erm, let’s see, what’ve we been up to? There was the weird blue dress thing, and the redheaded bloke,” he offered.
Sherlock, however, waved his hand dismissively. “Boring.”
“Hm, okay, what about Violet Smith, the cyclist and all her suitors?”
His friend perked up. “Oh, yes that one did get exciting toward the end, didn’t it? Let’s do that one.”
“Right, well, this girl shows up at the flat one day, but we’ve actually been rather busy lately and at the time Sherlock was already in the middle of the Harden case.”
Sherlock interrupted, “But John insisted we hear her out; I suspect this had more than a little to do with her physical charms.” He underscored this statement by tossing one of the apples at John, who caught it neatly.
“She wouldn’t go away!” He tossed the apple back, and it was smoothly reincorporated into Sherlock’s rhythm. “Believe me, I offered to help her myself, but she insisted on seeing you.”
“As well she should have,” he preened.
“Yes, yes, you’re the brains of the operation; I’m well aware. So, anyway, she tells us that she and her mother are on their own, father died years ago. Up until a few months prior, she’d been working as a nanny in London but had been persuaded to take a better-paying job out near Farnham in Surrey and she’d been coming back to town on weekends to see her mother.”
Sherlock cut in and took over. “The circumstances under which she accepted the new position were odd. Months before this, nearly a year in fact, she had been contacted on one of those useless websites -,”
“Facebook,” John filled in and protested, “You love facebook, you use it all the time for cases.”
Sherlock took no notice of this aside. “-by someone who was claiming to be her dead father’s brother who had emigrated to Australia twenty years earlier and hadn’t been heard from since.” He plucked a china shepherdess from a dainty shelf and added her to the spin of apples.
“Now, honestly, who believes that story?” Grandmère snorted.
“Exactly,” concurred John. “But as it turns out, there was some truth to the tale. There really was an uncle, and he was rich.”
“Really?” Grandmère commented, “They never turn out to be actually rich!”
“This one was, really loaded.”
“Yes,” Sherlock allowed, eyes on apples and shepherdess, “but our inestimable Miss Smith was not yet aware that her uncle was in possession of a fortune. The man himself was not doing most of the actual communicating you see. He had been persuaded by two young ruffians of his acquaintance that he should make virtual contact with his niece -,”
“And heir,” John put in, “as he was a grumpy old sort who didn’t trust lawyers.”
“And did not, therefore, have a will, rendering his nearest relation heir to his fortune,” Sherlock re-hijacked the tale. “It wasn’t at all surprising that the old gentleman wouldn’t be familiar with computers. So the situation as it stood was that Miss Smith was being digitally wooed with a variant on the Cyrano model. These two young men, Woodley and Carruthers, acted as go-betweens but they very carefully didn’t mention anything about money and advised the uncle to avoid the subject as well in his rare direct communication with her. They informed him that the internet lent itself to financial frauds and that Miss Smith might be made uncomfortable if money was brought into their correspondence.”
“The bounders!” exclaimed Claude.
“Indeed,” said Sherlock. A decorative ceramic lemon joined his miniature circus ring. “Though of course in their communications with Miss Smith they were the very picture of helpfulness and good cheer, sending her digital media they’d acquired and emails containing what are imagined by some people to be funny jokes.”
“Then, after they’d gained her trust by keeping up the virtual relationship for almost a year, they hit her with the whammy that they were moving to England,” said John.
“Oh dear, that’s not good,” said Grandmère with concern in her voice.
“Certainly not,” said Sherlock. “But Miss Smith had been successfully lulled into believing these two scoundrels friendly and agreed that once they were back in the country she would be happy to meet her uncle’s good friends in person.” A Russian nesting doll was taken from its place and set in motion.
“Luckily, Miss Smith wasn’t silly enough to go and meet them on her own.”
“John, you see, was - out - of - luck.” He emphasized each word by tossing an apple at his friend, leaving just the colourful trinkets going round and round in the air. “The lady was already engaged to be married.”
“Me?” He took a bite out of one of the apples and asked around it, “What about the two blokes who were after her for her uncle’s fortune?”
“Yes, it was quite a hurdle for them as well.”
“So the four of them met up in a London pub; Miss Smith, her fiance Cyril Morton, Woodley and Carruthers.”
Sherlock picked up a teacup from the sideboard and tossed it into the air.
“Careful with that one, dear, it’s the last of Great-Grandmother’s wedding china,” Grandmère put in calmly.
Sherlock smiled at her fondly and added a compass which had been sitting beside it. He took up the story. “During the course of the evening Woodley, with the assistance of copious amounts of bitter, betrayed his nature as that of a scoundrel and earned himself a black eye and a split lip courtesy of Morton.”
“Carruthers did better,” John said. “With lots of apologies and a promise that he’d keep Woodley away from her, he managed to keep in Miss Smith’s good graces.”
Sherlock swapped out the china shepherdess for a pair of embroidery shears. “So much so, in fact, that three months later he convinced her to quit her job and become nanny to his own child.”
“He won over Morton because the couple is saving up for the wedding, and Carruthers is paying her twice what she was earning in London, and offering affordable room and board in a separate cottage next to his house. So this is where we came in, and where it starts to get dodgy.”
“Oh my, how exciting!” Grandmère bounced a bit on the sofa.
Sherlock added a small brass terrier to his floating collection. “We’d already been informed that Miss Smith was travelling back to town each weekend to see her mother. Now she went on to confirm that she has always been an avid cyclist and so it was the most natural thing in the world for her to cycle to and from the train station on this commute.” He put the lemon down and plucked a jade Buddha from its resting place.
“Two weeks before her visit to us, she happened to look back and see that she was being followed by another bicycle. This was strange because since she had moved she had realized how few neighbours Carruthers had out there. It was odd to be running into anyone at all, much less find someone taking the same route she was on. Then, the same bloke appeared when she came down from London to go back to work, so she knew it couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. It wasn’t as if the man had been on her train, he was just following her on her route between Carruther’s place and the station, then back again.”
The teacup was swapped out for a small brass oil lamp, and the terrier for a gorgeous inlaid netsuke. “She acted quite sensibly,” Sherlock allowed. “She slowed down, speeded up, tried to catch a closer look at a crossroad, but her efforts were unsuccessful.”
“The next week, the same thing happened when she cycled to the station. She got so frustrated that she came straight to us from the train that Saturday and refused to take no for an answer.”
“I, of course, was engrossed in the Harden matter, so I sent John down to observe her trip back on Monday.” Swiftly, he replaced the objects one by one, each to its proper place and then started again with a set of six turkish coffee cups, all soon circling in the air before him.
“Everything was exactly as she said it was. He was following her when she reached my hiding spot. She was so annoyed by that point that she had a little run at him, but still couldn’t get a good look at his face. The bloke disappeared completely after following her from the station.”
“Yes,” Sherlock remarked witheringly, “he came back with that enlightening information.” One cup became a small cut glass bowl.
“Now look, Sherlock, you specifically told me to conceal myself. You then told me to use my own judgement, and I decided that haring all over the countryside asking questions and attracting attention was a bad idea. What was I even supposed to ask people? You’d all but said it had to be an admirer from her past, and none of them was going to be living out there in the middle of nowhere.”
“John, please, the only conceivable place the bicyclist could have been disappearing to was the grounds of Charlington Hall.” The second cup became a perfume bottle.
Claude and Grandmère exchanged a fond look and tried to hide their matching amused smiles.
“Yes,” he returned just barely patiently, “and we’d covered that beforehand as well, and I’d poked round a bit, but there was nothing obviously to be done to determine who was in residence without marching up to the place, ringing the bell and asking.”
“Sometimes, John, you display a truly startling lack of imagination. It really is one of your only faults.” The third cup became a jewelled dagger; sheathed, John was glad to note.
He threw up his hands. “Well, anyway, Grandmère, what your oh-so-superior grandson is implying is that I should have had the brilliant notion of going down the local and chatting up the barmaid.”
“Which I then proceeded to do with much more useful results. I learned that the gentleman in residence at the Hall goes by the name of Williamson and he was possibly a defrocked priest.” The fourth cup became one of Claude’s charcoal sticks.
“You then got into a barney with Woodley before you could discover any more, other than the fact that he’d been down to visit the Hall.”
Sherlock sniffed. “I won the barney, and learning that Woodley was in the vicinity told me all I needed to know to move forward with the case.” The fifth cup became a very large, gaudy-looking ring.
John decided it wasn’t worth arguing the point. “The next day we got an email from Miss Smith. It turns out that her new boss, Carruthers, had finally made his play. He’d sat her down, explained that he’d fallen in love with her and wanted her to consider breaking off her engagement to Morton to give him a chance to win her over.”
“She, I believe the phrase is, ‘tried to let him down gently’. He’d taken it fairly well, and she had agreed to see out the week, but after that would be moving back to London as she felt things would be a bit strained after that revelation.” The sixth cup became a small Wedgewood vase.
“By now, of course, Sherlock had worked out what was going on with Woodley, Carruthers and the uncle, and the fact that Woodley was still on the scene was bad news.”
“My texts to Miss Smith were going unanswered, so it seemed prudent to go down yet again and check on her.” He began to work his way backwards, reclaiming the cups from their various positions about the room.
“And what did you find?” asked Grandmère eagerly, clapping her hands with excitement.
“Grandmère,” Sherlock drawled, “you really won’t believe it. Woodley had proven more of an idiot than even I could have predicted.” Neatly, he took the six whirling cups and one-by-one replaced them onto the matching tray from which he had originally plucked them, circling the pot.
“He’d kidnapped her,” John revealed.
“Good god!” exclaimed Claude, and Grandmère let out a shocked gasp.
Sherlock had taken up another set of nesting dolls, a bit larger than the one he’d included in his routine earlier, and proceeded to take out the individual pieces. He set them into motion, a whirling circle of red and gold as he continued, “Even more ridiculous, he believed he could actually force her to marry him and that the marriage would be legal. Have you ever heard anything so utterly stupid?”
“We knocked up Carruthers, who confirmed our suspicions and revealed that he was our mysterious cyclist. He’d been following Miss Smith because he knew Woodley was in the neighborhood.”
“When we discovered that she was indeed missing, the three of us stormed the Hall and found Woodley physically restraining a gagged Miss Smith as the villain forced her to go through a farce of a marriage ceremony.”
“You remember the defrocked priest?” asked John. Claude and Grandmère nodded. “Utterly insane, he was. He’d convinced Woodley he could perform a legally binding marriage.”
Sherlock rolled his eyes and said sarcastically, “But, John, they had a license, what more could they have needed?”
John laughed. “Right. Aside from a willing bride, you mean?”
“How the devil did they get a license?” demanded Claude.
“A forgery, Uncle Claude. Just something to wave around in front of Miss Smith’s nose.”
“Who was furious, by the way. She wasn’t fooled for a second, of course, knew she wasn’t in any danger of ending up married.”
Sherlock apparently got bored with the dolls and set them down in a line, largest to smallest. He paused in order to announce dramatically, “She was surprised when Carruthers shot Woodley, though.”
“Shot him! Oh my,” exclaimed Grandmère.
“Mmmm,” mused Sherlock, “it seems he fell in love with her somewhere along the way.”
“Oh, splendid,” Grandmère declared. “What are you going to call it on the blog?”
“Hm. I don’t know; The Suspicious Cyclist, maybe?”
Sherlock rolled his eyes, but forbore to comment.
*****
Musicke. The Witches Dance, and vanish.
*****
On Christmas Eve night, the quartet performed Bartók’s quartets four and two for a small but appreciative audience. John, of course, attended, and he was joined by Lionel and Jean as well as Marshall from the shoot, who he learned was married to the cello player. Grandmère and Claude had come up to the house especially for the concert, and the Hannay contingent of Richard, Mary and Peter was fully represented. Viola and Hannibal were rather notably absent, but Grandmother was in attendance. Claire of the Beatles conversation and the tweedy-looking taxidermist also turned up, as well as a few people John had not previously encountered.
As soon as the music began, John cursed himself for not simply attending one of the rehearsals. Lapsed amateur clarinettist though he was, even he could understand how the cacophony which was the work of Béla Bartók could stir up the emotions of someone as sensitive to music as Sherlock. It wasn’t bad, far from it; despite its tendency to shriek at times, it was quite beautiful, but it was also an emotional fistfight waiting to happen. The instruments argued amongst each other in full voice at times, and of course Sherlock’s brain - as wide open to music as it was firmly shut to so many other things - had got itself caught up in the musical back and forth, to and fro of it all.
Already unsettled over John’s pain and grief; on edge because of his parents’ presence; it was no wonder he’d fallen prey to the emotions of the music and - basically - flipped out in a spectacular fashion. Well, he reflected, at least he could stop being quite so worried about his friend now. The situation had been a perfect storm of sorts and things should go back to (well, their particular flavour of) normal once they got home. He wouldn’t actually have to set up some elaborate, Pythonesque scheme to try and trick Sherlock into speaking with a therapist, thank christ.
Though he was inclined to hold a grudge, the music won him over in the end. All the musicians seemed to be enjoying themselves while playing, and in a startling display of just what made Bartók’s work so original and delightful, there came a movement when all four of them put down their bows and plucked their way through it. It was amazing, like nothing else John had ever seen or heard.
When the performance had come to an end, Grandmother stood up dramatically and bestowed praise upon each of the members of the quartet, paying especial attention to Sherlock, in John’s view. She then joined John, Claude and Grandmère where they were seated. “I saw Hannibal and Viola off this morning,” she remarked conversationally.
“Oh, did you?” John inquired innocently.
Grandmother smiled a Cheshire Cat smile and purred, “Yes. It was quite the illuminating interlude.” She turned to Claude and Grandmère, who were looking curious. “I’m afraid Viola was quite distressed,” she informed them.
“That’s not terribly unusual,” Claude observed.
“No,” Grandmother agreed, “but in this case I would have to say she was quite justified.” She smiled again.
Grandmère rolled her eyes and prompted, “Do tell us why, Florence dear.”
Grandmother looked over at John, who was maintaining an air of polite expectancy.
“It seems Hannibal took one of the cars out and had a bit of a smash up.”
“Again?” commented Claude drily.
“Yes,” purred Grandmother. “He was rather banged up as a result.”
“Hm,” observed Grandmère.
“That’s too bad,” commiserated John soberly. “He should really be more careful.”
“Yes, he really should, you’re very right Doctor.” She paused, and beamed a smile at him. “We’re so glad you were able to attend our little gathering this year. I must say that the results have proven simply smashing. Your presence is very much appreciated.”
“Grandmother, your hospitality has been boundless and I can honestly say I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” John told her sincerely.
She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, and John felt warm, safe and completely happy for the first time in a very long while.
After they had drunk a Holiday toast, the audience slowly dispersed. Among the last to leave were Forrester and Carlton, the former absolutely replete from having done justice to his god. Carlton petted him fondly, as one does a purring cat, then bundled him off to bed.
John found himself in the relatively congenial company of Sherlock, Mycroft and Not Anthea; he briefly considered trying once more to find out what her name actually was, and wondered if Mycroft knew.
Then she got up and very deliberately curled herself cosily into Mycroft’s lap.
John gaped and his brain sputtered in protest.
Mycroft?
The universe was having him on, it had to be.
Half the people alive thought he, John Watson, was shagging (also engaged to, his brain reminded him) Sherlock, and Mycroft ended up getting the girl?
Mycroft????
For his part, Mycroft was feeling unsettled about this turn of events as well. It wasn’t every day that one found oneself very clearly claimed as he had been that night in the parlour cum command centre. He was still sorting out the consequences and new obligations which came along with the insertion into one’s life of a beautiful, intelligent, crossbow-wielding mistress who demanded foot rubs rather more regularly than one would have imagined she might, if one had previously given it any thought.
His chief concern was currently the absence of an appropriate holiday gift, and he had already had several panicky moments as he had attempted to order up some emergency fire opals from Guadalajara, Hanadama Grade pearls from Tokyo, several bolts of the finest hand-woven silk China had to offer, and an Arabian stallion - without the use of his assistant’s Blackberry (He wasn’t fooling anyone. She knew. He knew she knew. She knew he knew she knew. She was very excited about the silk; she had plans for it, naughty ones.).
What fussed him even more, however, was the fact that these were so clearly panic offerings. A good gift, a really good gift, was so very hard to give someone. It needed to take into account not only what the recipient believed she wanted, but also what she actually wanted; it must reflect the thought and care the giver had invested in choosing the gift. It should be something which would make her smile and think of him each time her eyes fell upon it or sought it out. The thing which angered Mycroft was that he was one of the few people in the world who could be bothered to offer up this sort of gift, one which would be appreciated and cherished, but there was simply no time in this case.
There was no time to arrange to relocate the Mona Lisa so that every day he could show her how much more beautiful she was. There was no time to fly to Rome and prowl through the antique shops until he was able to locate a perfectly preserved marble statuette, a lost work by one of the Masters to adorn her desk and delight her eye. There was no time to hunt down the piece by Faberge which featured jewels precisely matching her eyes. There was no time to secure a first edition of Burns from which they could trade off reading to each other.
And so he was reduced to this, giving a panic gift as his first offering at her altar. He was honestly ashamed of himself. He would do better next year; he promised himself that, and in the meantime he would make it up to her with gifts for waking up beside him and gifts for remembering to order his salads without tomatoes; he would present her with gifts for unsnarling the knot of his daily appointments without complaint and gifts for rolling her eyes when he asked her one more time how the v-lookup nested within an if-statement worked; he would offer up gifts for the way she scrunched up her nose when she was honestly considering shooting someone and gifts for not actually shooting most of them; also gifts for the ones she did shoot. He was going to have to start a spread sheet so that he didn’t duplicate himself.
Across the room, Sherlock was thinking deep thoughts; like his brother, they were leading him in a gifty sort of direction, but that was mostly a coincidence caused by the impending holiday. He started by thinking about the chance remark which had brought John into his life. ‘I must be a difficult man to find a flatmate for.’ He didn’t remember if those had been his exact words, but whatever they had been he thanked Science he had uttered them at exactly the right time and place, and that John had done the same. This led him to consider how very true those fateful words had been. Sherlock was perfectly aware that his simple occupation of the flat (not to even mention case-related activities) put John in constant danger of torture, accidental (All right, there was also the possibility of deliberate, but not by Sherlock himself!) poisoning; being shot at, stabbed, taken hostage, or exploded - the possibilities were endless, really.
And John put up with it all. He put up with the body parts in the fridge and in the tub and in the microwave. He put up with the sulks and the drama and the showing off. He had even managed to put up with Sherlock’s knocking over the blocks of their home and then forgiven him for it.
Tomorrow was Christmas.
If anyone in the world deserved a present, it was John.
He thought about it. He really did; he focused his entire brain on the problem of what gift it would be best to give John, because when Sherlock did something he did it correctly and exceptionally well. It didn’t actually take very long for him to crack it, and in just a few minutes he was striding across the room to where John sat looking gobsmacked and staring at Mycroft, who seemed to have acquired an innamorata.
“Paper, John,” he snapped.
His partner looked up, startled. “Oh.” He pulled out his ever-present notebook and pen and handed them to Sherlock.
He dashed off the note, stuck the pen in the book to mark the page, and handed it back to him. “I’m going up to bed. Are you staying up or will you walk with me?”
He glanced back at Mycroft and his lapful of Not Anthea, quickly averted his eyes, and stood up. “Going with you, definitely. Let’s go, right now in fact, move.” He gave Sherlock a bit of a shove, and they were out the door.
As had become routine, John hugged an extremely amused Sherlock firmly before they went into their separate bedrooms.
It wasn’t until he put his notebook down in order to begin undressing that John recalled Sherlock hadn’t torn out the page he’d written on. Curious, he opened the notebook.
His friend had written:
I, Sherlock Holmes, do promise to relieve John Watson of the chore of a single trip to the shop in order to get in groceries and supplies for the flat at 221B Baker Street. I will undertake this endeavour, without question, at whatever time I am instructed to do so by John Watson .
Happy Christmas, John.
*****
Enter a Doctor of Physicke, and a Wayting Gentlewoman.
*****
On the morning of Boxing Day, John was reading the paper in the library when a large group of people, buzzing with purpose, came in and assumed various positions of expectant attentiveness. Persons of the elderly persuasion were given the privilege of the proper seats and the younger specimens draped themselves artfully on sofa arms or sprawled on the carpet; one man seated himself in the middle of a round table and several others quickly joined him on his perch. John recognized most of these people in passing; the triplets were there as well as an indulgent-looking Richard who had given him a placid nod of greeting. Not Anthea had perched herself on the arm of the chair Richard was occupying and her Blackberry had reappeared. After a moment, he put together the thought that the group seemed to be made up of those who had been mostly absent from the activities and more concerned with rushing about from room to room and declaiming lines as they paced the halls. These were the actors.
After a few minutes, during which he finished the article he was reading, tiny Grandmother swept in at the head of a parade of others, and John realized that this was the most people he’d seen in one place since they’d arrived, the only exception being around the gargantuan dining table. Grandmother settled herself into her chair and the flood of people who had followed her in fitted themselves into the room wherever they could. John congratulated himself on his foresight in securing a seat, then realized that since he’d had no expectation of the library suddenly flooding full of people, the sentiment was rather misplaced.
Grandmother cleared her throat expectantly, and silence immediately fell. John’s paper made a little rippling noise that resounded like Big Ben’s toll in the wake of this invisible mute button having been pushed. All eyes turned to him. “Sorry! Sorry, I’ll just…” He folded the paper quickly and set it down on the table next to him. “Sorry!” he added for good measure.
Grandmother proclaimed, “Don’t be silly, Doctor. I’m so glad to see you here. I wasn’t sure how much interest you’ve been taking in our Production since your arrival.”
“Oh, erm, great interest; lots of interest on my part, of course.”
“Excellent. I am so pleased to hear it.” The tiny, ancient woman beamed at him. Then, with an air of getting on with things, she crisply opened the leather-bound book she held on her lap. She spoke in ringing tones which reached every eager ear in the room.
“As we will all experience this evening, I believe this year’s Production has proven truly inspired. It is an excellent example of its kind. And so, we now turn to the future. We look forward to next year and the improvements we will all make during that time before we gather here again to celebrate the Bard and his works. As is traditional, I have chosen a comedy to follow a tragedy.”
The atmosphere in the room was heavy with anticipation and it made John feel a little nervous for some reason. He wished someone would laugh and break the tension, but the extended Holmes clan was not treating what was going on in this room with even the slightest bit of levity. He shifted unconsciously in his chair.
“The coming year will see us exploring the genius of -,” It seemed the entire room leaned toward her in excited anticipation. “Much Ado About Nothing.” The result of this pronouncement was thunderous applause. John joined in since he would have been the only one not clapping if he hadn’t.
After allowing the enthusiasm of her audience to die away slightly, she continued, “And we will set this masterpiece in the milieu of the Regency period. There was more applause, though not quite as much as before.
Grandmother smiled happily as she surveyed her enthralled audience. She cleared her throat again, and everything else stilled in response. “Now, since he has confirmed his interest in our endeavour, and being a soldier himself, I wondered if our own Doctor Watson might condescend to accept the role of Benedick. I believe this would emphasize the warm welcome we wish to extend to him in joining the family and taking such good care of our Sherlock.”
The room buzzed with whispers and gasps and bursts of scattered applause, and all eyes turned once again to him. Mycroft, who he hadn’t noticed was present until now, cleared his throat and began, “Grandmother -,” but John’s mind was already racing and it very definitely didn’t seem like something he ought to refuse, so he broke in and assured everyone, “I’d be happy to. Love to, in fact. Much Ado, great show. That’s a really warm gesture, thanks!”
Grandmother beamed at him again. “Wonderful. Now then - ,”
Mycroft’s tone was gentle when he cut her off, “Sherlock, do come in. John has just kindly agreed to play Benedick in next year’s Production.”
Sherlock, who had apparently either been passing the door or intending to join this mass gathering, was framed in the doorway and went completely still for a split second; his eyes grew wide. “Oh, John, no; you don’t have to do that.”
“No, no. I want to,” he assured his friend.
In response, Sherlock began picking his way across the room, looking like a giant water bug as miniscule patches of floor were uncovered by shifted hands and knees to allow his progress on tiptoe. “No, really, John. It would be better if you ceded the honour to someone else.”
He reached John’s side and dropped awkwardly into a crouch next to his chair. John leaned over slightly and hissed in his ear, “It’s a warm gesture in order to welcome me to the family, you git. I can’t just say no.”
Just as intensely, Sherlock insisted, “You really don’t want to do this, John, trust me. It’s quite elaborate; everyone takes it extremely seriously.”
John rolled his eyes. “I will read the play a couple of times beforehand, you know. I’m not an idiot; I know the story, this isn’t a big deal. I don’t get stage fright; we put on a panto in uni once.” When Sherlock didn’t look convinced, he continued reassuringly, “Honestly, it’s fine if they want to put a sword belt round my waist for a couple of hours and product into my hair. I can’t respond to ‘welcome to the family’ with ‘bugger off, thanks but no thanks’; it’s your Great Gran for heaven’s sake, Sherlock!”
Sherlock regarded him intently for a moment and then his eyes lit with humour. For a second, John thought he might giggle. He certainly spoke through a bit of one when he asked, “You’re determined, then? Nothing I say will convince you otherwise?”
“Yes, I am determined; and no, you cannot talk me out of it,” he responded with finality.
Sherlock nodded. “Very well.” John noticed that his mouth twitched into an amused grin. He rose to his feet and placed his hand over his heart before announcing, “I humbly request the role of Beatrice.” This caused more excited buzzing noises, whispered speculation and gasps of surprise.
“Hang on!” John stood up. “I’d quite like a girl for that, if you please.”
“No, I’m very sorry, John, but it’s the only practicable way the thing can be done. You’ll need to rehearse with your Beatrice and I am the only one who could conceivably spend enough time with you to do so.”
“You’re off your trolley.”
Grandmother made a bid to regain control of the room. “Sherlock is correct. The roles of Benedick and Beatrice should go to persons who will have ample time to rehearse together. You are awarded the role, Sherlock, based upon both this pragmatic concern as well as your excellent and skilled Ophelia.” Sherlock bowed dramatically to the praise and the sprinkling of applause which broke out, apparently in remembrance of his Ophelia.
John suddenly wondered precisely how badly - and what, exactly - he had just cocked up.
*****
Thunder and Lightning. Enter three Witches.
*****
Dinner that evening was early and the fare was light compared to what had been on offer previous days. When John remarked on this, Sherlock supplied, “There will be another light meal served after the Production.”
The dining room was suffused with an air of keen anticipation, and the conversation was largely concerned with The Scottish Play. When the meal drifted to a close, the actors bustled off, and John and Sherlock ended up in one of the drawing rooms where they were recruited for a game of Charades - by someone who really should have known better.
“No, no, you blithering idiot! How could it be Black Beauty when he’s clearly indicated it takes place in Japan?”
“Sherlock, calm down. It’s just a game.”
“It’s a game for blithering idiots!”
“Well, yes, and right now we’re playing at being blithering idiots. Go on, try that scenario for a while. See how it feels to you.”
John was saved from having to find out how that would go over for any length of time when the clock chimed the quarter hour before nine. Instantly, everyone in the room stood and moved toward the door. There was a bit of a rush and a bottleneck as they all streamed out of the room. Sherlock and John lingered, allowing the congestion to clear before Sherlock rose to his feet. “Come on then, it’s sure to be good.”
He, quite surprisingly, led John to the front entrance. “Is it outside, then?”
“Yes, the theatre is beyond the maze.”
“There’s an actual theatre?” He’d been feeling increasingly nervous about all this since Sherlock’s scene in the library.
“Of course. They take it quite seriously, as I said.”
The remark was made in an ‘all innocence’ sort of manner and it did nothing to put John at ease.
The path was lit with fairy lights and as they approached the building groups of small children could be seen chasing each other among the young trees that surrounded it. It was a reproduction of The Globe. John knew this because he had seen a production at the one in London once, a handful of girlfriends ago. He gaped and unconsciously stopped in his tracks.
After a stunned moment, he realized a giggling Sherlock was plucking at his sleeve. “John, come on, we don’t want to be late; there won’t be any seats left.” He allowed himself to be propelled into the theatre and inserted into a seat.
Hazily, he took in the buzzing audience (Gordian bloody knot) of elegantly attired Holmeses. “You bastard,” he breathed. “You utter bastard. Seriously? They take it seriously? You failed to mention that they erected the bloody Globe in the back garden!”
Beside him, Sherlock snickered, but had the grace to muffle the sound with a hand. “You were quite determined, remember.”
The lights which had been softly illuminating the house blinked twice then went out.
John jumped in his seat when there was, out of nowhere, a violent CRACK of thunder followed by a blinding flash of lightning. A torrent of rain drenched the stage and a strong wind howled and pulled at the entire building as the glorious blond triplets, costumed in bits of fur and madly-coloured feathers pinned to skin-tight cat suits, crawled across the stage from opposing corners to meet in the middle, calling out their lines in defiance of the storm that battered at them and the rain which caused their hair to hang stringily in their faces. They clutched at each other and rose as one to stridently declare in unison, “There to meet with MacBeth!” The storm stopped instantly.
John’s throat went dry as Afghanistan. “Good production value there,” Sherlock whispered into his ear, and there was laughter in his voice, the bastard.
It only got worse.
Not Anthea made a truly terrifying Lady MacBeth. The murderous glint in her eyes as she declaimed, “Yet do I fear thy nature; it is too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way,” made John unconsciously reach for the pistol he didn’t have on him. He had absolutely no idea how it was done, but Birnam Bloody Wood came, and the ghost of Banquo was actually transparent; he knew this because MacBeth had thrust his hand through his chest. Even Richard, previously such a brother-in-arms, now betrayed him by laying on a MacDuff which an Olivier would not have scorned to praise. During the course of the Production, John accepted the fact that he was utterly fucked.
Sherlock, the bastard, giggled the entire walk back to the house. “Oh, don’t worry, John, that panto you did in uni will stand you in excellent stead. I’m not at all worried about your keeping up your end.”
“Neither am I, as I’m planning to find some unemployed West End swot and pay him to take my place.”
“Oh, come now, it will be fun. We’ll dress you in regimentals, put some product in your hair, a sword in your hand and you’ll be off and running.”
“Ha bloody ha, Sherlock. It’s a good thing we’ve been cast in a comedy; you’d be wasted in anything else.”
“It will be fine, John. We just need to prepare properly.”
The light meal which was served back at the house did nothing to allay John’s anxiety. Belatedly, he realized that at some point a programme (done in glossy full colour and containing actual adverts) had been thrust at him and he dazedly made the discovery that it included a feedback form. These were collected during the meal and afterwards Sherlock gleefully (the sodding bastard) steered him into the large parlour off the dining room - and then there was a Discussion of the Production.
Not Anthea was praised to the heavens, and the decision to set the play in an anonymous, emo-gothic-sort-of time and place which featured a stark black backdrop was (he got the feeling not for the first time) hotly criticised and just as hotly defended. Someone pointed out that the lighting had been slightly off during one of MacBeth’s soliloquies, and someone else remarked that the costuming had been superb this year before cattily sniping, “with the exception of Hecate’s headdress, of course.” The item in question had fallen apart rather spectacularly during her second appearance on stage. The blocking (whatever that was - it seemed to have to do with choreography, John thought hazily) of the opening scene met with approval while the same of the combat scene at the end was sharply torn apart.
All of this swirled around in John’s head, whipping up a growing whirlpool of terror. When MacBeth was called upon to defend his choice to play his character with a pronounced limp and he launched into an extemporaneous speech about historical accuracy and the code of the warrior, John abruptly stood up and practically ran from the room. He walked far enough that the ringing tones of MacBeth’s defence faded to nothing, then turned to the nearest wall in an attempt to ground himself; the cool of the plaster felt like heaven against his forehead.
After a moment, he realized someone was rubbing reassuring circles on his back. Sherlock, of course.
“You don’t have to do it.”
He sighed, taking the opportunity to pull a good deal of oxygen into his lungs. “Of course I have to do it. But I’m not bloody defending any bleeding limp!”
“John -,”
“No, don’t bother. I agreed to do it, and it’s your Great Gran for heaven’s sake. And -,” he paused, turning to look his friend in the eye. “It’s family, Sherlock. I feel connected to a family again for the first time in a very, very long time. It’s Grandmère and Claude and Richard and Peter, and I like them all. Even Mycroft bloody told me what I needed to know for once.” He snorted in disbelief. “And you know how unbelievably rare that is! We’re now apparently actually united in protecting you from your parents.”
Sherlock digested this. Thoughtfully, he responded, “How long, I wonder, has it been since I gained another brother? I unfortunately failed to note the exact moment.”
John smiled ruefully. “I’m afraid I did too. It seems we’ll never know for certain.”
“Do try to continue to be more useful than Mycroft.”
He sighed another deep sigh, then pushed himself away from the wall and started walking back the way he had come. “Let’s get back in there. I need to know what to expect.”
“You are the very bravest of men, John Watson.”
“At least when I invaded Afghanistan they gave me a gun. I don’t even know what they should issue someone infiltrating the Holmes family.”
“Alexander’s sword, of course. How does it feel to be the ruler of all Asia?”
“Hm. It’ll feel better once I start to see the profits rolling in from all those little plastic things they export.”
“Oh dear, I suppose now we’ll need a pre-nuptial agreement. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m marrying you for your money.”
John laughed, and that set Sherlock off as well, so they giggled all the way back down the hallway.
*****
Flourish. Exeunt Omnes.
FINIS.
*****
Thanks for coming along for the ride! The next part of this is still currently a WIP, but if this does not put you off you can continue along by hopping over here http://impulsereader.livejournal.com/51479.html and keeping up with Sherlock and John's prep work for their roles. :-)