A/N: This fic is based on the original Arthur Conan Doyle story 'The Adventure of the Copper Beeches', which I highly recommend. In the original, Violet Hunter and Alice Rucastle also have unusually beautiful red hair, and many of the other elements from 'Copper Beeches' will also appear in this fic. However, the story will not turn out exactly the same. For one thing, Alice Rucastle is not a child in the original, but no more spoilers. I would be remiss if I did not thank Chalcedony Rivers for her excellent Beta services.
"It's about a missing child," the woman at our door pleaded. One of the bulbs in the fixture was out, so in the half-light, her pallid face stood out as a ghostly, disembodied thing against her dark hair and clothing.
"Then surely the police or Child Services are more appropriate agencies to appeal to," Sherlock replied, rudely.
"I went to the police, but they said since she was missing from Hampshire instead of London, it wasn't their jurisdiction and one weird phone call wasn't proof. When I tried to explain the circumstances, this Sergeant Donovan said 'For a freak job you need a freak job. Go see Sherlock Holmes at 221B Baker St.' She was so contemptuous that I didn't wait for the referral number for Child Services. I thought that if that's how the police view me, then…
"So here I am. Please, Mr. Holmes. Her name is Alice Rucastle and she's only seven."
Fumbling in her purse, she brought out her phone, pressed a few buttons, and extended it to us. On the screen, a unnaturally stiff and solemn child in a blue dress looked back at us. She had a pinched, haunted look on her face, and that, with the long hair streaming over her shoulders, made me think of Oliver Twist or Little Nell, of an era with workhouses and poorhouses instead of the dole and subsidized housing.
"Seven, seventeen, seventy, it makes no difference to me," Sherlock began savagely, but Mrs. Hudson had come up behind us and had a look herself.
"Only seven?" she asked. "Poor thing. Sherlock, there isn't much I put my foot down about, but I'll tell you this: You can hear this young lady out or you can go looking for another flat. And I mean it."
Sherlock assessed our landlady's expression, then smiled brilliantly, silkily shifting gears. "As I said, seven, seventeen or seventy, it's all one to me if she is possibly in danger. Come in, won't you, Ms—?"
"Hunter. Violet Hunter," said the woman, and came in, looking around at the mess with a creased brow. In a better light, she looked to be about twenty-five, with a pleasantly attractive, unabashedly freckled face, brown eyes, and truly remarkable dark red hair. There are more dyed red-heads than born red-heads out there, but from the length and texture, hers was natural. Neither gingery or carroty, it had a hint of purple to it, like a freshly shelled horse chestnut. It bumped her up from being just an attractive woman to an unforgettable one.
Unless the color was off in the photo, Alice Rucastle had hair exactly like hers. A shade lighter, maybe, but people's hair does darken as they age.
"Please, have a seat. That's my associate, Dr. John Watson, and anything you say to me you can say to him. Mrs. H, why don't you make us all a spot of tea?"
Mrs. Hudson might have liked to remind him she wasn't our housekeeper, but if so she swallowed it. "Of course. Sit down and tell them all about it, dear. What lovely hair you have. You should be doing shampoo adverts."
"Thank you," Ms. Hunter took the basket chair, and opened her mouth, but Sherlock, who had flopped down on the sofa, raised a languid finger.
"You are, or rather were, since you are currently unemployed, the child's nanny. You were sacked—three months ago? Four? Not for any negligence or wrongdoing, but because Alice's mother felt threatened by her daughter's attachment to you, and vice versa."
"Yes—oh, Sgt. Donovan phoned you, didn't she?" Ms. Hunter asked.
"No. Sally Donovan would not call me if she were being burned and tortured in Hell and I was the only one who could save her. Not without direct orders from a superior, anyhow. I could tell all that from looking at you. Despite the startling similarity of your hair, you are not Alice's mother, neither in the conventional way or any other. The police would have taken you more seriously in that case. Also, obviously you've never given birth, and if you were ever pregnant, one way or another it ended before your pelvic girdle shifted or your breasts swelled. No bra, and still perky as a ski ramp."
"Sherlock!" Mrs. Hudson called from the kitchen, scandalized.
"You're not supposed to comment on that sort of thing," I told him wearily. I had noticed, though. Ms. Hunter had superb…structural integrity.
"He can say whatever he likes about my breasts if he can only find Alice," Violet Hunter replied, sounding as weary as I did.
"Now I know you're serious," Sherlock nodded. "Yes, John, I know enough not to say things like that. I was testing her."
"Testing all of us, more like," I muttered.
"Moving along," Sherlock said, "She might be your sister, your niece, or your cousin, but again they would have taken you more seriously and your attitude is wrong. Why are you raising the alarm instead of her parents? Because there's something wrong within the family and has been for some time. You believe they may be involved.
"Where family is suspect, people either circle the wagons to protect them or burn them at the stake. Sometimes both. No, you're not family.
"So, what are you? A neighbor? A teacher? No. People can manage to keep up a façade around outsiders for a few minutes, a few hours, but among those they live with, the masks slip off. What role in their lives would you fill that would put you into such intimate contact and inspire you with such feeling? You care about this child because you've cared for this child. Hence, you were the nanny. That's partly why the authorities aren't taking you seriously. They hear 'let go' and think 'disgruntled ex-employee.'
"Finally, as to when you were fired, I look at your attire. You're aware of fashion but not a slave to it—your apparel is stylish, well-cared for, and of good quality, but those are last season's colors. The only exception is your shoes. Those are new, and a distinct downgrade from the rest. You truly needed a new pair, but you couldn't justify spending enough on them to bring them in line with the rest of your wardrobe. Last year at this time, you had a steady income. Now you don't."
Sherlock had spewed out all of that like a rapid fire machine-gun, allowing no word in edge-wise.
Glancing at the stunned look on Ms. Hunter's face, I answered the question in her eyes when she turned to me. "Yes, he's always like that, except when he's even worse."
"I feel as though I walked in here naked," she said.
"Actually, if you had I wouldn't be able to tell nearly as much about you," Sherlock said, sitting up because Mrs. Hudson was bringing over the tea.
"Enough of that, you. Time for Miss Hunter to tell you a few things you don't already know. They say the first twenty-four hours are crucial when a child's gone missing. Here you are, dear." She handed our visitor a mug.
"Thank you. Please call me Violet," Miss Hunter said.
"They say, they say," Sherlock mocked. "Who, exactly are they?"
"I have a telly and there are more crime shows on than you can shake a stick at," our landlady reproved him. "Hush. Let Violet talk."
"Thank you." She looked down at the mug in her hands, turned it around, sniffing at the steam. "I can't tell you about what happened without beginning with how I met Alice and her family in the first place. I never set out to become a nanny, trained for it, or even applied for the job.
"If my career had gone as I planned, I'd be outselling J.K. Rowling right now, but until the million pound book deal goes through—. I graduated from University with a degree in Literature, overeducated, unemployable and in debt. Like everybody else in those circumstances, I got a job at Borders Books. Working retail was another thing I hadn't set out to do. It's awful, to be quite honest. Between the people who somehow can't think to turn a book over to read the price on the back, and the ones who treat bookstores as if they were lending libraries, buying one book and then exchanging it over and over for a new one once they've read the last, it's enough to drive you spare.
"The parents, though, are the worst. The most annoying ones are those who give their kiddie a book or a toy out of our stock to gum on while they go through the store, and then when they get to the till, they hand it to you and say, 'Oh, I'm not buying this. I just gave it to him so he'd be quiet.' Leaving you with this object in your hands dripping with baby spit, and thinking, 'That's all right, I'll just wring it out and it'll be good as new.' You always wind up throwing them out.
"But the most disturbing ones are those who treat us as we were car-parks and their children were cars. Some parents leave their children—even quite young ones, hardly school age—in the kids' section and go off, sometimes for hours. Often they're not even in the store. I've no idea what they do—have their nails done, go to lunch, have it off with a secret lover... The point is, we, the store staff, we're not baby-sitters. We have work to do and we can't be looking out for kids all the time. Anyone could take off with a child under those circumstances, from luring them into the restroom to molest them, to making them vanish forever.
"Once I put up a sign saying, 'Unattended children will be given a puppy, a whistle, and a large double mocha frappe with extra sugar', but Management made me take it down." Her mouth twitched in an attempt at a smile. "That was how I met Alice, because her mother left her there.
"One day, my co-worker Linda sidled up to me and said, 'Vi, you sly thing, you never told me you had a daughter.'
"'I don't,' I replied. 'What are you talking about?'
"'Over in the story corner, look. I'd know that head of hair anywhere.' I went round into the kids section and had a look. Linda was right about one part of it. There was a child sitting there with hair like mine. It runs in my family, on my mum's side. I have two younger half brothers with it too.
"I looked at this little girl, and she just looked like the saddest thing in the world. You saw in the picture—her mother dresses her almost like it was a century ago, her own little Alice in Wonderland. Always in skirts, hard shoes, and her hair down so if she does anything but sit still, she gets dirty, scuffed and tangled. Then she has to be disciplined, of course…
"I think Anna—Mrs. Rucastle, that is—should have stuck with collecting porcelain dolls or something. But that touches on things I only learned later.
"On that day, I went over and said, 'Hello, sweetheart. Are you all right? Where's your mum?'
"She whispered, 'She's coming back for me at three.'
"It was only just one. I nodded, though, and said, 'All right. If you need anything or you have to go to the bathroom or somebody bothers you, I'll be right round the corner straightening Cookbooks, okay? My name's Violet. What's yours?'
"'Alice Rucastle.' She whispered again.
" 'Hello, Alice. Would you like a book to look at? We've got lots.'
"It was only a very small joke, but a normal little girl would have giggled or something. She only said, 'I'm supposed to look with my eyes, not with my fingers.'
"'And when there are breakables around, that's a good rule. But I think looking at books is okay if you're careful. Here.' I didn't know how well she might be able to read, since she looked to be about five, so I picked up a few David Wiesner books—he's an American illustrator whose books don't depend on words—and leafed through one with her, then encouraged her to pick up the next before I went back to Linda, who was stretching her ears out eavesdropping.
"'Her mum's coming back for her at three,' I said, and went back to work.
"Alice wasn't an attractive child—needy children are the least attractive—I mean, she wasn't the kind that makes people coo at her cuteness. There was nothing wrong with her features except her expression. I have seen her when she looked very happy and she was as pretty as you could want a little girl to be. I was very curious to see what her mother would be like, and I arranged to be around the kids section when three o'clock came.
"Anna Rucastle is—I want to say 'raw-boned', even though it's an old-fashioned expression. Too thin, with prominent facial bones that aren't harmonious. She was in her forties, old enough to be my mother, rather than Alice's, but then lots of women put off motherhood until the last possible moment or even later, thanks to fertility advances. Her hair was the same shade as Alice's, but it had that dead, dull look that hair gets when it's dyed too much. She went over to Alice, said something, and Alice got up and followed her without a word. They didn't hug. They didn't show any expression at all.
"After that, I kept an eye out for Alice, just because. She was the only child who got left there on a regular basis, and that was unusual. At least three times a week, she would be there for at least an hour each time. I always made sure to say 'Hi,' no matter how busy we were, and when it was slow, I'd sit with her a little. If she was there for more than two hours, I'd get her a glass of milk from the café. There was something—I didn't think much of it at the time…" Violet paused.
"But in retrospect it became significant," Sherlock drew her out.
"Yes. Retail workers don't have regular hours, not nine-to-five, unless they're management. It can be eight to three one day, two to ten the next, and so on. Our days off change from week to week as well. I asked Linda once if she could look out for Alice on my days off, and she said, 'No need. When you're not here, she's never here.'"
"So Anna Rucastle was keeping track of your schedule?" I asked.
"More likely she came in, looked around for Violet and left when she didn't see her," Mrs. Hudson added.
"Either way, it means Mrs. Rucastle was aware of Ms. Hunter. What did it lead to?" Sherlock asked.
"A job offer," Violet Hunter replied. "After several months, they stopped coming. It was summer, and Alice had once mentioned they had a place in the country, so I thought they must have gone there. I—missed Alice a little. I didn't care that much about her, back then. Not as I came to. Then one day Mr. Rucastle came in…"
TBC, maybe, if people are interested. My other Sherlock fic isn't exactly burning up the Interwubs, so I had another go.