Sherlock didn't pick up the phone for just anybody – in fact, for hardly anybody at all – but Mrs. Hudson was an exception.
"Is that Sherlock, dear?" Mrs. Hudson's voice came weakly over the line, edges blurred by more than the habitual static of the ancient phone in her sister's cottage. Sherlock couldn't quite bring himself to answer such an obvious question, but he hummed audibly by way of confirmation.
"I'm afraid I won't be able to meet you at Baker Street tomorrow, dear. I'm still in Chesham, up at the cottage." Obvious; the quality of the line would have made that clear even if it weren't. "June left it such a terrible mess, it's taken me days to sort through. And now I've caught rather a nasty cold, probably from trying to manage with the bins all by myself. But Sherlock–" he smiled to himself, since she couldn't see it; given to rambling, but savvy enough to know that she needed to prompt him at the important parts. "The local doctor's been in to see me, and he says I'm not to get out of bed for another four days at least. So that's our plan for showing you the flat, all spoiled. Perhaps next week, dear."
Sherlock felt a rasp of impatience at the delay, but he closed his eyes; there was clearly no help for it. "Yes, all right." He began calculating the probability that she would recover quickly enough for him to peruse the flat – and to ascertain, on the basis of that knowledge, how to locate a suitable and not overly annoying flatmate – before paying rent on another month at Montague Street; as his mind skimmed through possible diagnoses that would have led a Buckinghamshire doctor nearing retirement to advise four days' bed rest, he felt an odd discomfort flare dimly inside him and begin to tug at his conscious mind.
"Perhaps if you're – would you like me to come visit you?"
Mrs. Hudson made some sort of noise that Sherlock couldn't interpret, due to the static of the phone. "Sherlock, how sweet you are, thinking of me. There's really no need for you to come all this way just to see me."
True, but Sherlock knew that people said usually such things because they wanted to be contradicted. Sherlock typically had no interest in humoring people who couldn't say what they meant, but Mrs. Hudson was different.
"It's no trouble." Not strictly accurate, but not an unreasonable amount. He could make the entire trip in a single afternoon. And Sherlock hadn't been on the Metropolitan line past the ring road in nearly four years, and had been meaning to revisit it to explore possible developments. "How far are you from the train?"
Although Sherlock typically found pastry-shops maddening – in fact, today was no exception – he also found that he didn't mind it, knowing how delighted Mrs. Hudson would be when he presented her with a box of the hazelnut biscuits she only bought for herself on special occasions. He loved Mrs. Hudson like a mother – or at least in the way that people seemed to mean when they were being sentimental (certainly not his own mother). Sherlock deplored sentiment, as he deplored so many things that ordinary people considered acceptable and even necessary, but Mrs. Hudson was one of the few parts of his life that made all the deplorable things worth enduring, and he had not yet ascertained a better medium than sentiment for expressing that fact. The maudlin and imprecise terminology chafed, but as it was deployed exclusively in a conversation to which nobody else was privy, Sherlock had decided to live with it.
It had been some months since he had seen her last; February had been a busy month for the Met, and now that Lestrade had made Detective Inspector, Sherlock was consulting on at least one case nearly every week. They had been talking of a cozy weekend supper, to make amends for all the lost time, when she had gone suddenly out to Buckinghamshire for a full month to help her sister recover from a broken leg. Sherlock had never met Mrs. Hudson's sister, a Mrs…. Ferris? Furnis? It galled Sherlock that he couldn't remember precisely. He supposed this attenuated capacity for retaining relevant details was what Lestrade was referring to when he complained about Sherlock getting high. But whatever her name, she was by all reports a very challenging personality. Mrs. Hudson would surely have had much to say on the subject, but there hadn't been time to see her before she had turned around and gone back again, this time to make arrangements. It seemed the ostensibly minor illness that Mrs. … the sister had contracted while on bed-rest had developed into pneumonia and killed her within the week. Such things happened to the elderly, and Mrs. Hudson was in no way at fault: Sherlock was confident that the doctor would have apprised her of that fact. But clearly she still felt guilty, or she never would have agreed to clean and set in order the house of a not-especially-beloved sibling with early-stage hoarding tendencies. And now she was herself sick in that wretched little country cottage.
So it had been, Sherlock reflected, some months since Mrs. Hudson had spent significant time in London, and possibly longer still since she had made the trip to this rather out-of-the-way bakery for a sweet that she was, for whatever reason, intent to deny herself. It was only logical that the rate of diminishing return on her enjoyment of the biscuits would be slowed, given how long it had been since she had tasted one. It was surely for that reason that he decided, at the last minute, to purchase two dozen instead of one.
The air had a slightly more herbal smell at Chesham, even on the train platform. It mixed with the metallic tang of the heated tracks, coming into his nose with the raw scrape of the lingering frost. It was indeed, as Mrs. Hudson had remarked, quite nippy. "Such a late spring we've had this year," Mrs. Hudson had said, "so don't you forget your scarf – that big coat won't keep a chill off your neck." Sherlock smiled to himself, pulling the scarlet scarf she had given him a bit more snugly against his chest, and set off down the lane that would take him most of the way to Mrs. Hudson's sister's cottage.
"Going my way?" said a voice at his shoulder. Sherlock started slightly; he hadn't noticed anyone nearby. Next to him, a small, neatly-dressed man with fair skin and large eyes smiled ingratiatingly. Irritating, that this simpering person had managed to surprise him, and probably entirely by accident. It was the lingering unpleasantness of that surprise that made the eagerness on the man's face slightly disquieting.
"Doubtful, " he replied tersely, and began walking in case his tone wasn't enough to give the fellow the idea, his strides purposely long.
"I'm heading south, too, we can go a little ways." Irritatingly, and predictably, the man refused to be shaken off. He trotted alongside Sherlock, matching each step with two of his own. "And maybe I can help you out, help you find your way. The signs are a bit confusing around here." Sherlock pointedly ignored him, only quickening his pace slightly. "Are you here about the murders?"
Sherlock stopped walking.
The man undertook an elaborate pantomimed gesture, meant to invoke blushing. "Caught me, Sherlock. I'm a fan. I read your blog; great stuff!" His voice swooped, as though to mirror the gestures from a moment before, and then dropped to a low, almost conspiratorial tone. "They've called you in, haven't they?"
Much as Sherlock hated letting on when there was something he didn't know – especially to an imbecile such as this – he needed more information, and this was, unfortunately enough, the person most likely to give it to him. "No, my business here is – otherwise."
"Oh, I see," said the man, nodding vigorously. "Family?"
"Friend." He produced a rather stiff smile. "Merely a happy coincidence."
Even as he spoke he realized his error – Mrs. Hudson had taken to chiding him when he said things that could appear callous – and cursed himself for the time wasted in smoothing over the infelicity, but the stranger didn't appear to notice. "Yes, it's got the entire town talking. Both of them, killed in their beds. Just dreadful. And the police are baffled, of course, but they would be." He glanced slyly at Sherlock. "I'm sure they could use your help."
Sherlock considered. It was likely enough to be a tedious open-and-shut affair – one he wouldn't bother leaving the flat for, if this were London and Lestrade on the phone – but he was already here. Local inspectors would in all probability admit him to the investigation more readily than would the London police, but would also be more reluctant to do so save in person. He would go to the crime scenes – no, he would go to the station. It would be diverting. It never hurt to have contacts in the provinces. And Mrs. Hudson would be delighted to hear about it afterward.
He nodded curtly, burying the modicum of gratitude he felt toward the annoying man in impatience with his seeming inability to furnish sufficient information without prompting. "The police station – where is it?"
"They're a bit north of here." The man pointed back in the direction of the train station. "Just up Broad Street a little ways, it's not far. I'd take you there myself-" Sherlock's throat clenched at even the hypothetical prospect of yet more of this man's company – "but I've got some errands to run in town. You know," he rolled his eyes – no, his entire head, surely he knew that his affect was absurd? – and curled his fingers in scare quotes, "In town.Nothing like London, of course." He beamed at Sherlock, as if willing Sherlock to be impressed that he was able to distinguish between a market town in Buckinghamshire and a major metropolis of international stature.
"Yes. Well. Thank you…" his thoughts were already sliding ahead, calculating the rhetorical approach he would take with the Chief Inspector, but the man took Sherlock's tone as an invitation and stuck out his hand, still grinning. "Jim," he said. "Jim Fenris."
"Sherlock Holmes," he replied automatically. Fenris. The name clicked into place in his memory. For the third time in as many minutes, Sherlock was surprised; for the first time, it occurred to him to wonder if it showed.
"Yes, I know." Jim smiled again, and this time it was shrewd. "So I'll be seeing you, then, Sherlock."
"Probably not," he said, already walking away. Jim stood there, he knew without looking, watching him as the distance between then grew.
Forty-five minutes later, Sherlock exited the police station with hazelnut biscuits intact (he had slammed the box down on the countertop to punctuate a point earlier on, but now opened the box to check in a spate of remorse) and his temper rather less so. The whole affair had been a colossal waste of time, naturally; he didn't know why he would have expected otherwise. Sherlock had spent nearly fifteen minutes attempting to cow the desk constable into fetching the sergeant for him, who then renewed his subordinate's song and dance about how the killer had been apprehended just this morning and the case was closed, never mind about the petechial bruising at the throats; and that was just the evidence that they had managed to observe for themselves. But a citizen's tip had put the police on the tail of a local drunkard with known money troubles who could not supply an alibi for the night of either killing, and that was apparently sufficient for the Queen's Finest.
Fuming, Sherlock stalked through the pitiful clutch of streets that pretended to the title of town, past the roundabout and down the wretched highway that now overlaid what had clearly once been a rather lovely country lane. Putting the hedge of the westward field between himself and the traffic, Sherlock walked until the fields gave way to woods on both sides of the road about a quarter mile down. At this point, Sherlock turned away from the road to cut a diagonal course through the wood.
Things were a good deal quieter beneath the trees, and his black mood lifted somewhat. Sherlock preferred London to anywhere else on earth; but he also liked uninhabited stretches of land – whether field, forest, or moorland – far better than the wretched half-acculturated outposts, particularly those like the one behind him, in which the farm stand and the country apothecary had given way to Boots and Tesco. Although he was still fairly close to the road, the stillness and the rich smell of the forest understory made that world feel suddenly remote, even a bit unreal.
Sherlock paused to consult the moss growing on the side of a fallen log and corrected his course slightly, a bit more directly west. If he had plotted his course correctly – which of course he had – fifteen minutes' walk would take him to the south edge of the wood, to the very doorstep of the cottage at the northern tip of Winstone Close. Mrs. Hudson would be expecting him. He quickened his steps.
There was a natural clearing in the trees just north of the cottage which afforded a view of the place and its surroundings. Sherlock found himself unreasonably pleased to discover that it was quite an old building, built of solid stone, of modest but gracious proportions and surrounded by a lushly unkempt lawn. It was just possible to discern, farther down the Close and around a curve in the road, several more recent houses which were obviously part of the same development, but June Fenris's cottage had been left to stand pleasantly secluded. The curtains drawn over the windows were sufficiently thick as to disguise any movement inside, but the wisps of smoke curling from the chimney made the cottage look cozy and welcoming.
Sherlock wound round to the front of the cottage and was about to go in – for Mrs. Hudson knew to expect him, and would have left the latch undone – when the door opened and there stood Jim from the train platform.
Jim smiled widely. "Hello Sherlock."
Sherlock kept his face impassive as he clamped down on a sudden wave of unease that roiled inside of him. "Why Mrs. Hudson, you are looking unwell. Not at all yourself."
If anything, Jim smiled all the wider. "Mrs. Fenris was my auntie, you know, so I've been in and about since the funeral, helping your dear Mrs. Hudson get the place in order." He swept an arm toward the hallway. "Why don't you come in?"
Sherlock regarded him coldly. "Your 'help' has shown itself rather a poor commodity. You do realize that the police are laboring under the impression, however misguided, that they have already apprehended the culprit?"
"Oh, have they?" Jim shook his head regretfully for a moment, but then the smile reappeared. "Too bad for you, I am sorry. But you're here now." He stepped back from the door slightly. "Won't you come in?"
Sherlock scanned the sliver of dark hallway that had opened to him, and the man in front of him obscuring the rest. "You have very clean fingernails, for someone who has supposedly been clearing decayed storage vegetables from the cellar."
"That was for you, Sherlock." The smile grew flat, and Jim's eyes went half-lidded. "I knew you were coming and I've just made the tea. Won't you come in?"
Abruptly, Sherlock was out of patience. "Where is Mrs. Hudson. I won't play your game any longer."
Jim stepped out onto the threshold, putting his face uncomfortably close to Sherlock's own. "I'll tell you what, Sherlock. Why don't you just come inside" – he reached out a hand, as if to beckon Sherlock inside; there was a flash of wood as something slid out from the cuff of Jim's shirt and in the next instant Jim was holding a knife inches from Sherlock's chest – "and you can see just what kind of game it is we're playing." He paused. "You, me, and your Mrs. Hudson." And the flicker of indecision that Sherlock had felt was extinguished, and he went silently into the house.
Sherlock barely had time to breathe in the scent of the fire crackling in the living room hearth before Jim steered him down the hallway to a cold, dimly lit room at the back of the house sparely furnished in dusky greens and blues. Mrs. Hudson was curled up in one corner, and Sherlock crossed the room in an instant, kneeling down to take her face in his hands. "Are you all right?" he asked.
He touched her cheeks, her forehead, her neck, feeling for injuries. Mrs. Hudson's wrists had been bound with electrical tape, and her ankles as well. She was clearly distressed – about her modesty as much as anything else, Sherlock didn't doubt, for she was only in her nightgown – but the cloth bound between her teeth prevented her from talking. Whatever energy she might have had for the struggle had clearly been exhausted well before Sherlock arrived. But her eyes met his, frightened but clear.
Sherlock whirled on their invader, who was clearly delighted by the emotional scene playing out in front of him. "How dare you," Sherlock ground out. He drew himself up to loom over this pale, miserable creature who seemed to think that a bit of pointed steel would be enough to intimidate him. Mrs. Hudson was behind him now, and there were only a few feet of floor between Jim and the cold rage Sherlock felt building inside him.
"Oh, I'd be careful if I were you," said Jim in a low voice. You see" – and here he stuck his left hand in his pocket, drew out a lighter, and flicked it to life – "if you hadn't been so distracted just now you would have noticed the funny smell hanging around your Mrs. Hudson." And through his anger Sherlock became aware of a sense-impression he had not stopped to categorize, a pungent black volatile scent. Jim paused to sniff the air theatrically, a confused frown on his own face, and oh, how Sherlock hated him.
Seeing Sherlock gone still, Jim smirked and put the lighter back in his pocket. "Now then, we're all clear on what's happening. Sherlock, go have a seat." He flicked the blade of the knife toward a wicker chair that had been positioned in the middle of the room. Sherlock sat, mutinously. Jim picked up the roll of electrical tape, crossed the room, and cut the tape on Mrs. Hudson's feet. Pulling her roughly to her feet, he put the roll of tape in her still-bound hands and set his own hand in a vicious hold at the back of her neck. He steered her behind Sherlock's chair. "Tie his hands," Jim ordered, his voice gone cold and dead and bored, and though Sherlock could no longer see them, the slight catch of breath told him that Jim had tightened his hold on Mrs. Hudson's neck. It was slow, clumsy work, because her hands were still bound. The tape pulled at his wrists, lightly at first; but then Jim snapped out "do it properly!" and the tape yanked at his skin the next time it looped round. He then pushed her to the ground to do the same to his ankles.
Jim pulled at the tape to test it, then steered Mrs. Hudson back to her corner and pushed her to the floor. Sherlock couldn't help wincing at the whimpering sound she made when she landed.
Jim turned to Sherlock now, and his smile was predatory. He had never once put the knife away, but now he swung it loosely from his wrist as he moved, an indolent, sensuous gesture that made the blade seem like a natural extension of his hand. Like the weapon belonged to his body.
"Do you know why we're here, Sherlock?" Jim asked, his tone suddenly brisk, and inside Sherlock something shifted with relief; now, finally, they were getting somewhere. And Jim's attention was off Mrs. Hudson and on Sherlock, where it belonged.
"I'm sure you're planning to tell me," he replied, as haughtily as he could manage with his hands taped behind his back.
Jim seemed amused. "So I am! But really, anybody could have worked that one out." He lifted the knife to his left hand and fingered the blade reflectively. His smile seemed frozen on his face, an eerie contrast to the bizarre elasticity of all his various earlier expressions. "After all, it wouldn't be much fun for any of us if I just killed you, would it?"
From the corner, Mrs. Hudson let out a small, frightened gasp. Sherlock scoffed, and fixed Jim with an imperious stare. "Oh, boring. You're going to explain yourself at length before you attempt to kill me. That's rather a tired routine, isn't it?"
Jim stared back, and the smile had left his eyes, though it remained in the rictus of his face. "Not the way I do it," he said, bending down to thrust it at Sherlock. "This will be new."
Jim took the knife and drew it up his body like a pointer, barely a hairsbreadth away from touching him, carving out the shape of Sherlock's silhouette. He paused when he reached Sherlock's chest; Sherlock could not help lifting his chin, even as he knew that this small act of defiance did more to draw attention to his fear than to mask it. Jim let out a deep and plummy chuckle and tipped the blade of the knife upward until it caught under the edge of Sherlock's crimson scarf where it lay against his neck. Smiling languidly, he slowly, slowly put ever-so-slightly more pressure behind the knife, until at last the tip bit through the fabric with a scratching sound. The sound masked Sherlock's slight gasp, but Jim apparently felt the tiny movement of his chest and his smile grew wolfish. The sound of ripping fabric rattled like gunfire in the silent cottage as Jim drew the knife swiftly toward himself. When the parted edges of the wounded scarf fell away from the blade, Jim flipped it closed and tucked it carefully in his back pocket; and then quite suddenly his hands were almost in Sherlock's face as he seized the cut edges of the scarf and yanked on them violently. With a rasping noise, the scarf gave way and Jim dropped it just as suddenly, letting the two damaged halves slither down Sherlock's body to the floor.
Jim drew the folded knife back out of his pocket, caressing the handle with his thumb, and held it in front of Sherlock's face. "Oh, I'm going to enjoy our time together, Sherlock," he said silkily.
The moment was broken by a loud thunking noise from the hallway. "Hello?" a man's voice called down the hall. "Mrs. Hudson? All right?"
Jim's face seized with irritation, but he slid the still-folded knife back into his pocket. "Make one sound and I will gut her," Jim hissed, and stalked out of the room.
Having already ascertained that he would be unable to break or slip the electrical tape at his wrists and ankles, Sherlock took a rapid inventory of the other furniture in the room (day bed against the side wall, useless; matching chair in the far corner, useless at this distance and inaccessible) as well as the stray objects therein (box of biscuits just inside the door where Sherlock had dropped it, roll of tape near Mrs. Hudson, both no good). Down the hall, Jim greeted the man in words too faint to hear; Sherlock could make out only the blurry tones of their alternating voices, but inferred that Jim was laying on a fulsome routine about caring for his poor sick auntie. The visitor appeared to be convinced, and Sherlock felt a pang of frustration at the sound of Jim's hearty goodbye. He wasn't ready to give up just yet, but the thump of the front door as it swung shut did feel like a very solid blow to their hopes.
Jim was smiling again by the time he came back into the room, although Sherlock noticed that he had taken his time about it. So the conversation, however ostensibly pleasant, had been at least mildly disconcerting for Jim; surely Sherlock could use that.
"Making friends?" he asked snidely.
"Nah." Jim waved a hand over his shoulder. "We do fine on our own, in this house." His smile took root as he drew closer to the chair, and Sherlock suppressed a shiver. "We don't need other friends." Jim leaned in over Sherlock's shoulder, and his breath tickled Sherlock's ear as he chuckled. Sherlock locked his jaw and concentrated on not reacting to the breath on his neck and throat or the voice sliding into his ear. "We're going to have so much fun, you and me. And when it starts to get boring for me, that's when…."
But Sherlock never got to find out what would happen when Jim got bored, because next he knew Jim gave a choked-off grunt and collapsed over him. Something hot and wet hit him in the left eye, and so it was only by turning his head all the way to the left that he was able to see a blond figure bent over a distraught Mrs. Hudson, who had wisely waited until the danger had passed before going to pieces. Their rescuer seemed unfazed by her wailing; after untying the rag from her mouth, he spoke quiet words and caught her in low, soothing conversation while he picked steadily at the tape on her wrists.
A few minutes later, their benefactor ushered Mrs. Hudson to the day bed and then knelt down next to Sherlock. "It'll be just a minute on this tape," he said from beside Sherlock's ankle. "Sorry to leave you hanging with that piece of garbage ranged all over you. We'll tie him up in a minute once I've got you free."
"Thank you." Sherlock still had not seen the man's face, but his voice was reassuring: gentle but sturdy. A moment later, he felt his right ankle come loose; then his left, and then at last his wrists. With a painful roll of his shoulders, he thrust Jim's limp body off of him, and felt only relish as Jim hit the floor hard. It was a matter of seconds before the man had taped Jim's wrists and ankles. Privately, Sherlock doubted that Jim would ever wake again.
And suddenly the man was in front of him, holding his chin and looking critically at his face. The man's own face was wonderfully expressive, almost as mobile as Jim's, but honest: gentle and open and steely all at once. Sherlock thought he might spend a lot of time looking at a face like that before getting bored with it. At present, the face was frowning up into his. "That's his blood, not yours, right? Hang on a tick, I saw a flannel in the kitchen." Sherlock stood rubbing his wrists while the man darted down the hall and came back with a flannel and a bowl of warm water. Setting the bowl on the seat of the chair, he dipped the flannel and went to work cleaning Sherlock's face.
"There you are," he said, smiling at Sherlock as he dropped the flannel into the bowl.
"Thank you," Sherlock said again. Inwardly he kicked himself for being repetitive – after all, he had already said thank you – but he couldn't escape the sense that the circumstances warranted it.
"Yeah, of course. I'm glad I came by when I did." Rubbing his hand along the back of his neck, the man's eyes dropped to the floor, where two pieces of crimson cloth stood out sharply on the moss-green carpeting.
"Sorry about the scarf, mate," his rescuer said, picking up one truncated half and examining it. "I guess you've got two short ones, now."
Sherlock usually hated it when strangers called him "mate" – and anybody who wasn't a stranger knew better – but somehow Sherlock didn't mind it, from this man. Perhaps it was the axe.
"Oh," the man caught sight of Sherlock looking at the rough-hewn axe leaning against the wall next to the day bed, blood already darkening on the butt end. "I was just clearing the back patch out by my gran's house. I've been bringing over some wood for the fire, to help with the cold nights. And I've seen this louse" – and here he kicked Jim's shoulder, none too gently "skulking about town, but I'd never seen him here until today. So I thought I'd investigate. Make sure your auntie was all right."
"My friend, actually," said Sherlock, just as Mrs. Hudson put in "I'm his landlady, dear." The man looked back and forth between them, confused. "I'm John," he said to Sherlock, "and I'm pleased to meet you, whoever you are. Any friend of Mrs. Hudson's is a friend of mine."
"Sherlock," he replied, shaking the man's hand. He had a good firm grip. "You're military, aren't you? Invalided home, staying with family, hoping to return to London?"
John's open face was astonished. "Yes, but… how did you know that?"
"Never mind that." Sherlock smiled. "Would you be interested in a flatmate?"