"Not busy are you, Sherlock?"
Lestrade's tone was nonchalant, but anyone who knew him well – as both Sherlock and John did, by now – could tell that, in actual fact, he was deeply worried. It wasn't just the bags under his eyes, where he hadn't been sleeping, or the stains of ketchup on his normally pristine shirt, which bore witness to the fact that he'd been eating on the hoof, with no time to keep tabs on his appearance. No, it was the fact that he was standing in the living room of 221B Baker Street at all. Lestrade didn't do social calls. If he'd come to see Sherlock, it was because he needed his help.
"Sir George Maintree, the computing tycoon, was killed two nights ago at his London mansion," he announced.
"Yes, yes, read it in the paper yesterday morning," yawned Sherlock, wearily. "Obviously an inside job. You needn't waste your time looking for an intruder. It was someone who lived there that killed him. Either his son or one of the live-in staff."
Lestrade looked affronted. "Yes, we had worked that one out for ourselves. We're not total amateurs, you know!"
Sherlock's only response to this was an amused twitch to the mouth and a sardonically raised left eyebrow.
"We've already arrested the cook," Scotland Yard's finest continued. "All the evidence seems to point to him. Sir George was stabbed. The boy had a thing about knives. He ordered some kitchen supplies a month ago, on his employer's behalf, from Champignons, that fancy kitchenware shop on Marylebone High Street. But he ordered far more knives than they could possibly have needed, and some of them are missing from the kitchen now. He can't explain it."
"But?" interjected John.
"What makes you think there's a 'but'?" asked Lestrade.
"Well, you wouldn't be here if there wasn't a 'but'." John grinned. "Would you?"
"We think we've got it all tied up, but we just fancied a second opinion, that's all," said the policeman, in a studiedly casual tone.
Sherlock's eyes narrowed. "I don't do second opinions. My talent's not worth wasting on dotting someone else's "i"s and crossing PC Plod's "t"s. You can see yourself out, can't you?"
Lestrade immediately dropped the calm façade and blurted out in sheer desperation:
"All right, I admit it. I'm not happy with the result. The evidence seems to point that way and my governor just wants a nice, swift tidy end to the case, but something…my copper's gut instinct, I suppose…is telling me it's not right. I need your help!"
Sherlock sighed. "This cook. How old is he? Late teens?"
Lestrade nodded. "Eighteen. Came to Sir George six months ago, straight from his catering course."
"Wear a lot of bling, does he?"
The policeman looked surprised. "Yeah, that's right. How did you know? Did the papers get hold of his picture?"
Sherlock scoffed. "No. I simply worked it out. And of course he didn't kill Sir George! I'm assuming he's an excellent cook or Maintree wouldn't have taken him on, with his relative lack of experience. Good cooks aren't morons, Lestrade. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that to cook a first-rate meal probably takes more practical intelligence than to complete a PhD in Astrophysics at Cambridge. If the boy wanted to murder his employer, he'd have had the sense not to leave a glaringly obvious paper trail leading straight back to the murder weapon.
No, he wanted the knives for something else. Who uses knives these days? Gang members. You walk into a kitchen shop in a hoodie with enough gold jewellery decked about your person to stock an entire branch of H Samuel and ask to buy a set of knives, they probably won't want to serve you. But if you can convince them that you need the knives for your job and, very conveniently, get your employer to unwittingly foot the bill, it makes things a lot easier. Go and find the St John's Wood Posse and you'll have found your missing knives. They won't have been used to kill Sir George, though."
Lestrade's mobile rang before he had a chance to respond to this. He took the call.
"Hello?…Already? Excellent!…Ah…I see…Thank you, Molly, I appreciate it."
"You were right, Sherlock," he filled them in, as soon as he had rung off. "That was Molly Hooper at Bart's. She did the PM on Sir George. She's just been looking at a set of knives that are identical to the ones that are missing from the Champignons order. She says that none of them are consistent with the wounds she found on the body. But the wounds match exactly with an old army knife found in Maintree's study. He used to use it to open letters, apparently."
"I already knew I was right," sniffed Sherlock, haughtily. "Ah, well," he sighed with resignation, heaving himself out of his chair. "I suppose I am going to have to interview the other three to find you your murderer. John, could you fetch me my coat, seeing as you'll be going to get yours, anyway?"
"You can forget the son, by the way," Lestrade explained in the car on the way there. "He's out of the picture. Pity. I'd be fingering him, otherwise. Smooth bastard. Shifty. The type I can imagine selling his grandmother if he could get a good enough price. But we've been over and over his alibi with a fine-toothed comb and it's no good. It's watertight."
"Mixed metaphor," muttered Sherlock.
"What?"
"A comb would be no use whatsoever in trying to determine whether or not something were watertight. And that's even before we factor in the international trade in grandmothers."
Lestrade shifted testily. "Well, whatever words I use to describe it, one thing's for sure. His alibi won't crack."
"How very suspicious! Uncrackable alibis are so extremely rare in real life that whenever I encounter one I'm always tempted to jump to the conclusion that it's been elaborately constructed."
Lestrade held up his hands. "Well, if you can find a hole in it, good luck to you! Nothing would give me more pleasure than to see that boy behind bars. Too cocky by half."
"And they say the modern police service are impartial and fair…"
"Well, just wait until you meet him! You'll see what I mean."
And when they did meet him, John had to concede that Lestrade may have had a point. While Sir George Maintree, the dead industrialist, had enjoyed a wide reputation as a horn-handed son of the East End who had worked his way up from barrow boy to the CEO of a multi-national conglomerate by sheer dint of willpower and hard endeavour, and who had never forgotten his roots or lost his Cockney accent, his son was clearly a different beast altogether. Floppy-haired, dressed in expensive casuals, a cashmere sweater knotted loosely around his neck, he resonated privilege and patrician arrogance from his every pore, even before he opened his mouth and his cut-glass vowels oozed out in a lazy drawl.
John was by no means an inverted snob. Obviously, as an army officer, he had shared quarters and worked alongside the alumni of Eton and Harrow and had usually got on well with them. He got on well with Sherlock. Well, most of the time. And any problems he had with his unconventional flatmate derived more from his penchant for storing human body parts in the microwave than from his upper-middle class roots.
But there was something about Jonathan Maintree that immediately put his back up. Here was a freeloader, a playboy, who had plainly acquired a whopping great sense of entitlement from his pampered, wealthy upbringing, but no sense of duty or responsibility whatsoever.
He didn't seem to have had that effect on Sherlock, though, who was even now greeting him with what looked suspiciously like a Masonic handshake.
"Harrow?" he asked, conspiratorially, as if they were old friends.
"Er, no, Eton, actually," Maintree droned, matter-of-factly.
But Sherlock seemed barely to be listening. His attention had been drawn by some rosettes displayed on the wall and he was admiring a photograph next to them of Jonathan on a horse, dressed in jodhpurs and helmet and clutching a mallet.
"Ah!" cried Sherlock, enthusiastically. "So you're a polo man?"
Maintree shrugged. "Daddy liked me to play. I found it all a bit of a bore, to tell you the truth."
The conversation was obviously flagging, so Sherlock abandoned the idle chit-chat and cut to the chase. "DI Lestrade tells me you were out of the house the night your father was killed?"
Posh Boy nodded. "I was helping an old Cambridge friend celebrate his birthday at Cassett's. I'm afraid we went on a bit of a bender. Didn't get home until eleven the next morning."
"Cassett's, eh?" beamed Sherlock. "My brother's club. Perhaps you know him. Have you been a member long?"
"Daddy pulled a few strings to get me nominated when I turned eighteen. I can't say I spend a great deal of time there, though. Not really my kind of scene. I doubt if I'd have met your brother there. Although possibly I'd know him by sight, if he's a regular."
"I doubt if he'd have seen you on Tuesday night, when you were living it up with your chum. Mycroft's more of a lunchtime patron – he can't resist nursery food. Give him toad-in-the-hole followed by jam roly-poly and custard and he's in heaven.
Were there a lot of people in on Tuesday night? Anyone, for instance, who could testify that you were there all night and they never saw you leave?"
But before Maintree could answer, Lestrade had already chipped in, notebook at the ready:
"Only fifteen of Mr Maintree's university friends, thirty-six other customers, seven bar staff and a down-and-out who was kipping in the doorway of the only exit, that's all. Seems it was a fancy dress party. Mr Maintree must have been a little bit conspicuous, dressed as TinkyWinky from the Teletubbies. If he'd left the premises for more than five minutes, I think someone would have noticed."
John's ears pricked up. A Teletubby costume! How much of Maintree's face would that conceal? How certain could the punters at Cassett's be that the man they had seen had actually been Jonathan and not an accomplice, who might have switched places with the playboy for an hour or so, giving him enough time to nip home, murder his father, before returning to rejoin the party? John felt sure that that apparently impregnable alibi was on the verge of crumbling. Jonathan Maintree had to be their man!
Mind you, when he met Lee Smithers, the cook, he began to wonder if Sherlock had been hasty in dismissing him as a suspect so soon. The boy looked like a thug, with his blond hair shaved close to his head, big sovereign rings on both hands and ugly chunky gold chains hanging around his wrists and neck. John had no trouble imagining him wielding a knife in anger. Although he did have to concede that Sherlock had been right about one thing: he was an excellent cook. The homemade pastries he served them with their coffee were the best he'd ever tasted.
But if Sherlock couldn't crack Jonathan's alibi, surely the culprit had to be Smithers? Because John simply couldn't see either the PA or the housekeeper being the murderer.
They were both black women aged around 30. Sasha MacLaren was a bubbly, well-dressed woman with a winning smile, who greeted them with genuine warmth, not merely professional politeness or ersatz charm.
"I hope that you can help catch the beast who did this to Sir George, Mr Holmes, I really do!" she said, clasping Sherlock's hand between hers. "He wasn't just an employer, he was more like a father to me and Ella. Never a sharp word from him in the three years I've worked here! He was a real, old-fashioned gentleman. Who would want to kill a lovely old man like him?" She shook her head, sadly. "I tell you, it's proof enough that we're living in the Last Days!"
This comment puzzled John for a minute, but a closer examination of the PA's jewellery gave him a context within which it made sense. She was dressed neatly in a grey wool suit and a crisply pressed white shirt, but she wore a silver cross pendant that must have been at least three inches across and four inches long ("Practically life-size," as Sherlock observed later, when she was out of earshot), and around her left wrist she wore a silver bangle with "What would Jesus do?" engraved on it in cursive lettering.
But it wasn't just the secretary's religious faith and general demeanour of niceness that made her an unlikely murderer. It was also her nails. John had never seen such a magnificent set of talons – about three inches long, lacquered a tasteful shade of burgundy, with little diamante chips set into them. It was hard to see how she was able to type with them, let alone stab a man to death without breaking or chipping a single one.
That left Ella Ntsimango, the housekeeper, a very different person from Sasha MacLaren. Where the PA was chatty and effervescent, Ella was quiet and reserved, but in a calm and courteous way. Where Sasha was studiously groomed and coiffeured, Ella was simply and casually dressed in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, a baggy cardigan and flat loafers and her hair was left in its natural, frizzy state, but cropped very close to the skull. She was wearing rubber gloves and an apron when John and Sherlock arrived at the house, but had removed them when she realised that they wanted to interview her. She wore no make-up or jewellery. And she didn't need to. Because she was quite simply one of the most beautiful women John had ever seen. Almond-shaped eyes, with irises the colour of molten chocolate, razor-sharp cheekbones, full, luscious lips and a voluptuous, statuesque figure that quite took John's breath away.
Funnily enough, it seemed to be having that effect on Sherlock, too. John noticed with amazement (and not a little embarrassment) that his friend seemed to be staring at the woman's generously-proportioned chest. But that couldn't be! Sherlock was a cold fish, a very cold fish, indeed. John sometimes wondered if he'd ever had a sexual thought or feeling at all. If he had, though, John had somehow always assumed that it would be about a man. He didn't like Sherlock looking at Ella like that, didn't like it at all and, if he was honest with himself, it wasn't just because it was damn rude and he didn't like the thought of people thinking he was mates with a lech.
If Ella had noticed, though, she didn't show it. In fact, that was one of the most attractive things about her – she seemed completely unaware of her own traffic-stopping beauty. She gave every impression of being a modest, unpretentious, down-to-earth, practical sort, who just got on and did things, without making a fuss.
When Sherlock asked her if she would show them the study where the paper knife was kept, she briskly led the way there. Sasha came too, as Sherlock said he might need to ask her a few things about where papers and such were filed.
"You clean in here every day?" asked the detective.
"We have a daily who comes in on Tuesday and Thursday," Ella explained. "She does most of the heavy work. But I come in here every morning to give it a quick dust, empty the bin, make sure that there's fresh flowers on Sir George's desk and everything else is neat and tidy. It usually is." She flashed a grin at her colleague. "Sasha keeps things in excellent order."
"You normally work in here every day?" he enquired of the PA.
She nodded. "Sir George prefers to work from home, now that he's not as young as he used to be. Ella and I often tease him about it. Once in a while he goes into head office and obviously, I accompany him then. But we can do most things from this office…" She broke off. Tears filled her eyes. "I'm still talking about him in the present tense. I just can't believe he's gone! Still," she said, wiping her eyes with a tissue, "it's selfish of me to cry. I know he's in a better place now and the Lord is watching over him."
Sherlock made a couple of non-committal clucking noises. He never had been good at dealing with other people's emotions. Possibly to distract himself, he turned to Ella and asked her if she would show him the drawer where the knife was kept.
"It's that one."
She pointed to the top, right-hand desk drawer.
Sherlock gave a tight smile.
"Would you open it for me, Miss Ntsimango?"
"Certainly."
She leant over and gently pulled open the drawer.
Sherlock stood behind her and leant over slightly, too, as if he were trying to peer into the drawer. However, it was woefully clear from the angle at which John was standing that, actually, he was trying to peer down the front of her T-shirt. He stared with intent curiosity for several seconds, occasionally slightly altering the angle of his neck so he could get a better view.
This was quite extraordinary! It was so out of character, it was a bit like watching the Queen shooting up or the Archbishop of Canterbury mooning. John felt a little bit sick.
Eventually, though, presumably after he'd had enough of an eyeful, Sherlock straightened up, thanked Ella for her co-operation and told her she could shut the drawer again.
"Right. Thank you, ladies, for your time. We'll be on our way now. I think we've seen what we came for."
John privately thought that Sherlock had definitely seen far more than he came for, but he kept his thoughts to himself.
"I'm assuming that Jonathan is the sole beneficiary of Sir George's will?" asked Sherlock, when Lestrade was driving them back to Baker Street.
"More or less," confirmed the detective inspector. "I mean, there are one or two small legacies to charities, but the bulk of the one-and-a-half billion estate goes to our friend Mr Slimeball."
"How very intriguing! Four suspects. One has a 24-carat motive, but no opportunity. The other three have plenty of opportunity, but no apparent motive whatsoever."
"Yeah, but maybe they didn't know that," John pointed out. "One of them may have believed that they had a tidy sum coming their way in Sir George's will and now they're going to be deeply disappointed."
"Nice idea, John," sighed Lestrade, "but it doesn't fit the facts. They all knew about the will. Sasha MacLaren helped him draw it up, Lee and Ella witnessed it."
"Hmmm," muttered John, frustrated at hitting another dead end. "I suppose you're certain that it really was Jonathan Maintree in that Tellytubby costume?"
"First thing I thought of, too," said the policeman, "but, yes, it really was him. The headdress showed his face and he was never out of anyone's sight for longer than it took to go for a quick slash."
John turned to Sherlock, wondering what he thought, and a little puzzled by his silence on this matter, but then he saw that the great man was furiously firing off a series of text messages. What was that all about? But he knew there was no point in asking. The world's only consulting detective would tell him in his own good time, if he wanted to. If he didn't want to, no amount of questioning or coaxing on John's part would lead him to show his hand.
When they got home, Sherlock headed straight for the couch and stretched himself out in what John recognised as his thinking position. He wondered if he should offer to make him a coffee, but he didn't think he'd appreciate him interrupting his thought processes. Besides, he didn't like to eat or drink much when he was on a case. He sat for a few minutes watching his strange flatmate think, a superior and inscrutable look upon his face, like a Siamese cat. Then he began to feel a bit awkward and thought that perhaps he ought to go to his bedroom. He'd be less in Sherlock's way there. He started to get up.
"No, it's OK!" said Sherlock, hastily, without opening his eyes. He smiled. "I don't mind you sitting there. I quite like it. Just don't talk or think loudly, if you can possibly help it."
John coughed. "All right, then."
He settled back down into his seat and they sat in silence for about half an hour, Sherlock thinking, John watching Sherlock think.
Suddenly, the silence was ripped apart by the blare from the buzzer for the front door. John jumped. It frustrated him that loud noises still had that effect on him when he wasn't expecting them, even after this amount of time away from the frontline. Made him nervy, skittish.
"Ah," said Sherlock, snapping out of his reverie. "I think that will be a delivery I'm expecting. You wouldn't mind, would you…?"
John sighed. His flatmate's laziness was infuriating, but he knew that if he didn't go, Sherlock would probably let the package go back to the sorting office, and his own curiosity was by now so piqued, he simply had to find out what it contained and what bearing it had on the case. Cursing Sherlock under his breath, he clattered his way down the stairs and opened the door to the courier, who was clutching an A4 manila envelope, addressed to "Mr S Holmes". John signed for the delivery and jogged his way back up to the flat. Living with Sherlock was good exercise, at any rate.
Predictably, as soon as he was through the door, Sherlock snatched the envelope out of his hands without so much as a "Thank you" or "Do you mind?" and slit the seal with a knife. He peered into the open end, before sliding out a single piece of paper, folded down the middle.
"You don't need gloves to handle that?" asked John, more to remind his colleague that he was still there, not to freeze him out, rather than because he thought it might be a useful reminder. If Sherlock had needed gloves, he would be wearing gloves – John knew that. And Sherlock knew that John knew that. And he knew perfectly well that John knew that he knew that John knew that.
"No," muttered Sherlock, abstractedly, as he scanned the contents of the piece of paper. "The only people whose prints are on this are petty bureaucrats – nothing to do with the case at all. We don't need to worry about them….Ah!" he suddenly exclaimed, in a totally different tone – triumphant, vibrant. "Exactly as I thought!"
He tossed the paper to his friend. To John's surprise, the document was a marriage certificate, dated about three years previously. The groom's name was Jonathan Maintree, the bride's name was Ella Ntsimango.
"Ella is married to Maintree's son?" he asked, incredulous.
Sherlock nodded.
John was flabbergasted. "How on earth could you possibly have known that?"
Sure enough, his flatmate launched into one of his speed-of-light explanations, where he barely seemed to need to stop for breath.
"As soon as I met Ella, I spotted a faint bulge beneath her top. At once, I thought 'She's wearing something round her neck that she doesn't want anyone to see. Why wouldn't she want anyone to see it? Because staff jewellery wasn't allowed?' No, the other staff were decked out like bloody Christmas trees. Religious symbol? Why would she have to hide that? Sasha wears her faith on her sleeve – quite literally. Maintree evidently didn't have a problem with visible displays of religion. A secret key? That makes no sense – Ella has a key to every room in that house as part of her job. She didn't need to be reticent about it. The only other thing a woman might wear round her neck beneath her clothes is her wedding ring, if she didn't want anyone to know she was married, but if she were attached enough to her husband, if she were sentimental enough about him, that she couldn't bear to take it off and leave it in a drawer. That seemed to rule out her being married to Sir George, himself, which was my first hypothesis – if she were attached to him, she wouldn't have killed him. And, in any case, why would she be continuing to keep it a secret now, when he was dead? She would have had everything to gain by publicising their relationship – she would have become his next of kin, would automatically have inherited the largest slice of the pie, regardless of what the will said. No, the husband had to be Jonathan. There was no other explanation."
"Oh," said John, light finally dawning, "so that's why you were trying to look down the front of Ella's T-shirt! You wanted to see if you were right about the ring!"
"Of course!" snapped Sherlock, rather waspishly. "Why else would I want to look down her….." A look of revulsion flashed across his face. "Oh, God! You thought I was perving, didn't you? You little sod! Haven't I told you often enough, women are not my area?"
"Sorry!" said John, raising his arms in a gesture of defeat, and quickly changed the subject. "So they got married three years ago, but they never got round to telling his old man?"
Sherlock snorted. "Of course they never told the old man! Fond as he was of Ella, he wouldn't have approved. He expected his son to marry a suitable scion of the old county families – some horsey girl in twinset and pearls with a Barbour and green wellies, utterly devoid of either chin or personality. Didn't you see the polo pictures, the terrible look of ennui on Jonathan's face when I asked him about public school and Cassett's? His father was trying to live his life again through his son, using the boy like some poseable action figure to act out some deluded vulgar fantasy he had about the aristo lifestyle. If he'd known about the liaison with Ella, he'd probably have cut Jonathan out of his will. But what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him." He looked up. "Now do you have your motive?"
Sherlock's 'phone pirruped. He pressed the keys to read the text.
"Lestrade," he said. "A cleaning tabard and a bloodstained pair of Marigolds* have been found in a domestic wheelie bin about half a mile from Maintree's house. Forensics will have to run some tests, but I think they'll confirm what we already suspect."
(*There are other gloves.)
John felt drained, utterly disappointed in Ella, whom he'd instinctively liked. "They could have just sat tight and waited!" he protested – more to himself than his flatmate. "At his age, in his state of health, he wouldn't have hung on forever!"
"Perhaps they didn't want to wait?" shrugged Sherlock. "Or perhaps George kept pressing Jonathan to find himself a nice county girl and he'd just had enough of living a lie? I can't say I especially blame him. In his position, I'm not sure I wouldn't have done the same thing myself…"
"You don't mean that!" protested John.
Sherlock suddenly fixed John with his blue eyes, as cold and sharp as whetted steel. "Don't I?"
John felt a shiver down his back as, not for the first time, he became aware that his friend had a callous side, dark recesses to his personality where it was probably best not to go. He suddenly didn't want to pursue this conversation any further, so he made a tactical withdrawal to the kitchen to begin getting their supper.
It was about an hour later, when the lasagne was bubbling away nicely in the oven, that he realised there was still one question he didn't know the answer to. Pouring two large glasses of Malbec, he went back into the living room, carefully navigating his way around the piles of books and papers that littered the floor.
"Sherlock?"
"Hmm," murmured the great detective, who had become engrossed in a book of forensic theory.
"Jonathan and Ella both stood to gain from Sir George's death. They were both in on the murder, right?"
"Ye-es," he said, without raising his eyes from the page.
"So which one of them came up with the actual plan, then?"
Sherlock smiled, looking up from his book and taking the proffered glass of wine. "Ella Maintree, my dear John."