"But why would she lie?" John asked, clearly confused at the explanation Sherlock had just given regarding their current client's suspicious activity.
"Why does anyone lie?" Sherlock responded, gazing out the window as the cab slowed to a stop. "She's trying to gain control of the situation. It's in our best interest to make her believe she has it."
John stared at the notes he had taken, still perplexed. "But why come to us in the first place then? If she knows something about her sister's disappearance why would she bother coming to a detective. She's only making it more difficult for herself to get away with it." He thought for another moment. "And what did you mean when you said—"
Sherlock was already gone.
A tap on John's window startled him into an eye roll a second later. "Coming?"
He wasn't sure why he had to get out of the car. From what Sherlock had said, they were only stopping at Molly's flat to pick up Mary—who Sherlock had insisted he needed at the crime scene Lestrade had just called them to see. But, in typical John Watson fashion, he joined his friend at the front door anyway.
"Did you happen to notice what was behind Stella's bedroom door?" Sherlock asked when the doctor arrived by his side.
"The client? Her name is Stephanie."
"Is it?"
"Yes."
"Hm, irrelevant. It was a fingernail—a whole one, ripped clean off. Can't have been more than two hours old judging by the coagulation of blood on it."
"Jeez."
Sherlock nodded. "And still less alarming than what is about to be behind this door."
"What are you talking about?" John asked cautiously.
"I think I'll wait in the cab."
Before John could utter another inquiry, the door before him opened.
"Hey, sorry that took so long," Mary greeted, with a big smile. "This little girl wanted no part of putting on her coat."
John was flabbergasted. "God, you brought the baby?"
"Sherlock said he hadn't seen his goddaughter in four days, he asked me to bring her along. If the press ever gets word of what a big softie he is, he'll play bloody hell."
"I thought Mrs. Hudson was supposed to have her this afternoon." John instinctively reached for his daughter, whom Mary willingly handed over. She could see he was already becoming nervous.
"Hi, Sherlock." Mary said cheerfully, bending down to wave at the man in the cab. "She was, but apparently she's been congested the last few days. We'll give it another week."
"I'm not bringing Ella to a crime scene," John said finitely, pulling his baby a little closer to him.
Mary smiled and rubbed a thumb softly over her daughter's back. "Oh, it'll be fine. I phoned Greg; there's no dead body, no chemicals, and it's in a safe neighborhood. Just a small burglary right down the road." John still seemed reluctant, evoking a sigh from his wife. "Sherlock's going to find a way to bring her to a crime scene at one point or another, wouldn't you rather we're both present when he does?"
The ex-soldier sucked his bottom lip in, delicately mulling over the situation. "It's just a burglary?"
"Yes."
"You're sure?"
"Entirely."
It took him a while, but finally he surrendered (as Mary and Sherlock knew he would.) "Fine, but we're walking there. I'm not putting Ella in a cab with no car seat."
"I know," Mary said, also not willing to get into the cab with her little pink bunny. "I'm pretty sure Sherlock's just hiding in there."
OOOOO
"Glad you decided to join us," Sherlock stated smugly as the trio approached the address to which he had directed them.
"This is madness," John grumbled, softly though so as not to alarm the six month old baby.
"Oh don't be so dramatic," the detective replied, slipping his hands into black gloves.
"Really?" a familiar mockney accent called out. Lestrade came strolling over to the group, clearly humored—but not surprised— by the sight of a baby strapped to John Watson's chest. "Baby's first crime scene is it?" Despite his teasing, the D.I. made a silly face and a wave at Ella before turning his attention back to the adults. "Mary, John…" he properly greeted, with a polite nod of acknowledgment. "I'm sure this wasn't your idea."
"How did you guess?"
Sherlock rolled his eyes at John's enduring discontent. "Do relax. It's a burglary, it's commonplace; nothing dangerous about it."
"If it's commonplace, then why are you here," John asked, quite justly.
"Because I called him," Lestrade answered. "And it's not exactly a burglary."
"What do you mean?" Mary jumped in quickly, taking a subconscious step closer to her baby.
"Well, the place has been ransacked, but it doesn't appear they took anything of value. And there were plenty of valuables in the house. Diamonds, priceless paintings, the sodding dog they've got probably costs more than my car."
"What did they take?" Sherlock asked.
"The drapes."
"The drapes?" John repeated, getting an equally befuddled nod from Lestrade.
"Were the drapes worth anything?" Mary questioned, though she figured she knew the answer.
Lestrade shook his head 'no.' "Picked them up off a sale rack yesterday. They were only in the front window a few hours before they were nicked."
Sherlock scanned the property, then took a brief look at the surrounding houses. "What color were the drapes?"
John, Mary, and Lestrade all gave him a confused look. "Uh… green, a bright lime green," Lestrade answered, rechecking that information in his notepad.
"Are the homeowners here?" Sherlock was already briskly making his way to the front door where some officers were uselessly congregating.
"Just the wife; the husband's gone out of town, on business. He left a little while ago, just after we got here."
Mary, John, and Ella followed closely behind, though at a much slower pace. "He left town right after his house was broken into? Can he do that?" Mary asked.
Lestrade confirmed with a nod. "We took his statement. He had a plane to catch, and we didn't have any reason to keep him. He was at the pharmacy when the break-in happened; medicine bottle time stamp and the pharmacist confirmed it."
"She's getting fussy," John informed his wife, not really listening to the Detective Inspector.
"No, she's not," Mary replied smiling at her baby. "You're enjoying yourself, aren't you angel." The baby smiled right back, as she usually did when she heard her mum's voice. "Would you like me to carry her?"
"No, it's alright," he answered."You had her for nine months; I'm still trying to catch up."
The inside of the house was just as torn apart as Lestrade had described. Things were strewn everywhere, in nearly every room, and the drapes from the front window were indeed missing.
Sherlock immediately went to the woman making herself a cup of tea in the kitchen. There was an officer standing by who Lestrade subtly asked to leave once he saw the consulting detective flip his coat collar up. "Sherlock, this is Melanie Briggs. She's—"
"A middle-aged primary school teacher, mother of three, and a running enthusiast with a recent knee injury."
The woman shot him a perturbed look. "Have we met?"
"No. Where were you when the burglary took place?"
"Jumping right into then…" Lestrade muttered.
"Erm…" she shook off the obvious peculiarity of the man in front of her and thought back. "Must have been between 6 and 7 this morning. I was on a run; my husband had gone to fill a prescription. By the time I came back they were already gone, whoever it was…"
In the next room, Mary and John sat on the sofa, gently pulling Ella's arms and legs out of the winter jumper. They didn't want to risk her acclimating to the temperature inside and being cold once they went back out. "There we go," John said softly to the baby in his arms. "That's better, isn't it…"
"And no fuss," Mary marveled. "How did we get so lucky with you?" Sherlock could never hide his disdain for the high-pitched voices people so often used when addressing infants, so John and Mary kept their volume down. "I think she's enjoying her first case, don't you?"
John smirked and conceded. "Yeah, fine. Are you surprised?"
"Not in the slightest."
He adjusted her sliding socks a bit and gave a bigger smile. "So, Sherlock was on his phone when we were driving over to Molly's…I caught a glimpse of his new background."
"Yeah? What is it?"
John smiled and checked to make sure no one else was within earshot. "It's a picture of nothing, just the right side of his couch."
Mary raised an eyebrow. "Why would he make his background a picture of nothing? What happened to his bee diagram picture?"
"Well…" John looked down at his little girl, and switched to his baby voice. "Guess who makes an appearance in the bottom left hand corner of the photo?"
Mary's face lit up, clearly very touched. "No, he didn't…"
John just nodded. "Yep, he did. He must have snuck it."
"Oh, your uncle is such a softie," she cooed, tickling Ella's tummy.
At that moment, Sherlock came hustling into the room. "Well, she's an idiot."
"Who is?" John asked.
"The client, who else?" He quickly wrapped his scarf around his neck. "I'm going to have a look at the yard, shouldn't take long. Wrap up Ella and then meet me outside when you're done. No need to hurry."
As the detective dashed off, John and Mary just looked at each other trying to fill in the blanks. Greg entered the room right after, flipping agitatedly through the pages of his notes. "He never slows down, does he," he mused aloud to no one in particular.
"What's the matter?" Mary asked, situating an original Mrs. Hudson-woven hat onto the baby's blonde head.
"Sherlock," he answered. "He asked her a few pointless questions, made sure nothing was stolen—even though we already knew that—and then ran off."
"I thought they took the drapes?" she returned, mentally putting together her own case file.
Greg shook his head with confusion, but also disregard. "Apparently not. When I talked to the husband earlier and he said the drapes were stolen, but just now talking to the wife she says there never were any drapes. She threw the old ones out days ago and was going to replace them today. Then she grumbled on about her husband not noticing anything."
Mary's expression contorted a bit more. "Well, what did Sherlock have to say?"
"Who knows…he muttered some nonsense and then said he was going to have a look outside." Greg shoved the notebook into his coat pocket. "It's probably just some teenagers trying to stir up trouble. That woman in there wants to believe this was some gang-related thing…Give me a break. Nothing was taken, or even damaged. It's hardly worth the ink on the police report. I called in Sherlock because of the bit with the drapes, but that clearly doesn't matter." He shrugged his shoulders one more time, shaking off his frustration, and then headed out. "Afternoon."
As soon as he left, John looked over at his wife. He could see her running through it in her head. Her eyes were fixed on the space in front of her and she was biting into the side of her lip the way she always did when she was formulating. "Is 'teenagers playing tricks' his answer to everything he can't figure out?" she asked John, returning her focus to bundling up their daughter.
"Basically…why? Have you got a theory?"
"No," she replied disappointedly. "But I think the drapes are important. Did you notice it's only these in the front that are missing?"
"Yeah, and none of the rest are bright green. Lestrade said the ones that were stolen were bright green."
When the baby was fully layered and ready to head outside, the Watson family found Sherlock already waiting for them on the front steps. "Scotland Yard already left?" John noted, seeing that all the cruisers had vacated and it was just the four of them now.
"Yes, it's better like this. They just get in the way," Sherlock stated nonchalantly. "The wife says there were no drapes to begin with."
"Yeah, that's what Lestrade told us. The husband reported that they were stolen, though?" John said, adjusting the carrier on his chest.
"And what can we gather from that?"
"One of them is lying," John answered quickly, having seen plenty of domestic cases where marital partners were not quite on the same side.
"Which one?" Sherlock followed up, with a subtle smirk he was trying to hide.
"It has to be the wife," Mary blurted, earning a look from both men. "Well, doesn't it?"
"Why do you say that?"
Her husband was clearly very curious, but upon looking at Sherlock she could see he already knew why as well. "Only the front room drapes were missing. The rest of the windows still had drapes, but none of them were bright green. They were all beige."
"Good," Sherlock affirmed, nodding for her to continue.
"So, even if her husband is the type not to notice when she puts up new drapes, he wouldn't have imagined bright green drapes, would he? So there must have been bright green drapes in that front window recently. And now they're gone."
Sherlock was very pleased indeed. "Exactly."
"So, she just lied to the police…" John wondered aloud, not seeing how that could be correct.
"Really, does that still surprise you?" The taller man gibed. As they all began to walk away from the house, Sherlock shifted into narrative mode. "When we were in the kitchen with her, we never mentioned that her husband had reported green drapes stolen. Just drapes. I left this detail out for investigational purposes, Lestrade left it out because he thinks it doesn't matter, but it does. If we had said her husband noticed green drapes missing, do you think she would have taken the chance of lying?"
Mary was first to speak up. "No, she would have to change her story. She mustn't have realized her husband noticed the green drapes."
John joined in as well. "Lestrade said those drapes were new, just picked up yesterday. So…that's why she thought he wouldn't notice. They were only there a short time."
"Now, back to your original question, why would she lie?" No one took any guesses, although Ella made a humorously-timed gargling noise. "The drapes must have served a purpose. She bought them yesterday, and then today the house is broken into and the drapes are missing. To top it all off, she says the drapes were never there. This was all, of course, evident to me within moments of arriving at the house." John rolled his eyes at his ego. "But what purpose did they serve and why were they stolen?"
"Do you know?" Mary asked curiously.
Sherlock smiled. "It might help you both to know that I found the green drapes as well as the beige ones that were previously occupying the front window in the neighbor's bins."
"There's only one purpose I can think of…" Mary surmised quietly, taking in the new information. "The drapes must have been some sort of message to…someone else."
John nodded slowly seeing where this was going. "She put the green drapes up as a signal for something?"
"Exactly." Sherlock came to an abrupt stop in front of a brick house a couple addresses down from their previous stop. "Well, I think that's enough roundtable for one day…"
"Really?" John remarked with an unsure smirk. "If anything, it's more interesting now than it was ten minutes ago."
"It was interesting 10 minutes ago, just not to duller minds."
Mary gave him a scolding look. "The gloating, Sherlock. We talked about it."
"Right, not in front of Ella," he complied, adjusting his scarf. "Speaking of, hand her over."
John and Mary shared discreet glances as John happily lifted his daughter out of the carrier strapped to his front and passed her to Sherlock. "I guess she missed you too," he beamed, watching the baby go to her godfather with no fuss whatsoever.
"Too? What do you mean 'too'?" Sherlock asked, cradling her securely.
"Nothing, Sherlock," Mary replied, knowing he preferred his fondness of the little girl went unnoticed.
"Alright," the detective shrugged with a tiny smile as he properly greeted Ella for the first time that day. It wasn't long they were all standing there enjoying the moment of affection before Sherlock suddenly turned and headed up the sidewalk of the brick house. "Excuse us a moment, would you?"
"What—" John and Mary quickly looked at each other and then back at Sherlock who was already ringing the doorbell of the home before hastening after him. "Sherlock," John called out, but trailed off when the front door was pulled open by a very old and very tiny lady.
"Yes, hi," Sherlock began in his sweetest, most civilian tone. "I was just taking my little one out for a stroll and someone nicked my mobile phone right from my pocket. Do you mind if I use yours to report the theft?"
John and Mary reached the house just in time to hear the elderly woman empathetically coo something about Sherlock being a 'poor dear' and whole-heartedly invite him in. She was, however, slightly perplexed by the sudden appearance of the two others. "Hello, can I help you two?"
Mary's mouth opened to speak, but Sherlock quickly cut her off. "My witnesses, they saw the whole thing. They'll need to talk to the police, as well."
"Oh…" the woman seemed only marginally frazzled by the trio rushing past her. "The phone is in the kitchen, just down that way."
"That's alright, I'll use the upstairs one," Sherlock stated, hurrying up the stairs with two aggressive Watsons on his tail.
"Sherlock, stop," John finally commanded when they reached the second floor. "Did you just use my daughter to break into a house?"
"Yes…" he answered feeling completely justified. "No one's going to say 'no' to a baby. Ella, you were brilliant."
"She's not a prop, Sherlock" Mary put in protectively. "I really didn't think I'd have to say that."
"Of course she's not," the detective said, a bit offended. "However, she is incredibly useful in these situations."
John allowed himself a deep, calming breath. "Why are we here at all?"
Sherlock led them all into what he knew would be one of the second-floor bedrooms. "That window by the bookshelf is the only one on this street with an unobstructed view of the front window where the green drapes were hung. That's what I was surveying while you two were bundling up Ella."
"So?" John replied with a shrug.
"Look around you, whose bedroom is this?"
The Watsons scanned the room, which they really hadn't paid much attention to upon entering. Mary was the first to respond. "Looks like a teenage boy's…that woman downstairs must be his grandmother."
"Yes," Sherlock confirmed, unconsciously swaying in a soothing pattern for the baby. "I think it's safe to say the green drapes were a message for someone looking out this window. No other windows on the street line up and the ones that do are blocked by trees."
"A message for what, though?" John couldn't possibly see why a middle-aged woman would be sending a teenage boy drape-encoded messages. And, truthfully, it was not something he wanted to ponder any further. "You're not suggesting—"
"No, John, there's no romantic motivation here. Guess again." Both Mary and John were silent, rather eager to hear what Sherlock had deduced. The detective waited one second more before launching into the explanation. "Melanie Briggs is trying to convince her husband to move; specifically to somewhere in the country. She wants to get out of London."
"Did she say that?"
"In every way, short of actual verbalization. Her kitchen table was littered with housing magazines and newspaper clippings for what's currently on the market; there was a real estate agent's business card taped to the refrigerator, the office was located in Hertfordshire; she had a laptop open also showing listings for houses outside the city; and finally, in the bin I observed no less than seven brochures highlighting available properties stretching up into _."
"Are you saying she staged a break-in to make her husband look more keenly on getting out of London?"
"Well, if I'm not, that envelope on the dresser with Melanie's handwriting certainly is." Mary and John turned around to see the white envelope to which he was referring. In small cursive letters, it read: 'Daniel.' "Although she may want to move, her husband clearly needs some persuading. So, she recruits the teen next door to break-in, make the neighborhood look like a dangerous place to live, and leaves him an envelope of cash for his duty."
"One hundred pounds to make a mess of her living room?!" Mary exclaimed, fanning the cash out of the envelope. "This woman is insane."
"That also would explain why it happened so early in the morning," John contributed. "Burglaries don't usually happen early in the morning, but Daniel had to go in, get out, and then head to school."
"The curtain bit was a tad theatrical…" Mary added, setting the money and envelope back down.
Sherlock shrugged, adjusting Ella in his arms. "She couldn't very well text him or send any type of message he could later show someone. How would that look? And he couldn't go over until her husband had gone out. So what's left? A verbal agreement with a cleverly positioned green light."
"Green drape," John quipped, making both his wife and friend wince.
"Really, dad jokes already?" Mary grimaced. "You're only 6 months in."
"Yeah, well, we should probably get out of this lady's house now," John deflected.
"Probably," his wife agreed.
As they made their way out of the house, and back into the quiet street, Ella was returned to her mother. It was a nice enough day, so a walk back to Molly's flat to collect the Watson's vehicle wasn't hugely inconvenient. As they went though, Mary sensed a bit of discontent in Sherlock's stride.
"What's the matter with you? You solved it; you should be pleased."
Sherlock's expression went unchanged. "It was rudimentary, and practically futile as an instructive exercise."
"Instructive exercise?" John joined in.
"Cases like these…" Sherlock went on, "what they offer in eccentricity, they completely lack in any sort of deductive capacity."
"Well, not every mystery can be a masterpiece," Mary consoled.
Sherlock sighed and looked ahead. "No, I suppose not. I had, however, hoped for something a bit more challenging for Ella's first case."
"Considering she only recently learned how to hold her head up on her own, I'd say this was fine," John chimed in, more amused at Sherlock's dissatisfaction than anything else.
"Maybe… The next one will be better, I'm sure of it."
Both Watson's heads snapped in his direction. "The next one?" John quickly checked to make sure he had heard correctly. "You realize this won't be a regular thing…Ella going on cases."
Clearly Sherlock had not realized. "How is she going to learn without practical application?"
"She's six months old!"
"Yes, and already she has a hundred percent success rate in the field."
Mary kissed her daughter's forehead and chuckled as the men went back and forth on the topic for the remainder of the walk.