Sherlock & The Copper Beeches
by Soledad
Summary: a modern retelling of the classic ACD story, with a twist. Set in the same 'verse as "Sherlock & the Illustrious Client". Time: between "The Great Game" and "A Scandal in Belgravia."
Note: In the original ACD short story Miss Hunter's first name was Violet. However, I've already used that name in "Sherlock & the Illustrious Client", so I renamed the lady who, by the way, is "played" by Catherine Tate. *g*
A few lines are borrowed from the original ACD story; those are in italics. Beta read by the generous englishtutor, whom I owe my gratitude. All remaining mistakes are mine, due to my pig-headedness.
Chapter 02 – The Ambitious Miss Hunter
John didn't have to work at the surgery the next day, so he decided to have a lie-in, taking advantage of the fact that Sherlock still wasn't able to play the violin in the grey hours of the morning… or at any other.
Of course, there was always the chance that the bored genius would blow up the flat – or at least the kitchen – in the middle of the night, but it was a small chance. Sherlock, too, was still weakened by his injuries and actually slept through most nights… even if he adamantly denied it every time it came up.
Therefore John managed to sleep undisturbed till 8 am which, in military terms, was fairly late. As a rule, he usually woke up at 5 am every day, Army reflexes still firmly in place, even after more than a year. He splashed some cold water onto his face and went to the kitchen to make tea and prepare toast for breakfast.
As the positive result of their injuries, he found no body parts in the fridge, and even the kitchen table was reasonably clean. He briefly contemplated the rare chance of actually having a proper breakfast at said table when Sherlock all but sleep-walked into the kitchen, made a beeline for the cupboard and took a tin box from the highest shelf.
John could have sworn that the box hadn't been there on the previous night. Nevertheless it was there now and turned out to contain home-made oatcakes, courtesy of Mrs Hudson.
Such was life at 221B Baker Street.
"Where have those come from?" John asked, snatching one while Sherlock was unceremoniously dumping the rest of them onto the first tray he could find.
Accidentally, it was the one belonging to their tea service; one that had miraculously survived Sherlock's boredom-induced violent outbursts. John could never decide whether it was sheer dumb luck or the fact that the tea service was one of the very few things of actual value he'd taken out of storage after moving in with the consulting madman – a family heirloom that Harry hadn't wanted.
Sometimes even Sherlock knew better than destroy things that could not be replaced. Even if he huffed at the sentiment involved. Sometimes.
"Mrs Hudson baked them last night and left the tin on the landing for us," Sherlock replied, snatching one, too, to nibble on, which was his idea of a proper breakfast. "Obviously."
John said nothing, just looked at him and waited.
"I might have mentioned that we're expecting a client today," Sherlock finally admitted, without the slightest sign of regret. "A female one. One who might appreciate home-made biscuits for her tea."
John shook his head, torn between amusement and exasperation.
"Sherlock, you shouldn't manipulate her into baking us biscuits every time your sweet tooth manifests itself! She's elderly, she's got a bad hip and, as she's repeatedly told us, she's our landlady, not our housekeeper."
"Nonsense," Sherlock waved off his protests. "She loves doing it for us."
"She loves you like the son she never had," John corrected. "And he likes my by default 'cause we get on well enough. You still shouldn't take advantage of her like this, though."
"Not good?" Sherlock asked, now with a hint of uncertainty.
"Bit not good, yeah," John started steeping the tea. "Try not to do it too often. But since the things are already here and they are excellent as always, it would be stupid not to take a generous sample, don't you think? Quality control and all that. After all, we are expecting a visitor."
Therefore, instead of the bacon and scrambled eggs John had considered having earlier, they had oatcakes, toast and jam with their tea for breakfast, and then just sat in the living room in companionable silence, waiting for their prospective client.
It was a cold morning of the early spring; a thick fog rolled down between the lines of the neighbouring houses, and the opposing windows appeared as little more than shapeless blurs. John amused himself with reading the morning papers, while Sherlock retreated to his Mind Palace, pale and still and motionless – and mysterious like a sphinx.
He remained in that position for almost an hour; then he came back to the world of the living abruptly.
"John, what time did you tell Miss Hunter to come?"
"Half past ten," John replied absent-mindedly; then he looked at the clock, startled. "It is half past ten now."
"Indeed," Sherlock said calmly. "And I have no doubt that is her ring."
Somebody had just rung indeed and John, knowing that Sherlock wouldn't bother to move, suppressed a sigh and hobbled down at least to the landing to spare Mrs Hudson, who had already opened the door, the necessity of climbing the second flight of stairs.
"Boys!" their long-suffering landlady called up. "A visitor for you!"
"We know, Mrs Hudson," John called back. "Would you send the young lady right up? I'll meet her halfway."
He unabashedly listened to Mrs Hudson's apologies on their behalf; she was telling the visitor that they had both been recently injured and thus still didn't move around as easily as was their wont. Miss Hunter – for who else could she have been? – answered their landlady that she did not mind climbing the stairs on her own… and then she came up briskly indeed.
She turned out to be older than John had expected after the e-mail – in her late thirties perhaps, or even forty already –, a vivacious redhead with a bright, freckled face and with the competent, no-nonsense manner of a woman who has had her own way to make in the world.
A head taller than John (there went Sherlock's idea of a more suitable girlfriend), she was plainly but neatly clothed, in a charcoal-grey pencil skirt with a matching jacket and a dark red blouse underneath; and she was wearing sensible, low-heeled shoes.
Her brisk manner also suggested that she was a person who would be quite… loud by nature, and John had a hard time imagining her and Major Sholto living under the same roof without killing each other. Yet, obviously, they had managed to do so – at least for a while. John decided to be nice, if only for the major's sake.
"Miss Hunter, I presume," he said in his best bedside manner and stretched out his hand in greeting. "I'm John Watson; please, come with me."
What he also hadn't expected was the surprisingly strong grip of the woman… and the almost predatory glance with which she measured him from head to toe. Frankly, it made him feel like a slab of meat on the butcher's table. Her first words were, however, a lot more subdued.
"Thanks for putting in a good word for me," she said. "I hope you'll excuse my troubling you; but I've had a very strange experience, and I didn't want to discuss it with either my mother or my grandfather."
"Why not?" John asked, while steering her in the direction of the living room. Until now, he had thought that she perhaps didn't have any family to whom to turn and had called upon Sherlock for that reason.
"They always think the worst of everything," she explained with a grimace. "Grandpa is worrying about me constantly, and my mother is such a drama queen it isn't even funny. I don't have the nerves for her antics."
She certainly didn't make the impression of a drama queen; John would have been hard-pressed to find a more determined and down-to-earth woman in London. Although, of course, first impressions could be misleading. Perhaps she was just hiding it better.
"So I thought that Mr Holmes, who seems to be able to tell an impostor from the true item by a single glance, might be able to tell me what I should do."
"He will, assuming you can provide him with enough data," John promised, shepherding her up the last couple of stairs and into the living room. Then he opened the door and called in. "Sherlock, Miss Hunter is here!"
Sherlock rose from his armchair in the graceful, boneless manner of a cat and looked their visitor over in his customary, searching fashion. John could almost see the imaginary cogwheels turn in his head and only hoped Miss Hunter would take no offence upon having been stared at.
He had obviously underestimated her, though, because she stared back at Sherlock in almost the same manner: with unabashed interest, yet also with slight disappointment.
"You're not as tall as on your pictures," she said almost accusingly, and John fought very hard to suppress a grin.
"I usually take advantage of a good coat and a short friend," Sherlock returned flatly. "But that's hardly of any importance right now. Take a seat and tell your story; don't be boring!"
"Ignore him; he's always rude to everyone," John said apologetically, offering their client his own armchair. "Tea?"
"That would be lovely, thanks," Miss Hunter replied gratefully. "And don't worry about rude, sweetheart. I used to work for your ex-commanding officer. That gave me the chance to grow a really thick hide."
John nodded in understanding. Major James Sholto had always been a gruff, taciturn man, and the hostility he'd had to face since his return didn't make him any easier to live with. Sherlock, however, shot him an affronted look; something he was very good at.
"Don't be ridiculous, John, I'm not rude," he exclaimed haughtily. "I'm bored; and I don't see why I should put up with even more boredom."
John ignored his antics with practiced ease.
"So, Miss Hunter, why don't you tell me your problem?" he asked, pouring tea in all three cups. "Milk, sugar?"
"Black, please," she replied with the martyred air of a no-longer-very-young woman who actually liked things sweet but had to watch her figure.
For a few moments, they drank their tea in silence. Then Miss Hunter launched into her story with an enthusiasm that seemed to be her customary approach to all things in life.
"Well, I find myself in a bit of a pickle," she began. "As you know, I've worked for Major James Sholto as his personal assistant for almost two years by now. I took care of his correspondence – such as it was; he doesn't exactly keep up much contact with the rest of the world – filtered out the hate mail and the death threats, refused each and every invitation to military and social events in his name, kept his books, saw that his other employees got their salary, paid all the bills…"
"Yes, yes, tedious," Sherlock interrupted. "Does it have anything to do with why you've come to us?"
"Indirectly," she replied, completely unfazed by his manners… or rather the lack thereof. "I wanted to make you understand why did I leave his employment… despite the handsome salary I received there."
"I can guess," John smiled.
And indeed, he could. Wanda Hunter was a woman who clearly enjoyed life, every aspect of it. Being buried with Major Sholto somewhere in the arse-end of the world, as the Germans would say, must have been suffocating for her.
"You were lonely, weren't you?" he asked kindly.
She nodded thoughtfully. "Well, there was the housekeeper, of course, and the nurse, the driver and the bodyguard, and the physical therapist came three times a week, but other than that… The house is in the middle of nowhere and nothing ever happens there. Quite frankly, I was bored out of my head. Granted, I'm not sixteen anymore, but that doesn't mean I would want to be buried alive… and with half a dozen other women at that, each and every one of them single."
Clearly, Miss Hunter had not yet given up the hope to find a suitable husband one day.
"The Major has bodyguards?" John asked in surprise; that was a detail ha hadn't known.
Miss Hunter shrugged. "Well, he can't properly use his dominant hand; and he still gets dozens of death threats every week. It's only sensible."
"Yes, yes, how very practical-minded of him," Sherlock interrupted again with growing impatience. "It still doesn't explain why you're here. So drop the mindless babble and cut to the core of things, would you?"
"Sherlock, manners!" John warned his friend.
He thought that Miss Hunter deserved a modicum of respect, if only because she'd held out with Major Sholto for almost two years. He knew from first-hand experience that a disgruntled James Sholto was not easy to bear.
"Oh, don't worry, sweetheart," she waved off his concern. "Mr Holmes is right, unfortunately: I do babble a lot… now that I've got people around me to actually talk to…"
"So, you left Major Sholto's employment," John tried to move the story forward without offending her. That was Sherlock's job. "When exactly?"
"Five weeks ago," she replied promptly. Of course, I started looking for a new job right away. But you know how narrow the job market is at the moment. I advertised and read advertisements in every paper I could get my hand on, not to mention the Internet, but without success. At least the little money that I'd saved begun to run short, and I was at my wits' end as to what I should do."
"Why didn't you try your luck with an agency?" John asked in sympathetic understanding. The pains of job-hunting were well-known to him, unfortunately.
"Oh, I did!" Miss Hunter assured him. "There's a well-known agency for temp workers in the West End, called Westerway's, and there I used to call about once a week in order to see whether anything had turned up that might suit me."
"Sounds like a demotion: from the personal assistant of a war hero to a common temp," Sherlock commented with his usual tactlessness.
Miss Hunter shrugged. "In these days, Mr Holmes, one has to take whatever job one can get. And I used to be the best temp in Chiswick; I write two hundred words per minute, so I was hoping to find a job in that line of work."
"Did you?" John asked quietly. She nodded.
"I was offered one; but under such odd conditions that at first I wasn't really sure I should take it, despite the offered salary, which was tempting. Very tempting. As was the chance to work for Jeff Rucastle."
The name rang a bell with John immediately.
"You mean the war-zone journalist and star photographer?" he asked in surprise.
Miss Hunter nodded again. "The one and only, yeah."
Sherlock, on the other hand, stared at them with a blank expression.
"The one and only what?" he asked in confusion.
John rolled his eyes. "Why am I not surprised? Well, the short version is: Jeff Rucastle is an expatriate American journalist and photographer of Scottish origins, who's moved back to the UK a few years ago. He's a freelancer who sent reports from the worst war zones in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and countless other places, too. He also sent back dramatic and moving photos of the highest quality, too. He's known to be reckless, even ruthless in following his goals, but he always treated both soldiers and war victims with respect… a rare feat among the vultures who make a living out of the suffering of others."
"You know him?" Miss Hunter asked in surprise.
"I'm an ex-Army doctor who served several tours in Afghanistan," John explained. "I met him a few times in Kandahar and other places. He interviewed with a few guys from my unit; even went out with us a couple of times on missions. I seriously doubt that he would remember me, though. He's met hundreds of soldiers in dozens of war zones; and I was nothing special."
"A journalist with a working moral compass," Sherlock mused. "Who would have thought that a marvel like that would actually exist?"
"Not everyone writes for the tabloids," John pointed out. "Some journalists are said to be interested in the truth."
Sherlock pulled a face. "Sure, John, if you say so," then he turned to their client. "So, if Mr Rucastle is such a paragon of virtue, and if he offers such a handsome salary, why were you hesitating to take the job?"
"I'm not sure," Miss Hunter admitted. "I've got the uncomfortable feeling that something is fishy about this job."
"What makes you think so?" John asked, while Sherlock was rolling his eyed dramatically.
"Mr Rucastle asked me to do… odd things, should I choose to take the job," she answered slowly.
"Morally questionable things?" John pressed on.
She shook her head. "No, just really odd ones."
"It would help if you could explain what exactly counts as odd in your opinion," Sherlock said dryly.
"Perhaps it would be best if you told us everything about your encounter with Mr Rucastle," John suggested. "We'll be able to understand better what was… odd in his offer."
"Oh, I can certainly do that!" Miss Hunter took a deep breath and started with the dramatic account of the most recent events in her life.
~TBC~
