As the Starling Says Volume One
Chapter Three
The inky black cab swerved into a clumsy three-point turn that clogged the road as John Watson stood where he had been deposited onto the pavement. His mouth was in a grimace of distaste after the car, the boot of which was now chugging indifferently back the way it had come. That driver had been one of the rudest individuals John had ever come across in his life – second only to Sherlock Holmes – yet even so John had been unable to bring himself to the level of righteous anger needed to keep from tipping the wanker.
We all have detestable days… he'd told Mary. "Right." John murmured softly, rotating to look at where he'd ended up. "Detestable life that bloke has led, I'd say."
The building was like something out of a catalogue, creamy white with smoothened bricks, clean steps and impeccable paned windows. Its size was moderate, flanked on either side by houses nearly identical to it, spanning for as long as the block would allow; the only variations to the houses were how the front steps were decorated, how some of the windows were adorned with things like sill-planters and others were left bare. The street received a fair amount of traffic, and a smattering of people flitted around John on the walk, but Cosgrove Avenue was situated close enough to the Strand that John would have expected more.
He galloped up the front steps of the house in question, 1684, and rang the bell, feeling as though he had shelled out an extra six quid just to be barked at.
A few moments of uncertain waiting passed before the sound of a chain unlatching could be heard from the other side of the door, the blurred silhouette of a figure appearing behind the ornate frosted glass. The door was opened, and a remarkably pretty young woman was leaning through it, looking wary.
"Yes?" She greeted, her voice husky and low.
"Claressa Thomaston?" He asked, giving his best charming smile.
She didn't answer him, instead following up with a question of her own, "Who are you, sir?"
"My name is Doctor John Watson." He reached out a hand to shake hers, and when she met him in the gesture he smiled again. "Might I take up a few minutes of your time, Miss Thomaston?"
Her eyelashes fluttered, for the moment evidently stuck between wanting to question him further, and the compulsion for manners.
"Of course," Propriety it was then. "May I ask what for?" Perhaps not.
"I was wondering if you might have any information about a man called Antoine Douglas." John started, and it wasn't lost on him the way the woman folded her arms over her chest as he went on. "I'm trying to find out anything I can that might lend some light to his recent murder."
"Why would you come to me?"
"I understand you were involved with Mr Douglas, that the two of you shared a close friendship." John answered, rather hesitatingly; he wanted to be delicate, but her questions were too straightforward to mosey around.
"How would the police would know something like that?" she demanded, and she angled herself so that she was half-concealed behind the shelter of her front door.
"I'm not with the police, miss," John hurriedly reminded her. "I'm a physician, I have a medical practice." He was prepared to take out his wallet and show her his card, if he had to; people were typically less hostile once they were certain he wasn't on the force, he found.
"Okay?" Her forehead crinkled with vexation. "So, what's a doctor up to, trying to solve a murder? I wouldn't peg such a thing as your area of expertise."
John smiled wryly and took a breath. "Miss Thomaston, is there any way we can discuss this inside?"
She pushed the door forwards in response, as though a muscle-twitch away from shutting it on him altogether. John stepped closer, hand outstretched, and bumbled a quick apology. "No, I'm sorry. Give me a moment to explain." The woman widened her eyes by a considerable amount, and John had just enough time to think to himself that this interview was not going quite as well as he'd hoped. "I've truly got no real affiliation with the police. I collaborate with the investigative team from New Scotland Yard on occasion, but my primary work is done with a private-investigator by the name of Sherlock Holmes."
"Hang on," the door swung open by a fraction, her interest captured. "D'you mean the Reichenbach Falls bloke? The one constantly covered in the news a few years ago?"
"Yes."
"Well… he's dead, isn't he?"
"No, no." John chuckled awkwardly, trying to sound casual even as he said something as admittedly ludicrous as, "He was only pretending to be dead. But, he's very much alive and his name has been irrefutably cleared of all fraud-charges."
"Fraud charges?" Thomaston exclaimed and John's mouth fell into a grim line at his mistake.
"Don't worry, I said he isn't a phony. He's been cleared, thoroughly cleared. And if you know anything about Sherlock, you know that he rarely fails to solve a case, and anyone who helps him in his search is handled with utmost discretion."
Thomaston's visage uttered an expression of unabridged befuddlement. "Can a man like that be discreet?"
"Well, you wouldn't think so, would you?" Another painful chortle. "Discretion is practically in his internal coding, Miss Thomaston. Sherlock is more computer than man, really. You're in safe hands with us." John gave her a moment, hoping she might be able to process. Then he went on, "May I come in? Really, I just have a few questions. If anything I have to say makes you uncomfortable, you're under no obligation to answer. You can even chuck me out, it's all on your terms."
It seemed to take ages, Thomaston's face screwed up in deliberation so blatant that it was almost insulting. Then, finally, she stepped aside, and John scuttled over the threshold quickly before she could change her mind.
The house was clean, well-decorated in a range of colour from a deep russet orange to banana yellow, like the sun met the horizon in every room John could see from the foyer. There was a staircase that wound up from the wall to John's left to a second story where her bedroom and toilet were probably situated, and as she led him through a wide passage into the sitting room, he wondered at how a young theatre actress had come by the funds to keep such an obviously high-end townhouse in the heart of Westminster. It occurred to him that perhaps Douglas had a hand in paying for it, but that he would have needed to know more about the relationship if he was going to be conclusive.
Plus, on the right wall of the passage there was a collection of framed photographs that John turned his eye over as he went by them, and there was more than one which featured an older couple he easily presumed were her parents, based on resemblance. Everything about the regal-looking woman and the straight-shouldered gentleman seemed to scream "old-money", a portion of which might have provided Claressa with her rather comfortable lifestyle.
And, then again, Sherlock had mentioned that she worked for a writing team on the beeb, so if she was high enough in the network, it was possible that she could afford to live here on her own dime. Sherlock would know, John seemed to taunt himself, but he shoved the thought away from his mind.
Thomaston offered him an armchair upholstered in smooth crimson linen weave, and sat across from him on the sofa. Between them was a low glass coffee table, upon which a wicker basket of magazines were laid neatly. In the back of John's mind, once again, he could picture how Sherlock would have turned his eyes round the room and collected much more context of Miss Thomaston than that she came from a wealthy background. The magazine at the top of the stack between them in and of itself might have clued the genius in to where she attended Uni, or how often she went to the supermarket, but all John could see were magazines. A person's home is typically the essence of who they are, John was aware, but his mind could better tell that she kept a strict, healthy diet and committed herself to a regular work-out routine, and that was pretty much the extent of it.
"I don't mean to be obstructive, Doctor Watson," Miss Thomaston broke the silence. "It just strikes me as odd. How did Mr Holmes even know I was seeing Antoine? We never spoke about it to anyone, never texted or emailed each other over the topic."
John visualised the email Sherlock had shown him, reasoning that the actress simply forgot about that unique instance. "I haven't a clue how he knows," John lied easily. "He only asked me to speak with you."
She pursed her lips, clearly dissatisfied with his answer. He supposed he could have mentioned the note she left Douglas on his refrigerator, but the note hadn't even used her full first name. Thomaston would have wanted to know how Sherlock had gleaned the rest, and going through that rigmarole would only take them further away from what they needed to be discussing, would really only put her even more on edge. To keep the semantics from stretching John launched a question of his own.
"Why was there such secrecy over your relationship?"
For the moment the deflection worked; Thomaston stalled in her own suspicions and seemed to evaluate how best to answer.
"It was complicated," she began. "Tony wanted the privacy at first, because of his reputation. After getting closer to him, I sort of started thinking along the same lines about it. The media is always determined to make a spectacle of him, you know. It got him into a lot of trouble, apparently, so he wanted to keep a low profile. Once I started to see that up close, I wanted to avoid the exposure as much as he did."
"I assume you met Mr Douglas while acting at the Bataneaux, is that right?"
"No, I met him completely by chance." She said. "I was working at a coffee shop, I couldn't find work anywhere else. Tony came in nearly every day, and we would talk sometimes. He found out I'd studied acting for a while and invited me to read for a secondary role on Mama Mia."
"Had you always been… close with him?" John asked tactfully, earning a chuckle from her.
"God no," she snorted. "I worked on Mama Mia for a little over a year before I was offered the part of Cosette in Les Mis, and we got to know each other a little more at that point. We would flirt on occasion, but that was it. I lost touch with acting and got hired on as an assistant to Laura Prepenrich of BBC, and I lost touch with Tony as well. We had a flimsy friendship, I'd never thought all that much of him as anything more than a man who gave me a hand up when I needed one. Eventually I was brought onto the writing team for Beneath the Branches, and when it became a permanent position Tony somehow got wind of it; he got into contact with me, invited me out to celebrate, and it just sort of went from there."
John's brows began to meet as he listened to her, picking up on an oddity that was just obscure enough to keep him from identifying it. He went on with the question in his foremost thoughts, but he was more intent now.
"Did he ever ask you to a party he threw himself?"
Her eyes ticked away from his. "Yes, he did. Before you ask, yes, it was one of his quiet gatherings."
"And you went?"
"Yes, I went."
"Was it just the once?"
"No, I attended a few of them."
"Can you tell me what sort of things happened at the parties you attended?"
She took a long pause before answering. "I can, but I'm afraid I might disappoint you, Doctor Watson," She settled back into the sofa, as though strapping in for the ride, crossing one leg over the other. "There are mad rumours about those parties, I know. None of them are true."
"I haven't heard any rumours," John lied, and the flash of a smile arched over her lips, as if she could tell.
"Lurid sex-orgies, experimentations, rampant drug-use… I even heard one about a human sacrifice to Ba'al." She counted off her fingers and rolled her eyes at the recollections. "The only slice of gossip that was even a shred authentic was that bit about Ewan McGregor getting pissed and cutting off the tip of his little finger trying to make everyone his ratatouille."
John laughed heartily. "No, I certainly never heard that one." He said. "Were you there for it?"
She smiled again, this one appearing genuine. "I was. It was horrifying at the time."
"I imagine so," John chuckled again. "Okay, so no insanity, for the most part. What did happen at the parties? What were they like?"
"They were small. Perhaps only twenty, maybe twenty-five people at best, mostly repeat visitors. Sometimes new faces would appear, and old ones wouldn't show, but the guest list was pretty consistent." She said, and though John expected her to continue, that seemed to be all she wanted to say.
"How regular were they?" John asked, reckoning he ought to circle back by another way.
"It's hard to say. They seemed random to me, but I can tell you I went to four in the span of…" She blew a soft breath from her lips as she calculated. "Perhaps five months?"
"Do you recall ever coming into contact with anyone who seemed a bit off? Suspicious in any way?" She answered him in a negative, as he'd thought she would. It was clear that she didn't want to talk about the details of the goings-on at the quiet get-togethers, but there was always the chance to throw her off her defenses just enough to scrap a tiny bit more information. He threw out another query. "Were there ever any fights? People tend to brawl whenever drinks flow, after all."
"If there were any, they never happened when I was around," she said easily.
"Lots of dancing, loud music?"
"They were quiet," she said, hesitating. "Conversation was typically the main focus of the evening."
"Any topics in particular?"
"None that should interest you," was the almost cold reply. Thomaston broke off to ponder for a moment, before adding in a much politer tone, "I can't think of anything that might aid you in the investigation."
"Okay, I understand," John nodded. "Can you tell me what sort of guest list was typical for the parties? I've read about a few people who were left out, but who went to them? Besides Ewan McGregor, of course."
She only levelled a gaze at him, and John squashed his impatience the moment he felt it flare.
"I'm not asking for names, just a general idea." He clarified. "Were the guests like you and Douglas? Or were they mostly celebrities like McGregor?"
"I would say a mixture of both, equally."
John found himself thinking back to a day about two years ago, perhaps a week before Sherlock went on the lam… The detective had rounded on an elderly woman who owned the children's school Moriarty had had those kids snatched from. He'd bellowed in her face and yanked the scarf from over her neck, scaring her into quick, informative speech, and for the briefest of moments the memory tempted John to threaten Thomaston, just to see if it really worked. Perhaps the only reason he didn't was that John was sure he lacked the persona needed to pull it off.
"Okay, so then, back to the basics, eh?" he shifted in his seat, attempting a more comfortable position though the armchair was too firm for him to relax completely. "Were you exclusive with Antoine? Was he ever seeing anyone else?"
For a heartbeat Thomaston looked a shade offended, but she must have considered it a fair question as she replied, "I'd like to think Tony was committed, but obviously I'll probably never know for sure," she slid a glance at him that suggested she blamed Watson for planting seeds of doubt. "As for myself, I never saw anyone else."
"I see," for a while John sat there, hands braced awkwardly just above his knees. "Well, Miss Thomaston, I appear to be out of questions for you." Silently he added, Questions that you'll answer, anyway.
Right away she was on her feet.
"Alright, well I hope you've gotten what you needed." Before he could respond, she was herding him towards the foyer, though John wasn't sorry for it; what could he possibly have responded with?
Thomaston went as far as to open the door for him, unabashedly pleased to see the back of the doctor's head.
As John's feet hit the pavement outside the neat little townhouse it occurred to him now that he hadn't even spent ten minutes inside. He checked the clock on his phone before calling Mary, deciding to kill some time before hailing a taxi to Baker Street; going back empty-handed might just be easier if he pretended to have dedicated more than ten minutes to the task.
"You have to let me in," the sound of rolling tyres nearly drowned the voice on the other end of the speaker, but Melissa Stein knew how to make herself heard. "You always let me in."
Louisa held her finger to the intercom button and shared a smile with the warmly-bundled Margaret on her sofa. "And each time I do you break something." She said reproachfully, and Maggie giggled. "You still owe me a vase, a kettle, and money for that carpet man I had to bring in for your wine stain."
"That wasn't a break, it was a spill, and all of them were accidents."
"You're a walking accident, Mel!" Maggie trilled gleefully.
"Seriously, it's bloody frigid out here. It's all wet and I'm miserable." Mel complained vehemently.
Louisa took a pause that was just long enough to be the perfect touch of dramatic, but really she was sympathetic, as her own sinuses were completely wonky, her throat sore. "Okay, fine. But you'll stay glued to the sofa and if you think I'm too nice to enforce that rule you'll find yourself on the street before you know it."
She pressed the button to send the signal to unlock the front entrance of the building, and unlatched the lock over her own door. She settled next to Maggie on the sofa after nearly tripping over the power cable connected to a space-heater Maggie had forced her to dig out of the cupboard next to her bedroom.
"You do realise this is hardly Fall weather, don't you?" Louisa said as Mel's loud tromp was heard coming from the ground level. Her own body might have given in to the season, but she was determined not to let it bother her. "You're both acting as though we're in the depth of Russian winter."
"The rain makes it colder." Maddie countered, and they both turned their attention to the front door as Mel barreled through it, a bottle of pinot grigio cradled in the crook of her elbow like an infant.
"Well if I'd known you had that I would've taken your case." Maggie joked, and Mel shot her the sort of look that said she didn't find it funny.
"Got anything to open this with?" She asked Louisa, before turning towards the kitchen.
Louisa leapt to her feet.
"No! No, I'll get it Mel. You have a seat and get comfortable." She grasped Mel's shoulders from behind and redirected her into the sitting area, where she settled in Louisa's old spot with a disgruntled expression.
Louisa opened the drawer under her bread-box and fished around for quite some time, knowing there had to be a corkscrew in there somewhere. She'd bought one just a month ago, specifically for this purpose; her friends were drinkers, which meant she needed to be at least semi-prepared.
"Can't some people open a bottle of wine with a knife?" She asked she called, growing impatient. Then finally, she saw it, seized it, and brought it to the counter, which looked out into the sitting room, with the bottle of pinot. She jammed the metallic point of the screw into the soft cork as she watched Melissa and Maggie squabbled over the blanket.
It occurred to her, not for the first time, that she had made a home in London, dreary London. This flat was completely hers (well, except for the fact that she rented it, but it was her money which paid that rent), the corkscrew in her hand was hers, and the blanket being snatched between Maggie and Mel was hers as well. She was tackling adulthood as though the concept were a verb. She even had her own stationary, and a shopping list stuck to her refrigerator with a whimsical magnet she bought on a sudden (and very adult) fancy from the supermarket.
Louisa had finally reached a point where she provided for herself completely, and while she'd always pictured making a life for herself this way, it could no longer be ignored that at some point she'd had the genuine and highly repressed fear that she would tank the whole thing completely. And though the outcome she could see and feel around her struck a fierce sort of pride in her heart, there was a drop of dissatisfaction that was just strong enough to send a ripple through the pond from time to time.
Louisa went to the overhead cabinet with the frosted glass fixed through the centre and took down two wine glasses (purchased on the same night as the corkscrew, along with a board game called Parcheesi that happened to catch her eye), contemplating half-heartedly, truthfully a little afraid to look any deeper.
When she first made the leap into the Kingdom, she had absolutely expected to find a fair amount of boredom skulking about her brain like a shut-in which would not be gotten rid of until she could find a more substantial form of stimulation; she'd prepared for it by bringing along every book from home that could fit in two boxes, having the rest shipped to her by the housekeeper (the only woman aside from Louisa's mother who could possibly be trusted to undertake such a task). She'd taken along her painting easels, had made it her personal mission to buy watercolours from a local craft shop within the first week of her arrival, and nestled away in her armoire was a binder full of crochet patterns she'd always loved but never gotten around to completing. She bought more books regularly from the Red Light – which Laurence was inexplicably flattered by – and a brand new notebook, bound in painted leather, with a beautiful floral design done over it by hand, so that she could work on one of the many novels she'd started over the years since she was around seven years old.
So far she'd read all of her books, started a throw blanket for Kitty's Christmas gift (which was now stuffed into the armoire on top of the aforementioned binder for the time being), and painted a useless, ugly landscape with a cabin that resembled a giant clay pot, which she hadn't even felt much like painting from the start. The only avenue for recreation she hadn't even set foot on was the notebook, which lay untouched in the drawer of her writing desk since the day she'd put it there. That in and of itself was telling enough; it was a screaming clue to something that would only get worse if she didn't find a way to solve the elusive issue.
There was only one other period in Louisa's life that she had been unable to bring herself to write, and that had been during the weeks that preceded her brother's departure for University. The day she returned with her family from Dublin, after leaving Quinlan to his new dormitory, she'd sat at her table and written a short story about a girl who'd gotten trapped in the Internet.
Nine years had passed since then without a single dry spell, not even the hint of a dry spell. Tomorrow, the first of October, would mark her second month in London and she hadn't even looked at that notebook.
Writing for classes didn't count, obviously. Taking on a prompted subject had become second-nature to her long ago. But the inspiration, the motivation for picking up her pen and creating her own sentences was so buried deeply that she couldn't, apparently, be bothered to find it.
She was lucky to be here, but there was something missing. It was hard to ignore that feeling as she poured Mel's cheap pinot into the first glass, hard to bow away that realisation that she had fallen into an age-old cliché of coming into a big, sprawling city in search of something that she wouldn't have been able to identify if she came upon it.
"D'you have any snacks?" Called Maggie. "Haven't eaten since three."
"Make some of those little sandwiches again," Mel joined with her suggestion as Louisa opened the cupboard door for a party-sized bag of crisps.
"I have these, and it's all you'll get from me," She ripped the bag open and emptied its contents into a bowl from another cabinet. She put the bowl next to the wine and beckoned them over. "I don't have it in me to make sandwiches."
Mel and Maggie heaved themselves from the comfort of the sofa and within a heartbeat they were crowding around the counter, the blanket forgotten for the moment; it can be hard to make a crowd of two people, but the girls made it work without a hitch.
"Before I forget again," Maggie addressed Louisa, wine glass perched almost demurely in her hand. "Will you please cover my dinner shift on Saturday? I'm hoping to make plans."
"I close on Saturday, Maggie," Louisa said, her expression somewhat disbelieving. "I literally work with you every weekend."
"Oh. Well, my days sort of run together now that I'm not in school." Maggie said airily, but still Louisa wondered how something to consistent could have been missed. Maggie looked hopeful once more as she tried, "How about tomorrow, then? You're definitely not working lunch."
"You're right, and I put in a lot of effort to reach that luxury." Louisa said firmly, catching Mel's smile from the corner of her eye. "I can't make it through another soup day, Margaret."
Maggie looked as if she wanted to plead a little more, but she seemed to accept defeat after a moment, saying, "How'd you manage that, anyway? I've not been able to get out of a Wednesday since I started at the Red Light."
"It was a lot easier than I thought it would be," Louisa mused, putting her first drop of real thought into it. "I just stuck a note to the computer in the office, and when I checked the schedule Laurence had let me off."
"He only did that because he knows you're still upset with him." Mel put in, grinning again. She sat on one of Louisa's stools and leaned in, elbow supported on the counter top. Her chin was propped on her fist as she looked up at her. "He wants back on your good side."
"I'm not angry at him," Louisa said, taken aback. "Why would he think that?"
"Because you never responded to the invite for his Thanksgiving party." Melissa explained. "He told me he sent it last week, and asked if you might decline it because you're upset."
"I never check my email," Louisa said, her tone a little more subdued now. "He does realise October's not even underway yet, doesn't he?"
"Yeah, but Larry's always been like that. He's planned my birthday party since I was eight, and he usually sends out notice a good four months before the actual date, so I'd say he's shown great restraint. He treats every event like it's a wedding," she shrugged. "I find it endearing. It's partly what makes him my favourite uncle. Well, that, and he's my only uncle."
Melissa was clearly still light-hearted, but for the time being Louisa was too lost in blooming guilt to join her. She couldn't recall anything she might have said or done that would make him think her resentful, but apparently there had been something.
"Have either of you thought about how strange the word 'uncle' really is?" Maggie chimed. She sipped her wine and enunciated deeply, "Un-Kle. Saying it makes me visualise a barnacle on the bottom of a very run-down boat."
Melissa quirked her brow, looking at Maggie as though she'd never truly seen her before.
Maggie straightened up as she felt the stare. "What?"
Melissa was saved from replying by Louisa's interruption, who had barely heard the exchange.
"Well, did he say why he thinks I'm angry with him?"
"Oh, he still feels bad for making you wait on Greg's friend," Mel said dismissively, but her smile had begun to fade as she apparently realised Louisa's gravity.
"But that was weeks ago," Louisa said as emphatically as though Laurence were in the room to hear her. "And besides that, Mr Holmes wasn't all that bad. I was over it the minute the man was gone."
"Larry said you wanted him thrown out." Mel told her, and Maggie gave a sudden guffaw.
"Sure, because that sounds just like Lou."
"It's not! I wasn't serious, not really. I just wanted to avoid him after what happened the first time he came in, and… I was feeling all cornered." Louisa tapered off near the end of her sentence, feeling ridiculous. Had she really asked Larry to chuck him?
"Why would you want to avoid him?" Maggie asked. "I'm the one who made such a mess of him. You swooped in and saved the day."
"First of all, that wasn't completely your fault," Louisa said, pointing an emphatic finger. "Holmes was a wile arse, and he knew it." And though her mouth remained open, an inch from speaking, Louisa remained silent. Eventually she shut her lips and her friends cottoned on to the fact that there would be no second point.
"So…?" Maggie raised her brow, looking keen. "That doesn't tell me why would have him thrown out. You've never wanted anyone thrown out, not even the creep who slipped his hand in your back pocket."
Louisa broke eye contact and went to the drying-rack near the sink for a glass. As her back was turned she said, "Well, I sort of yelled at him. After you'd gone."
Maggie grinned somewhat dubiously. "You never yell. You internally ignore people."
Louisa might have conceded that she was exaggerating; she'd never actually raised her voice to Mr Holmes, but now that she could reflect upon the incident (and the revelation that sweet Laurence thought she could harbor grudges so strongly) she felt as though she'd slapped the detective with a white glove and thrown it at his feet.
She went to the fridge, still without looking at either of her friends, and took out a pitcher of cold water (she could not, for the world, figure out how to get the water-connection in the refrigerator door to work). "In my defense, the man refused to be ignored."
"I wish I'd stuck around to see that." Maggie said regretfully. "You reckon anyone managed to film it?"
Louisa set the glass on the counter and pressed her hands to both cheeks, trying to will away the heat. Melissa nudged Maggie, both of them suppressing chuckles at the sight of Louisa's crimson ears. It wasn't often that Lou got flustered, and when she did, it always seemed to be over the silliest of things.
"Don't even kid about that, Margaret."
"Oh, Louisa, you're too sensitive sometimes." Mel declared laughingly. She seized the bottle of pinot by its neck and gave it a wobble. "Have a drink, bury those tendencies."
"I think drinking would sort of highlight the tendencies," Maggie pointed out, and Mel shrugged, allowing there to be some truth in the statement. "Well, as far as Larry's concerned, don't worry too much. I can talk to him tomorrow, sort the whole thing out."
"No, don't bother," Louisa said glumly. "I'll go in for lunch and talk with him myself."
Melissa gave Louisa the sort of look that said she found her to be making too large a fuss about something relatively inconsequential, but it didn't change Louisa's feelings. She hated to think she'd snubbed Laurence when he was always so kind himself. Her mother had always taught her humility when it came to kind people, so it was perfectly logical to say that Louisa's pride was actually a little wounded by the situation, and she hoped it wasn't something very serious to him as well.
"Let's play a game," Maggie suggested brightly. "Talking isn't much fun, is it?"
The last time Louisa had the girls over, they'd squeezed hours of entertainment out of countless rounds of Scatagories, and they went down that same path tonight. The more plastered Mel and Maggie became, the funnier they were; Louisa had never minded being the only sober one in a group, and with them it was almost more enjoyable to keep from drinking, so that she was fully able to witness their unique brand of inebriated hilarity.
Subjects ensued that were far more favourable to Louisa than those in the kitchen; they teased Maggie about her thirty-two year old paramedic and Melissa about her crush on Greg Lestrade. They rehashed the memory of Jimmy the barman having a shift with a mop on a lost wager, and recalled how Laurence had once tripped in the dining room and brought down an entire, food-laden table in the futile effort to right himself.
Sometime after midnight Maggie left for home, calling a car to avoid the harrowing prospect of hailing a cab on a street as subdued as Pelcourt. Melissa lost steam shortly after that, accepting Louisa's offer to stay the night by pulling the space-heater closer and cocooning herself in the blanket on the sofa.
Louisa rinsed out the wine glasses once Mel was certainly out, voyaging into a drunken Dream-Land. She placed them in the drying-rack with little care to keeping quiet. Between the two of them Mel and Maggie finished the bottle of pinot grigio off, and half a bottle of the merlot Louisa kept specifically for company.
She went back into the sitting room for the aforementioned bottles and as she shoved the cork back over the merlot Mel twitched in her sleep, her mouth falling slack, eyelids fluttering.
It had been a nice night, but now that it was over, there was an emptiness to her flat that depressed her spirits considerably. Once she finished tidying up, once all the plates had been washed, rubbish disposed of, board-games packed away, she padded into her room and sat at her leather-covered writing table, apparently for little more than to stare a hole through the drawer in which her notebook slept.
She plucked a pen out of the metallic-mesh cup at the corner of her table and fell into tapping the end of it in a sporadic beat on the table's surface.
Louisa had always considered herself a perfectionist in her writing, which was actually more of a hindrance than it was of any actual benefit to her skill. Over the years she had started at least a hundred different stories, but only four had ever been serious projects. Those were four were the ones she pictured herself publishing, pictured as the foundation of her writing career, and she'd rewritten and revised each of them in turn, dedicated herself to each of them with every particle of concentration she had.
As of yet she hadn't come to a point where she could see a light at the end of her revision tunnel. Those four stories had gone through a lot, each one twisted, rearranged, hacked to pieces and linked back together again so many times that none of them resembled what their initial concepts had been. But, she could be contented in the assurance that she was continuously moving closer, constantly improving and taking steps.
Not only was she feeling stuck at this very moment, but she could not latch her attention to any project to work on, let alone the four that would have actually meant anything to her. Her mind was wiped clean of inclination towards any of them. Her thoughts appeared to want nothing more than to wander.
The sound of a car rolling up the pavement broke through to soft night noises of Pelcourt Street. Louisa half-stood, angling herself over the writing table to sweep the curtains away from the window it was situated in front of. A couple emerged from the black cab stalled at the kerb, linking arms the moment they were able. She'd never met them, but Louisa recognised the couple who lived in the flat below her on the first floor from the handful of times she'd spotted them, as she did now.
They were nice enough, she was sure, as they never complained about noise or other silly, neighbourly things. They were relatively young, as well. Obviously married. And Mr Keene, who lived on the ground-level, had spoken highly of them when Louisa had come looking into her own flat. The woman was a dancer, as Louisa had been able to read in her posh windbreaker and the perfect, circlet bun at the base of her head the first time she'd caught a glimpse of her from this very window. The man was an artist of some sort – more likely an architect, judging by the neatness of his dress, the scarcity with which she ever saw him go out, and the large, flapping portfolio she'd never spotted him without.
Above all else, they both looked to be so painfully cool that Louisa would have liked to be friends with them. People did that sort of thing, didn't they? They got to know their neighbours and invited them in for charades and cheese, right? But the idea of approaching them herself had literally never entered her brain as a serious thought to be considered. Both strangers knew she lived right above them, had probably seen her move in, so if they kept themselves away then they must have had a reason.
With a quiet sigh – and feeling rather creepy – Louisa sat back in her chair, letting the curtain swish back into place over the window. She opened her drawer and pulled out her notebook. She pulled the knot out of the long, thin strip that kept the it shut and let it fall open in front of her, picking up her pen once more and feeling as though she might as well close her eyes and try doodling a self-portrait.
Her hand seemed to move on its own, stringing letters together in her neat, loopy script, and once she was finished she read over the line, an uncharacteristically deep grimace marring her features.
I've got nothing.
How long had she been so prosaic? Had she always been this way, and was only now becoming aware of it? Eight bloody weeks and she hadn't a thing to show for it, aside from her so far adequate performance in her classes. But was that enough? The only story that had vaguely interested her was the case of Antoine Douglas' murder.
Louisa picked herself up from the seat, giving in, deciding to change into her pyjamas and crawl under the sheets, thinking it all over once again.
About a week ago she summoned enough curiosity to search the case online, once it became clear that Holmes did not plan to return to the Red Light and finish the narrative for her, but the most informative bit of news she could find on the matter was little more than a couple of paragraphs, saying there had been no conclusive evidence in the investigation that could be explored any further, and the case had gone cold. New Scotland Yard called for any and all people who might've had some direction to point them in, but apparently any tips that possible came in amounted to nothing.
"There isn't a way to tell who the killer is… There's nothing." Holmes had said, and it seemed now that he had not been going for melodrama. She wondered absently whether he'd ever looked seriously into the matter again, after she'd suggested the new perspective to him, but she would likely never know.
Which was, shockingly, an unfortunate revelation; she'd probably wonder off and on for a long time whether or not he'd ignored her completely, and although Mr Holmes seemed like an incredibly thorough individual, he was such an odd mixture of a thousand other components that anything was plausible.
Now there was another thing he'd said, echoing back to her: "Are you sure you never read anything about me, Miss Daly?" As though she had any reason to remember him saying that at all.
For the longest moment Louisa was kept from sleep by the temptation to log onto her computer and search the detective's name… After all, what had he meant by that? Was he just horrifically egomaniacal, or were there stashes and stores of columnists across London who were determined to break into his private life? She smirked to herself, eyes still close, cheek pressed to her pillow. Perhaps Sherlock Holmes was the Antoine Douglas of the forensics world.
But, for whatever reason, she felt as though fulfilling that nagging curiosity over Holmes would only prove him right about some unspoken bet, some challenge, even if there was no way he would ever know she'd succumbed.
She never went for the laptop, but she did end up unlocking her mobile and using it to send a quick email to her brother, after many minutes of arguing with herself against it. The thought to do so had only just occurred to her, and there was no reason she couldn't just leave it for the morning, but eventually she had to accept that she wouldn't be able to sleep before she sent it.
Louisa typed quickly, her thumbs fumbling a few times, so she was forced to proof-read the stupid thing before she sent it, but it was done with quickly. It was a brief message:
Quinlan,
Send your address please. Also, tell me a good time for a visit. I know you're busy so I'll come round to yours, I've got all the money I need for a ticket and a hotel if you're still the neurotic pile I remember. I can take off time before Thanksgiving.
I love you,
Lou.
With Quinlan so far at the front of her mind as she fell to sleep, she dreamt of him, and a little neighbor they used to play with together. It was actually quite a nice dream, the sort of dream one wants when they're sick.
By the time Louisa woke the next morning Melissa had gone.
She dressed herself warmly, buttoning her pea coat and wearing wooly socks. It seemed that October was in a hurry to prove itself as the real commencement of autumn, and with the central-heating still turned off the brisk temperatures raked her skin as she went through the motions of covering it. She thought about taking some breakfast tea to help in the process of warming herself up, help the scratching of her progressively raw throat, but in the end she elected to order something once she got to the restaurant, anxious to get on with the day.
She walked quickly to the corner of Pelcourt Street, where the neighborhood connected with Poppy Avenue and spent longer than was probably worth it trying to hail a taxi. Only two passed by her, but she'd been unprepared for the first, and the driver never looked in her direction. The second already carried an elderly woman in the back seat, and once she waited long enough for a third, she huffed in frustration and continued down the avenue, her breath becoming runners over her shoulder as it hit the open air.
Athlone had always gotten frigid during the final months of the year, but it wasn't quite as quick in its decline as London clearly was. This new environment was nice, in a way. It undoubtedly would have been better had she not been so stiff that morning, but Louisa had always been partial to the colder weather. She loved slatey skies and how they made anyone's house look so warm on the inside, and there was something so clean and simple about a lower temperature. As she walked she was able to wake up her limbs and shake off the remnants of substandard sleep, but stepping into the Red Light was like a gift.
She went straight to the bar and boosted herself into one of the high stools. She was one of three people sitting around the mahogany set-up, the others being regular patrons who she noticed around at least five days out of the week. Jimmy, never one to pass up a Wednesday despite the fact the bar stayed relatively shunned, ambled over to her.
"Hey Louisa," He smiled widely and reached under the bar for a bottle of Sauza Gold tequila. "Come for a drink?"
"I'll have tea, actually." She said, wondering how everything the barman said seemed to have a flirtatious ring to it. "And if you could let Laurence know I'm in to speak with him, there's a good tip in it for you."
"You could finally let me have your number," he flashed his teeth again and Louisa raised her eyebrows at him. Oh, of course, she reminded herself. You're female and he's an incorrigible flirt. That's why he sounds that way. "I promise not to call and hang up half a dozen times."
"I've told you," she smiled, to keep from hurting his feelings. He was incorrigible, but he always made her guests' drinks at lightning speed. And, he was funny. "I'm engaged to a man by the name of Goldsmith, and we plan to be married in six years' time."
He leant over the bar just a bit, saying, "If you weren't so sweet I'd think were too stuck-up to go out with me."
She couldn't help the moment of blank silence as she struggled to work out whether or not he considered that an actual compliment, but before it could become awkward she managed another tight smile. "Again, I appreciate the help. Breakfast tea, if we still have any."
Jimmy went of his way, and the smile slicked away from her face the moment he was out of sight. She shifted in her stool so that she could look round the dining room, returning Mel's wave across the way, near the host stand. A slow, caressing French song was playing softly overhead, the singer's vocals emotive and warbling – beautiful. She fell to watching a couple sitting on the same side of a table, holding hands, foreheads pressed together. Newly-weds, obviously. But beyond them, an unexpected sight caught her eye.
Mr Holmes sat in the Greenhouse at the same table he'd been in when she'd waited on him, visible through the middle arch in the wall. He stared straight ahead, and after a second of looking dumbly in his direction she saw him lift a ceramic mug to his lips and take a sip. Her lips parted, an odd feeling of surprise taking root. She noticed his head twitch just an inch, and she sucked in a hasty breath as she whirled her stool in a complete 180, putting her back to him.
Her palms landed flat against the bar, and she held her shoulders stiff. She really had not expected him to come back, and wondered rather deeply why he had. It occurred to her that Holmes might have asked for her to wait on him again; actually, it was probable, considering he'd obviously requested to sit in the Greenhouse, which was clearly closed as she wasn't on the floor to take it. Holmes was a creature of habit, which may have been why he came back. But was his need for consistency so ingrained that he would return to the company of someone he didn't seem to like very much?
Part of her wanted to head over and ask him. There was the slightest chance that he might be up to the task of talking over the Douglas case, but mostly she was certain that fate had stepped in last week when she'd written her request to have this particular Wednesday off, so that she could avoid him completely. It was probably better to stay where she was, keep herself faced away from him. He'd never seen Louisa out of her uniform, so it was unlikely that he should recognise the back of her head, and even if he did, Holmes didn't strike her as the sort to approach anyone whose presence he wasn't relying upon in some way.
It took a handful of minutes for Jimmy to return with her tea, and the knowledge that Laurence would be out with her when he finished up with his lettuce count. She wrapped her hands around the cup, letting the heat sink into them and melt the mild numbness, and tried to drudge up to courage to bother Jimmy for honey, to soothe her throat. Usually it took much colder weather to make her so chilled to the bone, but she could feel her immune system chugging away only half-heartedly, letting her down, making her weak. She sneezed into her beverage napkin.
Finally, there was the sound of a clearing throat behind her, and she turned her head over her shoulder to smile at Laurence
"Good to see you, dear." He said, and she detected a hint of nervousness in his demeanor. "I can't remember the last time you were in for a casual visit."
"I don't think I have been before," She gestured for the stool nearest to her, chancing a peek into the Greenhouse. Holmes was gone, just like that. She could just make out a few notes stuck under a plate of half-eaten fish and chips. An automatic sigh of relief ballooned from her lips. "though I think this counts as more of an official visit, of sorts."
Laurence took the stool readily enough, but he said, "We could take this into the office, if you'd like."
"No, here is fine," she smoothed the fabric of her coat in her lap. "But it is strange. I feel as if I should be carrying a tray."
There was a vaguely uncomfortable pause. Louisa reached up and started to play with the tag at the end of her tea bag and Laurence cleared his throat. "So, what's this official business, then?"
"I suppose I came to clear the air."
"Oh?" Laurence shifted his gaze, looking as though he wanted so say something, but wouldn't.
"Mel let it slip last night that you think I'm upset with you. I'm not, not even a little bit." She chuckled. "That's the long and short of it, really."
Laurence released a breath that had held his shoulders stiff, so he seemed to deflate. "Oh thank God. I thought you were going to quit."
"What? Why?"
"Well Judy put in a notice, she'll be leaving at the end of next week. And that new girl never showed up today. They say these things come in threes." He looked at her happily for a moment, but then leant in furtively, "Are you sure you're not upset? Because you haven't seemed like yourself lately."
"Of course I'm sure," Louisa said adamantly. "I didn't respond to your Thanksgiving invitation because I didn't expect it, and I hardly check my email unless I'm looking for something."
"Yes, Kitty did her best to keep me from sending them so early." Laurence smiled. "I just like for everyone to have proper notice. So you'll come, then?"
She looked at him regretfully. "As to that, I really can't say for sure. I think Quinlan may be talked into letting me come for a visit. I'm hoping to drag him back home with me."
"Of course, I understand perfectly." Laurence nodded firmly enough to give his little double-chin a shake. "That'll be nice, eh? Seeing your brother?"
The grin she returned was more wistful than she would have liked, but Laurence didn't seem to notice. He patted her hand and stood, saying, "If you want, there's a free bowl of soup with your name on it. No charge." He winked so meaningfully, as though he'd just slipped her twenty pounds, that Louisa gave a breath of laughter; the man really was just the cutest thing.
She turned back to the bar, putting serious consideration into taking that soup, though she'd grown tired of the potato kind within the first week of her employment here. She could feel Jimmy trying to catch her gaze as she sipped her tea, so she looked pointedly ahead of her, ignoring him as politely as possible.
Beyond the bar was a row of booths separated by a narrow aisle, and in her effort to appear lost in her own thoughts Louisa let her eyes glaze over the people who sat at them. She didn't plan to stay much longer, only staying at all from an unwillingness to go back into the elements, but as her focus fell to the darkened corner where the dining room split off into the bar-seating, she wished she'd just taken her leave the moment Laurence disappeared into the kitchen.
She might have escaped in happy ignorance, but as it turned out, she became aware of the tall, lurking figure hunched in the corner, the ghoul of the Red Light.
Louisa's expression morphed into baffled outrage and Holmes – who knew instantly he'd been found out – hunched inwards, as though hoping that thin strip of brick wall could disguise him.
"You're joking." She said, loudly enough for him to hear. They were making eye contact, she addressed him directly, and still Holmes shrank further, probably believing he could just melt into the shadows.
"Come off it and come out, Sherlock." Louisa commanded, and after a long hesitation Holmes straightened up and stepped into the light, posture held in a manner of preserved dignity. It was so dramatic, he looked as though he were reenacting the Beast's reveal to Belle. Louisa ground her teeth and expelled a mutter, "Eegit."
"I suffer from migraines, low lighting alleviates-" she cast him a look so dark that his mouth faltered and fell closed.
"You were eavesdropping." She informed him, her tone as dark as her look. "You – a man I hardly know – were prowling about, listening to my boring conversation."
Sherlock stuck up his chin and almost imperceptibly shifted his gaze so that his eyes were now focused on the centre of her forehead. "You're angry." He stated.
"No, not angry." She said, but her expression had him thinking otherwise. "I'm highly irritated."
He had no response for her, it seemed. She crinkled her forehead, which he was still examining thoroughly, in expectation.
"Aren't you going to tell me why you felt the need to be so invasive?" She asked.
"Merely interested." Holmes shrugged, but the movement was faintly tense as his hands dove in his trouser pockets to rest.
"Because I'm a suspect?" She tilted her head. "Were you being serious, then?"
Sherlock brows came together, attempting to make sense of it. Was she implying something?
Louisa tossed him an annoyed, knowing look, sighing harshly. "That's right, you've probably forgotten. You accused me of murder last we met, Mr Holmes. I assumed that was the motivation behind your uninvited loitering."
He remembered now, but his feelings on the matter went only far enough to make him wonder at how mundane people found a grudge over the most trivial of things.
"No, that idea was quickly disposed of." He still wasn't looking at her. "I happened to notice your entrance and started over to speak with you. Your boss got to you before I did."
"He has a name," Louisa admonished.
"Well I've never heard it."
"You've heard it many times."
He looked at her straight on now, annoyance of his own flashing in his eyes. "I did not feel it necessary to commit it to memory, it would appear."
"Of course not," she scoffed, shaking her head in almost complete seriousness. "Why should you have? Why remember anyone's name, for that matter?"
Her sarcasm was so hidden that he may have missed it, if he wasn't so concentrated. He frowned at her, noting the redness of her nose, the scratchiness in her tone, and those bags under her eyes. There was usually a strand of playfulness in her manner that was gone today.
"What do you want?" The eyes slid right back to her forehead as soon as the question left her lips.
"You should know that your suggestion was pointless." He said quietly.
"What are you talking about?" She asked, though she already guessed what he meant, she just wouldn't believe it until he gave her no choice.
"The idea you posed about the killer being expertly hired." Sherlock explained promptly.
"So, I was wrong?"
"No, it was a correct guess," the inflection on the final word was subtle, but definitely there.
"Then how was it pointless?"
"It never came to anything. It doesn't matter who killed Douglas, because they can't be found." Sherlock paused, actually hesitating with a puzzling sort of look that seemed to say he was taking a last look at a mental checklist. He nodded to himself. "It's nothing."
"And this matter was so pressing that you needed to make sure I was aware." She stated it wasn't a question, but Holmes gave his assent regardless. "Why?"
"Why?"
"Yes, why was it so important that I know?" She enunciated more clearly this time, still looking a little dumbfounded.
"Because you said you'd hoped to be of service to me, and you certainly were not." The way he said it, as casually as though commenting on the weather, innocently confused had Louisa raising her eyebrows at him.
There's actually something wrong with him, she thought gravely, and the thought helped soothe the burning desire to insult him. She reminded herself that he couldn't help it.
But then she saw it – a steely glint in his cool eyes, darkened to a clear green by the low light… It was a glint of intention.
She worked it out slowly, but easily.
"I was right, though, wasn't I?" She asked. "Antoine Douglas had an order on him."
Sherlock stalled, blinking lazily. "That isn't the point."
"Maybe not, but I'm asking."
"It was true that there was an order." His tone had subdued to a single note, no inflection, but the line of his mouth firmed.
"You hadn't considered the idea before our conversation, had you?" He didn't answer her so she pressed. "I pointed it out to you, so, one might easily say I was of use."
His nostrils flared and Louisa knew she had him. "That's what bothers you, isn't it?"
He'd been meaning to provoke her. He was an obsessive man, that was becoming ever the clearer to Louisa the more she saw of him. He'd probably obsessed away on the case of Antoine Douglas until he was forced to admit there wasn't a solution to the puzzle; the only thing he had left was to make Louisa feel the responsibility he felt, because she was the one to suggest the Mighty Brain had missed something, and she refused to let him catch her in that corner. She was in no mood for it today. This was an off-day. "Your projections are showing, Mr Holmes." She said, breaking off to sniffle, which made it hard to be clever, but she thought she managed fine.
A sound that was likely intended as a laugh flew from his throat. "Don't babble, Miss Daly, nonsense is not my forte."
"I can confidently say that you are, without a doubt, one of the most complex human beings on this planet," Louisa began, digging into her coat pocket for her wallet. "But I know floundering when I see it, Mr Holmes. Don't worry. Something will come along."
She tossed a tenner on the bar, unable to find anything smaller and unwilling to stay for change, and like that she was gone. Sherlock could think of nothing to say at all, reeling from what she'd said. It was a small, single sentence, but he was certain he ought to feel insulted.
He watched her leave through narrowed eyes, again noting the mismatched buttons fixed on the back of her pea coat where the fabric pleated. It was the first thing he'd noticed when he'd recognised her from his table.
Sherlock left the Red Light minutes after the waitress had, but still he spotted her at the corner of the street, trying and failing to make a cabbie pay attention to her. He mentally amended the previous thought: the mismatched buttons were the second thing he'd pick up on, the first actually being the way she'd whipped around the moment before he'd latched his focus on her. It only occurred to him now, however, that she had seen him first.
He frowned deeply as he watched Miss Daly catch the elbow of an off-duty pilot; she smiled in the man's face and said a few words, and in a moment the pilot was standing at the edge of the pavement with her. The pair stood for at least a full minute, arms wagging in the air until a car pulled sleekly next to them. Sherlock turned away as they shook hands and started walking, slowly; there was no hurry.
He was in no bloody hurry at all.
It was the 31st of October, another Saturday, which also happened to be Halloween. Judy Hunter left the Red Light as punctually as she'd promised, leaving a forlorn-looking Larry to sigh by himself in his office behind the kitchen; he'd really liked Judy. He wondered if she would still come to his Thanksgiving party. Then, he checked his wine delivery and phoned his wife, resulting in twenty minutes spent talking her out of buying another set of ivory knitting needles from Ebay between the lulls of trick-or-treaters.
John Watson spent the day updating patient files while Mary sat at the chair opposite his desk, able to pass her time with one of her Austen novels because she was the heavenly sort who had never known the anxious laziness of procrastination.
Sherlock Holmes holed himself in the lab at St. Bart's, examining another sample of pulp from a board of oak wood (this one he had beaten into submission with an aluminum baseball bat purchased from a thrift shop for this purpose alone), whilst Molly Hooper examined him from the counter adjacent to his own.
Louisa Daly worked all day and spent the evening hours commiserating with Maggie as the girl's little sister, friend in tow and both dressed as sexy nurses, sent her running to the kitchen every time Maggie was forced to visit their table. And, despite having the Monday which followed all to herself, Louisa went to bed perhaps half an hour after she returned home from the Red Light.
Minutes before the clock struck midnight, minutes before Sunday turned over again into another week; Louisa tucked herself under her covers. Fatigue carried her into a swift state of dreamless sleep, just as a girl named Kaleigh Carlton drove her brand new car into the support of a highway overpass.
Author's Note:
AHHHH Happy Christmas, everyone! I know how exhausted this phrase is, but I truly love the holidays. And it's not just because I get a considerable amount of time off, either. I've got as many reasons as there are people who feel the same as I.
Anyway, now that we've gotten the precursor out of the way (the precursor being the affable and dearly departed Antoine Douglas), it's time to get to the meat of the story - the progression of which I am so excited for. Thank you to those of you who were patient enough to stick around for this incredibly delayed update. I sincerely hope you find the outcome as worth the trouble as I do.
I cannot, unfortunately, meet any of the kind strangers who left reviews for the previous chapters; if I could, I would give you each a pleasant (but probably cheap... student, remember) gift. Please consider this chapter dedicated to anyone who enjoys the story. I wish you all a very merry Christmas, from the bottom of my jolly-swelled heart. If anyone's feeling lonely or despondent, or stressed from all the Christmas hubbub, just remember that you are valuable and lovely, and eventually the judgey relatives will take their leave and the hope for peace shall return :p
Thank you!
Emily.