Chapter Four - Her Research
He watched her mind race as his did, watched her try to find the solutions to the problem. Just once, just this time, she was the expert over him. It felt like the situation had been taken out of his hands. This was her field, and it was her time to thrive in it.
They were pushing through crowds, brushing past people, trying to get along the street to hail a cab. Amy was clutching her phone in her hand, scrolling through the index of the archives. Sherlock followed behind, eyes glancing between the road and her, trying his best to keep up with the way she seemed to thread through the rush hour crowds expertly. He supposed she'd done it hundreds of times before. He watched her coat being dragged by people's shoulders, her scarf blowing back in the wind, her hair fall forward into her face. She seemed unfazed by all of these things, staring at her phone, eyes searching for what she was looking for. Finally a cab with its light on emerged on the road and Sherlock stuck his right arm out, using his left to reach out to Amy, grabbing her arm to stop her. She looked round, almost shocked, as if she'd forgotten he was following her and moved out of the crowds to the edge of the pavement as the cab pulled up next to them.
"I've found a few files in the deep archives, there could be more. But it's a start…" Sherlock nodded, opening the cab door for her.
"Anything you can find is obviously of use." He followed her in, sitting in time to hear her give the address.
"Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road please." The cab pulled away from the kerb. She kept scrolling. "I can get us in to the National Archives with notice but technically they shouldn't have anything on this subject we don't have. That's been proved wrong before, of course. They don't like me digging around in there anymore for that reason…"
She glanced at him, almost with a cheeky smile on her face. "I tend to mess up their top secret, official secrets act protected files."
Sherlock couldn't help but smile at that. A smile he remembered he had when John had pulled rank at Baskerville. A smile so genuine it rarely occurred. And he knew why now. He smiled like that when he witnessed someone being their true selves… and loving it.
"So are some documents still classified? That can't be after one hundred years."
Amy shook her head. "Many work on a 'need to know' basis, and with the backing of Scotland Yard, I can say we need to know…"
Sherlock smiled again and nodded. She knew what she was capable of, certainly.
He watched her continue to scroll and memorise archive patterns and numbers. It wasn't long before the cab pulled up outside the museum. The police tape still restricted access to the public but Amy seemed to have no issue with ducking right under it and heading up to the building. A police officer went to yell, but saw Sherlock follow and with a roll of his eyes let it happen, knowing his life would not be worth living if he prevent the great Sherlock Holmes from doing exactly what he wanted.
Amy produced a large set of keys from her bag and rifled through them, turning the corner to the side door. She was in her own world, on a mission, and aiming to reach her destination quickly.
She soon found the right key and headed inside, through the cloak room, down the café corridor and entered the main hall of the museum. Sherlock was following closely, and almost failed to stop when she did, standing in the large space next to a tank. She looked up at the Spitfires hanging from the ceiling and a smile grazed her lips. The detective followed her gaze closely, but brought his back down after a moment to her eyes.
Sherlock Holmes, of course, can read people easily. There is no denying that. But it is usually the facts, hardly ever the feelings that he read. This time however, he watched for the feelings. He watched this woman, who he hardly knew, express every emotion she was feeling as clear as day in her eyes. He watched someone who had seemed rather dull to him before, irrelevant even, become something that fascinated him completely. He watched as what to some was just a building housing some old relics bring someone to life. And when their eyes met again, he was sure of one thing, even if it was the only thing he was sure about when it came to this woman; she had just entered a place she felt truly alive in. And that fascinated him.
"Sorry," she said quietly, drawing her eyes away from the ceiling, letting them drag around the room for a moment before settling on Sherlock again. "I don't ever want to get used to it…"
She didn't say anything more as she headed for the stairs in the far corner, with a 'staff only' sign on it. Produce another key, she unlocked it and entered, holding the door open behind her as Sherlock slipped through and together they descended the stairs. There was one more door that was unlocked swiftly before the pair entered the front office of the archives. Amy slipped off her coat and scarf, throwing them over the end of the desk before sitting quickly in the chair and pulling herself towards the desk.
Sherlock followed her round behind the desk, for now just standing behind her chair. He watched her fingers move fast over the keyboard to enter her login. It was muscle memory, he could tell. She had entered it so many times there was no reason for her brain to store the information anymore. The computer was mercilessly slow, and both had sighed an exasperated sigh before it finally logged in.
"Now, some idiot a long time ago decided it would be a good idea to only half enter the files on the digital system, just to piss me off. So if I find say… a diary entry under the file search in sector 14A, then files 14B, C, D and E could also be related files but wouldn't be noted in the system. I could have struck gold right here, I just wouldn't know it."
As she spoke, she was searching the name and any related dates, eyes running across the screen to see if anything was of use.
"There."
Sherlock leant in, one hand beside the mouse on the desk and the other on the back of the chair.
"As I said, sector 14A. There are no other entries until 14I. That could be everything we need, or nothing, but it's a start."
She glanced sideways, to her right for the first time and realised just how close Sherlock was leaning, eyes scanning back and forth across the screen to read what she had just said. Her eyes lingered a moment on his cheek, scanning along his sharp cheekbone. This was once again an insane situation to be in.
Sherlock's eyes darted to the side briefly, and looked away again to the screen.
"So I guess we just start looking then," he murmured. "But what are we looking for?"
Amy shrugged a little. "Anything that seems relevant, I suppose. Any mention of the name. Find the different arguments, the different evidence of his existence or lack of. Anything."
Sherlock nodded and straightened up, stepping back. "Right then."
Amy picked up her keys and took a breath, heading to the door the archives. "I could lose my job for this," she said quietly, not looking at Sherlock.
"Then don't do it," the reply came. It was a challenge, not an offer.
She closed her eyes and shook her head, a small smile playing on her lips. "I knew you'd say that…"
"Then why did you say it to me in the first place?"
When she next looked over at him, she was smiling properly. The glint in her eye that Sherlock had observed when they entered the museum earlier was back.
"Challenge accepted," she whispered, turning the key in the lock slowly and giving the heavy door a push.
Sherlock had to take a moment to appreciate how she'd interpreted his statement. It simply proved how much she loved this. Following her inside, he could tell how eager she was to do some proper, old fashioned researching. Digging through archives. That's what her job was about. He expected that it was now a very small part of her day to day work with the computerisation of so many documents. The way she walked ahead of him, fingers skimming across the spines of the files and folders, over the top old dusty boxes, just told him how much she appreciated what she was surrounded by. She was in her element. She was in the one place she felt…
"Isn't it strange that I feeler safer her than I do in my own flat?" she said after a moment with a small, nervous laugh. "And I don't mean safe in that sense, I mean comforted. I suppose protected." She stopped at one shelf, and looked up to a large box. "My grandfather's service records…" she said quietly, before continuing.
Sherlock had remained silent since they entered. He was watching her. He was once again fascinated by how this woman in front of him was so engrossed in something others had no interest in. He saw a lot of himself in her, they shared passion. Maybe that was why he couldn't take his eyes off her as she stopped at the section they were looking for; 14.
"Here." She pointed, and then let her finger run down the whole stack of shelves. "We need to go through all of this."
She crouched and began to pull boxes of the bottom shelf. Sherlock took a moment to engage the correct part of his brain again before he followed suit, taking boxes from the highest shelf where he could reach and she couldn't. He sat himself on the floor with her, the boxes opened up next to them.
"Has the museum ever had break ins?" Sherlock asked after a moment of briefly searching through a box.
Amy nodded, not looking up from the file she had open in front of her. "Mm, why? They tended to take medals, or things they thought they could sell for a profit."
Sherlock pushed the box towards her. All that was in the bottom were a couple of scraps of paper, with black crossed out sentences, leaving practically only 'and', 'the' and 'if'.
She raised an eyebrow at that and pushed the box away, grabbing another and pulling it towards her. By the fact it weighed barely anything, she expected the lack of paperwork the sat inside. She grabbed another. Just the same. She looked up at Sherlock and just shook her head.
"Shit."
