Chapter 4

John was left waiting until Rosie just exhausted herself. It wasn't his preferred method of dealing with a tantrum, but he recognised that he just hadn't got there quick enough. The best times were when he could cut it off at the pass before it even happened. Second choice was when he could settle her down within fifteen minutes with calm discussion and, occasionally, bribery. That required her to be receptive to the idea, and she wasn't tonight. Letting her wear herself out wasn't ideal, but it was a damned sight more ideal than the occasions when he lost his temper himself and just shouted back.

Currently, she was still sobbing on his chest while they lay in the big, special four-poster bed. The worn-out grizzling of a child not yet ready to just pass out and go to sleep. She occasionally hiccupped. She'd already screamed so much that she threw up on both of them. Only them though, and not the room, so John considered that a win.

It just getting to eleven-thirty when Sherlock opened his bedroom door. John startled, and Rosie lifted her head to wail at him.

'Sherlock!' she whined.

Sherlock and the grace to look thoroughly guilty about it. John was torn between the desire to throw something heavy and hard at his head and the wish that he'd just come in and help now.

Sherlock opted for coming in without being asked. He lifted Rosie and rested her on his shoulder and gently swayed. John used the opportunity to change his position to make himself more comfortable.

'Shush now, Rosie Petal,' Sherlock crooned. 'Go to sleep now, little girl. I'll come and see you in the morning.' He rocked her some more. 'Go to Daddy now.'

Her eyes were glassy as she slipped from Sherlock's hold to John's. He started again with the hushing and soothing words he'd been repeating for the past half hour.

'Sorry!' Sherlock mouthed.

'Ten minutes,' he mouthed back.

'Text me.'

John nodded and soothed his child.

Eight minutes later she was asleep with her head on his chest, dribbling a pool of droll onto it, with her fist tightly holding his t-shirt. He waited until her hand was slack enough to free himself, then reached for his phone to text Sherlock.

Sherlock appeared ten seconds later.

'I'm so sorry,' he whispered. 'I thought she'd be out.'

'No. That one was a humdinger.'

His nose twitched, picking up the acrid smell of the dirty clothes. 'Poor thing.'

'Mm.'

'Those sickness pills were hardly worth it, and as I started speaking I recognised that that was going to sound more judgemental than I intended.'

John huffed a quiet laugh.

'What do you need?' he asked.

'I wanted to look at the adjoining room,' Sherlock answered. 'It's the sight of the murder three years ago, and even as I started speaking I recognised that that might not be the sort of thing you'd want to hear about the room intended for your daughter.'

John glanced down at her and smiled. 'Well, she'll be in with me anyhow tonight.'

'Do you want me to take over?'

'No. I'll feel better with her here.'

'Shall I take her swimming in the morning while you rest?'

'Not bloody likely!' John whispered. 'I'm not being the person who tells her no while not being the person who gets to tell her yes. Anyhow, get on with your room check so I can go to sleep.'

The door adjoining the two rooms was a little way along the wall where the bed was. It was locked at that time, but Sherlock turned the key and went in, leaving the door open. A lamp was turned on in there, but not the bright, overhead light, presumably for fear of waking Rosie again. There were some very, very quiet knocks on the wall. Sherlock then came back into the main room and crept along the wall away from the bed, stopping in the corner of the room where there was a short chest of drawers. He shook it gently to test its weight, then shuffled and pulled it away from the wall.

John checked that Rosie wasn't going to be disturbed by it, but she was spark out. Then he slipped out of bed to help Sherlock. When they'd pulled it away, they found a vent with an ornate brass grill over it.

'Don't you think that's strange?' He whispered to John.

'Pretty strange,' John said. 'Why wouldn't you have the vent going outside?'

'Yes,' Sherlock said. 'It's an interesting question.' He knelt down and John squatted down to look too. 'I was expecting to see this, but I expecting it to be substantially newer than it was.'

'Why expecting it?'

'Something Greg said, actually. He said that this was the favoured room for parents to be able to hear their child. The walls are pretty solid in this hotel, so to be able to hear a crying or misbehaving child, there would have to be some flaw in the wall. This vent explains it. I expected it to have been put in more recently because the rooms would not be up to fire regulation standard in this state. It would be required to be covered.'

'Maybe it was and the cover was then removed.'

Sherlock crouched right down look closer, then pulled his magnifying glass to look closer still.

'Not three years ago,' he said. 'If a cover was removed that recently, there would have been traces of it. This wall has been renovated several times since any removal.' He sat back on his heels. 'It's too small for a person though, and anyone filling the room with chlorine gas would risk it coming back at them.'

'Chlorine gas! Shit! God. Is it possible that it did, but it gave them a smaller dilution?'

'Yes. Julia...'

'Louisa!'

'Louisa said that her stepmother was sick following Katie's murder. She assumed it was a natural stress reaction, but it might be that some of the poison hit her. Louisa herself seemed to have been mentally disturbed.'

'Yes. She'd just watched her sister horrifically die. That's normal.'

'Is it? Oh. Could stress be an explanation about why she might be hearing the sleigh bells herself at the moment?'

'She's hearing the bells?'

'She certainly thinks she is.'

'God.' John was suddenly depressed. Sherlock was looking at him expectantly though; like he'd like him to get with the programme and work stuff out rather than get upset about it. He shook his head. 'You couldn't get a person through that thing though. I suppose a glass phial could be lobbed through.'

'Could be.'

'You don't think so?'

'No. There would be a risk that a phial would break too close and release gas through the vent.'

'Maybe they sent an animal in,' John said. 'Deliver the poison more closely, like they did with dogs during the Second World War.'

'Dogs?'

'Yes, it was hideous.'

'It's not impossible, I suppose. John, would it disturb your sleep too much if I were to stay in the adjoining room tonight?'

'What are you intending to do in there?'

'Just think.'

'Violin playing, shooting the wall, or just standard silent thinking?'

'The latter, I assure you.'

'Knock yourself out then,' John said. 'I'm going to turn in now though. I'm done to death.' He frowned. 'Hopefully not literally.'

'I'll do my best to ensure that's the case,' Sherlock said.

John settled into bed again. Sherlock came to loom over him.

'I'm probably not going to sleep with you like that,' John said.

'No. I was just wondering, how would you explain to a person that someone wanted to murder their intended wife?'

John blinked a bit. 'Well, I'd sure as hell make sure I got their name right.'

'Yes. Good tip.'

'Is there anything he needs to know tonight?'

'I need him to listen for a sleigh bell.'

'Make sure you call him then.'

'And get Louisa's name right.'

'That too.'

Sherlock lay in the darkness of the room until a little after two, letting his brain run along hundreds of possible roads, stopping and checking off each one as it was shown to be impossible. There were two points that flickered and danced around his head. One was that, in a hotel such as this one, many people had keys for many doors. The family rooms would not be part of the main locking chain, so those skeleton keys were ruled out. There might be, however, other keys. If the hotel cleaners took care of the family rooms, if food was being delivered upstairs and so forth, people would have keys. It was not impossible that someone was able to hide in the room and then leave later in the commotion. But then, that person would have been poisoned by whatever had poisoned Katie. They could have left some devise though, and arrange to have it detonated later.

The second was the vent. The vent was the other thing that made the crime possible without anyone else being in the room. But in this case, the person would have to be the mother, or in the room with the mother. Again, it was possible; there might be any amount of circumstances where the mother either wouldn't or couldn't sound the alarm, of if she was unable to. Difficult though, and if there was an animal going through the vent, they'd have to be sure it wouldn't simply turn around and come back out at them.

All the evidence, as it was, was circumstantial. He closed his eyes to try to work out how to find evidence for a crime that was committed three years ago in this very room, but before it had been renovated and improved and turned into a hotel room.

It occurred to him at about this time that it was a very rare occasion where he might see John and Rosie asleep together, and it was, irrationally, one of his favourite sights in the world. Easily scoring in the top three. He'd actually be hard pressed think of another two. Or one. It was rare though, for fear that John would wake up and (rightly) say it was creepy. He therefore decided to take the opportunity to walk through to John's bathroom and wash up there before coming to bed. He jumped when he turned the bathroom light on and the extractor fan burst into noisy life. He washed quickly before going back to check that the Watsons were still asleep. They were. Rosie sprawled across the bed like a superstar, both arms flung up above her head, a picture of sleeping energy. John was just curled up next to her, one hand holding onto his daughter's.

Sherlock left them to it and went through to sleep.