Sherlock paced in front of the chimney. John had gone to the surgery for work and Mrs Hudson had left on whatever errands landlady's did, so he had no one to take out his frustration on and it was annoying him that much more. The lack of interesting cases lately had drawn him to complete a few experiments he had left lying around, but he was not happy with the results, and now he was left with nothing else to do, having run out of cartilage to renew his tests.

Cross Contamination, he could hear John's voice saying in the back of his mind. That's what you get for storing severed limbs in the middle of the fridge.

That was how Sherlock found himself on the precipice of boredom, so it was with unusual enthusiasm that he answered the knock on the door.

"Come in!" he chirped.

"Sherlock? Erm, is this a good time?" Detective Inspector Lestrade asked hesitantly as he poked his head in.

"Certainly. Please bother me, Lestrade."

Lestrade took a few steps in, but stopped short and stared at him with a puzzled expression. The one he usually wore when he couldn't follow his deductions, even the simplest of them.

"What?" Sherlock finally asked when the awkward silence had stretched on for far too long.

"There's something wrong with your face," Lestrade answered slowly. "Oh, blimey! Is that a smile? You shouldn't do that, Sherlock, it's downright creepy. Make it go away."

Sherlock scowled. He hadn't been smiling, had he? He wanted to prove the detective inspector wrong but he could feel the strain in his cheek muscles. He must have reached the pits of despair if he was happy to see Lestrade.

"You better have something good," Sherlock said.

"I think you'll like it," Lestrade assured him with his easy grin. "It's only a robbery, mind you, but it has the whole police baffled."

"Baffled sounds good," he agreed, while thinking it was even better this was a robbery instead of the usual homicide.

"John around?" Lestrade asked, looking behind him for his friend, which he found a bit insulting for John. He wasn't that small.

"No. Work. Boring," Sherlock answered in a monotone while he took out his bow and threw the window open, inhaling the sharp cold air of London after a night of drizzle.

He could hear Lestrade sputtering in protest as he aimed and let the arrow loose with a resounding twang.

"Right, then. Let's go." Sherlock said and clapped his hands to emphasize his point. "That robbery is not going to solve itself, now, is it?"

Sherlock gave Lestrade a little push in the right direction as he stood rooted to the spot, gaping at him and still trying to form a coherent sentence.

"Did- Did you just… Why? Why would you do that?"

"All will become clear, Lestrade. Follow me. Come on," Sherlock told the DI and lead the way down the stairs.

He smirked when he heard Lestrade scramble to catch up with him and they were soon out in the street.

"Ah, perfect timing," Sherlock said as he eyed his approaching neighbour.

She strode towards them with a furious expression on her face, clutching his arrow in her fist and shaking it angrily in his direction.

"I told you not to do that again. It's downright dangerous."

Sherlock snorted. How could she consider his careful aim dangerous when she was being pursued by a psychopathic, at least triple-murderer? Women were such nonsensical creatures.

"You'll have to admit it's very effective to lure you out, though. 100% success rate so far," Sherlock pointed out before being interrupted by Lestrade's not so discreet cough.

"Who's this, Sherlock?"

"Yes, of course. Lestrade, this is a new friend, she will be my John for the day since he's out."

"You, Mister Holmes, don't get to decide that," she replied, narrowing his eyes at him.

"Oh, really," he replied, feigning being wounded. "But first, may I introduce you to the very official Detective Inspector Lestrade, the finest policeman of all New Scotland Yard."

Oh, yes. This is definitely entertaining, Sherlock thought as he struggled not to appear too smug. His neighbour was debating with herself, he could see the cogwheels turning and the conclusion she would inevitably reach. She wouldn't want her full name advertised more than necessary, especially not to an official government agent like Lestrade.

"Pleased to meet you," she said, extending her trembling hand to shake Lestrade's but the inspector was too busy eyeing Sherlock curiously to notice. Finest policeman indeed. "I'm Jean."

Sherlock noted the lack of hesitation, so Jean was either her middle name or just an alias she commonly used, and filed the information away in his mind palace. She had a full drawer just for herself in there and he was thinking of adding a second. Only John had had that honour before, even if he had much more space dedicated to him now.

"You seem… normal," Lestrade commented as he looked her over. "Well, except for the whole Sherlock summoning you with an arrow like some demented cupid. How do you know Sherlock, anyway?"

"Jean is my long-term project," Sherlock answered before she could. "And she'll be assisting me today, won't you, Jean?"

The woman scowled but nodded docilely and Sherlock did not miss the way she was patting her side as if she was feeling for a concealed weapon the way John sometimes did. He had noticed that quirk a couple of times already, but he couldn't figure out what she was hiding. It wasn't bulky enough for a firearm but it wasn't a place you usually concealed knives, either.

Lestrade shrugged, not minding whoever Sherlock fancied bringing along, as long as he solved his cases, and they all got in the car.

°\_(°~°)_/°

"Will you look at that," Anderson sneered as soon as they reached the crime scene. "The freak brought his girlfriend along. Did Watson finally come to his senses and dump you?"

Sherlock ignored him completely and brushed past him, knowing the snap of his coattails would annoy him to no end when they hit him in the shins. His neighbour however, wasn't as forgiving and turned to Lestrade.

"What is this, Detective Inspector Lestrade? Kindergarten?" and she followed him in, but they heard Lestrade feeling compelled to berate the man for his immaturity and she caught up to him to give him a thumbs up that Sherlock wasn't sure how to answer to, or if he even had to, so he made a note to ask John later on.

Once his eyes got accustomed to the poor light inside, Sherlock surveyed the scene. It was one of his favourite kind of cases: a locked-door mystery. An antiquarian, a cluttered one at that, had notified the police a bunch of old crap had gone missing while the doors and windows were all barred and locked.

He then glanced at his assistant of the day, who was observing and listening attentively. Good.

"Why is Scotland Yard even bothering with such a mundane case? It's not even your division," Sherlock asked Lestrade.

"Miss Cavendish, the store's owner, is the niece of a certain Duke who has a hand in politics… the higher ups want it solved so they thrust it on me and I'm doing the same to you, and here we are. Keep in mind I won't be getting a promotion anytime soon if I mess this up, so please try to be...civil. Please?"

Sherlock hummed in annoyance and started walking through the aisles, observing the walls and ceiling, knocking here and there occasionally. The burglars seemed to have gone through a whole lot of trouble to steal decrepit baubles.

"Lestrade!" he snapped. "I assume you have a list of what was stolen?"

The inspector nodded and ripped a leaf out of his pocketbook that he handed to him without hesitation. Apparently, he was fully expecting him to solve the case.

Tiara - jewels, precious metals, boring.

Case of rings and necklaces, boring.

Old coin collections, crested silverware, antique pocket watches… boring, boring, boring.

"Is this all?" he asked Lestrade.

The inspector raised an eyebrow, looked to the list and then back at him.

"You know that's an estimated thirty thousand quids, right?"

"Yes, and I also know they won't be able to pawn it off for that price and that whoever did this went through too much trouble for so little reward, so I'll repeat my question: is this all?"

"You better ask the lady. This is all she gave us," Lestrade said, waving in the direction of a young woman with a long braid of hair and hippy skirts.

Sherlock strode towards his target with Lestrade in tow, motioning for Hermione to follow him.

"Miss Cavendish, what's not on this list and why did you not include it?"

The woman sputtered for a bit, out of sheer shock at being confronted so bluntly.

"Wh-, no. That's all there is, I swear," she said with wide-eyes.

"She's telling the truth," Sherlock declared. "That doesn't make any sense. Are you sure?" he asked the woman again.

"Well, I…" Miss Cavendish faltered and looked around at the cluttered shop. "I'm not the most organized of people, but those items are the only ones worth stealing, really."

"Maybe you could walk around?" Hermione said from beside him. "You might notice something else missing."

Sherlock nodded. It was a good idea if the woman was capable of directing her few brain cells to this particular task, which he seriously doubted. He went over to the rear of the shop where a door with a small brass plate stood ajar. It was the office and was, of course, just as disorganized as the shop: papers, accounting and inventory books, bills, deliveries and enquiries… there was no order whatsoever, everything was lying in an enormous jumbled pile, like a papery road-kill left in the gutter to rot.

"Bloody hell!" Hermione exclaimed as she followed him in.

"Aren't you following Cavendish on the mission you gave her?" he asked as he looked around the room.

"No, I just wanted her out of the way. I doubt she'd find her own shadow if she put her mind to it."

Sherlock snorted, finding himself surprised someone other than John had managed to coax that sound out of him. It was rather undignified.

"So what are you looking for in here?" she asked while he waded through the cabinets and shelves.

"Ah. Here," Sherlock finally said pointing to a shelf with a variety of objects on it.

Hermione approached and had to stretch on her toes to see the shelf in question. She was even smaller than his usual assistant.

"Oh, I see. Something was recently removed," she said, pointing at a square spot free of dust near the edge.

"Very good. You might make a passable John yet."

She rolled her eyes before the corner of her lips quirked up.

"Do you think she'll even remember what was there?"

"Dear God, woman. Are you trying to ruin my fun?"

But, as it turned out, she did remember what had been taken.

"It was just a small wooden puzzle box, you know, a brain teaser? It's not that valuable but I liked the design on the top so I kept it in my office. But why would they steal that? It's not worth much."

Sherlock wanted to make a scathing retort to such an inane question but knew John generally scolded him at this point, so he reined himself in, albeit with great difficulty, and continued.

"More importantly, why was that one in particular stolen while the other two you have on that same shelf are still there? I suppose you never bothered to open it, probably way above your mental capability, and it's quite alarming that an 'antiquarian' such as yourself doesn't know these puzzle boxes were often used to hide sensible information or valuable objects, and that it thus must have been the burglar's only and real target. You'll probably find the rest of your wares stashed in a dumpster in one of the alleys nearby," he finished with a flourish before muttering under his breath: "Where they belong."

Lestrade motioned two of his men to make the rounds of the dumpsters while Sherlock took a deep breath and ploughed on.

"However, your security is top notch for such a small establishment, no doubt your dear uncle's doing because it can't possibly be yours. So we are left with just the how. How did they enter and leave unnoticed and without a trace? I must be missing something obvious," he muttered, walking off and disappearing in the cluttered aisles. He must have gone round twice when he noticed Hermione staring up at a tall angle cabinet made of dark wood.

"I thought you had more taste than that," he told her, snapping her out of her reverie.

She chuckled nervously, he could see her pulse beating fast just above the collar of her jumper.

"Don't worry, I don't intend to inflict it to your sight if you're still bent on spying on me. It just reminds me of a… story I read, when I was younger."

Sherlock was not interested in some childish story, but the way she had stumbled on the word made him curious."

"Pray tell."

"It's silly, really. It's about vanishing cabinets and they look just like this," she said gesturing at the dark monstrosity looming over them. "They go by two and you can enter through one cabinet and leave out through the other, whatever the distance. Well, you can imagine all the trouble you could get into with one of those."

Sherlock nodded but decided then and there she was the worst storyteller ever. Even worse than John.

"So it is similar to a magician trunk with a false bottom that opens into a trapdoor to make your assistant seemingly disappear..." Sherlock trailed off as the two stared at each other. "Surely not," he said, paused, then wrenched the cabinet door open.

Everything seemed normal at first glance. Solid dark panelling all around but Sherlock noticed a smudge of mud on the bottom corner and grinned. He rapped his knuckles on the bottom panel, a hollow echo sounding back at him.

"Lestrade!" he hollered as he pulled a dulled sword from the clutter nearby to wrench the bottom panel off.

It came off easily and he peered into the darkness.

"Here," Lestrade said as he arrived, handing him a torch he had snatched himself from one of the uniformed officers.

He shone it down the hole but it was narrow and didn't go far before there was a bend in the tunnel.

"I won't fit," Sherlock muttered, looking at the various officers present.

Half of them were disgustingly overweight, a contradiction in their line of work. Lestrade was even taller than him and would be hard pressed to wiggle his way through.

"What did they send through there? A miniature ninja?" Lestrade commented.

"Where's Donovan?" Sherlock asked, irritated.

"Called in sick." Lestrade said. "I could call in one of our other female agents."

"Too long" Sherlock grumbled.

Did Lestrade really expect him to hang around all day?

"I can go," Hermione offered. "Can't I?"

"Well..." Lestrade hesitated.

"No," Sherlock said, surprising everyone. He glared at them. "I don't know what's down there. I can't put you in danger," he said with finality.

Lestrade gawked at him. It was annoying. It's not as if he always put everyone around him in danger all the time. Well... Not on purpose, anyway. He was about to have him get Anderson, who was the skinniest available person around despite his height, but before he could react, Hermione had snatched the torch out of his hand and jumped down the hole.

"Are you out of your mind!?" he bellowed down the hole and received an echoing giggle in return. "John is going to kill me," he muttered.

"Jean?" Lestrade called down the hole.

"It's okay, there's a very short tunnel and then they knocked down a wall... Eeew!"

"What?" Lestrade and Sherlock asked at the same time, both kneeling at the cabinet's entrance with their heads in.

"Sewers!" Her voice echoed back, coming from further away than he was comfortable with, but the light from her lamp soon returned and she raised her arms up as far as possible, wriggling her hands impatiently. Sherlock and Lestrade each grabbed one so they could pull her up and out.

She was covered in mud but grinning like a lunatic.

"Sewers!" She repeated. "Don't know what else I was expecting, really. Come on, I'll show you which way you can recover the trail."

She led them out and towards the street on the other side of the block before they found a manhole they could open.

"You don't mind going down again?" Lestrade asked her.

"She jumped down a muddy hole into the unknown, Lestrade. Do you really think she minds?" Sherlock snapped.

"But it's the sewers," Lestrade insisted.

"I don't mind. You get used to the smell after a while, and the rats are too well fed around here to bother you."

"Rats?" Lestrade squeaked.

Sherlock and Hermione shared an amused look and they all went down in a single file. Hermione soon lead them back to where a wall had been eviscerated: mud, bricks and debris lying at its feet.

Sherlock took over and showed them the telltale signs that pointed towards the direction they had taken. Because it turned out to be a team of burglars with two very distinct set of footsteps: one small and light, the other much larger and heavier.

"Sherlock, shouldn't we bring back-up?" Lestrade asked, peering into the darkness ahead of them.

"No," the consulting detective sighed. "With the racket your men made upstairs for God knows how long before you thought of calling me in, they're long gone. Besides each of us is armed and perfectly able to defend himself."

"We are?" Lestrade asked with a raised eyebrow but his disbelief was clearly directed at the small woman between them. Never mind that Sherlock never carried a gun himself.