Chapter 7:

Harry's old posts had been deleted, but the site had an automatic back-up system and it took Sherlock only a few minutes to restore them. His opinion of the hacking skills of Harry's opponent, which he had been keeping an open mind about, dropped to sub-basement level in light of this: her choice of passwords for her blog and her home computer must have been pathetically transparent for someone so patently lacking in experience to have broken them. Well, of course they were; this was Harriet Watson, after all, and Sherlock had always thought of her as completely brainless.

The first page that came back up featured a photo of Harry: an indifferent selfie taken in bad light and showing a fair-haired woman whose fine bone structure and large eyes would have made her pretty, perhaps even beautiful, if it hadn't been for the sulky, discontented expression that marred her mouth. It was impossible to tell from such a poor-quality snapshot whether the drinking had taken a toll on her skin, but there were no obvious signs of it. She had grown her hair out since the last (and, indeed, only) time Sherlock had seen her; it curled softly around her face now, making her look much younger and more vulnerable than her brother. In fact, Sherlock knew that she was the older of two as these things are usually measured, though clearly not in terms of competence or maturity.

He gave the first few posts a quick glance. They were the kind of maundering, confessional tripe that sent a shudder down his spine: she was a recovering alcoholic, she was in therapy. Her therapist had suggested that she write down her life story, and that she might even find it helpful to put parts of it online as a blog.

(Why, Sherlock thought, why does that woman suggest these things? What possible use could it be to anyone to announce the details of their lives to the world at large? Did no one give any thought to the damage to the world of spewing so much domestic rubbish into other people's minds? It was worse than the state of the oceans. . . .)

She hoped to reach out and touch the hearts of others with her story. Perhaps her courage in opening herself up (Good God! Courage? She was revoltingly eager to expose herself!) would inspire others to do the same. (Sherlock sincerely hoped not. He could imagine nothing more appalling.)

"I am my mother's daughter," she wrote in her second post. (No, really? What a surprise! Who else's daughter could you possibly be?) She had her mother's diaries still, along with all the family photo albums and other memorabilia. She had never looked at them before—they were packed up in boxes that had been gathering dust under her bed ever since they'd been handed to her—but she was planning to delve into them at last, in the hopes that they would remind her of details of her past she had forgotten, provide a context and shed new light on those events she did remember from her childhood, and help her understand better why she had become the person she was today.

Her third post concerned the book club she had joined. Sherlock yawned and decided that he had had enough of Harry Watson. But his all-but-photographic mind still registered and responded to the words on the page before he could close the screen:

She had been reading Karl Ove Knausgaard's "A Death in the Family," a recent release which apparently billed itself as an "autobiographical novel." Sherlock thought that the designation "novel"—a form of reading material he despised—surely negated any meaning that "autobiographical" might have held as a descriptive term, but this did not seem to have occurred to Harry. She was certain that this book—the first of a long series, most of which had not yet been translated from the Norwegian—was a brilliantly honest rendering of every facet of the author's life. Knausgaard had apparently entitled his epic work 'Min Kamp.' This left Sherlock wondering sardonically whether Harry had any idea what it meant. He himself had no difficulty translating it into either English or German: "My Struggle." "Mein Kampf."

This literary idol's unvarnished and unsparing accounts of everything he had ever thought or done and everyone who had ever had the misfortune to know him had apparently moved Harry to tears. They had also inspired her: if he could write a best-selling memoir, she announced firmly, so could she.

Sherlock snorted at that. He had long suspected John's sister of envying the success of her brother's blog and the significant improvement in his finances that had followed on Sherlock's becoming famous. Her reasons for undertaking this excruciating project of public self-examination and exposure was not, he felt certain, so much therapeutic as mercenary, and yet he could see that Harry was quite unaware of this and really imagined that she was about to give the world something important and interesting.

As he snapped his computer shut, Sherlock wondered, without the slightest sense of irony, at anyone related to John being so unlike him: so fuzzy-minded, so caught up in herself, and so willing to take for granted the tireless support of the man she was lucky enough to call her brother.

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For the next hour Sherlock paced restlessly about the flat, trying to find a new angle from which to think through the still-unsolved problems that were weighing on his mind and to distract himself from his growing concern about Mrs. Hudson.

Since Spanish Leather had spent time in her kitchen, he should show up on Mycroft's surveillance pictures from 221A, as well as on the tapes from the CCTV cameras outside the flat. Sherlock was still unwilling to ask for Mycroft's help in identifying him, but he was not entirely comfortable with the choice he was making. If Mrs. Hudson had gone out with Spanish Leather . . . if she were actually in danger . . .

He picked up his violin, then set it down again. He needed to get a grip on himself; after everything that had happened today he couldn't risk letting his feelings slip out of control again. There was always that danger with music, though these days he could usually keep himself from being carried too obviously away when he played. That hadn't always been the case: it had been five whole years after that mess at Cambridge before he had been able to touch the instrument at all, longer still before he had let himself play anything more than exercises on it. So tonight he closed it back in its case and paced the sitting room restlessly instead.

It was with a sigh of relief that he heard a key turning in the front door lock, the sound of Mrs. Hudson's steps in the front hall. He was downstairs in a flash, helping her off with her coat and the silk scarf she was wearing tucked inside its collar, asking with his most artificial smile if she didn't want some tea.

A hint of Spanish Leather clung—along with several other, very familiar, scents—to her clothing, and there were short, silver hairs on her dress sleeve.

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"Thank you, dear," Martha Hudson sighed as she settled into a chair in her kitchen and watched Sherlock fill the kettle at the sink. "Whatever's got into you tonight, that you're being so nice to me?"

Her voice sounded sleepy and a little slurred.

"I'm always nice to you, Mrs. Hudson."

"Not like this, Sherlock, no. I'm terribly fond of you, you know, but you do like to be waited on hand and foot, no matter how many times I tell you I'm not your housekeeper. And poor John! The things you expect him to do for you."

Sherlock's back stiffened, but she prattled on.

"You want to watch out there, dear. You can't expect a man like that will be willing to do all your chores for you forever. He'll go and get a wife and a home of his own one of these days - or someone who'll want to look after him a little sometimes, too."

"Nice evening out, Mrs. Hudson?"

Sherlock had no doubt that an evening that had included 30-year-old Glenglassaugh whisky and premium marijuana was one Mrs. Hudson had enjoyed very much indeed. She was more than a little under their influence still.

"Oh, it was lovely, Sherlock! And to think I almost spent it at the cinema with Jane."

"That would have been a tragedy, clearly. What did you do instead?"

"We had drinks at the Beaumont—such lovely cocktails—and dinner at Gaucho's. And then dancing at—oh, I don't remember where, but they were beautiful places, all of them. I wished I had remembered to put on nicer shoes, but I got ready in such a hurry, I forgot."

Sherlock gave himself a sharp mental kick for the mis-deduction. He'd been so sure the second-best shoes had meant a second-best date.

"You've had quite an evening, then," he said, forcing himself to keep the conversation going. The kettle was boiling; he searched in her cupboard for the tea tin and the pot.

"They're right there on the worktop, Sherlock. Yes, it was so nice! Such a long time since anyone asked me out for a night like that, and a girl does like a little fun, you know. You should remember that if you ever find one, dear. It doesn't matter how old she gets; she'll never stop wanting to go out and have some fun. Or he, of course. Maybe you and John should—"

"Who was he?" Sherlock cut her off. "Where did you meet this perceptive and sensible man?"

The tea really ought to steep longer, but he wanted her to be sharp enough to answer his questions before she drifted off to sleep altogether. He poured a cup out and put it down on the table beside her.

"Sensible? Sugar's in the cupboard there, dear, just to your right, and I like a little milk, too, you know; that's in the fridge, of course. I'm not sure I'd call him sensible, dear. Dangerous men aren't, usually; that's what makes them so interesting."

"Dangerous?" Sherlock stopped moving, the sugar bowl still in his hand.

"Oh, quite dangerous, I think. That's why I wouldn't go home with him—well, that and not wanting to go all that way down to Chelmsford, such a bother, really, and no toothbrush or nightgown, at my age . . . And I did learn a thing or two from that last husband of mine. But, oh dear, I was tempted. . . ."

Sherlock blinked several times.

"Sugar, Sherlock? Thank you. You're such a love. You really should find yourself someone, dear. I'm not sure John's the one for you, really. He'll be your friend forever if you'll let him and don't drive him away. But he does seem to like the girls that way, and that's not something most men can change, you know."

"What did he look like?" Sherlock demanded, reaching blindly into the fridge for the milk. If you'll let him. If you don't drive him away.

"Look like? Awfully tired when he left today, I thought, but he always looks very nice anyway, even when you can tell he's just shattered, don't you think? Not exactly handsome—not like you, dear—and a bit on the short side, of course, but there's something about his face, just the same. And the way he moves—you can tell he's been an officer, can't you? It's a shame he got shot like that, dear boy. I'm afraid that shoulder of his has been bothering him lately, and his leg seems to have gone out again, and I really don't think he's getting enough sleep at night. You should try harder to take care of him, Sherlock, dear. If you can make tea like this for me, you could do it for him too, surely?"

Sherlock put the milk down on the table, closed the fridge door and, for a brief moment, rested his head against it, suddenly feeling that he was really very tired, too, and that it would have been much nicer if Mrs. Hudson had stayed home and made scones or ginger cake and was plying him with them now, instead of going out on the town with a dangerous stranger and then coming home high and sitting in her armchair, making him wait on her and scolding him for not taking better care of John.

He pulled himself up straight, put his hands in his pockets, and glared at her.

"Not John, Mrs. Hudson. This man you spent the evening with. What did he look like? What was his name?"

Not that it would be his real one, but it might be useful to know what Spanish Leather called himself when he was courting an old lady and persuading her to make a fool of herself for his amusement. Or perhaps for some other, more sinister purpose, like pumping her for information about the world-renowned detective who paid her for the dubious privilege of living upstairs and having to put up with her idiotic, unsolicited, and entirely uncalled-for thoughts about his flatmate. . . .

"Look like?" she asked vaguely. Her eyelids were drooping; she'd be asleep in another minute. For God's sake, he couldn't have this. He should have let that tea steep longer.

"Look like," he insisted, shaking her shoulder a little. "Name."

"Name?" she murmured, putting a hand over his and stroking it. "Why, Jack, dear. Jack . . . Now, what was the rest of it? . . . I can't quite remember. . . . "

"How did you meet him?" Sherlock asked urgently, shaking her shoulder again, more roughly this time. She opened her eyes at once and slapped his hand quite sharply.

"Stop that, Sherlock! You don't need to shake me; I'm perfectly awake. What did you say?"

"How did you meet this man, Mrs. Hudson? What did he look like?"

"Oh, he came to see about the gas meters! He was new on the job; he'd never been here before. He came to check the meters and then stayed and had some tea, and we got talking, and then he asked me if I was busy this evening and did I want to go out for dinner. He had such a nice suit with him in his bag, so I sent him upstairs to use your loo while I got ready. I knew you wouldn't mind. He'd been up already, you know to see about the meters, so he knew where everything was. He was so pleased to see where you live, and ever so interested. We had a simply lovely time talking about the two of you and your cases! He knew all about them. From the newspapers, and from John's blog, of course. He was such fun to talk to, and so attractive. I was quite tickled when he asked if I'd like to go home with him—at my age! But it would have been a very silly thing to do, I know that, I wasn't entirely myself and he was definitely a bit risky. And I didn't do it, so don't look at me like that, Sherlock. Anyone would think I'd shocked you! You should know me better than that, dear boy. I wouldn't have thought anything I did could shock you."

Sherlock was frowning.

"What did he look like? He wasn't—" a thought he had dismissed earlier returned unexpectedly, and his voice sharpened with a sudden, entirely irrational, fear—"about my age, was he? Medium height? Dark hair?"

Of course he wasn't. There were the short grey hairs on Mrs. Hudson's dress, and those prints in the stair carpet had to belong to a taller man than Jim Moriarty. It couldn't be him. It couldn't be.

"Oh, no, dear." Her voice was slowing down again, her eyes starting to close. "He was,"—she yawned a little, and rested her head on the back of her chair—"an older gentleman. Silver-haired . . . very distinguished-looking. . . ."

"Height, Mrs. Hudson?" He tried squeezing her hand this time, and found she opened her eyes just as readily as she had to his earlier treatment. "My height? Shorter? Taller?"

"Hmm? Oh, quite a bit taller than you, dear. About six four, I would think. He was very well-spoken, though; he was like you that way. I was surprised he was working for the gas company, but with pension funds the way they are these days, you know, so many people can't get by on what they had put away. My friend Jane has had to go back to work as a secretary, at her age! And Charlotte Dickey. And Emma Stevens' husband. I'm so lucky to have this house, and you dear boys to help out. . . ."

Her voice trailed away. This time Sherlock could not wake her: squeezing her hand produced only a murmured, "Dear boy," and he found he could no longer bring himself to try anything harsher.

Her teacup began to slide down her lap; he caught it before it fell to the floor. He hesitated for a moment; then, slipping one arm behind her shoulders and another beneath her knees, he lifted her bodily out of her chair and carried her to the sofa, where he laid her down gently and tucked a cushion behind her head. There was an afghan draped over the sofa back; he twitched it off and spread it out over her, then turned out the light and left her to sleep off the effects of her exciting night out with the mysterious and, in her words, quite dangerous man Sherlock still thought of as Spanish Leather.

Before he left he looked up at the ceiling fixture and addressed the microphone hidden there.

"Look after her, Mycroft," he growled. "And if you don't find out who this Jack is and what he wants with John and me, I'll tell Mummy you sent me to do your dirty work for you at Astor Mews."

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John was exhausted; he fell asleep almost immediately, in spite of his leg and shoulder. He woke two hours later with a cry and found himself lying with the sheets twisted around him, covered in sweat. He lay there for a few moments, blinking, trying to think where he was. When it came to him he sat up and rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes, wishing he could scrub away the images still burning behind them.

Groaning a little, he got out of bed and walked back and forth across his room until his breathing steadied out. Then he lay down and tried to sleep again. His leg and shoulder were burning and throbbing with equal intensity, making him long for the codeine tablets Sherlock had destroyed. For a moment he actually considered going downstairs and picking the pieces out of the kitchen bin where he had dumped them when he was making his tea and cleaning up Sherlock's mess. The image appalled him.

Maybe Sherlock was right to think he was stupid enough to let himself get addicted. What kind of doctor was he, anyway? Could he really trust his own judgment when he couldn't tell the difference between the pain in his shoulder that was supposed to be real and the one in his leg that wasn't?

As he'd done almost every night since Baskerville, John turned over, gritted his teeth, and told himself to man up and tough this out. An hour passed, then another.

He had fallen into a fitful doze when, around 5:00 a.m., his phone rang. Groping for it sleepily he knocked it off his night table; he had to pull himself out of bed to retrieve it, his right leg screaming in protest as he leaned down to pick it up. He was sure the caller would have hung up before he pressed Talk, even surer that it would turn out to be a misdial, but he was wrong on both counts.

"John," Harry's voice sobbed into his ear. "Oh, John, thank God you answered! Someone's broken into my flat. I think they must have hit me, my head is killing me, there's blood everywhere, the place has been trashed, my computer's gone, and I've called 999, but nobody seems to be coming and I don't know what to do. . . ."

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Two hours later Sherlock was still deeply asleep, dreaming that he was walking down the long gallery of a country house, looking at the paintings hanging there.

"Great-grandfather did that one, too," a familiar voice beside him was saying. "Just learning copies, you know, but they're not bad, are they?" "They're very good," he heard himself agreeing. "Do you really like them?" the voice asked, and he knew that its owner wanted him to say yes. So he said it: "Yes, I do." "I'm so glad," the voice said. "I've always been so fond of them, but I couldn't care as much about them if you said you didn't. Everything seems so much better when a friend likes it too, don't you think?"

Sherlock's phone must have chimed then, because he heard it in his sleep like an old clock chiming somewhere in the house he'd been walking through.

"Come on," that familiar voice said, and something inside him ached at the sound of it, though he couldn't think why. "The light's lovely now. If you stand right there, it will fall across your face just the way I want it to. Yes, play, please—it won't bother me at all, you know how much I like it. You play and I'll paint. I think I might get this finished today. . . ."

The phone went off again and Sherlock woke quite suddenly, sitting up and reaching for it before he even realized where he was. The dream disappeared as he read the text that had come in. It was from Lestrade:

"It's murder now. Get yourself to Great Purlington, Essex, ASAP please. Will send car to meet you at the station."

Sherlock was dressing hastily when his phone rang. He looked at the caller's number and ignored it. It rang again and then, as he was putting his coat on, again. He was reaching for it to switch the sound off when instead of ringing, it chimed.

"Ignore Lestrade's text," this one read. "Do NOT go to Great Purlington before talking to me. MH."

Moving like a cat, Sherlock crossed the sitting room and stood beside the front window where he could look out without being seen. A familiar long black car was making its way down Baker Street.

When a groggy Mrs. Hudson had answered the front door and Mycroft climbed the stairs to his brother's flat, the minor functionary of the British Government found it empty. The window in Sherlock's bedroom was closed but unlocked. Which of the drainpipes, fire escapes, and rooftops had provided his escape route Mycroft could not immediately determine, but he saw no point in asking his beautiful assistant to call up the CCTV records. Sherlock, he was well aware, knew the exact location of every camera for miles around, and multiple ways to avoid them.

"Dear little brother," he sighed. "For just once in your life, couldn't you trust me?"

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