Magpie: Two for Joy
Chapter 7 T minus 42
Author's note: Between this chapter and the previous one, things have moved on. Check out the stories in Ex Files Chapter 51, Exclaim and then Chapter 11 in Express, to get the backstory.
Mrs Hudson put the tray down on the coffee table, and poured tea.
"We're not expecting the Queen, Mrs Hudson; no need to use your best china."
Mrs Hudson gave Sherlock a slightly offended look, but softened it with a tiny smirk. "I like to keep up standards for your visitors. No need to poison people with whatever passes for your version of washing up a mug."
"Thank you, Mrs Hudson. Quite kind of you, I am sure." Mycroft gave her his patronising smile, the one Sherlock had always thought he kept in his repertoire to manipulate the servants at Parham.
She passed them both their cups and then looked back at the tray. "Should I pour one for…?" She nodded towards the kitchen, where Stephen Rawlings was standing.
Mycroft replied before Sherlock could. "No, he's just leaving." He cast a meaningful eye into the kitchen. "Rawlings…you won't be needed for the next hour or so."
He then looked back at Mrs Hudson, who took a moment to take the hint.
"Well, then; I'll leave you two to…" she hesitated, choosing her words carefully before continuing, "…discuss things."
When the door was shut behind her, Sherlock drank his tea, being willing to risk burning the roof of his mouth, rather than give Mycroft any eye contact. He counted the footsteps going down the stairs, the clunk of the front door being shut behind Mycroft's agent, and then the sound of Mrs Hudson's kitchen radio being turned up loud. She was clearly expecting the two brothers to start arguing, and past experience had told her this could get noisy. Sherlock didn't blame her for wanting to avoid conflict; he'd have liked to have done so himself, if only his brother would have obliged.
Mycroft put his full cup of tea back in its saucer. "How you can tolerate her plebeian taste in tea, I will never understand, Sherlock."
As opening salvos went, it was passive, almost conversational.
Sherlock didn't look up, but took another deep swallow of the tea. Whatever he thought about the relative merits of PG tips, he wouldn't give Mycroft the pleasure of agreeing with him.
"Do I get a list this time?"
The question got him a glare. "No need; I'm clean. I'll even take a test, if you want."
The glare was answered with a dismissive sniff. "That's probably true, but only because stimulants have such a short half-life, and you haven't been given the chance to resume your binge. Well, we did clear the flat out and install a baby sitter. I don't need a test, because I believe my PA, who said you were clearly using stimulants."
"I wouldn't have had to, if you'd been honest with me."
"You've been using that excuse for far too many years, brother mine. It wears exceedingly thin these days." Mycroft studied his fingernails.
"You've been lying to me for far too many years, Mycroft, and your protestations of honesty are increasingly threadbare." He snapped this, rather waspish.
If truth be told (and he'd rather die than admit it) Sherlock was feeling the effects of coming off a three day stimulant binge. He wanted nothing more than to raid his bolthole stash for something to take the edge off, just a benzo or three to help him sleep, or even a touch of opiate just to slide him gently down. Instead, he'd been transported back from the bolt hole in a black van and frogmarched up the stairs to the flat by four of Mycroft's team. The brawny agent Rawlings then unceremoniously stripped Sherlock of his clothes and handcuffed him to the bed, before sitting down in the corner to watch him. One of the other three agents rotated through every six hours- and not one of them proved willing to say a single word to him, no matter how much he provoked them through deductions about their personal and professional lives. His Serbian guards had been more vulnerable.
When he needed to pee, one of the agents sat on his legs while the other did the necessary to direct the urine into a plastic bottle. He was given water through a straw, but no food. For the rest of the night and all the next day and night, Sherlock had gone nearly mad with trying to keep his agitation under control; come downs were never easy, and doing so under this degree of constant scrutiny and invasion of his personal privacy was unbearable. This morning, one of the agents arrived to tell him that he could get up, washed and dressed- his brother was coming to see him.
His hand did not tremble as he put his empty tea cup back in the saucer.
Mycroft tutted, "Still dehydrated? I would have thought thirty nine hours would be enough to sober you up."
Sherlock counter-attacked. "How's Ketavan? Brought her up to date with all the Georgian gossip yet?"
Mycroft just looked at him. "I am going to assume that you bear the person in question no personal ill-will. As a result, you will not refer to her by any other name than the one she has given you. To do otherwise is to put Anthea at risk."
"Oh, dear, have I offended your sense of ownership?" It was less a question, more an observation. "Just who is it in Tbilisi that has rattled the bars of your cage so very hard? I don't think I've seen you quite so…irritated and worried in years, maybe even decades."
Of course, to anyone else's eye, Mycroft would have appeared unchanged, as unruffled and rigidly controlled as ever. But, Sherlock knew differently. The infuriating thing was that all his efforts to decode the files and put the data together had showed him that the end of the rainbow was in Tbilisi, but he had absolutely no idea what or who it was that had distressed his brother this much. From what Sherlock had been able to gather from Mycroft over the past ten minutes, he'd put this mystery on as high a level as the time when his brother had discovered the Sigursson Plan. There was a difference this time, however; Mycroft was not angry with Sherlock on this occasion.
And that fact puzzled him even more, because the kidnapping of Ketevan had been designed to do just that. After years of experience, Sherlock knew that Mycroft revealed most when he was able to make him angry. Yet, Mycroft was not rising to the bait. In fact, he was distinctly avoiding the more blatant reprisal that Sherlock had expected. When he'd been manhandled by the agents into the back of the black van, he'd assumed he'd wake up in a rehab unit. It wouldn't have been the first time. So, despite the irritating presence of his brother's minions, his being held prisoner in the flat was an interesting wrinkle that Sherlock was still trying to work out.
Mycroft did not reply to his barb about his cage bars, but simply stood up and walked over to the tray on the coffee table to deposit his still full cup. Then he started reading the Wedding Plan on the wall over the sofa.
"This is the first time I've had a chance to peruse your little distraction. Is it working to keep John Watson and his fiancé at arm's length?"
"Don't be so patronising, Mycroft. I'm immune to your attempts to play mind games with me."
Mycroft pursed his lips, scrutinising the Gantt chart next to the map. He sniffed. "Neither of them realises that this is just a form of intellectual stimming, indulging your appetite for perseveration."
"Mycroft…" This was uttered in a warning tone, as Sherlock got to his feet and closed the gap between them.
His brother gave him one his annoyingly knowing smiles. "Well, don't take my word for it. Your little pathologist friend spotted it, too. And now she's passed on the news to your latest therapist, and thence to Doctor Cohen, who both came to me- a veritable deputation of cognitive specialists to say how your executive functioning is being compromised. I must confess to not believing them at first. But looking at this…" he gestured to the wall, "…well, there's clear evidence of decreased flexibility and sub-optimal planning."
"In what way?!" Sherlock failed to keep the outrage from his voice. He had worked hard to manage the whole process; nothing was being left to chance.
"You're vetting the guest list- but you're not doing the same with the suppliers- any one of which could be using the wedding as yet another opportunity to prove to you yet again that threatening John Watson motivates you."
Sherlock turned his head to the side, as if hardly believing what he was hearing. "Why the sudden concern about John? You're the one who's been telling me he's got on with his life. Marriage will put enough distance between us that he won't be a target anymore."
Mycroft allowed himself a stifled snort. "Is that the justification you give yourself as an excuse for this waste of your talents?"
"You'd prefer me to chase up a loose lead or two in Tbilisi?"
This time he did get the expected reaction- an ice-cold blast of dictatorial authority straight from the freezer. Mycroft went very still and then said through clenched teeth, "You will not even think of leaving the country, brother mine. I have put a stop on your passport; you won't get out of the country without me knowing it. And if you ever thought of using the false passports you must have stashed away, souvenirs of your gap year adventure, be assured that Georgian authorities have your visuals on a watch list."
Sherlock smirked. "Now we are getting somewhere. Such extreme measures…you are in a tizz."
Mycroft reached out and took a very firm grip on Sherlock's arm, turning him away from the wall to face him. "Listen very carefully, Sherlock. This does not concern you. It is merely the relic of something that happened a decade or more ago in the security services, and none- I repeat, NONE- of your business."
Sherlock had stiffened at the physical contact, and how he shifted his gaze to where his brother's hand was gripping his arm. He thought that whatever truce between them, formed after the Serbian debacle, ended the moment Mycroft laid his hand on his arm. Time for another flanking manoeuvre.
Deducing his thought processes, Mycroft added, "It won't help you to run to Elizabeth Ffoukes this time. She will not help you in this matter. No one will. If I even suspect you are thinking of leaving the country, then you won't be given the courtesy of being returned to your flat; it will be confinement in a more secure facility. I won't need a sectioning order; it will be a matter of national security."
Sherlock kept staring at the offending grip on his arm.
Eventually, Mycroft released him. "Go back to your wedding planning, Sherlock. If you want to keep John Watson safe, then you need to stay off the drugs. It might embarrass the groom if his best man has to miss the big day because he's in rehab. And stay put in London, or you'll end up behind bars, unable to perform your duties for the Watsons on their 'Big Day'."
Mycroft turned away from the wall and walked to the coat hook. He put his coat over his arm and collected the umbrella.
Without turning, Sherlock sniffed. "Take your babysitter with you, Mycroft; he's not needed here."
"I'll be watching you, brother mine. Stay out of trouble, will you?"
Sherlock didn't give him the courtesy of a reply.
oOo
"Hmm…you've lost a bit of weight, Mister Holmes." The grey haired tailor was adjusting the charcoal morning suit jacket on Sherlock, using the cushion of pins attached to his wrist to mark where the material on the back would need to be taken in a bit at the waist.
The second man working with John had a smile that he was trying to hide, but the doctor could see it in the mirrors that surrounded them at Henry Herbert, Gentlemen's Haberdasher of Savile Row. John had taken the afternoon off to join Sherlock for the second fitting of the suits that were being produced for the wedding.
"Whereas you, John, have put on weight, but he's too polite to say so." Sherlock seemed keyed up, almost fidgeting under the fingers of the tailor as he did his pinning. "You'll need to be dieting as much as Mary is at the moment. She is panicking that she won't fit in her dress."
The younger assistant tried to smooth things over. "Never mind, sir, that is the benefit of custom made; adjustments are always possible, even up to the last minute." He reached under the jacket to loosen the silk strap at the back of the dove grey waistcoat that John was wearing under the charcoal wool tailed jacket. "That's better."
John sighed. "I really didn't need to be reminded of her current state of mind, Sherlock. All this palaver… I would have been perfectly happy with a MossBros hire suit."
Both tailors looked askance, but it was Sherlock who sniffed, "You might have been, John, but neither Mary nor I would have. No off the peg suit fits me; you know that. And I was told not to upstage the groom by getting something tailored to fit me while you turned up in something plebeian- Mary made that very clear."
John snorted. "Well, maybe I am a plebe, but heaven forbid that you had to adjust your standards downward. You can be a posh git sometimes, Sherlock."
"Speaking of posh gits, lucky for both of us that Mycroft is footing the bill for these." The bespoke suit was Mycroft's wedding present. Sherlock straightened his back, stretching his arms to get more of the double French cuffs to show. He loosened the light grey, almost silver tie a trifle. "If I have to break the habit of a lifetime and wear this noose to satisfy Mary, then you can manage the right clothes to mirror her taste."
There was the muffled sound of a mobile phone emerging from the changing cubicle at the back of the room. John recognised it as Sherlock's – the opening bars of the Bach Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. John had always thought that piece of music rather ominous. Sherlock used it for the calls being forwarded from the number given on his Science of Deduction website for prospective case work.
"Would you like to answer that, sir?"
Sherlock shook his head. "No, I know who it's from. Ignore it. This is more important."
John wondered at that statement. He would never have predicted that Sherlock would take his duties as wedding planner more seriously than The Work, yet several times in the past week, since the elephant in the room at Ryder Lane, Sherlock had turned down cases. Today when John arrived at the Savile Row shop, Sherlock was already in the fitting room, pacing. He seemed on edge, antsy.
John surveyed their appearance in the mirror, with a slight frown. "Why is it you look like some bloody relative of the Queen and I end up looking like a butler or an undertaker? Maybe we should have gone for the lighter grey jackets, instead of this one." He fingered the fabric, which was the darkest of charcoal grey, with a very fine, almost invisible black stripe.
The tailor behind John looked horrified. "Oh dear, no sir. Light grey jackets are only for the races. You wouldn't want to be mistaken for someone without the dress sense to know that."
John sniffed, "The only one of the invitation list who might know the difference is standing right next to me, or his brother." Then a mischievous gleam appeared in his reflected image. "I don't know- maybe I should wear a kilt; after all, Watson is a name of Scottish origin."
"Mary would be aghast. The Watson tartan plaid is a rather garish bright blue, green and yellow with a red line. Impossible clash with the lilac shade of the bridesmaid's dresses."
"Careful there; you're insulting my forefathers."
Sherlock's lip quirked, and he turned to the tailor. "Next thing he'll be wanting one of those lurid American tuxedos with satin lapels and a gaudy cumberband."
The older tailor's eyes widened in horror. Both Sherlock and John giggled.
The doctor contemplated his look in the mirror. "I'm not really arguing- this looks great. It just seems an extravagance- and I mean, really…when am I ever going to wear this kit again?"
The tailor slipped into the smooth gear of reassurance. "Of course, sir; that is the advantage of the groom's outfit instead of a bride's wedding dress. While one hopes that she never has the occasion to wear hers again, the gentlemen's morning suit is an excellent investment- the staple formal wear of the British social season. You can wear it to any of the events- from Glyndebourne, a Buckingham Palace Garden Party, or the races."
Sherlock's smile grew. "And there's always Mycroft's funeral to look forward to- I'm sure there'll be a strict dress code for that event. Perhaps we should plan ahead and get a black waistcoat to match, while we are at it?"
John stifled another giggle. "Getting on well with your brother these days?"
"No; not at all. He's being a bigger prat than usual. Arrived at the flat yesterday to give his ritual lecture, much to my horror. So, let's increase the cost; we will have the second waistcoat, in funereal black."
"As you wish, sir." The older tailor nodded, as he finished his pinning. "I understand that the bride is organising the pocket watches for your waistcoats, but perhaps you would like to do the fitting for your top hats and gloves today?"
Sherlock eluded the tailor's grasp and reached over to his tablet sitting on the chair at the side of the room. He flipped the cover open, swiped the calendar icon, and then frowned. "Not today. Too much on. When we come back for the last fitting on the 29th of April; it's not like our heads or hands are going to grow in the meantime."
John smirked. "That depends…solve another couple of big cases and that could make your head swell."
The day had been like that- a bit of banter back and forth. Sherlock was in one of his super-focused, tightly wound up moods, and John was trying to use humour to soften the hard edges.
"We have a timetable, John. And every minute counts. Two more stops."
On his knees, putting the finishing pins into the hem of John's trousers, the assistant commented "it would be useful, sir, if at the final fitting you could bring the shoes that you intend wearing at the wedding, so we can use the heel height to get the hem just right."
John looked down at the black shoes poking out the bottom of his trousers. "What's wrong with these?"
The tailor rocked back on his heels, a look of astonishment on his face. "Oh, sir, brogueing is never acceptable on your shoes at a wedding. That would be as hideous as wearing patent leather dancing pumps. One must invest in a plain toe capped leather shoe."
Sherlock interrupted before John could argue the sartorial toss. "Never mind, John. The next stop is Barkers on Jermyn Street, a ten minute walk from here. We might as well splurge and get you a pair of handmade shoes; Mycroft can afford it. From there, we need to get to Selfridges before four thirty."
John gave him a puzzled look. "What for?"
"Not a what, a who- Phillipa Craddock to be precise. I am reliably informed she is the best florist for traditional weddings. She's sparing us the pain of a trip to East Sussex. She's doing the flowers."
"And what favour does she owe you?" John was learning that this was a better question to ask than to raise the subject of how they could afford a society florist.
"She was born at Parham; her father was head gardener for my mother."
"Why does that entitle me and Mary to anything special?"
"She once promised my brother she'd do the flowers for free, for whichever of us got married first."
John tried to puzzle that one out. "But neither you nor Mycroft are…"
Sherlock interrupted with an impatient gesture. "Your wedding is the nearest I am ever going to get to a nuptial ceremony, John, so I might as well call in the promise. At least I get to play a part in yours. Phillipa was delighted; I think she had despaired of either of us ever tying the knot. I need to pick up her sample photobooks to take them to Baker Street. Mary's going to arrive at the flat after her shift ends at five, to make her choice, and catch up on the timeline of activities."
John was now resigned to the fact that their entire wedding was being financed by people who owed Sherlock some sort of favour. He might be sticking to John's rule not to spend his own money, but his friend seemed to be calling in every debt owed to him to make their day as special as Mary wanted it to be. The thought both touched and disturbed John in equal measure, but he wasn't sure why.
The phone in the cubicle repeated the Bach. Sherlock scowled at the noise, walked over to the door and shut it firmly, muting the sound.
It was a half hour later, when the sales assistant at Barkers on Jermyn Street was taking the measurements of John's right foot, that Sherlock's phone went off again. He ignored it and after two rings, it must have gone to voice mail again.
John decided that he'd had enough of Sherlock's martyring. "That sounds like a most insistent client."
"Prospective client. I haven't decided." Sherlock's left leg was jiggling with impatience.
"Look, if this …wedding stuff is getting in the way, just take a break. It's not like you to turn down The Work."
"Nonsense. We have a timetable to keep to. Tomorrow you have an appointment with Ara; please don't forget about that. There are things to be done, places to go, decisions to be made. There is less contingency than ever."
John worried about this frenetic burst, but didn't know how to voice his concerns about Sherlock without sounding a bit anxious himself. The last month had revealed a new side of Sherlock that he was still trying to understand. The PTSD of Hartswood was gone- the EMDR had worked for him in a way that it hadn't for John. But what had replaced the flashbacks and reclusiveness was an edgy energy and a level of control freakery that bordered on manic at times. That in itself wasn't unusual, but in the past that sort of focus and direction had always been focused on case work.
A sales assistant passed John a beautiful plain black leather shoe that probably cost more than his last month's paycheck. Sherlock sniffed. "No, the stitching is too obvious, and the shine too bright."
"Whose foot is this going on, Sherlock- yours or mine?" John decided that a case was probably exactly what Sherlock needed to re-direct his energies toward something more interesting. "What's it about?"
"What?" Sherlock looked up from the offending shoe at John, obviously confused by the question.
"The case?"
"Oh." He reached over to his coat, tossed in the chair next to him. Digging into the Belstaff's wide inner pocket, Sherlock pulled out his tablet. "He sent this email three days ago. Read it for yourself. This…" he gestured at John's feet "…only needs your feet, not your eyes."
The doctor scanned the email. It was long- usually a sign of a boring case, a trivial one that someone thought terribly important but which usually never even warranted a reply from Sherlock.
Mr Holmes, I am a PhD student at Goldsmith's College, University of London- and I have a case for you, one that your blogger Doctor Watson will call "The Case of the Invisible Roommate". I share digs with a fellow student Alan Flanagan, and we are both media students working on Virtual Reality simulation as new immersive media experiences. A week ago, he walked straight into me while I was standing in the middle of our lounge, nearly knocking me over. When I asked him why, he said he had not seen me there- I was invisible, and had only reappeared when I started talking to him. We both had a laugh, and sort of forgot about it. Until it happened again. This time he actually sat down in the chair I was already sitting in- and said I wasn't there when he looked before sitting. The same phenomenon has happened four times since- and not always in our flat; it's happened twice at Uni. In one class he started talking to a friend of mine about me, as if I wasn't there- and the friend didn't see me either. They both freaked when I started talking to them- calling me a disembodied voice. I thought it might be a joke- an elaborate hoax, but then another student none of us knew walked by and when Alan asked him whether there was anyone standing beside him, the stranger said, 'No'. This time it took almost fifteen minutes before they said I started to return to normal- a process they swore took at least five minutes. He says it must be a side effect of my spending so much time in my VR world; I'm losing my corporality in this world.
Will you please take this case? I am afraid I may be losing my mind- and my body!
Kind regards, Jack Griffin
John smirked, and muttered, "He's having you on, Sherlock."
Just then, Sherlock's phone went off again. This time he pulled it from his suit pocket and scowled at it.
"Go on, answer it. Put the poor sod out of his misery."
With a put-upon sigh, Sherlock thumbed the connect button. "Hello, Mister Griffin." Within a few seconds he rolled his eyes at whatever was being said on the phone.
John smirked, and said, sotto voce, "well, he might be invisible, but he isn't inaudible."
"Tha…" But whatever Sherlock was going to say, the person on the other end of the phone ignored his attempt to interrupt their flow of thought. Sherlock's frown turned into an outright scowl. Unable to get a word in edgeways, he pulled the phone away from his ear, closing his eyes in frustration. John could hear a tinny voice continuing to speak, but wasn't able to distinguish the words.
Finally Sherlock's patience snapped. He bellowed, "SHUT UP!"
The sales assistant measuring John's left foot visibly flinched.
Sherlock put the phone back to his ear. "Mister Griffin, I will think about what you have said, and if I can make any sense of it, I might contact you again. Right now, however, I am BUSY. Goodbye." He thumbed the phone off quickly, before the student could respond.
The Consulting Detective threw himself to his feet, and started to pace around the sales room. "Why are people so thick?!"
John smiled. "What's happened now?"
"He swears that he can't see himself in any of the mirrors. Called up in an utter panic and demanded I go over there and see for myself."
"So, why don't you?"
Sherlock started to say something, and then stopped, suddenly distracted by something. He picked up a shoe from the wooden shelf beside where he had been pacing. "This is the one."
The sales assistant looked up at the Consulting Detective. "Good choice, sir. The Exeter in black calf, a traditional Derby that is classic, yet modern. It never goes out of fashion."
"Comfortable, John. You'll be on your feet for several hours and need to be able to dance in them, too."
John sighed. "Dancing…" He shook his head. "Mary wants us to do something traditional as the first dancel- a waltz or something. I haven't got a clue."
Sherlock handed John the shoe and then continued on his journey. John felt the softness of the leather. It was amazing. Sturdy leather sole, but not the hard stiffness that he usually associated with new shoes. The brogue pair he was wearing now he'd had for almost twenty years. Four soles and three re-heelings later, the shoes were as moulded to his feet as if they were slippers. But, this black shoe was in a whole different class.
"I could teach you." This was said in a rather tentative tone; Sherlock had stopped pacing and was now looking out the plate glass window onto Jermyn Street.
John didn't hide his surprise. "You? When did you ever learn how to dance? I wouldn't have thought you'd have the patience for that sort of thing." He tried to imagine how someone who didn't like physical contact and had gone to an all-boys public school could have learned ballroom dancing.
There was something slightly defensive in Sherlock's reply. "It's a good way to improve co-ordination and balance. I had to work hard at those, but hated team sports. Dancing was easier because it involved music."
That made sense. John smiled. He was still learning about Sherlock- never one to volunteer anything about his past ("It's passed, John- by definition not important") just occasionally little snippets came out that surprised him, like this one.
"I've got two left feet, and in front of the wedding guests, I'll probably make a mess of it."
The sales assistant smiled politely. "I can assure you, sir, having just measured yours, you have both a right and a left foot. Your shoes will be ready by the 11th of May."
"Excellent." Sherlock answered for him, as John tied his own shoes back on. Then the taller man was suddenly in motion again, pulling out his tablet and rapidly scrolling onto the internet. "I've added it to the list."
"What?"
"A couple of lessons…I know just the dance studio. We'll need space. The first just on your own; once you've got the basics, then Mary can join in, without you feeling like an outright beginner."
John started to laugh, shaking his head. "God, you're almost as bad as she is about this."
"Bad?"
"You know what I mean." John gave him a grateful smile, opened the door of the shop and gestured for Sherlock to go through. "Lead on, Macduff."
Sherlock frowned. "That's a common misquote. What Macbeth actually says is 'Lay on, Macduff' to goad his foe into attacking."
"Whatever…what I meant is - you lead, I'll follow."
"You'll have to lead when you're dancing. Not good to let Mary do that."
Ninety minutes later, they crossed the threshold of 221b, armed with two shopping bags of photo albums from the florist. Mrs Hudson greeted them in the hallway.
"You're late, Sherlock. I do wish you'd tell me when you have a client appointment. I'm not your secretary or your housekeeper but it would be useful to know when you are expecting company. I've taken the young gentleman upstairs and given him a cup of tea."
"Who?"
"He didn't say; just that he'd spoken with you on the phone this afternoon, and that you'd agreed to see him."
John followed Sherlock up the stairs, but then almost walked straight into him when the man stopped suddenly, two steps into the living room.
"John…"
There was an empty suit sitting in what he still thought of as his chair, as if there had been a body in it that had just…vanished. A cup of tea was on the side table beside the chair, steam still rising from the cup. The arms of the suit were positioned as if the flesh inside had been resting on the arms of the chair. There were shoes at the bottom of the trousers, laces tied neatly and looking as if the feet and the legs to which they were attached had just faded away.
Sherlock said, "Mr Griffin, I presume?"
John started giggling, but when Sherlock didn't join in, he stopped. "Sherlock; it's a gag, a prank. There's no such thing as invisibility."
"Not true. There are at least three known solutions that create the effect of invisibility. That suit could be a hologram. The email said he and Flanagan were involved in Virtual Reality- the technique of augmented reality has been used to approximate invisibility since the 1960s; all you need is a garment made of highly reflective material, a digital video camera, a computer, a projector and half silvered mirrors called a combiner." This came out at the rate of knots, Sherlock's usual deductive stream was cranked up just that little bit faster by the agitation he'd been showing all afternoon.
"Sounds a little farfetched….I don't see any of those things lying around, do you?" John was finding it hard to keep a straight face.
But Sherlock was taking it seriously. "That's the point, John. You wouldn't see any of those things. He could be hiding anywhere in the room." He started darting about the room, thrusting his arms under the table, onto the seats of the chairs, the sofa, into corners.
"Sherlock, will you just stop? This is crazy."
"No it isn't. The US, Japanese, Canadian and Israeli armies have all been testing invisibility cloaks. The science is straight forward- treated fabric bends light, shields against infrared and thermal imaging cameras, and can be programmed to project an image that renders the object invisible because it blends in with the background."
"But, look…the suit is empty." John walked over to the suit and lifted an empty sleeve.
"That doesn't mean anything. He could be hiding under a Vatec multispectral 3D combat camouflage blanket projecting the same fabric as your chair."
Sherlock strode over to the chair and poked behind the suit. When his hands found nothing other than the chair, he turned and looked around. "Or he could be anywhere in the room." His voice was getting increasingly worried, making John begin to wonder why Sherlock was taking it so seriously.
"Why? Why would someone do this? These two media students are just playing you."
Sherlock didn't stop- he climbed up onto the bookcase and started waving his arm in front of it, as if to interrupt some projected image. "How do we know they're just students? Taking them at the word of an email? It could be Mycroft testing out some new equipment, spying on me."
"Now you're being paranoid, Sherlock." John crossed his arms in front of his chest, his scepticism clear. "Why would your brother announce the fact by sending you an email?"
"Just the sort of thing he'd do to try to wind me up." He started to toss down books from the top shelf, papers and files started to rain down onto the floor.
"Sherlock…."
"The Canadians call it quantum stealth; they're working on a paint that bends light, allowing someone to blend into the background." He nimbly leapt from the bookcase onto the mantelpiece, and then to the bookcase on the other side of the fireplace. The shower of papers and books continued.
"Sherlock!"
It was the tone of army command, and it made Sherlock stop, and turn around, still precariously poised on the bookshelf. "What?"
"Mary's due to leave work any minute now to come here and you're wrecking the place."
Sherlock hopped down.
"Call her; tell her it isn't safe. Not until we are sure the flat is empty. In fact…" He scooped up the two shopping bags full of photo albums. "…take these and go home; she can make her decisions at your place. It's not safe for you here."
John laughed out loud. "Sherlock…this is crazy. The only thing I'm in danger of is getting beaned by a book thrown by a consulting detective who is taking a prank too far." He stopped. "Oh, is this you? Have you set this up to try to make me believe in an invisibility cloak? John sniggered. "I know I can be gullible, but I'm not that gullible."
Sherlock looked confused. He put the two shopping bags down. "I'm not playing a practical joke, John. This is serious."
Whatever John might have said got drowned out by the sound of his mobile phone going off. He pulled it out and looked at the number. "It's Mary." He thumbed the connection icon and put it up to his ear. "Hi, Love. Are you on your way?"
"Nope. Change of plan. I was halfway out the door of the clinic and threw up rather spectacularly all down my uniform."
"Oh. Wow, that sounds nasty. Do you think you're coming down with something or was it something you ate?"
"No idea. I've been nauseated since this morning. I'm heading home for a shower and clean clothes."
"Well, Sherlock just said I should take the flower books home to you, and save you the trip. So, I'll head off now. Just get home; I won't be long. Love you; bye."
He looked back up from the phone to Sherlock, who looked concerned. "Mary's just thrown up. She said she's been feeling ill for most of the day, and is heading straight home."
Sherlock held out the two shopping bags again. "Good."
John gave him an odd look. "No, it's not good that she's ill."
"I didn't mean it that way. I meant, it's good she's going home. And you now have an excuse to go. Take these and leave now."
He took the proffered bags, but gave Sherlock an odd look. "Are you going to be okay here?"
"Why shouldn't I be?"
"Well…I don't want to find out from Mrs Hudson that you've taken the place apart looking for an invisible man."
"Go, John. Now."
The doctor was torn. With Sherlock acting quite as strangely as this, he would have preferred to stay around, and see if he could calm him down. But Mary was in need, too- and hers sounded more urgent, so he said his goodbye to Sherlock and Mrs Hudson on the way out.
Just under an hour later he made it through the front door of his flat and was relieved to see Mary in her pyjamas and robe, sitting on the sofa. She greeted him with a smile.
"Feeling better?"
"Yes. The shower helped and so does the peppermint tea."
John put the shopping bags down and sat beside her, then reached over to lay a hand on her forehead.
She smirked. "No, Doctor Watson, I do not have a fever."
"Well, that's good news."
"But I am off food tonight. Can't face the idea of cooking supper, so you're on your own."
John frowned. "You need to eat something. How about I fix some scrambled egg? Just a little?"
She shook her head. "I won't starve, love. In fact, I could do with losing a few pounds to avoid looking matronly at the wedding, so this is one time I will take advantage of the fact that I'm not hungry."
"Well, here's food for thought then." He got up and pulled out the photo albums from the florist. "Sherlock says you decide whatever you want- he's put a list together of what is required."
The list was lengthy- bride's bouquet, button holes for John and Sherlock, different ones for the ushers and the pageboy, Archie; corsages for the bridesmaids, then flowers for the church- the porch columns, altar and the arrangements tied to the end of every pew. Then it was onto the Arnsworth Castle Hotel, with the top table arrangements, the guest tables and the floor standards- one in each corner of the room. Then the bridal suite, and dried flower petals for confetti. Mary opened the first album he put on the coffee table, and snorted at the photo- a huge, gorgeous arrangement of white flowers on a tall Grecian column. "And how did he convince a florist to do for this sort of thing for the price we can afford?"
John smirked. "Noblesse oblige. She grew up at his family estate, and said he would get flowers for free at his wedding. He says ours is the nearest he'll ever get to one, so he's cashed in the promise."
A few worry lines appeared on Mary's forehead. "He really is giving this event everything he can, and yet…"
"What?"
"Oh, John…no matter what we say, he must be worried about what will happen between you two, once we're married." She put her tea cup down and hugged her knees to her chest. "I feel like I'm taking his best friend away from him." Her eyes teared up. "And, what's worse, he's arranging his own execution."
"Hey…" John sat down again beside her and pulled her into a hug. "Stop this. I've said it before, I'll say it again. It isn't either/or. I will marry you and we will build our life together, without me losing him as a friend."
"Then why isn't he taking you on cases anymore?"
"He is. We just had one last week where there was an elephant in the room. And today, when we got back to Baker Street there was an empty suit waiting for us."
"What?"
He sniggered. "It's some uni students pranking him, I think, pretending to be clients. Funny, but I can't say he got the joke."
John left her to the photo books of flowers, while he cooked himself some scrambled eggs.
Later, when Mary had slipped off to bed, he watched a bit of a late night talk show, thinking that it was just the sort of inane discussion that would have had Sherlock shouting at the television. His mobile vibrated on the coffee table where he had left it next to the flower books. Muting the telly, he picked up to see an incoming text.
23.10 Cracked it. We were drugged at Selfridges and taken by the cab to a replica 221b. A camera projected the suit onto the chair. SH
23.11 LOL. Who would do such a thing?
23.12 Ninjas, ordered by Lord Moran. The suit never existed; a hologram projected by mirrors. SH
23.13 Moran's dead- you told me so yourself.
23.14 All we have is Mycroft's word on that. SH
John sniggered. He started typing,
23.14 This afternoon I was there, Sherlock, remember? Spoke to a *real* Mrs Hudson on my way out; no fake flat, no hologram. You've been pranked, so stop digging yourself in deeper.
23.15 I'm serious. SH
23.15 I'm seriously tired, and going to bed. Joke's over. Good night, Sherlock.
John switched the phone off, and headed towards the bedroom, still smirking. He slipped into bed alongside a warm, sleeping Mary. As he drifted off, he'd started to write a blog post about it- the Hollow Client.
Back in 221b, Sherlock put his phone down and eyed the Ninja who was sitting in John's chair. At least, he thought the man might be a Ninja. From head to toe all in black, with just a slit through the face mask for his eyes, the apparition looked the part, right down to the epicanthic eye-fold. On the other hand, he could be from China or Korea, just disguised as a Ninja, but the antique Samurai sword across his knees suggested otherwise.
"Who are you?"
There was no answer to his rather tentative question. On second thought, he couldn't be sure he'd even voiced the question; he might have just thought it.
Sherlock tried again. "Why are you here?" This time his ears registered the sound of his voice.
There was a shrug, and then in the Japanese dialect favoured by the Yakuza, the apparition spoke to him.
"You should know the answer; this is your hallucination."
Frustrated, Sherlock looked around the facsimile of 221b that he kept in his Mind Palace. "I need to think straight, about John, about who has been trying to kill him four times in the past five months, and whether there is any connection to what happened in Georgia, whatever did happen."
The Ninja removed his mask, and it was James Moriarty. "Then you should've taken cocaine, doofus. You know ketamine messes up your concentration."
There was a reason he'd opted for ketamine, but not one he'd like to admit to Moriarty."It was a low dose- not recreational, not the sort to create hallucinations. Anyway, go way. You're supposed to be dead. "
Jim shrugged. "Am I? But, then so were you." The Irishman lifted the sword and balanced it on his hand, gave it a wolfish smile of appreciation. "So beautiful. So sharp. A bit like the way your brain used to be, before you let your pet mess it up so much." Moriarty gave him one of his manic laughs, and then tutted at him. "If you weren't so weighed down by sentiment and anxiety about losing your only friend in the world, then you'd have figured out Mycroft's little mystery by now."
Sherlock closed his eyes, not wanting to face what his Mind Palace was telling him. The Moriarty avatar wasn't one he'd consciously let out of the padded cell in the basement, and it was a sign of his current mental fragmentation that the bastard had somehow made it out on his own.
Sherlock had made the call to a dealer from the changing cubicle at the suit fitting, while he was supposed to be getting dressed. He'd popped open the back of his phone and swapped in the SIM card from the burner phone, just long enough to make the call. He'd hidden the Sim in the lining of his Belstaff, knowing that neither Ketavan nor Mycroft would deprive him of the coat for long.
When they'd got to Phillipa Craddock's florist boutique in Selfridges, he'd excused himself to go to the loo, while she talked to John. Once in the quiet of the department store's Gents, he'd met the dealer whose discretion he could count on, paid for the ketamine hydrochloride and took the first dose in the stalls. A low dose, just enough to steady his nerves. He'd ridden out the fifteen minutes of the drug's anaesthetic impact in the back of the black cab on the way to Baker Street.
Once John had left the flat, he took the second injection and sat down amidst the shambles that he'd made of the living room- books and papers scattered in a mess. Sherlock chose to avoid looking at the side of the room over the sofa. He couldn't allow all the minutiae to keep distracting him. He kept his back to the baleful threat on the wedding wall, and contemplated his future. John was going to get married and disappear into domesticity. He knew that. And it was okay, because it made him safer than if he was still at Baker Street.
But that thought was little consolation. If there had been someone here using an invisibility cloak, then it could be the same person who had put John in the bonfire, or the one who had led him to the dwarf with the poisoned Amazonian dart. Would the next attempt succeed?
I'm not being paranoid, as long as I don't know the answer to that question.
The whole situation was starting to get on Sherlock's nerves. Too many unsolved cases. He'd been struggling with the comedown from the stimulants taken when he kidnapped Ketavan, but his efforts there had not solved the case. All this failure was just too much to bear.
"Oh, Sherlock…" This taunting call was uttered in the high-pitched, sing-song voice he'd come to associate with Richard Brook, the children's actor persona that used to such good effect at the end.
The Moriarty avatar was not letting him go. He opened his eyes, to see that at least it was no longer dressed in Ninja disguise. This was the dark suit and navy wool coat that he'd worn to the Barts rooftop, complete with a bloodstain down the shoulder. Sherlock had not needed to check the corpse for a pulse; the scent of gunshot residue had been mixed with that of cranial fluids, blood and splattered grey matter. That scent now filled the room, bringing back the memory of those short moments of panic, when Sherlock had realised it was the worst case scenario- he would have to fake his death and disappear. Seven of the thirteen scenarios had given him a chance to tell John before he vanished. Four of the other scenarios could have led to a reveal some weeks later.
If only. If only one of those scenarios had been possible, he wouldn't now be planning the end of his friendship with John, in order to save his life by marrying him off to someone who would be able to keep him safe in a way that Sherlock couldn't. All that effort to take apart Moriarty's network had not been enough to protect John. The mere existence of Sherlock threatened John's life- that was the harsh reality of his return.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, waiting for the second dose of ketamine to do its job. He knew he was fighting off depression. It had been lurking for weeks. He was always vulnerable to a dip in mood after a stint in rehab. And no matter how they dressed it up, Hartswood was rehab.
It was like his brain chemistry couldn't cope with being clean for too long. Cases were being dull in the extreme, or frustrating as hell. The Georgian connection, the dwarf, and now this invisibility lark. Sherlock closed his eyes again, took a deep breath and tried to avoid putting his hands in his hair and giving it a tug. If Mycroft did have a camera on him, that would be a give-away, a tell-tale sign that he was struggling.
The ketamine should lift the depression long enough for him to figure a way out of this mess. The medical establishment were starting to realise what he'd known for at least a decade- using the drug created a dissociated state, a dream-like pause that re-booted his brain in almost the same way as ECT had when he was a child. With one huge redeeming feature- it didn't lead to amnesia. He had bought enough to get him through a week of treatment, and if he was lucky, the benefits would lift his mood out of depression for a couple of weeks without anyone noticing. He needed to hold things together until John was safely away on honeymoon.
That reminded him. He stood up and wandered over to the Wedding Wall, and started a new sheet of paper. Writing "Suppliers on Site", he silently thanked his brother for the suggestion that they too would need to be vetted.
Sherlock got back to work.
