Saving Grace

By Navigatio


Chapter 9: Mistrust


Sherlock was so distracted during the autopsy of Mr Oliver that Molly had to tell him three times that she hadn't received the toxicology report yet. He was surprised she wasn't angry with him, but she just patiently repeated the information, and he caught himself, cleared his throat and changed the subject.

"Well, have you got a preliminary cause of death, then?" he asked impatiently, as if it were she who had made the mistake.

"Quite obviously acute myocardial infarction." She finished removing the heart from the chest cavity and turned it over in her hands. "There is a fair amount of necrotic tissue. . ."

"Donovan will be quite pleased," Sherlock grumbled.

"However," Molly continued, "When I performed a stomach wash earlier, I found hyperaemia and hemorrhagic foci in the mucous membrane—"

"So he was poisoned," Sherlock said with a smirk. Donovan was wrong after all—at least something was going his way today.

"I would say it's likely. May be from vomiting, which he apparently did at least twice before his death." Molly responded, tipping the heart onto the scale. "I'll have to wait for the toxicology report, which—"

"Isn't back yet, yes, yes I know," Sherlock snapped back.

"How are things going?" Molly's tone was mild, with a bit of a lift at the end, as if to hide the fact that she was prying. Sherlock decided to try a bit of deflection. It usually did the trick.

"What do you mean, how are things going? With this case?"

"With John, I mean. How is he. . . feeling?"

"Fine," Sherlock responded curtly, in a tone that invited no further questioning. Molly looked up from her clipboard to raise her eyebrows at him, but he clamped his mouth shut and gave her nothing further.

Finally she returned her attention to the corpse. "Edema," she noted, pointing to the left hand, where the third finger showed a deep crease at the base. "I've had to cut off his wedding ring."

"Wedding ring? He wasn't married."

"Widowed," Molly corrected. "He still wore the ring."

"Oh." Of course. John still wore his ring too, Sherlock remembered. He wondered if he would always wear it. John in his seventies, fat and old, still wearing a wedding ring on his finger, that had to be cut off from his dead body. . .Now the picture in his mind turned to Mary's bloated corpse. He closed his eyes, swallowed hard and shoved the disturbing image away.

When he opened his eyes again, he discovered that Molly was watching him with a sickeningly sympathetic expression. As soon as he made eye contact, she quickly looked away, back to the task at hand, which was now the open abdominal cavity. "Cirrhotic," she commented, lifting up the liver to check the underside.

"Oh?" This caught Sherlock's interest. There had been no mention of alcoholism or liver ailments in the police report or medical records. He leaned over Molly's shoulder for a closer look.

"Looks mild. No ascites, no oesophageal varices. . ." she continued. "May not have been diagnosed."

"Ah. But he would have been abusing alcohol."

"Well, he definitely shows signs of scarring and fatty deposits in the liver," she said, pointing to a yellowish mass. "It's certainly indicative. You'd have to ask the family if they knew about it."

"Hmm."

Molly moved on to the spleen, but Sherlock's mind had gone back to John, and that sour whiff he had caught in his room that morning. Was John abusing alcohol? Did that make him an alcoholic? He knew the textbook signs, in a technical, detached sense, but had no first-hand experience with alcoholism. Molly, on the other hand. . .

"How would the family know if he were an alcoholic?" he asked matter-of-factly.

"You know the signs."

"But I've never experienced it before."

"And you think I have?"

"Come now, Molly. It's obvious your father was an alcoholic for years before his death."

Molly was giving him a hard look now, so perhaps he had gone too far. He cut his eyes to the side, chewing on the inside of his lip, and tried to think of a way to placate her. Nothing came to mind. . .

After a moment he heard her sigh. He looked back at her to find her staring down at the face of the corpse with her lips twisted.

"I suppose. . . drinking alone. My dad used to drink in his study after we had all gone to bed." Molly said quietly. She swabbed around the dead man's mouth now, gently, taking care with the task and not looking up. "I didn't know until he was hospitalized the first time and I found dozens of empty bottles in the back of his closet."

Ah, drinking alone. Yes, that was a possibility. Sherlock hadn't found any empty bottles around the flat, but the fact that the bedroom smelled like alcohol even though Sherlock hadn't seen John drink the previous night was an indication.

"Forgetting commitments and missing work is another sign." she continued, while slipping the swab into a sample container. Without a pause she moved on to his fingernails, seemingly absorbed in her task, speaking in a far-away voice. "My dad actually lost his job but we didn't know it until he was in hospital and my mum tried to call in sick for him."

That fit too. Sherlock's chest was starting to get that tight feeling again, and he could feel the sweat forming between his shoulder blades, even though the room was cold.

"Does he. . .does he seem depressed?" Molly asked quietly.

"He's been spending a lot of time in his bedroom," Sherlock answered, before he realized she had changed the subject. But of course she would have caught on to the real reason he was pressing her for details. Molly was always remarkably perceptive, even more so than he was himself when it came to his emotional state.

When she glanced up from her task, he spotted something in her eyes that looked suspiciously like either sympathy or pity. It instantly put him on the defensive. "But things are getting better," he assured her quickly, but then followed up with, "At least, I thought they were." He broke off. Saying more felt like a betrayal to John.

"But now?" she prompted finally, head cocked to the side.

Another long pause followed, while Sherlock stared at the pattern of tiles on the floor and considered how much to tell her. He wasn't one to prattle on about his "feelings," especially when they were so tangled and difficult. But on the other hand, she had been useful before. And she had proven she could be discreet.

"He's been missing work," Sherlock admitted. "I thought things were getting better, and now I find out. . .I've been trying. . ." He trailed off. This level of openness was unfamiliar, and unexpectedly difficult. Molly was still listening expectantly, so after a raspy breath, which turned into a muffled cough, he continued. "I've been trying to do everything right. I keep trying to help, and it only makes things worse."

"It's normal for grief to go through cycles, Sherlock. You can't blame yourself."

"But he should have been over this by now." Sherlock knew his voice sounded petulant, but being aware of it didn't mean he could stop it.

"It's only been a little over a month. It takes time to heal, and you never get over the death of a spouse."

Sherlock shook his head. "John needs some excitement in his life. If he were to join me on this case, he would forget all about it."

"I don't think it's that simple. Didn't he say no to joining you on cases?"

Sherlock scowled. "He's being ridiculous."

"It's not ridiculous to want to stay safe for Gracie, Sherlock. Surely you can understand that?"

"John needs adventure. If he doesn't have a bit of danger in his life, he turns self-destructive. It's more dangerous for him NOT to join me."

"Hmm. Well, is there a way he can help you without being involved in anything dangerous? Like maybe. . . research?"

"Excellent idea, Molly!" Sherlock exclaimed. He knew there was a reason he kept her around. "He could research poisons for this case. No danger there, but he would be doing something useful."

"Good idea. Keep him busy and he'll be less likely to turn to other things to take his mind off it."

"Yes," Sherlock mused. "And after that he can help me with the second search of the younger sister's kitchen—"

"You might want to take it slowly. If you try to move too quickly, he's likely to run the other way."

"You're right, of course. Just the research for now. Legwork can come later, once he realizes how much he's missed it."


An hour later, Sherlock found himself standing at the door to John's room, with Gracie perched on his hip, attempting to convince himself that it was necessary for him to violate John's privacy and betray his trust for a greater good. He didn't understand why he was so hesitant. Breaking and entering was usually something he did without a second thought.

"It's necessary," he said seriously to Gracie, whose pudgy arm was wound around his neck. "It's a necessary evil. Do you understand?"

Her only response was to twist her tiny fingers into the curls at his nape and gurgle happily, which he took for agreement. Besides, it wasn't as if John had not done this exact same thing to Sherlock, on more than one occasion. Turnabout was fair play, after all.

"Good," he said with a nod. "I'm glad we've had this discussion." After a deep breath, he opened the door and found the bed unmade, John's pyjamas still lying where he had discarded them on the floor near the bureau. He decided to start there.

When he opened the top drawer, he found messily piled vests and socks, which was unusual for John. His army training meant that his clothes were typically all neatly folded and lined up in the drawer. Sherlock closed the top drawer and opened the second, this time finding a lumpy, untidy pile of jeans and trousers tossed in together. The back of the pile was bunched up, and when his hand went out automatically to smooth it back down so he could close the drawer, he felt something hard under the clothes.

Pursing his lips, he lifted up the top layer of jeans to discover a 750 ml bottle of Jameson's Whiskey, approximately half-full. For a moment he simply frowned at it, as if it were a wild animal that must be handled carefully. Finally he laid the jeans back down over it and arranged them as they had been, lump and all.

The next drawer yielded four empty bottles of various types of alcohol, tucked under John's jumpers. Sherlock sat back on his heels and blinked at them in disbelief. How had this been happening under his nose and he hadn't known it? He had thought things were getting better, John had seemed happier. How had he got it so wrong? The now-familiar lump returned to Sherlock's throat.

Swallowing hard, he pushed the jumpers back into the drawer, hefted Gracie back onto his hip and moved on to the closet. While he stood staring at the closed door, the baby popped her thumb into her mouth and laid her head on his shoulder, with her soft curls tickling his chin. The lump grew, joined now by the return of the tightness in his chest. He turned his head to avoid coughing into Gracie's hair.

When the coughing fit was over, he finally opened the closet door with sweaty hands, to find several boxes still stacked inside, with "bedroom" written on the side in John's handwriting. These had never been unpacked from the move.

A search of the bottom part of the closet yielded no more bottles, empty or otherwise, but he did find the cardboard box containing Mary's personal effects that had been delivered by Lestrade. The lid was partially open, and when Sherlock flipped it the rest of the way open, he found Mary's phone sitting on the top. He knew he shouldn't, but he picked it up and pressed the power button. Nothing happened, so either the battery was flat, or it had been irretrievably damaged in the river. He filed the information away in his "to be considered later" drawer in his mind palace and returned the phone to the box.

The only other things in the box were Mary's keys and purse, which he rifled through and found nothing of interest. Disappointed, he dropped it all back into the box and returned the lid to its partially-open condition.

With Gracie on one hip, he reached up to the top shelf and found John's small gun safe, apparently containing his gun based on the weight. That he pushed to the side, and when he did, he discovered a small metal box, yellow and rectangular, tucked back behind it. He remembered that box from when he and Molly had packed up John's flat, remembered wondering what was inside it, and now here it was. It was obviously Mary's, since the worn edges belied its age, and he didn't remember John ever owning it previously. He wondered if John even knew it was here, given that the shelf would have been above his eye level, although not above Sherlock's.

Carefully he pulled the box down from the shelf and hefted it in his hand. It was heavy enough that he could tell something was inside. A small combination lock held it closed, just three dials, three numbers. It would be easy enough to crack, but should he?

He sat down on the floor, Gracie on his lap, the box on the ground in front of him. This box might contain evidence, he argued with himself. It was just property. Property could never be more important than the truth. He picked up the box and scrutinized the lock, while possible combinations appeared unbidden in his mind. His fingers automatically started turning the dials. When he realized what he was doing, he felt a flash of guilt. It wasn't right to violate John's privacy, but this wasn't John's box, he reminded himself. It was Mary's, and Mary was dead, so she couldn't expect privacy anymore.

The final tumbler clicked into place and the box popped open, startling him a bit. He hadn't expected it to be so easy. Chewing on the inside of his lip, he carefully lifted the lid and saw a stack of photographs, obviously old and faded, corners soft from years of handling.

The first, black and white, well-worn around the edges, showed a young couple: a man in a striped suit and a woman in a dark colored frock, with a bright smile like Mary's. Her parents, perhaps? The woman held a blanket-wrapped baby in her arms, and clinging to her leg was a little boy, with short hair that showed up almost white. On the back of the photo, "1974" was written in faded pencil.

He flipped to the next photo, which depicted two children: a boy seated, and a girl standing with her arm around the boy's neck, just as Gracie's arm was wound around Sherlock's neck at that very moment. The girl's chubby thighs peeking out from under the hem of her short frock were also perfect mirrors of Gracie's little legs currently folded across Sherlock's lap. The toddler in the photo had to be Mary, and the boy, whose eyes and mouth shared the same shape, must be her brother. A brother that Sherlock didn't even know she had.

He turned over the photo and found written on the back, in light pencil "Niki och Abbi 1977." Niki? Short for Nikolas, perhaps? and Abbi—could be a nickname for Abigail, or a stand-alone name in some Scandinavian languages (suggested by "och", which he knew could be either Swedish or Danish).

Sherlock lifted up the rest of the photos, which depicted various unlabeled elderly people with wobbly jowls and unsmiling mouths, and checked underneath, but discovered only the bottom of the box, which seemed unlikely to him. Why would she go to the trouble of a locked box only for a few photographs?

He picked up the box and looked underneath, holding it up to protect it from Gracie's reaching hand, but found nothing. Next he took the photographs out and laid them on the floor, out of Gracie's reach, and felt around on the bottom of the box. It seemed the box should be deeper. . .

Gingerly he pressed on the bottom of the box, first on one side, and then the other, then in the corners, where he felt a bit of give. With a slightly firmer pressure, the bottom of the box suddenly popped up.

With eyebrows furrowed, he pried the bottom of the box out and looked into the secret compartment underneath. A tiny, A8-size notebook, with a worn leather cover that snapped shut, lay in the bottom. When he pulled it out, he found a thumb drive tucked beneath it, with the letters AGRA written on the side.

For a moment, he stared at it, scarcely daring to breathe. This thumb drive was a twin of the one that Mary had given to John, that he had destroyed without looking at. Of course there was a duplicate. Someone as careful as Mary would never have all of her eggs in one basket, so to speak. This thumb drive likely held the answer to the mystery that had been plaguing him for weeks, the information he was missing on the cards in his desk drawer.

Gracie's squawk as she tried to squirm off his lap pulled him out of his moment of shock. "No, no, love," he said firmly, shifting her to his other knee. Impulsively he pulled the thumb drive from its hiding place and stuffed it into the pocket of his dressing gown, and, after a slight hesitation, took the notebook as well. Then he quickly reassembled the hidden compartment, gathered up the photos, and arranged them in the box, which he clicked shut and returned to the top shelf of the closet.

The possibility of finding answers had chased all of his previous reservations from his mind. He had to see what was on that thumb drive. With that the only thought in his mind, it was a matter of mere moments before he was seated at his desk, with Gracie on his lap gumming a biter biscuit, and the drive plugged into his computer.

Almost immediately a prompt popped up on the screen.

Enter Password


Sherlock's fingers hovered over the keyboard. What was important to Mary? After only a slight hesitation, he typed in "Gracie" and hit enter.

The screen lit up red and the words INCORRECT PASSWORD. SIX TRIES REMAINING appeared. Shit.

Narrowing his eyes, he thought back to the inscription on the back of the photo. Abbi could very well be Mary's real name, given that she had said that AGRA were her initials. With slightly more trepidation, he typed in "Abbi".

Again the screen lit up red and the prompt appeared. INCORRECT PASSWORD. FIVE TRIES REMAINING

Oh, come now, Mary, help me out here, he thought. Don't you want me to know what happened? Well, obviously not, or she wouldn't have hidden the information so thoroughly.

Giving up for the moment on the thumb drive, he lay back on the bed with Gracie sitting on his stomach, and opened the notebook. The first page was blank, but on the second page he found a column of numbers in a cramped, squared-off hand, starting with 012703 and continuing in that vein to the bottom. A second column held sets of letters: AGA, NRA, SPG, DMR, repeated in random order. A third held strings of letters and symbols that were obviously some sort of code that he doubted he could break without a key.

Sherlock squinted at the first column. What could they mean? Some sort of code. . . Suddenly, he heard the sound of the door opening downstairs. Shit! John was home, and he hadn't gone back to make sure he had covered his tracks in the bedroom. Had he closed the closet door? He couldn't remember.

He quickly ejected the thumb drive and dropped it into his desk drawer, along with the little notebook. Then he closed his computer and hurried downstairs to meet John at the front door, with Gracie bouncing in his arms.

"Ah, hello, John," Sherlock said carefully, not sure what sort of response to expect, but John gave him a warm smile.

"Hello, Sherlock. Here, I'll take her," John said, reaching for Gracie, who eagerly came to him, grabbed the sides of his head with gummy fingers, and planted a wet, open-mouthed kiss on his cheek. "Yes, ta for that, love. We'll have to work on your kissing technique."

Sherlock trailed anxiously after John into the sitting room, while John cooed and babbled to the baby. That was. . . good, right? He seemed sober, no lingering smell of alcohol. And he had obviously come home straightaway after work, no stops at the pub along the way.

When he reached the middle of the sitting room, John stopped and turned around to face Sherlock, who halted in his tracks and tried to arrange his face into a neutral expression. Did he know already that Sherlock had been snooping in his bedroom? What had given it away?

"Sherlock, I need to apologize to you."

"Apologize? Oh, erm. . ."

"Yes. I had no reason to be cross with you this morning. I know you were trying to help."

"Well, I suppose. . ." Sherlock trailed off again. How was he meant to respond to an apology? Tell him you forgive him, his mother would always say, after she had forced an apology out of Mycroft for his horrendous behaviour. Sherlock would always refuse, because Mycroft may have been apologizing with his lips, but in his heart he was unrepentant and therefore did not deserve to be forgiven. John, on the other hand. . .How could he not forgive John?

"Right, so. . ." John started awkwardly

"I forgive you, of course," Sherlock interrupted. "Goes without saying."

"Right," John said with a little smile. "All the same, I'm glad to hear it. I need to tell you something."

"What?" That you're an alcoholic? That you've lost your job? That you and Gracie are moving out and taking my heart with you?

"Yesterday was a. . ." John broke off, hugging Gracie a little more tightly. "Yesterday was a hard day for me because it was Mary's birthday," he said all in a rush.

"What?" Sherlock responded immediately. "Why didn't you tell me?!" 27 August—Mary's birthday, of course. . . the previous year they had celebrated with pineapple upside down cake and glasses of milk instead of champagne, and a party hat tied around Mary's almost flat belly for the baby, and John had tipped shots into his and Sherlock's milk while Mary's back was turned, and Mary had danced with both of them and said Sherlock was the better dancer (even though he was half-pissed and stumbling over his own feet) which John had found hilariously funny, and a month later she shot Sherlock in the chest and everything went to hell. . .

"What would you have done, come drinking with me?" John's tone was light, as if he already knew the answer. Didn't he remember that party? Didn't he know how happy Sherlock had been to be accepted by Mary? How content he had been knowing that Mary was on their side, and the baby would make the picture complete. . . Sherlock's chest hurt thinking about it, a dull ache just above his sternum that had never really gone away since the bullet had shattered the bone.

"I might have done," he squeaked out, managing to match John's light tone.

"It's all right," John said with a sigh. "I know you wouldn't—"

"I miss her too," Sherlock blurted out.

John's brow furrowed. He stopped bouncing Gracie on his hip and turned to look Sherlock full in the face for the first time since he had walked in the door. "Oh, God, I'm sorry, Sherlock. I didn't realize. . ."

Sherlock swallowed down the lump that had appeared in his throat. Don't fall apart, he warned himself sternly. John needs you to be strong. "I mean, of course I miss her, as I know you do too."

"Yeah. Yeah I do. A lot." The sudden flash of pain in John's eyes was, frankly, terrifying. Sherlock felt that if he gave into that pain, it would be like jumping off a cliff into a bottomless abyss. Unending. Irreversible. All-consuming. He couldn't let that happen. He had to pull John back from the brink.

Sherlock broke eye contact and cleared his throat. "Right, well. Of course we do. But—but we're fine now, right? Gracie's doing well, and you're happy here. Things are good." Please say yes, John, he silently begged. Please say you're fine and you're happy. Please.

John's mouth twisted (depressor anguli oris again). "Right," he said softly, bouncing Gracie on his hip again. "I—I'm fine now. It won't happen again."

"Good." Yes, much better. The pain in John's eyes had receded now, although depressor anguli oris was still active. Much better indeed.

"And I'm sorry about the drinking. That won't happen again either."

Sherlock was a bit taken aback at that. Should he admit to John how much he knew? Or wait to see what John thought?

"In fact, I'll dump out the bottle of Jameson's I've got stashed in my bureau. No, on second thought, that shit's expensive. But I will keep it in the kitchen. Does that sound all right?"

"Yes, of course." Good, settled. Now to talk to John about Molly's suggestion, that he involve John in the case to take his mind off things. "Look, John, I was thinking. . ."

"Yes?"

"You really could do with a bit of adventure, and I could use your help on this case—"

John was shaking his head firmly now. "I've already told you—"

"No direct involvement, just with some research to start with."

"Research?"

"Yes, on poisons that mimic heart attacks. Molly is still waiting on the toxicology report, but the elder Oliver sister is claiming that she saw the younger sister with rat poison in the kitchen the week before the old man died."

"Well, maybe I could help out with that part. But that's it."

"I understand. Now, I think it would be helpful if you sat in on the next interview, perhaps took a look at the house—"

"Sherlock. . ."

"Right. Of course," he backpedaled hastily. "Just some research, then."

"Right."

It was a start, Sherlock thought. A foot in the door. Maybe by the next week John would be ready to take that next step. It really was necessary to get him out of the house once in a while, somewhere besides that boring surgery with the sniffly noses and obesity-related illnesses. A bit of adventure was what John needed to get his blood pumping again and set him firmly back on the path to recovery.


A/N: As always, I love, love, love reviews. Just drop me a quick note below letting me know what you think. I definitely appreciate it!