Author's note: A reviewer asked how many chapters this story will be. Right now I'm thinking it will be about 24, of which I have finished writing all but the last two. The more reviews I get, the more I will be encouraged to get that ending finished up!

So, even though this chapter is labeled "Acceptance," that doesn't mean the story is over, not by a long shot. Poor Sherlock. Just because John agrees everything is "fine", that doesn't really mean everything is fine!

Saving Grace

By Navigatio

Chapter 10: Acceptance

Enter Password

_Hamish_

INCORRECT PASSWORD. FOUR TRIES REMAINING

The notebook was vexing, to be sure. That row of numbers—what could they mean? After over an hour lying back on his bed searching through his mind palace, Sherlock finally gave up and opened his laptop. Google was for goldfish, but even the best and brightest (himself, of course) was forced to admit defeat every once in a while.

Entering the first number, 012703, led to a variety of hits, all of which Sherlock found unlikely. A part number for a cabinet door handle. A photograph ID# from the Australian War Memorial. An item in the Library of Congress. . . No, no, and no.

He was about to click over to the second page, when one of the hits jumped out at him as being unlike the others: an obituary. Could this have something to do with Mary's former line of work?

He clicked on the link and found himself on an obituary page for the Edwardsville, Illinois Intelligencer, listing death notices for about a dozen elderly people, all of whom appeared to have died of natural causes. He deemed it highly unlikely that any of them had been shot by Mary or any of her associates.

Disappointed, he was about to go back to his search results when the date of the article caught his eye: Monday, January 27, 2003, written just like that. Oh! Could the numbers be dates, but written with the month first like the Americans do? And if so, were they a list of hits that Mary and her team had carried out?

He returned to Google and in the search box entered "27 January 2003 assassination". This time the first hit was for a bombing in Mumbai that killed a controversial ambassador from Sweden. Now that sounded much more likely.

He made a note on a card and moved on to the next number, 021203, which generated a number of hits for the death of the son of the president of Syria, Basil Al-Assad, in a car crash, although none of the articles claimed it was anything more than a tragic accident. The next few numbers also linked to untimely deaths of political figures.

Sherlock closed the laptop and flipped through the little notebook. Eighteen pages were filled (the last date evidently being 5 April 2009), twelve lines per page. If each were an assassination, that meant at least 216 murders were listed on those pages. If the first column were dates, did the second column, with sets of three letters, refer to the assassin? One of the sets of letters was AGA, which was similar to the initials Mary had written on the flash drive. So were all of the lines listing AGA her kills? Scanning the pages, he discovered that over half of the entries were labeled AGA. The rest were mostly SPG or DMR, with a few NRA sprinkled here and there.

(30 August)

Two days later, Sherlock was sitting on the floor with Gracie, totally absorbed in watching her crawl to collect snacks positioned about the room, when John said out of the blue, "Digitalis?"

"Sorry?" Sherlock said without looking up. He gave Gracie's bum a nudge to steady her as she stretched for a bit of biscuit that was just out of her reach.

"Digitalis," John repeated. "Heart medication. The father was already taking it for his heart condition. It's possible he overdosed."

Sherlock scooped up Gracie, who wailed until he grabbed the snack as well, and joined John at the desk, craning over his shoulder at the screen of his laptop. He scanned the list of symptoms: vomiting, diarrhea, edema. . .yes, those all matched.

"What do you think?"

"Why, yes, I think that's likely. Good show, John."

John positively beamed under the praise, which pleased Sherlock no end. He had known John would be useful, and the best part was that John seemed pretty chuffed about it as well.

"I'll discuss it with Molly in the morning, but the symptoms match what Lestrade reported, and what I observed at the autopsy last week."

"Excellent. I'll email you this article, and then I need to go to the shops."

"Good. Buy more milk. We're out again." With an irrepressible grin, Sherlock returned to his fascinating task of exercising Gracie. Possibly he could design an experiment to determine the effectiveness of his techniques. . .

"Already?"

"Mm. And jam too. And bread, I think. Beans. Maybe tea. . ." But what could he use for a control? Perhaps periods of treatment and periods of rest?

"You're joking. I just bought jam." John had gone to the kitchen now and was rifling through the fridge, but Sherlock hardly paid him any mind. His thoughts had gone back to the spinster Oliver sisters—if the father had died of an overdose of his heart medication, which one had done it? There seemed to be reasonable doubt in both directions. Both had access to his medications, both had spent time with him alone, both stood to gain from his death. . . OH! Could they BOTH have been in on it? They had both claimed they had been fighting, but Sherlock had his doubts.

"Sherlock!" John's sharp voice pulled him out of his thoughts.

"Sorry?"

"I've been asking you if I can use your debit card at the shops?"

"Of course you can. What's wrong with yours?"

"Declined. I just remembered that's why we're out of jam. I was going to buy some yesterday but I didn't have enough money in my account."

That caught Sherlock's attention. "Why haven't you got money in your account?"

John shrugged. "If you must know, I've had to dip into my savings a bit from missing paychecks when I wasn't working. I thought there was more in the account, but life is expensive when you have kids."

"You only have the one child," Sherlock corrected with a frown. John's lips twisted as he very pointedly looked Sherlock up and down until he caught the meaning. "Oh. Well, of course I'll pay my part."

"I know you will. Now where's your debit card?"

"Wallet in the drawer of my desk," Sherlock said, returning his attention to Gracie, who had wormed her way off his lap and was searching the floor for more snack. John was halfway to the stairs before Sherlock suddenly remembered why John shouldn't search his desk drawer. "I'll get it," he said quickly, thrusting Gracie into John's arms on his way past. He didn't look back, but he knew John must be curious as to why he had changed his mind.

After John had gone off to the shops, debit card and PIN code in hand, Sherlock stood in the middle of the sitting room and contemplated the problem of John's bank account. He knew the salary John was earning at the surgery, and he could make a rough estimate of their living expenses based on the items he had seen John bring home from the shops. Sherlock was taking care of the rent. Mycroft had paid for the funeral. Even counting the extra expense for alcohol, John should have had plenty in his account to cover the cost of groceries, especially if he had been dipping into his savings. It didn't make sense for him to not have the funds. Where had the money gone? Was John buying things and hiding them from Sherlock? Not likely, since Sherlock had thoroughly searched his room just two days prior and hadn't found any expensive items hidden away.

Sitting at the desk with Gracie on his lap, he opened John's laptop and stared at the home screen. "It's necessary," he reminded Gracie, who had started to squirm on his knee. He bounced her a bit until she giggled. "Necessary evil, remember? And it's not like he's never done it to me."

Gracie grabbed for the keyboard with chubby, grimy fingers (need to have Mrs Hudson do the hoovering, he thought), so Sherlock pushed it out of her reach and opened the web browser. It was only a matter of two tries before he was into John's bank account. He thought perhaps he should encourage John to change his passwords, but then John would know he had been snooping, so best not.

Still jostling Gracie gently on his knee, Sherlock scrolled through John's bank statement, first the savings account which currently stood at a balance of under ten pounds (surprising, since John had said he had enough in savings to cover Mary's funeral had Mycroft not paid for it); next he looked through the checking account, noting recent deposits of paychecks on a regular basis, and withdrawals at Tesco and Sainsbury, all quite ordinary. There was the occasional small withdrawal from the savings account to cover when the checking account ran low, but not enough to have depleted what should have been a sizable chunk of money.

He scrolled back further, to July, and suddenly spotted a withdrawal of L200, dated 13 July, Sunday, from an ATM at 85 Kings Road. He could think of no reason that John would have been on King's Road on a Sunday at 3 pm. Perhaps the withdrawal had been fraudulent? But wouldn't John have missed the money? Perhaps not if he hadn't checked the balance on the account regularly.

Gracie's hands were reaching for the keyboard again, so he grabbed them and bounced her on his knee, to her delight. 13 July—that date sounded familiar. . . Oh, it was the date that Mary had met with Corporal Wood at Kensington Gardens! Had she been paying him off? That location was somewhat in the vicinity of Kensington Gardens, but there were closer ATMs, so why would she choose that one?

Scrolling back to the previous week, he found another withdrawal for L200 on 10 July at 9:30 am, from an ATM on Markham Street. That would have been before Mary had met with Wood, but perhaps she had been withdrawing money in preparation for paying him off?

Sherlock sat back in his chair and narrowed his eyes at the door to John's bedroom. Mary's phone still sat in the box in the closet. Her phone that may have been used to set up meetings via text. Her phone that was waterlogged, but still may contain some recoverable data. He could remove the card, recover the data, and return it to the box before John even missed it.

Right. Good plan, so why did he hesitate? Why should he feel guilty for taking what was a reasonable course of action? If Wood had been blackmailing Mary, he needed to know, in case he decided to come after John as well.

Pushing aside his doubts, he tucked Gracie in against his hip, squared his shoulders, and went into John's room to fetch the phone, which he found in the box just as he had expected. A bit of dried greenish slime clung to the cover, and the charging port was corroded, but the card slot seemed intact and the card itself had no obvious damage.

He went back to the sitting room and inserted the card into the reader on his laptop. "Error: Unreadable Disk" the screen proclaimed. Nothing he tried changed that, so after a few minutes he gave up. Maybe an expert could recover the data. He knew just the person to try.

Mrs Hudson wasn't home, so he left John a note and took Gracie with him, bouncing her on his lap in the cab. John kept harping at him to take the nappy bag, but this was so much easier. Nothing extra to lug around—everything she needed could be tucked into pockets: Spare nappy and burp cloth in inside pocket of his coat, along with a bottle. Dummy in the pocket of his jacket; keys, phone, and wallet in trouser pockets; pink bunny with squeaker (that John inexplicably called "Harvey") attached to Gracie with a short length of ribbon. He got along just fine without a nappy bag, thankyouverymuch.

It wasn't a long ride to the "home" (if it could be called that) of his expert, a young woman barely out of her teens, called "Tweaker". After Sherlock had been introduced to her talents, the previous year, by one of his Homeless Network, he had connected her with a training program that could help her hone her skills and find gainful employment. In the past several months, she had certainly gained valuable expertise in computer science and coding, although it appeared she used her skills mainly for hacking and had yet to stay at any job longer than a week or two before they turned her out on her ear, typically for use of profanity with her boss, or in one case rewiring the entire mainframe for use in a multi-player version of a game called "Binding of Isaac," which was too morbid even for Sherlock's tastes.

He had the cabbie stop a half-block away from Tweaker's building and made a quick stop at a sketchy-looking food truck. He doubted the "establishment" could pass inspection, but it hardly mattered, as he wouldn't be eating what he bought there, and the intended recipient wasn't picky.

The stairs down to Tweaker's basement flat were dark, and slippery with a brownish slime that Sherlock stepped carefully around, mindful of falling with Gracie in his arms. The baby didn't seem the slightest bit bothered by the dank smell, or the gloom, or the exposed wiring snaking down the walls toward the doorway to the flat. As he reached for the doorknob, the door opened and a man slipped through: thin, pockmarked, with unkempt greasy hair, wearing a stained gray hoodie and threadbare jeans.

"Mouse," Sherlock greeted him with a nod, which the man returned jerkily.

"Oy, Holmes."

"Tweaker in?"

"Yeah, just through there."

Mouse squeezed past them on the steps, flipped up his hood, and headed off down the street, while Sherlock pushed the door open and stepped into Tweaker's domain. A wrap-around desk filled two of the walls, with monitors and CPUs of various sizes and shapes sitting on every surface. Sagging shelves above the desks and along the other walls held electronic devices of all types, most of which Sherlock had no idea of the use for.

Tweaker herself, tiny, dwarfed by the wall of electronic junk surrounding her, sat with her back to him in a broken rolling chair, tapping away at an ergonomic keyboard on her lap. She hit a key and the screen in front of her showed a gory slo-mo of a head exploding.

"Oy, Shezzer," she greeted him with a quick glance that set her blond ponytail swinging. "Who's this little love then?"

Gracie cooed and bounced in his arms at the greeting, but Sherlock pulled her in protectively. "This is. . . my niece, Gracie."

"Aww. . . what a little dolly!" Tweaker's attention returned to the game, where she quickly dispatched what looked like a zombie into chunks of bloodied flesh. Sherlock noticed Gracie's wide eyes were glued to the screen, and he suddenly realized that perhaps this wasn't the best setting for a baby. He quickly turned her so she couldn't see the screen, but she still craned around trying to look anyway.

"Yes, well. I've brought you food." Keeping his body positioned between Gracie and the screen. he held out the bag with the takeaway kebab he had picked up on the way, and she snagged it out of his hand without turning. Another zombie head exploded, splattering the screen with simulated gore.

"You said you wanted me to hack a phone?"

"If you. . . have the time."

In response, Tweaker balanced the bag of takeaway on her knees and reached out with a tattooed arm, snapping her fingers for him to hand over the phone. As soon as he had passed it over, she hit a button to pause the game (mid-head explosion) and extracted the phone card one-handed whilst opening the bag with the other.

After stuffing a wooden forkful of meat into her mouth, she scooched her broken chair to another section of the wrap-around desk and inserted the card into a small card reader attached to a different computer. A few taps later various messages started flashing onto the screen, too quickly for Sherlock to decipher.

Only two minutes had passed (and most of the kebab had disappeared into her mouth) before she ejected the card and held it out to Sherlock between stained, well-chewed fingernails. "Sorry, Shezzer, can't do it."

"You can't restore the information? Too much water damage, then?"

"Nuffin' to restore. The card was wiped."

Sherlock blinked. "Wiped?" Why would the card to Mary's phone be wiped? Was this proof that the car crash really wasn't an accident after all?

"Yeah. Thoroughly. Whoever did that knew what they were doing."

"I see."

"Sorry, mate," Tweaker said breezily, petting Gracie on the head. Gracie caught her finger and pulled it toward her mouth, but Sherlock backed up a step to prevent it. "Can I still have the twenty quid?"

"Of course," Sherlock answered, distracted. He reached into his pockets and came up with a dummy, which he handed to Gracie, then a bottle, then a nappy. Tweaker folded her arms and watched him with an amused smile on her face while he shifted Gracie to the other arm and felt around in his trouser pockets until he finally came up with his wallet. He extracted a 20 pound note and handed it to Tweaker, who folded it neatly and slid it into the pocket of her skin-tight jeans.

"Always a pleasure, Shezzer," she said, already turning back to her game, so he hefted Gracie to his hip, with a mental note to disinfect her when they got home, and left.

There were no cabs out front of the building, so he was forced to walk, with Gracie bouncing on his hip, down the rubbish-strewn pavement, looking sharp to avoid puddles from the recent rain. Gray-brown mud splashed onto his trousers when he misjudged and put a foot into the water. With a hand up to shelter his eyes from the wind, he kept scanning the area carefully. He wasn't afraid for himself. He knew he could handle whatever came, but with Gracie in his arms, he felt keenly vulnerable.

Half a block on he spotted a man walking his direction, still about a hundred meters ahead, and for a brief moment he thought it was John; although he couldn't make out the face, the figure had a similar build, the same sandy hair. His heart gave a lurch. If John was there, it could only mean that he knew what Sherlock was up to and had come to confront him about it.

While Sherlock dithered on the pavement, unsure of whether to duck into an alleyway to hide, or to keep walking because John must have already spotted him, the figure turned and entered a shop, leaving Sherlock wondering if it truly had been John or not. The next second a cab appeared and he waved it down with a palpable sense of relief.

In the cab his phone buzzed in his pocket. That might be John texting, he thought, but then it kept buzzing. Someone was calling him; possibly Mycroft, as he was the only one who seemed unable to get the hint that Sherlock vastly preferred texts.

By the time he had shifted Gracie around enough to extract the phone, it had rung three times. He glanced at the screen. Unknown number, perhaps a new client? It was worth a gamble.

"Sherlock Holmes," he said briskly into the receiver, gently pushing away Gracie's curious, slobbery fingers.

"Mister 'olmes, it's Corporal Woods. Quill."

"Ah, Corporal. I've been meaning to contact you."

"'Bout what?"

"You failed to mention that you were blackmailing the woman who met you."

"What? I never did! I didn't want to hand over those photos, Mr 'olmes. That man threatened me." Wood's voice sounded truly panicked. "I'm calling you because someone showed up at my son's school."

"Man or woman? Description?" Sherlock demanded instantly.

"Woman. The office staff said she was white. Skinny. Dressed all up fancy. Lots of makeup. Left my kid a present."

"What was it?"

"A doctor's kit. He's all excited, said it was a birfday present. But I'm scared outta my wits, Mr 'olmes."

"Have you got a firearm?"

There was a brief pause on the line, then Wood said hesitantly, "that's illegal."

"I'll take that as a yes. I'll arrange for a security team to check in with you, Corporal. Please don't shoot them."

He rang off, then scrolled through his list of contacts. Mycroft's security team would be efficient, and brutal, but then he would have to suffer through a lot of questions. And lately Mycroft's team seemed determined to cause more harm than good (perhaps that wasn't fair—if Sherlock were Mycroft's bodyguard, he might be tempted to knock him down under the guise of "saving him" too).

His homeless network, on the other hand, was less efficient, not to mention less clean, but they didn't ask questions. And best of all, they worked for egg mayonnaise sandwiches.

When Sherlock got home, John hadn't arrived back from the shops yet, which was good. It gave Sherlock time to return the phone to the box, after which he went up to his room, Gracie in tow, to add information to his cards.

After changing from his muddy trousers to pyjama bottoms and dressing gown, he laid out all of the cards he had done so far on his unmade bed. Then he wrote on a blank card "Phone wiped." He didn't know where to put that card in that array, so he laid it off to the side.

Taking another blank card, he wrote, "Mary withdrew L600," and the date and place each withdrawal had been made. After a moment's hesitation, he added "Not a payoff for QW". Despite the similar timing, he was convinced that Wood's protest had been genuine and he had not been blackmailing Mary.

He held the card in his hand and looked over the rest of the array on his bed. The card noting the coded message from "Star" caught his eye. Could Mary have been withdrawing money for whomever that was? He made a space and set down the new card next to that one. The timing of the first withdrawal was the day after Mary had presumably met up with Star. If "Star" had wanted out, he or she might have needed money, and Mary may have been helping out.

Before he could follow that reasoning any further, he realized that Gracie, who had been sitting near the headboard playing with Harvey, had grabbed the nearest card and was gumming it with a contented hum.

"Gracie, let me have that, you naughty thing," he chided gently. He dug around in his pockets and finally came up with her dummy, which he handed to her in exchange for the card. Her drool had soaked through about half the card, rendering the writing smudged and barely legible. Hoisting Gracie up onto his lap, he took a new card and started copying out the information, which was for the mystery man who had visited Quill Wood.

When he was finished, he narrowed his eyes and contemplated what he had just written.

Mystery Man

Age: Mid-forties

5'8", more than 10 stone

Short blond hair, turning gray

Biggish nose

Accent

Visited QW to obtain photo

Threatened QW's son?

Leaving aside the accent, that almost could have been a description of John. The man he had seen today in the street by Tweaker's den—Sherlock hadn't been able to see his face. Could it have been this mystery man and not John as he had thought?

Another thought suddenly followed: if the mystery man had been following him, then Tweaker, and possibly Mouse as well, would be in danger, especially if the man thought they had information that would be useful to him.

He searched his pockets, extracting nappies, tiny bodysuit, rolled socks, and bottle, before he finally found his phone, and dashed off a text to Tweaker.

Checking in. Your status?

Then he sent one to Mouse as well, just to be sure. Please check on Tweaker and report.

He sat and stared at the phone for a moment, waiting for a reply that didn't come, until he heard the sound of the door open downstairs, then John's heavy tread. Loaded down with the shopping, no doubt. Experience had told him John would appreciate an offer of help in such circumstances. And perhaps whilst he was helping, he could deduce why John had taken so long at his task. Tesco was just around the corner, after all, and Sainsbury was only a block further on. It seemed odd that the shopping would have taken so long, unless John had made an unscheduled stop along the way.

He quickly gathered up the cards and started to tuck them back into the desk drawer, but then thought better of it and stuffed them in the compartment in the back of his bedside table instead, next to the photo, thumb drive and notebook. Swooping Gracie up from the bed (which caused her to giggle and screech in delight), he hurried down the stairs in time to meet John at the top step. John was carrying four—no, five—carrier bags filled with food, including at least a half-dozen items Sherlock had never seen him bring home before.

"Ah, John. How was the shopping?" he asked, relieving John of two carrier bags and leading the way to the kitchen, where he deposited them on the counter. He turned and gave John a quick once over as he entered the kitchen, brief but thorough enough to spot a few clues:

—Redness around John's eyes—hadn't been there before he left for shopping. Wind exposure the most likely explanation, understandable since he had walked at least two blocks.

—His trousers were loose and were being held up by a belt that was buckled as tightly as it would go, which hadn't been the case the previous month. There was a crease in the belt indicating that it had previously been buckled on a looser notch. Sherlock had observed that John had been eating more regularly lately, but apparently was still losing weight.

—Dried gray-brown mud on his shoes and flecks of mud around the hems of his trouser legs. Curious—the mud in the vicinity of Baker Street was more of a chocolate brown color, while this mud definitely had a grayish caste. In fact, it matched the color of the mud Sherlock had found on his own trousers after his outing today.

When he scanned back up, he noticed that John had folded his arms, and then continuing up to John's face, he found it holding an odd sort of expression, with his lips twisted slightly, eyebrows raised.

"Ah. Erm. . ." Sherlock broke off his scrutiny, because it dawned on him that the expression meant he had been caught. John hated to be deduced. He cast around the kitchen for something to say, and his gaze fell on one of the carrier bags that had fallen open on the counter. "I see you've bought cumin."

Another second of tension, and then John's arms relaxed, lips curved up into a slight smile. "Yeah, thought I'd try a new recipe tonight."

"Oh?" That should be interesting. John only cooked complicated meals when he was in a good mood, which meant that lately their suppers consisted mainly of beans on toast or soups from a tin. It was always entertaining to watch John cook, mainly because his technique was a curious mix of overconfidence and lack of expertise, which led to him picking complicated recipes with a long list of ingredients, only to come out with a final product that in no way resembled the photo on the website (case in point: John's risotto, which had the consistency of rice soup). Usually the flavor was fine, so Sherlock counted himself lucky to be able to eat the mistakes.

"Mm. Cod masala salad. I remember you like cod, right?"

"Sounds delicious. I'll be happy to watch Gracie while you do that." Sherlock settled into one of the kitchen chairs with Gracie standing on his lap, her hands wrapped around his fingers to steady herself.

John smirked. "Yeah, that's what I thought. Well, you can watch if you like. Just don't laugh when I bodge it up as usual."

"We'll eat whatever you cook, won't we, Gracie?" He bounced Gracie on his knee, which caused her to giggle in delight.

"I'll hold you to that," John said, turning to the task of putting the shopping away. A neat stack of ingredients appeared on the counter next to the stove. Sherlock continued to bounce Gracie while he watched John work. It reminded him sharply of sitting at John and Mary's kitchen table holding Gracie, watching the two of them work together like an intricate dance in the small space. Mary's laughter and gentle teasing at John's mistakes. John's rueful grin at yet another casserole with odd lumps and mistimed side dishes. It was such a small thing, so domestic and ordinary, and yet, now that it was gone, how he missed it.

"What were you doing upstairs?" John asked suddenly.

"Hmm?" Sherlock, attention focused on watching John attempting to cut up a chili without actually touching it (and remembering a time when Mary had rubbed her eye with chili oil on her fingers and had to have it washed out under the faucet, coming up dripping like a drowned cat), was caught off-guard by the question.

"Just now, when I came home. Were you researching more about Digitalis?"

"Oh, yes, Digitalis. I think you're on to something there. I was just about to text Lestrade and suggest he look into it. In fact. . ." He wrapped one arm around Gracie's waist while searching around in the pocket of his dressing gown for his phone. "I'll text him now."

"Good." John, having given up on chopping the chili into regular sized pieces, started pulling out pots and pans with quick, efficient movements.

Just as Sherlock was about to text Lestrade, his phone buzzed in his hand.

Incoming text from Mouse.

Tweakers fine. Why?

Well, that was a relief. He quickly texted back: Have someone stay with her please. Text me if you see anyone lurking about.

He heard John's voice, and tuned back into the conversation in time to hear him say, "Tell him to have Molly check for hyperkalemia." John frowned at a skillet that was obviously too small, replaced it in the drawer, and pulled out another larger one.

"Yes, good," Sherlock said as he sent the text off to Lestrade. "You're handy to have around."

John didn't respond to that, but Sherlock glimpsed the side of his face and could see that he was grinning while he worked. And that was VERY good.

(3 Sept)

Enter Password

_John_

INCORRECT PASSWORD. THREE TRIES REMAINING

Next was the ancient housekeeper's turn for an interview. If the sisters were in their sixties, this woman must have been pushing ninety. Sherlock observed her from his position in the corner of the interview room: wispy white hair under a black pillbox hat, plain black frock, sensible shoes. Despite her wrinkled face, her eyes were shrewd, dark brown buttons. She spoke with a slight accent. Corsican? No, Sicilian, Sherlock decided.

"I had been in the employ of Mr Oliver for seven months," she said crisply in response to a question from Donovan.

"How well did you know his daughters?" Donovan asked, scribbling an illegible notation on her pad.

"Frankie and Joey? Well enough." Her mouth turned down at the corners when she said that. So she didn't like them. Interesting.

"What jobs did you do for Mr Oliver?" Lestrade asked. No! Wrong question!

"What is your impression of the sisters?" Sherlock interrupted before she could answer Lestrade's question. Lestrade's eyes flicked to him and he gave a little huff, but didn't correct him, so it was fine. Now to see if the old woman would tell the truth.

The housekeeper fixed those bright eyes on him for a moment, as if she were deducing him as well, then she said evenly "I don't like them much." Ah, a truthful answer. Excellent!

"Just one? Or both of them?"

"They are so much alike that it is hardly any use talking about one without the other. Thick as thieves, those two. Always whispering to each other."

Interesting. This woman might be useful. "Do you think them foolish?"

"I should say not," the housekeeper stated emphatically, and turned back to Donovan as if dismissing him, although he had his next question on the tip of his tongue.

Donovan spoke first before he could get it out. "Where were you employed before you came to work for Mr Oliver?"

"That is a ridiculous question," Sherlock snapped.

"Inspector—" Donovan started, but Sherlock interrupted her.

"You found the body, did you not?" Sherlock said to the housekeeper. A flash of something passed over her face. Interesting. File that away for later. "Did you notice anything different about the bedroom?"

"I was rather distracted."

"Specifically his medication," Sherlock pressed her.

"I don't know."

"Where did he keep his Digitalis?"

"Well, on his side of the bed, but I don't remember—"

"And was it there when you found his corpse?"

"She's already told you!" Donovan exclaimed. Sherlock held out his palm.

"Shut up, Donovan!" Something the woman had said had triggered an idea, but now that idiot Donovan had interrupted his train of thought. What was it?

"Inspector!" Donovan cried. And then he felt Lestrade's hand on his arm, pulling him back.

"You've got to back off Donovan a bit," Lestrade hissed in his ear. "Yeah? Like we talked about."

"Yes, yes," Sherlock said impatiently. He realized now why the maid's words had sounded off. If Lestrade would just let go of him. . .

"Watch yourself," Lestrade warned with a final glare. Sherlock shook off his hand and rounded on the woman.

"His SIDE of the bed?" he questioned, eyebrows raised.

"His bed," the housekeeper corrected herself smoothly, but she was lying, obviously.

"When was the last—" Donovan started to ask, but Sherlock interrupted her again.

"That's not what you said. If you were sleeping with your employer—" He wrinkled his nose in distaste. "—although dear God don't ask me how or why—"

"Inspector!" "Sherlock!" Donovan and Lestrade cried simultaneously. Oops, obviously not good.