A/N: Oh my God, I've been away so long fanfiction dot net has changed their entire format. I am so sorry. My life in the last few months has been a marching procession of too many overlapping events. I finished a few other projects, including my Bachelor's degree, then accidentally donated 20,000 words of Potterlock to a charity auction for Gatiss' birthday, and then once I'd finished that gargantuan project it took a while to get my brain back into 1603 in between all of the other things, and when I got here I had to fiddle around considerably with where this chapter ended and the next began. I'm here now. I'll try to stick around this time.

I confess that I did not consult my usual historical happy-maker, Silmanumenel, with this chapter - I really wanted to just get it up because it's been so long. If anyone spots anything please let me know.

-for you!

"Now, why don't you tell me who you really are, Captain Crocker."

John felt shock radiate from his chest to his extremities as he looked back at the sailor, who sat frozen in place, breathing slowly.

Then he smiled. "I heard you were good, Mister Holmes," he said, leaning back in his chair with a far more comfortable air.

Sherlock rolled his eyes, seemingly unsurprised by this change in manner. "Don't insult me. I dismissed the idea of the burglary being staged by Lady Brackenstall's lover the day I began investigating the case. Tell me who you are."

Crocker seemed to hesitate, but what he said after a moment's pause was, "I can't. I'm sorry." The detective let out an impatient breath, which made the sailor sit up with a slightly anguished look. "Mary is missing, Mister Holmes," he said urgently. "And she didn't go willingly. I needed to make sure you were looking for her, to make sure you were treating it as a kidnapping and not assuming she'd run off with a lover."

"Have you spent time in Scotland, Mister Crocker?" Sherlock asked critically, clearly ignoring the other man's plea in favour of his own investigation. John raised an eyebrow: there were so many hints of different accents in the man's voice he hadn't even thought to identify any of them. He probably couldn't have picked Scottish out of the mix even if he'd tried. He wondered if Sherlock had spent time there himself amongst all of the other places he'd been.

Crocker blinked, thrown for a moment. "Three years," he answered. "I loaded cargo there before I was made Captain here. That was about a year ago."

Sherlock frowned. "Have you ever heard the name Lady Frances Carfax?"

Even John noticed the tiny flinch that the sailor made at the name, but he covered it almost immediately with a frown, like he was trying to remember. "I don't believe so," he said after a moment of this. Sherlock rolled his eyes.

"If you're only going to lie to us, Captain Crocker, you may as well leave," the detective snapped. "Two women are missing, I don't have time to play guessing games."

Privately, John thought that Sherlock was more irritated by not being able to immediately know who the other man was than by the worry for the missing ladies. It did seem a bit pointless to him that this man – who definitely knew of both women – had come here with a rather transparent cover-story and no apparent reason behind revealing himself to Sherlock. He wished that he had any kind of skill at sketching, so as to capture what the man looked like.

Crocker's shoulders slumped slightly. "I only wanted to impress upon you the urgency of this case," he said solemnly.

Sherlock snorted. "Believe me, Captain, you are neither the first nor the most impressive person to attempt that. I am currently following up on several leads regarding the items that were removed from the Abbey Grange along with Lady Brackenstall. If you leave an address at which you can be contacted, I can ensure the Constabulary keep you updated on any progress made to find her."

The tiniest smile fluttered over Crocker's lips, there for a moment and then gone. Instead he heaved a sigh and levered himself from his chair. "That won't be necessary," he said resignedly. "Thank you for your time, Master Holmes."

The great detective merely raised an eyebrow, ignoring the hand that Crocker held out for him to shake. John cleared his throat awkwardly. "You too," he said, glancing at Sherlock to receive his disapproving frown with one of his own. Sherlock had systematically ignored any contribution that John had had in the investigation - admittedly there hadn't been much, but John couldn't help feel a little insulted by the detective's insistence on using the word I when John was actually in the room."Can you show yourself out?"

The sailor nodded. "Thank you, Master Watson. Good day to you both."

John smiled half-heartedly. Crocker lingered for a further uncomfortable moment, then he patted down his waistcoat and left the room.

Sherlock took a long breath in and let it out just as slowly, until John began to feel dizzy in sympathy.

"Both he and Lady Carfax looked like they were begging me to investigate, but wouldn't give me any information themselves," he mused, throwing himself back from the desk and beginning to pace with no further introduction. "Did you see that little smile when I mentioned the jewellery? It's like they're trying to find out how smart I am."

John stared at him incredulously. "You're saying both women went missing because of you, because someone's trying to test you," he restated, trying to make it sound like that was the most ridiculous idea he had ever heard. "Sherlock, that's ridiculous," he added, just in case he didn't get the message from the tone. From what he'd seen of his friend's ego, it was quite possible Sherlock saw that as a reasonable explanation.

The detective waved a dismissive hand. "Not the whole case, John, of course not," he said irritably. "But anyone with any influence could find out that most of the Constabulary call me when confronted with a difficult case. Maybe that's why Lady Carfax posed as Lady Brackenstall after her disappearance. To try and gauge how intelligent I am, maybe how far I'd go for the case. Hopefully our insistence that we didn't have to tell Lestrade if she was trying to protect someone helped in that regard. And now Crocker, though I doubt that's his real name. I almost think I've seen him somewhere before, but there was no point in coming here except to introduce himself to me and me to him, maybe to let me know that he's a player in whatever game this is."

"I thought two women were missing and there wasn't time to play games," John quipped. Sherlock gave him a glare clearly designed to peel paint. John raised a flippant eyebrow in response; he'd thought that was a valid point, no matter Sherlock's reasons for making it in the first place.

"We don't have time to play games," the detective rebutted. "Certainly not with people who are supposed to be on our side. I doubt the orchestrators of the kidnappings have the same worries about the Ladies." He gave John a stern look, like he should have known that himself.

John sighed. "All right. So what does it mean, then? If Crocker and Lady Carfax are trying to play games with you, does that tell us something about what's happened to them?"

Sherlock slowly lowered himself back into his chair. "It tells us that there are potentially multiple groups of people involved. If Crocker and Carfax were trying to check in on my progress with the Brackenstall case, then they're unlikely to have instigated it, although they most likely know who did. If Lady Brackenstall knew Lady Carfax's secrets - or even if someone suspected that she did - then I don't doubt Lady Carfax would be highly invested in finding her."

"But now Lady Carfax is missing too," John interjected.

The detective frowned. "Maybe she isn't," he speculated. "Maybe she's in hiding, voluntarily - she was certainly free enough to impersonate Lady Brackenstall almost a sevennight after she 'disappeared'."

John shook his head to try and stop it from spinning at the speed with which Sherlock had changed tack. "Why would she be in hiding?" he asked, attempting to slow down his friend's mind - he could almost see thoughts racing each other around the inside of his skull, a slightly dizzy expression in his grey-green eyes.

That earned a lengthy pause from Sherlock, who eventually sighed in frustration. "I don't know," he admitted reluctantly, spitting out the words as though they were foreign to him. "I don't know enough about Carfax - it's almost certainly one of these mysterious secrets. Knowing that is the key to both cases, I believe, when you think about how Carfax went missing first, and then her confidant. I need to speak to someone who knew her. Mycroft seems to have told me everything that he's willing to - that leaves the maid. We'll have to arrange a meeting with her."

"The maid that Carfax dismissed?" John checked. Unsurprisingly, Sherlock replied with a glare that clearly said keep up. He rolled his eyes. "You haven't seen the letter she was sent yet either, have you?"

The detective shook his head silently. "I assume Lestrade has seen it, though - Mycroft had it copied but I wanted to see the original."

John nodded, because some kind of response seemed to be necessary. Sherlock narrowed his eyes at him, considering something. "Would you accompany me? We'll stop at my brother's office to get the maid's address and make sure she still has the letter."

"Of course," John replied, grinning slightly at the fact that his friend still felt he needed to ask if John would go with him to solve crimes. Sherlock smiled, immediately vaulting himself out of his chair and picking up his coat from where it was slung over the pile of clothing on the room's other chair. John shook his head slightly, marvelling at the way Sherlock could go from practically comatose to vibrating with suppressed energy without warning. It reminded him of Will when he'd had an idea for something he was working on.

He brought it up as they swept out of the inn with an abrupt farewell to Angelo. "You and Will have a lot in common," he said idly. Sherlock raised a curious eyebrow at him, still fastening his coat over his sternum. "Have you considered spending time with him outside of the theatre? I think you'd get on really well."

To his surprise, Sherlock slowed down the brisk walk he'd started with and turned to frown at him, a flash of hurt visible in his eyes for a moment before it was whisked away. "Why do you say that?" he asked.

John hesitated, trying to assess where the hurt had been in his remarks. "So many things you do remind me of Will," he said tentatively. "You're both so brilliant at what you do, completely unique in your fields, and you have the same kind of driving energy - I just think that you'd enjoy spending time with him, that's all."

"Oh," the detective said shortly, snapping his head back to front and pushing his hands into the pockets of his coat. "Perhaps. I did notice that Shakespeare's reaction to having an idea is similar to my own. I thought that may be why I appeal to you as an acquaintance."

He said it like it meant nothing, but there was a catch in his deep voice, a kind of silent vulnerability that said the opposite. John frowned. "I don't think so," he negated firmly. "I mean - maybe I'm drawn to talent, and that's a part of it, but I think if I'd met you on Will's terms things would have worked out differently – if I'd met you as an actor first, not a detective. I appreciate the things about you that remind me of him, but really it's the things that are different about you that make me want to be friends with you."

Sherlock paused, the corners of his mouth turning up in a small smile. "Thank you, John," he said softly. John smiled back. The taller man cleared his throat briskly, clearly uncomfortable. "As to being unique in our fields, nothing is unique for long in the theatres. Shakespeare's complex and detailed characterisation of Hamlet was something I've never seen before, but I was given a glimpse of Marlowe's latest last week and he's clearly attempting to emulate it. It's doubtful people will remember that Shakespeare did it first."

John hummed agreement. "You know, there are people out there who firmly believe that Hamlet's entire character springs from the fact that he actually wants to sleep with Gertrude," he started, letting his amusement show in his voice. Sherlock arched a disbelieving eyebrow at him without otherwise acknowledging the statement, continuing his brisk walk down the cobbled street. "It actually explains a fair amount of his behaviour, when you think about it. His completely irrational disgust for her and Claudius' marriage bed is jealousy, and he can't quite bring himself to kill Claudius because he's accomplished what Hamlet couldn't, so there's a part of him that admires him." He smiled to himself. "That's the brilliant thing about Hamlet, I think. There are so many potential motivations, so many different ways you could interpret his actions, or inactions."

Sherlock suddenly stopped dead, turning in the road to face him, his face contracted in irritation. "John," he said, sounding unreasonably frustrated, "characters are not people. Even Hamlet. You can't pick apart their minds like they're real people."

"I know they're not," John replied, slightly taken aback by the detective's reaction to the statement. "I just meant -"

"If Hamlet's motivation really was lust for Gertrude, then Gertrude wouldn't have completely faded from the play after their bedroom scene," Sherlock interrupted violently. "If characters were people and had legitimate motivations, her story would have been more important. We don't get told how Gertrude feels about the Mousetrap or Hamlet and Laertes fighting because it doesn't matter, because Gertrude's usefulness to the play finishes after the bedroom scene." The actor wheeled around and resumed his breakneck pace, his coat flying out behind him like a stylish bat. "The only possible motivation that a character can have is to further the plot of the play, to serve the author's purpose, to drive the action forwards. If you attempt to treat them like people, then you must give every manservant who has a single line in a single scene their entire backstory. The possibilities are endless and dizzying. You simply cannot work like that."

"You tried, didn't you," John guessed, watching the rather personal way in which Sherlock had taken his statement. The detective flapped his hands, but he looked slightly surprised that John had worked him out so quickly. He slowed down slightly, his rage fading.

"I wanted to be a writer when I was younger," he admitted, looking sheepish as though this was a silly thing to want to be. "But the moment I actually started to write a play - life is just so complicated. Every single person I even mentioned needed an entire life, motivations, hopes, desires, secret sorrows. I almost went mad trying to tie everything together."

"That's why a play isn't real life," John rebutted. "It's a play. We suspend our disbelief in the theatre because we have to, to find it entertaining."

Sherlock made an irritated noise. "I know, and I can't work like that," he said.

"You do work like that," John reminded him, amused now.

The detective made his dismissive hand gesture again like this was irrelevant. "When I'm acting it's fine, because I only have to worry about the motivations of one character. I don't know everything about people I only meet once in real life either, only the people who are important to me."

John wondered whether he qualified for that group; Sherlock knew an awful lot about him and his past, but most of that was information he'd either volunteered or his friend had worked out in one fell swoop the very first time they had met. He'd never asked anything about his life, but perhaps that was only because Sherlock Holmes never had to ask anything.

"Mycroft's office is around this corner," Sherlock interrupted his thoughts, nodding towards the bend in the road. John glanced at the buildings around them; he'd been so preoccupied with their argument about Hamlet that he hadn't noticed their complete change in neighbourhood. The street they were walking down was neatly paved, the sewage running down neatly hewn paths from the elaborate buildings on either side. John whistled. He supposed it shouldn't be surprising, given the way Mycroft had dressed and spoken like he was on first-name terms with the Queen.

The building Sherlock eventually turned into was richly furnished in pale stone, edged in intricate windows. John couldn't help but be intimidated by it: every item of clothing he owned would have been underdressed, and he was definitely regretting not having shaved that morning even though Archie the costumer liked to do it himself.

Sherlock led him up a flight of stairs as he gawked at the architecture, eventually emerging into an antechamber where a secretary sat at a desk beside a heavy dark wooden door, his sleeves rolled up to avoid ink blots from where he was painstakingly copying something. John couldn't help noticing that the man was both surprisingly young to be a secretary to someone as important as Mycroft seemed to be and incredibly attractive, with dark hair trained backwards over his head and a light flush across his high cheekbones. Sherlock didn't seem to notice, marching right up to his desk with his usual impersonal stride and drawing a deep breath.

"Sherlock Holmes," the young brunet pre-empted calmly as they approached the desk, flicking his sleeves back down his arms as he lay aside his pen.

Sherlock frowned heavily. "How do you know me?" he asked.

The secretary smiled in a mysterious kind of way that he had clearly practiced. "You're Master Holmes' brother. He mentioned you would be coming. You're after a name and address, which I have here for you."

John couldn't suppress an amused smile at the youth's manner and the way his crisp diction had obviously put Sherlock off his stride. The detective snatched the piece of paper from the outstretched delicate hand with an irritated huff; the brunet smiled politely in response. John cleared his throat. "Sorry about him," he excused. The secretary's dark eyes flickered to him, an amused smile playing across his lips. "I'm John."

"John Watson, Lord Chamberlain's Men," the youth completed.

"Have you seen us play?" John asked, flattered. Sherlock snorted impatiently from beside him.

The brunet's smile widened. "Master Holmes described you to me," he corrected.

John felt his stomach sink slightly and tried not to let his disappointment show on his face. "Ah," he said instead. He paused to allow the man to offer his own name; when he didn't, John rocked uncomfortably on the balls of his feet. "Right. Well. That was all you needed, wasn't it, Sherlock?" he distracted lamely.

Sherlock smirked. "Yes, that was all," he confirmed. "Don't thank Mycroft for me."

He turned on his heel - his coat flaring out around him like a doxy's skirt - and began to stride out of the room. John smiled weakly at the secretary. "Thank you for your help," he said, but the youth had already rolled his sleeves back up and returned to his copying. He sighed and followed his friend back down the stairs instead.

"Nicely handled, Master Watson," the detective said dryly, smirking at John as they left the building.

John flushed angrily. "Shut up," he rebutted. "I was just being polite." Sherlock raised an incredulous eyebrow and John gave in - subtlety was not a skill that the Globe cultivated in its actors. "Shut up," he repeated, grinning. "It was worth a try."

"Mycroft's assistant was worth a try," Sherlock repeated, sounding amused. "You have interesting taste."

"Apparently," John had to agree. I fancy you, after all, his mind added wistfully. "Although I also don't have your aversion to any sentence that could possibly have the word Mycroft in it."

The taller man shrugged nonchalantly. "You just haven't spent enough time with him," he insisted. John grinned: he understood Sherlock's vehement dislike of his brother. His own sister seemed to have the same attitude towards him, most likely because she was older but he had been given far more opportunities. She'd always resented being born female and had seemed to blame John simply because he hadn't been.

He sighed in defeat. "Well, he's not likely to want to spend any more time with me, is he?" he said, closing the matter. "And quite clearly, neither is his assistant." Sherlock smiled again. "Although," John added, mainly to get a reaction from the other man, "if he'd recognised me from the theatre I would have had more luck."

"Oh, yes," the detective snorted. "Your acting skills are irresistable."

John grinned at him. "I gather from past experience that they are, yes," he said.

Sherlock swallowed, looking away; from where he stood, John couldn't tell if the gesture was biting back a scathing retort or admitting his point.

Either way, it kept the detective quiet for the next few streets. John grew bored with the silence rather quickly, instead starting to whistle the song of sexual prosperity from Dream with the vague thought that Sherlock might join in and attempt to learn the tune.

"Stop that," Sherlock snapped instead after the first few lines.

John stopped. "Sorry," he said, allowing the bewilderment to show in his voice as though hinting that his friend's response had been rudely abrupt.

The detective frowned at him. "I'm trying to think, and that sound…" he made an odd sort of clawing gesture, as though trying to rip it from his mind. "It paralyses my brain," he tried to explain.

"I see," John lied. "I'll stop, then." Sherlock twitched one corner of his mouth upwards in acknowledgment and fell back into moody silence.

He waited for a few moments in case the other man began to think aloud; when he didn't, John fell into his own thoughts.

So it seemed Sherlock thought that Carfax - and now this Crocker bloke - were manipulating him, spoon-feeding him the case to judge how intelligent he was. He couldn't help but think that the biggest thing that this told them was the extent of the detective's arrogance, whether deserved or not. On the one hand, the Queen was after Lady Carfax, so she must be someone important. On the other, if she had gone missing of her own accord, why was she playing around with Sherlock instead of telling someone like Mycroft that she was safe?

If you want a crime solved, Sherlock had said, you either have to do it yourself, or hire someone like me. And there are no people like me. Only me.

To be fair to Sherlock, even Mycroft had come to him for assistance with the matter, although it had sounded like the elder Holmes had wanted someone else to do the legwork more than he wanted his younger brother's crime-solving expertise. Maybe he really was simply the only person they could contact to solve their mystery.

"I've been thinking," John admitted finally, pausing to allow the detective to raise the expected incredulous eyebrow without comment. "It seems a bit pointless that Lady Carfax is spending all this time trying to get you to understand her case instead of going straight to Mycroft and his people to tell the Queen that she's safe."

Sherlock hummed, but he didn't sound particularly interested. "Unless she's not safe," he completed ominously, not looking at John.

The maid lived at the top of a shared house near the South Bank. John wrinkled his nose as he avoided someone emptying a chamber-pot from a middle-storey window, grateful that he'd managed to avoid the shared houses himself. Sherlock was still buried in his own mind; John had to fling out a hand to stop him from stepping in a puddle of effluent. The detective gave him a grateful smile before stepping onto the wooden boards that served as pedestrian walkways. "This house," he pointed.

Sherlock knocked easily on the door at the top of the stairs, giving John a reassuring smile as he did so. John wondered why he needed to be reassured. "Miss Devine?" he called as he knocked.

The door opened tentatively, a young woman with flushed cheeks peeking nervously out from behind it. "Yes?" she squeaked, her eyes widening as she took in the state of Sherlock's dress. Her mousy hair was wildly escaping the tight bun she had scraped it into, and she looked as though they had interrupted her in the middle of something physical.

The detective turned his reassuring smile on her; John raised an eyebrow. Perhaps Sherlock had only directed it at him to practise it. "Miss Devine, my name is Sherlock Holmes, and this is my colleague John Watson. We're here investigating the disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax."

"Oh," the maid said, not relaxing. "Yes – come in, of course." She opened the door wide enough for John and Sherlock to step through and then closed it sharply behind her. "Are you with the constabulary?" she asked, gesturing towards the rickety-looking dining table.

Sherlock flicked his coat out behind him as he sat where she was indicating. "I'm a consulting detective," he said, as though this explained anything instead of confusing her further. "I am not associated with Her Majesty's Justices, but on this instance I am assisting Constable Lestrade in his investigations."

Marie Devine nodded vaguely. "Excuse me for a moment, sirs - I presume you wish to see the letter that my Lady sent me?"

The detective nodded sharply. "Thank you," John supplied on his behalf. She left the room quickly and returned clutching a piece of heavy parchment to her chest.

"I thought something might be wrong when my Lady went to Sussex without me," the young woman admitted, sinking into a chair opposite Sherlock. John looked around for a third chair before settling himself standing behind Sherlock's, one hand on the high back of the chair to avoid touching the detective in ways that he might forget about and get carried away. "She never goes - never went anywhere without me. But she said she wanted to be alone, and she promised to write to me, and I was so busy with the wedding -"

"You're getting married, Miss Devine?" Sherlock interrupted, raising an interested eyebrow.

The maid blushed pleasantly. "In June," she said. "I never would have met him without my Lady. She's been so kind to me." Sherlock smiled encouragingly. Devine fell back to toying nervously with the edge of the parchment. "She wrote to me once a week for three weeks, and then her next letter was this one, dismissing me and paying for my wedding. It's not like her at all, and she hadn't given any warning in her last letter, so I reported it."

Sherlock nodded slowly. "May we see the other letters as well, Miss Devine?" he asked, unusually polite. "Did anything in them strike you as strange?"

Devine shook her head with a frown. "No," she completed. "She wrote about the people that she met in Sussex. At the time I didn't think it was strange - Lady Frances made friends easily. She was interested in people."

"At the time?" Sherlock repeated questioningly.

The young maid worried her lower lip between her teeth. "Well, now she's disappeared. I can't help but think the people she was with might have… especially the two that she told me she would leave with. She planned to come back to London with some couple that she met at her inn."

"Can you tell me anything about this couple?" Sherlock asked urgently. John could feel the tension pull the detective's shoulders together as he sat up straighter, as though he could jump up and run to Sussex if it was required of him.

Devine nodded nervously. "I can give you her letters, sir. She said he was a religious man - Slessinger, his name was." Sherlock shook his head minutely. "I don't know anything that isn't in those letters, Master Holmes, and nothing about them seemed out of character to me except her final letter. I think even a complete stranger could see the difference between the two."

Sherlock reached across the small table to pat the woman comfortingly on the back of the hand. "Thank you, Miss Devine," he said softly. "I only have two more questions - would you say that Lady Frances acted any differently before she left? You mentioned that it was unusual for her to go alone."

"It was," the maid nodded, "but it wasn't unheard of. My Lady likes to be a little mysterious from time to time. I always worry, but she had behaved this way before."

John couldn't help but smile; he knew the feeling. Sherlock gave him a quick look, as though predicting his amusement, but didn't say anything. "Thank you," he repeated. "Did Lady Frances have any enemies that you knew of? People who didn't like her, maybe people that she accidentally upset?"

Devine sniffed. "You mean people already in her life who might want to hurt her?" she simplified. John smiled. "I don't think so. She was widowed so young she had to keep people on her side to survive."

Sherlock raised an eyebrow; the maid flushed as though reconsidering the sense of her statement. John hadn't thought of it as a silly thing to say - a young widow was expected to fend for herself, but depending on how young she was when she had been married, often had not developed an understanding of how to do so. Lady Carfax had struck him as a composed and capable woman, but how long had it taken her to learn to project that image? "I'll just fetch you the letters, sir," she said uncomfortably, pushing herself back from the table and leaving the room.

John frowned at Sherlock when the detective turned green-grey eyes sparkling with interest on him; upon seeing the frown, Sherlock's face fell into confusion. "What?" he asked.

"The woman is worried for her mistress - and probably her friend," John rebuked softly. "She's trying to help, you don't need to treat her like she's stupid."

Sherlock snorted. "That was a stupid answer," he retorted. "Everyone has enemies. Particularly young widows, even more particularly young widows who look like Lady Carfax - any suitors would think they were doing her a favour until she turned them down, any friends of her husband would think she had something to do with his death, the list of things that she can't avoid doing to make herself enemies is endless."

John sighed. "And unless they were openly hostile, Marie Devine wouldn't know that they existed."

The detective looked like he wanted to argue, but the maid re-entered the room clutching a heavier bundle of papers and he closed his mouth. He accepted the package without comment, instead simply shaking them out, his eyes flying across the first one. Devine looked up at John, unsure how to react. He tried a grateful smile as his friend read through the letters at lightening speed; John glanced down at the first one and tried to read along, but Sherlock seemed to read faster than John could even process what his eyes were telling him.

Quite suddenly, the detective stood up, his chair scraping obnoxiously across the floor. John winced. "Thank you for your time, Miss Devine," Sherlock said abruptly, waving the letters at her with a brief and glaringly false smile. "These are incredibly helpful. I will ensure that someone keeps you informed with our progress in this investigation."

Devine smiled, but the expression was lost on Sherlock, who was already halfway out the door.

He didn't stop until he reached the boarding of the street outside, forcing John to run to keep up and almost collide with the back of him. "Are you okay?" John asked, though he had a strong suspicion that Sherlock had simply had an idea and wished to follow it up as quickly as possible without regard to either of the other people who had been in the room.

But when Sherlock turned to look at him, he looked shaken, his lips pressed tightly together. "I didn't want to say anything around Miss Devine," he said quietly, holding out a page of the letters to John, who took it and read the sentence that Sherlock indicated to him.

Today I became acquainted with another guest at the inn, Raymond Slessinger, a most singular man in both name and education - his left ear is all tatters, injured in a religious ceremony that he happened upon in Spain, of all places.

John looked back up at Sherlock. "A ruined left ear," he repeated questioningly. "You recognise this Slessinger?"

The detective tipped his head to one side curiously. "Not as Raymond Slessinger," he said quietly, taking back the letter and tucking it swiftly back into his coat pocket. "But it can't be a coincidence. And if that man is who I think he is…" he shook his head shortly.

"It doesn't bode well for either Lady," John finished for him.

A/N: Boy, endings are difficult.

The idea that characters are not people is taken pretty much straight from the work of Stephen Orgel, who uses the exact same Gertrude example. Also, I doubt that people were really applying Freudian theories to Hamlet mere months after it came out, but I had fun with it.

Marie Devine and Raymond Slessinger (so-called) are from Doyle's The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax, and Captain Crocker is from The Abbey Grange.