"Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself" - Mark Twain

Watson

"Doctor, can you not keep that child still?"

"Well, it is not my fault that someone thought it would be a good idea to give the girl a lemon custard for breakfast, Mycroft!" I retorted with a glare at the elder Holmes, plucking Eve from off the floor of the train compartment and setting her on my lap.

"You said she should eat if she wanted to!" the portly Holmes replied with a scowl.

"I didn't say everything she wanted to! Eve, look, you simply must calm down now," I told the girl seriously.

Holmes was watching this with a deal of amusement, smoking a cigarette despite the very clear warning on the door that this was a non-smoking compartment. I rolled my eyes at his elder brother, who shrugged as if to say As if I can stop him? Then I turned my attention back to the wriggling girl on my knees.

She scrambled down and picked up a book, climbing back up to me and indicating I was to look at it.

"You've been teaching her to read, Mycroft?" I asked.

The elder brother shrugged and tossed me a small package of crayons.

Eve took the blue one out of the box and looked quizzically up at me.

"No, no, don't write in the book. Here," I said hastily, pulling out my little notebook and handing it to her, "you can write in here, only on the blank pages, mind."

She gave me a tiny grin and opened the book to a blank page. Then, after glancing up to see that I was watching, she printed a very passable 'apple', studiously copying the word from the primer and then looking at me hoping for praise, which I gave her accordingly.

Mycroft Holmes seemed to be dozing and his younger brother was drumming on the wall with his fingers trying to release nervous energy, and so I took one of the crayons and printed the word 'Mycroft' under the girl's 'apple'.

Eve looked up at me, puzzled. I pointed to the elder Holmes and then back to the word on the paper, and saw the child's face light up with sudden quick comprehension. She really was a remarkably intelligent little one.

It was the work of a few moments for her to copy the word rather shakily but still legibly on my notebook and turn a beaming face in my direction.

"Why don't you go show him what you did, Eve?" I said helpfully, setting the girl down and giving her a nudge.

The child hopped over and shoved my notebook into Mycroft's ample stomach, causing him to sit up with a grunt.

"What is it?"

Eve pushed the book up to his face, and he squinted.

"That's very nice," he muttered, looking helplessly at me. I gave him a warning look that obviously told him to praise the child.

"Very nice indeed, Eve - I am flattered you can write my name," he added uncertainly.

I sighed. Not bad, I supposed, for a Holmes.

Younger brother snickered loudly at this escapade, and Eve sent him a glare that even I never would have given him. Then to my eternal surprise, and great amusement, she did the first actually childish thing I had seen I had known her.

She stuck her little tongue out at my dear friend and flounced back to me in rather a pout.

Mycroft Holmes nearly roared with laughter as his younger brother turned red in the face, and I hastily hid my laughter behind the girl's primer as we rattled onward toward Derby.

Holmes

"Eve, stop chasing the fowl!" my brother called as the girl pulled Watson along in pursuit of a large feathered creature, sending it scuttling out of harm's way as we walked up to the front door of the house.

Watson swung the girl up into his arms and followed us as my brother knocked on the door, his face flushed as much as the girl's from his efforts to keep the sugar-energised child corralled.

Barington proved to be a smallish, balding man with a large country accent and absolutely no backbone. It took Mycroft only one question and a glare that could turn sand to glass before he was spilling his story. I wondered briefly if Sinclair had known their safe house was so limp.

"I d-didn't even want to do this," the man stammered out, twisting his hands in one another and staring at his dirty nails rather than having to meet three sets of probing eyes. "I borrowed m-money from... From that devil Sinclair! To keep t-this farm, y-you see, after my father died. B-But disease hit in the second year and c-c-couldn't repay him. If I hadn't agreed to store the safe t-they left here, h-he would have just taken the farm. Knowing him, he might even have killed me! I-I swear, I didn't even know t-there was something that important in it! I-It's not here anymore; someone came to fetch it a while back."

"How long ago did Sinclair leave with the Ruby, Barington?" my brother asked in the voice he reserved for stern lectures.

"S-seven months ago, at least, maybe a little more?" the little farmer replied, glancing nervously from one to the other of us.

Of course there was no point in prosecuting the man due to the gag order and so on, and the promise of no repercussions had served to loosen the man's already too eager tongue.

"You are certain of this?" I interjected.

"Yes, seven months, that's it," the man replied.

"The same time Mason started running for Minister," I said to Mycroft.

"A very brilliant deduction, Sherlock," he replied with a dry sarcasm.

I glared at him as Watson smirked before turning his attention back to the girl, who was wandering about looking at things in the small parlour where we were seated. Watson hastily stopped her from picking up a glass figurine and settled back with her on his lap, and she appeared to be content there.

I shook my head in wonderment at my friend's uncanny ability to inspire trust, but then my attention was arrested by what appeared to be...ash? Under Barington's fingernails.

Ashes, under the nails of a poultry farmer - odd, certainly. I wasted no time in questioning the man about it.

"Ah, well, Mr. Holmes, I was helping to clean up a house fire on a neighboring farm," the man said, glancing from me to my brother. "Sorry business, that. Poor Mrs. Harley."

"Harley?" Mycroft inquired, glancing at me.

"Yes, the good lady was married to Jacob Harley, widowed a good many years back. Poor dear was caught in the fire, apparently," Barington said with a look of remorse.

"Burned to death?" Mycroft asked, "or smoke inhalation?"

I saw Watson shoot him a meaningful look, glancing at Eve with a worried countenance. But surely the girl had heard worse things than a simple statement of death.

"The whole place was burnt to a cinder," Barington replied, "they only found parts of the woman's -"

"Yes, all right, we can use our imaginations," Mycroft added impatiently, finally catching sight of Watson's glares and ending the interview, seeing that Eve was watching us all closely.

"You are lucky this investigation is not interested in prosecuting you, Barington," my brother said imperiously, drawing himself up to his massive height and looking down upon the poultry farmer.

"Yes, Mr. Holmes, thank you, sir," the man's cringing was rather nauseating and I followed Watson and the girl outside without preamble.

I watched in amusement as Eve leant over the side of my friend's grasp to gaze at a large bantam rooster. The animal squawked indignantly as another fowl came too close to it and the child scrambled back to the safety of my dear friend's arms, looking up at him with a childish questioning.

Ten minutes later we were in the small trap we had appropriated at the station and were heading back toward Derby, my brother insisting that the morning had been most productive and it was now time for luncheon.

I glanced over at Watson and saw that Eve was far from being tired as I had anticipated (no doubt thanks to my brother's not-so-brilliant choice of breakfast food) but was bouncing on his lap, eagerly looking out over the countryside, taking it all in with a wide-eyed wonder.

Upon our return to Derby, my brother located a hostelry that would apparently satisfy his hunger and we sat round a wooden table discussing Barington, Sinclair, and the Ruby.

Watson was reading a local Derby newspaper, clearly not interested in my brother's and my deducing games, and Eve was practicing her newest word in his notebook over and over in purple crayon, each time showing it to my brother with tolerable pride.

"Yes, yes, you're doing splendidly, Eve," my brother said for the thirtieth time, finally taking the time out to print the word 'Watson' for her and tell her to copy it, pointing to my friend's head that was just visible above the periodical and setting the girl to copying again furiously.

Mycroft then turned back to me with a tired shake of the head. "As I was saying, Sherlock -"

"Holmes?"

We both turned to see Watson folding up the paper with a rather excited look upon his face, glancing from one to the other of us as if he had some news to impart.

"What is it, Watson?" I asked, leaning over to see the paper he was indicating.

"This article, about the fire at the old Harley place," he replied excitedly, pointing to the article in question, "look - it says that the woman's maiden name was Mason!"

I snatched the paper and skimmed the article.

"Well, Sherlock? Don't be so infuriating!"

"He's right, Mycroft," I read emphatically, tossing the paper over to my brother. "And this article informs us that this woman who died in that mysterious fire was Bradford Mason's older sister."