John followed Sherlock to a cab that he somehow managed to wave down even with an unpleasantly lumpy and stained burlap sack in his grasp. To his surprise, Lestrade hopped up inside with them.
"So, Captain Watson, how long have you been home from the war?" he asked genially as the cab sprang forth towards the hospital.
"Since summer," John answered warily. "My leg was injured during Quatre Bras. I recuperated from fever at my brother's home in Essex."
"You must have fully recovered then, to chase around after this one."
John wasn't quite sure how to answer that.
"Much improved, thank you," he managed.
"So how long have you known Holmes?"
John glanced at Sherlock, but he was staring out of the window, thoughts completely obliterating the conversation happening only a foot away from him.
"We met a couple of weeks ago. He and his brother visited me and mine at my brother's estate."
"Just about the time of the announcement in the papers then. Couldn't see it being a love match, I suppose. Congratulations, at any rate." Lestrade's leaned back, pleased with John's startled look.
"It doesn't take a genius, Lestrade, to read a newspaper announcement." Sherlock's chill voice didn't put a damper on Lestrade's pleasure. "And Donovan would offer condolences, but the prat isn't here."
"Oh, so you knew."
"Not for sure until you were introduced. Never thought Holmes would marry. Figured it must have been arranged when I saw the betrothal notice, or a grievous misprint." The man laughed, but in a pleasant, amused way. "I never expected to actually meet you, and certainly not at a crime scene. Figured you'd two keep your paths as separate as possible. That he'd keep you at home like a little wife."
"You're not as dull as I often suspect, Lestrade."
The man beamed at the offhanded praise from Sherlock Holmes.
"Except if you thought for a minute I'd simply obey Mycroft and be married without the spouse being in the least bit useful, you're more cracked than Donovan's left shoe."
John hadn't quite known Sherlock well enough to recognize the twisted, deformed nature of his praise, but Lestrade merely laughed again.
"A medical man, and a soldier. You've done quite well for yourself, Holmes."
An hour later, John Watson found himself watching his fiancé examining a severed foot with a magnifying lens. Lestrade had hopped out of the hired coach when it neared Bow Street, exchanging promises to keep the other informed, leaving John and Sherlock to travel the rest of the way to the morgue in silence.
"John, take notes," he had said. Not, please, John, it will go faster and more efficiently if you take notes. Still, John wrote down all the measurements and details Sherlock provided, rarely requiring him to repeat anything, and generally submitted in silence.
"Amazing," he said once, unable to contain himself when Sherlock launched into the conclusion that none of these feet matched any of the hands. It was simple enough to deduce that, because they were all left feet, there were at least four victims, or at least dismembered corpses, but Sherlock's tiny details provided very different pictures of the former owners than had been provided by the hands.
"See, John, look!" Sherlock raced around the morgue, shoving Anderson into the slab where he was working in a fume three times more often than necessary. "Honestly, Anderson, where did you put the jars?"
"Storage, you dolt, that cabinet there." Anderson gestured with a wicked filleting knife. "Now get away from me."
Sherlock opened each jar and carefully removed the pickled remains, laying each on a cloth John later realized was Anderson's coat (due to venomous swearing that went unheard by a flurried Sherlock).
"The feet are all male. Two of the hands belonged to women, so that leaves us three. Dock worker, marine, very common jobs. After years on their feet, there are all sorts of likely callouses, marks from rubbing shoes, probably broken toes from heavy boxes being dropped, et cetera. Salt water, very drying, damp, causing rubs and rashes. Also, with the weight of muscle and the added weight of cargo, the bones in the feet would have spread, widened. See how narrow each foot is, how clean and healthy, skin unbroken? Plenty of time on horseback, chair, in well-fitted shoes or boots."
"Third hand, chef. Obvious from the burn scars and shallow knife cuts. Much older than the others, though not yet wizened." John noticed the scars and cuts, imagined using a knife to cut vegetables and a few small scars were right where he could see the knife slipping. The scars were faded, almost invisible except for how they sometimes interrupted the flow of the whorls on the fingertips or oddly puckered the skin. Very old scars, then, from when the man was learning his trade, developing his skills with a knife.
"Fascinating." John picked up Sherlock's lens and peered through it at the fingertips.
A few moments later, he noticed Sherlock had stopped talking and was looking at him quite oddly.
"Er, sorry." He offered the glass back to Sherlock.
"No, it's… fine." Sherlock swept away and back, dramatically pacing in a small three step area. "What else do you see?"
John peered through the glass. He remembered his questioning the sketches Sherlock had sent him and began to examine the stump end.
"There is more skin than you would typically leave on the amputated limb. See, here." John used a couple of instruments to fold down some of the skin around the wrist. It didn't cover the whole of the rawness, but perhaps that was a result of the preservation methods. "Usually you would leave that on the stump end, to help cover the wound."
"Hmm." Suddenly Sherlock was leaning quite closely over John's shoulder. The man radiated heat, but John shivered a little. "Anything else?"
"Amputation isn't always done at a joint, depending on the need. Sometimes you just have to saw through the bone, trying to save enough of a limb to keep a joint like the knee. Makes it easier to attach a false limb and the patient is ultimately more mobile.
"These appear to be very methodically removed at the joint. Disassembled, much like a piece of meat. You may remove some of the cartilage or tendon to make it easier, but then you just twist until the joint pops."
"Difficult to do were the patient alive, John?"
"It would be blatant torture." John didn't even want to think about that. It was bad enough to remember the screams, the all-encompassing horror of the surgery tent, all the blood and pain and torment he'd seen, become acclimatized to on the continent; but to think of someone here, in London, doing this for some sort of sick game made him dizzy.
"Can you tell if the limbs were removed post or ante mortem?"
"Not for certain, no, but the neatness of the cuts would suggest postmortem. At the very least, the victim would have had to be completely immobile or unconscious."
"Hmm." Sherlock resumed his narrow pacing.
After a while, Sherlock bellowed, "Anderson, clean up! We're going!"
John's head rose from his arms where he'd been dozing awkwardly on the desk in the corner.
"Anderson went home hours ago, Sherlock."
"Oh." Sherlock glanced around him, noticing for the first time the low level of oil in the lamps and the pale grey creeping into the sky beyond the east-facing window. "Then Anderson will be back shortly; he can still clean up. Let's go."
John struggled to stand. Sleeping hunched over in a hard wooden chair hadn't done him any good and now his back ached in addition to his stiff leg. At least he hadn't had any nightmares or leg cramps; he supposed he hadn't gotten enough proper sleep for his body to bother.
"Where are we going?"
Sherlock paused. "I suppose I can't very well take you back to Baker Street until we're married, so Mycroft's, I expect. He'll have my head if I don't present you for your fittings this afternoon."
"I have fittings?"
"For your wedding suit, John, yes. Besides, there isn't much else we can do right now. We've examined both the hands and feet, and I'll send along the descriptions of the new victims to Lestrade. He may need a couple of days to have his men go through the missing persons reports at Bow Street. At any rate, he won't be there until at least nine to bother him about his lack of progress."
John blinked wearily. For someone who clearly hadn't slept, Sherlock was amazingly alert and spoke almost faster than John could comprehend. He leaned heavily on his cane and followed Sherlock out onto the street, where he immediately hailed a passing hack.
"I would have thought it would be impossible to find a cab at this time of day." London never truly slept, but surely the hour before dawn would be the closest it would come. Cool grey fog lined the streets, mixed with coal smoke from thousands of homes. Most people wouldn't be awake yet and even the night watch might be settling their heads against a convenient wall for a rest.
Sherlock didn't answer and John dozed off again in minutes, head bouncing against the worn padded seat-back.
He woke to Sherlock instructing the cabbie to wait.
"Go inside, John, and get some rest." He hopped out of the cab and gave John a hand down. John might have protested the gentle treatment if he was more sure that his bad leg wouldn't turn to jelly at any moment. He was already dreading the long staircase up to his rooms in the Sherrinford household.
"You're not staying?"
"I'll not stay another night in my brother's house if I can help it." Sherlock dashed up the stairs ahead of John and let the knocker fall twice. One of the rather anonymous footmen answered it almost immediately. "Good night, John."
"Good night, Sherlock." John's eyes followed Sherlock as he bounced back into the hack and set off.