Things We Lost In The Flames
I make no apology for revisiting this scene in it's entirety - it is simply one of the most complex, revalatory and stunning scenes of the entire Sherlock canon. And the acting ain't bad either!
Chapter 25: 'A list of all the things….'
John Watson opened the door of the taxi and was out through it and onto the pavement, crossing it at speed like a greyhound from the traps. The anger in him - hunched shoulders, white fists, clenched jaw - was only too visible despite his silence.
Mary Watson followed him; frightened to even glance back at Sherlock Holmes; distracted, haunted eyes fixed on her husband's disappearing back.
Sherlock Holmes, last to leave the taxi, hauled himself heavily to his feet by the hanging strap and heard himself groan.
"You OK, Sherlock?" asked the cabbie, glancing back with carefully veiled concern.
"Hmn. Thank you, Davy." Somehow he stepped out of the vehicle in one piece and swayed down onto the pavement. "Put this on my account and add an extra twenty for your time."
"Ta, mate."
He watched the consulting detective weave across the short yet endless space between the kerb and the front door, and only when Sherlock had moved safely inside, drove away.
Checking Mrs Hudson was not hovering nearby to overhear him, he hung onto the banisters to make a short, important telephone call, and then proceeded to drag himself up the stairs hand over hand, with a pause on the half landing to get his breath.
Breathing was getting harder and pain was taking over again as the last snort of ketamine wore off. And he did not have any more at hand to save his life. However dearly he needed and craved it.
Fortunately, none of the three of them had wanted to talk in the cab, so he was able to concentrate on nothing except holding himself together and preparing for the hard and inevitable interview to come.
John Watson had needed to know the truth about his wife, and quickly, so Sherlock Holmes had not had the time for niceties, for subtle preparation. He had had to break out of hospital and just do what was needed.
Magnussen could act against Mary at any time, now he had such an immense lever against her. Which meant Magnussen would act against John Watson too. The thought goaded Sherlock on beyond sense, beyond sanity, beyond his own sense of self. He had already wasted a week without being able to warn Mary, to inform John Watson. What evil might Magnussen have been planning in this time?
And this, with his irrepressible egocentric labyrinthine mind, meant Magnussen could and would act against John Watson too. Would he turn on the husband first, to intensify the pressure upon the wife? Or go straight to the attack on Mary? Which job could he need her special talents for? And who might he want her to kill?
Lady Smallwood? To delay or stop completely the Parliamentary Select Committee process of investigation upon him? Lord Smallwood again? Out of resentment of the original plot frustrated? To turn the screws on the husband in revenge? To make a void in government, to put pressure on Mycroft? Or all of these? Out of revenge for the blackmail plot being foiled?
Any of the Sondersons? To prove the long reach of his power? To retaliate? To break up the family for the sheer mischief and pleasure of the act? To take down part of the heart of European security? To blacken Danish authority and influence?
To kill Piet Bruhl? For the power play of seeing a brave and irreproachable man obliterated personally and professionally?
To kill Mycroft? To throw the government in disarray? To spite his younger brother simply for breathing? And remove his influence and protection? Or for daring to counteract for delaying his seduction? And turning the screws on the inevitability and humiliation of that act?
Or even perhaps - the most twisted game of all - to get the assassin wife to kill her ex-soldier husband to put sideways pressure on both Holmes brothers and destroy them all and together. So they would all and both die from their heart outwards; like the weeping willow tree. And have to endure watching each other do so.
Having been shot and put safely out of the way in hospital, his removal from the fray might be just the advantage the Dane would relish. When the absence of the fly in the ointment, the spoke in the wheel, might well allow Magnussen plenty of room to make all the manoeuvres he so wanted.
So Sherlock had no choice but to move fast; to act, even from his hospital bed - for time was now of the essence. And it was the very lack of time to recover, the amount of time he would need to recover, that had made him move.
Move when he could barely stand. Act when he could barely think. Take risks to achieve knowledge and wisdom and safety. Yet not for himself.
So now he cursed and hauled and shuddered his way up to 221B, to reach up and into and burst through the surface of his actions. Of his very life.
Finally he achieved the top of the stairs, exhausted by the effort, and, heavy of heart yet light headed and short of breath, he braced one foot between the door jamb and the floor, one arm against the wall, to prop himself upright against the architecture. The only support of any sort he could count on.
John Watson, first into the room, had dropped his coat onto the dining table, and the speed and force of his entrance as he slammed the door back into the wall had startled Mrs Hudson and brought her flying out from the kitchen.
To then hover to an indecisive stop in the middle of the sitting room, as if suspended in the discordant air.
" John? Mary?"
Hesitant questions, to which she received no reply; John Watson seething and unseeing in the centre of the room, his wife tucked into a corner, as if wanting to absent herself from whatever was about to happen.
Martha Hudson searched their eyes, saw nothing reassuring in the face of either. Looked towards the doorway, for the entrance of the person still missing from the group. And saw Sherlock had planted himself at the entrance of his own home as if he dared not enter.
Sherlock, standing, tense and drawn, eyes hooded, sweat on his face. Shaking gently, braced against the architrave of the doorway. Oddly erect and immobile.
"Oh, Sherlock!" She put her hands to her face, unable to stop the cry of fear and sympathy that came out of her mouth at the sight of him. "Oh, good gracious! You look terrible."
She would have gone to him, but something about him repelled her as he turned his eyes towards her; blank of expression yet with wild eyes - like a madman.
She had been fluttering there - waiting in the flat for him - all of the evening past, then, something at the back of his brain registered.
For he remembered. Remembered how she had rushed up the stairs from her own flat earlier, as soon as she had heard him enter the house with Bill Wiggins - rushing to see how he was, what he was doing.
She had run into the flat only just behind them, not seeing how Wiggins had almost carried the consulting detective from the taxi to the house, and with an effort, up the stairs, dropping him onto the nearest dining chair by the desk.
And as he sat there, one arm flung behind him across the back of the chair, holding himself upright to ease the pain of movement, he looked very much like himself: imperious, withdrawn, silent.
"Sherlock! What are you doing home? How can you be well enough….?" A horror of some sort of realisation, a pause. "Where's Mycroft? John?"
For to Mrs Hudson Bill Wiggins was a stranger. And with his gaunt unshaven face, his shadowed eyes, his hunched physicality, Martha Hudson recognised a drug addict when she saw one. And although she knew many of Sherlock's homeless network, this one was different. Brighter, sharper, deeper in the pit and walking to the beat of a different drum. He was dangerous. Yet also happy to be Sherlock's ally.
"Who are you? What do you want with Sherlock?"
She was a frail elderly woman. But she was still Sherlock Holmes's protector.
"It's OK, Mrs Hudson." He lifted a hand to her as if in appeal, and tried to ignore how much even that careful action hurt. "This is Billy. Billy, this is my landlady, Mrs Hudson…"
"Hello, Mrs H."
Bill Wiggins waved a friendly paw in her direction, and Martha Hudson glared at him.
"Billy is with me, Mrs Hudson. He's fine. In small doses, anyway. And today he's helping me."
"You're not fit to be out of hospital…."
"I am fine, Mrs Hudson. Things to do."
He wavered on his chair, and smiled at her in what he clearly thought was a reassuring manner. She glared at him suspiciously.
"Who let you out of hospital? Who knows you are back home?"
He patted her hand but did not answer her. And the hand that touched hers was far too warm. She was not reassured.
Things to do, Hudders. Can you give us….ten minutes? And then a cuppa would be marvellous."
He beamed vaguely at her. And she squeezed his hand and returned downstairs.
Which gave enough time for Billy to haul John Watson's chair from it's new position by Sherlock's bed and back to it's old place by the fire. To retrieve Lady Smallwood's Claire de la Lune bottle from the bureau. To position the occasional table and set the perfume bottle on it. As instructed by the man who could not manage those actions for himself.
To create a tableau for John Watson to see. To present all the clues and hope the doctor would start to take a new view of the world, find a new way through the woods, work his way towards his own answers to questions he did not even know he was asking.
And for Sherlock to snort another line of ketamine.
All before Mrs Hudson reappeared with a tea tray. So all three of them could drink in some travesty of a polite tea party before the two men were on the move again.
"Sherlock….?"
His name was on her lips as she watched him stand with slow deliberation. He looked down at her with such anguish and sadness in his eyes she felt a terrible lurch in her heart.
"What?" he was distracted, yet seemed almost lazily patient, still speaking softly to her.
"Just come home safely. Will you do that? From wherever it is you are going?"
He trailed a finger across her cheek, and she resisted a strong temptation to put her arms around him, to stop him going off to do whatever awfulness he intended, and to hold him close.
"Of course. Not going far. When I return you can make another lovely cuppa," he said with an airy sort of deliberation.
And then they were gone.
But now Sherlock was back. Looking worse than before. With John and Mary this time. And in between times Martha Hudson had been unable to leave the flat, as if somehow her presence would act as a totem, and draw him safely home.
She was about to go to him when he spoke.
"Get me some morphine from your kitchen," he demanded. "I've run out."
It was probably the last thing she had expected him to say. Surprised, she instantly retorted:
"I don't have any morphine!"
He always expected her to have anything he needed to hand - shoelaces, asprin, milk, biscuits; but he was the only person who totally knew her past and could have expected morphine in her fridge along with herbal soothers in Wincarnis. The fact she did not have something he desperately needed pained her. Struck a nerve.
His head went back, and he almost sobbed before he spat back a reply with angry awfulness.
"Then what exactly is the point of you?"
She ignored the insult, for insults from Sherlock Holmes were far from unusual, and were rarely meant when directed at her, however harsh they sounded.. She knew that. Knew more than anything how much it showed his pain and despair and need.
"What is going on?" she demanded. Worrieds for him, not distressed for herself.
Looking for answers from either of them, all of them. But no reply came from any one of them.
"Bloody good question!" snarled John Watson, head sunk down into his shoulders like a bulldog, eyes angry and turned inwards.
"The Watsons are about to have a domestic, and fairly quickly, I hope, because we've got work to do."
Sherlock Holmes spoke almost conversationally from his position in the doorway. The pain had passed through him on another wave, and for the moment he was lax, light-headed, yet almost himself.
John Watson looked across at him, lost in his own hurt and anger, and saw only what he wanted and expected to see; control and assurance and the usual superior knowledge and sense of self. And it annoyed him.
"Oh. I have a better question…."
And turned to his wife. Looked angrily at her as if she was a stranger. Looked at her as if wishing she was a stranger.
"Is everyone I've ever met a psychopath?" The question was as bitter and disillusioned as it was angry. Mary Watson stared at him, speechless and blank of expression
Sherlock Holmes watched them both, thoughtfully.
"Yes," he agreed; speaking for her.
And Mary Watson flashed him a look, finally, and gave a small nod of agreement.
"Good; then we've settled that," Sherlock Holmes was brisk, making the most of the cycle of pain and reprieve; the brief time he had before the pain of the gunshot wound - the additional damage he had done since leaving hospital - would take him again.
"Anyway, we….." he began.
"Shut up!" John Watson wheeled, tearing his eyes from his wife to turn with hot and even more angry eyes to his former flatmate.
Mrs Hudson jumped at the savagery in his voice and his body language, savagery she had never seen from the former soldier before, and in reaction clapped her hand over her mouth. But in truth John Watson had forgotten Mrs Hudson was even in the room.
"…..And stay shut up," he clenched his fists and took a step towards Sherlock, on the verge of losing all control. "Because this is not funny. Not this time."
"I didn't say it was funny," Sherlock responded gently.
Looking hard, pausing, yet finding no anger or aggression in Sherlock to attack, John Watson now turned back on his wife yet again..
"You! What have I ever done - hmn -" he hovered on the point of losing all control, even the ability to speak. Made a noise low in his throat, pulled himself back from the brink. "….in my whole life to deserve you?"
Sherlock saw the agony in Mary Watson's face, and again answered for her.
"Everything."
Watson swung back towards him like a boxer, low, balanced on his toes, primed to attack. Stepped forward, hands fisted at his side.
"Sherlock. I have told you…." walked towards him, threat and danger about to overflow - "Shut up."
"Oh, I mean it." The voice was a quiet unaggressive purr.
Sherlock Holmes stood his ground. Because he had neither the energy nor the willpower to do anything else.
"Seriously. Everything - everything - you've ever done is what you did ." he said.
"Sherlock;" Another low warning "One more word and you will not need morphine….."
It was a snarled and clear threat, but his friend did not back down.
"You were a doctor who went to war…" he began. Swallowed, looked intently into the face of John Watson. Committed himself.
As he spoke, something in his soul braced itself and prepared to make a last stand and to die in a good cause, if needed.
He had to tell John Watson who he was and why he was. He had to relate. He had to reveal….he knew that. And that commitment was thanks to Molly Hooper. If thanks was the right word.
o0o0o0o
She had glided gently into his hospital room the day before. Watchful, quietly determined and self deprecating as ever, fresh from work and laden with bags; carrier bags of shopping from Tesco's for herself, a ream of odd items pulled one by one from her huge floppy handbag for him.
He had quirked an eyebrow at her, lightly amused by the normality of how she produced cherry lozenges and wine gums to soothe a throat sore from recent intubation. Red grapes 'because that's what invalids need.' A bottle of energy drink. A newspaper and three recent editions of the British Medical Journal, a fresh tube of mint and apple toothpaste, a notepad and pen. A packet of ginger nuts in an airtight tub. A get well card with ducklings on the front.
She produced each item with a commentary. And he let her prattle on until she ran out of words and things to place on the bed with him, and finally sat down in the empty chair by his side.
"I don't think I have forgotten anything that might be useful," she said with an air of finality.
"Tell me why you are here?" As question.
"To see you getting better. To bring you essentials other visitors might forget." She smiled over brightly at him and twirled her fingers together.
"Tell me why you are here." As command.
"Had a mystery drowning into the morgue yesterday you would have liked. But you were here."
"So who was there?"
He looked at her with cold interrogation and watched her flinch.
"Sorry, Molly," he unbent a little. "I sleep a lot. Drugged out of my mind a lot. Have to make the most of lucid times. So speak quickly. Before I fall asleep again."
She accepted his analysis and nodded.
"I had a visitor yesterday. Might have been you; sat down on your stool without a word. Sat watching me work. Sat for ages,"
"John," he said with certainty.
"Yes," she agreed. There was a pause while she debated with herself what to say next.
"He's….hurting, Sherlock."
"Two of us, then."
"Stop being the smart arse!" she snapped. And he immediately bowed his head a little in silent apology.
"I threw him out of here earlier. "
"He was upset."
"Too bad. He'd overstayed his welcome. I am not his penance."
"Sherlock, stop it!"
In frustration she flung her little fists in his direction, and she watched him flinch in his turn.
"He doesn't know, Sherlock!"
"Know - what?"
"Oh, for pity's sake!" she made a little embarrassed laugh of disbelief that got no further than her throat. "Anything! He doesn't know anything! Not why you died - why you jumped. What you did and who - exactly - you did it for. Where you went. About Serbia, How ill you were. He doesn't understand why you are pushing him away."
She watched him roll his head away on the pillow and close his eyes. But she kept talking.
"He doesn't even know what happened….with…with…Magnussen. He doesn't know anything!"
She rounded on him, ignoring the equipment trying to make him whole, ignoring his pallor and pain. She was his fury, the voice of his conscience. As ever.
"Why haven't you told him?"
He rolled his head back to her and opened his eyes.
"I….tried. When I am came back. He…he hit me."
"So? He was upset. What did you expect? And he still doesn't understand."
"Not my fault."
"Sherlock! Why haven't you told him? He doesn't know - understand - anything. What you did. What you sacrificed. To save him."
"And others," he corrected. "I did try. He wouldn't listen to me."
They looked at each other blankly, and his usual eloquence failed him.
"Did you….tell him instead?"
The question - five hard words to ask - forced themselves out despite him. Because he really did not want to know the answer.
"Of course not. That's between the two of you."
She watched him shake his head, a shadow passing over his face.
"You've got to tell him, Sherlock. He only let Mary in because he had lost you…" she blushed, embarrassed.. "That didn't come out right, but you know what I mean! He thought he had built a whole new life, and was happy. Then you returned, and he was confused.
"Now he doesn't know if he's coming or going. What he's done to upset you. Why he can't get the friendship back to what it was. Why you keep forcing him away. Even when he thought you were dying…"
"I can't explain, Molly. I must keep him away from me; it's the only way to keep him safe."
She sat and searched his face for a long time. Knew he was speaking truth and his heart.
"It's this case you're on, isn't it? There's something awful about it; and it's doing something awful to you."
"Molly….." The one word was plea and warning and admission.
"Sherlock: you can't keep doing this. You can't keep shutting John out, You need him. He needs you. Please, please talk to him…"
He was shaking his head as she spoke, and she leant forward to hold his head between her hands, to stop him doing that, to make him listen and learn.
"He is so upset, Sherlock. He thought he was moving into a new life, going to be happy. But now….he…he doesn't even know who he is. You're not dead any more. But you have left him more alone now than when he thought you were dead."
"He has Mary. Mary is all he needs. Should be all he needs."
"Oh, Sherlock."
She put her forehead to his, her usual diffidence forgotten.
"You saved his life, Sherlock. You are tied together forever by that…"
"And he saved mine. We cancel each other out."
"It doesn't work like that. You know that really. You do. You are his life, Sherlock."
"And Mary is his love. She has the greater claim."
"You can live without love. But you cannot have love without life. And you are his life. His life force."
"No."
"Sherlock, he was in tears last night. He was so upset…and that upset me. You have got to tell him what has happened. So he understands … where he is in the universe."
"Easy to say."
"Yes, it is. Some people talk about love and life all day. Make it their reason for living. You - typically - are the exact opposite."
She sighed and stroked her thumbs across his cheekbones, a softness he shrank away from.
"You two need to talk. He is imaging all sorts of daft things as to why you are shutting him out. Stupid things. That you are dying of a horrible disease. That you are in love with Mary. That you are in love with him. That someone is blackmailing you. Threatening to kill you. He is thinking all sorts…."
"Molly, stop. Please. Please. Stop."
He twisted his head out of her hands, but he could not physically escape her, nor contain a sob of frustration and pain.
She stroked his cheek and eased the tears from the corners of his eyes.
"What has happened to you? Apart from being shot, of course!" she risked a tiny laugh and a smile, and he smiled a tiny smile back to her. Not to turn her words and actions into a joke, but to show that although she had hurt him, he recognised the pain was essential, cathartic, the impulse to a way forward. "I am not the only person here for you, Sherlock. John is here for you too. If you will only let him. But he is lost - floundering.
"Help him, Sherlock. So he can help you. Start by telling him who is he. So he can work out which way up he is standing."
She patted his cheek and released him. Could no longer look at his ravaged, hollow face.
"I'm sorry. I should go. My….my frozen chicken fillets for tea will be thawing…."
He reached for her hand, and laughed; a genuine, tremulous laugh.
"Molly…."
"No. I can't say any more, I've said too much as it is. Just talk to John. Tell him who he is. Go on from there…."
And she gathered her bags, flustered, her diffident normal self again, and left the room without another word.
He was left looking at the space where she had been. Slowly and hesitantly he tidied the things she had chosen for him with such care and thoughtfulness. Leant back into the pillows and began to compute.
He was Sherlock Holmes. This was what he did. First. And last. And in every space in between.
o0o0o
So now he took a deep breath. And with total deliberation looked into the eyes of John Watson and did Molly Hooper's bidding, In response to John Watson's appeal to her. Because it made sense.
"You were a doctor who went to war," he began. Heart in mouth. Soul in eyes. Courage in both hands. He swallowed hard and continued. Committed now. Whatever happened.
"You're a man who couldn't stay in the suburbs for more than a month without storming a crack den and beating up a junkie. Your best friend is a sociopath who solves crimes as an alternative to getting high. That's me by the way."
His eyes slipped sideways, escaping the intense angry gaze of John Watson. He forced a smile to break the tension, and waved a hand. "Hello!" John Watson almost smiled then, and Sherlock Holmes saw. Was emboldened. "Even the landlady used to run a drugs cartel."
"It was my husband's cartel," interjected Mrs Hudson with irritated precision. "I was just typing."
"And exotic dancing," he pointed out, piqued.
"Sherlock Holmes, if you've been YouTube-ing me….." she began, shocked. But he interrupted her; he had something more important he still needed to say. While he still could. He could not stop now he had started. Any more than he could stop the blood rising within him, taking over the machine.
"John, you are addicted to a certain lifestyle. You're abnormally attracted to dangerous situations and people…so is it truly such a surprise that the woman you've fallen in love with conforms to that pattern?"
John Watson heard and processed the words. Looked pained. Recognised the truth of the words Sherlock was saying. He swallowed, tried for speech, waved a hand towards his wife.
"But she wasn't supposed to be like that. Why is she like that?" The voice was torn and tearful, but something had changed in the eyes, now. Sense and direction returning home from a wilderness.
Suddenly, without fuss, the old rapport was back. Sherlock pronounced - and Watson opened his heart. The consulting detective recognised this. Saddened, not exultant. And his face twisted with sympathy for the simple truth he had to explain.
"Because you chose her."
Whether that was the answer he wanted, that was the answer he got. And it held the brevity of absolute truth.
John Watson wheeled away in frustration. Saw three people watching him - the three people he loved most in the world. But none of them were helping or reassuring him.
"Why is everything… always….my fault?
The last word punched out with huge force as John Watson's frustrations boiled over.
He turned and viciously kicked the little side table before him, the safest target in reach, and it flew across the room. Mrs Hudson, and even Sherlock, jumped in surprise. But Mary remained silent and still in the face of his outburst.
"Oh, the neighbours!" Mrs Hudson exclaimed, running away from him into the kitchen.
Sherlock Holmes took a huge, steadying breath. Fixed his eyes upon his friend as if willing him to calmness by force of personality alone.
"John." His voice was so quiet it sounded like another person. "Listen. Be calm and answer me. What is she?"
John Watson's head dropped, all his focus on his wife.
"My lying wife," he ventured.
"No." Sherlock Holmes still spoke calmly; levelly, and with a patience that seemed to belong to another man. "What is she?"
"…And the woman who's carrying my child and has lied to me since the day I met her," Watson continued as if uninterrupted.
"No. Not in this flat. Not in this room. Right here - right now. What is she?" The voice was still the calm expression of logic. And finally the doctor understood what the detective was telling him of the easiest and clearest way to move forward. For objectivity, distance, reason.
"OK. Your way," he capitulated to the stronger mind, the brighter intelligence, as always. But was irked by that this time. So complied with some bitterness: "Always your way."
Sherlock lowered his head and avoided the burning eyes, his face twisting. There was no victory but logic in winning that particular battle of wills.
Doctor Watson picked up a dining chair, placed it precisely and with determination in the middle of the room between the two facing armchairs.
"Sit," he snapped at his wife.
"Why?" she asked mildly enough.
Because that is where they sit," he replied brusquely. "The people who come in here with their stories. The clients. Because that is all you are now, Mary. You're a client. This is where you sit and talk,,,,,and this is where we sit and listen. And then we decide if we want you or not."
He sniffed forcefully, a characteristic decisive action. Walked - formal military posture - to his usual chair as if heading to a firing squad. Sat down, unconsciously adjusting the cushion behind him. After a pause, and into a heavy silence, Sherlock Holmes walked forward to his own chair with pained deliberation. He avoided meeting his own eyes in the mirror over the mantel.
For a moment he faced Mary Watson, looked at her briefly, gave a small nod. Permission? Recognition? Sympathy? But the fleeting moment passed as he turned, awkwardly and without his usual fluid grace, to sit in his own armchair. Still wearing the protective armour of the Belstaff, shaking hands firmly hidden in it's capacious pockets. Looking down and away.
Mary Watson watched the two men in her life adopt their usual stances and positions, and finally moved herself to sit on the hard dining chair. Put her bag onto the floor beside her, adjust her coat and jeans. Clear her throat and look at her husband expectantly.
As if making a decision she placed a pen drive on the oak side table between herself and John Watson. Sherlock Holmes, grimacing in increasing pain no-one else in the room seems to even notice, focused down on it.
The drive was stainless steel, but looked silver in the light: and in black marker pen, in handwritten scrawl, the capital letters: A. G. R. A.
"Agra: what's that?"
Holmes and Watson looked at her for elucidation.
"Everything about who I was is in there," explained Mary Watson slowly, her voice raw with something indefinable. And she looked at her husband when she continued: "If you love me, don't read it in front of me."
"Why?"
"Because you won't love me when you've finished…" Just for a moment, her face is as naked as her voice. "And I don't want to see that happen." Her voice cracked. She heard it, gave herself a small shake and turned to her equal and her adversary. Her victim. Sherlock Holmes.
"How much do you know already?" The words are almost a snarl.
He sighed, but answered concisely. "By your skill set you are - or were - an intelligence agent. Your accent is currently English, but I suspect you are not. You're on the run from something. You've used your skill sets to disappear…." he sucked a breath as a wave of pain cut through him. "Magnussen knows your secrets; which is why you were going to kill him. And I assume you befriended Janine in order to get close to him."
For that moment the irony of his words were not lost on her.
"Oh! You can talk!"
He flashed a look, smiled at her, gave a hum of appreciation.
Watson, stung, suddenly excluded from the wordless communication between his friend and his wife, could only react and snap in retaliation.
"Look at you two. You should have got married."
He heard the hurt and the jealousy in the words, but could neither hold them in nor call them back. And what made that worse was neither the man nor the woman before him reacted to or even registered his pain.
"The stuff Magnussen has on me, I would go to prison for the rest of my life," observed his wife. Who was suddenly a person he did not recognise any more.
"So you were just gonna kill him."
"People like Magnussen should be killed," she retorted immediately, faster and harder than thought. And with biting reality added, and finally admitted: "That's why there are people like me."
"Perfect!" he snapped back, and did not think he could hurt any more than he did at that moment. "So that's what you were? An assassin?"
The question sounded like a joke. Like melodrama. Like a nightmare. He would have laughed if he had not felt he knew the answer before it came. "How could I not see that?
"You did see that." She paused, almost smiled. He did not recognise the expression on his wife's face as belonging to anyone he knew. She recognised that, and in a tone of infinite sadness added: "And you married me. Because he's right." She slanted a knowing look at Sherlock, who met her eyes then, but rapidly looked away "It's what you like."
Into the ensuing silence Sherlock Holmes twisted in his chair, twisted in pain. And still no-one else registered his distress. So neither did he.
"So….Mary…" the words cranked out of him despite his increasing weakness. "Any documents that Magussen has concerning yourself you want….extracted and returned…."
"Why would you help me?"
Her question was sharp and serious. But his face and voice were unusually ingenuous. And true.
"Because…. you saved my life."
"S- sorry. What?" Watson made it clear in his question that he did not believe what he had just heard.
But Sherlock Holmes was speaking only to Mary Watson now.
"When I happened on you and Magnusson…" a spasm of pain made him go cold and clammy, his hands clutch the chair arms, suck a couple of hard breaths The pain ripped through him, increasing in strength, and that it's demands be answered. "There was a problem More specifically, you had a witness. The solution of course was simple. Kill us both and leave. However, sentiment got the better of you. One precisely calculated shot to incapacitate me. In the hope that it would bide you more time to negotiate my silence."
He paused. No argument, no lies, no protests. So he continued.
"f course you couldn't shoot Magnussen. On the night that both of us broke into the building, your own husband would become a suspect. So you calculated Magnusson .." a wave of pain disorientated him for a long second. Before he could continue. "Not sharing the information with the police as is his MO. And then you left the way you came." he paused ads the room shifted around him. Began again. "Have I missed anything?"
Doggedly returning to what he did not understand in the narrative, John Watson forced Sherlock Holmes to backtrack.
"How did she save your life?"
"She phoned the ambulance."
"I phoned the ambulance," he corrected.
"She phoned first. You didn't find me for another five minutes. Left to you, I would have died. The average arrival time for a London ambulance is…."
He lifted his right hand to look at his wristwatch, but found he needed the left hand to help the right lift and stay raised.
Just as two paramedics clattered up the stairs and into the sitting room, urgent, wrong footed now, stuttering to a halt in the centre of the doorway, Looking puzzled.
"….Eight minutes," Sherlock concluded. Breathing heavily, left hand still raised from checking the time; physical actuality against expectation.
"Did you bring any morphine?" he rapped out. "I asked on the phone….?"
"We were told there was a shooting…? The shorter paramedic with the curly ginger hair and the wide eyes, looked even more puzzled than when he had entered the room.
"There was," gasped Sherlock with deliberation. "Last week."
Now measuring the pulse rate on his left wrist with his right hand, he dragged in a sharp breath and tried to speak as levelly and clearly as possible.
"But I believe I'm bleeding internally and my pulse is very erratic."
This was critical. This was urgent. He carefully placed his hands on the arms of his chair and levered himself upwards.
But as he did so there was a disorientating shock of pain through his entire body and he folded over.
"You may need to restart my heart on the way."
He had not intended to sound so melodramatic. But throughout that entire awful evening neither the doctor nor the nurse had seemed to register or recognise his increasing pain and incapacity; that something awful had happened to him when he had bent so carefully to pick up that 50p piece on the floor of Leinster Gardens; and that he had been getting steadily worse as the evening worse on.
So to speak as he did now was not being melodramatic. It was statement of fact, a cry for help, a plea for assistance. A complaint against pain that could no longer be ignored. He hadn't meant the words to break, or to break him. But they did.
For on the word 'heart' his voice broke, sounding as if he had been kicked in the throat, and he started to fall.
John and Mary Watson unerringly united for the first time in a long time to rush towards him, taking a side each, taking an arm each to hold him up as the paramedics also rushed forward.
"Come on Sherlock. Come on Sherlock." John Watson, unflappable doctor in another life and time, found himself chanting, repeating the same three words; curse, prayer, command. Or a mix of all three.
He groaned with a sort of despair and grasped his friend's shoulders as Mary Watson stepped back and lets the paramedics take over and support Sherlock Holmes..
"John?"
The patient rallied. Had something urgent to convey.
The paramedics dropped their bags, and took hold to support his weight and ease him down, but he ignored them, clutching Watson in his turn. Making him listen. Making him believe.
"John. Magnussen is all that matters now. You can trust Mary. She saved my life."
"She shot you."
"Er…" a quirked grin, a movement of the eyes. The old Sherlock he knew and loved. The intelligence, the certainty. Despite the pain and the exhaustion. "Mixed messages I grant you."
And suddenly it was all too much. A grimace, a cry of pain that could not be contained or disguised.
Sherlock Holmes started to fall, letting John Watson and the paramedics lower him gently down to his own red Turkish sitting room carpet. Groaning, gasping, crying out with unsurpressable pain.
Dr John Watson had spent his army career in theatres of war tending the wounded and the dying. Yet he had never herd cries of pain and anguish such as came from Sherlock Holmes then. His invulnerable, impossible Sherlock Holmes. And it twisted a knife in his heart.
"Sherlock? Sherlock? All right, take him."
Sherlock cried out again and this time Dr Watson stepped back, hopeless and helpless, leaving his friend to the care of others.
"Got him?"
Looked on in concern as one of the paramedics applied an oxygen mask.
Looked up at his wife as their eyes clashed across a silence.
With absolutely nothing to say to each other as their friend became a patient and the patient became an emergency.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Author's Note:
Wincarnis is the trade name of an old fashioned health wine drink.