Hello lovely, lovely followers. I am very sorry for my long absence. How very rude of me! Here's a new chapter to keep you satiated for just a little while. The next one is where shit starts really kicking off.

Adriana X

"So?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes and looked up from his microscope. John was leaning in the doorframe.

"So... What?"

The doctor came in and sat on the bed.

"Oh by all means come in, I'm not even slightly busy," muttered Sherlock, adjusting the fine focus.

"So, what's your theory on last night?"

Sherlock sighed and turned away from the microscope.

"There are a few loose ends to tie up but other than that it's quite obvious don't you think?"

"Ahm... No, not really. You woke me up in the middle of the night, then we heard all the furniture in the place being thrown around the room and Molly was acting as though she was possessed or something..."

"No, I don't believe the furniture was moved at the moment we heard the crash." Sherlock interrupted him.

"What?"

"I imagine we were drugged, some variety of oneirogenic airborne general anaesthetic to keep us in a dead sleep while someone, or more likely some ones moved the furniture around. Quinuclidinyl benzilate was my first thought, or a variant of it. It took time to work, characteristic of that strain of deleriant. Then of course, there was the disturbing and unusually vivid dreams. Either a side effect of the nerve agent in the air or more likely, This."

Sherlock held up a page torn out of a book. John took it.

"Sherlock, where did you get this? You didn't take it out of one of the books in the library, did you?"

"Just read it"

John sighed.

"Calea Zacatechichi." He read. The rest was in Spanish. "What?"

Sherlock gave him That Look.

"It's a herb found in South American medicine," He explained. "Also known as Leaf of God, or the dream herb. Used in witchcraft for divination. And in certain other circles, recreationally. It causes the user to experience intensely graphic dreams."

"That makes sense." John said slowly. "It was in the air too?"

"No, it was in the tea."

"The tea? Are you sure?"

"Can't be positive until I test for it."

"But that means that Lady Ravensdale..."

"Drugged us. Yes. As it happens, I did take that page from a book in the library. A book on witchcraft and herbalism, that had been handled in the past three days."

"How...?"

Sherlock closed his eyes in exasperation.

"Do you even have to ask anymore?"

John feigned an expression of hurt.

"I thought you like it when I ask."

Sherlock ignored him and continued.

"After we were incapacitated then something, most likely one of the Chesterfields that was balanced precariously fell and made a crash. Somebody wants us to believe there is a supernatural presence in this house, John. The murderer, or murderers, wants to keep us in the dark and the local police scared stiff - I think its safe to assume that the killing of Mortimus Ravensdale was a group effort..."

"I'm confused about one thing," John said, "You were the one who woke me last night. You passed through the sitting room to get to my bedroom. How could you, Sherlock Holmes, the most ridiculously observant man in the known universe fail to notice that the room had been turned over?"

"It was dark," said Sherlock dismissively, "I was still disorientated."

"Sherlock..."

"Hmm?"

"Molly told me she dreamt about that girl, I dreamt about the war... What did you dream about?"

"Can't remember." Sherlock said quickly. "I just know it was... Disorientating. Here." He handed John a small plastic specimen cup.

"What's this?"

Sherlock glanced at him.

"I need a urine sample. To test for the presence of any abnormal chemicals."

John shrugged and took the cup.

"We really do have a special kind of friendship."

"No we don't."

777

Molly wandered along the banks of the lake in a daze. She hadn't slept even close to enough, and the warmth of the hazy sun was soaking into her bones. She felt shaken but calm, the events of the previous night seemed more benign in the daylight. It was funny, the way darkness amplified everything. Even Sherlock coming into her room before she left and asking awkwardly for a urine sample had seemed hilarious. She would have been mortified in the past, but this morning she had giggled so much that she'd found it almost impossible to pee into the cup, with Sherlock waiting impatiently outside.

Molly had always known that Sherlock didn't respect her, but the fact that he so clearly thought her insane and disregarded her awful experience as hysterics had all but eradicated her attraction to him. Now she could see him as he was, a pompous, megalomaniac sociopath. But, a little voice in the back of her head reminded her, he did have the most magnificent cheekbones.

Lost in thought, Molly tripped over a tussock of grass and landed on her knees, her copy of Wuthering Heights flying out of her hands. She dissolved into helpless giggles.

God. Maybe she really was hysterical.

"Are you alright miss?"

Molly looked up.

777

"I'd heard you was coming, and when I saw the car outside I thought that must be you lot up from the city. Never see a car that clean in this town and that's for sure. And then when I saw young miss Hooper trippin' about up by the lake I thought, that's a girl not from round here I thought, now that's a girl who don't know two ways around a tussock."

The groundskeeper, James Coulter, was huge in an almost geographical sense. He towered over even Sherlock, and was about four times as wide. Molly had met him out by the lake and had the presence of mind (barely) to bring him to the house to meet Sherlock (who was now sitting opposite him, legs crossed, fingers steepled, wincing at every grammatical flaw in his tirade).

"You were here the morning they found Lord Ravensdale?" John asked helpfully, trying to steer the man in the right direction before Sherlock snapped at him.

"That's right. I had to break the door down, see, it'd all swelled up with the damp. Terrible thing it is, Sir dying like that. Just retired, and he were always very decent to me too. Always a bottle of whiskey at Christmas. I don't touch the stuff, mind, not wanting to go the way of me father, but Ethel, that's the missus, she always found it useful for her preserving..."

"Stop!"

Everyone turned to look at Sherlock, who was pinching the bridge of his nose like a man trying to quell a migraine.

"Stop." he said again. "He didn't do it."

"Sherlock," John muttered, "He's been here five minutes, what makes you so-"

"One, lack of motive," Sherlock said without raising his head.

"Two, lack of intellect."

"Sorry," John said to Mr. Coulter, who continued to grin amiably.

"Three, character shows an excess of loyalty."

"Come on Sherlock, that can't be..."

"Four, Mr Coulter has an alibi."

John looked surprised.

"Does he?"

"Do I?" Asked Mr. Coulter happily.

Sherlock rose from his chair and grabbed a stack of papers from the coffee table.

"Local newspaper," he said, "Gets delivered weekly. Usual stuff, sheep shearing championships, wellington boot tossing competitions, and -" He selected one and held it up, "Darts."

The front page showed a picture of a smiling James Coulter holding a trophy in the shape of a dart board.

"Local man wins local darts championship," Sherlock read. "The final of the Somerset darts championship fell on Wednesday 4th July. In a tense competition, the likes of which has never before been seen in Somerset, the contestants played through the night, with the victor Mr James Coulter (52) beating his adversary Mr. Christopher Pentreath (57) in the final round with a stunning ton 80. The game drew to a close at six in the morning-"

Sherlock stopped.

"Six in the morning," he repeated. "The post mortem put the time of Lord Ravensdale's death between four and five A.M. Mr. Coulter simply was not present. Congratulations on your sweeping victory, Mr. Coulter." Sherlock dropped the newspaper and gave the groundskeeper a terse nod before stalking out of the room.

"Very high strung, those city types," Mr Coulter said, picking up his cup of tea. "Saving the presence of you two of course."

"You've never really seen him do that properly before, have you?" John said to an openmouthed Molly. She shook her head.

"He's very observant."

"That he is." John nodded. "He can see the corner of a newspaper and gather it's significance at a glance. It gets less impressive and more irritating with time, believe me..."

"Is he some kind of savant then?" asked Mr. Coulter.

John had the good grace not to answer, and shrugged.

777

After a late dinner, with darkness just beginning to fall, John and Molly turned in for the night. Molly was clearly exhausted, her eyes beginning to droop halfway through dessert. Sherlock, predictably, hadn't eaten a thing and John had spent most of the meal trying to catch Marion's eye as she served them (with little success).

As they traipsed up the staircase, John caught Molly's arm.

"If anything happens tonight... I mean anything, even if it is just a very bad dream... Wake me."

Molly smiled.

"Don't worry about that." She lowered her voice as Sherlock disappeared into his room and shut the door. "I mean, I'm hardly going to go to him am I? He thinks I'm mental."

"Out of all the people I've known," John said grimly, "Sherlock Holmes is the last person with any right to call someone else mental."

Four hours passed before Sherlock's door opened again. He had lost himself at his makeshift chemistry lab, testing the samples for anything untoward, with no success. It was only when his eyes began to sting from focusing on the lens of the microscope that he realised his body was exhausted. Time to take a look around the house, he decided. In the dead of night, the place would be his to explore thoroughly without distraction. He closed the door quietly behind him.

Sherlock paused outside Molly's room. Both her and John kept their doors open. It was part of some agreement they had now. Sherlock could make out the shape of Molly's small form under the sheets. He rested one hand on the doorjamb and seemed to struggle with his thoughts for a moment, before moving on.

The great house was quiet, but not entirely silent. Distant creaks and the clanking of pipes filled the dark halls that seemed to go on forever. Lit by dim lights set into the walls, they were hung with portraits and tapestries. Hundreds of pairs of ancient eyes watched Sherlock as he walked slowly towards the main staircase. The entire house seemed to reverberate with a low, almost imperceptible grey noise.

As he descended the staircase Sherlock stopped. A shiver passed through him. He leaned against the bannister and took a deep breath, rolling up his left sleeve. The skin on his arms was raised in gooseflesh. He was experiencing a pilomotor reflex in response to some impalpable stimulous. Interesting.

Sherlock frowned. He wasn't cold. So what was it? It was almost as though his body was reacting to a fear that his rational had yet to hear about. It had to be a drug. Nothing had shown up in any of the samples from the three of them. Either the drug left no trace at all, which was unlikely, or the elimination rate was unusually high. But if he was clearly still feeling the effects then it couldn't be that. Always in the air, like Baskerville, keeping them constantly on a level... Sherlock made a mental note to call Mycroft to send more equipment.

He reached the end of the staircase and crossed the entrance hall. Sherlock had sourced and studied the elaborate blueprints of the house as soon as he had been put on the case. He knew the place like the back of his hand, on paper. As he reached the half hidden stairs to the basement Sherlock noticed the low buzzing noise rise a level or two in frequency. Before he set foot on the first step, he heard a new noise on one of the upper levels. He cocked his head to one side and listened. The noise came again. Not from the East wing where the bedrooms were, but from the west, and higher up. Footsteps.

Sherlock turned and started back across the entrance hall.