A/N: Hello, hello! How is everyone on this fine Sunday evening? This story is starting to really pick up and all the loose threads are being tied up in a neat little bow.
And off course the writing experiment is coming along swimmingly, as you already have another chapter. Still no idea how long I can keep this up, but here's hoping to at least the end of the story.
And no cliffhanger on this one, I promise.
Greg and Jack walked past Hugh, who was standing at the reception desk like he did every day at the City South police station. Jack smiled and Hugh nodded.
"Let us know when those results come in, Collins," Greg called out over his shoulder and opened the door to the interrogation room.
John sat at the table with his head bowed, hands clasped and handcuffed in front of him.
"I need you to go over every detail with me," Greg said, sitting down in front of him.
John let out a shuddering sigh and slowly raised his head, "I didn't set out to kill her, but I did nothing to stop it when I had the chance. I had, in fact, tried to kill myself."
"Come again?" Jack asked, raising an eyebrow.
"In my coat pocket you'll find a small vial," John replied. Jack stepped forward and rummaged through John's pockets until he found the bottle. He poked his head out to the reception area.
"Hugh!" he called.
The constable looked up in time to see Jack lobbing a bottle at him. He caught it deftly with a small look of surprise on his face.
"Have Mac test that," Jack explained. "See if it matches what they found in Mary's blood."
"Right away, sir!" Hugh exclaimed and dashed off for the morgue.
Jack turned around, closed the door behind him and said to John, "Continue."
"I had it in my pocket last night at the party," John started. "I had intended to drink the poison myself at the toast announcing Mary's and my engagement."
Greg frowned. "That's a bit drastic, don't you think?"
John shrugged. "If the poison didn't kill me, at the very least it would make me a vegetable and therefore useless to her."
"What do you mean?" Jack asked, concerned.
"She was only marrying me to get at my medical practice and the records kept there. That bitch was blackmailing my patients," John growled, clenching his teeth and his fists.
"Why not call off the engagement, or why did you even propose at all if you knew this?" Greg pressed.
John scoffed. "And have her blackmail me, or worse, Sherlock? No thanks, besides I didn't know until the day of the party. I had come back early from lunch because I forgot my wallet, to overhear her extort Mrs Hudson."
"Why would she blackmail Sherlock?" Jack asked.
"I don't know!" John said panicked. "I only meant that she would try to find something on him."
Greg and Jack shared a look.
John gulped. "Anyway," he said with a small cough. "I knew that if she didn't get what she wanted she would hurt me or Sherlock, so I was going to take the coward's way out. I poisoned my glass and held onto it so that I wouldn't lose my nerve."
Jack half sat on the table, one leg up, the other flat on the floor for balance, hands clasped on his bent knee. "Then how did she get the drink?"
"After hearing Sherlock play, I knew I couldn't leave him behind. It would hurt more than anything else I could've done," John sighed and bowed his head once more. "I set the glass down and walked out to the gardens where I had seen Sherlock go after his performance, but before I could get to the doors I realized that I shouldn't have left a poisoned glass lying around."
"You think!" Greg bellowed.
John nodded, mournfully. "It was stupid, I know that. I wasn't thinking at the party. I turned around to see Mary grab the glass and drink it down. I tried to catch her, to warn her, but I lost her in the crowd. Knowing it was a lost cause, I left her to her fate. She would have started to experience dizziness and vomiting within minutes and then death." He shrugged. "I figure that the dizziness got her first and she fell from the top of the stairs, only hastening her inevitable end."
The room grew quiet and as the silence stretched on, John cleared his throat, "So you see officers, I killed Mary."
Just then there was a knock on the door and Jack went to answer it. On the other side, Hugh was back.
Jack raised his eyebrows. "That was quick."
"Dr McMillan said that there was no need to test the vial," Hugh stage whispered. "There wasn't enough poison in the victim's system to have killed her. At best, she would have had flu-like symptoms for a couple of hours and then would have been fine."
John stood up, "No. No, that's not possible. I've seen what that poison can do; it would have killed her. I know it would have."
Greg cocked his head to the side, "Collins, do you still have the vial?"
Hugh nodded and Jack moved aside to let him into the interrogation room. Hugh pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to Greg.
Greg looked at the vial and smiled softly. "Have you looked at the bottle since the party?"
John shook his head.
Greg held it out for him to take. John cupped his hands and Greg gently dropped the vial into them.
John turned the bottle over through his fingers and let out a small sob. The seal on the vial was barely broken. It wouldn't have poured out much of its contents. In John's haste to poison himself, he hadn't opened it enough to have done him or Mary much harm.
"No," he cried again. "It has to be me."
Greg looked at Jack and then back to John, concerned. "Dr Watson?"
"It has to be me," John repeated. "You can't keep investigating. You'll turn up things that deserve to stay buried."
"What things?" Jack asked. He looked to Hugh and Greg but neither one had any idea what John could be referring to.
"You'll only hurt him," John murmured, clutching the bottle tightly.
"Hurt who?" Greg pressed.
John pounded on the table and growled, "You'll only do more harm. I can't let you hurt him like that." Tears streamed down his face as looked up at the police officers, pleading, "Please...please take me."
Phryne, who was not one to take orders, especially when it wasn't something she wanted to do, had dragged Mycroft into town with her on her car. As she was nearing the police station she spotted Dot walk out of one of the shops with a woman and her teen-aged son.
Phryne honked the horn and waved. A delighted Dot waved back and beckoned her and Mycroft to come over. Phryne stopped the car and leapt out of it, graceful as a swan. Mycroft, on the other hand, exited the vehicle with all the dignity of a secretary bird.
As Phryne got closer she could better see the pair Dot was conversing with. The mother had long dark locks, hazel eyes, and warm, dusky skin. She starkly contrasted with her son, a gangly boy with dark curls, pale skin, and bright blue eyes.
"This is my friend," Dot said to the pair, "Miss Phryne Fisher, lady detective. These are Mrs Janine Hawkins and her son, Archie."
Phryne smiled and made sure to shake hands with them both. "Pleasure to meet you."
Mycroft just smiled, as they had met before.
After a few moments of conversing Phryne exclaimed, "He looks so much like Sherlock, don't you think, Mycroft?"
Mycroft scoffed. "Only as he is now, you should have seen him as a teenager, he was short and freckled until he was sixteen and then he shot up like bean sprout."
Phryne knew that she should leave it alone, but it just went against her grain to leave something unturned. "You must have been quite young when Archie was born."
Janine nodded and admitted. "Oh yes, about seventeen. Sadly, Archie's father passed away in the War."
Phryne smiled and the Hawkinses parted company from Phryne and her friends. As they walked back to the car, Miss Fisher commented, "You know, Sherlock would have been about the right age to have fathered Archie. She could be using the 'husband died' excuse to ward off her nosy neighbors. I would, if I were in her position."
"Oh for God's sake!" Mycroft protested.
Dot blushed. "Sherlock is very unlikely to have–" she made a vague noise, "with Mrs Hawkins."
"Sex, Dot," Phryne admonished her friend, "You can say it. Had sex. For crying out loud, you're a married woman." She put her hands on her hips. "I don't see why not, Mrs Hawkins is a pretty enough woman now, she would have turned many an eye in the town, so why not Sherlock's?"
"He's homosexual!" Dot and Mycroft said together.
Both Phryne and Mycroft turned to Dot.
She blushed, but began to tell them what she had seen in the garden in the days leading up to the party.
"Oh dear," Mycroft said, mournfully, "I'm afraid that gives him even more of a motive to kill Miss Morstan."
They stopped in front of the police station and Phryne's eyes lit up and she gasped. "Unless–"
"What is it, Miss?" Dot asked.
"I haven't figured out who did it, yet. But I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt it wasn't Sherlock or John!"
She ran into the police station, calling over her shoulder, "I need to see Detective Inspector Lestrade!"
Phryne stopped short when she saw Hugh removing the handcuffs from John and knew what he had tried to do.
"Hello, Detective Inspector Lestrade," she said, strolling up to Greg as he and Jack came out of Greg's office.
Both officers stopped and said, "Uh oh."
"Oh, come now," Phryne said, smiling, "all I want to do is have a nice talk with John here somewhere private."
Greg shrugged, "I don't see what harm it could do and you might get more out of him than we were able to."
Jack couldn't argue, he had seen it far too often in their time together.
"You could use the cells," Greg explained. "We mainly use them for a drunk tank when the boys get a bit too rowdy and there is no one there now."
"Good," Phryne grinned. "Follow me, John!"
John dutifully followed her to the place he had hoped would be his new home, the cells. John sat down on the bed and looked up at her expectantly.
"You do have an alibi for Mary's murder, don't you?" Phryne asked.
John scoffed. "Even if I did, it's not one I can tell anyone."
"Yes, because shagging the owner of Undershaw's younger brother would land both of you right here."
John's jaw dropped. "No! Of course not!"
"Oh God's sake!" Phryne said, exasperated. "Mac is homosexual."
John frowned, but Phryne waited until the comment really sank in.
"Oh!"
"Exactly, I wouldn't turn you in, any more than I would her or anyone else with those proclivities."
John sagged against the stone of the wall in relief. "I never thought about how heavy that kind of secret is until someone knows and the weight is gone."
Phryne walked further into the room, "Now, the sensible thing for you to do is hire me, and anything you tell me would be considered privileged."
"And Sherlock?"
"Oh, I don't mind taking on more than one client," she said, folding her arms and cocking her head.
John let out a sigh of relief. "Thank you!"
"Oh, believe me, the pleasure is all mine."
