"Molly, if you want to take her to the hospital, we'll go," John said over the din. "But I've checked her over and I can't find a thing wrong with her. She's not feverish or vomiting or colicky, and she's far too young to be teething..."
It was almost half-past two, and Molly had been walking the floor with her daughter for over half an hour while little Charlie alternated between low-level keening and full-pitched screams of rage. John had taken a turn, with no better results. Molly looked across at him miserably but said nothing. He crossed the floor to put his arm around her.
"Got a better idea," he said. "We put her in her crib, turn the lights down, and shut the door. See if she'll settle on her own. Maybe she just doesn't like being touched while she's falling asleep." Which would explain why we go through this performance every single night.
"Brooke Cade says the 'cry it out' method is abuse..."
"Who's Brooke Cade?"
"She runs our Mother's Group."
He held in a sigh. What was supposed to be a support group was making Molly less and less confident in her parenting abilities, though it would do more harm than good to outright say so. "And is she a child psychologist or a paediatrician?"
"... No."
"Then it's none of her business what we do with Charlie. We'll give her ten minutes. If she's still acting like we've cut her throat, we can go back to this..."
John had rarely felt so helpless before becoming a father, and helplessness was his least-favourite emotion. Of the people he knew, very few of them also had children and could weigh in from experience. The closest person he could go to for advice was Chrissy Stamford, and he couldn't call her at half-past two in the morning for anything short of a life-threatening emergency. He took Charlie gently out of Molly's arms and went over to the nursery door, flicking the light on with his elbow before going in.
"You're trying my patience, kid," he said as he moved 'Freddie'- Molly's paisley-eared mouse - out of the cradle and put his daughter in it. "If I didn't love you so much, I'd seriously be considering wishing for the goblins to come and take you away right now." He chuckled a little at the idea, which made way for furtive giggling. It had been a very long day.
He patted Charlie for a few moments while she waved her arms and legs and hiccupped. For a second, he could have sworn she was trying to kick his hand away. He took a deep breath, then went back to the doorway and turned off the light, shutting the door all but a slight crack and going back to where Molly was sitting miserably on the bed.
"She's still screaming."
"I can hear," he said, trying not to sound agitated. "She'll run out of steam eventually. She's been up for a few hours, so she's probably overtired as it is. Come on." He lay down and gestured for her to do the same, running his fingertips over her back gently. "Ten minutes. If she's still crying in ten minutes..."
She nodded.
They lay in the darkness, listening to Charlie gradually running low on energy. At the seven minute-forty second mark, there was finally silence from behind the nursery door. John started to remark on the fact when he realised that Molly had fallen asleep.
He drew the duvet over her and hoped Charlie would give her mother at least an hour more of sleep before her next demand to be fed.
"Sherlock...?"
Sherlock surfaced reluctantly out of sleep and opened his eyes. It was daylight in the room and John, fully dressed for the day, was standing in the doorway.
He blinked and rolled over. "What?" he slurred, throwing the duvet over his face and taking the opportunity to swallow heavily. He'd woken up to be sick during the night, and if John hadn't been hovering over the bed, he'd be tempted to go to the bathroom for a second round.
John pulled the duvet off again. "Adelaide Bartlett," he said. "We were supposed to see her today, remember? And if I managed to get out of bed and get dressed before midday, so can you."
Sherlock suddenly remembered - yes, the Bartlett case. He sat up, wincing a little.
What's that?
'That' wasn't nausea and shakes anymore. It was a dull, persistent ache, as if he'd taken a fist to the gut. He paused for a second, trying to puzzle it out; then he carefully stood up. "Give me five minutes," he said.
"Coffee? We've got time for it."
"Uh... yes. Coffee," he muttered. "Fine."
John left him to get dressed. He put on the first clean things to hand - does moving make it feel worse, y/n? - and came out to the kitchen just in time to see John set a cup of coffee down on the table, having had to move a jar of pebbles, a dead moth and a spanner to make room for it.
"Where's my toast?" Sherlock said, looking forlornly at the living-room table where he'd last seen his uneaten meal of stone-cold toast and congealed melted butter. The last thing he felt like was actually eating, but it was the principle of the thing.
"Oh, for God's sake, I threw it out, Sherlock." John leaned over to put more bread in the toaster. "Wouldn't be surprised if the mice had got to it." He looked around the chaotic room in exasperation, then slid the cup of coffee across the table to Sherlock, who took a sip and nearly choked.
"Good God, John, this would keep someone awake three days after they'd died."
"Really?" John sounded genuinely surprised. "I'll remake it if it's too strong for you -"
"No, don't bother." Sherlock looked hard at him, scanning him over. Three hours of intermittent sleep last night. Probably every night for a month. He's used to taking his coffee this way.
He opened his mouth to make some sort of comment on the scenario. "I told you so", or a commentary on how ludicrous it was that human beings wanted to create screaming need-machines when they had no discernable use for fifteen years or so.
He decided not to say it.
There were a few things he wasn't saying to John these days.
"Lestrade, I need to see the house, not just Mrs. Bartlett herself," Sherlock complained. What he'd initially thought would be a foray into a nice interesting murder scene had turned into the usual meeting in Lestrade's office at NSY.
"Take it up with your brother," was the inexorable response. "Got a call from him this morning. There might be an opportunity for you to go to the crime scene later, provided you don't make Mrs. Bartlett cry. John..." Lestrade snapped his fingers across the desk at him. "Wakey-wakey."
John, who had been resting his head on his hand and had closed his eyes thirty seconds before, abruptly opened them again. "Yeah, I'm listening," he said blearily.
"Really? What'd I just say?"
"You said you'd take Sherlock to the Bartlett house later if Mrs. Bartlett doesn't cry during our interview," John repeated through a stifled yawn. "If there's anyone who can sleep and listen at the same time it's a former medical student, Greg."
"Bobbies do a good line in sneaking a quick kip, too. Just how much sleep did you get last night, anyway?"
"Not enough," John muttered. "And I just called you 'Greg', didn't I? Sorry."
John had always made a habit of addressing Lestrade by his surname while he was on-duty, reflecting that he had enough trouble keeping some of his underlings under control without his first name being thrown around the place.
"My name's not a secret." Lestrade glanced at Sherlock and looked amused for a second. "Both of you look like hell today. Some secret mission last night I wasn't in on?"
"Yeah, if you could call 'screaming baby' a secret mission," John said. "I've even got Harry there this morning keeping an eye on things so Molly can get some sleep."
Ordinarily, this declaration would have been a source of high interest for Sherlock - John had made it clear that he was never going to let an alcoholic babysit his child, even if she'd been sober since Charlie's birth. But Sherlock had barely taken note of this exchange. Instead, he'd been analysing the slow but definite intensification of his stomach-ache.
Food poisoning? Allergy? He rejected these one by one. Definitely not cramps. He could thank God for those small mercies, because he wasn't going to be good for investigating if he was crippled with diarrhea. All the same, it hurt, it wasn't going away, and it was slightly worrying. He furtively pressed his fingertips over the place, which helped a little.
"Hey, are you okay?" John frowned, gaze dropping to Sherlock's fingers. "You've gone really pale."
"I'm fine," Sherlock snapped. "Tell me about Adelaide Bartlett, Lestrade."
"Right, well the first thing you should know is that she and her lovely solicitor will be here shortly, and Pam Greer doesn't miss a trick." Lestrade was going through his filing cabinet. "In the meantime, let's take things from the top and give you an idea of exactly what you're dealing with. Adelaide Blanche Bartlett, aged twenty-eight." He slapped down a ten-by-twelve colour photograph of the woman in front of Sherlock, who picked it up. "Killed this guy, Thomas Edwin Bartlett, thirty-nine." He handed a photograph of a sandy-haired, tanned, serious-faced young man to John. "They met when Edwin was on a business trip to Paris, and they'd been married for ten years."
"Ten years?" John blinked.
"Ceremony was three days after her eighteenth birthday. Let's not pretend you or I can say much about age differences, and all that."
"Yeah, well," John muttered, looking at the photograph in his hand. "I didn't marry Molly when she was barely eighteen, did I. No children?"
"No. You're going to love this one. One of the drunken rants she had at the squad that night was that she's still a virgin."
John glanced up from the photograph. "Seriously?"
"Well, we haven't asked her to prove it. What's the likelihood, do you reckon?"
"Wouldn't have a clue." John was looking over Edwin Bartlett's photograph again. He shrugged. "I wouldn't shag him. Is that the reason she said she killed him? He wasn't satisfying her?"
"The opposite. She said she'd been in the confidence of their family doctor, Ralph Inglis..." Lestrade handed over another photograph. "Apparently he'd given her the chloroform to... fend off Edwin's advances."
John looked at the photograph of the young doctor. "I'm starting to see my way around this now," he remarked, handing the photograph over to Sherlock. "Younger, better looking. Were they having an affair, do you think?"
"Looking into it now."
"So she admitted to chloroforming her husband to fend off his sexual advances," Sherlock muttered, looking over all three photographs. "Odd thing to confess to, don't you think? When last I looked, chloroforming people was a crime, even if they don't die of it. Was her husband abusive?"
"She hasn't claimed so. I mean, didn't smack her about or anything. But apparently he was a rare breed of hypochondriac- one who went for every dodgy hippie snake-oil treatment going, but refused to see an actual doctor. And he should have. Preliminary autopsy report." He handed it to John, who looked it over in silence before making a sudden exclamation of disgust.
"What?" Sherlock looked anxiously over his shoulder at the paper in his hand.
"Jesus, he was riddled with bloody tapeworm." John handed him the report. "Something a simple course of over-the-counter tablets could've cured. No wonder she didn't want to sleep with him. So he was into herbal remedies, things like that?"
"You should see the stuff they confiscated from the house. Everything from hibiscus roots to bear bile."
"Bear bile? No, don't tell me. I don't want to know." John rubbed his eyes. "He took aspirin, apparently. That's at least got some medical basis. But never saw a doctor. Was he paranoid?"
"Kind of hard to tell, since Adelaide Bartlett's our only source on that and she doesn't seem to be the full bag of marbles either-" Lestrade paused as there was a knock on the door and Sally Donovan opened it.
"Sir, Adelaide Bartlett and Pam Greer are here."
"Right, thanks." Lestrade looked at Sherlock. "Sherlock, please. Pam's not going to cop any of your antics, so just... don't, okay? By the way, Mel's sitting in with us as well. And Donovan. All your favourite people in the same place, hey?"
Sherlock scowled, but got up without saying anything.
"Mrs Bartlett," Sherlock greeted her with the calm reticence that passed, for him, for politeness. "Sherlock Holmes. I'd offer to shake your hand, but considering the circumstances, I don't think you're likely to reciprocate. This is my colleague, Dr. John Watson. I'm sure everybody knows everybody else." He threw himself into his chair, wincing slightly as he did so. "We need to ask you what happened to your husband last night."
"I've told everyone so many times," she said weakly. She was well-dressed and groomed this morning, with her black curls pinned up out of her face and her makeup carefully applied. An attractive woman, Sherlock thought blandly. In her own way.
"Start from the middle, then, if you're bored by the beginning. At half-past nine, you went up to Edwin, who'd had a headache and had taken aspirin. What happened then?"
"He said he still had a headache. He could be very... difficult and childish... when he was ill. He wanted me to hold onto his toe... he said it helped him sleep," she elaborated, seeing John's very unimpressed expression. "Thoughts come out on your face like print, Dr. Watson," she remarked to him.
"I'll take that as a compliment," John said. "So for some reason, holding his toe helped him sleep. So you did it. For how long?"
"I don't know." Her voice had become weak again. "An hour, perhaps? He was sleeping, and I fell asleep in my chair, too. When I woke up again it was after one o'clock. His toe was cold and I looked over and realised..."
She started to cry, and Pam Greer patted her shoulder and gently reminded her that she had the right to silence, but that she also had nothing to hide.
"No, Mrs. Bartlett," Sherlock said. "Crying is not very useful to me. Facts. I need facts. What happened then?"
"I didn't know what to do," she said, wiping tears away. "I called Dr. Inglis... but he didn't pick up the phone. So then I called the police..."
"And then you cracked open a bottle of Scotch, judging from the police report," Sherlock broke in. "Odd thing to do under pressure - for most people, anyhow. Tell me, are you an alcoholic?"
"Mr. Holmes -!"
"It's a relevant question, Ms. Greer," Sherlock said. "Mrs. Bartlett, I ask again. Are you an alcoholic?"
Adelaide looked at her solicitor for a moment. "That..." she exclaimed in a sort of breathless shock, "that is none of your business!"
"You're up on charges of murder. Everything is my business." Sherlock scornfully ignored the light pressure of John's hand on his arm for a second; a warning to tone it down. "Did you poison your husband, call your lover to let him know you needed a clean-up, and then turn to the bottle when he didn't pick up the phone? Because -"
Like a striking cobra, Adelaide launched across the table between them. Sherlock drew back, but not quickly enough; she dealt him a vicious rake across the face with her nails, then closed her hands around his throat. His chair tipped and crashed backwards. They both tumbled to the floor, with the enraged woman kneeling on his chest.
"Shit -"
Lestrade grabbed Adelaide by the shoulders, locking his elbows in hers. He dragged her backwards, but her grip on Sherlock's throat held fast. By now he was coughing, red-faced, for breath.
"Donovan, give us a hand -"
But John was quicker, reaching out and closing his own hands over Adelaide's outstretched wrists. "Mrs. Bartlett," he said, "if you don't let go, I'm going to make you let go, and it will hurt. Do you understand?"
She glanced up at him, wild eyes uncomprehending.
"Dr. Watson, stop." This was Pam, who had shrugged herself up against the wall and out of the chaos. "Stop. She doesn't know -"
"Adelaide, let go of Mr. Holmes."
When she made no reply, John twitched his fingers over her wrists. She yelped and drew back like she'd been stung. Lestrade, now with Donovan's help, pulled her again, dragging her backwards and onto the carpet. "Donovan," he barked. "Cuffs. Now."
Donovan handed the cuffs over. As Lestrade twisted Adelaide's arms behind her back and locked the cuffs into position, she spat in Donovan's face. Donovan flinched, then leaned across and slammed her palm against the emergency alarm button. A siren started blaring in the hall. Heavy, swift footsteps echoed outside and the door flew open to admit Halloran, Castelli and Dyer.
"Jesus -!"
"Arrest her and get her to a cell." Lestrade made sure Halloran had a firm grip on her. "Post a suicide watch. Mel - I mean, Dr. Brennan, you need to arrange for her to get a full psych evaluation as soon as possible. She may need to be in hospital. Donovan, get yourself cleaned up right now and go home until further notice. Sherlock, are you all right?"
Sherlock was sitting on the floor, hands cradled his throat and he was gasping for breath. Adelaide's fingernails had ripped deep gouges in his left cheek, and blood was dripping down his face and onto his collar. John was still kneeling beside him.
"Sherlock?" Lestrade noted for the first time that day how pale Sherlock really looked. But Sherlock only nodded and let John help him to his feet. He flinched and grabbed blindly for the back of the nearest upright chair as Adelaide was read her rights, then dragged out of the room and down the corridor, with the shaken Pam Greer following behind.
There was a shocked silence for a few seconds, punctuated only by Sherlock's laboured breathing.
"John," Lestrade said darkly, "take Sherlock to the First Aid room and give him whatever help he needs. And then I need to see you in my office. Got a few words for you, and I'm afraid none of them are going to be 'happy birthday.'"