John had been expecting Tim Bartlett to be a sort of avatar of his late brother's photograph: gaunt, sandy-haired and freckled. But the man standing on the step of 221B Baker Street just over an hour later was tall – taller than Sherlock – and stocky; as swarthy as a pirate in a pantomime. John didn't need to channel Sherlock to casually reflect adopted, then to wonder whether the biological child was Edwin, Tim or neither of them, and whether that had any bearing on Edwin's murder.
His apparent murder. Because really, he'd told an unimpressed Sherlock just five minutes before, it could have been a suicide. That'd explain the minimal damage caused by the chloroform.
And now Tim Bartlett was standing uncertainly on the doorstep, dressed in a low-key grey suit and wearing an expression that was not, John reflected, exactly of the funereal variety. He wasn't smiling, exactly, but... well, maybe he was just one of those people who had a pleasant face and couldn't help it.
"Mr. Bartlett." John shook his hand. "It's good of you to come. I'm sorry for your loss. Come in... I think it's about to rain." He ushered the younger man into the front hall.
"Mr. Holmes...?" Tim ventured uncertainly. John smiled.
"Not even close. John Watson. Hi. Um, I should warn you, this might be a bit of an unusual consultation." He was leading Tim up the stairs by this time.
"Unusual?"
John held in a sigh. "Sick in bed, but you needn't worry. He's not contagious. I'm his doctor," he added, as if to reassure Tim that he knew what he was talking about. "You don't have a phobia of vomiting?"
"No," Tim said uncertainly. "But perhaps I should come back another time -?"
"He'd kill me, Mr. Bartlett. Just let him know you're not impressed for me, if you could. Come on up, and please excuse the mess."
"Ah, Mr. Bartlett." Sherlock shifted slightly from where he was ensconced on the bed, pillows propped behind his back and the duvet over his knees. He was very pale, but his eyes were keen with interest. There was a bucket on the bed beside him, but it was empty and reeked of disinfectant. All the bedroom windows were wide open, admitting an autumn breeze and muted sounds of mid-city traffic.
"Mr. Holmes." Bartlett leaned over the mattress slightly to shake Sherlock's hand. "I'm sorry to see that you're not well."
"Not dying," Sherlock said tersely. "But forgive me for not standing to greet you. My colleague and doctor has an unsurprisingly literal interpretation of the expression 'bed rest'."
"Can I offer you a cup of tea, Mr. Bartlett?" John asked, before Sherlock could complain more about his bedside manner. "Maybe coffee?"
"I'd be very grateful for a straight black," was the polite, almost timid response - a response at odds with Tim Bartlett's frank physicality and the tenor of his voice. "No sugar, thank you." He turned to the pallid detective on the bed. "I can certainly come back later if this is an inconvenient time..."
"No, not at all." Sherlock snapped his fingers at John. "I want a drink, too, and I don't want any more of that horrible rehydration liquid."
John paused in the doorway. No, he was absolutely not going to get into a battle of wills with Sherlock in front of a client. He could bully the overgrown toddler into taking his medicine a little later. "It's not meant to taste good," he said, rolling his eyes. "What do you want, then? You are not having coffee."
"Juice," Sherlock demanded sulkily.
"Yeah, fine, okay, juice. Any kind in particular, Your Majesty?"
Sherlock twitched the duvet further over himself. "You choose."
"Oh, well, thank you for that vote of confidence. You are such a pain when you're sick..." John, going to the kitchen for Tim's coffee and for the apple juice they'd picked up on the way back to the flat, reflected that Sherlock driving him up the wall with childish orders wasn't necessarily a bad thing. He'd rarely seen Sherlock truly sick, but when he was, he was like a cat - he just crawled into a dark place and lay there, too miserable to even complain. By the time he returned with the drinks, Tim had settled in the armchair. There being no other seats, John went over and rested slightly against the windowsill.
"I see you've purchased a new suit, Mr. Bartlett," Sherlock remarked, gesturing to it. "For the funeral?"
Tim looked down at himself, brushing a speck off his lapel. "Uh, yes," he muttered.
"It's all right, I'm not going to accuse you of being overdressed, though that's exactly what Dr. Watson is thinking right now - he's trying to work out if it's relevant to the case. Don't bother, John. It isn't."
John sighed heavily.
"I suppose this has been a great burden on your family." This was about as polite as Sherlock ever got. John glanced in trepidation to Tim, whose face hardly changed.
"I loved my brother, Mr. Holmes."
Both Sherlock and John immediately recognised the conviction in Tim Bartlett's voice. "And your sister-in-law?" Sherlock persisted. "What about her?"
"Oh, Addie's a good sort." Tim shrugged and sipped his coffee.
"Odd thing to say about the woman who might have poisoned your brother." Sherlock steepled his fingers in contemplation. "So you don't think she killed him?"
"Do you?" Tim crossed his arms for the first time since settling into the armchair. Sherlock's grey eyes suddenly sharpened into deep interest, and he leaned forward slightly.
"Answer the question," he demanded in a low voice.
Tim held the detective's gaze for a few seconds. "No, I don't think she killed him," he finally said. "I mean, yep, I've heard what apparently happened. She was the only one who could have done it. But I can't see she had any motive to."
"She told the police she'd been chloroforming him to avoid his sexual advances."
Tim's eyes widened in genuine surprise for half a second. "Really? Bloody hell, poor Ed. He must've been the only one."
John raised an eyebrow. "The only one?" he interjected, ignoring the don't-interfere glance that Sherlock cast him. "Addie told the police that she's still a virgin."
Tim coughed into his cup of coffee, then set it down on the floor, spluttering until John started to wonder if the man needed first aid. Finally he subsided, wiping his streaming eyes.
"That amuses you," Sherlock remarked.
"Cracks me up," Tim corrected him. "No, she's not a virgin, and the plod must be the dumbest in London to believe that story."
"You're sleeping with her?" John, too, had crossed his arms. But Tim looked extremely unapologetic.
"Not in a while." He took another sip of his coffee. "Gone off each other a bit recently. But we'd started all that just after they got back from the honeymoon."
"That's a pretty low thing to do to your brother," John told him severely.
"No, Ed was fine with it," he said. "In fact, he more or less told me to keep up the good work."
"Really?" John said. "I mean, look, I've heard of open marriages and stuff, but I don't think I've ever heard of one where the husband was fine with the wife sleeping with his brother when she wasn't sleeping with him, too."
"Ed was a bit... peculiar like that, poor sod." Tim leaned back in his chair. From that angle, his swarthy face looked almost menacing. "That marriage was odd from the get-go."
Sherlock frowned. "Odd? How?"
"It was like... like an arranged marriage or something. When Ed asked La Tremoille if he could marry Addie, he told him that his intentions were honourable and he had no intentions of ever sleeping with her."
"And La Tremoille gave his blessings to that idea?" John gaped. "How did Addie feel about it? Did she not want to have kids?"
"Don't know. Like I said, Ed wasn't possessive about who was sleeping with her, so if she ever wanted to have a kid to someone else, he mightn't have minded." He sipped his coffee. "Ed had some odd ideas about... well, about everything, really. Terrified of doctors. He didn't want one to tell him he was dying, or something. Used a lot of rubbish cures that didn't do anything."
"Yes, we've been hearing about that," John said. "But Addie didn't have a problem with doctors?"
"I don't think she was screwing Ralph Inglis, if that's what you mean," was the candid response. "But she saw him as a professional, yeah. Good guy, Inglis. Bit of a wimp, but... yeah. Anyway, one of the things that Ed would go on about if you let him was that he thought men should have two wives. One for... I don't know, companionship and to talk about intellectual stuff with."
"And the other for...?"
"Use."
"Oh." John exchanged a brief glance with Sherlock. "And so Addie was the intellectual companion, then. So you don't think he ever slept with her?"
"Not that I ever heard. I really think he didn't intend to, not at first, anyway. After they got married, he even packed her off to Uni for the first three years. Residential and everything. She only saw him during the holidays."
"Which university was it?" Sherlock asked him.
"Leeds. Majored in... psychology, I think."
Sherlock chuckled softly to himself. "What an odd education for a woman who's trying to pretend her English skills are poor," he said.
"Oh, Addie's English skills are fine, though she used to pull it on Dad every now and again."
"Dad?" John prompted.
"Our mum died not long after Ed and Addie got married," Tim said. "And then Dad decided he was moving in with them, since they had a spare room. I don't think I've ever felt more sorry for either of them. Dad really hated Addie... thought she was sly. Pretty sure she hated him, too. They drove each other crazy. He lived there for three years before they finally moved somewhere else..." He chuckled again. "Somewhere without a spare bedroom, of course."
"What did your father do then?" John asked him.
"Nursing home. He died last year... Mr. Holmes...?"
Sherlock had been fighting a battle with nausea for the last ten minutes; at this point he finally capitulated, grabbing the bucket and vomiting violently into it.
John rose in alarm. "Sherlock?"
Sherlock heaved again, and John felt his anxiety spike. Sherlock Holmes, who was so desperate to pretend the physical limitations of being human did not apply to him, was now throwing up into a bucket... in front of a client. He looked despairingly at Tim, who was already on his feet.
"I'll, uh, leave you to it, then," he muttered. "I hope you're feeling better soon, Mr. Holmes."
"I do, too," John said, seeing that Sherlock was beyond civil conversation with his client just then. "Are you able to let yourself out, Mr. Bartlett?"
"Sure."
"Thanks again for taking the time to see us. And I'm really very sorry for your loss."
As Tim clattered down the stairs and out the street door, John went to fetch Sherlock some water. He swished and spat into the bucket then, seeing John's expression, obediently managed to swallow a few sips. John wasn't much comforted, however.
Antibiotics really should have started to work by now.
"Here, if this tastes any better," he muttered, passing him the half-glass of apple juice from the bedside table. "If you're throwing up, Sherlock, I need you to keep an eye on your fluid intake... I mean, keep an eye on whether anything is staying down..."
"Yes, fine," Sherlock snapped, holding out the now-empty glass in clear expectation of more.
I deserved that. John sighed and went out to the kitchen. He was standing at the fridge, mercifully devoid of cadaver parts for the time being, when his phone rang. Alarmed for a second, he fished it out of his jeans pocket and inspected the incoming ID.
Harry.
His heart skipped two beats: one for Molly, and one for Charlie.
"Harry," he said down the line, trying to sound collected. "Is everything okay?"
He heard it before his sister's voice: the high-pitched, enraged background screams of protest from Charlie. Well, it could be worse...
"John, out of curiosity, do you actually plan to be home at some stage before Charlie's first birthday?" Harry demanded. "Because she's been screaming for eight-four minutes and counting, and Molly's blundering around looking very much like she wants to sell her to the highest bidder on Ebay."
"I'm coming home now," he said. "You know -" He stopped.
"What was that?"
"Nothing." John had a feeling that you know Sherlock's sick wasn't going to earn him much more than a torrent of foul-mouthed abuse from Harry. "On my way."
"Hurry up." She hung up on him.
John exhaled and went slowly back into the bedroom. "I'm sorry, Sherlock," he said, putting the full glass down on the bedside table again. "Charlie's being difficult, and Molly needs me home."
"Hmm?" Sherlock emerged from deep thought. "Oh - fine," he muttered vaguely.
"You'll be all right here on your own?"
"Perfectly fine."
"I'm going to leave your medication and drinks here, okay?" John plunked the packet of paracetamol down on the bedside table, searching in his pocket for the antibiotics. "If you throw up the antibiotic straight away, take another one as soon as you can. Set an alarm if you have to. You've got that scan at nine."
"Yes," he agreed blandly.
"How are you feeling?"
"Awful."
John frowned. It wasn't like Sherlock to make such a frank admission. "The meds really should have kicked in by now," he muttered, but it was half to himself. "Here's enough paracetamol to get you through the night, so if you try to be cute and have yourself a little overdose, you won't have any left for when you really need it. And no wandering around in the middle of the night. Bathroom and back. Fridge if you need some more water. Got it?"
"Mmm."
"I'm going to just check your temperature again -"
"Unless you're looking for an imminent divorce, I strongly recommend you leave sometime in the next twenty seconds," Sherlock said crossly, batting away his outstretched hand.
"Fine." John rubbed his eyes for a second. "Fine, I'm going. But Sherlock, if you're not feeling any better after your next dose, call me, okay? I can come back, even if you just don't want to be alone while you're not feeling great. Or call Mycroft. Or Greg. Or somebody. And I'll be back tomorrow morning to get you sorted for this scan, okay? Half seven -"
"John. Out."
John would never have admitted to ever storming out of the flat, but he did close both the bedroom and flat doors rather forcefully after himself.