"Mycroft, are you absolutely sure that you want to be doing that just now?"
John, still on the floor beside the compliant Ralph Inglis, watched as Mycroft coolly made his way over to the bedside drawer and gingerly pulled it out further to examine it. He made absolutely no acknowledgement of Inglis at all, and was wrapped up in his own thoughts for a few seconds.
"Yes," he finally said, after such a long pause that John had almost forgotten the question. "I didn't go to the effort of getting clearance for this – not an easy thing to do if you're contravening Scotland Yard's orders – to be interrupted by a common housebreaker. And when I lent you that gun of mine, I thought you had better sense than to drop it on the ground." He clucked his tongue and picked up the forgotten pistol before John could venture a word. John was wearing gloves; Mycroft was not, and readily put his prints on the Browning
It was a few dazed seconds before John realised what Mycroft was trying to do. And it was a week before he learned the whole truth: the Browning may never have been officially his, but it had been officially the property of Mycroft Holmes since he'd registered it that way, the day after the slaying of the murderous cabbie.
Mycroft went back to the bed; he inspected the floor and under the mattress, then looked carefully at both bedside tables using a slide magnifying glass. Oh, you needn't wonder any longer what he was looking for," he remarked to John over his shoulder, much as if Inglis wasn't even there. "Dr. Inglis, while my personal experience of such matters may be limited, I believe that women only tend to keep love letters if they're in love with the man who sent them. Sadly for you, this is not the case."
"Love letters…?" John glanced at Inglis, but the man was face-down and not a lot could be derived from the back of his head, unless one's surname happened to be Holmes.
"Perfectly obvious, John," was the smug answer.
"Oh, yes, obvious," John muttered under his breath.
"Timothy Bartlett is dead," Mycroft continued. "Adelaide Bartlett is not only in hospital, but she's in a high-security psychiatric unit, which is virtually impossible to escape from. And that leaves the family doctor as the prime suspect in Tim's murder. It would be very awkward and incriminating if the Met were to discover that he's been sending rather pathetic lovelorn letters to Mrs. Bartlett for some time now."
"You mean, as in letters-letters? Not texts or emails, or-"
"No. Quite clever, really. Emails and texts leave an electronic trail that is nearly impossible to delete… and of course, the first things the Met confiscated from this house were Addie's mobile phone and her laptop. But with a hand-delivered letter written on paper with ink, all one needs to do is burn it and it no longer exists. Especially when it's of no value to the recipient."
John glanced back down at Inglis.
"There are marks here on the bedside table of the bottle used to administer the poison," Mycroft continued, running one finger very carefully over the edges of the table-top. "A wide-bottomed bottle, stub, with a long and narrow neck, I believe."
"And what does that mean?"
"Rather a lot, but I have no inclination to share any more with Dr. Inglis."
Lestrade and such members of his team as he could gather at short notice took another twenty-five minutes to arrive. On hearing them in the downstairs hall, Mycroft paused in his perusal of the carpet under the bed and went out to the landing, inviting them to come up without fear. John still had his suspect on the floor; he waited until Donovan had her cuffs at ready before letting go and standing up.
"Dr Inglis," she said, "I am arresting you on charges of breaking and entering. You do not have to -"
"He pointed a gun at me," Inglis wailed. "He tried to shoot me!"
"Gun?" Donovan was looking around, anxious. "Who has it now?"
"I do," Mycroft said coolly, retrieving it from the inside of his jacket and handing it to Donovan by holding it barrel-down. "I gave it to John when we realised the house had been broken into, simply to protect himself. Nobody fired it. I suspect Dr. Inglis hasn't heard that there's no "trying" to shoot people where Dr. Watson is concerned."
"Don't start on me, Greg," John muttered through gritted teeth before Lestrade had a chance to open his mouth. "Arrest me if you want to, but I'm in no mood for a bollocking, so-"
Lestrade folded his arms. "I was going to ask if you were okay, actually," he said.
"I'm fine." John paused. "So is Inglis, so if he says otherwise-"
"If he complains, we'll have him looked at when we get him back to the station…" Lestrade watched impassively as Halloran helped Donovan haul the reluctant suspect out the door. He was not resisting, but he was not helping, either; he'd become a deadweight, so that between them the two officers were almost carrying him.
"So what happens now?" John asked.
"I need you and Mycroft to come with me and make a statement," Lestrade said. "But neither of you are under arrest… provided Mycroft can demonstrate that you were supposed to be here, 'cause I have no knowledge of it. It'd be nice if people told me these things."
"Mr. Holmes… wakey-wakey…"
Hospital, Sherlock reflected foggily as he struggled to open his eyes. The only place on earth where they wake you up in order to give you a sleeping pill.
He sat up painfully, reflecting that the medicine cup that Rosa, the night-nurse, put into his right hand didn't strike him as a sedative. "What's this?" he slurred.
"Antibiotic," she responded, upbeat but in hushed tones.
He blinked, wondering if she was medicating the wrong patient. "I'm on an intravenous course-"
"Yes, we're easing you off that by upping oral doses and lowering the intravenous doses…"
"Was this explained to me?"
"Yes. This afternoon… Samantha says you did look a bit vague through it all."
Samantha. The spotty, giggling second-shift nurse that Sherlock had wished more than once to end up at the bottom of a well. He remembered that she had given him some sort of lecture about his medication that afternoon, but he had been mentally going through Adelaide Bartlett's conflicting statements at the time and not listening.
"Oh," he said.
"Cheer up, Mr. Holmes," Rosa urged him. "It's not horrible, and it just means you're closer to being able to go home. You want that, don't you?"
Sherlock tipped the thick, gluey liquid straight down his throat, but even so he shuddered and swallowed down a gag at the bitter, cloying taste. "It is horrible," he complained, pulling a disgusted face.
"Oh, that's no good," she replied sympathetically, causing Sherlock to shudder for an entirely different reason. "Well, perhaps some ice cream would help take out the taste in your mouth?"
"It's eleven o'clock at night," he protested.
"I don't think there's any official time zones for eating ice cream, is there?"
Sherlock lay back on his pillows, wincing a little – even days later, he was still surprised at how much pain he was in, though John had told him ad nauseum that it was normal as long as it wasn't getting any worse. He took a deep breath.
"Would you like some?" she persisted. "Can't hurt, especially since we're trying to put more weight on you."
"Fine." He waved his hand. "Get it, then." He paused for a few seconds. "Please," he finally said.
"Whoa, wait, you've lost me."
Ralph Inglis was being remanded in a holding cell overnight while the Met prepared for an all-nighter of collaborating evidence against him for anything they could. Lestrade had taken Mycroft and John into his office for a condensed version of what had happened at the Bartlett house, but much to Mycroft's irritation, he didn't seem to be following. "Hang on," he said. "So what are you saying about the bottles?"
Mycroft sighed heavily. "The furniture in the bedroom is made of balsa wood," he said slowly, in the tones of one humouring an idiot. "Bedside tables, dressing table, chest of drawers, the bed – all of it."
"And?"
"And balsa wood is remarkably soft and pliable. Any glass bottle placed on it would leave little scratches in its wake - perhaps not visible to the human eye, but visible under magnification and certainly visible under a microscope."
Lestrade nodded his head in comprehension. "And you found none of those marks."
"No. Of course, I only had a magnifying glass with me, but if forensics were to look at it-"
"So what's that mean?"
Mycroft sighed again. "Think on this, Lestrade," he said. "Mrs. Bartlett is trying to imply that while she was asleep, her husband retrieved the four bottles of chloroform, combined them into a larger, narrow-necked bottle, and drank it off – all without waking her. He was in bed when he died, which means-"
"He was in bed when he drank it," John finished for him.
"Precisely. The effects of the chloroform would have been immediate and violent, and nobody in their right mind would have the ability or the inclination to calmly climb back into bed after taking something like that. The larger bottle stood on the bedside table. There are clear signs. So if Edwin poured four bottles of chloroform into the larger one while sitting in bed, where in heaven's name did he put the little bottles? On the carpet? That would be an extremely odd thing to do, given that there was a perfectly good bedside table at his disposal only inches away."
Lestrade frowned. "So the four little bottles…"
"Were never in the bedroom at any point. They were combined into one bottle in another room, and it was the larger bottle and no other that was put on the bedside table. Where were the smaller bottles when the first responders arrived?"
"Addie," Lestrade groaned. "She was drunk, remember? Answered the door with them in her hands." He was silent for a few seconds. "Okay," he finally said. "But there's not enough evidence against Inglis to press charges of murder, and we have to check his whereabouts on the night Edwin was killed, too. That's going to take time. And I'm going to need to speak with the Home Office to get his passport revoked and his travel privileges restricted."
"I think I can take care of that," Mycroft commented. Lestrade couldn't avoid snorting.
"Of course," he said, a little acidly. "Do whatever it is you do. But if we can't get evidence that Inglis murdered Tim Bartlett and have to release him, we're going to need to keep him close. John, 'you sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine," John said, with just a hint of offence. "He didn't touch me. I'm sure his lawyer is going to hear all about it."
"Don't worry about that for now. Go home and get some sleep; we'll pick this back up in the morning."
From the end of the street, John noted that Molly had left the front porch light on for him; this wasn't much of a surprise, since he'd phoned her from the station and told her he might be in very late.
He glanced at his watch. It was half past midnight, and Molly was awake. On closer inspection he'd seen that the house was lit up like a Christmas tree; bedroom, bathroom, front hall. The nursery was toward the rear of the house, but John, unlocking the door and letting himself in, had no doubts that that light was on, too. Seconds later, he heard the familiar, pitiful wails of his extremely unhappy progeny upstairs.
Molly...?" he called hesitantly in the general direction of the stairs. Before he could reach them, though, Molly emerged from the direction of the living room, with Toby captive in her arms. She was dishevelled and in her nightie, and John did a double-take. Charlie was definitely upstairs, and Molly was not, and -
John..." Molly spoke hoarsely, in tones so low he barely heard her; she hid her wet face in Toby's thick mottled fur. John stopped short in the hall doorway, heart in his throat.
"Oh my God, what's wrong?" he demanded. "Are you all right? Is Charlie-"
"Could you…" she hiccupped and wiped her flushed cheek with the heel of her hand. "C-could you… please change her for me…?"
He looked at her blankly for a few seconds.
"Sure," he said slowly, suspecting this had subtext that he was missing. "But what's-"
"She… she doesn't want me to do it… because she doesn't like me..."
Oh, Molly..." He crossed the hall to her. "What the hell...? No. No..." He drew her close, ignoring Toby between them, as she started crying more energetically. Upstairs, Charlie was still crying too, but that wasn't anything new. This was.
"Calm down," he told her after a few seconds. "Calm down, you're going to make yourself sick."
"But she… she doesn't… won't smile… always cries when… when I…"
"Nope, don't you dare start telling yourself things like that." He rubbed her shoulder, then held her at arm's length and tilted her chin up with his hand. "Listen… listen. Calm down." He kissed her forehead briefly, noting how hot it was. "Hold Toby a bit more. I want you to put the kettle on while I'm upstairs, and then we're going to talk, okay?"
She nodded, wiping her eyes and taking Toby to the kitchen; John waited until he heard her put the kettle on before he went up stairs and changed Charlie's wet nappy. Laying her back in her crib, he patted her with one hand and pulled out his mobile phone on the other. After a fraught little delay, Melissa sleepily answered the call.
"John," she muttered. "Greg doesn't appear to be here, so I think he's still at work…"
"I know," he said, clearing his throat. "Listen, um, I need some help from you…"
"From me?" her voice suddenly gained clarity; she'd obviously just registered the tension in John's voice and Charlie's wailing. "Is Charlie all right?"
"I think she's just fussing. It's not her. Mel, I know you're not a cognitive therapist, but you're the best I can do at this hour. Could you come over, please?"