Disclaimer: The characters of Sherlock are not mine, nor is the story, nor are the characters from the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I make no monetary profit from this.
The Seduction of John S. Willoughby
Part Twenty-Two
John Willoughby needed a miracle. He needed a miracle, and he needed it now, and he was prepared to sell his soul to the first divinity who was willing to grant him one.
So far there were no takers. He wondered if he'd have better luck if he offered, in addition to his soul, shaving his head and becoming the appropriate kind of hermit-monk equivalent.
Mr. Milverton hadn't come back. John had done everything to stall the dinner party that could reasonably be expected of him. He'd had the actual serving of food delayed for a bit, just enough to still stay on the right side of embarrassing, and he was letting the courses go on for as long as possible. And when the time came for dessert and coffee, he'd have to resort to an impromptu trivia game (thirty questions made up when they were serving the dinner rolls, to be read by one of the younger journalists he was friends with, with the prizes hastily furnished from the hotel gift shop), and once that was over, there was only the three-minute video montage on Mr. Milverton's career to fall back on. If he wanted to stop people from leaving after that, he'd have to bar the doors and hold someone hostage with a table knife.
He had no idea what Mr. Milverton was up to. It certainly didn't help that his boss wasn't answering his mobile – something that had John tied up in knots after fifteen calls and two texts – and he kept getting the ansaphone when he tried the landline at the house. And people kept asking after him. John had started out saying that he'd gone to the restroom, and then, when it became obvious that Mr. Milverton couldn't still be using the W.C. unless he was in dire need of medical attention, he had to admit that he'd left ('a small personal matter, very urgent, had to be seen to, but he'll be back, nothing to worry about').
It was all a little too much. John supposed that it was lucky he couldn't get Mr. Milverton on the phone because he was this close to screaming at him exactly how irresponsible it was to miss the party you were throwing to celebrate thirty damn years of your own blasted career, especially, especially if you'd said you were going to give a speech at the end of dinner. He couldn't get ahold of the driver either.
And Stephen wasn't answering his calls. John Willoughby wanted to die.
Well, not really. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he wanted to go away and curl up in bed and let someone else handle everything. (Except Stephen. He'd do the handling of Stephen himself, God, yes, just give him half the chance, thank you.)
He finally got the driver on the phone while they were serving the main course.
"Chris! Why the hell haven't you been answering your phone?" he hissed into his mobile. "Where are you? Do you have Mister Milverton?"
"I was having a smoke," said the driver. "And Mister Milverton's still inside. He said to wait."
"You mean you're still at the house?"
"Yup."
John looked at his watch, and despaired of anything ever going right again in the entirety of space and time. "Look, Chris, you go in there, you tell Mister Milverton that he's got just enough time to get here before people start leaving if you leave right now, bundle him in the car, and come back."
"He said to wait outside."
John hopped in exasperation. "That doesn't matter! He's not answering his mobile or the landline, and he's going to be late, and he's going to blame me!"
"And if I go in there after he told me to wait outside, he'll fire me," said Chris. "Or tell me off. I'm not paid enough to deal with that kind of shit more than once a w—" He broke off. John heard a faint series of popping cracks that he hopedwere merely a product of his imagination or just plain old wonky network service. And he really hoped that the hair standing on the back of his neck had everything to do with overtaxed nerves and nothing at all to do with a cold visceral recognition – he'd a grandfather who liked to hunt, and who had liked to take him along during the season - of what that sound could be.
"What was that?"
xxx
"Couldn't have come any earlier, could you? You're more than half an hour late," said Milverton, clearly peeved, to the person who stepped into the office. A woman, John Watson thought as she followed Milverton into his line of vision, though it was hard to tell really, with the hood of her thick jacket pulled up well over a peaked cap like that. She even had sunglasses on, ridiculous as it was at that time of night. "I still don't understand why we couldn't have met at the hotel. You really couldn't have made it there, eh?"
The woman shook her head. She was standing a couple of feet away from Milverton's desk, and dead even with the gap between the curtains that he and Sherlock were peeking through. John swallowed uneasily. He didn't even dare move his free hand to pull the draperies closed for fear that the movement might attract her attention. All she had to do was turn her head. It had been easier when it was just Milverton in the room. He'd had a plan for discovery by Charles A. Milverton, not for discovery by a strange lady and the resulting reaction from both her and Charles A. Milverton. Not that it had been much of one, as plans went, seeing as getting on with a nice, quiet burglary hadn't been in his plans for the evening in the first place. It was all Sherlock's fault.
Ha. John could see that going down as an excuse at New Scotland Yard. Lestrade would probably just shake his head sadly at him before locking him up. In the same cell as Sherlock. Oh dear God.
"I hope you make this worth my time," Milverton was saying, pushing papers around on his desk. "I'm already much later than I meant to be. Well, what do you have for me? You said you have pictures of the Prime Minister's wife you want to sell. I want to buy them, if they're any good. They had better be – I don't want to have wasted this evening for nothing." He looked at her expectantly, and when she continued to do nothing, treated her to an arch, impatient, "Well?"
The woman pushed off her hood, removed her dark glasses, and Milverton's face rearranged itself into a perfect caricature of surprise.
"You?" he said, half rising from his seat at the desk.
"It's good to see you remember me," she said quietly. "Hardly anyone else does."
"I'm surprised you can say that. You were quite the rising star."
Her sneer was clear, even in profile. "And you made short work of me, didn't you? You ruined my life."
"My dear, you have only yourself to blame. You were so very obstinate. I put the price quite comfortably within your reach."
"I begged you not to do it. Right here, in this room, I begged you. Got down on my knees, and begged. And all you did was laugh. You're not laughing now, are you?"
"I'll give you a chance. If you leave now, I won't report this, I won't speak of it. You're only doing yourself more harm. The tabloids didn't need me to point out your little meltdown. You're clearly deranged."
"And what if I am? It's your fault."
"My fault? Look, girl, if you'd made smarter choices, it would never-"
"Shut up. You ruined me. I never got another job. My husband left me, won't let me see my daughter, my mother agrees with him, won't even talk to me. My own mother." She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a revolver. Her hands were steady as she trained it on Milverton. "Do you know what that's like?"
And she shot him. He staggered backwards, eyes wide in disbelief at the wet redness spreading on the front of his cream-colored dress shirt.
"Like that," she said. "And that. And that. And that. And that."
Each sentence was punctuated by another bullet in Milverton's chest. She watched dispassionately as he slumped to the floor, scrabbling feebly, desperately at his desk, at his chair for purchase as if getting a grip on them would somehow save him. Then she walked up to him, shot him in the face, pocketed her gun, put her glasses back on, and left the same way she had come.