A/N: Hello everyone! This is my second attempt at a Sherlock story, only in contrast to the first one, I actually have plotting this time (yay!).
This story is a slow-burn Sherlolly interspersed with mini-cases (which will be adapted from ACD canon). Mystery writing is definitely not my forte, but I'm trying to expand my writing horizons, and what better way to start than by adapting pre-written mysteries?
This will be canon-compliant up to S3E2. This story picks up after some time has already passed since the wedding (i.e. Rosie has already been born, Molly's engagement has been broken off for some time). We'll assume Magnussen did happen to some extent (Mary is still assassin!Mary), but with less consequences/fallout than in the show.
First mini-case is adapted from the Boscombe Valley Mystery. Thanks to everyone reading this! :)
Chapter 1: A Weekend in the Country
It was in the precise moment that she was peering over a dead body, blinking away the chilled morning mist surrounding her and pulling her jumper around herself more tightly for warmth, that it finally occurred to Molly Hooper that she was happy.
It had been a long time, she had to admit, since she had been happy. And it was properly happy, too, she mused – not the sort of happy where you had to continually remind yourself of it, and remember you were supposed to be feeling it. No, this was the sort of happy that snuck up on you, that dawned on you as you blearily blinked yourself awake one morning; that crashed over you unexpectedly as you were waiting for the Tube, or folding your laundry, or – well, or standing over a dead body.
"Why did you go into the pond?"
Molly was taken out of her reflections by Sherlock's sharp voice and looked up from the body before her to see that he was addressing the local inspector.
"How did you - ?"
"If I have to explain my logic every time I come to a conclusion, Inspector, we'll be here till nightfall. Just answer the question."
Molly would have felt pity for the man, only he hadn't proven himself to be particularly likeable so far; he'd made every sign of showing how unwelcome their presence was in his village since their arrival an hour ago, and had given her a skeptical and patronizing look when Sherlock had introduced her as his colleague. "I thought you usually have that doctor fellow with you," he'd said sneeringly, glancing in her direction.
"Yes, I presume you're thinking of the male one. This, however, is the lady one," Sherlock had replied wryly. "I have two of them, you see." He had briefly met Molly's gaze as he had said it, with a slight raise of his eyebrow, and she had had to bite back a smile.
Now she watched the inspector fidget uncomfortably under Sherlock's sharp stare as he finally answered begrudgingly, "We went through the pond while we were searching for the weapon."
"Of course you did. And as an added bonus, to scupper up all the evidence, I suppose you thought you and your men would tramp all across the crime scene like you were leading a dance at the village fete?"
The inspector only glared back at the consulting detective darkly, clearly at a loss for reply. And he's only warming up, you poor bugger, Molly thought, though admittedly not with a great deal of sympathy.
But by then Sherlock, having vented his frustration, had already lost interest in the inspector, and had instead begun to stride back and forth across the length of the crime scene, at intervals bending over specific areas of muddied grass and taking out his lens to examine them closer.
"Those are you and your men, I suppose, clopping around like a herd of buffalo; and the inn-keeper and Ms. Turner here, to discover the victim." Sherlock was muttering to himself as he went, but loudly enough that Molly suspected they were meant to hear. "And there the son, obviously; yes, distinctly his." At one point he straightened up abruptly, taking out his phone to snap several pictures of the ground before him. "Molly, any particular thoughts about the body?"
Molly started; she had been making an effort to stand perfectly still after his stern lecture of muddying up the footprints, but now that she had been called on, she gingerly bent down to lean over the man's body, formerly a Mr. Charles McCarthy, and to gently tilt his head away from herself with a gloved hand, revealing where a large wound was visible amid hair clotted down with blood.
"A blunt instrument," she said after a moment. "Blow delivered from behind. Looks to have hit him somewhere around the left parietal bone." She glanced up at Sherlock, who had already examined the body earlier and was now watching her with a note of impatience. Clearly, he was expecting her to go further than that.
"Probably someone who was left-handed, seeing the placement of the wound," she continued thoughtfully. "Taller than him, too, seeing as it looks to have been delivered at a downwards angle." She gave a final survey to the body; nothing under the nails, no sign of a struggle; the single blow had been fatal, and probably entirely unexpected to the victim; but aside from these rather evident things, there was really nothing else she could conclude at the moment.
Molly straightened, futilely making a brush at her jeans where they had been stained by the damp grass. "That's all I've got, I'm afraid."
"Mmm," said Sherlock noncommittally, already striding over to a tree at the edge of the clearing. "And the note?"
Molly glanced at the inspector, who was holding the bagged note which had been found in the murder victim's shirt pocket. Unenthused, he proffered it up to her to read, though he made a point of not actually handing it over to her. Meet me at 5:00 tomorrow, at Boscombe pond, she read from the typed message.
"The killer was someone he knew," was all she could offer up in the end, feeling she was entirely missing whatever point Sherlock was trying to get at. "Someone he trusted."
Sherlock glanced at her, as if to check that she was finished speaking. "Well, Molly, not particularly profound, but overall not terrible, considering most clues pointing towards the killer's identity are actually to be found in the crime scene itself rather than on the body." He leaned over the bark on the tree, scraping something off of it; then squatting down, he took out a plastic baggie and collected what appeared to be a sample of dirt. Getting up, he set off into the woods, still staying in sight of them, but surveying the ground intently as he zigzagged between the trees.
Molly suppressed a smile as she watched him. The very first time she had seen him rattling off his lightning-fast deductions – God, it had been ages ago, hadn't it? – she still remembered how in awe she had been left; almost starstruck - yes, she supposed that was the closest word. The experience had been admittedly overwhelming - his words rattled off with the speed of a bullet, his vibrating intensity, his vigorous, almost manic style of scrutinizing every little detail around him. She had assumed then, from his contemptuous ripostes and perpetual state of irritation, that he resented the presence of onlookers – that he hated people watching him while he worked.
But after John had arrived in his life, and she had seen the poor man's increasingly exasperated reactions each time they came to the lab, she had gradually come to realize that she had been quite wrong. Sherlock didn't resent the presence of people at all – he was exhilarated by it. Molly was sure that he could solve cases perfectly satisfactorily in the solitude of Baker Street if he needed to; but she was also sure he much preferred it when there was an audience to be rapt and astonished by his deductions. She was certain now that he was fully conscious of the inspector and herself watching his movements; that his querying her about the body had been setting up the perfect foil to his inevitable, impressive reveal of facts, all of which were obvious to him, but which were wholly undiscernible to normal people, like herself and the local Herefordshire police force.
At last, he bent over and picked something up from the ground some meters away from the clearing, bagging it and slipping it into his coat pocket.
He strode back over to them, with the satisfied air of an inspection which had borne him ample fruits.
"No luck?" Molly asked innocently. This elicited a reproving glance from Sherlock, though she could have sworn a corner of his mouth had also quirked up for a brief moment.
"Well, I believe I've gotten everything I need. I'll be in touch."
"Hold on," the inspector protested. "Aren't you going to tell us what you've found?"
"Mm, no, I shouldn't think so. Seeing as there are still some loose ends to consider, after all, and you and your men are quite likely to bungle up everything you touch. Don't worry, I'll let you know once it's solved, so you'll have plenty of time to fill out all the paperwork accompanying the arrest."
Molly could tell; she could tell that Sherlock was goading him intentionally, and it was almost funny, how easy it was to predict what the inspector's next words would be.
"Oh, I see," the inspector said, folding his arms with an infuriating smugness. "Yes, yes, I see. Quite easy, insulting us local boys – only the great detective hasn't been able to find anything more than we have. But of course, the great detective can't admit that, can he?"
Sherlock's eyes flicked to hers for a moment, and she caught an almost conspiratorial glint in them, as if he were saying, Well, we know what happens next, don't we?
"Yes, you're quite right, I'm afraid," he said, returning his attention to the inspector. "Pitifully little to go off. Hardly anything at all, in fact, except that the killer has a limp on their right leg, smokes Sterling cigarettes, owns a grey scarf which they tend to lose, wears thick-soled hunting boots, and used to be in the military." He reached into his pocket, pulling out a bag which contained a jagged stone he had picked up earlier from the mossy woods. "Ah, and of course, the murder weapon, which you were all so adamantly attempting to locate."
Thrusting the bag at the inspector, who was still gaping at him dumbly, Sherlock whirled around and set off back up the hill to where their car was parked, only calling over his shoulder, "As I said, we'll be in touch."
The inspector turned to her accusingly, as if she were suddenly the one who should have been responsible for reigning Sherlock in. "Well? Is he going to come back to bloody explain himself?" he demanded of her.
Molly knew she shouldn't have enjoyed that nearly as much as she had. She knew that, really she did.
"I wouldn't count on it, no," she said in as mild a tone as she could manage, hoisting her bag further up her shoulder. Without waiting for the inspector's reply, she turned to follow Sherlock up the path, allowing herself the smile she could no longer suppress, and also hoping the great detective hadn't forgotten to wait for her before driving back to the village.
"You have questions."
Sherlock's voice startled Molly out of her thoughts. He hadn't forgotten her, fortunately; he had been busy looking over something on his phone when she'd joined him by the car.
He was now driving them back to the village, and they had spent the ride so far in silence. She had been busying herself by turning over his deductions in her mind. She fancied that she was able to figure out where he might have gotten one or two of them, but some of them were decidedly evading her.
His statement was almost as if he had been perfectly following her thoughts, knowing she was currently occupied in trying to puzzle everything out. Despite herself, a spurt of excitement passed through Molly at Sherlock's words. There was definitely an undeniable pleasure, a sense of superiority, almost, borne from being one of the lucky few who was accepted into Sherlock's confidence. There was something very satisfying about the knowledge that the inspector was undoubtedly still fuming in the frigid, damp air of the crime scene where they had left him while she was here, getting to see the case being solved firsthand.
"How did you know which people all the footprints belonged to?" she asked.
"Pictures," he said matter-of-factly. "Of the soles of the victim's and his son's shoes. Sent to me courtesy of Alice Turner. I knew her footsteps, because they were slightly fresher, smaller, likely to belong to a woman. The police were responsible for all of the newest ones; therefore, it was process of elimination for the killer."
Molly mulled this over for a moment. "And the murder weapon? There were no marks or blood on that stone as far as I could see."
"No, the killer would have wiped it off. They then would have discarded it a little ways away from the clearing, thinking a perfect weapon would be one that appeared naturally in the surrounding environment."
"But they thought wrong, of course," Molly said with a faint note of amusement in her voice. Sherlock's gaze darted to her for a brief moment, as if trying to ascertain if she was teasing him or not, and then back to the road.
"A weapon's suitability to the crime is entirely dependent on who is investigating it; it may well have been perfect if that inspector was on the case; but seeing as I was there…" He didn't finish the sentence, though the insinuation was clear.
"Go on, then," she said. "How did you know it was that specific rock and not any of the other ones?"
"Moss," he said simply. "The top part of it had been covered in moss, but that was the side facing the ground when I came on it, meaning someone had already picked it up. The grass beneath it was bent, meaning it hadn't had time to grow around it yet. Also a small bald patch on the other side of the clearing, with a similar shape to the stone. Theoretically, it is possible that someone picked up a stone from one side of the clearing and deposited it on the other for an entirely unrelated reason to the murder, but it is rather an unlikely coincidence, especially as the stone seems to match with shape of the blunt instrument used to deliver the blow."
Molly let all of this sink in for a moment. "Right," she said at last.
"Right?" Sherlock repeated, looking at her askance again. Clearly, it was not the response he had been expecting.
"Well, I could tell you it's clever, but it would be rather redundant, seeing as you already know that," she said with a small grin. She saw Sherlock's frown of confusion dissolve, replaced fleetingly with a begrudging look of amusement. The expression was momentary, but admittedly, she was still rather proud to have elicited it.
She was rather proud of how far they had come in general, actually – how normal it all was now. God knew how long it had taken her to get here – a place where she could feel secure enough to tease him, to ask questions without a second thought; all as compared to before, when she'd had trouble stringing two sentences together in front of him. It had been worth it, however, for the two of them to get where they were now, spending a car ride in comfortable silence, casually discussing a case, like peers… no, like friends.
"So where are we heading now, then?"
"Our client, Ms. Alice Turner," Sherlock said, though the abstraction in his voice told Molly he was already sinking into his thoughts. "We're going to hear her side of the story."
The conversation between them petered out once more. Molly turned towards the window, watching the ambling, misty countryside as it rolled past them. She idly wondered to herself when he would finally notice. But then, they had spent most of the morning and train ride together, so perhaps he already had, and was simply refraining from saying anything – putting to use some of that handy emotional intelligence he had acquired over the years of being John's friend. After all, discussing her love life with Sherlock Holmes had never gone particularly well for either of them, had it? Maybe he was just as eager to avoid the subject as she was. She snuck a glance at him, but his face was as impassive as ever; odds were that his mind was entirely absorbed with the case.
Admittedly, she hadn't seen that much of Sherlock lately. She hadn't minded, truth be told; it was nice, after all, to explore a new relationship without having it dissected by one of the world's preeminent minds. But now that they had been going on almost two months, and it was going well – properly well – she rather thought she was ready for everyone to know about it, including Sherlock. And then, if that wasn't the real test of a relationship going well - feeling ready to withstand the full force of Sherlock Holmes' scrutiny – Molly really didn't know what was.
She'd been quite surprised, if not unpleasantly, when she had woken up to an out-of-the-blue text from Sherlock that morning, asking her if she wanted to accompany him on a case up to West England for a day trip. It was true that he had invited her along on a few odd cases with him over the past year, those times when he'd needed assistance, and John hadn't been at his disposal, but it was always infrequent, and had never been out of London.
She had debated on whether to accept at first, but then, she thought – why shouldn't she? They were friends, weren't they? And this was the sort of things friends did… well, friends of a consulting detective, anyway. Besides, that was the perk of dating someone who didn't mind her buggering off to solve crimes with Sherlock Holmes. "Country air – it'll do you some good. I'd come, too, you know, but I've got all this bloody paperwork to finish." And she'd laughed at how earnestly beleaguered he'd sounded, and kissed him on the forehead.
She glanced again at Sherlock. Why not just tell him now? After all, he couldn't always have the satisfaction of deducing everything himself. She had only opened her mouth to do just that, when the car came to a short stop, and she realized they'd arrived outside of a small coffee shop.
"Shall we?" Sherlock said, and swept out of the car before she had any time to answer.