After all this time, seeing Sherlock work still never fails to amaze me. Occasionally, as I stand back and watch him zoom around the room – prodding books and figurines, examining the victim's hair, exclaiming about the idiocy of the world in general – I try to predict what he will say. I look at the hem of the victim's coat and imagine what it might mean. . . .
I'm never right, of course. Years of following Sherlock around, and I'm never right. But then, I don't need to be. That's not what I'm here for.
"No, no, no!" Sherlock cried in frustration, leaping to his feet. "Something's missing. What am I missing?"
"A conscience?" someone offered, to general sniggering. It was a comment that Sally might have made, back when I first met Sherlock. Faces come and go, but Sherlock manages to get on the wrong side of them all, one way or another.
"Nonsense," Sherlock said briskly. "John's right over there. No. Something else. Shut up. I'm thinking." He paced the room, hands occasionally grasping at the air, reaching for some elusive clue.
"Can you give me anything?" Lestrade asked wearily.
"I'm missing something," Sherlock emphasized. "I know I am. I can almost –" He groaned in frustration. "I wonder – he does owe me. John –" he clicked his fingers at me – "phone."
"Use yours," I said.
"It's in your pocket."
I sighed and dug out the little rectangle of plastic. It was, in fact, his phone. I handed it over. "Do I want to know what you've done with mine?"
Sherlock waved one dismissive hand in the air (which presumably meant that I'd really rather not know) and whipped off a text. Instead of pocketing the phone, he handed it back to me.
As long as I was going to be a portable phone box, I might as well snoop. I accessed his outbox and saw – rather to my shock – that the text was to Mycroft. A brief message: just the address and the words, What am I missing?
I've . . . never been entirely certain about the relationship between the Holmes brothers. Before Sherlock's "death," I had grown almost fond of being kidnapped, when I wasn't impossibly frustrated. Mycroft and Sherlock are more alike than they frequently pretend. When Mycroft sold Sherlock out to Moriarty – or so I believed – I was furious. But then Sherlock died and that fury died with me. I've never been able to help following Sherlock around. With him gone –
Well. I won't say Mycroft was the next best thing, exactly . . . but he was, to me. There was something oddly comforting about the way he would glance at me with that same look, that exact same look that Sherlock had in his eyes when he was deep in deduction mode. Mycroft gave me purpose, purpose beyond my medical duties. Purpose only a Holmes could give.
"Sherlock's last request was that everyone believe him a fraud," Mycroft told me, not long after Sherlock's supposed death. "I think we ought to respect that, don't you?" And then he explained to me about the snipers, about Moriarty's network, about how with Sherlock not only dead but discredited, they at last had a chance to bring down the spider's web.
He offered me a job. After all, I had been trained by one Holmes brother. Why let those talents go to waste?
"The defamation need not be permanent," Mycroft offered, before I left. "When Moriarty's network is destroyed, there'll be no need for the truth to remain hidden."
I almost laughed at that – almost laughed and almost cried. "And – what? The newspapers are already forgetting about Sherlock. It could be months – years –"
"Then I suggest," Mycroft said, smiling gently at me – a genuine smile, for once – "that you write a book, something to grab the public's imagination. 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,' perhaps."
Three years. Three years – and suddenly, Sherlock was back. Thinner, maybe, but no less bright-eyed. Within hours of his resurrection, he was dragging me off to capture the last of Moriarty's network, Colonel Moran.
As if he'd never been gone.
In a way, he never had been. Thanks to Mycroft, I had unknowingly spent the past three years as much at Sherlock's side as ever, guarding his back, keeping him safe.
I don't know whether the Holmes brothers' relationship changed during those three years or only my interpretation of it, but I began to see pride in the way Sherlock described his brother as the British Government; I began to hear fondness when he called him his archenemy.
"I thought that was Moriarty," I said once, about a month after Sherlock had returned.
Sherlock snorted. "He wished. Moriarty was – maybe – temporarily – my arch-nemesis. But archenemy? Never."
Which was what passes for an expression of deep affection, coming from a Holmes.
Back at the crime scene, Sherlock continued to pace the room, hands flat together and pressed to his lips. Lestrade several times asked him for his deductions, tried to hustle him on so forensics could come it, but Sherlock only flapped his hands at him and demanded silence. "I'm missing something," he repeated.
Then abruptly, Sherlock froze, head cocked, a ghost of a smile upon his lips.
I strained my ears and caught the sound of a young man protesting. "Sir, please, this is a crime scene. Sir, I'll need to see some identifi –"
Mycroft Holmes strolled into the room, furled umbrella swinging in his hand. A young constable – Hopkins, I thought – bobbed in after him, in a helpless flurry.
Sherlock kept his back to his brother, but his lips were definitely twitching.
"Mr Holmes!" Lestrade exclaimed, and I could see the way Donovan and Anderson – not the same two, of course, but the near-replicas which had taken their places four years ago – instinctively turned to look to Sherlock, baffled. "No, it's all right, Hopkins. I'm sure he has – uh – clearance. Mr Holmes, I didn't expect –"
Sherlock's snigger was barely concealed in his hand as he turned to watch the Donovan and Anderson replicas stare at Mycroft in unbelieving horror. Donovan-replica even opened her mouth to say something scathing – there are two of them! perhaps, or, not another freak! But Mycroft's eyes flicked over her and the words never emerged.
Mycroft gave Lestrade a cursory nod and went to stand beside and a little behind Sherlock, leaning on his umbrella. Sherlock finally deigned to look at him.
"Fifteen minutes, Mycroft?" he said. "Hardly a record. Too busy lazing around your club?"
"Fourteen minutes," Mycroft said complacently, his pale eyes scanning the room, skimming over the dead woman on the floor.
I'd given the diagnosis, of course, but my services had hardly been needed: five stab wounds in the chest. The knife – of the ordinary kitchen variety, to my eye, and part of the block set in the kitchen – was still sticking out.
"Sherlock," Lestrade said wearily. "I'd really appreciate it –"
"Of course," said Sherlock – and he was off, spinning out his deductions. Watching him whirl about Mycroft, arms flying, words spilling out, I was struck by the sudden impression that the two of them were like a tornado: Sherlock spinning around and around at a hundred miles per hour, Mycroft utterly still at the eye of the storm.
Which made me a storm chaser, I supposed. Storm chaser, blogger, phone box, and conscience.
"She lived here, obviously," Sherlock was saying. "Recently moved from Brighton. No family. Wealthy – inherited money, probably from her husbands. Engaged to be married again in, oh, a month, I'd say. Fourth marriage –"
"Fifth," Mycroft said softly.
Sherlock spun to him. "Fourth. Ring, necklace, pair of earrings."
"Pair? Really, Sherlock."
Sherlock stared at him for a moment and then he was kneeling beside the victim, magnifying glass out, minutely examining the emerald earrings. "Not a pair," he breathed. "Fascinating. Present from her first husband, no doubt, lost one, and another husband –"
"—her third."
"Her third husband replaced it. Same design, but different jeweller cut the emerald."
I could see Donovan and Anderson gaping. They had never seen anyone correct Sherlock on a deduction. No one – not without being verbally ripped to shreds for abominable stupidity.
And Mycroft, standing five respectable feet from the corpse, had noticed a miniscule difference in the way two emeralds were cut. And he had been right. And Sherlock had admitted it.
I was grinning now. The Holmes brothers knew exactly what effect they were having on their audience. Of course they knew; they noticed everything.
They always did have a flair for the dramatic.
And they were enjoying this as much as I was.
"Four husbands and one fiancé," Sherlock was saying. "All of them rich. Husbands all leave her money. No children –"
"Hmm," Mycroft hummed, examining the tip of his umbrella.
"Yes, I know, but she's pregnant. And has an appointment for an abortion. And not her first either –"
"Wait," Lestrade said, "how –"
"Look around you! No papers, no brochures. First time, you'd think she'd be a little nervous, wouldn't you?"
"You think her fiancé killed her because she was getting an abortion?" I asked.
"What – and kill the baby, too? Rather defeats the point. No – no, there's something else going on here, something I'm missing. What? Why would he kill her?"
"Hmm," Mycroft said again and, for the first time since the deductions had begun, he moved. Propping both hands on his umbrella, he squatted to get a closer look at the woman. Close enough to touch – but he didn't touch. "How many abortions had she had, I wonder," he said after a moment, straightening. "Four, perhaps?"
"Ah!" Sherlock exclaimed. "Of course!"
"Of course?" Lestrade asked, as confused as I.
"A black widow, Lestrade, a black widow! Your very own serial killer – dead on the floor, already brought to justice! She marries a rich man and, the moment she gets pregnant, kills him and aborts the baby. That's probably how it started with her first husband – she wants an abortion, he says no, she kills him. Her fiancé finds out, somehow –"
Mycroft was at the mantelpiece now, examining the trinkets there. "She hadn't always lived in Brighton," he said. "She grew up in London."
"The fiancé puts the pieces together, realizes what's going on – and you end up with a dead black widow with multiple stab wounds."
"So we find the fiancé –"
"Don't be ridiculous," Sherlock snapped. "A man clever enough to put together something like this, resolute enough to kill her instead of going to the police? You'll never find him if he doesn't want to be found."
"An unusually resourceful man," Mycroft murmured.
"Thinking of hiring him?"
Mycroft favoured his brother with one of his best government-issue smiles of semi-benevolent near-omniscience. "Don't be absurd; he's not that good. I'm sure you'll chase him down at the docks. Good day, gentlemen," he added to the room in general, and strolled off with precisely the same air with which he had strolled in.
Sherlock overtook him halfway to the street, phone in his hands – I hadn't even felt him pickpocket me – browsing the web for who-knew-what information.
I ran after him, of course; that's what I do. Storm chasing.
I wouldn't trade it for the world.