The aroma of hot coffee permeated the blissful semi-conscious haze, tugging Sherlock back to consciousness. A sigh slipped from his lips – it might have been a groan, but the thumb rubbing soothing circles on the back of his skull prevented that.
With the coffee mug held between his hands, Sherlock closed his eyes again, happily pinned by John's touch and the heat from the drink seeping into his skin. He hummed contentedly and heard John chuckle, warm lips pressing against his forehead.
"What time is it?" Sherlock murmured.
"Nine-thirty," John replied.
"What?" The detective sat up quickly, taking care not to spill the coffee as he set it aside, swinging himself to standing. "Why didn't you wake me?"
"I didn't know I was supposed to," John said, folding his arms, a smile playing on his lips.
"The case, John! We don't have the time for lie ins!" Sherlock snapped. "We leave tomorrow–"
"And you were up until at least one in the morning trying to decode that letter," John interjected. Sherlock shot a scowl his husband's way, knowing it was very likely undermined by the state of his hair and the fact that he was still the sweatpants and t-shirt of John's he'd appropriated years ago. "So that's a good eight hours."
"I don't need eight hours!"
"Must be all those sleepless nights catching up to you," John replied, an unwarranted twinkle of laughter in his eye. "You're not a young man anymore."
"What does that make you?" Sherlock retorted, but John refused to take the bait, only raising his eyebrows. He gave John another glower for good measure, then reclaimed the coffee, unwilling to let his expression show that the caffeine was welcome.
"I have work to do," he muttered.
"It's still downstairs," John said. "I'm afraid if we stay longer than tomorrow, you'll overrun the whole house."
"The work matters, John."
"Then go solve it," John replied, closing the distance between them to give Sherlock a quick kiss. He tasted of coffee, too – and bread. "The break probably did you good. I got them to save you some breakfast. Eating will help."
"So you always claim," Sherlock muttered.
"I'm a doctor. I know these things."
Sherlock had at least consented to dress and shave before reclaiming his spot in the guest library. A plate of scones and fruit sat next to him – and he was even eating it, if slowly and rather haphazardly.
Eighteen years and something's rubbed off, John thought with a rueful smile, helping himself to another cup of tea from the pot Sarah had delivered.
Sherlock was working in a stop motion way – longer periods of stillness interspersed with short bursts of activity. The map that Sarah had given them was marked up with notes scored with straight lines to cross them out, or scribbled over with corrections and additions. John enjoyed the sight of Sherlock pressing the end of a pen against his lips, chewing on it thoughtfully.
"Stop it," his husband said.
"Stop what?" John asked.
"I can practically hear you, John. Honestly, you've got a one-track mind."
"Coming from you?" John asked with a grin.
"I've got countless, all high velocity, and all currently occupied with this case. If you're going to sit there, you could at least be useful."
"What can I do?" John asked, setting his tea cup aside and leaning forward, elbows on his knees. "What are you doing?"
"Trying to match any of these local landmarks to references in the letter!" Sherlock snapped, tossing the pen on the table. "This wasn't a one-time code, John; it's too complicated! Henry and his accomplice must have met somewhere, and it's unlikely that a farm boy like him would travel great distances from the village on a regular basis – especially without drawing suspicion!"
"What have you got so far?" John asked.
"Nothing!" Sherlock snarled. "Symbols and initials that repeat themselves don't translate into any of the prominent landmarks near here and–" He stopped abruptly, the corners of his grey eyes twitching as they narrowed, the flicker of a frown creasing his features. John bit his lip against a question; one of Sherlock's mental trains had just changed tracks, and he knew better than to derail it by speaking.
There was a suspended, breathless moment before Sherlock moved again, scribbling illegibly on the notepad John had leant him, bottom lip caught in his teeth. John wanted to remind him to breathe but still kept silent, and Sherlock let out a sharp gust of air, sitting back abruptly, eyes fixed on the letter.
"What?" John asked, judging it was safe to talk.
"Translate," Sherlock replied, eyes moving to meet John's gaze. "I said they don't translate into the names of any of the landmarks near here." John frowned slightly, nodding, his palms sliding absently over one another. "But they do, John. Quite literally. This letter is written in French."
"What?"
"Give me your phone."
John fumbled for his mobile, passing it across the small table. Sherlock pulled up the most recent photograph of the symbols carved in the woods and sketched it on a blank note page.
"So?" John asked. His question wasn't quite ignored; Sherlock drew two horizontal lines linking the vertical ones – one on top, one underneath – then pulled out his own phone.
"Check French records. And Belgian ones, just to be on the safe side," he ordered, probably before Mycroft had a chance to speak, then rung off, tossing his phone heedlessly on the table.
"How do you know it's in French?" John pressed.
"I told you, the landmarks." Sherlock spun the letter around to face John, tapping the pen against the letters BM. "I've been trying to match up the names on the map with initials in the letter. I couldn't, because they're translated. Here, John. Marion Wood. In French, bois Marion. Or 'BM'. The landmark closest to Henry's home, and that separated the farm from the manor house."
"But how would someone like Henry learn to speak French?"
"How indeed?" Sherlock murmured. "Of the inhabitants of this area at that time, whom do you suppose would speak French?"
"The Graves, probably."
"Precisely."
"The daughter? Eleanor? But Meredith said she married an American named Sebastian Cole who wasn't Henry Tate."
"Wasn't he?" Sherlock asked. "I wonder, did anyone here ever meet Mister Cole? If so, were they meeting the real Mister Cole? Perhaps he didn't want his identity to be known to those back home."
"That's insane," John protested. "Why go to all that trouble?"
"To cover up whatever crime they committed," Sherlock replied. "We may have the answer right here."
"It's still all in code," John said.
"And now that I know it's in French, there are half a dozen abbreviated words that I recognize. This is a personal shorthand, John – it's not as complicated as a professional one."
"Except it's in another language."
"That doesn't make it complex," Sherlock murmured in reply, bent over the letter again. "Ring Meredith, have her come here. She has information we need. Do it outside; I need to concentrate."
"Cracked it, has he?" Meredith asked as she shut her car door. John grinned, hands in his pockets, giving a slight shrug.
"He says he has." She raised an eyebrow at him, and John beckoned her to follow. "He wants to interrogate you – which he'd call asking you a few questions. It can be an interesting experience. But at least there's tea."
She laughed, falling into step behind him and greeting Sarah and Andrew warmly once inside the house. Sherlock was glowering impatiently at the small talk, but the warning look John shot him was at least enough to keep him quiet about it.
"Tell me about the Graves children," the detective insisted as soon as Meredith had claimed a seat and had been given a cup of tea.
"Ah– well there two of them. Eleanor, of course, and Avery. She was the elder of the two, by a couple of years, I think."
"And she was Henry Tate's age?"
"No," Meredith said, frowning slightly. "I think Avery was closer to his age – not that it would have been a big difference between Eleanor and Henry. But I've told you, they didn't run off together. A lot of people have looked into Sebastian Cole – he was definitely not Henry."
Sherlock tapped his pen impatiently against the map; he'd circled both the farm and manor houses, and drawn a line between them, approximately where the path of the carved symbols lead up the hill.
"But they were both educated. Eleanor and Avery."
"I imagine so," she agreed. "Avery went to Eton, I think. Eleanor went to Roedean, but she'd finished by the time Henry vanished, if my dates are right."
"Were either of the children ever questioned about Henry's disappearance?"
"I can't imagine they would have been," Meredith said. "The police at the time certainly wouldn't have thought there would be a connection. And Avery had already gone by then, of course."
John frowned, seeing the expression mirrored on his husband's face – and on that of his hosts.
"I thought the boy died in the war," Andrew said. "'Thirty-seven was too early for that."
"Could he have already been enlisted?" John asked. "Maybe died on some other overseas campaign?"
Meredith's eyes slid between them, darkened slightly with confusion.
"If Avery Graves was ever in the army, his family certainly didn't know about it. He ran off in 1936 – and not like that," she said, nodding to the letter Henry had written his sister, which lay unfolded on the table next to the coded missive. "He stole a number of extremely expensive pieces of jewellery from his mother – not to mention some very valuable family silver – and vanished."
"No one thought it necessary to mention that?" Sherlock snapped as John was still catching up.
"Neither of us knew," Andrew pointed out, earning a glare for his efforts, and Meredith shook her head.
"And it was never linked to Henry's disappearance," she added.
"Who else would have taught him French?" Sherlock demanded.
"We hardly knew the letter was in French," she replied, arching a dark eyebrow. John caught the gleam of amusement in her eye and was relieved she wasn't offended. "Even if it was from Avery, how would Henry have had anything to do with that? Avery vanished in October of 1936, Henry eight months later."
"They were meeting in the woods," Sherlock stressed.
"Or Henry was meeting Eleanor," Meredith sighed. "Or it was the three of them. But do you imagine Avery lived through the winter in the woods? A boy like that? Besides, someone was bound to notice him, even if he tried to stay hidden the entire time."
"Henry refers to a crime in his letter," John pointed out.
"And the police – or his family – would have noticed the sudden appearance of silver and jewels. Or money for that matter."
"It may have been pre-arranged," Sherlock insisted. "Have one of them stay behind, deflect suspicion."
"Why?" Meredith asked. Sherlock made a disgusted noise, tossing his pen on the table and slumping against the back of his chair.
"Henry might have been able to travel more freely without being associated with Avery. Everyone would have known Avery had executed the theft – but would anyone have suspected a farm boy's involvement? How would they have known each other?"
"Good question," Meredith replied.
"There's a clear trail between the farm and the manor."
"That doesn't explain how they knew each other," she said. "Nor why Avery would need or want Henry's help. What resources would he have had that Avery didn't – or couldn't get access to?"
"You've jumped from Eleanor to Avery pretty quickly," Sarah pointed out. "And to the idea that the trail was made by those two boys."
"A letter in French and the outline of the French or Belgian flag on the trees?" Sherlock demanded.
"Or the Roman numeral two twice – or just a symbol," Sarah said.
"The letter's written half in symbols," John pointed out. Sherlock raised his eyebrows at Sarah, and John smirked inwardly at the expression. He wasn't sure Sherlock was right, but he had no idea if his husband was wrong, either.
And the detective had managed to decode part of the letter for the first time in almost a century.
"John," Sherlock said, in what John recognized as his dictatorial tone, "Go online – find anything and everything you can about Avery Graves or Henry Tate. Ms. Kim, I need anything you've got in the archives – newspaper articles, letters, police reports. Anything."
"What will you be doing?" Meredith asked with a wry smile. Sherlock sniffed slightly, deigning to give her a cool glance.
"Decoding the letter," he replied. "At least someone should be making some progress."
John gave a low whistle. The sound caught Sherlock's attention but the doctor shook his head quickly. His husband wouldn't care about the items Avery Graves had stolen – it was only the crime that mattered.
That and somehow linking Henry Tate to the whole thing.
But the copy of the police report that Eleanor Graves had donated to the archives, along with the rest of her family papers, contained detailed descriptions and even faded photographs of the stolen goods. John had a decent imagination – despite whatever Sherlock would contend – and he could picture the jewellery in all its glory without much effort.
Whatever it had been worth, Avery could have lived comfortably on the proceeds from the sale for a long time.
"It's a bit extreme," he said.
"Running away from home with something valuable?" Sherlock replied without looking up from the letter. "What child doesn't threaten it at some point?"
John snorted, a grin spreading across his lips.
"They don't usually follow through – and not at the age of seventeen. What did you threaten to take?"
"A katana a Japanese diplomat had given my father."
"I bet that went over well."
"My mother told me I was more than welcome to take it. She hated it."
"What happened?" John asked.
"I was five," Sherlock replied. "I couldn't carry it, and Mycroft told me they'd never allow it on the train."
John chuckled, the sound mixing with the distant laughter from the dining room, where their hosts and Meredith had retreated once banished by Sherlock. Sarah had delivered dinner to them in the study; Sherlock had eaten – more or less – under John's watchful eye, before abandoning the food in favour of the work.
"You?" his husband asked.
"What, you can't just deduce it?"
"I'm busy," Sherlock sniffed.
"I don't remember," John said honestly. "I do know I was going to take Harry and go to Southend-on-Sea."
"Why?" Sherlock asked.
"Because it was the furthest I'd ever been and the only place other than London whose name I knew. I was six."
His husband rolled his eyes, then glanced pointedly at the temporarily abandoned work that lay on the table. John sighed, the expression tempered by the smile on his lips, and turned back to his task.
He hadn't got anywhere with the internet search, as proficient as he'd become in those over the years. There were no news articles in the files Meredith had brought; it seemed that the Graves had managed to keep this out of the papers. John didn't blame them – the way gossip worked, the whole village would have known, and probably most of the people in the Graves' social circle.
If Henry had been involved, he would have had to listen to that gossip for half a year before he vanished. John wondered what that would have been like – then idly entertained the idea that it was Eleanor he'd been meeting, maybe after Avery's disappearance. Had she been seeking solace after her brother had become a thief?
But that didn't explain why a farm boy had been associated with either of the Graves children.
Or if he had been.
With an inward sigh, John turned back to the reports, trying to coax some scrap of information out of them that would link Henry Tate to this whole thing. The doubts he'd always had were growing stronger; chewing on his lower lip helped refocus him on the files. Sherlock wouldn't appreciate him shirking his duties – fruitless as they may be.
"Oh." The word was little more than an inhalation, a stunned response that matched the expression John saw when he glanced up. Wide grey eyes, parted lips, startled gaze fixed on the letter.
"Sherlock," John murmured when the detective didn't give any indication of explaining.
"We were wrong, John," Sherlock said, eyes sliding from the letter to meet the doctor's gaze.
"About what?" John asked.
"This isn't a conspiracy," his husband replied, thumb flexing just enough to impress a small fold in the sheets, drawing John's attention briefly to the much-handled pages. "It's a love letter."