"So it was Eleanor," John said, leaning back in his chair, half disbelieving they'd been on the right track – more or less – most of the time.
"No," Sherlock replied, shaking his head slightly. "This was written by Avery. To Henry."
"What?"
"The theft wasn't the crime – not Henry's crime anyway. It was this. Listen: 'My dearest Henry – It has all been arranged. After all this time. I can scarcely believe it, and I wish I could tell you in person, but I dare not. This will have to do.
"'I've left you money for travel in Marion Wood, buried in the usual spot. It is enough to get you there, and to buy you whatever else you might need along the way. Spend it wisely, love, for I've no means of getting you more during your journey. Should you need more before you leave, get a message to M, who will see to it you have whatever else you need."
"Who's M?" John asked.
Sherlock shook his head, tapping his pen against his lower lip.
"I don't know," he said. "Not yet."
"Someone knew they were going."
"Obvious," Sherlock replied.
"They ran off together," John murmured, raising his eyebrows.
"Eight months apart, and not for the reasons we thought, but yes."
"Where?" John asked. "Were you right about France?"
"I can't tell," Sherlock replied. "Their destination isn't named specifically." John moved to sit on the arm of Sherlock's chair, one hand resting lightly between his partner's shoulder blades as he leaned forward slightly to listen.
"'You know where to go – all but the address. As I write this, I don't know it either; strange to think neither of us will know when you read this. But you will as soon as I do. The message may come to you by other means – be waiting for it, my love, and don't neglect to check the woods. M may leave it there, if no other option presents itself.'"
John raised an eyebrow, but didn't interrupt.
"'All has been arranged in London, but don't tarry there, as it will not be entirely safe. No doubt someone will think to link us, if only for two abrupt disappearances, and we are beyond neither the law nor my father's arm in the city.
"'When the time comes, do not delay.' It dissolves into romantic hogwash from there," Sherlock snorted and John grinned, reaching to pluck the translated letter from his husband's hands. Sherlock gave him a mild scowl but let him read it; John kicked his heel absently against the side of the chair, his smile fading as he read the final words on the page.
He wondered what it would be like, writing a letter like this, knowing he'd be separated from someone he loved for the better part of a year. Knowing that loving someone was cutting him off from his family – very likely forever. Having to decide which was worth it, and losing one no matter what the choice.
Sherlock's presence next to him – against him – suddenly felt starkly real, no longer the familiar and comfortable constant he'd grown used to over nearly two decades, but something fragile and indescribably precious. Something that in another lifetime, he might never have had.
Not without giving up everything else.
John shook himself back to the present, closing his eyes and pressing a kiss into his husband's curls.
"I'll get the others. They'll want to see this."
The house was nearly as full of furniture and books – and now Sherlock's notes and papers – as was their flat, but without the added benefit that he could walk on it or throw it into disarray like he could at home.
At least, not without John giving him a Look.
Avoiding John's Looks was important, particularly in company, and especially if they were staying under someone else's roof. The confinement – both physical and mental – chaffed. He needed to move. To really think, he needed the sounds of the city. The chairs and coffee tables he could step on. The door he could fling open to holler for Mrs. Hudson. The pavement under his feet, the ease of hailing a cab.
They were at the mercy of the countryside here. No web of city streets and alleyways to walk, nothing but a rental car. The village was small enough to cross in fifteen minutes on foot – and he may have done it, if only to move and think, but not for the villagers themselves. He was a stranger here, in a town of familiar faces; gone was the relative anonymity that let him move through a crowd unheeded (except for those who recognized him thanks to John's blasted blog).
Sherlock had tried insisting on going back to the Graves' house, and John had given him a Look.
He could have taken the car and gone himself, but it wasn't just London he needed in order to think. It was John, and his husband's presence was more vital the further removed they were from the city.
But John considered the case solved. The idea was so baffling that Sherlock ran up against it uncomprehending each time the words formed themselves in his mind.
How could the case be solved? They had one fact. One simple, solitary fact. Henry Tate had run off with Avery Brooks because they'd been lovers.
John thought that was enough. So did Sarah and Andrew, and Meredith the archivist. There had been questions, of course. There had been predictable exclamations about "those poor boys" – as though a young man with a small fortune's worth of treasure could be considered poor. There had been discussion – seemingly endless discussion – about the details.
All of which had resulted in nothing. No amount of dissection of the family names had resulted in any hint of whom M might be. Not the sister, whose middle name was Catherine, after her mother. Not the father, George, from whom Avery had received his middle name.
Friends were a possibility – friends of Avery's – but even if it were the case, they'd never know. No letters between him and any friend had been donated to the archives, no list of his contacts from his years at Eton.
There had been a crime, and not the crime of which Henry had thought himself guilty. Technically illegal at the time, yes, but the law occasionally required a pragmatic frame of mind. It had driven him away – although to where remained unknown; Mycroft had been unforthcoming with any information regarding their ultimate whereabouts.
The crime had been the theft from the mother. Stealing into a dressing room when everyone was otherwise occupied, relieving her of the money he would need to survive on his own. Pausing on his way out in the middle of the night to add some silver to the collection. Perhaps some servant had helped him, let him know the coast was clear to enter his mother's room, to leave the house, but that same servant could scarcely be the mysterious M.
It had to have been someone with access to funds. Someone with whom Henry could make contact if needed.
John had reread the letter as Sherlock prowled the too-small confines of the guest sitting room, winding down mental pathways that were always dead ends. John had that sympathetic, sad look to him – twin lines drawn up his forehead from his nose, a downward tilt to his lips, a sombre light in his eyes. Feeling badly for two people long dead.
Making a personal connection because yes, John would see it that way, despite the clear differences between now and then. But he'd put himself in Avery's shoes – or Henry's. To what end? What did it accomplish?
There was still a crime, and they knew the why of it – but the why was never as fascinating as the how.
So Sherlock paced and chaffed at the physical restriction and swallowed another demand that they go back to the abandoned house, where he'd have space to move – to think – because John would say no and very logically point out that it was dangerous there. The pavement outside was available for walking, he'd say, but he didn't understand the need to be in the place, to understand the way a now-empty house would have shaped the events.
His abrupt stop drew John's gaze from the book he'd settled on; Sherlock ignored him, eyes narrowing as they swept over the room.
"What are you doing?" his husband demanded, question unanswered as Sherlock slithered under an unoccupied chair, checking the maker's mark, then nudged his husband's legs aside so he could investigate that chair as well. "Sherlock, what the hell?"
He scrambled up, dusting himself off absently, checking the tables and lamps, dragging the desk from the wall to look for stamps or engravings. There was a snap as John shut his book, the faint sound of an inhalation that preceded a demand that he stopped – and that Sherlock silenced by calling Sarah's name.
"What is it?" she asked, coming into the sitting room, momentarily alarmed at the beginnings of disarray.
"This house. You said you bought it twelve years ago. Where did you get the furniture?"
"Um– most of it were already owned," she replied. "Some is Andy's, some is mine. Whatever else we needed – beds and dressers, mostly – we bought. Why is it important?"
"Where did you buy it?" Sherlock demanded.
"Shops," she replied, casting John a look over Sherlock's shoulder – he didn't have to see the helpless shrug in return to know John had given it. "Some new, some from antique shops. Why?"
"Anything from the Graves' house?"
"Well – no. Eleanor cleared that out in the fifties; you heard Meredith, and you've been there. There's nothing there but an empty house."
"You said some of this is yours – do you mean your family's?"
"I didn't inherit all of it," she said. "But some, yes."
"Did they get any of it from Eleanor?"
"I can hardly see why they would have – even with the letter. It's not as though they knew. It was a crime back then but now… if my grandmother had known anything, she would have told us. Andy's been interested in that letter since we met, and I know she missed Henry. She talked about it, sometimes."
"What if it wasn't Eleanor?" Sherlock demanded.
"Who else would have sold anything to my family?" Sarah asked. "It all belonged to her."
"It didn't always – and I'm not talking about selling. Who is M?"
She looked startled at the sudden change in topic, and Sherlock caught John's frown out of the corner of his eye.
"Someone Avery knew – and someone he trusted enough with his secret. Who would help Henry with funds to leave if needed? Who had access to that kind of money? Someone who knew when he could access those jewels, when he could leave the house. Someone who wanted to protect him."
"But there was no one with the initial M in his family," Sarah said. "Meredith even checked for other family members, but there weren't any living there."
"There's no M for us – but there would been for him. Think!"
Sarah started slightly, but there was a sharp inhalation from John.
"His mother. 'Mother'. That's what he'd call her. Not Catherine. It was her jewels he took. He would have needed to know where they were and when to get at them. The easiest way would have been to get them directly from her. "
"But she reported the theft!" Sarah protested.
"What choice would she have had?" Sherlock replied. "Like Henry's delayed departure, it was a deflection. Draw attention away from the truth – by accusing him of stealing her belongings, she hid one crime with another."
"What if he'd been caught?" Sarah asked.
"This was planned. The letter's proof enough of that – not just a plan between Henry and Avery, but one that involved someone Avery trusted. Enough to divulge this secret, and to trust she'd help Henry if he needed it to. Who better? A father at that time wouldn't have been a reliable choice – and he's clear enough about his father's opinions. Eleanor was only two years his senior. Difficult to predict her reaction based on what little we know. But a mother will love her children, won't she?"
"I should hope so," Sarah replied. "Usually anyway."
"If it was her, would the contact have stopped? She might even have known where they'd gone."
"If she did, we don't," John pointed out. "Meredith would have said something about letters from Avery to Catherine if they'd been in the things Eleanor had donated."
"Why would they have been?" Sherlock asked. "Where would you keep something like that? Something that implicates you in the crime your own child has committed?"
"I'd burn them," Sarah said.
"Would you?" Sherlock asked sharply. She drew back slightly, then shook her head.
"I suppose not."
"Hide them," John replied.
"But here?" Sarah asked. "How would that even be possible? It's not as though she knew I was going to be born and inherit my grandmother's letter and move into this house."
"Not this house," Sherlock snapped. "Not even you. Eleanor emptied the big house after her father died. Meredith said Catherine moved to London – but there would scarcely have been room in a flat in the city – or even a house – for all her possessions to go with her."
"But why would she send anything of Avery's to my family? Why wouldn't she just take it with her?"
"Safe keeping. Your family had become her family after a fashion, and perhaps she didn't trust her daughter with the information. Why not pass on the evidence to someone who didn't know they had it?"
"Why wouldn't it have been safe with her?" John asked.
"She didn't outlive her husband by long," Sherlock replied. "And whatever she owned would become Eleanor's when Catherine died."
"She was still protecting her son," Sarah said. "Even after she died."
"But that doesn't mean there's anything here," John said. "It could be anywhere."
"What did you inherit from your family?" Sherlock demanded.
"Um– mostly dinnerware and silverware, some crystal wineglasses–"
"Furniture!" he snapped, ignoring the slightly startled look. "Anywhere something might be hidden and stored!"
"Those chairs and tables," Sarah managed, nodding at the sitting room furniture. "Books, I suppose, and–"
The answer leapt into his mind, swallowing her words, and John's voice was carrying up the stairs after him, disregarded as Sherlock took them two at a time. It was mere seconds before they were behind him, but he was already in their rented bedroom, kneeling on the floor where the rug met the hardwood.
"And this trunk," he said, skimming his fingers over the surface, searching for irregularities his eyes couldn't see. "The mark is an old one – a designer popular in Paris and London in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. Not something you'd find in just any antique shop – and not something you'd pick up for cheap. Not now, and certainly not then. But if you didn't know…. You might use it for storing blankets in a guest room and think nothing of it."
"But there's nothing in there except blankets!" Sarah protested as said blankets were evicted unceremoniously. A quick visual measurement of the interior was confirmed by the hollow feel and sound beneath his knuckles rapping on the false bottom.
"Get me a crowbar or a screwdriver, whatever you've got," he demanded. Sarah hesitated the barest of moments before hurrying out the door. "John, help me."
Working it together was no more productive than on his own, but Sarah returned with a tool chest – and Andrew in tow. John took Sherlock's direction without question, hissing triumphantly when the false bottom began to give, clattering slightly as it tilted. They drew it out, John setting it aside as Sherlock pulled out a thin box and a dust-encrusted packet of letters. The papers and the string binding them were brittle enough to be left for Meredith – no sense destroying what little evidence there was – but the box had held up well enough.
He eased the lid off just as his phone buzzed in his pocket, drawing a faint scowl.
"John," he ordered, and the doctor lifted his eyebrows, but fished out the mobile expertly anyway, ignoring the message on the screen in favour of the contents of the box.
It was a picture frame, coated in dust, the black leather backing paled to a worn grey. Sherlock turned it over gingerly, ignoring Sarah's gasp and Andrew's quiet curse.
"That's them, isn't it?" John murmured, gaze on the two men smiling back at them from the faded photograph. Sherlock removed the backing carefully; the seal had preserved the woman's handwriting well.
Avery and Henry – Marseille, Autumn 1946
Wordlessly, he handed the photograph to Sarah; there were tears glistening, unshed, in her eyes, and her husband was shaking his head in disbelief, lower lip caught in his teeth.
"What does Mycroft have to say?" he asked. The shock on John's face was evident in his actions; he fumbled slightly with the phone, but there was no more impatience for the knowledge – there was little Mycroft could say that they didn't now know.
"Death certificates," his husband replied, voice edged somehow with disappointment for a fact that was hardly a surprise. "Henry Tate, the fifteenth of November, 2015, and Avery Graves, the twenty-seventh of December of the same year."
"Well, we could hardly expect them to still be alive," Sarah pointed out, the reasonableness of her tone undermined only by the slightest of tremors.
John paused, scrolling down through the message, before a smile spread over his face like a beacon. He passed the phone to Sherlock, who read it, eyebrows raised. The thought of Mycroft's aggrieved reaction to the dramatism made Sherlock smile.
The last document his brother had included was a marriage certificate, dated to the nineteenth of May, 2013. A day after it became legal in France – and seventy-six years to the day after Henry wrote that letter to his sister and vanished into the night to rejoin his lover.