Why is this wrong? There's something WRONG here…

Sherlock sat at Lestrade's desk, waiting patiently for him to return from the incident room, where he was arranging for someone to take over Donovan's duties in her absence. He'd cleared the desk and laid out several A4 photographs of the interior of the Marie Celeste and was looking them over, occasionally swapping their order or examining their finer detail with his slide magnifying glass. John was pacing around near the window, phone at his ear, though Sherlock couldn't quite piece together what was going on by his responses.

"Yes… yes. I understand. Has she been in for… no, I figured you mightn't. The police are going to be there this afternoon to talk to staff… yes. Okay…"

Sherlock switched off and willed himself to concentrate on the images. After all, John had many failings, but he had a good memory and had showed time and again that he could accurately relay data. That was currently his job. His, Sherlock's, was to work out why these photographs were tripping something off in his head.

They were completely ordinary photographs of a completely ordinary yacht cabin. If Siobhan and her parents were "slobs", either it hadn't carried over to Brett or his wife had him well trained. The cabin of the Marie Celeste was neat and tidy, but not suspiciously so. Nothing would suggest that it had been cleaned up after a crime had been committed. Forensics had noted that even under UV light, they could find no significant traces of blood.

Sherlock flicked through the photographs. Navigational equipment still in place. High chair drawn up to the table. A tiny pink parka draped over the back of one of the other chairs. Two bowls of a meal mainly consisting of white rice, lime and coriander - the pitiful attempts of a middle-class couple gone broke to pretend they were still doing all right. The canary was flourishing, well-fed and cared for, and was currently happily singing away in its cage on top of the filing cabinet just across the office. John had one finger in his ear to hear the hospital contact officer over the shrill tweeting. Finally, he thanked the caller, hung up, and drew a breath.

"Still unconscious," he said. "But she's hanging on, and they've got signs of neuro function, so she might pull through. Strangling's one of those things - you can recover completely in days, or you can die."

After waiting a decent length of time for Sherlock to reply and receiving nothing, John continued, "I'm surprised Greg wants a watch on her room. I mean, she attempted suicide. No one else tried to kill her. Do you think he's worried about someone hurting her? Adrian? Maybe her parents?"

Sherlock shrugged, keeping his gaze on the photographs in front of him. He heard, rather than saw, John sighing heavily and then sitting down in the chair across the desk, as if he were being interviewed.

"Listen, Sherlock," he said. "I told you to call the ambulance because there wasn't time to ask you if you knew CPR and show you what to do if you didn't. I knew Greg was trained, because of his job."

Sherlock picked up one of the photographs - clothes, mainly belonging to Sadie Holland, balled up in a bundle at the bottom of a laundry hamper.

"It wasn't that I-"

"Beryl Holland is the key to all of this," Sherlock said. "Not Adrian."

"Seriously? But-"

"Siobhan's instinct was to defend her husband. Did you hear what she said? She feels as if Adrian hasn't an ally in the world except herself, and she knows he's suspected of foul play because of his prior conviction. How can she defend Adrian if she's dead?"

John considered this. "Okay," he said. "But she did try to hang herself, so why?"

"She's afraid of something else - so afraid that it overrode that desire to protect her husband. Fear would induce a person to attempt suicide like that - not anger. Anger is the only emotion Siobhan showed when we started to accuse Adrian." He picked up another photograph - the canary cage in situ - and glanced at the noisy creature itself, hopping from one perch to another.

"So you think she's afraid of her mother?"

"She's allowing her parents to live at her house."

"When they talk about her like that." John nodded. "Yeah, good point. What's all that about, do you think? Brett and Sadie are broke, and now you're thinking Chris and Beryl are?"

Sherlock nodded. "I've told Lestrade that their bank accounts require careful scrutiny. Both of them retired in the past three years. Presumably, they were solvent before that time. Before something happened."

"What?"

Sherlock gave him a withering look by way of reply. "Another thing I noticed," he said. "Beryl genuinely did not know that Brett and Sadie had no money. Did you see her reaction when Lestrade told her?"

John nodded. "But come on," he said. "Even if you're broke, you don't murder your granddaughter to collect your son's money. You do what normal people do and ask him for a loan."

"And you'd classify this family as 'normal', would you?"

"Good point." A gust of wind rattled the windows, splattering icy rain onto the panes. John got up and went back to the window, looking out on what was quickly building into a London deluge. After a second he instinctively drew his jacket around himself, as if he could feel it. "God, I wish this rain would just go away."

"So would the Cornwall team. Rain ruins evidence."

"But we'll still have the Holland's place, and Derrick Rice's?"

"I doubt Sadie and her child are at either place. If they were, we'd know."

John looked out at the rain again. "It's cold out there," he muttered.

"Worrying about the cold won't help find Sadie and Maisie any faster," Sherlock said briskly. "And if they're dead, this weather won't be bothering them at all."

John whirled around to face him. "Jesus, what-"

"Just being practical."

"Maisie Holland's two, Sherlock! Even if she's not injured, she's in trouble if she's out in that weather. You're not being practical, you're being…"

"A psychopath?" Sherlock quietly suggested.

"If it were Molly and Charlie out there -"

Sherlock finally dropped the photograph he was holding and looked up at him. "If Molly and Charlie were out there somewhere," he snapped, "perhaps dead, almost certainly injured, and it was because somebody had murdered and dismembered you, I would be doing exactly what I'm doing now to help."

In the silence between them, Sherlock listened to the sounds of the building - voices, computers, phones ringing - interspersed with the rain hammering the thick windows.

"Sherlock," John said. "Be straight with me here. Do you think Sadie and Maisie are alive?"

"I don't know." Sherlock, looking through the glass office door and seeing Lestrade approaching, stood up and brushed some imaginary dust off of his lapel. "Thank you," he said.

"For what?"

"For not asking me whether I hope Sadie and Maisie are alive."

One of the down sides of living at Baker Street, as opposed to the middle-class niceties of the north-western suburbs, was that parking was at a premium, both literally and figuratively. It often wasn't available at all, and the nearest space was sometimes in the next street. When Molly arrived home at half-past three, with Charlie, tired out from a day at the hospital staff daycare centre, strapped into the back seat of the car, the spot she usually gunned for was occupied by someone's VW Golf.

She sighed heavily, but there was nobody to complain to except Charlie, who was too young to care. Besides, Molly had recently read a parenting book that absolutely forbid the foisting of "negative energy" onto young children. She put on a false smile and drove around the corner, and around again, a total of seven times before she found a parking space a full three cross-streets from 221 Baker Street.

Well, that issue was certainly one for the "against" if she and John were debating just how long they were going to be living at Baker Street. She hoisted Charlie on her hip and her handbag on her shoulder, locked the car, and, wrestling with an unruly umbrella, made her way up the street toward the front door.

On the doorstep was a woman in her late twenties, engaged in the very act of ringing the doorbell. She was taller than average, with a full forehead, beaky nose, and dark blue eyes set a little too close together for beauty. She held an umbrella, but the gusts of wind tunnelling up the street had rendered it nearly useless, and her dark hair was dripping into her eyes. Molly had never seen her before… or had she…?

Molly had the keys in her hand by this time. The stranger turned to her; it was difficult to tell which woman was the more confused. Molly was now used to Sherlock's clients showing up at the flat on a near-daily basis, but this seemed different, somehow. This wasn't a client.

"Hello," the woman finally said. She seemed embarrassed but friendly. She held out her hand, waiting patiently as Molly struggled with her keys, umbrella and toddler to produce her right hand to shake. "I'm sorry to just barge in on you like this…"

She had a strong accent, but Molly, flustered as she was, couldn't place it. She hoisted Charlie in her arms, fighting the temptation to try to hide her face in her daughter's shoulder. "Oh, no, that's okay…"

"I'm looking for Sherlock Holmes...?"

"He's on a case," Molly said. "He'll be home tonight, I think." And, she hoped, John would be coming home with him. He had work the following day. It was John's usual habit to get up for work at 5am on a Tuesday morning.

The woman was no longer looking at her face, and Molly, looking first at Charlie and then down at herself, remembered she was six months pregnant. She flushed hot. "Oh," she blurted out. "Oh, God, no, I'm not Sherlock's… I'm… I'm Molly," she said.

"Oh, Molly." The woman had a broad, almost horsey grin. "Sherlock's mentioned you. You're the pathologist he works with at the hospital - John's wife, right? I'm Christabel."

When Beryl had explained that her son-in-law was at work, Lestrade had immediately assumed some blue-collar occupation, one that wouldn't mind employing a convicted criminal who'd been in prison for a year. But Adrian Frost didn't fit the bill. He was tall and angular, with a spike of dark hair and an almost boyish face, though his file said he was thirty-four. Dragged straight from his work to the hospital and then to the police station, he was wearing dark trousers and a blue-and-green striped shirt with Fixitfast Computers embroidered on the front pocket. Lestrade took his time collecting Sherlock and John before finally making his way into the interview room. On seeing the trio, Adrian all but leaped out of his seat.

"What's happening with Siobhan?"

Lestrade glanced at Sherlock before he could help himself. Well, at least Adrian was having the right emotional reaction. Beryl and Chris Holland might not have given a damn between them about Sadie and Maisie, but by all appearances, Adrian was frantic about his wife. "Sit down," he said, glancing this time at Adrian's legal counsel, a white-haired man he'd seen about three thousand times and could never remember the name of. "We need to start proceedings officially, and then we'll talk, okay?"

He ran through those preliminaries at an almost breakneck speed. Since the interview with Derrick Rice, he couldn't guarantee that Sherlock wasn't going to provoke another interviewee into a meltdown. Adrian agreed to all of the official details, but his mind was clearly elsewhere.

"I just spoke with Siobhan's doctor," John finally told him. "She's stable and doing the best we can expect."

"But let's remember," Sherlock said, "that she's in the intensive care unit. And it's not a coincidence that she chose to try to hang herself five minutes after being interviewed by the police. She knows something, and so do you."

"I don't know anything." Adrian's voice sounded high and thin. "I would never… I would never," he finished up weakly.

"Siobhan can't talk for herself," Lestrade told him. "Since she's unconscious, it's up to you to man up and tell us if you murdered the Hollands. Did Beryl and Chris pay you to get rid of them, thinking they were going to inherit from Brett's will?"

Adrian traced on the table with his finger, his strokes aggressive, stabbing lines. Lestrade looked down, trying to make out what he was tracing. It wasn't hard to make out, as it happened: NO NO NO NO NO NO

"Can you tell us where you were on Friday morning?" John asked him finally.

"At home," he said stonily. "I did my back in playing golf Wednesday afternoon."

"Got anyone who can verify that?"

"Yes. Siobhan, Beryl, and Chris."

Lestrade groaned under his breath. Adrian's alibis all had good reasons to lie about where he was on Friday, and their own alibis were each other and decidedly dodgy.

"Let's talk about your brother for a second, Adrian." He rubbed the heel of his hand over the paperwork in front of him.

"Inspector Lestrade," Adrian said heavily, "I think by now you've probably done your research, and you know why I torched the car."

"Tell me."

"You know."

"Maybe," Lestrade said. "But I think it's only fair if I get it straight from you. So tell me." He settled into the back of his chair, but Adrian dithered for a few seconds.

"I've never done drugs in my life," he finally began.

"Really? I think you're in a minority, mate." Lestrade remembered that he was being recorded just in time before he could make a confession of his own to Adrian - that he'd been known to smoke the occasional blunt during his final years at school. Pity. In his experience, suspects opened right up when presented with concrete proof that detectives weren't saints.

Adrian shook his head. "Ethan was a junkie," he said.

"Was?" According to the most recent records that the Metropolitan Police could get their hands on, Ethan Frost was alive, if not well, and living in a government flat in the inner East End.

"Well, I wouldn't know what he's doing these days, and frankly, I don't care. But he got into a pile of shit with his dealer. I mean, they were about at the level of cutting his fingers off when he came to me for help. That's when we came up with the idea to torch the car."

"Your car or his?" John asked him.

Adrian snorted. "Mine," he said. "As if Ethan's ever had enough of his shit together to buy a car! It was a silver Mazda RX-8, if you really need to know. We were going to split the insurance money between us. I'd buy a shitbox to get me to and from work, he'd pay off his debts and get clean, and I'd be the best big brother around."

"That's awfully generous of you."

Adrian shrugged. "We don't write off favours in our family," he said. "I'd have found something to call him in for later."

"Yeah," Lestrade said drily. "I think I know what that's like."

"It was an accident. Neither of us had tried to set something on fire with petrol before. I put the fire out. I called an ambulance. I did everything I could to help. I had no reason to set my own brother on fire!"

"Calm down. I get the idea." Lestrade cleared his throat. "We've just found out," he went on, "that Sadie's grandmother, a Margaret Callan, left her half a million pounds in her will when she died fifteen years ago." Well off from the 'over a million' Chris had thought, but Lestrade wouldn't have been too upset if his grand had left him half a million when she'd died.

"Okay," Adrian said.

"And in the time they've been married, they've managed to chew through the whole lot," he went on. "Did Brett ever say anything about buying big-ticket items? Going into expensive business ventures?"

"What, apart from the yacht?"

"Yeah, apart from the yacht."

Adrian appeared to be considering this. Then he shook his head. "No," he said. "Unless you're counting Maisie."

"Maisie?"

"Hasn't anyone told you yet?" Adrian asked, looking genuinely surprised.

"Depends." Lestrade didn't like it when suspects tried to lead him around. "Told us what?"

"She's an IVF baby."

Lestrade willed himself not to glance at Sherlock, though he had plans to never let him forget that little omission from his god-like powers of observation. "Okay," he said. "What can you tell us about that?"

"What's there to tell? Brett and Sadie met at school. They got married when they were practically still kids, but they couldn't have any of their own."

"Do you know what the problem was?"

"Do you talk about that kind of thing with your mates?"

Lestrade silently conceded the point. He was fairly sure more of Melissa's friends knew about his vasectomy than his own did.

"So anyway," Adrian went on. "They did IVF for years before Sadie had Maisie, and I remember Brett telling me that they'd used up the rounds the NHS helped out with and had started to pay out privately for them. I don't know how much, but he said they were expensive. That's probably what he and Sadie spent all their money on." His face crumpled for a second. "Nobody wanted to hurt Maisie, Inspector," he said. "If you're looking for someone who killed her, you won't find them in this family. Now, please, I need to see my wife…"

After Adrian's interview, Lestrade led him back to the front desk to process the necessary paperwork. Sherlock went with them, oblivious to the fact that John had wandered away. Once Adrian was given permission to go back to the hospital, Sherlock looked around and saw John standing at the end of the visitor's area near the vending machine, phone in hand. He beckoned Sherlock over.

"What's wrong?" Sherlock demanded, thoughts immediately going to Molly and Charlie. But while John looked nervous, clearly nothing horrible had just happened to his family.

"Uh…" John glanced down the corridor to where Greg was still talking to Adrian, as if worried about being overheard. "Sherlock," he said. "I've just had a call from Molly. She says Christabel's just shown up at the flat."

"Did she let her in?"

John blinked. "Yeah," he said. "To our flat, anyway. That's what you do when someone-"

"No." Sherlock snatched John's phone out of his hands and put it to his ear. "Molly, no," he snapped into the receiver. "No-no-no. No…"

Too late. He was speaking to silence.

He threw the phone on the ground in disgust and stormed out the double doors and down the slippery front steps, heedless of the steady rain that was still falling. He was making his way along the footpath toward the northbound cab rank when he finally registered that John was calling him.

He ignored it.

"Hey," John said, grabbing at his sleeve to get his attention. Sherlock stopped and turned around, but looked at his shoes, his hands, a passing car.

"Sherlock," John tried again over the roar of a nearby bus. "All right, look, I've… respected your privacy…"

Sherlock snorted.

"What's going on? Don't look at me like that. You went to Germany for a case last summer, and I'm not stupid, Sherlock. You'd been texting Christabel, and then you found a pretty thin excuse to go to Germany without me - you must've been planning to see her. You came back early, you've never mentioned her again, and now she's just shown up at your flat and you're acting like she's kicked down your door. So just tell me, will you? What's - oh."

The 'oh' was so abrupt that it even derailed Sherlock. "What?" he asked, finally looking at John, shrugged into his jacket as if it offered him protection from the weather. But both of them were now soaked through to the skin.

"God, yes, that fits," John muttered. "You went to see Christabel when you were in Berlin and she had a visitor, didn't she?"

Sherlock turned away.

"Was it just your dad, or was it her as well… you know, Christabel's mum?"

"Shut up."

"Nope." John grabbed at his arm again. "Sherlock, listen. If anything, my family's more complicated than yours, so I get this, okay? You might be the world's only consulting detective, but you're not the only person who's got problems with your parents, so stop acting like you've got some deep, dark secret; it's getting boring. Did you see him? Your dad?"

Sherlock lit a cigarette and puffed in silence. John waited it out patiently.

"He didn't see me," Sherlock finally said. "I was crossing the road and saw… it…" He gave a brief, humourless chuckle. "I don't even know why I'm telling you this..."

"I do," John said. "It's 'cause I'm your friend."

Not knowing what to do with this declaration, Sherlock ignored it. "I went to see her at her flat."

"She invited you? She actually told you to come at a specific time?"

"Yes."

"And you saw your dad there, even if he didn't see you. So what, you think Christabel was trying for some sort of family reunion?"

"I find any other hypothesis problematic. She knew I was coming. He lives in America, so am I to assume he was just dropping in for a casual visit? It's almost impossible that she didn't know he would also be there. And that we reached her front doorstep at almost exactly the same time…" Sherlock took another drag on his cigarette.

"Look, I don't know, Sherlock, maybe it's more logical to at least see her and hear her out," John said. "I mean, she's come all the way from Germany, and you don't even know what she wants yet."

"I know what I want," Sherlock said, dropping his cigarette and crushing it under his heel. His gaze wandered back to the cab rank. "I want to find Sadie and Maisie Holland without dealing with some American woman in my flat."

Answer your phone. - S

- Today 12:54pm

Answer your phone, Mycroft. - S

-Today 12:56pm

I'm in a meeting. - M

- Today 12:57pm

You need to go to Baker Street. Now. - S

- Today 12:57pm

May I enquire as to the occasion? - M

- Today 12:59pm

Christabel's there with Molly. You need to tell her to go away. - S

- Today 1:00pm

Tell her yourself. I told you I wasn't getting involved. - M

- Today 1:02pm

I'm busy. - S

- Today 1:03pm

So am I. - M

- Today 1:03pm

I'm INVESTIGATING A MURDER. - S

- Today 1:04pm

I'm SHUTTING DOWN HACKTIVISTS IN THE WHITEHALL EMPLOYEE DATABASE. - M

- Today 1:04pm

Damn. - M

- Today 1:05pm

I'll take the hacktivists. You take Christabel. - S

- Today 1:05pm

And the murder you're investigating? - M

- Today 1:06pm

Shut up. - S

- Today 1:06pm

Answer me. - S

- Today 1:14pm

You told me to shut up. I obliged. No, little brother, I won't be telling Christabel to go away. - M

- Today 1:21pm

Please. - S

- Today 1:26pm

Please, Mycroft. - S

- Today 1:31pm

Please. - S

- Today 1:32pm

Please - S

- Today 1:32pm

Stop ignoring me. - S

- Today 1:34pm

Please - S

- Today 1:36pm

Please - S

- Today 1:38pm

Oh, for God's sake. - M

- Today 1:38pm