Lestrade returned to the Lamorna Cove headquarters alone, pulling his car up behind John and Molly's just as they arrived. Both the Watsons looked so tired and harassed as they got out of the car that Jake Dyer immediately took Charlie off Molly's hands, figuratively and literally.

"Come on," he said, hoisting Charlie in a way that reminded Lestrade that Jake's skills with children were something he might be able to use, should the need came up. "I'll show you your room, Molly. I s'pose she's grizzling 'cause she's hungry. Did you stop for dinner on the way? Decent food, here, I've got to say…"

John watched them go up the steps and through the glass lobby doors, a little distractedly. It was only when Dyer was out of earshot that he finally asked, "Where's Sherlock?"

"I left him at the Ship Inn, with Donovan… long story, John, and the best one you'll hear all year." Lestrade grinned in spite of himself. "Something I can help with…?"

"Have you seen Maisie Holland's birth certificate?"

He blinked. "Yeah, probably," he said. "Copies of all our victims' birth certificates are part of the case files, where they exist. I'd have noticed if Maisie's had been missing. Why?"

"Would you have noticed if there'd been anything weird about it?"

"If you mean," Lestrade said, "did I notice there were any blank spots or Maisie's parents being listed as anything other than Brett and Sadie, no, I didn't. And if I hadn't noticed that, I'm bloody sure Sherlock would have pointed it out."

Now he came to think of it, John was bloody sure Sherlock would have pointed it out, too…

No. Molly had been sure. And now he was possibly veering into the unenviable position of believing Molly or believing Sherlock Holmes.

"It's just," he said. "Molly and I were talking about it on the way up. Long story short, there's a big chance Maisie isn't Sadie and Brett's biological child."

This derailed Lestrade for roughly one second. "So she's adopted?"

"Molly seems to think she might be. But you'd have noticed that, right? Her adoptive parents' names wouldn't be on her birth certificate."

Lestrade considered this for a few seconds, then drew his phone out of his pocket. "I'll get Gregson to text through a copy," he muttered, "and get someone up in London to have another look at the original. I don't think anyone here would be able to tell just from a scan or a photo whether it's a fake or something."

"But I really don't get this," John said, narrowly avoiding a petulant, and I was kind of hoping Sherlock would be here to explain it. "If they couldn't have their own baby, and adopted one, why lie? People adopt all the time."

"You'd be surprised about all the stupid things people lie about, John."

"No, I wouldn't," John said. "Working in Accident and Emergency, you should see the creative excuses people have for 'how that got there'."

Lestrade winced. "Don't tell me. I don't want to know."

"No, you really don't," John agreed. "Speaking of, who was Sadie's doctor in Cornwall?"

"Which one?"

"Exactly. We're looking for a GP, a neurologist, and an ob-gyn. The last I guess I could track down through the hospital where Maisie was born… assuming she was born in one."

"The GP is a Dr. Givan… Jonathan, I think his name is. The Cornish officers pulled records before we even got here and did an interview with him."

"Did you look at it?"

"Yeah, but I was looking for whether he'd said anything that might hint at Maisie or Sadie being abused."

"Did he?"

"Nah. No hint that Sadie was depressed, either; that her marriage was in trouble or she was thinking of suicide or of hurting anybody. She did mention being stressed a couple of times, but a woman with a young kid and no family around except Brett—well, neither he nor the interviewing officer thought that was anything unusual. Wasn't on any other medication, other than the Epilim. Neither was Brett or Maisie, from memory. Maisie's fully vaccinated and hasn't been in for anything more than the usual kid dramas—a couple of coughs and colds..."

Both of them turned as Inspector McMannis opened the front lobby door and made his way down the steps to them. He looked slightly agitated, checking over his shoulder, as if worried he'd been followed outside.

"Inspector McMannis," Lestrade said, taking a step back and gesturing to John. "This is Dr. John Watson, Sherlock's colleague. John, DI McMannis is in charge of the investigation here in Cornwall."

McMannis paused to shake John's hand politely; then he turned to Lestrade and demanded, "Why's there a kid here?"

Through the closed glass doors of the lobby, both of them could hear Charlie's thin wails, interspersed with both Molly and Jake trying to calm her down.

"Ah. Yeah. Um, that'd be mine," John explained ruefully. "No living grandparents, and the usual babysitters weren't on hand. Sorry."

"And her mother's Dr. Hooper, the one I was telling you about." Lestrade put in. "Brilliant pathologist. The Met uses her all the time, and Sherlock uses her skills on private cases. Look, Colin, she's okay. Really. Adapts well. She might even be useful to us—she once solved a case for us by being born."

"Oh, don't let Sherlock hear you say that," John said. "He solves all the cases, remember?"

Lestrade was about to make another bid for Charlie when McMannis's phone rang. He held up one hand apologetically and pulled it out of his trouser pocket with the other, wandering away a few paces for privacy. By now Charlie had subsided, and the only sounds from inside the resort was a hum of faint activity coming from the makeshift incident room, where both Met and Cornwall officers were manning the tip line and collaborating data. Above the resort, the wind had picked up and was whistling through leaf and branch, cliff and crag.

"He seems nice," John said. "I was expected a lot worse from him for showing up with the Human Megaphone. So come on—what's Sherlock doing that's so bloody hilarious?"

"Pretending to be Donovan's boyfriend, would you believe?"

"… Really?" John stared. "And, um, how's that going for him?"

"We're about to go and check out Derrick Rice's place together, so you can ask him yourself. I'm not really expecting to pick them both up alive, if I'm honest-"

"No," McMannis suddenly barked, shoving a finger in his free ear and pacing toward the courtyard's boundary fence. He turned and made eye contact with Lestrade for a second. "Under no circumstances are you to let him in… I don't care. Get an officer to go for him… I'd prefer it if you didn't even do that, but it's not our primary crime scene and he's only a suspect at the—right. I'll contact Sherlock Holmes, send him and Lestrade and a few of the others down to you. In the meantime, keep him off."

He hung up and looked despairingly at his mobile phone, deep in thought, until Lestrade interrupted him. "What was that?"

"Derrick Rice has just shown up back in town," McMannis said. "Wants in to his place, where he could well want to clean up after himself or destroy evidence."

"Did anyone, you know, ask him to come back?" Lestrade asked.

"Not that I've heard of. I certainly didn't ask him to."

"Well, what's he playing at, then?"

John thought. "You've probably heard, but there's been a bit of fuss back in London— they think Siobhan's coming to. Can't talk yet, and Gregson's on it. But he said in his interview that he was close to Brett's parents, and they're still with Siobhan. Bit strange that he'd choose now, of all times, to come back home. I'd love to know what Sherlock thinks of all this."

As it happened, when Lestrade and John picked up Sherlock and Donovan in the shadowy car-park behind the Ship Inn, neither of them were conversationally inclined. Donovan folded her arms petulantly and slid to the furthest extremity of her side of the back seat, and Sherlock seemed lost in thought and oblivious to everyone else in the car. By the time they turned into Cliff Lane and pulled the car up outside the little white house Derrick Rice had owned for only a fortnight it was to find a pair of uniformed PCs standing in the front yard having a heated exchange with the man himself.

"What's going on?" Lestrade asked as they got out of the car strolled over. He sounded casual, but both Donovan and Dyer knew that Derrick Rice was already walking a fine line.

"Oh, you're here," Derrick said ungraciously. "Is this the way you do things, now, not let people into their own houses?"

"While there's an investigation underway into a murdered man and two missing people, yes," Lestrade said. "Sorry, but you're going to have to find somewhere else to watch telly—or, God help us, you could actually go down to the bay and start searching along the waterline, like everyone else in the village is."

Derrick gave a great, heaving sigh, as though he were trying to calm himself from an outburst. "I haven't even got a change of clothes," he complained.

"We'll get you one from inside, if you want to wait a bit. Anything else you need?"

Derrick mumbled a request for a toothbrush, and Lestrade gave orders to one of the constables to find him accommodation at the Old Coastguard, since it was a decent distance from where Sherlock and Donovan were 'undercover' at the Ship Inn.

"You guys go in; I'll be right there," he said to Sherlock and the others, pulling a packet of cigarettes out of the top pocket of his jacket. "It's just, I haven't had one all day. Smoke, Derrick?"

"What's all that about?" John asked as they filed in the door and Donovan shut it behind them. He peeped out of the front curtains at Lestrade and Rice, smoking on the footpath. "Last I saw Derrick Rice, he threatened to kill you, Sherlock, for daring suggest he'd ever do anything to hurt Sadie. Beside himself with grief. Now he's complaining about not having a toothbrush?"

"Bit suspicious, isn't it," Donovan said.

"Plenty of people would be pissed off at being chucked out of their own house, without even a change of underwear," Dyer, who was still firmly gunning for Brian Couch as his culprit, pointed out. He looked around at the little 'front room' they were standing in-a cramped, low-eaved arrangement with small, square windows and whitewashed walls. "Right, so what are we looking for, apart from a change of clothes for our friend out there?"

"The estate agents said the Hollands moved out of their place six or seven weeks ago," Donovan said. "And you said, Genius, that if they'd been living on the Marie Celeste all that time, you'd know. We've made enquiries—no evidence they were staying at any of the resorts in Mousehole, and anyway, it wouldn't make sense if they moved out of their house because of money issues and then spent it on a hotel room. So they had to have stayed somewhere."

"But wait," John said. "Derrick said he'd only been living in Mousehole for two weeks. So there's still, what, four or five weeks…"

"Not exactly." Sherlock got down on his heels to inspect the dust on Rice's television unit, sweeping it up on the tip of one finger. "I don't believe Brett and Sadie were in Mousehole, homeless, for those weeks we can't account for. They moved back to London—and in with Derrick Rice. John, you remember Siobhan saying she'd last seen Brett and Sadie when she came down here for Maisie's birthday last month?"

"Yeah."

"No. I believe she did visit for Maisie's birthday—in London. And Adrian didn't visit with her, nor her parents, because Siobhan was the only one of Brett's family who knew that the Hollands had come back. Chris and Beryl were already chasing them for money. They'd hardly be likely to announce they were in town. But Siobhan—nice woman, dedicated aunt. She could be trusted with the secret."

"And then, so, they all go back down to Cornwall, and Derrick gets this place, and then Brett and Sadie stay here with him?"

"So it would seem." Sherlock pointed to one of the blue fabric seats of the sofa. "That's been turned over recently," he said, stepping over to it. "The forensic team would never have turned it over and left it like that—they know to put things exactly how they found them." He turned it over himself. "Yes, look." He pointed. "Traces of where a soggy biscuit has been ground into the fabric. They've tried to clean it, failed, and turned the cushion over to hide the stain. Do you know any adults who play with their food?"

"Yes," John muttered, glancing up at the ceiling.

"What's this about biscuits?" Lestrade, now smelling strongly of cigarette smoke, had let himself into the house and joined them in the doorway between the living room and kitchen.

Sherlock, after a deep sigh, condescended to explain again. "Did you get Derrick's DNA?" he asked.

" 'Course I did." Lestrade patted his pocket. "Either he's stupid enough to not realise we can get it from a cigarette butt, or he doesn't care. So you reckon he was hiding the Hollands from their, um, creditors?"

"The evidence is all over the room, if you care to observe it," Sherlock said, getting to his feet. "Aside from some telling stains, there are coasters set out on the coffee table, and three of the sofa seats have been regularly sat on in the last few weeks. The depression in the foam and slight wear on the leather is quite distinctive."

"Maybe he just had visitors," Donovan said.

"No. The same three seats, indicating that whoever sat there was in a regular habit of it. Besides, he doesn't know anyone in Mousehole, according to him. Not well enough that he'd invite them in to his house, lay out coasters, and let them claim their personal preference in sofa seat." Sherlock dusted his hands. "I need to see upstairs."

Derrick's bedroom door was directly opposite the top of the stairs, and it was closed. Sherlock opened the door carefully, as if he was expecting to be attacked. But the bedroom was empty, save a large pine-framed bed, stripped down to the mattress, two bedside tables and a low dresser. Above it, a large wedding photograph took pride of place on the wall. Brett and Sadie Holland. Much younger—Brett's hair had been darker then, and Sadie's had been blonde. They had been posed with Brett nuzzled into Sadie's neck, his face almost obscured. He dipped her toward the camera, romance-movie style, and she smiled into the lens with a cat-that-got-the-cream expression: a tall woman, too heavy for current fashion, and, arguably, too heavy for the bargain-rack, halter-neck white dress she wore. Her hair was swept up in unnatural, solid-looking curls, pinned and sprayed and defying gravity, while her veil dangled almost to the ground.

"Lestrade," Sherlock said, "how often have you been someone's best man?"

"Twice… wait, three times," Lestrade said, momentarily forgetting standing up for a mate from school—a shotgun wedding at the Bristol Register Office when all parties involved were nineteen. "Why?"

"And did you put photos of the happy couple up in your house?"

Lestrade paused. "… Yeah, that's a bit weird," he said. "You think Rice was overstepping his bounds a bit?"

"Judge for yourself." Sherlock gestured to the photograph. "Note, too, that it's not a particularly clear picture of Brett, but it's a good one of Sadie."

"So what are you saying?"

Sherlock shook his head. "It's not enough," he muttered to himself. Then, more loudly, "It's not enough that he might have photos of Sadie—quite natural; they're friends, after all—somewhere in his house for him to look at. This is a framed wedding photograph on his bedroom wall."

"I wonder how Sadie felt about that," Donovan muttered. "I'd be giving the creep a wide berth if it were me. Positioned right where he can get comfortable with it."

"No, this isn't about masturbation," Sherlock said. "At least, not entirely about masturbation. He could keep photos for that purpose in his bedside drawer. This is a very carefully chosen photograph—Sadie looking directly into the eyes of the viewer, Brett so obscured and out of focus that any man viewing this could stand himself in Brett's place. A fantasy of being married to Sadie."

"A fantasy that he's Brett. His childhood best mate." Lestrade pondered this. "That he's… Maisie's father? He lost it when you suggested he'd ever hurt Sadie, but you were including Maisie in that."

Sherlock shook his head. "He's never asked about Maisie's welfare," he said. "And it was Adrian who bothered to tell us Maisie was conceived by IVF, not Rice. He'd have mentioned it if he had particular interest in Sadie's child." He scrutinised the picture for a few seconds more, then snapped out of his reverie. "This is going to take forever if we don't split up," he said. "Dyer, you may as well get Rice's things. Donovan, you and I search up here. Lestrade, John, try the kitchen."

"So glad you're running this investigation for me," Lestrade said as they all moved out into the hall, with the exception of Dyer, who began rifling through drawers in the dresser. Donovan moved onto the bathroom and Lestrade headed back down the stairs, but John grabbed at Sherlock's sleeve.

"Okay, Sherlock, out with it," he said, with a deprecatory glance at Donovan to check she either couldn't hear or wasn't paying attention. "What are you and Donovan up to?"

"Not as much as Mousehole thinks we're up to, I assure you."

"No, but seriously—"

"Seriously." There was no mischief in Sherlock's grey eyes. "To find out the truth, one sometimes needs to obfuscate. And make sacrifices."

"Well, what am I even doing here?"

"I'll need you tomorrow. Early."

John seemed on the verge of saying something else when, from downstairs, he heard Lestrade call his name. Looking slightly put-upon, he trudged down the stairs and over to where Lestrade was standing at the kitchen sink.

"What's wrong?"

"That woman," Lestrade said, peeping through the shutters.

John did the same. In the house opposite, only fifteen or twenty feet away, was a deep-eaved window that matched Rice's almost exactly. Amber light spilled out from open Venetian blinds, and between them, John caught glimpses of a white-haired, wizened little woman fussing around at her own sink.

"Trying to be subtle about it, but she's been washing the dishes ever since I left Derrick outside, having a grand old snoop," Lestrade said. "Bloody little old ladies."

"We used to have one who lived across the street when we were kids," John said, wondering whether Veronica Cartwright and her pride of half-feral cats were still alive and well in Great Leighs. "Knew everything about everyone. Knew Harry was gay before Harry did."

Lestrade nodded. "Pain in the arse to live next door to, but they can be a godsend for an investigation," he said. "Sherlock's supposed to be lying low—not sure he thought that one through, but it's keeping me entertained. Want to come over with me and see if the old bat knows anything?"

Lestrade's instincts had been on the money. Rose Tully seemed at least a hundred years old; a garrulous, harmless and probably lonely old soul who'd been widowed during the Thatcher administration and lived alone since. Judging from the pictures occupying every spare space of wall and almost every surface of her front living room, she knew a lot of people and kept tabs on them. On letting them into the house, she immediately rushed to the kitchen to fetch tea and toast. Lestrade had left the fateful packet of fish and chips with Sherlock and Donovan at the inn and John hadn't eaten since he left London, so neither of them complained. It was only when she'd brought in a pot of tea, a stack of buttered toast and a pot of marmalade to the table that Lestrade cleared his throat and began.

"So I s'pose you've heard about Brett and Sadie Holland, and their little girl," he said, taking a gulp of his tea. Beside him, John was too busy with the toast for coherent conversation. "They were good friends of Derrick Rice. Did you see them next door much?"

"Oh, all the time," Rose said. "The little one screamed a lot."

"Screamed?"

"Oh, bless, I just meant she screamed in the way all children that age do. I had four of my own, and they used to stand out in the middle of the yard and hold competitions to see which one of them could scream the loudest."

"Bet that went down well with the neighbours," John remarked.

"Well, there were always the sort who'd complain about that, but mostly, in those days we understood that children are children, and we let them be," Rose said. "There wasn't all this business with not letting children play in their own yard without watching them."

"I remember," Lestrade said. "In the summer, my mum used to chuck me out of doors after breakfast, and heaven help me if I came back before dark.'

"Disgraceful. Melissa Bancock on the corner, she doesn't even let hers out in the front yard on their own. I told her it wasn't healthy for a boy of eight to be able to, you know, be a boy. She said people call the police on people who let their children play out-of-doors on their own nowadays." She fixed Lestrade with a stern, rheumy eye.

"Nothing to do with me," Lestrade said, injecting a bit of boyish charm into the words. The last thing he needed was a diversion into what Melissa Bancock did or didn't do with her children. "So they were a happy lot next door, then? No parties, no rows?"

Rose shrugged. "No parties. I was a bit nervous when he moved in—young man like that, you never know. But he didn't seem to have a… what do you call it? A house-warming party. No loud music, either. And let me tell you, detective, I was very grateful for that. We get tourists here in the summer who never seem to turn the wireless off. What's the point of coming to the ocean if you can't even hear it?"

In the pause that followed, they watched her pour her own cup of tea. Her hands were so gnarled with age and arthritis that Lestrade half-expected that she'd drop it and spill hot tea all over everyone, but she navigated the strainer and tea spoon without incident. "I did hear one row," she said at length.

"When?" John asked.

"Well, it was bin night last week. I know because Terry Vance from across the street comes and puts out mine, and he'd just left when I heard something going on. He was over to put them out again tonight, so Tuesday, would have been. A week ago exactly."

"Who was having the row?" Lestrade went for his pocket for a notepad, but John beat him to it, giving Rose an apologetic half-smile.

"The young woman—Sadie, you said her name was—and the man who lives there."

"What about?"

"I don't really know. I couldn't hear his side of it, and didn't get much of hers. She was shouting; nearly hysterical. He was all quiet, like. But I did hear her say 'you don't know what it's like', and 'I care what they think of me', as if he'd said 'I don't care what they think of you', you know?" She paused. "No, wait," she said. "Maybe she said 'you don't know what he's like.' I don't really know, sorry. I was trying not to listen. People's rows are private, you know."

"Yes. They can be really helpful to think back on when something happens, though," Lestrade said. "No rows after that?"

Rose sipped her tea. "Now I come to think of it," she said, "I don't think I saw the woman and the little one after that night."

A/N - I feel I should apologise for this chapter being a lot of conversation and not a lot of action. I'm sorry. The action won't make sense without the information first. Thank you for being patient :)