When John returned to headquarters at nine o'clock, he found Molly sitting on the bed in their room, her laptop on her knees. She'd already moved a table and chairs from the corner near the window to turn it into a blanket fort for Charlie, who was peeking out from underneath it at intervals and chuckling like an owlet.
"Yes, I see you," Molly teased her as John came in. "Cheeky girl."
"Wow, Molly, that's professional-level blanket-fort making," John said, stopping in the doorway to admire her handiwork. "Did I miss a class on that at Barts?" He got down on the floor and lifted one side of the blanket up to find Charlie, who erupted into giggles again.
"Dad taught me when I was little," Molly said, smiling. "I read this library book I probably should have… I don't really remember it, except that it was about wolves, and the night I read it there was a late storm. I was scared to sleep in my own room, so we made a blanket fort in the living room. I slept it in for weeks."
Not for the first time, John thought that he'd have liked his father-in-law. He drew the blanket down again and got to his feet, leaning over the mattress to plant a kiss on Molly's forehead. "So it turns out Derrick Rice might be a bit of a creep," he said. "With a big obsession with Sadie Holland. Sherlock seemed to think it was important, but he didn't say he thought Derrick actually did it. Did you get anywhere with the police pathologist?" Molly had offered to run her own mini-investigation into the condition of Brett's remains and what, if anything, could be derived about his killer from them.
"No cause of death, sorry," Molly said, "but I'm not surprised. That was almost certainly going to be a head injury of some kind, and, well, until someone finds the head, we can only guess."
"And a single bullet to the temple is a completely different killer to sixteen blows with an oar," John groaned. "So that's not much help. Anything else?"
"He hadn't had breakfast yet, but we knew that, because there was food laid out—John, why were they eating rice at eight o'clock in the morning?"
John, who'd been known to happily eat room-temperature pizza at 7 a.m., shrugged. "Does it matter?"
"It might. Anyway, he hadn't had a chance to eat yet. As far as the Penzance pathologist could tell, Brett was in good physical condition. A bit lean, but that seems at least partly genetics."
John thought about Brett's mother and sister—both decidedly on the dumpy side—but said nothing. Chris Holland was sparse, though it was hard to tell what he'd been like as a younger man.
"No drugs or alcohol in his system," Molly went on. She'd plaited her hair over one shoulder, and started absently unravelling it. "Which might be important, if the lady in the fish and chip shop wasn't just gossiping and had it right that Brett was a drinker. There were some bruises here and there, but they were old and Dr. Lancombe didn't think they were significant to the crime—just the sort of barked shins and things you'd get if you were on an unsteady boat."
She was plaiting her hair up again. And down. And up again. Molly was oblivious to the signs she was agitated, but this one was almost as obvious to John as when she compulsively played with her wedding ring. He sat down beside her.
"Molly, if there's something you're not telling me…"
"The rope burn," she blurted out. "He thought I'd got that wrong. That it was just subcutaneous hypostasis. I'm so sorry. I was sure—"
John nodded. Just the week before, a very sick five-year-old had come into the A&E during his shift, and he'd made an initial diagnosis of acute bronchitis. He'd then ordered a blood test and chest x-ray, which revealed the poor kid actually had pneumonia. Every doctor got it wrong at least once, but John lived in terror that he'd misdiagnose a kid with a harmless bug when they were dying of meningitis. "Hey," he said lightly. "They had the arm under laboratory conditions. You were having a look on your hands and knees at the aquarium. I wouldn't be too hard on yourself. It doesn't really change the investigation much, either way— and for all we know, you could still be right."
Molly gave a disconsolate murmur.
Having an inspiration, John drew his phone out of his pocket. "Actually," he said. "Something you can help us with." He went into his photo files and passed the phone to her so she could have a look. "These photos were taken on the Marie Celeste before Forensics got to it. Sherlock says something's out of place in these pictures, but he doesn't know what."
She looked up, frowning. "John," she said. "You don't think he's…?"
John shook his head. "Not when Charlie's living with him," he said. "I made him promise that."
He had, and Sherlock had solemnly sworn it: no drugs, none at all, while Charlie was living at the flat. Nowhere on his person, nowhere in his flat, nowhere in his system. John believed him completely, but was now plagued by the idea that if he and Molly ever moved out, Sherlock would immediately fall of the wagon, deliberately or otherwise.
"It's not that," he said. "To be honest, I think he keeps thinking about Christabel. That's bound to throw him off. Anyway, so something's wrong with these photos. What do you think?"
Molly peered at the phone screen for ten or fifteen seconds. Then she gave it a hesitant swipe with one forefinger, forward, then back again. She looked up. "Oh, John," she scolded playfully. "I can't believe you didn't notice!"
"Notice what?"
"The high chair's sitting too far over from anyone sitting on those chairs," she said, pointing to the places laid. "I wouldn't put Charlie in her high chair where I couldn't even reach her. And anyway, there's no food laid out for Maisie. Can you imagine how upset Charlie would be if we had breakfast in front of her and didn't share?"
Judith Lessen, proprietoress of the Ship Inn, had coyly referred to Sherlock and Donovan's room as the 'Deluxe Honeymoon Suite.' There didn't seem to be anything particularly deluxe about it, however. A neat, clean, cosy room, with a king-sized bed and low bay windows looking out onto the water.
"Derrick Rice." Donovan threw her bag down near the inside of the doorway and dropped into an armchair, then leaned over to open the curtains, even though nothing much could be seen except her own reflection. "Got to be."
Sherlock, dumping his own suitcase onto the bed, looked up. "Sorry…?"
"What's got into you?" Donovan asked peevishly. "You've been vague-as all day. Derrick Rice is our man. Apart from the fact that he's got a creepy fixation with Sadie and probably offed Brett because of that, we know he was in the area, that he had a boat, and he knew how to pilot it. End of story, unless you want to argue they were killed by pirates."
"Forensics have been all over the Lady Marlborough," Sherlock pointed out, taking off his coat and scarf and tossing them down beside his suitcase. "No indication Brett or Sadie were ever on it. It's definitely not our crime scene."
"Well, maybe he hired a boat?"
"No record of that happening, either," Sherlock said scathingly. "It's true that Rice has a fixation with Sadie, and that he's shown in the interview room to have a temper he struggles to master. But neither of these things equate to him thinking killing Brett would be a way to get Sadie."
"You said he does have a temper."
"Exactly. This was a premeditated crime. If it was a crime of passion, I'd have already solved it—the killer would have confessed, or at least, they wouldn't have left such a contradictory set of clues. This is more in line with someone who deliberately wanted to cover their trail. To create confusion."
"It's worked." She got up. "Though I've got feeling you know more than you're saying."
"Always," he said. "I need to make sure my theory is sound before putting it forward. The last pieces are falling into place."
"Great. Well, I'm going to have a shower, 'cause I do my best thinking there. You?"
Sherlock made no indication he'd heard her. When she emerged from her half-hour shower, wrapped up in pyjamas and dressing gown, it was to find Sherlock exactly where she'd left him, except that he was now poring over something on his phone.
"What are you doing?"
"Video," he muttered, without looking up.
"Of…?"
"Maisie Holland. I'm trying to determine if she's biologically Brett and Sadie's child."
"What, just by looking at a video?" Donovan plonked herself ungracefully beside him and peered at the screen. On it, a little blonde girl, dressed up in a Frozen dress of light blue, was sucking on a wad of wrapping paper. Before her was a wooden xylophone in pine and bright primary colours, but it apparently lacked the allure of the paper it had been wrapped in. A male voice encouraged her with "Maisie, look!" Then two arms came into view, picking up the xylophone and tapping it with the little mallet. It made a tinny, hollow sound. Bonk! Bonk! The little girl stared at it for a second or two. Then, breaking into a grin, she grasped for the mallet. Bonk! Bonk-bonk!
"Parnell just sent through a copy of her birth certificate. It lists Brett and Sadie as her birth parents. And, as far as I can tell, she is." Sherlock sounded highly annoyed by this. "Chin, jaw and smile like her mother's. Everything else is so blatantly like her father, there can be no question of it."
"But you're not happy with that."
"No. Apart from a telling problem with some of the dates of Sadie's medical care, there are items on the certificate that indicate it's a fake. Maisie's place of birth is listed as the North Cornwall. At the time of her birth, though, there was no maternity unit attached to that hospital."
He handed his phone to Donovan, who watched for a few seconds more. Now Sadie was in the shot, helping her daughter unwrap a box bigger than herself. Early morning, obviously: Sadie was in her nightie, bright-red hair disheveled, and Maisie was still wearing bunny slippers. A normal, happy family.
"Who took this?"
"Adrian Frost gave it to Parnell. Siobhan took it for Maisie's birthday."
"Can you tell if it was taken in Cornwall or in London?"
"London." Sherlock pointed to one of the windows behind Sadie and Maisie; at the resolution the phone offered, little more than a block of light azure. She caught a glimpse of something growing close outside. A flash of green leaves. "Begonias," Sherlock announced. "Difficult to tell unless you zoom in, but without a doubt to me."
"Okay, so?"
"They're hyper-sensitive to salinity. The chance of Brett and Sadie Holland keeping them alive in Cornwall is almost non-existent." Sherlock got up. "You'd better not have used all the hot water," he said.
"Oh, I might have." Donovan smiled sweetly, watching Sherlock collect his things and slam the ensuite door behind him in high dudgeon.
~~o0o~~
By the time Sherlock emerged from the bathroom fifteen minutes later, Donovan was kneeling on the carpet at the foot of the bed, arranging a pile of pillows and blankets that she'd pulled out of the linen closet.
"Well," she said, looking up at him. "I can cross that off my bucket list. I always wondered what you slept in. I thought maybe you had those pyjama suits made up to look like tuxedos."
"What are you doing?"
"I'm wrecked, Sherlock," she said. "And so are you. So let's just get these beds organised and get some sleep, okay? If you snore, I can't promise I'm not going to smother you in your sleep."
"No, I mean, what are you currently, physically doing."
She rolled her eyes. "I'm sleeping on the floor," she said.
"Why?"
"Because I said so."
"Sally—"
"'Cause I've spent twelve years as a detective trying to get the guys—and now Jones is dead, they're all guys—to stop giving me special treatment because I'm a woman, that's why."
"I wasn't giving you special treatment." Sherlock sounded miffed.
"You were going to volunteer to sleep on the floor, just 'cause you're a man."
"And you naturally assumed you were going to sleep on the floor."
"No, I naturally assumed you were going to have a macho little snit-fit if I told you I was, so I thought I'd make the best of possession being nine-tenths of the law. Wasn't disappointed, either. So..." She dropped down onto her makeshift mattress with a little bounce and crossed her legs. "How much should I enjoy it?"
Sherlock blinked. "Sorry, enjoy what?"
"The amazing hot sex we're having while staying here on our affair." She gestured to the headboard of the bed. "If we can hear people clinking glasses in the restaurant, they're going to be able to hear whether or not people are having sex in here. Which is creepy, when you think about it. So I'm just asking, so we have our stories straight, whether you're a crap lay or whether I c-"
"Yes, thank you, I see your point." Sherlock reached out for his phone, which Donovan had left on the bedside table. He needed to check the exact wording of one of Greg's texts from two days ago—all building a theory. To his surprise, though, the top message in the list had changed.
Hi Sherlock. Hope your investigation progressing. Lots of huge breakthroughs. JSYK flying back 2 Berlin Tuesday. Couldn't get a day flight any earlier. Sorry again.
— Christa
The text was marked as read. And it had come in while he'd been in the shower.
He looked across at Donovan, who was still cross-legged on the floor and brushing her hair. "Did you go through my phone?"
"Uh." Donovan paused mid-stroke, mortified. "No," she said, putting her brush down. "But I'm going to explain, so just shut up while I do. Your text alert went off while I was watching the video of Maisie, and I assumed it was about the case, okay? And if it was about the case, it couldn't wait. I had a look at that text. And ONLY that text. I didn't know it was private. I didn't really think you got private texts. I'm sorry."
"Yes," he seethed. " 'I'm sorry' seems to be endemic among the female class."
"Oh, well, while we're at it, then, that thing in Dorset..."
Sherlock blinked. "Sorry, what thing in Dorset?"
"Sherlock, don't be dim," Donovan said, sighing deeply. "It's not one of my favourite memories either. I didn't know you did things like that, just to get information for cases. So I didn't think you had girlfriends."
"I don't," said Sherlock through his teeth.
"Okay." Donovan nodded. Then, after a long pause, "So who is she, if she's not your girlfriend?"
No answer.
"Oy." She picked up a pair of her socks, wrapped up into a hard little bundle, and threw them at him. "If it's a personal question and you want me to shut up, you can just say so..."
But Sherlock was no longer listening. He stood at the open window, the sea breeze playing with tendrils of his hair; abruptly he squinted and scrabbled to pull the sash up.
"What is it? What's wrong?" Donovan rushed over to see.
From the vantage point of the window, they could see most of the bay as it curved east. Throughout the evening, as for the past two days, small bands of police officers and concerned locals had been wandering up and down the shoreline, searching for any sign of Sadie or Maisie Holland. Now a group of four—men, probably, though it was hard to tell in the dark and at that distance—were gathered at a clump of rocks just at the point where the bay began to reach out to sea again. All of them were looking at something at their feet. Another small group, headed by a female constable in uniform, had just rounded the sea wall. One of the men called out something, and the constable broke from the rest of the group, jogging toward them over the wet, hard sand.
Without a word Sherlock was out the door. It took Donovan only a few seconds to put on her shoes on and follow suit, pursuing him down the narrow staircase, through the downstairs pub and out the door. Sherlock was still in his pyjamas and bare feet, and she caught him up easily as he tried to negotiate the twin perils of wet sand and sharp rocks.
"You haven't found her?" Sherlock sounded puffed as he pulled to a halt, but Donovan knew he was in too good shape for it; he was back in character. The mysteriously Bristolian Cockney who took his mistress to a remote village in Cornwall.
"It's… I don't think it's a person…" The constable, a plain, stocky woman with hair pulled severely back behind her ears and her hat in one hand, pulled out a little torch, hardly bigger than a pen. One of the men who had found the bundle grabbed a stick and, before anyone could stop him, dragged it through the wad of material to unfurl it.
It was a tiny dress of navy blue, bordered with pastel pink and machine-embroidered with a character Sherlock immediately recognised: Peppa Pig, also a favourite of Charlie's. Attached to it was a mushy pile of tulle that was probably once a pink tutu. Dark stains were smeared across the ensemble, shoulder to hem. Sherlock brushed his fingertips across the worst of the stain and sniffed them.
"Oh, my God," the constable blurted out. The light from her torch flickered wildly and he staggered, but in the dark it was unclear if she'd tripped or her legs had given out.
"No," Sherlock barked at her, giving her shoulder a hard little shake. "No. Be calm."
"I am calm!"
"You're not calm; you're borderline hysterical. Stop it."
Donovan opened her mouth to interject. Before she could say anything, however, Sherlock took her by the arm and walked her a few paces upwind of the little group.
"Donovan," he said, "you need to keep that woman from having a meltdown and bringing every man, woman and child in Mousehole over here to ruin the evidence and start gossip that we may not be able to stop. And you need to do it without breaking character."
Donovan raised her eyebrows. "You think she's getting hysterical because she's a woman?"
"Oh, for God's sake, will you look at her?" He gestured with one arm. "Her age and accent both indicate she's local. Her hair's tied back with a pink tie with a plastic strawberry on it— a child's tie, probably grabbed at home. So she has a daughter about the same age as Maisie. She's probably acquainted with the family. And most obviously, I think she's getting hysterical because she's self-evidently getting hysterical."
"I-"
"Yes, this is Maisie's dress-brought in by the high tide, and in the last hour. Someone else would have found by now it if it had washed up this morning. Very likely she wasn't wearing it on the day of her father's murder, and it's an almost one hundred percent certainty that she did not wear it after. It's been used to wipe blood, probably off the killer's hands or face. Not her own blood. Her father's."
She looked up at him. "You're sure?"
"Certain."
Donovan looked back at the officer, who was now yelling at everyone to stay away from the bloodstained bundle. She certainly did seem only just this side of losing it completely. "Okay," she said. "So I'm the Sister Solidarity Unit. What are you doing?"
"I need to call Lestrade," he said. "And get him and John down here. We've got a chance of finding more evidence if we can clear the beach of the idly curious. And I want all of our suspects flown down here immediately. We need to question them. I need to question them. Beryl Holland has a lot to answer for."
A/N: Thanks again for reading. For details on 'what happened in Dorset', see chapter six of Come Forth, Lazarus.