Chapter 70
The driver of the hackney was dozing on his perch when they approached, huddled under a blanket thrown over the shoulders of his coat. John could commiserate. He wanted nothing more than to be in his warm, soft bed with his husband by his side, but he knew the night was not over yet. Despite his nap, the several hours bent over the body in the morgue had exhausted him. In truth, it had been an overly strenuous day in all its various activity and John sank into the thin cushions on the hackney's seat with a stifled groan.
John had not noticed how weary he'd become while he and Sherlock puzzled over the body in the morgue, much as he used to perform surgery for twenty hours or more on end after the carnage of battle, but now that it was over, he was ready to sink into bed for an equally long rest. Still, he expected Sherlock would want to question the man he'd dubbed Lazarus as soon as possible. John himself was slightly worried that the man would escape custody before they could attempt to speak with him, or be rescued by his demented master.
Sherlock climbed into the carriage a minute later, the jostling of the box on the springs snapping John's eyes open with a start. He hadn't even realized he'd closed them. When he heard Sherlock give the driver their home address, he was surprised.
"What about Lazarus?"
"Neither you nor Lestrade are of any use to me asleep on your feet. Lazarus shall keep until morning. I must think about the information we have collected thus far before I question him. Beyond that, a night in the discomforts of gaol may loosen his tongue." John thought he might have hummed some sort of affirmative response, but he couldn't be sure.
It seemed that only a few seconds passed between Sherlock's statement and the cab's arrival at their Baker Street residence. John started awake at the lack of jolting motion. He let Sherlock balance him on the carriage step due to a slippery patch on the cobbles. He made it up the stairs without assistance, though slowly and with heavy use of his cane. Sherlock stepped patiently behind him, handing off the dinner basket to Matthews before sending the man for warm water to wash.
John dropped everything from cane and greatcoat to his linen shirt on the floor of their bedroom, stripped down to his smalls by the time the wash water arrived. Matthews gathered these things as John made use of the water, and then crouched in front of the fireplace to stir up the fire and add more coal. Sherlock dismissed him for the night when he was done, sitting in one of the chairs by the hearth, his greatcoat undone but still draped over his shoulders. His eyes landed on John as he washed, but with a sort of glazed-over cast to them as if he was not really seeing anything.
John found himself trembling with fatigue. He wanted to excuse it with the chill in the room or the flicker of the firelight but he couldn't. It was all he could do to pull a warm nightshirt over his head. Still, he made one small detour to where his husband sat deep in thought. Sherlock's eyes blinked rapidly as he came around and realized his husband was standing above him.
John cupped Sherlock's slightly whisker-roughened chin and kissed him softly on the lips. Then, because he could, he kissed him again, lingering in the pleasure of it.
"John, again, really? I thought you were tired."
John gave a faint smile. "Beyond exhausted. I may actually be sleeping right now. But I hope to never be too tired for a goodnight kiss. Are you coming to bed?"
"Soon."
John mumbled, "Goodnight, Sherlock," before staggering to the bed and falling asleep as soon as he was under the covers.
Sherlock sat a while longer before washing up himself. He crawled into bed in just his drawers, careful not to awaken John, and made sure the covers were tucked neatly about them. Sherlock did not intend to sleep, but he was curious to note whether John would dream or awaken in the night and the bed was warmer than the edge of the hearth. Still, he fell asleep in the small hours despite his racing brain, and woke with John tucked up against him.
Morning had arrived dim and overcast with a chill, pervasive fog. The room remained dim and it was only the clock on the mantel that indicated the time. Sherlock remained still and quiet, content to allow John to sleep a while longer. He listened to the breaths that puffed out against his shoulder. He envisioned the fingers that splayed over his chest, strong and nimble, surgeon's hands, capable of delicate stitches as well as sawing through bone.
John's breath suddenly huffed and those fingers twitched. Sherlock felt the body next to him tense. He quickly shifted away from John, moving up to his knees, and shoved the covers down. One quick glance had him straightening John's bad leg and pressing his fingers into a hard, contracted muscle. It took only a moment, catching the spasm so early, to feel the muscle stretch and relax.
John woke to Sherlock flexing his foot gently and rubbing his ankle.
"Morning," John said after he assessed the slight ache in his leg and his husband's helpful occupation.
"Good morning, John. I trust you slept well?"
"I slept very well, thank you. And thank you for staving off what could have been a rather painful spasm."
Sherlock ducked his head and continued his massage. "In another week, provided we can keep up the regular morning routine, I shall add a series of movements in the evening to see if it prevents or exacerbates the spasms."
"Hmm, your hands all over me morning and night? How did I get so lucky?" John chuckled and sat up so he could reach Sherlock where he knelt on the bed. His thumb traced along one high cheekbone. John leaned forward and kissed Sherlock's mouth, just lightly. "Good morning, husband."
Sherlock returned the gesture in a rather perfunctory way before drawing away and beginning to manipulate John's leg. Still, a bit of a flush highlighted his cheekbones, one that was not there from the warmth of their bed, nor pressure from the pillow. John lay back on his pillow with a satisfied grin.
"I thought you'd bounce up as soon as the sun rose and be off to see our prisoner."
"I haven't forgotten. I told Lestrade we would meet him at Bow Street at ten. We have time for your stretches and the breakfast I'm certain you will insist upon but we ought not indulge in more. Lestrade will not be late. He has most likely taken to sleeping at Bow Street, given the dalliances of his wife. John!"
John had begun to run his hand lightly over Sherlock's where it firmly gripped John's knee. He gave a teasing wink when Sherlock shook free of his touch.
"We haven't time for that, I said." Sherlock looked so exasperated with John's simple flirtation that John fell back laughing.
"Don't worry, love. I am as anxious to interview the prisoner as you, provided he was not broken free in the night by his mad scientist." The last word of this sentence was half grunt as Sherlock pushed John's knee as far towards his chest as it would go.
"I do not think a man of intelligence would risk exposure by announcing himself at a prison cell."
"While that may be true, the motivations of this madman seem inclined towards exhibition."
Lestrade awaited the two gentlemen near the entrance. Sherlock ushered John inside with a minimal amount of exasperation, the majority of which had been expended on the driver. He fidgeted through the shaking of hands but said nothing. Lestrade spared him a curious look before leading them down a dank hallway through the lower level. Before pulling the bolt on the door, he spun to face Holmes.
"You do remember the agreement. No experiments. No fluid samples. You may speak with the prisoner, observe him, but you may do nothing invasive or harmful to his person."
"Yes, yes, Lestrade." Sherlock reached for the door's bolt but Lestrade slapped his hand away.
"Do not conveniently forget what I've told you, Holmes. Until proven otherwise, the prisoner is still a man."
"There is little I might do that has not been inflicted on other prisoners, Lestrade. However, I have agreed to restrict my curiosity."
"The magistrate already loathes the thought of you, Holmes, and me for associating with you. He only tolerates our alliance because of your high level of results."
"Lestrade, this repetition is tedious. Release the door."
John stood back from this exchange a little, though he was nearly as interested as his husband in the prisoner. Relief coursed through him when Lestrade pulled the bolt aside with a grating rasp and a renewed scent of rust. The prisoner sat on the wooden bench with his back against the wall. He didn't turn his head when the door opened, unsurprised at their presence given the debate in the hall. A trencher of bread and congealed gravy and a chipped cup of water sat on the bench beside him, untouched. The room was narrow enough for John's fingertips to brush both walls simultaneously. The sloped ceiling was high enough on the far side, though, to contain an iron-grated window the prisoner had no hope of reaching. The cell was cold and the grey morning light seeping in through the small window did little to illuminate the tiny room.
If the prisoner hadn't lifted his head as Sherlock stepped before him, John might have wondered if he hadn't frozen solid in the night.
"What is your name?" Sherlock demanded. The figure in front of him stiffened his slump, straightened his gaze forward, and remained perfectly silent. "I know you can understand me. Your brain is undamaged enough that you can maneuver a carriage through the maze of London. You can obey your master's orders. You will tell me your name. Who is your master?"
Sherlock's eyes narrowed at the prisoner's silence. He stepped deeper into the cell to distance himself from the man and give himself a wider scope of scrutiny. The prisoner was certainly the man whose path they'd been crossing for days now, from the chase through Westminster to the poor boy squeezed to death in an alley. His clothing was dirty, but the cloth was not ragged or worn. A long grey scarf was wrapped multiple times around his neck, hiding the cut the mudlarks had described, but the lowest coil was darker, stained.
"Open your coat. Do you have a bullet wound in your chest?"
The straight-forward stare remained steady.
"Open your coat. I will see it!"
The man was being frustratingly unresponsive. Yet he made no prohibitive movement when Sherlock furiously snagged the end of his scarf and began to unwind it. Its removal displayed the collar of a pink-stained white shirt, sans neck cloth, points stiffened with dried fluids. Sherlock tipped the surprisingly acquiescent man's chin up to get a better view. It wasn't one long cut, as one might make when slitting a throat; it was three. Two flanked the man's neck, slicing across where the man's carotid arteries and jugular veins ran. The third opened the area somewhere around the thyroid cartilage.
"John, look at this."
John stepped away from Lestrade. The glassy eyes of their prisoner fixed on him as he approached, which made him shudder just slightly. If the man was really what Sherlock had said, a construct, a dead man walking, then for all John's curiosity, he was vastly more unnerved. Raising the dead was the subject of nightmares, of bone-chilling tales told in the darkest night, of myth and magic and horror – a new alchemy for a scientific age.
John steeled his mind and focused on using the scant light to examine the cuts on the prisoner's neck. They'd been stitched up with the same irregular sutures they'd found on the body from the warehouse – small and precise, professional, but with random lengths between them. The irregularity, and the probable high level of activity of the man in front of them, had led to several broken threads and unhealed gaps. Not that any inch of the raw edges looked healed – they were pinker than the surrounding pale skin, bloodless, but glossy with pale fluid.
"Could the third incision have caused enough damage to keep him from speaking, John?"
"It is difficult to be certain without reopening the wound, but it is quite possible that the incision was made to purposely damage or remove the larynx with that specific intent."
Sherlock let out a frustrated huff of air.
"Open your coat, then!" he ordered anew. "Your body will have to tell us what you cannot."
The man did not obey, but he did not resist when Sherlock hastened to undo the buttons himself. Each layer opened faster than the one before.
"Look here!" Sherlock exclaimed, pushing aside half the plain, dark waistcoat. "There's a hole in his shirt. This is where you shot him, John!" A finger from each hand tore the thin fabric to expose the bullet hole. "I told you that you hit him. Damned impressive shot from that distance."
Lestrade cleared his throat from the doorway, though the two men ignored him and John himself simply leaned further over Sherlock's shoulder.
However, John's attention was not on the bullet hole, though it was stitched up crudely as if darned like a stocking, pinched together and looped with one continuous thread and that in itself was curious. No, his eyes were caught by the stained cambric clinging, and in some spots stiffened and stuck, to the expanse of the prisoner's chest. Sherlock noticed it before John could breathe a word.
As he began to peel away the fabric, more carefully after an admonishment from Lestrade, a new set of incisions appeared. These were made very deliberately, very shallowly, and had not been stitched up. The cuts formed letters; the letters formed a word.
"R-A-P-H-E. What is that, German?" Lestrade asked, his head popping over John's shoulder to get a closer look. "Or a name? Like Raphael?" The prisoner remained unnaturally still, eyes glazed and distant as the three men leaned closer than was safe to examine the word carved on his chest.
"No, it's Latin. Pronounced rey-fee. Anatomical in nature." Sherlock leaned back with a frown. "Though Raphael is Hebrew for God heals, which might appeal to our madman, but no."
"What does 'raphe' mean then?" Lestrade asked for the benefit of the half of the room without medical Latin.
"It typically refers to a natural seam on the body, something that looks like a line or a scar. Like along the roof of your mouth, or bisecting your scrotum," John answered.
"Why the hell would someone carve that on a man's chest?"
"I'm done here," Sherlock proclaimed, standing upright swiftly enough to make John and Lestrade startle back a step or two.
"Sherlock?"
"Lestrade's office."
A/N: Raphe, the weird-but-true counterpart to Rache, though sadly without Anderson's German accent. ;) When I came across it looking up the etymology of "suture," I simply had to fit it in.