The Slash Man

by Engazed

Book 2 of 'The Fallen': After ten days of unspeakable torture at the hands of Sherlock's worst enemies, John Watson has returned to Baker Street to live with a man whose death, no matter how fake, still haunts him. But his recovery is not easy, his friendship with Sherlock is strained, and a dangerous but hidden menace continues to threaten them both. Violence/Horror/Rape

4. Sam Jefferies

Chapter 4: Sam Jefferies

FRIDAY, JANUARY 2, 2015

Molly Hooper heard just three words—Lestrade told me—and let him straight in.

'I haven't even unbagged him yet,' she said.

'I'll help.'

She wasn't accustomed to having an assistant on these things. Or rather, she wasn't accustomed to playing assistant, as before ten minutes had passed, Sherlock had essentially taken over the morgue. 'Hand me that magnifying glass,' he said to start, and before long, it was, 'Angle that light right here. No, here' and 'Hold this' and 'Write this down. Have you written it?' He was quick to identify the method of strangulation had been rope, not a belt, even before she had found a tiny sliver of fibre from a hemp rope embedded in a scratch on the neck, and also to declare that the bruising had occurred post-mortem, an assessment she agreed with, ruling out strangulation as the cause of death. A large gash in the back of the head was a more likely candidate.

Still, she had her own uses. The left ankle was clearly broken, as both could see, but it was she who first suggested that it had been the result of twisting, a hard clockwise wrench. He agreed that twisting was most likely, looking slightly put out that she had beaten him to the punch. She also noted that the bruising on the wrists, contrary to those on the neck, had occurred prior to death, to which he replied, 'You've grown quicker, Molly.' Together, they observed some kind of thin, dried film on the lips and at the corner of his mouth, a faint pinkish-red colour, which both initially mistook for blood but upon closer inspection they saw that it certainly was not. That would be a matter for the lab to identify.

He still let her do all the procedural things required by both law and training, and he let her take care of the cutting and organ removal (with the occasional 'Budge over, Molly, I can't see') to determine the kind of internal damage the assailant had caused, but he took it upon himself to collect samples and put them in plastic bags to send to the lab. (She watched him closely, making sure he didn't take anything for himself.) They had never worked together in this way before, and it was highly unorthodox (Dr Torrence, who was on holiday in Majorca, would have had a coronary if he'd known), but Sherlock was keen, and Molly didn't hate it. It was rather nice, actually, having a little company while performing a post-mortem.

That wasn't to say that either of them was particularly enjoying the work. When Molly collected fluid and tissue samples from the area of assault, Sherlock turned away. It was on the pretext of re-examining the victim's torn shirt and jeans, and he talked the entire time, rattling off deductions about the way the man sat on trains and how he took his coffee as though he were a wind-up toy, but Molly recognised it for what it was: a way to divert other thoughts. He had managed the rest of it (the bashed up face, the bruises colouring back and torso, the signs of strangulation) with the same detachment and clinical curiosity he had always shown. But he paused and his breath faltered at the wrists, rubbed raw and red from the shoelace. He let her take samples from the slash marks at the hips. And he turned away from the evidence of rape. She understood. A little over two months ago, this had been John. No, Molly corrected herself. This only might have been John. John had survived.

When they were finished and cleaned up, Molly completed the report and got the samples labelled and ready to send off to the lab. She wanted to have them back by the time Greg showed up, and she hoped that whatever the tests revealed would be useful to him. She knew he was stressed enough as it was, what with trying to track the men who had abducted John (a practically futile search, he had told her recently, until they got more to go on) and with the aftermath of a conspiracy ring at the Yard. His nearly every waking hour was devoted to some aspect of the job, and, though he never said as much, she got the sense that his sleeping hours were none too peaceful.

They had been seeing each other since November, but the reality was, they hadn't actually seen much of each other. In fact, thinking of herself as a 'girlfriend' felt a little premature and presumptive, perhaps even a little juvenile. She didn't know for sure that Greg saw her in such a light. With a pang, she knew that 'boyfriend' wasn't quite how she thought of him, either, not yet, not when they hadn't even kissed properly, just shy touches on the arm or sitting close together, hip to knee, on a park bench while they braved the cold and sipped coffees on the rare occasion her lunch breaks and his case lulls happened to coincide. Molly could count up on one hand the number of evenings they had spent together, just the two of them, that hadn't taken place in that very morgue. The thought depressed her, but she had no solutions. She didn't want to pressure or burden him, didn't want to seem overly eager or needy or ungenerous or any of those things she believed she had been guilty of in the past. She liked him, respected him, believed he was doing an important work. He just seemed . . . tired. And the more time that passed, the more tired he became.

But maybe, just maybe, this body represented the break in the case he needed. Maybe it would actually prove to be useful.

She had just crossed the last t when she noticed that Sherlock's attention was once again on the body he was supposed to be zipping back into the bag. Instead, the bag was stretched wide so he could examine the deep scratches embedded in the hips. His attention had turned to them at last.

'Something else?' she asked.

He didn't answer, so she tried again.

'What are you looking for?'

'Something I must have missed.'

'Why do you think you missed anything?'

'Because something is not right.' He moved around to the other side of the table. His fingers curled into a claw-like position and dragged through the air, just above the marks, to recreate what he supposed had caused them. There were thirteen distinct scratches on one side, eleven on the other, indicating fingernails that had raked the skin multiple times. 'This mark here . . . It's different from the others. Longer, thinner. I don't believe it was from a fingernail. But it's not a blade either. The cut isn't clean enough for a blade.'

'Then what?'

'I don't know. Lestrade presumes that this is the work of the Slash Man.'

'Isn't it?'

'It's not an illogical assumption, given some of the evidence, but not a foregone conclusion until the DNA results confirm it.'

'It shouldn't be long.'

'But the differences. The differences, Molly. Prior victims reported the deep scratching, like this, the Slash Man's hallmark sign. I've seen some of that for myself. The fact that this man was homeless fits the profile of all known victims but John. Yet this is the first time one of the Slash Man's victims has been killed—no one ever died before. That's not all. According to reports, the Slash Man always stripped his victims bare before raping them, let them get cold; this man was still partially clothed. And the strangulation? That's new. The sodium hypochlorite—that's new too. If he's going to leave such obvious markers, why bother even trying to destroy DNA evidence?'

'Do you mean that this wasn't him? A copycat, maybe?'

'Conceivable. But not likely. There are too many similarities. Not with his prior victims, but with John.'

She gasped a little and clutched the clipboard to her chest.

'The bleach. They poured bleach into John's wounds. The same thing happened to this man.' He walked up to the dead man's head, re-examining the bruising on the neck and collarbone. 'And they strangled John, too. Repeatedly. But the bruising here . . . Why strangle a man after he's dead?'

Having never considered the mind of a madman, she had no answer to give.

'These differences mean something,' he continued. 'Someone playing a game. And if this is a game, then this'—he gestured urgently at the whole body—'is a message. I need to decode it.'

Molly was at a loss. She had never been one to question Sherlock's reasoning, let alone his conclusions. But now, she wasn't so sure. To her, a dead body was message enough. In any case, she just wanted this one to be simple, straight-forward, easily cracked. But Sherlock stood with his hands on his hips, glaring down in annoyance at the exposed corpse of a man who had been beaten, raped, and murdered within the past twenty-four hours as if it were still holding something back.

'Are you okay?' she asked delicately.

'What? Me? I'm fine, Molly.'

'Is John?'

He looked up sharply. 'Why shouldn't he be?'

'It's just . . . with all this.' Her eyes flitted to the body. 'I notice he didn't come with you today. Sorry, it's not my business. I'll just, you know'—she indicated the report and samples in her hand—'be back in a tick.'

She made a quick job of the delivery and ensured that the lab technicians saw that everything had been marked as urgent. By the time she returned to the morgue, Sherlock had zipped the body bag and was sitting on a chair beside it, fingers drumming the silver table a little impatiently.

The door had only just swung shut behind her when he said, 'Not good.'

She halted. 'Sorry?' Something she had done?

'John.' He rolled his shoulders a little as though to release some building tension. 'He's not good.'

'Oh.' Molly stood awkwardly for a moment, staring at him, cleaning one fingernail with another. For the first time since he had arrived, he looked tired, though she doubted that a good night's sleep could solve this kind of tired. It was the kind of enervation that came from not knowing what to do, and she had never known him to be in such a state. She crossed the room to another rolling operator chair and sat herself on the edge of it. 'Not good how?' she asked gently.

His face was like stone and his eyes just as hard. Had he been looking at her, she might have felt the need to back away. As it was, however, he was looking at the floor, his jaw hard-set. And Molly knew: he was worried about John and didn't know how to say it, didn't even know if he should.

'Maybe just one thing,' she suggested, 'that's not so good.'

For a long moment, she thought he wouldn't or couldn't answer. Then, 'There isn't just one thing. It's a thousand things, all tangled together in a wretched skein. Everything hurts. All the time. Everything.'

'You mean . . .'

'Every part of him. Skin, muscle, bone, head to foot, real pains and imagined ones, it's all the same, there's no point in drawing lines. And what's to be done? His meds work only when he takes them, when he doesn't refuse to take them, and even then the pain is only dulled. I think he prefers to hurt. When he doesn't, he thinks about . . . things. So it's a choice. He just hurts, all day long, all through the night. He can't get away from any of it.'

'Do you talk to him about it? Getting help, I mean.'

In answer, he stared even harder at the floor, as though his eyes alone could bore holes through it. She watched him bring his hands together, to clasp them, she thought, but instead he started scratching the skin there. Slowly.

'If he'll listen to anyone about it, Sherlock, it's you.'

He laughed shortly, bitterly.

'Really, he will. He trusts you.'

'He can't stand me.'

Whatever she had expected him to say in response—of John's physical condition or mental health or handling of grief—she had not expected that. 'I'm sure that's not true.'

'It's true.'

The stone cracked and the mask slipped, just a fraction, and Molly saw the expression of deepest self-loathing before the stone settled again.

'I don't blame him. I'm no good for him.'

'Has he said—?'

'He doesn't have to. I walk into a room and he holds his breath. That is, if he doesn't find some reason to leave. He'll spend an hour in the bathroom with the shower running, or long hours in his bedroom, just to stay away from me. We take meals together, out of custom or because Mrs Hudson has prepared it, but he'll hardly say a word, and when we're working, it's all business. This morning he sat with me only long enough to tell me I needed to get out of the flat more but that he wouldn't come with me, and when I did leave he told me not to hurry back. He's poorly in every way one can imagine, but he doesn't want my help, or anyone's. He never smiles, not unless he has to, and then it's a chore and fades quickly. I haven't heard him laugh since . . . I don't ever hear him laugh. Not that he has anything to laugh about these days.' He sighed out a great breath. 'I don't know what's going on up here.' He tapped a fingernail roughly into his temple. 'I used to be able to tell, but now it's all walls.'

'He's going through a lot,' said Molly. She knew the weakness of the hackneyed phrase the moment it left her lips, and Sherlock scowled at it. 'He needs time.'

'He needs her. He has me instead.'

She answered shyly, 'He needs you, too, Sherlock.'

Again, he looked disgusted by her attempt at consolation and answered, 'Yes, to find them. And I will. I swear to god I will. And once I have . . . That'll be that.'

She was startled by how alarmed she felt on his behalf. 'That'll be what?'

'He'll have no reason to stay.'

He was suddenly on his feet. The heart-to-heart was over.

'Text me the details, once the results are in. I want confirmation that this is the Slash Man we're dealing with, and I need the identity of the vic—'

At that moment, the door to the morgue swung inward, emitting Greg Lestrade. Molly shot to her feet, already smiling and wondering a little foolishly how her hair looked. But the smile slipped a little when she saw how Greg's eyes skipped right past her and narrowed in aggravation at the sight of Sherlock Holmes.

He made her no greeting but said instead to Sherlock, 'What the bloody hell are you doing here?'

'Afternoon, Lestrade,' said Sherlock mildly.

'You told him to come,' said Molly, but she was suddenly uncertain. 'Didn't you?'

'Like hell I did.'

'You didn't really expect me to stay away,' said Sherlock. 'Not on a case like this.'

'Jesus.' Lestrade pinched the bridge of his nose and screwed up his eyes as though he had a headache.

'Sorry, Greg,' Molly said, contrite. It hadn't even crossed her mind that letting Sherlock in wouldn't be all right.

'Don't be. He knew what he was doing.' He dropped his hand to his side. 'All right then. Fine. Let's have it. What did you find?'

'Nothing of importance,' said Sherlock. His tone was mild, but his expression could have shattered glass. He was fitting his scarf around his neck.

'Oh, come on now, don't be like that.'

Sherlock yanked indignantly on the scarf, almost choking himself, and swung on Greg. 'There was nothing. Nothing Molly wouldn't have found on her own. You should have had me at the crime scene.'

'You know I can't. Not anymore.'

'What, because of the newspapers? Afraid of what the public might think?'

She saw Greg control an eye roll. 'You may not care about public opinion, but the Yard does. But even that doesn't matter when it comes down to it. I've already told you—it's policy. It's out of my hands!'

'Policy never bothered you before. What you cared about were results.'

'Things aren't like they were before. They're different.'

'Yes,' Sherlock agreed. 'The stakes are higher, and you need me now more than ever.'

Greg stepped forward a few paces. His body language beseeched Sherlock to listen to reason. 'I want you there working cases with me. This case. I do! I just—' He shook his head in frustration. 'You can't, Sherlock.'

Sherlock rolled his shoulders into his coat. His eyes burned with anger and his movements were jerky as he pulled on his gloves. Molly felt miserable watching him. She wished something would relieve the awful tension in the room—that Sherlock would understand or that Lestrade would relent—but neither man yielded any ground.

As he stalked toward the exit, Sherlock, without sparing another glance on either of them, said, 'I'm on this case, inspector. Find a way to make it right with the Yard.' Then he threw the double doors wide and disappeared.

Alone with each other now, Lestrade groaned and dropped his head into his hands. 'God, what am I doing?'

Molly came closer and placed a tentative hand on his upper arm, rubbing gently. She was on the cusp of excusing Sherlock's behaviour by relating his concern over John, but she believed that the things he had told her had been spoken in confidence, and she knew it wasn't her place to pass them along. Instead, she said, 'It's my fault. I shouldn't have let him help me with the autopsy.'

Straightening, and placing a hand over hers, he tried to smile. 'Not your fault. I told Sherlock he wasn't to be involved, just a couple of hours ago. But when does he ever do what people tell him? I shouldn't have been so surprised to see him here.' He acknowledged the body in the bag with a nod of his head and dropped his hand; she followed suit. 'So. He really didn't find anything?'

Regretfully, she shook her head no. 'He thought there might have been some sort of message on the corpse, but no, nothing.'

'When do you expect the lab work to be done?'

'It'll be a couple hours. I only just dropped off the samples.'

'Bad timing, I guess.' He grinned apologetically.

'Maybe not so bad,' she said, matching his smile. Again, she touched his arm, teasingly, rubbing the fabric between two fingers and wishing they had reached a point where they could be more familiar with each other. But she felt foolish and stopped. 'If you need to wait for the results, we could, I don't know, grab an early dinner?'

'I'd like that,' he said. 'I can't tell you how much. But . . .' He winced. 'I can't. I think we may have an identity on the victim. Someone recognised a photograph and, well, I need to go talk to the family.'

Her smile dimmed as she failed to hide her disappointment.

'Damn. I'm always doing this, aren't I?'

'It's fine,' she said. 'You've got an important job.'

'We've all got important jobs,' he said. 'I don't want you to think I'm hiding behind mine.'

'I don't.'

'Things will let up.' He tucked a loose strand behind her ear. 'Soon. I promise.'

She nodded and inclined her head slightly toward his hand, but she wasn't greatly encouraged. Their plans always seemed to exist in the realm of soon and someday.

His phone went off, and he sighed out his disappointment and dropped his hand. 'Excuse me,' he murmured, reaching inside his pocket. 'Lestrade,' he said into his phone. Molly couldn't make out the words on the other line, but the voice sounded like Donovan's. 'Yes. Yes, good. Good. I'm on my way.'

Dropping the mobile back inside his pocket, he said helplessly, 'I have to go.'

'Good news, is it?' She tried not to sound too hopeful.

'Maybe. Three separate people identified our victim's photograph.'

'Who is he?'

'Sam Jefferies.' He spelled it for her, for the report. 'I'll bring the family in to positively ID the body later today. You'll still be here?'

She inserted a light-hearted laugh. 'Always.'

His returned smile was a little pained. 'Great. Then . . . I'll see you then.'

He squeezed her hand lightly and turned to go. By the time the door had swung closed her smile was gone. Shaking away the negative thoughts, she pulled out her own mobile and began to text.

Sam Jefferies, presumably.
Not yet confirmed. No word
yet on the perp.

A moment later, the text alert sounded on her mobile.

Thank you.
SH

---

John closed the bathroom door, locked it, and set the gun beside the sink. Then he leant the cane against the wall between toilet and bath, propped himself against the wall with one arm, and lowered his zip as he stood over the bowl. Nothing happened.

'Stop it, stop it, don't be ridiculous,' he coaxed himself under his breath. 'Just go. Just go.'

But he couldn't. He felt the pressure, the need to urinate. The muscles in his body were tensed and his bladder felt like it was being squeezed from all directions, but he couldn't relax enough to release. Breathe, he told himself, resting his forehead into the arm now pressed against the wall. But every time he began to relax, even just a little, he shivered, and the muscles seized up again and prevented anything from happening.

'Damn it,' he said, still in little more than a whisper. Every damn time.

He zipped his flies back up, lowered the lid, and sat. He commanded himself to breathe again, slow breaths in, slow breaths out, but the sound of it made him want to scream. Since the convent, he couldn't stand silence punctuated only by the sound of his own miserable breathing. So he reached for the knob on the shower and twisted, letting the water run cold as it slapped noisily against the bottom of the bath. It would do.

Lestrade's visit had unsettled him more than he wanted to admit. Things had been going . . . all right. He had begun to feel stable, more in control of his thoughts and emotions than he had since the whole thing started. Not good. God no, far from good. But he had been managing the intrusive images well enough without having to rely on Sherlock to bring him back from the brink of insanity every few hours. And yes, he still had nightmares, though not the kind that brought Sherlock running. Then Lestrade had mentioned the underwear. The dish. The cilice. His mouth had run dry. A frigid, invisible hand clutched at his chest, squeezed, stole his breath. Moran's voice drifted into the room, muffled and distant-sounding at first, but as Lestrade and Sherlock continued to argue and his thirst became unbearable, the words had grown louder, clearer, until it was a voice booming in his skull: Just a dog. Just a dog. Just a dog.

And the glass shattered.

With the crash, Moran's voice disappeared too. He realised he was sweating, shaking, and he felt like he might throw up. You're fine, you're fine, you're fine, he repeated in his head, trying to drown out the echo. But he was unable to convince himself it was true; he was barely able to push himself from the chair. He was humiliated. Jesus, the way Lestrade had looked at him, with such concern, regret, pity. Sherlock was already in the kitchen, making things right. John had to move, just to prove that he could.

He didn't want to consider why those three items had been stolen from evidence. Plenty of things had been recovered from the basement of the abandoned convent: a carbon-steel knife, steel pliers, brass knuckles, a lighter, bottles of chemicals, his wristwatch, shoes, socks, trousers, vest, shirt, coat, leather belt. . . . Even the taser had been found on the grounds of the convent. All were now in police storage lockers, labelled as evidence for the open criminal case, and under lock and key. All but the scalpel. Moran must have had that on him when he fled. But those three items . . . he didn't want to consider them. But he knew. Those were the tools they had used to break him. Sexual degradation, animalistic shaming, and unrelenting pain. All three had ravaged his body, spoilt his mind, and left him a whimpering mess of a man.

And if John knew it, Sherlock surely did.

'You bastard, you miserable bastard,' he said to himself between arduous breaths.

He despised himself. For feeling so weak. For feeling trapped inside so damaged a body, a body that would forever carry the marks of his captivity, the reminders of his loss. He hated how the mere memories reawakened physical pain in every scar, burned open every wound. He felt it now, and in distress, he pushed off his slippers and socks, set a shaving mirror on the floor, and held his right foot over the glass.

He half expected to see three lines of blood at the ball, arch, and heel. Instead, he saw three parallel scars, slightly raised pink strokes of pinched, perfectly sealed new skin. When he walked, however, no matter what he wore on his feet, he could still feel the pressure of tender skin threatening to split beneath his weight. As a doctor, he knew it was an irrational fear; but it was one he was unable to shake.

Seeing that the skin of both feet was still intact, he hitched up his left trouser leg and ran a finger across the stab wound in his calf. There were mornings when he woke up convinced that the tip of the scalpel had broken off and lodged itself there: he could still feel the sharp blade deep inside the muscle tissue. But this, too, was a ridiculous notion, as his brain should have been able to figure out. Had the blade really broken off in his leg, Moran would not have been able to leave other marks.

Working his way higher up the leg, he came to the puckered scar of a bullet wound, deep purple and ugly. He was no longer wearing the wrappings because the skin had sealed and infection was no longer a concern. However, the bullet had grazed the bone, and the muscle damage still caused him pain when he walked, or even when he didn't walk but left his leg too long inert. He had missed his last two therapy sessions intended to strengthen it. To the physical therapist, he had lied and said he was going on holiday, and to Sherlock he had lied and said the therapist was on holiday. He was fairly sure Sherlock had seen right through him, but he hadn't called his bluff, only taken it upon himself to refill his meds.

On the other leg, he examined burn marks and minor cuts up to the knee, but when he came to the first signs of mangled skin, evidence of flesh torn apart by the cilice, he let the trouser legs fall again, covering it all up. He already knew what it looked like, the massive scarring that covered both legs, knee to crotch. He sure as hell knew what it had felt like, wearing the cilice, one leg at a time, how the barbs sank in, how they twisted and pulled and ripped tiny gashes through his flesh, even before being viciously wrenched away. How many times, he had no recollection. Too many. The hideous scarring was testimony to that.

John knew it wasn't over. He knew Moran was still out there, as was that woman, and he knew that they had not intended for him to survive. It was the reality of his every waking moment; it plagued him even while he slept. But Lestrade's report of a murdered man, and of the disappearance of those three pieces of evidence, had sharpened that reality.

He couldn't fall to pieces. Not now. Not when things were happening again. He should be out there with Sherlock, not holed up in a bathroom. He knew it the moment Sherlock had walked out the door, but he had been unable to summon the strength—the courage—to call him back. And he hated himself for that, too. Once he had been the whetstone against which Sherlock sharpened his intellectual flint; now he was the millstone hanging around his neck. He wasn't recovering the way Sherlock needed him to. Mentally, emotionally, he was just too unstable. Physically, he was weak, sleeping poorly and always tired, still taking pain meds, still relying on a cane. Of course Sherlock would be frustrated, being trapped in a flat night and day with him. When John had told him to, he had practically run out the front door.

If he didn't straighten himself out, Sherlock would eventually become bored with him, and leave. That's just who he was.

And oh god, what would he do if Sherlock left? He'd spent more than three years in a larger, more dangerous, more stimulating world. And now he was . . . caretaking.

Just a dog. Just a dog. Just a—

Stop!

He dropped his fists down on his thighs, and a burst of anger erupted from his throat, echoing loudly in that small, lonely space.

At the same moment, the doorbell sounded, a rapid buzzing: three dots, followed by four dots. SH. The front door opened.

John put one hand on the edge of the sink and pushed himself upright. Once he'd steadied, he was recalled to his purpose in coming into this bathroom in the first place. He lifted the toilet seat and tried again. This time, after a very concerted effort to relax (he heard Sherlock's footsteps ascending the staircase), he was finally able to piss.

Next minute, he opened the bathroom door, passed through the kitchen with his cane, and found Sherlock standing in the centre of the sitting room, staring at the open file John had left by his laptop. Despite his promise to read through the whole thing, he had lost interest quickly. It was just page after page of foreign names attached to catalogued sightings in cities he'd never heard of; lists and lists of invoices for illegal contraband—weapons, drugs, precious metals, computer equipment—being bought and sold and smuggled across borders; coded names, coded operations, coded codes. And not once, in all those thousands of words, did he ever come across the name Sebastian Moran, or even his codename, LANCE.

Maybe Sherlock could make something more of it.

John could not account for the feeling of relief that swept through him at the sight of Sherlock now, nor could he reconcile it with the anger that flooded him in the same moment—that he should be so dependent on the man for his wellbeing! He was a grown man; he shouldn't have such a strong, visceral reaction to Sherlock's mere presence. He shouldn't still feel impelled to touch him, just to verify that he was real, a thing he seldom allowed himself to do.

He knew he should ask about the morgue. What had he learnt, what would he do next, and could he come along? But his throat was constricted with emotion, and his eyes burned with shame.

In the end, he could say nothing. Instead, he nodded to Sherlock, stiffly and coldly, and went to his bedroom, leaving Sherlock standing in the middle of the sitting room all alone, staring after him in bewilderment.