CHAPTER 15: ONE HOSTS THREE

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2015

In her haste to leave the flat, Molly crammed the note into her pocket and scooped Cheshire into her arms, but she forgot her hat, gloves, and handbag. She hurried through crowded, lamp-lit London streets, hugging the squirming cat close to her chest beneath her coat. He wasn't liking it one bit.

It wasn't until the cat scratched her deeply across her collarbone and down her chest, wriggled his way out of her coat, and streaked for the skips that Molly was pulled out of her fearful stupor. She chased after him, calling his name and begging him to come back, but he disappeared into a dark alley. Molly's feet came to a sudden stop on the threshold where lamplight met shadow.

'Oh Cheshire, please,' she said into the mouth of the alley. People continued along the pavement behind her like she was a stone in a stream, some offering a cursory glance, others sniggering heartlessly or tsking sympathetically, but they all moved along just the same. She stood there pleading as the minutes passed and cold crept beneath her coat and slid against her skin. She shivered. For a moment, she was on the verge of panic, clamping two hands across her mouth while pacing in front of the black alley.

'Trouble, miss?'

She gasped and turned to see a hefty man in a leather jacket and a flat cap, who stood in the centre of the pavement, hands deep in coat pockets and shoulders hunched against the cold.

'You looked upset, was all. Can I help?'

Without a word, she turned and ran.

She ran for who knows how long. When she finally came to herself, she realised how far she had gone, and how cold she was, and she knew she needed to call Greg. She came to a stop on a corner and shoved her hands, stiff and beginning to hurt with cold, into the pockets of her coat in search of her phone, only then remembering how she had put it in her forgotten handbag, which also carried cash and cards. She whimpered, tears building behind her sinuses. Why hadn't she memorised his number? She couldn't even pay the bus fare to his house, let alone cab fare, though she knew better than to take a cab. But it didn't matter anyway—she'd left his key behind with everything else. How could she have been so careless! So foolish! She could return to the flat, she supposed, and bother the landlord, who kept residence on the ground floor, to let her in. But what if someone was waiting for her there? She hadn't searched the bedroom or the bathroom, after all. What if someone had been in hiding, just behind a door or around a corner, waiting to— She couldn't bear to think it. Just the thought of stepping foot inside her own home right now sent her quaking. She couldn't do it. Not alone.

But her finger brushed the note in her pocket.

And that was when she realised she was walking again at a good clip, brushing tears from her cheeks and sniffling to keep her nose from running. Her feet were pointed toward Baker Street.

She was going for an opinion. A consultation. That was all. Just to get his perspective. And, maybe, to get him to roll her eyes at her for this dramatic response to such little upsets. He would point out to her that there were perfectly logical explanations for everything—the rose, the note, the bird—and she'd simply been spending too much time around dead bodies lately. He would explain it all thoroughly and in one breath and let his tone and eyes alone berate her, and everything would be fine. There would be no need to bother Greg after all.

She pressed her thumb to the buzzer: two dashes, four dots, just like she'd been instructed back in December. Her initials. While she waited, she cleared her throat and patted her cheeks, hoping the redness and puffiness could be blamed on the cold.

She wasn't buzzed in. Instead, she heard uneven footsteps descending the stairs, and moments later, the front door pulled open. It was John.

'Molly,' he said, half in welcome, half in surprise. A look of cold guardedness slid away, as though he had been anticipating a different MH.

'Hello John,' she said, her voice pitched higher than was natural. She swallowed hard. 'How are you?'

'Come in, it's freezing,' said John, treating her question as a salutation, nothing more.

She followed him up the first flight of stairs. He was walking without his cane, relying instead on the banister or the wall, and she wondered if this was a new thing, a positive thing. She wasn't one to judge, though, especially because it felt like ages since she had seen John herself. In the morgue, while he was examining the bodies of that homeless couple, Sherlock had mentioned in passing that John had returned to his physical therapist (a thought inspired, it seemed, by the scar tissue on the woman's leg, coupled with the uneven wearing of the bones in her feet that Sherlock thought might have indicated a limp). He hadn't commented further on John's condition. Since the day Sherlock had stated plainly that John couldn't stand him, he hadn't spoken to her at all about his state of being, physical or otherwise, though—and Molly wondered if she were being intuitive or just nosy in thinking it—it seemed that he wanted to.

'Is Sherlock—?'

'He's out,' said John. They'd reached the landing, and he held the door open for her to pass into 221B. 'Doing what Sherlock does best.' There was a twinge of acrimony in his tone.

'Oh.' She felt suddenly embarrassed for coming, uninvited and unannounced. In the comfort of this flat, fleeing her own in such a state now seemed a very silly thing to have done. All she'd accomplished was stranding herself and losing her cat. But now, a feeling of calm and safety enveloped her, and if John didn't mind, maybe she'd stay a while.

'Let me take your coat,' John said. 'Maybe get you some something dri— Molly, is that blood?'

Her coat was halfway down her shoulders, and she looked down at her shirt where a line of blood had soaked through her collar and left breast pocket.

'Cheshire,' she said, 'my calico. Still just a kitten, really. He . . . he ran away. On my way over.'

She saw his confusion and knew that she was making little sense, but he didn't question her. His face softened and he took her arm, leading her to the kitchen. 'Let me help you clean it up,' he said. 'Cat's claws can lead to nasty infections.'

He sat her at the table and busied himself in cupboards and at the sink, returning with a first aid kit, a bowl of warm water, and some white cotton flannels. He asked her to open her blouse a few buttons and hold back the collar while he cleaned the scratch over her collarbone. There were three scratches, about five inches long, but only the centre one was deep enough to bleed.

While he worked, she tried hard not to stare at him, but it was difficult not to. It wasn't just the facial scars, the grooves in the skin left behind in the wake of a knife; it wasn't the slightly offset nose, a remnant of a break; it wasn't even the shiny skin on his neck, caught in just the right light, that spoke the burning of a leather strap. These things scared her. But it was more than the wounds in a living body that fascinated her: it was something she couldn't name. It was in the way he carried them, an indescribable quality of shadow and light existing in the same plane. She could hardly believe that this was the man she had known three years ago, or the same man who had lain in a hospital bed in critical condition for so many days, just a matter of months ago. All three versions seemed to be different people entirely, men who couldn't possibly share one life; and yet, in the man who sat beside her now, she saw echoes of the other two play across his face every time he turned his head.

'Thank you,' she said when he was finished. She buttoned her blouse again over the thin strip of gauze he had used to let the wound breathe. 'You must think me pretty silly, coming all the way over here for help with a scratch.'

'Is that why you came?'

He began to repack the first aid kit. His tone was casual, but his eyes, when they glanced up to meet hers, were incisive.

She smiled to show she was all right, but she couldn't hold it, and it slipped completely off her face, replaced by trembling lips. 'Sorry!' she said, her voice strained as new tears welled in her eyes. She stood and turned her back to wipe them away, moving into the sitting room. She had thought she had herself together, at least to the point where she could speak without a thick throat or falling to pieces. And maybe with Sherlock she would have been able to. She would have been on her guard, or at least in a more logical frame of mind. But for some reason, with John, her defences dropped away, exposing her disquiet and laying bare her fear. She couldn't understand why this was so.

Molly felt his hand on her back as he stepped to her side and guided her to the sofa. There, he sat with her, keeping his hand steady between her shoulder blades. While she cried, he asked no questions but instead served as an empathetic vessel who, without her having to say a word and without knowing the cause, understood that she was afraid. And maybe that was why she knew that, if she could talk to anyone, she could talk to John, because hers was a fear he had known.

'Someone was in my flat today,' she said shakily. 'I came home, and there was a rose on the table, and a note.' Oh, it sounded so harmless! Even she was sceptical of any true danger now.

But John didn't scoff. 'What did it say?' he asked, his voice gentle as milk.

She nodded to where her coat hung by the door. John arose and put his hand in the pockets, extracting the crumpled note with her name on. After he read it, he lifted his head, his face grim.

'There was a dead bird in the kettle,' she said. 'So I got out of there as quickly as I could.' She covered her face with her hands. 'I thought the rose was from Greg!' she cried. 'But it wasn't him. It wasn't him.'

The sofa sank again beside her, and John put his arms around her and pulled her close, letting her cry. He stroked her hair to soothe her.

'They know, don't they?' she said into his gaunt shoulder, unable to keep her body from shaking. 'That I'm the one who knew he was alive. They know!'

'Shh, shh,' he said.

'They'll think I'm important to him. And they want to hurt him, I know they do. So they'll go through his friends. That's what these people do.'

'Molly, don't—'

'I can't do it,' she said, pulling herself back.

'Do what?'

For a moment, she was unable to continue; her imagination conjured atrocities too terrible to name. He reached for the box of tissues on the coffee table and brought them nearer. She pulled one out to wipe her face; she could feel how splotchy and puffy her skin still was. 'I'm not strong like you are, John. I won't hold up against that sort of . . . The kinds of things they did to . . . I'm sorry.'

She meant torture, but she couldn't say the word. Ashamed, she cast her eyes down to her lap, but instead she saw John's hand rested on his own knee. The scars from the wire cuffs stood out on his left wrist.

'Don't apologise,' he murmured softly. He surreptitiously tugged his sleeve to cover the soft, pink lines.

'I don't have any more secrets,' she said, unable to stop herself. 'What if they have no reason to keep me alive at all?'

She waited for him to tell her that nothing like that would ever happen to her, that she was overplaying the danger or misunderstanding what she had seen in her flat. But he didn't. He made no pretence of regarding her fears as anything less than reasonable. Instead, he stood. 'Come with me,' he said, extending a hand.

Confused, a little frightened, but trusting him all the same, she put her hand in his. He helped her rise and led her out of the sitting room and to the staircase leading to the second storey. As they ascended, John, still holding tightly to her hand, dropped the banister to pull his phone out of his pocket. She saw him scroll through a short address book and land on the name Sherlock. With a thumb, he quickly typed out a simple text:

Come home.

He brought her into what was clearly his bedroom, though it was hard to imagine that anyone really lived here. It was as sparse as a room could be: a bed, a bureau, and a bare three-legged bedside table with an unshaded lamp, all simple in design, all drab in colour. There was nothing on the walls, not even a mirror. Even the window stood un-curtained, revealing nothing but a rickety fire escape and a solid brick wall on the other side of the back alley.

John dropped her hand and walked to the headboard of his bed where he opened a small drawer and pulled out a black pistol. She tensed.

'Here,' he said, extending the weapon to her, grip first. 'I want you to hold it.'

'John, I can't—'

'Like this.' He ignored her protests and stood closer to demonstrate a proper grip. 'Right-handed, yeah? Tuck the grip right here, in the web between the thumb and forefinger. Three fingers curl around the grip, like this. See? Use your left hand to anchor yourself and stabilise your aim. Place it right here, over your other hand like this. Yeah? Like you're praying.'

He taught her how to flip on the safety, and how to flip it off. He told her about sight alignment, how to look at the front sight on the slide and align it with the rear notch, and how to level it at a target. He explained to her how to squeeze the trigger, smoothly, and how to lean gently into the shot and anticipate a recoil.

Then, to show her the gun was harmless, he reached back into the drawer and extracted a magazine, which he tossed on the bed. He pulled the slide back swiftly to show her a hollow chamber. Finally, he pointed the gun at the opposite side of the room and pulled the trigger twice to show her that it was, indeed, empty. But with each click, she jumped all the same.

'Hold it,' he said, pressing the gun into her hands.

She curled her fingers around the grip, warm from his hands.

'How does it feel?'

'It's heavy,' she said, a little surprised by the weight.

'And that's without the magazine. It only gets heavier. Every pull of the trigger, the heavier it becomes. So fire it once, and make it count.'

A firm and unrelenting teacher, he made her hold it with two hands, just as he had shown her; he adjusted her grip, showed her how to lock her right arm and slightly bend her left, how to keep her arms straight as she raised them to aim at a target. Then he placed himself on the other side of the room, touched the centre of his chest at the sternum, and said, 'Right here. This is a kill shot.

She nodded fearfully.

'Take it.'

'What?'

'Practise aiming. Pull the trigger.'

'I can't, John.'

'The gun is empty.'

She knew it was, but she asked anyway, 'Are you sure?'

'Yes.'

She hesitated.

'You won't get a chance to think about it when it counts, Molly, you have to be prepared. You have to know what it feels like. So when I tell you, you aim and shoot. Got it?'

'God, John.'

'Align your sight. This is your target.' He jabbed again at the centre of his chest.

'God, John!'

'Molly, now.'

She raised her arms and pulled the trigger. All she heard was a small click. But she could barely breathe.

'Good,' he said. 'That was good. You were a bit too quick, actually. You fired before you had locked onto your target. You just shot me in the stomach.'

Molly shook her head, apologetic and not sure why. 'That's still lethal.'

'Yes, but it's going to take me quite a lot longer to bleed out from it. And I'll be in agony while I do. A quick, sure death is right here.' His fingers rammed his chest a third time, hard enough to bruise. 'Fire.'

She lifted the gun and fired again; an imaginary recoil vibrated through her body, and she jumped.

'There it is,' he said, approvingly. He returned to her side of the room and took the gun out of her hands. She sighed with relief, but then he slammed the magazine back into the well, flicked the safety on, and put it back in her hands to make her feel its full weight.

'When you shoot, Molly,' he said gravely, a hand on her shoulder, 'you shoot to kill. Hear me? You don't give him a second chance.'

'Man, I don't think I should be talking to you.'

'Why not? You just said you were by Shepherd's Knoll that night. If you saw or heard something—'

'Shut up, man, I ain't saying nothing because'—the kid's volume dropped and he looked around shadily—'I don't want a target on my back.'

'What target? Who's making threats? Tell me, and I may be able to—'

'Man, you're the threat. Don't you get it?'

Sherlock straightened and his mouth closed. The kid was maybe sixteen, and maybe still had a home to return to, if he wanted it. Sherlock was mistaken to think that a younger man would be ignorant of who he was and therefore be more likely to talk. The kid took another step backward, distancing himself.

'None of this would be happening if not for your bloody return from the dead. We all know it. Old Man Reaper, he ain't satisfied, is he? He's angry. You cheated him, and we're the ones paying for it. That's the word.'

'That's absurd.'

'Yeah? Well.' The young man kept shifting his weight, casting glances to the shadows. 'Some of the blokes ain't too happy with you. They're thinking to do something about it, too. Evening the score, so to speak.'

'How?'

The kid shrugged, checked the stretch of alley to his right, and said, 'That's all I got, man. Nah, man, I'm done.' And he bolted.

Sherlock kicked a stone in anger and heard it skip down the street like a stone on a pond. This wasn't the first time he'd gotten a reaction like that one.

He decided to continue on to Shepherd's Knoll and question more patrons when his phone went off. He recognised the personalised text alert, but he was momentarily stunned by it, and it took him a moment to understand why: it was message from John, and it was the first time John had texted him in three-and-a-half years. It read:

Come home.

He didn't even think twice. He stepped out into the street and hailed the first cab he saw. Sliding into the back, he said, '221 Baker,' and moved his thumb to reply to the text to tell John he was on his way.

'Oi, I know that address.'

He lifted his eyes and saw the cabbie staring at him in the rearview mirror.

'Problem?'

'221 Baker, we all know that one. They print it in the paper every day, in one place or another. You're him, ain't you? You're that Holmes character?'

'Hardly relevant. I'm paying you to do a job.'

'Nah, I don't want none of your money. Out you git, Mr Holmes.'

'Pardon?'

'Not in my cab, no sir. It may be I's just a cabbie, but this cabbie don't chauffeur no criminals. Out you git, and don't make me say it twice.'

Next he knew, he was standing again in the street as the black cab peeled away. He was incredulous, fuming. He was not a criminal, and damn them all for believing the twisted lies of Kitty Riley. Sheep. And damn her lawyers and The Sun for putting up bail. She would be sleeping comfortably in her own bed tonight while all of London quailed at the false words dripping from her pen.

Turning onto a more major road, he hailed the next cab he saw, kept his head down as he climbed in, and said, 'Corner of Glentworth and Melcombe', which was just around the corner from his front door. He sat back in the chair, kept his head down, and resolved to buy a hat as the cabbie, no questions asked, pulled away from her kerb.

He arrived on the doorstep approximately thirty minutes after receiving the text. He hit the buzzer to announce himself (three dots, four dots), and bounded up the stairs, taking them two at a time, both eager and apprehensive to discover why he had been summoned. The text could be read as urgent, or terse, or annoyed; but any way he read it, the direction was clear, and he followed it.

To his surprise, he found Molly Hooper in the sitting room with John. She sat in his chair with her feet drawn under her and sipping what he could smell from the doorway was a strong cup of tea. John was in his own chair, also with a cup. They had apparently been involved in a very intense conversation—Sherlock knew the look of one. Their heads came around as he stepped into the room. Molly's blush was fresh and she quickly dipped her head to sip again from her cup, but John just stared at him as though he had never seen him before. The expression was unfathomable.

'What has happened?' he asked, even as he scanned the room for clues. There were several spent tissues on the coffee table (Molly must have been crying when she first arrived); the first aid kit lay open on the kitchen table (she had been hurt); there was blood on her shirt; and John's pistol lay in plain sight on the small table at John's elbow. Whatever it was, it wasn't good. He waited for an explanation.

John pushed himself to his feet, limped to the coffee table, and picked up a crumpled piece of paper. 'When Molly got home today,' he said, 'she found that someone had been inside her flat. They left her a rose and this note.' He passed Sherlock the note.

His brow furrowed as he opened it to find a nursery rhyme substituting the name Polly with Molly. He sniffed and got a whiff of eau de cologne. Not Molly's.

'She looked in the kettle and found a dead bird,' John finished.

Sherlock flattened the crumpled paper on the table top. Then he stepped over to the lamp in the corner and pulled the cord. He angled the card so that the light spilled across the writing, casting shadows into even the slightest impressions in the paper. More words, as though someone had written on a page set atop this one. He grabbed a pencil from the table, and with its flat edge rubbed gently across the indentations until the message, written in the same hand, began to appear:

You always did gravitate toward the unremarkable.
Or maybe she's more delicious than she seems. xxx

He frowned. His mouth fell open, prepared to spew forth his deductions and launch into a string of questions. But then he saw the trepidation on Molly's face, and the caution in John's eyes, and he switched tracks.

'John, a plastic bag, if you would.'

While John went to the kitchen to fetch one, he stepped closer to Molly. 'Are you all right?'

She nodded, but she did not look all right.

'The blood—'

'Cat scratch. Nothing serious.'

'Have you called Lestrade?'

'I . . . forgot my phone. Keys and everything. In the flat.'

He nodded.

John returned with the plastic bag into which Sherlock dropped the card. 'Anything else in left your flat? Anything touched? Moved? Missing?'

Her look of distress deepened as she tried to remember. 'I don't know,' she said. 'I didn't notice. When I found the bird . . .'

'I need to have a look around, it seems. You are welcome to stay here, of course. John won't mind.'

'You'll need me to get in,' said Molly. 'Mr Fazal, the landlord. He won't let you in unless I'm with you.'

Sherlock grinned slyly and started to say, 'I think I can manage—' but John picked up the pistol, and as he tucked it into the back of his trousers, he said, 'Looks like I'm coming, too.'

'The flower was on the table, just here,' said Molly, pointing. She moved into the room, but Sherlock had paused in the threshold. At first, she thought he was waiting, vampire-like, for an invitation to enter, and her tongue fumbled a bit as she started to say, 'Um, you can, that is, do you want to . . . ?' But she trailed off as she realised that, like the flipping of a switch, he had entered deductive mode: he had stepped onto a crime scene, and his eyes were scanning wall to wall, floor to ceiling, and every inch in between. He sniffed the air like a hound and cocked his head to listen for any unusual sounds.

'Er, Sherlock?' said John, who still stood outside the door and was blocked from entering. 'You want to let me in?'

Rather than answer, Sherlock stepped purposefully into the room, turning like a dancer, three hundred and sixty degrees, still observing, sedulously touching nothing. It occurred to her that, though she had seen him investigating many times before, she had never seen him at a crime scene. It was a different style, a different art, to that of examining corpses, and it was fascinating.

John came in behind. He had brought with him his cane, so clearly he was not off it completely. Just around the flat, it seemed. And though he, too, surveyed the room, his was an air less of inspection and more of vigilance, as though assessing the flat for weak points in the fortress and places to establish a night watch.

'Where's the rose now?' asked Sherlock.

'Kitchen,' said Molly. 'Shall I—?'

'Show me how you found it.'

She re-entered the kitchen, gave wide berth to the fallen kettle, and grabbed the rose, which lay perched by the sink. Back in the sitting room, she lay it on the table.

'Just like this,' she said. 'And the card was here.'

'Who has access to your flat?'

'Just Greg. And the landlord.'

'And the landlord's wife.'

'Well, yes.'

It had been she, Mrs Fazal, who had let them in, as Mr Fazal was not at home.

'Very well. I'll need to see everything.' He leant into his next step, but halted, re-evaluated, and, rocking back, added, somewhat perfunctorily, 'May I?'

'Whatever you need to do,' she agreed.

He gave a sharp nod. 'John. Check the integrity of the locks on the windows and door. Tell me if you see anything amiss.'

She watched them set to work, a little spellbound. Sherlock moved like a bird, flitting to and fro, if only methodically and with calculated purpose. He was high (stretching his neck to the tops of her bookcases) and low (crouching to look under the coffee table and below the sofa), back (to the door) and forth (measuring the steps to the dining table); and soon he had exhausted the sitting room and was fluttering about in the kitchen, opening cupboards and drawers, fiddling with the tap and the cooker and coffee pot. She heard him dealing with the bird, too (she heard the fridge door open, so she knew exactly where he had put it), but despite feeling sorry for it, she didn't want to see it, so she stayed in the sitting room and watched John.

John worked with the painstaking efficiency of a practised surgeon: while not exactly slow, he certainly wasn't rushed. He tested the double bolts Greg had had fitted on the windows and pressed fingers into every corner of the panes until he was satisfied that they were well and truly secured; and he spent a fair amount of time examining the strength of the lock on the front door and looking for signs of a forced entry.

'Where's the fire escape?' he asked.

'It's just off the balcony,' she said. 'In the bedroom.'

John nodded and started in that direction, but Sherlock had just left for the bathroom, and Molly took John's arm to stop his leaving.

'John, what I said back at your flat,' she said softly; she was suspicious of Sherlock's sense of hearing. 'I, um, I maybe shouldn't have told you what I did.'

'I'm glad you said it,' he said. The water kicked on in the bath. Seconds later, Sherlock exited the bathroom, leaving the showerhead running, and disappeared into the bedroom. 'Really.'

'I feel that I may have broken confidence. I want him to believe he can trust me.'

'Molly, he does trust you. And he has every reason to.'

'Yes, but—'

'But I promise,' he said, his eyes very serious, 'I won't let on that I know . . . anything . . . of what he said. All right?'

She nodded gratefully. But she couldn't stop herself from adding, 'I just want you to know, well, I mean, if there's anything, anything at all, I can do, to help, that is . . .'

He smiled softly as a gesture of goodwill. 'Let's worry about you tonight, yeah?'

Sherlock was striding back toward them. Swinging from a lacy strap looped around one finger was a black brassiere.

'I take it this is not your own?' he said mildly.

Molly's eyes widened as she stared at the article draping Sherlock's hand. She could feel the heat rising in her cheeks, a sense of mortification she couldn't account for, given that the item was definitely not her own. Still, the feeling of having been violated was keen. She shook her head vehemently.

His eyes flicked down to her chest. 'I thought not,' he said.

'Sherlock,' John scolded.

'This is a C cup for a 32 bust,' Sherlock returned, ever the practical one. 'Molly's barely a—'

'Don't!' Molly said.

'You've been in her underwear drawer?' said John. 'Sherlock—that's not okay!'

'I promised I would conduct a thorough search,' said Sherlock, apparently not understanding the objection. 'Sock drawer, underwear drawer, medicine cabinet—your Zolpidem is expired, by the way. I suggest you throw it out.'

Molly's blush deepened, and John groaned and rubbed a hand across his face.

'Problem?' Sherlock looked to John.

'Tell me you found more than a black bra, Sherlock.'

'More than a—? John, you don't see what this means? Of course I found plenty!'

He led them into the kitchen. The kettle was repositioned on the cooker; Molly knew she'd be spending a fair amount of time scrubbing it out.

'Do you like claret, Molly?' he asked, reaching into her cupboards.

'Um, yes?'

'Do you have any on hand?' He pulled three wine glasses from the highest shelf and set them in a row.

'No, I rarely buy it myself, but on special occ—'

He whirled to the fridge and pulled it open. Inside, she saw a single bottle of claret. Pulling it out, he shook it enough for both Molly and John to hear that it was half empty. 'Someone's been enjoying a splash of wine,' he said, and plunked the bottle beside the glasses. He lifted one. 'Two things, then. First,'—he raised the glass to eye level and pointed—'the remaining drops of claret still pooled at the bottom of the glass.'

'In all three glasses?' asked John.

'There's a fourth.' He pulled down another wine glass. 'One for the hostess, and one for each of her three guests. Symbolically. Only one person was in this flat. These clues were planted, down to the drop. This one'—he turned the glass around so they could better see the other side of the rim where the imprint of dark crimson lipstick stained the glass—'is more telling. From a bottom lip, obviously. An observably deliberate gesture.'

He set down the glass and turned abruptly for the back of the flat. 'Now, as for the bathroom—'

'But Sherlock,' said John, 'what about the bird?'

'It's a wren. Moving on!'

Molly heard John sigh out his exasperation as he followed after her and Sherlock.

He had been running the shower, as hot as the water would go. When they entered, the warm, humid air engulfed them. Sherlock twisted the knob to off; he didn't have to say a word beyond that. On the mirror, they could clearly see the image of a smiley face streaked across the glass:

Sherlock quickly pulled out his phone, wiped clear the lens, and snapped a photo.

'And now to the bedroom.'

Again, they trailed behind him until they entered Molly's bedroom. All the sheets had been pulled off the bed, and her underwear drawer still hung open. She hurried to close it.

'Nothing more of interest in there,' Sherlock said offhandedly, 'and nothing else in the room has been touched. Save by me.'

'Then what are we doing in here?' asked John.

'I wanted Molly to see that it is perfectly safe in this room.' He faced her head on. 'I checked the balcony myself. It's secure. She came in another way. Mostly likely straight through the front door.'

'She?' Molly and John said together.

Sherlock proffered a look of wonder at their combined average intellects. 'Irene Adler.' Then he marched out of the room in what looked to be a temper. 'Obviously.'