CHAPTER 34: TRUTH OR DARE
"Look who's back to annoy me," John exclaims gleefully while entering the room, his eyes all focused on his friend. He can't express how grateful he is to see him breathing, still holding onto that life that he never seems to consider of much value in his reckless adventures. Yet he didn't let go.
John smiles fondly at him, but as soon as his eyes land on the figure beside the hospital bed, his hand instinctively flits behind his back, reaching for his gun tucked in the waistband of his jeans. He doesn't consciously want to aim a weapon at Giulia, of course. It's just his spontaneous reaction in front of what he perceives as a threat and possible danger for both him and Sherlock. Sometimes, the soldier sleeping within reacts faster than his alert, rational conscience.
Holmes inspects his every move and beseeches him, "Easy, Doctor."
Watson keeps his hardened gaze locked on Giulia and spits out, "She's a liar."
She peacefully opens her arms in a gesture of surrender.
"To be fair, I never really lied to you. I simply withheld some information and omitted a few details about my past."
"Like the fact that you died one year ago, just to name one," John quickly rebuts, straightening up and keeping both arms stiffly by his side. His clenched fists still signal a circumspect attitude.
"Apparently not," Sherlock ironically intervenes to lessen the tension in the room. "Take a seat, John. We're here for a story."
John raises a questioning brow at them but doesn't argue. Never taking his eyes off Giulia, he steps backwards, outstretching his hand back until it brushes against the armrest of the chair in the corner. He slowly sits down on the edge, still watching her.
Giulia swallows under his wary gaze and attempts to break the ice.
"Sherlock told me about the newspaper article you found regarding the explosion at the Italian Consulate in Latin America. How could you be certain it was about me?"
"Next to the text, there was a family portrait. I recognised your face beside your parents and sister, I assume," he states in a firm voice.
She frowns at him, puzzled.
"That's odd. There shouldn't be photos of me anywhere anymore. Where did you find the newspaper again?"
No photos of her anywhere? How's it even possible? Nowadays, it would be incredibly difficult to erase someone's presence from the Internet entirely, John reflects, but instead of expressing all those questions aloud, he simply replies, "I didn't. It was attached to an email in Sherlock's Inbox."
She gawks at him while a thousand doubts line up in her mind. Something's not right. That is a subtle way of blackmailing her by advertising her true identity to the people closest to her.
"Who sent it?"
"No idea: anonymous sender. But that's not the point. Are we really going to ignore that you faked your death one year ago?" John bursts out, losing his temper. He needs answers. Now.
"I never intended to do such a thing. I simply found myself in the right place but at the wrong time. Let's start from the beginning. What do you know about that?"
"Not much. You were the daughter of an Italian Consul in Latin America. Last year, a gas leak provoked an explosion that tore down the Consulate and killed your parents and allegedly you as well," he hisses.
"Quite accurate, but not entirely. You got some details right. My father was indeed a consul, and he and my mother both lost their lives in that explosion." Her voice drops to a barely audible whisper, then she speaks up. "But it wasn't a gas leak: it was an overt attack against my family."
For the first time since the start of that conversation, John looks more confused than distrustful.
"There was nothing about it in the article."
She smirks. "I bet. It's classified information that was never released. However, I think it's time you knew the truth about me, so here's my story: I was living in the Consulate together with my parents and my sister. My father was an honest diplomat, determined to dismantle a web of organised crime; the mafia isn't a problem in Italian territory only. It spread throughout the world, like a tumour with bad cells in many countries. My father waged his war against a powerful and dangerous local family. As Consul, he turned the local Italian community against them, stripping the family of any support from the villages of Italian descendants. One day, though, they retaliated. That night, my house, together with my entire life, went up in smoke, literally." Her eyelids flutter over her eyes for half a second as she struggles to push away those heart-wrenching memories.
"How do you know it was a deliberate attack rather than an unfortunate random event?" John inquires.
She cracks her eyes open and stares at him with an amused look.
"My dear doctor, I've been cooperating with the Secret Service ever since."
"Of what country?"
She shoots him a smug smile, and he immediately realises.
"Oh. And why would the British Secret Service be interested in an attack perpetrated by the Italian mafia in Latin America?"
"You're finally asking the right questions," Sherlock praises him. "Piecing together these new elements about her past with what she told me when we came back from the bank where she was held hostage, some months ago, I'd say that the MI6 was chasing after a criminal network that was believed to be at the roots of the attack."
"But how did she start her cooperation with the MI6 in the first place?" John asks without thinking, then he pauses for a few seconds, replaying Sherlock's sentence in his head. "Hang on, what did she tell you that night? And why was I not made aware?"
Now he is diverting his anger towards his friend. Sherlock flashes a guilty look at him.
"We can discuss it later. Giulia, could you provide us with an answer?"
"I never doubted that the Mafia was the perpetrator of the explosion, but something was unclear. At the time, the MI6 was leading an investigation on an entangled criminal web stemming from the UK with branches in many places, Latin America included. The British intelligence had concluded that the Mafia family that my father was fighting was somehow connected to it as well. Upon hearing about the explosion, British agents immediately started digging into it, hoping to unearth the bonds between the Latin America cell and the London headquarters. There's not much else to say. The investigation is still ongoing, and regretfully, the missing link between the low-key criminals that attacked my family and the nebulous organisation that instigated them is still unknown. The MI6 is still tracking down the mastermind behind it all, and I'm afraid it's going to take a while."
"Which is why the real nature of the explosion was never reported to the national authorities of that South American country or published in the papers," John finally realises. "It had to look like an accident, and nobody could know that the British Secret Service was investigating the matter, flushing out whoever was in cahoots with that organisation, without raising any suspicion. So, that's what went public: a tragic gas leak blew up the building," he recapitulates, connecting the dots.
"Excellent analysis," she compliments him, earning a glower from him.
"Care to explain why your name appears among the confirmed victims, then?" Sherlock intervenes with a serious look. He might not have reacted as badly and cautiously as John, but they both know all too well that trust has always been a sore point between them. She kept too many things from him to expect him to blindly accept only the morsels of her story.
"Because I was supposed to be home when the explosion burst out. Although, that night I had slipped out of the Consulate with no one knowing... Well, not the perpetrators anyway," she adds with a bitter smile.
Sherlock catches the allusion. "Who knew then?"
"My bodyguard. He tried to stop me while I was climbing over the perimeter wall, minutes before hell broke loose. I begged him not to ask questions and not to follow me. I was asking him to break protocol and jeopardise his career if anybody ever got wind of it, but we trusted each other, so he obliged. Not more than a few minutes after I left, when I was barely a mile away from home, I heard and saw the explosion from afar," she recalls, gulping nervously at those memories.
"I'll skip the details of my shock and despair. As soon as I could think straight again, I immediately looked for my bodyguard. Thankfully, he wasn't badly injured but got away with only a few light burns; the guards' quarters were at the gate of the property, just at the edge of the blast radius. I ran there, found him, and hid there. He kept me safe until he could assess the situation. He himself had collaborated with the MI6 a few years before when working at the service of a British ambassador. When he learnt that the British Secret Service intended to take over the case of the explosion, he realised that his old contacts in the agency could provide me with the level of protection I needed. That's how I started cooperating with British intelligence—it was through his old ties. And since he could be of use in the operation to find the truth about the attack as well, he became a consultant on my family's assassination case."
The two men breathe heavily, letting the truth sink in. Then Sherlock cocks a brow at her.
"Are you still in contact with him? Is he your current bodyguard standing outside 221 Baker Street?"
"No. We had to part ways some time ago," she says briefly, with a tight-lipped grimace.
Holmes studies her expression for long instants: she keeps her head down and shoulders slumped as she bites the inside of her cheek. That goodbye must have been harrowing: it cost her more than she is willing to admit. But why? That bodyguard was just one of her family's employees tasked with her security. Why would she be so affected?
"He wasn't only your protector," he deduces in a flinty tone. He doesn't know how to deal with other people's emotions; seeing her in such distress is oddly uncomfortable for him. And that's the only explanation for the nipping note in his voice, he struggles to convince himself.
There is absolutely no other possible, logical, imaginable, valid reason that her sadness over another man should cause his veiled resentment, right? He tries to talk himself out of those senseless thoughts of jealousy.
Giulia raises a melancholic look at him.
"He was my mentor: he trained me on self-defence techniques and emergency response to critical situations. That helped forge a bond between us: we were close. And that was a mistake," she adds in a whisper.
He narrows his eyes at her, trying to extract some more information, but it looks like she has retreated into an impenetrable silence.
John changes the subject.
"So ultimately, the British Secret Service provided you with a new identity and let you lead a new life in a new city, correct? And they changed your appearance as well, considering that you had blond hair and were wearing glasses in the photo I saw. Are you wearing contacts now?"
"Of course not," Sherlock interjects. "She squints her eyes every time she needs to read something tiny or far away: she must be only slightly short-sighted. The choice to wear glasses probably depended on eye fatigue since she was spending long hours in front of a computer screen, following online lectures given by international teachers worldwide. I've always wondered how she gained her peculiar education. I guess that as the daughter of a foreign diplomat, she used long-distance learning methods with both Italian and foreign professors."
She gapes at him and confirms, "Yes, that's precisely what I used to do. But the person in that picture… That isn't me anymore. My old self is dead. I even have a tombstone in my birthplace, Rome. Nobody must know that I am alive."
"Nobody shall know that you're hunting down your parents' killer with the help of Her Majesty's intelligence," Sherlock says.
"Only when I'm not too busy with my academic assignments. You'd like to remember that I am actually pursuing a PhD in international relations, in the end." She shrugs, putting up an innocent face. "Any more questions?"
They process all the new information for a few seconds, and John asks, "Does your sister know that you're alive?"
Sherlock replies on her behalf, "Obviously. Don't you remember? Giulia called her sister right after our first case together—the one with the twin sisters who infiltrated the terrorist cell. Besides, she's quite a sensitive woman, and we can imagine that she wanted to spare her sister the unnecessary pain of her loss, especially since they were already grieving for their parents. I don't entirely agree with such a choice, by the way. How could anyone sell their fake death if the people closest to them aren't devastated?" He ponders the idea briefly.
John gives him a shocked look. "You can't be serious."
Sherlock quickly jumps onto the next topic.
"How did your sister survive the explosion?"
"She wasn't there. She was at a gala that night."
"And I guess that her attendance to the gala was a matter of public knowledge, wasn't it?" Sherlock infers, finally reassembling all the pieces of that complex puzzle. John, on his part, gives him a lost look of confusion.
She nods, and he concludes, "If she was a designated target, the attackers would have chosen a different night to carry out their plan, so she wasn't in the crosshairs. And yet, for some reason, you were. Clearly, you know all that already, since you went immediately off the radar and never corrected your presumed death, thus preventing them from coming after you again. Your death in the explosion was never meant to be collateral damage of the revenge against your father, was it? They wanted you dead as well."
She wrinkles her nose at his correct deductions and nods silently once more.
"Why were you leaving the Consulate that night? What were you up to?" Sherlock interrogates her.
"Nothing illegal, I promise," she laconically replies, keeping her eyes fixed on the ground.
That's not enough: he wants more, he wants the full account of that night. But that is too painful for her; he can see that. He can easily read her movements and acts: the furrow between her eyebrows, her clenched fists, and her terrified gaze lowered down. Ghosts haunt her endlessly. Her nocturnal nightmares are always with her, even in the daylight. She can never get rid of all the grief or the unsettling feeling of persecution. He can't ask her to expose herself to the merciless assault of those memories just for his childish thirst for complete knowledge. She told them the truth; that will suffice, at least for now.
"That's all you're going to tell us for today," he assumes. "This is a story for another time, isn't it?"
Giulia remains quiet for a few seconds, pricking up her ears to the surrounding sounds: the room is immersed in a muffled silence that amplifies the rhythmic cadence of a twang and a pair of approaching footsteps along the hospital corridor. She sighs and smiles feebly.
"Definitely."
"Alright, I only have one more question." John stares at her. "Of all the cities in the world, why London?"
"Because I requested that," says a familiar voice. Mycroft Holmes appears on the threshold, marking his every step with a tapping of his umbrella's tip on the tiled floor.
Sherlock immediately understands: that was the source of the twang resounding in the corridor, a few moments before. His mouth bends in a smirk as he draws one logical conclusion: the reason Giulia postponed the final explanation was that she heard Mycroft arriving and didn't want him to eavesdrop on her secret about the night of the explosion.
Good news: he and John aren't the only people that she is keeping in the dark. Bad news: she still has secrets and trust issues.
"What are you doing here, Mycroft?" His younger brother asks, annoyed.
The elder Holmes looks down at him, trying to mask a hint of concern.
"Checking on you, brother mine. As always."
John gapes at him. "Wait, you knew all about Giulia?"
"Of course, he knew," Sherlock intervenes. "He has been at the head of this MI6 operation since the very beginning. I grew suspicious when he showed up in New Scotland Yard after he himself had helped to exonerate Giulia from the murder charges in Michael Chadley's case. Then he appeared once again inside the bank on King William Street to check on the woman that he clearly considered under his protection. When coming back home, that night, I talked with Giulia, and all I could get out of her was that Mycroft was the man who had provided her with her new identity and was the one calling the shots on an investigation connected to a devastating event in her past."
"Did you?" John looks at him, surprised and outraged that his friend never thought about sharing that critical piece of information with him.
"On that occasion, you also learnt that I was meeting with her regularly to update her on the developments of the mysteries regarding her backstory," Mycroft recalls.
"Has anyone ever thought that maybe I didn't want to be kept in the dark about our flatmate's past?" John raises his voice.
Mycroft turns to him with his signature haughty face.
"You barely knew Sherlock when you moved in with him. I never imagined it would be much of a problem for you, Doctor Watson."
"Hold on a second. Did you purposefully send her to live with us at Baker Street?" John asks abruptly.
"God forbid. That was never my intention. Unfortunately, she asked and obtained that the Secret Service stay out of her accommodation arrangements, letting her make her own decisions. I regretted granting her freedom of choice when I found out that of all the places in this city, by chance Giulia had ended up at 221 Baker Street. It was too late to change her (or your) mind. I accepted it, thinking that perhaps it'd be easier for me to keep an eye on her for security reasons," Mycroft explains, pursing his lips in a peeved grimace.
"It doesn't look like you did a great job," John teases him, hinting at both her kidnapping and her being caught in the crossfire just the day before.
Mycroft glares at him and sighs. "In hindsight, living with my little brother is probably the greatest danger she should fear." He throws her a scolding look for tricking her bodyguard and fleeing the house without protection.
"What I find rather surprising, though, is how you two gentlemen found out about her real identity." He changes the subject, leaning inquisitively on his umbrella.
John tells him about the email containing the old newspaper article, and Mycroft freezes. Only after a few seconds, he lifts a hand and massages his temple, perplexed. He shifts his eyes to Giulia.
"This shouldn't have happened. It means that your safety is compromised."
She holds his gaze and talks back resolutely, "It doesn't change a thing."
"I think it does," Sherlock chimes in.
"I want to get to the bottom of this story. I can't stop now. I'm done running," she declares in an unfaltering tone.
Sherlock shoots her a concerned look.
"This isn't a game, Giulia."
She raises a brow at him sarcastically. "Coming from you…"
"Enough," Mycroft cuts their banter short. "I will not engage in a petty argument between the two of you. If Giulia wants to stay in London and keep her current identity while being well aware of the risks she is taking, so be it. I've always been a keen estimator of free will," he concludes, heading for the door, then he turns around for one last glance.
"I am glad that you are still alive, brother mine. Get well soon. As for you, Giulia, I will notify you of any progress in the investigation. Evening, Doctor Watson." And with that, he walks away.
After Mycroft leaves, the three of them fall silent for a few minutes, and then Giulia breaks the immobility of the room.
"I won't apologise for hiding the truth this whole time. It was a conscious decision. In the past, I put in danger the people I cared about, and I couldn't let it occur again with you. However, it wasn't an entirely selfless choice. I don't want to suffer anymore. I'm tired of causing trouble to others, to make them pay for my actions. I've started my personal war to get justice for my family, but I couldn't expect you to jump on board with it. It's—"
"What, dangerous?" Sherlock completes her sentence in a taunting tone, hinting at his situation: lying on a hospital bed with a bullet wound in his chest.
John opens and closes his fists for a second, taking deep breaths before being able to look her in the eyes. A corner of his lips bends in a crooked smile and he stands up, walking closer to her.
"Listen, we can't fathom what you've been through, but we've had our fair share of troubles, too. Whatever lies ahead, we are going to dive in headfirst because that's who we are. That's how we handle things." He shrugs. "Honestly, I don't even care that you kept some things from us. I only feared that you had been faking everything all along, for whatever reason. That you had been fooling us, that… that nothing was ever real," he stutters, struggling with the words. He is fighting an internal battle with his trust issues.
Giulia steps forward and tentatively reaches out to squeeze one of his hands to reassure him. To her relief, he doesn't recoil at her touch; he doesn't see her as a threat.
"I told you: I never lied to you. I kept secrets about my past, but the person you got to know over the last few months is 100% authentic. That's who I am: flaws and everything." She lowers her head. "However, I don't expect you to trust me straight away. Unconditional trust is a rare commodity, and I understand it better than anyone else."
Sherlock notices the slight crack in her voice. She is constantly battling against buried feelings, meaning that someone in her yet-unspoken past must have broken her heart.
He fixes his gaze on her eyes.
"John might have inherited some trust issues from the war, and I might seem an emotionless machine, but it doesn't make us strangers now. Blind trust or recklessness, we are by your side, Giulia. Now, and until the end," he says. His deep voice doesn't betray the slightest hesitation.
Her lips curve in a grateful smile. He averts his gaze right when someone knocks on the door: the worn-out face of D.I. Lestrade peeks in.
"Hello, everyone. I'm glad you're not dead, Sherlock. The paperwork for murder out of my division's jurisdiction would be a nightmare," he jibes at him, but Sherlock reads the weary expression on his face.
"I'd take a wild guess and say that you aren't here to check on my health status, Lestrade. To what do I owe this visit?"
"I have a few questions before I can close the case, but I can come back later if you want to rest." He takes half a step towards the door, but Holmes beckons him to keep talking.
"Over the phone, Giulia gave me a full statement about everything," he recounts. "She explained your deductions about the links between the Admiral family and the Thertons, the robbery and the two homicides. She also described the shooting you were involved in. Fred and Martha Admiral have been arrested, and we have collected hard evidence against them—including a gun of the same model as the one we found at the crime scene, which is being tested by ballistics as we speak to confirm that it is the actual murder weapon in the Elisa Therton's homicide. It will be searched for Martha's fingerprints as well. She is in custody at this hospital, suffering from Atropa Belladonna poisoning, just as you deduced. We could also retrieve the grass shears that you found in Martha's handbag, and we are testing the traces of blood to verify if it can give us one additional proof that Mrs Admiral is the killer."
"Astounding, late job, Detective Inspector," Sherlock mocks him. "What is it you still struggle to understand, then?"
"Her motive. After six years spent trying to get her hands on the stolen jewels, did she really snap and kill her friend when she got news of the imminent liquidation of her father's Plumbers Company?" Greg scratches his chin, dazed.
Sherlock smiles at Giulia, impressed with her precise recollection of each one of his deductions, then nods at the Inspector.
"Yes, you will find the pertinent instalment in the London Gazette as confirmation."
John goggles at him. "The London Gazette? You remembered she was carrying it in her purse?"
"Just like you listed when I asked you. Good eye, John. Oh, and I won't blame you for not seeing the bloodstained grass shears. The very paper must have been wrapped around them."
"Let me get this straight: that morning, Mrs Admiral bought the London Gazette and read the insolvency notice that creditors of the company had placed in the newspaper. At that point, she realised that killing Elisa to buy her house at auction after Isaac was framed for the murder was her last resort to get enough money from the sale of the hidden jewels on the black market?" Lestrade sums up.
Sherlock shoots him a triumphant smile. "All as above. I believe you can finally put this case to bed."
"I do. I'm glad that I got nothing more to do with that small town. All those mysteries drove me crazy. I still can't believe that Adam Therton was indeed the second thief of the infamous robbery. And he never came clean about the theft, not even with his wife."
Giulia mutters softly in response, "Sometimes people choose to keep secrets, especially with the ones they care about the most."
For a split second, her eyes meet Sherlock's gaze, then the D.I. catches their attention again.
"In this case, I believe Adam took his secret to the grave. Nobody has any idea where he might have hidden the jewels."
"Sherlock deduced that the valuables must be buried in the garden," John remembers.
"True. But since the cottage isn't an active crime scene anymore, we can't keep searching, let alone dig on private property," Greg says.
"That little town deserves at least one unsolved mystery, you know, for gossiping reasons." Sherlock simpers at him.
"Well then. Get well soon," Lestrade gives him a polite nod of the head and leaves the room.
When he closes the door behind his back, Giulia stares at the detective and smiles.
"You know exactly where the jewels are, don't you?"
He shrugs. "The death of the Thertons' furry friend will help answer this question. You already know that I could identify the killer because Mrs Admiral showed many symptoms of Belladonna poisoning, and I realised that the dead dog did too."
"Yeah. Thanks to your chemical knowledge, you concluded that the dog must have eaten the poisonous fruit of the Belladonna bushes in the garden," Giulia recalls.
"It doesn't make sense, though. If there was a poisonous plant in the garden, the dog could have eaten its fruit ages ago," John objects.
Holmes gives him a condescending look. "You forget that those bushes were secluded in a fenced portion of the garden. When Mrs Therton was abruptly interrupted by Mrs Admiral while gardening, she stormed into the house, leaving the fence gate open, just like we found it when we visited the crime scene. The sole purpose of that fence was to keep out the dog. And the obvious reason was that—" he stops mid-sentence, expecting them to finish it.
"There was a plant with very juicy, very deadly berries, inside," Giulia concludes.
"Correct."
Watson frowns. "I still don't understand. Why would Adam Therton plant in his special part of the garden a bush that was poisonous to his own dog?"
"To prevent any animal (both wild beasts and the family pet) from digging up the ground where he had clearly buried something extremely valuable." Sherlock smirks and John's face lights up in both realisation and disbelief.
"Did he really plant a bush of Atropa Belladonna to protect the stolen jewels, then built a fence to protect his dog's life?"
Sherlock nods at him with a satisfied smile. "It appears so."
"Are you suggesting that Isaac should dig up the whole fenced section of the garden in search of a small sachet?" John asks, worrying about the fate of the poor orphan.
"Had you paid the slightest bit of attention to that boy, you would already know precisely where he should dig. You have been to his room: the boy is a fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie merchandise. We can assume that he held onto the most significant memory of his father, even during the interrogation, he recalled his dad used to tell him pirates' adventures as bedtime stories. Now, knowing that Adam never breathed a word about the heist to his wife and assuming that he wanted his son to find the loot to give him a chance at a brighter future, we can logically deduce that the jewels are buried under the stone engraved with the letter X from the spelling 'Plants eXperiments' on the string of flat stones placed at the foot of the fence. After all, in all traditional pirate stories, the X always signals where the treasure is."
Giulia grins. "His father left that clue just for Isaac trusting that, as soon as his son realised Adam was the second thief, he would be clever enough to understand where the loot was hidden."
John claps his hands together and says, "When Sherlock gets better, we are going out to celebrate the closing of two cold cases, the solution to a recent homicide, and another day on Earth for him, of course. I believe a drink is in order."
Sherlock rests his head against the pillow, letting out a heavy sigh.
"How did the sea song go? Drink and the devil had done for the rest... Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!" he sings softly.
"You did enjoy my Christmas gift, after all," Giulia exclaims, recognising the fictional song written in Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island.
Author's note: That's a wrap, folks!
You finally have all the details about this murder mystery and the interconnected stories. I hope you enjoyed this case and that it was clear enough to follow. If not, do not hesitate to tell me. Feedback, of any kind, would be highly appreciated.
What are your thoughts/comments on Giulia's backstory?