Chapter Text
From the private blog of John Watson:
Sherlock rang about a quarter hour after I’d gotten Rosie off to daycare, and I think I’d have talked to a car accident scammer or a siding salesperson to get out of cleaning the flat, which I just had time to do before my afternoon shift, but when I pulled out the mobile it was him. I let it ring twice more, so I wouldn’t seem too eager.
We’ve patched things together, but I don’t think it’s ever going to be the same. I was an arse to him after Mary died; I worked out in therapy with Ella that a lot of that was my guilt over being secretly glad that he was the one who lived. (I never told even Ella about the string of dreams I had when he first came back, right after the shock of seeing him alive had forced me to realise what I really felt – dreams where it was Sherlock seated across from me at the Landmark, looking expectant while I fumbled in my pocket for a ring).
We both know now what Mary’s real reasons were for being with me, but some of the things I said can’t be unsaid. He curled up in a protective shell for a long time, and I don’t suppose I can blame him; nowadays he’ll call me with “a good one for the blog,” get Rosie a gift punctually for every birthday (I don’t know how she’s four already), spend time talking with me at Molly’s Christmas parties (she throws one every year for people who “don’t have anyone to spend Christmas with”). That’s been mostly that.
Hudders finally had her hip replaced – the NHS moves slowly, but it gets there – and I swear it took ten years off her age. I know that Sherlock took care of her as if he’d been her own son, and when I came round during her rehab, helping her manage the steps down to the street and pacing alongside her Zimmer frame (she’d count off the steps, every day ten more than the one before, up and down in front of Speedy’s) she’d talk about how she missed having me there. “But I suppose you wouldn’t want a little girl growing up round all that chemical stuff, and the gunshots, and the Met calling at all hours,” she’d sigh, meaning she really wanted me to show up at the door with Rosie the next morning.
I wanted to do that, too. But it wasn’t mine to ask.
So my heart jumped up like the stupid thing it is when he said “This one's probably not for the blog, John, but given your taste for the luridly overdramatic, I thought you wouldn’t want to miss it.” Could I be there at nine? I’d be there five minutes ago if you wanted.
And yeah, I can write that because this is a private post. My eyes only. Call it notes for the public version, if there ever is one.
A quandary of prodigious moment, involving the fate of the Earth and the Divine Plan, Sherlock had quoted to me before the pair arrived. He usually didn’t have time for nutters, so there had to be something special about these two.
“We understand,” said the more affable of the two men, “that you are exceptionally skilled at discovering crimes, and tracking down missing persons, and – that sort of thing.”
Had he been living under a rock? From his clothes, you might have thought it. He wasn’t a small man exactly, but there was something cosy and roly-poly about him. He seemed obscenely benevolent for before lunchtime, and he was dressed like a refugee from the BBC costume shop, with a waistcoat more worn-out than the Baker Street carpet.
Maybe he just didn’t watch telly or read the tabloids. Sherlock’s been a household word in Britain for years now; he may have a strand or two of grey in those curls – I don’t like to be seen staring too hard, it could just be the light – but he basically looks like the same smartarse that got plastered over the front pages back in the oughts until I wanted to get my hands around Murdoch’s throat.
“I am,” Sherlock replied, “simply the best at these things.”
“Reckon you’re the one we want, then,” said the other man. You’d never think they had a thing in common. The same kind of lean, expensive dash Sherlock’s got: trousers that fit like a coat of paint, messy-just-so hairstyle that looked like twenty minutes every morning – so red it couldn’t be real, but you couldn’t see any roots – one of those watches that gives you barrels more information than you can ever use, and an apparent need to do anything with the sofa but sit on it like a normal person. He didn’t smile, and he wore wraparound shades in the same price point as the wristwatch.
“And your friend’s name – ?” said Sherlock.
“Ah – this is my colleague, Crowley, Anthony Crowley.” Cuddly Fluff had already handed over a visiting card in sepia fountain-pen script, as if it were eighteen-ninety-five, introducing himself as A.Z. Fell, Bookseller, Occult and Rare Volumes A Speciality.
“So, what sort of problem do you have for me? I warn you ahead of time, it had better be at least a Six.”
“If you are assigning numerical values to importance, I believe it would be fair to call this one a Ten Thousand.”
“I am all ears. What happened?”
“He lost – “
“We lost – “
They both spoke at once, hesitated, and then Cuddly Fluff went on: “A child has been lost.”
“Boy, girl? How old? John.” Sherlock nodded at me, the cue to open my laptop – I already had – and begin transcribing the conversation.
AF: Eleven. He’d be eleven.
SH: And when did he go missing?
AC: Er, would’ve been eleven years ago Wednesday.
I was sure I’d heard that wrong, and I could tell Sherlock was too.
“You lost. A child. Who had just been born,” he said after several seconds. Ella calls this Active Listening, which is better than saying what the fuck. “And in the intervening eleven years what steps have been taken to find him?”
AC: Well, none actually.
AF: You see, we thought we had the correct child, but he apparently wasn’t, so now we need to get the real one back.
Real? I had to break in at that point. I mean, all I could think about was Rosie. If I’d adopted her or whatever these two were talking about, and found out years later that somehow I didn’t get the baby I’d put in for – well, it’s not like ordering a custom Mini. She’d still be my kid. “You have a child, but he was supposed to be a different child?” I guess I sounded sharp. What did they propose to do with the one they had? Restock him?
“Was this some sort of complication about an adoption?” asked Sherlock. “I’m well aware that that involves massive amounts of paperwork – ”
“Doesn’t everything,” muttered Grouchy Sunglasses.
“ – there would be medical records, DNA testing – “
AF: Well, yes, but the records have been lost. There was a fire. We made enquiries in person.
SH: If you have raised a boy to the age of eleven, I cannot fathom your reasons for wishing to replace him with another one now.
AC: Well, we didn’t raise him.
AF: Yes we did.
AC: Oh, well, Harriet looks in sometimes. More now than when he was younger.
(Grouchy Sunglasses had an audible Sarcasm Font. I thought of asking him to teach me that.)
SH [increasingly baffled]: With. Whom. Has he been living?
AF: His parents –
AC: We were workin’ for ’em. Making sure he grew up right. Godfathers, like.
SH: So when they adopted him –
AF: Oh, dear, no. They thought he was theirs.
AC: Bit of a cock-up at the lying-in hospital.
SH: They made you godfathers.
AC: Actually, was his nanny – I mean, the wrong boy’s nanny, all right? Only we thought he was the right boy –
When Sherlock clutches his head, I know the case is at least an Eight.
SH: This is not helping. John, ask Mrs. Hudson if she would kindly make a large pot of very strong coffee –
“She’ll say she’s not your housekeeper,” I interrupted, still typing.
“Yes, she will. Then she’ll do it.”
“A spot of tea for me, if that’s possible,” said Cuddly Fluff. Grouchy Sunglasses just glowered.
“And then,” said Sherlock, “we will start over, and you two will begin at the beginning.”
“And we know he is destined to set off the Last Battle. Unless we prevent him. As my card says, I specialise in books of prophecy, and I’ve been following up – well, a number of prophecies that might help us to locate him, but I’m not certain I can puzzle them out in time.”
We’d gone over, twice, how Grumpy Sunglasses had dropped off a foundling at a lying-in hospital to be looked after, and it smelled fishy as hell, but they didn’t tell different stories and they didn’t change them. Years around Sherlock had taught me that most people who’re lying regroup and revise their narrative if you look like you’re not buying something, but if some of this was bollocks, they’d at least rehearsed it first. It got madder by the minute, but the longer they went on, the more Sherlock sank into his chair and steepled his fingers in front of his face, that position that tells me he’s opening the doors to his Mind Palace so he can make connections to whatever’s in there. I imagine it as something you’d build in Minecraft, which, by the way, I’ve played a lot on long dull nights. My second bachelorhood is full of excitement, I can tell you.
AF: You see, the child was – is – very special.
SH: Special how? Disabled? Talented? Euphemisms aren’t helpful.
(Had that dressing-gown faded since I first saw it? It felt as if I was sitting in on our first case together.)
AF: By reason of heritage. His Father, you see –
SH: You knew the father? I thought you said he was a foundling.
(First flaw in the story. Now we’re getting somewhere.)
AF: Not personally, no –
AC: And you wouldn’t want to.
AF: It only meant he had an important destiny.
AC: Only we were doin’ our best to talk him out of it.
AF: In an effort to prevent the end of the world and everything in it. We’ve both gotten quite fond of the place, you see.
AC: So we thought, best strategy, get taken on in the parents’ household –
AF: – only to find the boy we’d been looking after wasn’t the right one at all.
(The longer they talked, the more I noticed how they finished one another’s sentences, how the skinny bastard’s gyrations on the sofa always pointed him toward the other bloke, almost protectively. It was an instinct I recognised.)
SH: And these adoptive parents, who are apparently unaware they’re adoptive – John, are you getting all this down?
“I’m just the secretary,” I muttered.
SH: Who are they? The parents. Of this, ahem, wrong boy.
AF: Americans here in the diplomatic service. Thaddeus and Harriet Dowling.
SH: Thaddeus Dowling. I’ve heard the name.
(Sherlock has a way of saying “I’ve heard the name” that means more than it sounds like it does. My ears perked up.)
SH: So you detected the discrepancy – how?
AF: He would have been – made aware of his destiny on the date of his eleventh birthday. It’s the prophecy, you see.
AC: And instead he just went on behaving like an insufferable little tosser. Wrong boy, no question. So Azira – so we had the idea of poppin’ up to Tadfield and havin’ a butcher’s.
AF: Which is when we learned about the fire, and the lost records, and so on. The boy we know would have been confused for another child born in that hospital on the same date, but we’ve no way of learning who that might be. And we really have to find the right child, and, well, do something about him before everything goes pear-shaped.
That seemed to be the end of the narrative. Cuddly Fluff’s hands were in some sort of a death struggle in his lap and he was biting his lip, while Grouchy Sunglasses glared grouchily through his sunglasses as if he were personally affronted by everything in the flat. I saw him shooting a death glance at a peperomium that Rosie had insisted we give Uncle Sherlock last Christmas, which was sitting in the window looking about medium dead. Sherlock sank further into the wing chair, until his bottom threatened to slide off the cushion.
“I’ll take the case,” he said without opening his eyes or unsteepling his hands. “My usual retainer, as we discussed on the phone. Kindly give my associate here all the particulars – the correct full names of everyone you know to be related to either boy, contact information if you have it for them, any alternative contacts for yourselves, and the names of anyone else who may have information about the matter. I will begin enquiries immediately. I will be in touch.” He fell silent. I knew they were dismissed, though I’m not sure they grasped it.
“Thank you,” said Azira-something-stammer Fell. “It’s very urgent. He’s already certain to have named the dog.”
“Dog?”
Sherlock, deep in his Mind Palace, ignored my question. I typed down the completely baffling footnote that followed, about how we’d most likely find the boy with an utterly terrifying dog named something like Ghoul or Mutant or Scrofula, and showed them out.
You learn a bit by seeing how people behave when they leave Baker Street. These two seemed to be already bickering about something by the time they got on the pavement – the sitting-room window gives a good view, just a little of it’s blocked by Speedy’s awning – and headed for an antique Bentley parked right across the street, in front of a hydrant. It looked like half a million quid and about as old as Cuddly’s outfit, and there was an orange clamp on the rear tyre.
Except a moment later, there wasn’t. I don’t generally imagine things, but I was having a lot of different feelings right about then. They got in, still bickering, and drove off.