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unlettyrdeTitle: Boston Marriage
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Words: 75,000
Pairings/Characters: Jo Watson/OMC, Sherlock/expensive violins, ensemble cast & original characters
Spoilers: Through "The Great Game"; also for several of the early ACD stories
Rating: Teen (see warnings)
Warnings: Armchair psychology; discussion of suicide in the context of a murder investigation; murder investigations, abductions, violence, and a great deal of associated unpleasantness
Illustrations: by the amazing![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sleightofhand
Summary: In which Jo Watson tries to take this therapy business into her own hands, London produces enough crimes of interest to satisfy even Sherlock Holmes, and the Bechdel test doesn't know what hit it. Game on.
Part I, Chapter 1
Illustration by sleightofhand
Boston Marriage
Part I: The Element of Surmise
Chapter 1
Jo Watson wanted to talk about going off her medication. Her therapist wanted to talk about men.
Well, she wanted to talk about sex, and the session took a few unexpected detours before Jo could bring it back where it belonged. Unexpected, but no longer unfamiliar: she’d covered most of them with Harry just the week before.
“Will you shut up about it?” Jo had said to her sister when the question first came up. “No,” Jo said to her therapist. “Really, no,” and in both cases there followed a split second of thoughtful silence before the inevitable follow-up.
“You’re very emphatic about that,” said Dr. Thompson. (Ella, she reminded herself halfheartedly. Jo could not imagine asking a patient to use her Christian name. In the service it had been different, but everything had been different in the service.) “Why such a strong reaction? It makes sense for me to ask whether you’ve had an interest in men since your recovery.”
Of course it made sense. Libido was one of those things a therapist was meant to ask about, along with mood swings, suicidal thoughts, and screaming nightmares. That didn’t make it any less unpleasant to answer.
“There’s no interest. There’s no…attraction. I suppose I’ve had enough of men.” Ella’s eyes flicked up from her notepad. “There comes a point where you’ve been surrounded by big, sweaty male bodies long enough to forget what was so fascinating about them in the first place. They’re just part of the landscape. Part of the job, you know.”
That earned her another intent look. This one held. “Which part of the job?”
“What do you mean?” Jo knew what she meant, because Jo was trying not to talk about what she meant. Classic avoidance. Pt. refuses initially, but bringing it up in the first place indicates subconc. desire to discuss difficult topic. She didn’t need to read the notes upside-down to know what they said.
Ella said, “The part where you were killing people, or the part where you were cutting them apart to keep them alive?”
“Both.” It came out easily, a straightforward answer to a loaded question. Let her chew on that for a while.
Instead the therapist added something to her already copious notes for that session and brought them straight back to sex. “So you’re no longer attracted to men.”
“That’s what I said.”
“To women, then?”
Yes, exactly like the conversation with Harry. Except her sister had said, “You’ve finally come ‘round to my way of thinking?” and Harry had been half needling her, half genuinely curious. Ella never displayed any emotion so pedestrian as curiosity.
“Just because I’ve taken rooms with someone,” Jo had hissed into her phone, cupping a hand over the speaker to keep her voice from carrying over to her flatmate. Said flatmate was draped over the sofa in an attitude that meant either she was listening to every word or she was plotting another experiment involving human flesh and hydrochloric acid and wouldn’t have noticed if Jo was bellowing at the top of her lungs. “Just because I have, it doesn’t mean I’ve come ‘round to your way of anything. Though as usual you’ve managed to make everything about you.” The conversation with her sister had not gone well after that point.
To Ella she said only, “No. Not to women, either.”
“So you’re no longer interested in sex. With anyone, just to be clear.”
“Yes.”
“What about sex in the abstract?”
“What?”
“Sex in the abstract. Leave individual people, male or female, out of the question. Does that still interest you?”
Jo didn’t like therapist speak, but she could produce it herself when necessary. She let her upper lip curl in what was probably not an attractive way. “You mean, have I experienced sensations of physical arousal since coming back to London.”
“If you want to put it that way.”
“So not sex in the abstract, so much. Sex in the concrete.”
“If you like.”
“No. I haven’t.”
“Is that unusual for you?”
“It’s unusual for anyone, isn’t it?” Which was both reductive and grossly inaccurate, but Jo was irritated, and Ella didn’t like it when she answered questions with more questions.
“Decreased sex drive is a common side effect of citalopram.”
“It started before I went on the medication. Though, now you mention it, that’s another excellent reason—”
“Decreased sex drive is also common in people who have undergone significant physical or mental trauma.”
“It started before I was shot.”
“So did the trauma.”
Jo very carefully did not grit her teeth. After all, she couldn’t afford the dental bills. “Did you want to talk about the war or about my love life?”
“We could talk about both. I was asking about your sexual interests, though. Can you tell me why you used the word ‘love’?”
“Because I’m starved for intimacy. You’ve caught me out. What is that, a reverse Freudian slip?”
Ella gave her a cool smile. It was not, surely, because she found that amusing.
“What?” Jo said.
“You’ve become more argumentative. During our first few weeks together, you were soft-spoken and very well-behaved. You lied about your progress, of course, but you lied nicely. Now you don’t bother. I’d say you came in here looking for something to argue about.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Was it better to be repressed and polite or liberated and belligerent?
“That depends, Joanna. You could choose to see it as a good thing.”
“I could also choose to point out that this session has run over by five minutes.”
“So it has. Are you comfortable leaving things here for the week?”
“Comfortable isn’t the word I’d use.”
Ella’s smile didn’t waver once as she showed Jo to the door.
She walked home, gratified to note that her leg was rock-steady. It tended to twinge worse after her sessions. Halfway there she remembered they were running short on bread and completely out of both eggs and milk. Jo’s skills in the kitchen began and ended with boiling water, but fortunately that was just about all that was required for hardboiled eggs. She’d discovered only the other week that if she made them for herself and left one or two lying suggestively on her plate, they would disappear before long. Someone had to make certain Sherlock was getting protein in her diet.
Someone also had to make certain their rent was paid promptly on the first of every month. Three and a half weeks ago this had fallen entirely to Jo’s lot, and as a result she was a little short, but Sherlock had assured her just the other night that there was enough in her debit account to make up for it this time around. It wasn’t that Jo minded fronting her the cash, at least in theory; it was just that Jo didn’t have the cash to front. On the other hand, she’d been given tacit permission to swipe Sherlock’s card whenever anything vital was at stake, and their milk supply had to count. She stopped off at the Tesco at the corner of York and Baker and went in to replenish their bare cupboards.
She came back out again ten minutes later, face burning with rage and frustration, and this time it wasn’t even because of the damned self-service checkouts. She reached the flat and threw the door open with all the violence of righteous anger. It rebounded off the wall with a crash loud enough, she was sure, to startle anyone upstairs. Good. Sherlock had been at the kitchen table when she’d left that morning, hunched over a beaker with the intense look that meant she would still be at it hours later. Jo hoped she’d dropped something corrosive. Sherlock rarely bothered with gloves.
“Insufficient funds!” she bellowed. That time she heard a sudden movement from above, like a chair scraping across the floor as its occupant jerked back in her seat. She drew a steadying breath and made her way up the stairs, putting each foot down with loud and angry deliberation. “Do you know how insufficient? So insufficient, Sherlock, that I had to fish change out of my coat pockets to buy half a litre of milk and a loaf or two of bread. Mind telling me how you plan to pay both halves of our rent with a balance that low?”
Sherlock’s voice came floating down the stairs. “Now is not the best time for this conversation, Joanna.” She didn’t sound at all startled. She sounded calm. She had no bloody right to be that calm, not when they were both about to be thrown out into the street and when they had come so very close to not having milk.
“Isn’t it? I think now is an excellent time for this conversation. As I recall, I also thought two days ago was an excellent time, or last week, or better still last month, but you always seem to have something more interesting to do.” She’d reached the door by then, and it flew open with another satisfying crash. “Well, you should know that this time I don’t care about that fascinating murder-suicide that can’t possibly be a murder-suicide, or whether you’re in the middle of an experiment, or you’ve got a—guest.” Sherlock was perched crosslegged on the coffee table, and there was a man sitting in the chair opposite. Jo ran an automatic mental tally: black, late thirties, casually dressed. Not someone she’d seen at the Yard, and not Mycroft. Those were the only two categories she’d learned to apply to the people in Sherlock’s life, so this left her at a bit of a loss. “Who is this?”
“Next month’s rent, I hope,” Sherlock said.
“What?”
“A client, Joanna. He has a case for us.” She was doing that thing she did where her face didn’t move at all when she talked, and the only clue Jo had as to her amusement was the angle of her eyes. “Scott Morstan, Joanna Watson.”
Jo set down the bag with her dearly-bought groceries. Morstan stood and reached for her hand, and could it be that simple? Apparently it could, and Ella might as well strike out everything she’d written in that session’s notes, because that rush of blood to certain areas was as clear a symptom as any limp.
If Scott Morstan had been born eighty years earlier, he’d have been one of those sepia-toned faces in old photographs, frozen forever in earnest youth, having died tragically young in the war and been buried somewhere in Flanders. Warm dark eyes, well-formed mouth, and a good strong curve to his jaw—his face was not striking enough to grace the tabloid covers, but it betrayed an appealing combination of assurance and sensitivity, and Jo was overthinking this and in half a second she’d have held the handshake for too long. He had a good, firm grip, the sort that told her that hand was capable of all sorts of useful things. She dropped it immediately. No wedding ring, she noticed, and could have kicked herself for looking.
“Ms. Watson,” he said, and he gave her a smile that had her stomach doing backflips and her pulse pounding somewhere decidedly south of her ribcage.
Jo had always found “Ms.” aesthetically unappealing but also liked it when a man didn’t assume things; still, the last thing she wanted to do was give up any ground. There would be no points for effort. “It’s Dr. Watson, actually.”
She’d been around enough to know the reaction to this would say a great deal. When he ducked his head just a little to hide his suddenly more genuine smile and said, “I’ll keep that in mind,” it was just about more than she could take.
“Mr. Morstan,” said Sherlock in a tone so dry Jo could feel the rainwater on her coat begin to evaporate, “is here about his wife.” Oh. “His late wife. She died, what did you say, four months ago?” Very not good, then. The clarification was clearly for Jo’s benefit. Sherlock would never forget a detail like a victim’s date of death.
“Yes,” he said, stepping back to the armchair. Jo sank onto the couch next to Sherlock and folded her hands primly over her knees. “Val was killed back in August.”
“You said the police had ruled it an accident.”
“They did.”
“You disagree?”
“I do now. Back then, I was in shock, you know. I didn’t think twice about it.”
“But now you’ve reconsidered, and you want me to tell you what really happened.” Sherlock wasn’t hooked yet. Jo could tell.
“Not exactly.” Sherlock’s gaze narrowed. “I mean,” Morstan added, “I do want to know what happened, but that’s not why I’ve come to you. The police are reopening the investigation. They’re trying to get an order to exhume the body. They don’t think the first inquest caught everything.”
“What do you think they’re going to find?”
His jaw had gone rigid, betraying pain or grief or—fear? “I think they’re going to find that she was murdered. And I think I’m the one they’re going to arrest.”
That got her interest. Sherlock’s long and languid limbs gathered themselves until she was braced forward, knees to elbows on the sitting-room table. “Let’s start with your first assumption. What makes you think your wife was murdered?’
“It doesn’t sit right, Ms. Holmes. They said Val drowned in her bath. That doesn’t just happen.”
“But it does, Mr. Morstan,” Jo said, as gently as she could. “There are accidents, you know.”
“Not the way they said it happened. Read the police reports and you’ll see. It’s all wrong.”
“Drowned in her bath,” Sherlock said. “Back in August. Your wife was Valerie Hammond.” At Morstan’s nod, Sherlock let out a low hmm. “I did read about the case. Professional interest, you understand. Everything I had was from the papers. They said there were drugs involved.”
Morstan’s mouth twisted, not in grief this time but in anger. The expression sat oddly on his face. “That’s a lie. That’s a damned lie, but that is what they said.”
“So there weren’t any drugs.”
“She took a pill, but it was prescribed, for God’s sake. It made her drowsy was all. She had a glass of wine with it and then had a bath.”
“So yes, drugs, but only by the strictest of technicalities,” Sherlock said, which did nothing to soothe the furious lines in Morstan’s forehead. “That seems a strong case for accidental death.”
“You didn’t know Val,” Morstan said. “She’d never have been careless enough to mix wine with sedatives. She wouldn’t even take paracetamol with alcohol. She was one of those people who read the fine print on everything, and she’d never have taken anything without knowing all the side-effects and contraindications. People made that mistake about her all the time, you know. Just because she was the artistic type, just because she came across as passionate and impulsive, they thought she was careless. She was the most practical person I’ve met.”
“That’s still insufficient to deem the case a murder.”
“There was also the way she was behaving before she died.”
“And how was that?” Jo knew Sherlock well enough to hear the hint of impatience. She must be chafing under this piecemeal presentation of the facts.
Morstan looked down at his hands. “We were separated at the time, in the middle of a divorce, and outside the lawyers’ offices we weren’t talking. She called me three weeks before she died and said she needed to meet.”
“And did you?”
“Yes, at her house. She asked me for money.”
“Money from the man she was about to divorce?” Jo asked. “That seems like the wrong way to go about it.”
“You have to understand the way things were, Dr. Watson. We didn’t hate one another outright. It wasn’t like that. Maybe we should have, but Val didn’t have a resentful bone in her body, and I couldn’t bring myself to—”
He trailed off, leaving Jo uncomfortable and embarrassingly curious. She gave in to the latter impulse. “Can I ask why you were divorcing?”
“Infidelity,” Sherlock said, as though it was obvious. “Hers, not yours, and multiple offences.”
“Three men,” Morstan agreed. Jo could tell it pained him, but his tone was frank and his manner straightforward. “She broke down and told me or I’d never have worked it out. We made up after the first and tried counselling after the second. I probably should have known better. Then there was the last, and when she told me that time I asked her to move out. That was back in April.”
“Where these isolated incidents or extended affairs?”
“It varied. The last one went on for at least two months, but it was over by the time I knew about it.”
“Yet you say you didn’t hate her.”
“I suppose I had reason to. I tried, but I couldn’t quite manage it.”
“And when you went to see her that day, did you argue?”
“No. I won’t say it was a comfortable conversation, but we didn’t fight. We got all the arguing out after affair number two, I think, and neither of us had any left.”
“How much money did she want?” Sherlock asked.
“Six thousand pounds.”
That wasn’t small change. “Did she tell you why she needed it?”
“I asked, of course, but she all would say was that it was life or death, that I was the only person she could ask, and that she’d repay me before long.”
“And?”
“And I gave her the money.”
“I wouldn’t have thought a theatre’s lighting technician made enough to have six thousand ready to hand.” Morstan sat back in his chair, and from his alarm Jo assumed he hadn’t mentioned his career before she arrived. Sherlock waved a hand. “Your profession is moderately obvious, Mr. Morstan. The fact that you carry a small but high-powered LED flashlight in your coat pocket could mean any number of things, but you’ve used gaff tape to repair the torn corner of your shoulder bag, which narrows the field. I could mention at least six other indications, but I won’t waste my time on trivialities. Where are you employed now?”
“I’m head lighting director at the Emporium. You’re right about the ready money, but I’m careful about my finances, and I’d been saving. The six thousand was most of it, though.”
“And you gave it all to your adulterous wife.”
“I knew she’d pay it back,” Morstan said. “That was another thing about Val. She always paid her debts. More than paid them. She was very generous.”
Jo thought that was an odd thing to say about someone who’d cheated on him repeatedly, but Sherlock moved on. “Did she repay this one?”
“No. When I gave her the money, she said it might be some months before she could give it back.”
“And she died three weeks after this conversation. Did you tell all this to the police?”
“I did, but I don’t even know if they looked into it.”
“Not surprising.”
“I don’t understand,” Jo said. “If you’ve asked them to reopen the investigation, why would they suspect you?”
“I’m not the one who’s insisting,” Morstan said. “It’s her life insurance company. They want it ruled a suicide and not an accident.”
“Ah,” Sherlock said. “Money, again. Now we come to the second part of your earlier statement. Why do you believe the police will accuse you?”
“The husband’s always the first suspect, isn’t he? And then there was the divorce. We might not have hated each other, but we didn’t get on.”
“Yes, in general that is a prerequisite for murder.”
Morstan flinched, and Jo could have kicked her for that bit of insensitivity. He cleared his throat. “There’s also the insurance money.”
“A pedestrian motive, but certainly a reliable one. How much?” Jo gave her a pained look, and Sherlock frowned. Then she sighed and told Morstan, “You should understand that I am able to be useful to you only by preserving a clinical detachment. If I ask you a question it is not because I mean to cause you distress but because I require an answer. Now, if you please, Mr. Morstan: How much did you stand to gain by your wife’s death?”
“Ten million.” Those two words fell between them with a hollow echo. Jo could not imagine this man in the possession of so much money. Jo could hardly imagine anyone in the possession of so much money.
“Not so pedestrian, then,” Sherlock said. “Extravagant might be a better word. Why such a high figure?”
“That’s just it, Ms. Holmes. I have no idea. I didn’t even know she’d taken out a policy, much less that I’d still have been the beneficiary.”
“Can you prove that?”
“I was hoping you could.”
Sherlock smiled thinly. “I shall do my best. In any case, I can see why the insurance company would prefer this to be declared a suicide. Though presumably they will also have to pay if the police determine it was in fact murder.”
“I suppose they think it’s worth a try.”
“For ten million, I would imagine so. When did she sign for the policy?”
“About a year ago.”
“And not a word to you.”
“Not one.”
“Did you see your wife again after that meeting three weeks before her death?”
“No.”
“Did you speak to her or hear from her in any way?”
“I transferred the money that afternoon, and she rang that night to thank me. We talked for less than five minutes. I asked her again if she was in any trouble, but she told me not to worry about her, that she had everything worked out. Then there was nothing until a plainclothes officer showed up at my door.”
“You must admit it looks suspicious.”
“I wouldn’t have come to you if I didn’t have good reason. Can you solve it?”
“Four months after the fact, with nothing to go on but the papers and a half-hearted police investigation?” Her eyes burned with the challenge. “Certainly I can.”
“In terms of payment…” Morstan began.
“You’ll find our services quite reasonable,” Sherlock said, naming a per-case rate that made Jo blanch. That would certainly cover the rent.
Morstan didn’t flinch at the price, but he had noticed the plural pronoun. “When you say ‘our’, Ms. Holmes—”
“I include Dr. Watson, of course.”
He looked as though he wanted to say something, but Sherlock was talking again. “We will also require reimbursement for any expenses, and there will be an additional fee for any danger undertaken by either member of the firm.”
“Danger?” Now he was really alarmed. “Is there much chance of that?”
“This is a murder investigation, Mr. Morstan. There is always the possibility of danger.” Jo could think of several words better than “possibility”, but this seemed like a bad time to bring them up. “Now, if you don’t mind, I would prefer to speak to the police before doing anything else. Your interests will be better served if I have some idea of where their investigation stands. Which brings me to my last point. I am accepting this case with you as my client, but do not assume that your freedom is my primary objective.”
“What is your primary objective?”
“The truth, Mr. Morstan. The pure, scientific truth of what happened. If my investigation proves your guilt rather than your innocence, that’s all the same to me.” Her eyes narrowed in amusement. “Though if my efforts land you in prison, I assure you that you will be released from any financial obligation.”
Morstan’s jaw was stiff again. He was a stubborn man, then, behind the reserved exterior, and unwilling to be pushed over. Jo approved. “I suppose I should be offended,” he said, “but you may as well hear it from me. I didn’t kill Valerie. Someone else did, and if you’re as good as you say, then that’s exactly what you’ll find out.”
“How gratifying. I hate being hired by murderers. Thank you, Mr. Morstan, that will be all. If you will give me your card, you will hear from us when I know what additional information we may need.”
He left with a polite, if not quite friendly, nod to Sherlock and another firm press of Jo’s hand. She was standing near the window, and when she saw him walk out onto Baker Street she was still pleasantly aware of her palm, the ghost of his lingering on her skin. “You don’t really think he killed her,” Jo said. “How stupid would he have to be, hiring a detective to investigate the death of someone he killed?”
“Stupid, or supremely confident,” Sherlock corrected. “Not that the two are at all mutually exclusive. He may think this will stand as a mark in his favour should the matter ever come to trial.”
“Assuming he’d be able to fool you into arguing his innocence.”
“An unlikely event, but he may not be aware of how unlikely. But no, I don’t suspect him.”
That was a bit of a relief. Not that Jo had believed it, either, but if there was anything worse than directing her first impulses of renewed attraction (and mutual attraction, too, if she was any judge) at a man who wanted them to investigate the recent murder of his wife, it would be finding that he was the one who’d killed her. Jo thought back on that morning’s session and wondered what Ella would have said about all this. Jo would have to be very careful not to bring any of it up when she went back in two weeks. If she did go back.
No sooner had she brought her still-tingling palm up to rub her leg than Sherlock said, “You should fire your therapist.”
Jo had to make her stop doing that. “Funny, that’s just what your brother said.”
Sherlock made the face she reserved for Mycroft alone. As irritating as it was to have her mind read at inconvenient moments, at least Jo had worked out how to retaliate.
It was exactly the sort of comment that would have left Sherlock sulking for hours if there hadn’t been a ready distraction at hand. Her expression turned introspective, and her eyes narrowed ever so slightly before she snatched up the mobile from the table beside her. “What does one wear to a disinterment?”
“You’re not going to that?” Jo said, startled.
“There must be an established etiquette. Do they make cards for it? ‘On the occasion of your loved one’s untimely reappearance’, that sort of thing?” Before Jo could work out how to respond to that, Sherlock had finished dialling and was speaking rapidly and ungrammatically into the phone. “It’s me. Are you on the Valerie Hammond case?” Her lips tightened in the ghost of a satisfied smile. “Excellent. I’ll be there in ten.”
“You don’t like talking on the phone,” Jo said as Sherlock untangled her legs and stood up in one fluid motion.
“Lestrade’s been ignoring my texts. Something about the Richardson affair.”
As the conclusion to that case had involved a three-hour excursion into the London sewage system, a detour Lestrade had later declared unnecessary while wringing an unmentionable substance out of his jacket, Jo was not surprised. “But he’s taking your calls?”
“There’s a landline in his office. He’s been at his desk doing paperwork all morning. He won’t admit it, but he’ll be happy we interrupted. Now are you coming?”
It wasn’t until they were halfway to Scotland Yard that Jo realised she’d left the Tesco bag on the sitting room floor. She glanced at Sherlock, but it was impossible to to tell just yet whether this would be one of those cases that kept them away from the flat for several days running. She could only hope they’d make it home before the milk had time to curdle.
********
Somewhat to her surprise, Jo had found she liked DI Lestrade. They shared a similar attitude of mingled awe and exasperation for her flatmate, and she was convinced there was a substantial reservoir of affection hiding under that wry exterior. He’d never admit to it, but if nothing else the fact that he was still willing to work with Sherlock after the Richardson case spoke volumes.
He was also very good-looking. Jo had noticed this in a matter-of-fact way on first meeting him. Whatever Harry might say about her reasons for commissioning, Jo was quite free of daddy issues and didn’t have any particular preference for older men in positions of authority, so she’d absorbed it into her impressions of the good inspector without much thought. It came as a surprise, then, when they walked through his door and he growled something disapproving at Sherlock, and his gravely tones went straight to the pit of her stomach.
This was getting ridiculous.
She spent the next several minutes railing at her id for having chosen such an inconvenient time for a sexual reawakening and so missed part of the conversation.
“We’re trying to keep this quiet,” Lestrade was saying. “When you get involved, Sherlock, things are less quiet.”
“I am discreet.”
“When you want to be. But we don’t need you on this one. We wouldn’t even be reopening it if the insurance investigator wasn’t making such a god-awful fuss about it. They’re insisting it’s a suicide. It was accidental, if you ask me. There’s no mystery here.”
“Which I assume is why the file is open on your desk.” Sherlock plucked it up from an untidy mound of paperwork and turned it around, and Jo leaned over her shoulder to read along.
The first thing she saw was an autopsy photo of a woman, undoubtedly attractive until she’d been submerged in water overnight, though it took an experienced eye to see beyond the bloated features. Her hair was still striking, rich auburn waves cut into a very short pageboy.
“When is the second autopsy?” Sherlock asked.
“You can’t just march in here—”
“Evidently I can.”
Lestrade reached across the desk and took the file right out of Sherlock’s hands. “Right, I’ll have that back. You can’t just march in here and expect me to let you in on this. And come to that, why do you care about this case?”
“I’ve just been hired to investigate it.”
“By the insurance company? You can tell Hellers not to bother coming around again. He’s left me quite enough of these, and I’ve no intention of using them.” Lestrade had taken a business card from the top drawer of his desk and all but shoved it at Sherlock, who glanced at the name and then pocketed it. “When did you start hiring yourself out to corporations?”
“Not by the insurance company. By the husband.”
This was news to Lestrade. He dropped the file back to his desk, careful to keep it beyond Sherlock’s considerable reach. “Now why would it occur to him to find himself a private investigator?”
“Consulting detective,” Jo said automatically. Lestrade stopped just short of rolling his eyes at her.
“Mr. Morstan is under the impression that he tops your lists of suspects.”
“Can’t have suspects in a suicide any more than you can in an accidental death.”
“No-one in this room is under the illusion that this isn’t an active investigation.”
“And why would he put himself at the top of our list? Supposing we have one.”
“Possibly he is aware of the statistical likelihood that, in the event that a white woman is murdered, her black husband will find the finger of blame pointed squarely in his direction.”
“Go on,” said Lestrade. “Tell me it’s racial bias, if we’re looking at him at all. I’ll tell you we can prove he was in her house—the house where she died—three weeks before her death. He was there alone. No lawyer or any other witnesses, though they were going through a divorce.”
“He told me as much.”
“And did he tell you about the insurance policy?”
“He did.”
“Nobody takes out a policy that size unless they think they’ll need it.”
“Who gets the money if Morstan is convicted for his wife’s murder?”
“There’s a cousin.”
“Have you—”
“Of course we have. She’s a naturalist.”
“I take it that’s relevant.”
“She’s spent the last eight months in Ecuador studying the mating habits of flightless birds.”
“Difficult,” Sherlock said, “but not insurmountable.”
“She didn’t know about the insurance money.”
“Neither did Morstan.”
“So he says. Forget the cousin, Sherlock. Forget the whole case.”
“You don’t really think that’s going to work,” Jo said.
“Hope springs eternal, my dear Joanna,” said Sherlock, though from Lestrade’s expression the DI had given up on hope as a mythical beast that bore no relation to any version of reality that included the world’s only consulting detective. “We know you’ve requested a disinterment. How soon can it be done?”
“Possibly never,” Lestrade said. “It’s been held up.”
“How long can it take to get a coroner’s order?” Jo asked, curious.
“It’s not the coroner that’s the problem. It’s the bishop.”
“Buried in hallowed ground, is our Ms. Hammond?” Sherlock asked.
“She is, and that could mean some knotty politics if the C of E decides to be difficult. We’ll get it eventually, but I’ve got instructions not to step on too many toes. This isn’t your game, Sherlock.”
“A second autopsy may not be necessary if you’ll give me access to the files.”
“What, you think the Yard might have managed to gather all the relevant evidence without your help?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sherlock said. “Still, you have more than I do just at the moment. Morstan said his wife had taken a pill. What was it?”
“Venlafaxine,” Lestrade said. “You know it?”
“It’s an SNRI,” Jo put in. “Usually used to treat major depression. Was Valerie Hammond depressed?”
“That would be a logical conclusion.”
“Was it an overdose?”
“No. She only took one pill—the prescription had been filled that morning, and we checked how many were left in the bottle.”
“But she took it with alcohol.”
“Only one glass. It was an accident, not a deliberate overdose.”
“The coroner may not have known what to look for,” Sherlock said, “and it may not have been drugs.”
“What ‘it’? There’s no ‘it’, Sherlock. Look, I’ll bring you in on it if we find anything suspicious this time around, but we won’t.”
“And if I find something?”
“There’s nothing to find.”
“But if I do, you’ll give me full access.”
Lestrade looked less than enthusiastic, but it didn’t take him long to bow to inevitability. “If you do, give us a ring.”
“Excellent,” Sherlock said with her quick and terrifying smile. “I’ll speak to you soon. Come, Joanna.”
The afternoon had begun with a half-hearted effort at rain before settling for damp and gloomy. Jo zipped her jacket up to the neck and shoved her hands into the pockets, waiting for Sherlock to finish whatever she was doing on her mobile.
“If you wanted to commit suicide,” Sherlock said in a conversational tone, still typing away, “how would you do it?”
“Cyanide,” Jo said.
Most people would have been taken aback at the promptness of the reply. Sherlock just said, “Poison rather than a gun to your temple? How stereotypically feminine of you,” and gave her a look that begged to be challenged.
“It’s really not, if by ‘feminine’ you mean hesitant and likely to fail. A large enough dose can lead to instantaneous unconsciousness and death soon after, and if you know what you’re doing there’s virtually no chance of reversal. Put a bullet in your brain and you might not finish the job. People miss.”
“You wouldn’t.”
Jo really shouldn’t have found that quick confidence flattering, not under the circumstances, but that had been an unmistakable compliment. She cleared her throat. “Yes, well, there’s always the mess to think of.”
“Surely you have ready access to other options. Narcotics, for example.”
Which brought Jo’s mind unpleasantly to the tiny, careful scars that she’d once seen peppering Sherlock’s pale inner arm. She shook her head. “Overdoses can be unpredictable, and there’s the chance someone will catch you in time. Call me old-fashioned, but it’s bitter almonds for me. In gaseous form, given the choice.” It had a classic quality to it, she thought.
Sherlock considered her response for a few paces, then said, “You’re not at all the best person to ask. Medical professionals would have a different perspective on it.”
“I suppose so. What perspective were you looking for?”
“That of a depressed serial adulteress. Though even if that description fit you at all, you wouldn’t, for example, drown yourself in the bathtub. No, I thought not. It’s neither poetic nor efficient, and from her husband’s evidence I would have expected Valerie Hammond to be both.”
“You’re really thinking suicide, just because of the medication?”
“It was an obvious first stop. Whatever Mr. Morstan may believe, the circumstances do not scream ‘Murder Most Foul’. Besides that, she was about to begin a painful divorce, she was in extreme professional difficulty, and she was seeing a psychiatrist.”
“Guesses.”
“Hardly.”
“A GP could have prescribed the venlafaxine. You can’t possibly know she was seeing a psychiatrist.”
“Why can’t I?”
“Because I read the same two pages of the casefile that you did, and they didn’t say anything about that.”
“You also saw the photo of her desk stapled to the second page. Didn’t you look at the planner? It was lying wide open.”
“I didn’t look that closely.”
“You should have done. Two seconds, Joanna, and you’d have known where we’re going now. She had an appointment with a Dr. Felsham two days before her death.” Sherlock waved her mobile under Jo’s nose. “There are three Dr. Felshams practising medicine in the Greater London area. One is a paediatrician, another is a specialist in male sexual disfunction, and the last is a clinical psychiatrist with a practise in the West End.”
“What about the professional difficulty? Morstan didn’t say anything about what she did for a living.”
“He didn’t have to. Almost anyone who hadn’t spent the greater part of the last five years abroad on active military duty would have known.”
“What?”
“Valerie Hammond was an actress.” Sherlock raised her arm to flag a cab. It pulled over to the kerb and sent a splash of dirty rainwater up to speckle Jo’s slacks, missing Sherlock entirely, of course. As they settled into their seats, Sherlock typed something into her mobile and handed it to Jo. It now showed a Wikipedia article. The photograph at the top of the page was of the same woman she’d seen in the autopsy report, but here she was vibrantly, beautifully alive, long auburn curls tumbling over her shoulders and a magnetic smile lighting her face.
She skimmed the article as they alternately sped along the streets and waited in stubborn lines of traffic. “Oh, I know her,” Jo said in surprise. “When Harry had her appendix out a while back, I spent a few days at hers, and all she wanted to do was watch BBC costume dramas. Hammond was Miss Whatsit in that—thing—by Dickens? I’d never have known her name, though.”
“If you hadn’t been sent to Afghanistan, you probably would have. Two years ago she starred in a mindless crime serial that became suddenly and wildly popular, but a few months before her death she was fired over artistic differences.”
“And you know about this because you have a secret passion for network television.”
“I did a bit of research when her death hit the papers. I concluded it was either accident or a very ordinary suicide and not nearly worth my time, but then I didn’t have access to all the evidence.”
“So you were wrong,” Jo said delightedly.
Sherlock gave her a cold look, and Jo held back a laugh. “Data, my dear Joanna. I cannot be expected to work without it.”
“Still, you were wrong.”
“Evidently. Do try not to take so much pleasure in that, it’s not at all attractive.”
“Why did you look into it at all? Sheer sensationalism isn’t usually a draw for you.” Though this was all making a lot more sense, from the fact that a simple accidental death had made the papers and attracted more than two seconds of Sherlock’s notice to the way Scott Morstan had spoken of his wife without feeling the need to fill in her background.
Sherlock said, “I was already familiar with her name. Not, I hardly need add, because of any interest in police procedurals or costume drama, but because Valerie Hammond was also a highly successful and even rather brilliant stage actress, which is why we are going to the Majestic after our interview with Dr. Felsham.”
“You don’t really think a psychiatrist is going to break confidentiality for you? We’re not with the police. We’ve got no official reason at all to be asking questions.”
“The thought had occurred. Do you own a suit?”
“I own a dress uniform.”
Sherlock let out an explosive sigh that contained all the sartorially-pretentious despair in the world. “I suppose there’s no time to go back to Baker Street in any case, if we want to get there during business hours. You’ll have to do. Just try to act a little less fundamentally decent and a little more callous, if you possibly can, and we’ll manage.”
Forward to Part I, Chapter 2
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Words: 75,000
Pairings/Characters: Jo Watson/OMC, Sherlock/expensive violins, ensemble cast & original characters
Spoilers: Through "The Great Game"; also for several of the early ACD stories
Rating: Teen (see warnings)
Warnings: Armchair psychology; discussion of suicide in the context of a murder investigation; murder investigations, abductions, violence, and a great deal of associated unpleasantness
Illustrations: by the amazing
sleightofhandSummary: In which Jo Watson tries to take this therapy business into her own hands, London produces enough crimes of interest to satisfy even Sherlock Holmes, and the Bechdel test doesn't know what hit it. Game on.
Part I, Chapter 1
sleightofhandBoston Marriage
Part I: The Element of Surmise
Chapter 1
Jo Watson wanted to talk about going off her medication. Her therapist wanted to talk about men.
Well, she wanted to talk about sex, and the session took a few unexpected detours before Jo could bring it back where it belonged. Unexpected, but no longer unfamiliar: she’d covered most of them with Harry just the week before.
“Will you shut up about it?” Jo had said to her sister when the question first came up. “No,” Jo said to her therapist. “Really, no,” and in both cases there followed a split second of thoughtful silence before the inevitable follow-up.
“You’re very emphatic about that,” said Dr. Thompson. (Ella, she reminded herself halfheartedly. Jo could not imagine asking a patient to use her Christian name. In the service it had been different, but everything had been different in the service.) “Why such a strong reaction? It makes sense for me to ask whether you’ve had an interest in men since your recovery.”
Of course it made sense. Libido was one of those things a therapist was meant to ask about, along with mood swings, suicidal thoughts, and screaming nightmares. That didn’t make it any less unpleasant to answer.
“There’s no interest. There’s no…attraction. I suppose I’ve had enough of men.” Ella’s eyes flicked up from her notepad. “There comes a point where you’ve been surrounded by big, sweaty male bodies long enough to forget what was so fascinating about them in the first place. They’re just part of the landscape. Part of the job, you know.”
That earned her another intent look. This one held. “Which part of the job?”
“What do you mean?” Jo knew what she meant, because Jo was trying not to talk about what she meant. Classic avoidance. Pt. refuses initially, but bringing it up in the first place indicates subconc. desire to discuss difficult topic. She didn’t need to read the notes upside-down to know what they said.
Ella said, “The part where you were killing people, or the part where you were cutting them apart to keep them alive?”
“Both.” It came out easily, a straightforward answer to a loaded question. Let her chew on that for a while.
Instead the therapist added something to her already copious notes for that session and brought them straight back to sex. “So you’re no longer attracted to men.”
“That’s what I said.”
“To women, then?”
Yes, exactly like the conversation with Harry. Except her sister had said, “You’ve finally come ‘round to my way of thinking?” and Harry had been half needling her, half genuinely curious. Ella never displayed any emotion so pedestrian as curiosity.
“Just because I’ve taken rooms with someone,” Jo had hissed into her phone, cupping a hand over the speaker to keep her voice from carrying over to her flatmate. Said flatmate was draped over the sofa in an attitude that meant either she was listening to every word or she was plotting another experiment involving human flesh and hydrochloric acid and wouldn’t have noticed if Jo was bellowing at the top of her lungs. “Just because I have, it doesn’t mean I’ve come ‘round to your way of anything. Though as usual you’ve managed to make everything about you.” The conversation with her sister had not gone well after that point.
To Ella she said only, “No. Not to women, either.”
“So you’re no longer interested in sex. With anyone, just to be clear.”
“Yes.”
“What about sex in the abstract?”
“What?”
“Sex in the abstract. Leave individual people, male or female, out of the question. Does that still interest you?”
Jo didn’t like therapist speak, but she could produce it herself when necessary. She let her upper lip curl in what was probably not an attractive way. “You mean, have I experienced sensations of physical arousal since coming back to London.”
“If you want to put it that way.”
“So not sex in the abstract, so much. Sex in the concrete.”
“If you like.”
“No. I haven’t.”
“Is that unusual for you?”
“It’s unusual for anyone, isn’t it?” Which was both reductive and grossly inaccurate, but Jo was irritated, and Ella didn’t like it when she answered questions with more questions.
“Decreased sex drive is a common side effect of citalopram.”
“It started before I went on the medication. Though, now you mention it, that’s another excellent reason—”
“Decreased sex drive is also common in people who have undergone significant physical or mental trauma.”
“It started before I was shot.”
“So did the trauma.”
Jo very carefully did not grit her teeth. After all, she couldn’t afford the dental bills. “Did you want to talk about the war or about my love life?”
“We could talk about both. I was asking about your sexual interests, though. Can you tell me why you used the word ‘love’?”
“Because I’m starved for intimacy. You’ve caught me out. What is that, a reverse Freudian slip?”
Ella gave her a cool smile. It was not, surely, because she found that amusing.
“What?” Jo said.
“You’ve become more argumentative. During our first few weeks together, you were soft-spoken and very well-behaved. You lied about your progress, of course, but you lied nicely. Now you don’t bother. I’d say you came in here looking for something to argue about.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Was it better to be repressed and polite or liberated and belligerent?
“That depends, Joanna. You could choose to see it as a good thing.”
“I could also choose to point out that this session has run over by five minutes.”
“So it has. Are you comfortable leaving things here for the week?”
“Comfortable isn’t the word I’d use.”
Ella’s smile didn’t waver once as she showed Jo to the door.
She walked home, gratified to note that her leg was rock-steady. It tended to twinge worse after her sessions. Halfway there she remembered they were running short on bread and completely out of both eggs and milk. Jo’s skills in the kitchen began and ended with boiling water, but fortunately that was just about all that was required for hardboiled eggs. She’d discovered only the other week that if she made them for herself and left one or two lying suggestively on her plate, they would disappear before long. Someone had to make certain Sherlock was getting protein in her diet.
Someone also had to make certain their rent was paid promptly on the first of every month. Three and a half weeks ago this had fallen entirely to Jo’s lot, and as a result she was a little short, but Sherlock had assured her just the other night that there was enough in her debit account to make up for it this time around. It wasn’t that Jo minded fronting her the cash, at least in theory; it was just that Jo didn’t have the cash to front. On the other hand, she’d been given tacit permission to swipe Sherlock’s card whenever anything vital was at stake, and their milk supply had to count. She stopped off at the Tesco at the corner of York and Baker and went in to replenish their bare cupboards.
She came back out again ten minutes later, face burning with rage and frustration, and this time it wasn’t even because of the damned self-service checkouts. She reached the flat and threw the door open with all the violence of righteous anger. It rebounded off the wall with a crash loud enough, she was sure, to startle anyone upstairs. Good. Sherlock had been at the kitchen table when she’d left that morning, hunched over a beaker with the intense look that meant she would still be at it hours later. Jo hoped she’d dropped something corrosive. Sherlock rarely bothered with gloves.
“Insufficient funds!” she bellowed. That time she heard a sudden movement from above, like a chair scraping across the floor as its occupant jerked back in her seat. She drew a steadying breath and made her way up the stairs, putting each foot down with loud and angry deliberation. “Do you know how insufficient? So insufficient, Sherlock, that I had to fish change out of my coat pockets to buy half a litre of milk and a loaf or two of bread. Mind telling me how you plan to pay both halves of our rent with a balance that low?”
Sherlock’s voice came floating down the stairs. “Now is not the best time for this conversation, Joanna.” She didn’t sound at all startled. She sounded calm. She had no bloody right to be that calm, not when they were both about to be thrown out into the street and when they had come so very close to not having milk.
“Isn’t it? I think now is an excellent time for this conversation. As I recall, I also thought two days ago was an excellent time, or last week, or better still last month, but you always seem to have something more interesting to do.” She’d reached the door by then, and it flew open with another satisfying crash. “Well, you should know that this time I don’t care about that fascinating murder-suicide that can’t possibly be a murder-suicide, or whether you’re in the middle of an experiment, or you’ve got a—guest.” Sherlock was perched crosslegged on the coffee table, and there was a man sitting in the chair opposite. Jo ran an automatic mental tally: black, late thirties, casually dressed. Not someone she’d seen at the Yard, and not Mycroft. Those were the only two categories she’d learned to apply to the people in Sherlock’s life, so this left her at a bit of a loss. “Who is this?”
“Next month’s rent, I hope,” Sherlock said.
“What?”
“A client, Joanna. He has a case for us.” She was doing that thing she did where her face didn’t move at all when she talked, and the only clue Jo had as to her amusement was the angle of her eyes. “Scott Morstan, Joanna Watson.”
Jo set down the bag with her dearly-bought groceries. Morstan stood and reached for her hand, and could it be that simple? Apparently it could, and Ella might as well strike out everything she’d written in that session’s notes, because that rush of blood to certain areas was as clear a symptom as any limp.
If Scott Morstan had been born eighty years earlier, he’d have been one of those sepia-toned faces in old photographs, frozen forever in earnest youth, having died tragically young in the war and been buried somewhere in Flanders. Warm dark eyes, well-formed mouth, and a good strong curve to his jaw—his face was not striking enough to grace the tabloid covers, but it betrayed an appealing combination of assurance and sensitivity, and Jo was overthinking this and in half a second she’d have held the handshake for too long. He had a good, firm grip, the sort that told her that hand was capable of all sorts of useful things. She dropped it immediately. No wedding ring, she noticed, and could have kicked herself for looking.
“Ms. Watson,” he said, and he gave her a smile that had her stomach doing backflips and her pulse pounding somewhere decidedly south of her ribcage.
Jo had always found “Ms.” aesthetically unappealing but also liked it when a man didn’t assume things; still, the last thing she wanted to do was give up any ground. There would be no points for effort. “It’s Dr. Watson, actually.”
She’d been around enough to know the reaction to this would say a great deal. When he ducked his head just a little to hide his suddenly more genuine smile and said, “I’ll keep that in mind,” it was just about more than she could take.
“Mr. Morstan,” said Sherlock in a tone so dry Jo could feel the rainwater on her coat begin to evaporate, “is here about his wife.” Oh. “His late wife. She died, what did you say, four months ago?” Very not good, then. The clarification was clearly for Jo’s benefit. Sherlock would never forget a detail like a victim’s date of death.
“Yes,” he said, stepping back to the armchair. Jo sank onto the couch next to Sherlock and folded her hands primly over her knees. “Val was killed back in August.”
“You said the police had ruled it an accident.”
“They did.”
“You disagree?”
“I do now. Back then, I was in shock, you know. I didn’t think twice about it.”
“But now you’ve reconsidered, and you want me to tell you what really happened.” Sherlock wasn’t hooked yet. Jo could tell.
“Not exactly.” Sherlock’s gaze narrowed. “I mean,” Morstan added, “I do want to know what happened, but that’s not why I’ve come to you. The police are reopening the investigation. They’re trying to get an order to exhume the body. They don’t think the first inquest caught everything.”
“What do you think they’re going to find?”
His jaw had gone rigid, betraying pain or grief or—fear? “I think they’re going to find that she was murdered. And I think I’m the one they’re going to arrest.”
That got her interest. Sherlock’s long and languid limbs gathered themselves until she was braced forward, knees to elbows on the sitting-room table. “Let’s start with your first assumption. What makes you think your wife was murdered?’
“It doesn’t sit right, Ms. Holmes. They said Val drowned in her bath. That doesn’t just happen.”
“But it does, Mr. Morstan,” Jo said, as gently as she could. “There are accidents, you know.”
“Not the way they said it happened. Read the police reports and you’ll see. It’s all wrong.”
“Drowned in her bath,” Sherlock said. “Back in August. Your wife was Valerie Hammond.” At Morstan’s nod, Sherlock let out a low hmm. “I did read about the case. Professional interest, you understand. Everything I had was from the papers. They said there were drugs involved.”
Morstan’s mouth twisted, not in grief this time but in anger. The expression sat oddly on his face. “That’s a lie. That’s a damned lie, but that is what they said.”
“So there weren’t any drugs.”
“She took a pill, but it was prescribed, for God’s sake. It made her drowsy was all. She had a glass of wine with it and then had a bath.”
“So yes, drugs, but only by the strictest of technicalities,” Sherlock said, which did nothing to soothe the furious lines in Morstan’s forehead. “That seems a strong case for accidental death.”
“You didn’t know Val,” Morstan said. “She’d never have been careless enough to mix wine with sedatives. She wouldn’t even take paracetamol with alcohol. She was one of those people who read the fine print on everything, and she’d never have taken anything without knowing all the side-effects and contraindications. People made that mistake about her all the time, you know. Just because she was the artistic type, just because she came across as passionate and impulsive, they thought she was careless. She was the most practical person I’ve met.”
“That’s still insufficient to deem the case a murder.”
“There was also the way she was behaving before she died.”
“And how was that?” Jo knew Sherlock well enough to hear the hint of impatience. She must be chafing under this piecemeal presentation of the facts.
Morstan looked down at his hands. “We were separated at the time, in the middle of a divorce, and outside the lawyers’ offices we weren’t talking. She called me three weeks before she died and said she needed to meet.”
“And did you?”
“Yes, at her house. She asked me for money.”
“Money from the man she was about to divorce?” Jo asked. “That seems like the wrong way to go about it.”
“You have to understand the way things were, Dr. Watson. We didn’t hate one another outright. It wasn’t like that. Maybe we should have, but Val didn’t have a resentful bone in her body, and I couldn’t bring myself to—”
He trailed off, leaving Jo uncomfortable and embarrassingly curious. She gave in to the latter impulse. “Can I ask why you were divorcing?”
“Infidelity,” Sherlock said, as though it was obvious. “Hers, not yours, and multiple offences.”
“Three men,” Morstan agreed. Jo could tell it pained him, but his tone was frank and his manner straightforward. “She broke down and told me or I’d never have worked it out. We made up after the first and tried counselling after the second. I probably should have known better. Then there was the last, and when she told me that time I asked her to move out. That was back in April.”
“Where these isolated incidents or extended affairs?”
“It varied. The last one went on for at least two months, but it was over by the time I knew about it.”
“Yet you say you didn’t hate her.”
“I suppose I had reason to. I tried, but I couldn’t quite manage it.”
“And when you went to see her that day, did you argue?”
“No. I won’t say it was a comfortable conversation, but we didn’t fight. We got all the arguing out after affair number two, I think, and neither of us had any left.”
“How much money did she want?” Sherlock asked.
“Six thousand pounds.”
That wasn’t small change. “Did she tell you why she needed it?”
“I asked, of course, but she all would say was that it was life or death, that I was the only person she could ask, and that she’d repay me before long.”
“And?”
“And I gave her the money.”
“I wouldn’t have thought a theatre’s lighting technician made enough to have six thousand ready to hand.” Morstan sat back in his chair, and from his alarm Jo assumed he hadn’t mentioned his career before she arrived. Sherlock waved a hand. “Your profession is moderately obvious, Mr. Morstan. The fact that you carry a small but high-powered LED flashlight in your coat pocket could mean any number of things, but you’ve used gaff tape to repair the torn corner of your shoulder bag, which narrows the field. I could mention at least six other indications, but I won’t waste my time on trivialities. Where are you employed now?”
“I’m head lighting director at the Emporium. You’re right about the ready money, but I’m careful about my finances, and I’d been saving. The six thousand was most of it, though.”
“And you gave it all to your adulterous wife.”
“I knew she’d pay it back,” Morstan said. “That was another thing about Val. She always paid her debts. More than paid them. She was very generous.”
Jo thought that was an odd thing to say about someone who’d cheated on him repeatedly, but Sherlock moved on. “Did she repay this one?”
“No. When I gave her the money, she said it might be some months before she could give it back.”
“And she died three weeks after this conversation. Did you tell all this to the police?”
“I did, but I don’t even know if they looked into it.”
“Not surprising.”
“I don’t understand,” Jo said. “If you’ve asked them to reopen the investigation, why would they suspect you?”
“I’m not the one who’s insisting,” Morstan said. “It’s her life insurance company. They want it ruled a suicide and not an accident.”
“Ah,” Sherlock said. “Money, again. Now we come to the second part of your earlier statement. Why do you believe the police will accuse you?”
“The husband’s always the first suspect, isn’t he? And then there was the divorce. We might not have hated each other, but we didn’t get on.”
“Yes, in general that is a prerequisite for murder.”
Morstan flinched, and Jo could have kicked her for that bit of insensitivity. He cleared his throat. “There’s also the insurance money.”
“A pedestrian motive, but certainly a reliable one. How much?” Jo gave her a pained look, and Sherlock frowned. Then she sighed and told Morstan, “You should understand that I am able to be useful to you only by preserving a clinical detachment. If I ask you a question it is not because I mean to cause you distress but because I require an answer. Now, if you please, Mr. Morstan: How much did you stand to gain by your wife’s death?”
“Ten million.” Those two words fell between them with a hollow echo. Jo could not imagine this man in the possession of so much money. Jo could hardly imagine anyone in the possession of so much money.
“Not so pedestrian, then,” Sherlock said. “Extravagant might be a better word. Why such a high figure?”
“That’s just it, Ms. Holmes. I have no idea. I didn’t even know she’d taken out a policy, much less that I’d still have been the beneficiary.”
“Can you prove that?”
“I was hoping you could.”
Sherlock smiled thinly. “I shall do my best. In any case, I can see why the insurance company would prefer this to be declared a suicide. Though presumably they will also have to pay if the police determine it was in fact murder.”
“I suppose they think it’s worth a try.”
“For ten million, I would imagine so. When did she sign for the policy?”
“About a year ago.”
“And not a word to you.”
“Not one.”
“Did you see your wife again after that meeting three weeks before her death?”
“No.”
“Did you speak to her or hear from her in any way?”
“I transferred the money that afternoon, and she rang that night to thank me. We talked for less than five minutes. I asked her again if she was in any trouble, but she told me not to worry about her, that she had everything worked out. Then there was nothing until a plainclothes officer showed up at my door.”
“You must admit it looks suspicious.”
“I wouldn’t have come to you if I didn’t have good reason. Can you solve it?”
“Four months after the fact, with nothing to go on but the papers and a half-hearted police investigation?” Her eyes burned with the challenge. “Certainly I can.”
“In terms of payment…” Morstan began.
“You’ll find our services quite reasonable,” Sherlock said, naming a per-case rate that made Jo blanch. That would certainly cover the rent.
Morstan didn’t flinch at the price, but he had noticed the plural pronoun. “When you say ‘our’, Ms. Holmes—”
“I include Dr. Watson, of course.”
He looked as though he wanted to say something, but Sherlock was talking again. “We will also require reimbursement for any expenses, and there will be an additional fee for any danger undertaken by either member of the firm.”
“Danger?” Now he was really alarmed. “Is there much chance of that?”
“This is a murder investigation, Mr. Morstan. There is always the possibility of danger.” Jo could think of several words better than “possibility”, but this seemed like a bad time to bring them up. “Now, if you don’t mind, I would prefer to speak to the police before doing anything else. Your interests will be better served if I have some idea of where their investigation stands. Which brings me to my last point. I am accepting this case with you as my client, but do not assume that your freedom is my primary objective.”
“What is your primary objective?”
“The truth, Mr. Morstan. The pure, scientific truth of what happened. If my investigation proves your guilt rather than your innocence, that’s all the same to me.” Her eyes narrowed in amusement. “Though if my efforts land you in prison, I assure you that you will be released from any financial obligation.”
Morstan’s jaw was stiff again. He was a stubborn man, then, behind the reserved exterior, and unwilling to be pushed over. Jo approved. “I suppose I should be offended,” he said, “but you may as well hear it from me. I didn’t kill Valerie. Someone else did, and if you’re as good as you say, then that’s exactly what you’ll find out.”
“How gratifying. I hate being hired by murderers. Thank you, Mr. Morstan, that will be all. If you will give me your card, you will hear from us when I know what additional information we may need.”
He left with a polite, if not quite friendly, nod to Sherlock and another firm press of Jo’s hand. She was standing near the window, and when she saw him walk out onto Baker Street she was still pleasantly aware of her palm, the ghost of his lingering on her skin. “You don’t really think he killed her,” Jo said. “How stupid would he have to be, hiring a detective to investigate the death of someone he killed?”
“Stupid, or supremely confident,” Sherlock corrected. “Not that the two are at all mutually exclusive. He may think this will stand as a mark in his favour should the matter ever come to trial.”
“Assuming he’d be able to fool you into arguing his innocence.”
“An unlikely event, but he may not be aware of how unlikely. But no, I don’t suspect him.”
That was a bit of a relief. Not that Jo had believed it, either, but if there was anything worse than directing her first impulses of renewed attraction (and mutual attraction, too, if she was any judge) at a man who wanted them to investigate the recent murder of his wife, it would be finding that he was the one who’d killed her. Jo thought back on that morning’s session and wondered what Ella would have said about all this. Jo would have to be very careful not to bring any of it up when she went back in two weeks. If she did go back.
No sooner had she brought her still-tingling palm up to rub her leg than Sherlock said, “You should fire your therapist.”
Jo had to make her stop doing that. “Funny, that’s just what your brother said.”
Sherlock made the face she reserved for Mycroft alone. As irritating as it was to have her mind read at inconvenient moments, at least Jo had worked out how to retaliate.
It was exactly the sort of comment that would have left Sherlock sulking for hours if there hadn’t been a ready distraction at hand. Her expression turned introspective, and her eyes narrowed ever so slightly before she snatched up the mobile from the table beside her. “What does one wear to a disinterment?”
“You’re not going to that?” Jo said, startled.
“There must be an established etiquette. Do they make cards for it? ‘On the occasion of your loved one’s untimely reappearance’, that sort of thing?” Before Jo could work out how to respond to that, Sherlock had finished dialling and was speaking rapidly and ungrammatically into the phone. “It’s me. Are you on the Valerie Hammond case?” Her lips tightened in the ghost of a satisfied smile. “Excellent. I’ll be there in ten.”
“You don’t like talking on the phone,” Jo said as Sherlock untangled her legs and stood up in one fluid motion.
“Lestrade’s been ignoring my texts. Something about the Richardson affair.”
As the conclusion to that case had involved a three-hour excursion into the London sewage system, a detour Lestrade had later declared unnecessary while wringing an unmentionable substance out of his jacket, Jo was not surprised. “But he’s taking your calls?”
“There’s a landline in his office. He’s been at his desk doing paperwork all morning. He won’t admit it, but he’ll be happy we interrupted. Now are you coming?”
It wasn’t until they were halfway to Scotland Yard that Jo realised she’d left the Tesco bag on the sitting room floor. She glanced at Sherlock, but it was impossible to to tell just yet whether this would be one of those cases that kept them away from the flat for several days running. She could only hope they’d make it home before the milk had time to curdle.
********
Somewhat to her surprise, Jo had found she liked DI Lestrade. They shared a similar attitude of mingled awe and exasperation for her flatmate, and she was convinced there was a substantial reservoir of affection hiding under that wry exterior. He’d never admit to it, but if nothing else the fact that he was still willing to work with Sherlock after the Richardson case spoke volumes.
He was also very good-looking. Jo had noticed this in a matter-of-fact way on first meeting him. Whatever Harry might say about her reasons for commissioning, Jo was quite free of daddy issues and didn’t have any particular preference for older men in positions of authority, so she’d absorbed it into her impressions of the good inspector without much thought. It came as a surprise, then, when they walked through his door and he growled something disapproving at Sherlock, and his gravely tones went straight to the pit of her stomach.
This was getting ridiculous.
She spent the next several minutes railing at her id for having chosen such an inconvenient time for a sexual reawakening and so missed part of the conversation.
“We’re trying to keep this quiet,” Lestrade was saying. “When you get involved, Sherlock, things are less quiet.”
“I am discreet.”
“When you want to be. But we don’t need you on this one. We wouldn’t even be reopening it if the insurance investigator wasn’t making such a god-awful fuss about it. They’re insisting it’s a suicide. It was accidental, if you ask me. There’s no mystery here.”
“Which I assume is why the file is open on your desk.” Sherlock plucked it up from an untidy mound of paperwork and turned it around, and Jo leaned over her shoulder to read along.
The first thing she saw was an autopsy photo of a woman, undoubtedly attractive until she’d been submerged in water overnight, though it took an experienced eye to see beyond the bloated features. Her hair was still striking, rich auburn waves cut into a very short pageboy.
“When is the second autopsy?” Sherlock asked.
“You can’t just march in here—”
“Evidently I can.”
Lestrade reached across the desk and took the file right out of Sherlock’s hands. “Right, I’ll have that back. You can’t just march in here and expect me to let you in on this. And come to that, why do you care about this case?”
“I’ve just been hired to investigate it.”
“By the insurance company? You can tell Hellers not to bother coming around again. He’s left me quite enough of these, and I’ve no intention of using them.” Lestrade had taken a business card from the top drawer of his desk and all but shoved it at Sherlock, who glanced at the name and then pocketed it. “When did you start hiring yourself out to corporations?”
“Not by the insurance company. By the husband.”
This was news to Lestrade. He dropped the file back to his desk, careful to keep it beyond Sherlock’s considerable reach. “Now why would it occur to him to find himself a private investigator?”
“Consulting detective,” Jo said automatically. Lestrade stopped just short of rolling his eyes at her.
“Mr. Morstan is under the impression that he tops your lists of suspects.”
“Can’t have suspects in a suicide any more than you can in an accidental death.”
“No-one in this room is under the illusion that this isn’t an active investigation.”
“And why would he put himself at the top of our list? Supposing we have one.”
“Possibly he is aware of the statistical likelihood that, in the event that a white woman is murdered, her black husband will find the finger of blame pointed squarely in his direction.”
“Go on,” said Lestrade. “Tell me it’s racial bias, if we’re looking at him at all. I’ll tell you we can prove he was in her house—the house where she died—three weeks before her death. He was there alone. No lawyer or any other witnesses, though they were going through a divorce.”
“He told me as much.”
“And did he tell you about the insurance policy?”
“He did.”
“Nobody takes out a policy that size unless they think they’ll need it.”
“Who gets the money if Morstan is convicted for his wife’s murder?”
“There’s a cousin.”
“Have you—”
“Of course we have. She’s a naturalist.”
“I take it that’s relevant.”
“She’s spent the last eight months in Ecuador studying the mating habits of flightless birds.”
“Difficult,” Sherlock said, “but not insurmountable.”
“She didn’t know about the insurance money.”
“Neither did Morstan.”
“So he says. Forget the cousin, Sherlock. Forget the whole case.”
“You don’t really think that’s going to work,” Jo said.
“Hope springs eternal, my dear Joanna,” said Sherlock, though from Lestrade’s expression the DI had given up on hope as a mythical beast that bore no relation to any version of reality that included the world’s only consulting detective. “We know you’ve requested a disinterment. How soon can it be done?”
“Possibly never,” Lestrade said. “It’s been held up.”
“How long can it take to get a coroner’s order?” Jo asked, curious.
“It’s not the coroner that’s the problem. It’s the bishop.”
“Buried in hallowed ground, is our Ms. Hammond?” Sherlock asked.
“She is, and that could mean some knotty politics if the C of E decides to be difficult. We’ll get it eventually, but I’ve got instructions not to step on too many toes. This isn’t your game, Sherlock.”
“A second autopsy may not be necessary if you’ll give me access to the files.”
“What, you think the Yard might have managed to gather all the relevant evidence without your help?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sherlock said. “Still, you have more than I do just at the moment. Morstan said his wife had taken a pill. What was it?”
“Venlafaxine,” Lestrade said. “You know it?”
“It’s an SNRI,” Jo put in. “Usually used to treat major depression. Was Valerie Hammond depressed?”
“That would be a logical conclusion.”
“Was it an overdose?”
“No. She only took one pill—the prescription had been filled that morning, and we checked how many were left in the bottle.”
“But she took it with alcohol.”
“Only one glass. It was an accident, not a deliberate overdose.”
“The coroner may not have known what to look for,” Sherlock said, “and it may not have been drugs.”
“What ‘it’? There’s no ‘it’, Sherlock. Look, I’ll bring you in on it if we find anything suspicious this time around, but we won’t.”
“And if I find something?”
“There’s nothing to find.”
“But if I do, you’ll give me full access.”
Lestrade looked less than enthusiastic, but it didn’t take him long to bow to inevitability. “If you do, give us a ring.”
“Excellent,” Sherlock said with her quick and terrifying smile. “I’ll speak to you soon. Come, Joanna.”
The afternoon had begun with a half-hearted effort at rain before settling for damp and gloomy. Jo zipped her jacket up to the neck and shoved her hands into the pockets, waiting for Sherlock to finish whatever she was doing on her mobile.
“If you wanted to commit suicide,” Sherlock said in a conversational tone, still typing away, “how would you do it?”
“Cyanide,” Jo said.
Most people would have been taken aback at the promptness of the reply. Sherlock just said, “Poison rather than a gun to your temple? How stereotypically feminine of you,” and gave her a look that begged to be challenged.
“It’s really not, if by ‘feminine’ you mean hesitant and likely to fail. A large enough dose can lead to instantaneous unconsciousness and death soon after, and if you know what you’re doing there’s virtually no chance of reversal. Put a bullet in your brain and you might not finish the job. People miss.”
“You wouldn’t.”
Jo really shouldn’t have found that quick confidence flattering, not under the circumstances, but that had been an unmistakable compliment. She cleared her throat. “Yes, well, there’s always the mess to think of.”
“Surely you have ready access to other options. Narcotics, for example.”
Which brought Jo’s mind unpleasantly to the tiny, careful scars that she’d once seen peppering Sherlock’s pale inner arm. She shook her head. “Overdoses can be unpredictable, and there’s the chance someone will catch you in time. Call me old-fashioned, but it’s bitter almonds for me. In gaseous form, given the choice.” It had a classic quality to it, she thought.
Sherlock considered her response for a few paces, then said, “You’re not at all the best person to ask. Medical professionals would have a different perspective on it.”
“I suppose so. What perspective were you looking for?”
“That of a depressed serial adulteress. Though even if that description fit you at all, you wouldn’t, for example, drown yourself in the bathtub. No, I thought not. It’s neither poetic nor efficient, and from her husband’s evidence I would have expected Valerie Hammond to be both.”
“You’re really thinking suicide, just because of the medication?”
“It was an obvious first stop. Whatever Mr. Morstan may believe, the circumstances do not scream ‘Murder Most Foul’. Besides that, she was about to begin a painful divorce, she was in extreme professional difficulty, and she was seeing a psychiatrist.”
“Guesses.”
“Hardly.”
“A GP could have prescribed the venlafaxine. You can’t possibly know she was seeing a psychiatrist.”
“Why can’t I?”
“Because I read the same two pages of the casefile that you did, and they didn’t say anything about that.”
“You also saw the photo of her desk stapled to the second page. Didn’t you look at the planner? It was lying wide open.”
“I didn’t look that closely.”
“You should have done. Two seconds, Joanna, and you’d have known where we’re going now. She had an appointment with a Dr. Felsham two days before her death.” Sherlock waved her mobile under Jo’s nose. “There are three Dr. Felshams practising medicine in the Greater London area. One is a paediatrician, another is a specialist in male sexual disfunction, and the last is a clinical psychiatrist with a practise in the West End.”
“What about the professional difficulty? Morstan didn’t say anything about what she did for a living.”
“He didn’t have to. Almost anyone who hadn’t spent the greater part of the last five years abroad on active military duty would have known.”
“What?”
“Valerie Hammond was an actress.” Sherlock raised her arm to flag a cab. It pulled over to the kerb and sent a splash of dirty rainwater up to speckle Jo’s slacks, missing Sherlock entirely, of course. As they settled into their seats, Sherlock typed something into her mobile and handed it to Jo. It now showed a Wikipedia article. The photograph at the top of the page was of the same woman she’d seen in the autopsy report, but here she was vibrantly, beautifully alive, long auburn curls tumbling over her shoulders and a magnetic smile lighting her face.
She skimmed the article as they alternately sped along the streets and waited in stubborn lines of traffic. “Oh, I know her,” Jo said in surprise. “When Harry had her appendix out a while back, I spent a few days at hers, and all she wanted to do was watch BBC costume dramas. Hammond was Miss Whatsit in that—thing—by Dickens? I’d never have known her name, though.”
“If you hadn’t been sent to Afghanistan, you probably would have. Two years ago she starred in a mindless crime serial that became suddenly and wildly popular, but a few months before her death she was fired over artistic differences.”
“And you know about this because you have a secret passion for network television.”
“I did a bit of research when her death hit the papers. I concluded it was either accident or a very ordinary suicide and not nearly worth my time, but then I didn’t have access to all the evidence.”
“So you were wrong,” Jo said delightedly.
Sherlock gave her a cold look, and Jo held back a laugh. “Data, my dear Joanna. I cannot be expected to work without it.”
“Still, you were wrong.”
“Evidently. Do try not to take so much pleasure in that, it’s not at all attractive.”
“Why did you look into it at all? Sheer sensationalism isn’t usually a draw for you.” Though this was all making a lot more sense, from the fact that a simple accidental death had made the papers and attracted more than two seconds of Sherlock’s notice to the way Scott Morstan had spoken of his wife without feeling the need to fill in her background.
Sherlock said, “I was already familiar with her name. Not, I hardly need add, because of any interest in police procedurals or costume drama, but because Valerie Hammond was also a highly successful and even rather brilliant stage actress, which is why we are going to the Majestic after our interview with Dr. Felsham.”
“You don’t really think a psychiatrist is going to break confidentiality for you? We’re not with the police. We’ve got no official reason at all to be asking questions.”
“The thought had occurred. Do you own a suit?”
“I own a dress uniform.”
Sherlock let out an explosive sigh that contained all the sartorially-pretentious despair in the world. “I suppose there’s no time to go back to Baker Street in any case, if we want to get there during business hours. You’ll have to do. Just try to act a little less fundamentally decent and a little more callous, if you possibly can, and we’ll manage.”
Forward to Part I, Chapter 2
