It Started With Stealing | Sherlock Holmes

79 - Doubt Roots Itself

But he would find out eventually.

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A couple of days passed and the year of 2011 was slowly nearing the end of January. They had been surprisingly quiet in terms of cases. January always had been a bit of a slow month for business - who knew killers found it too cold to kill? Of course, Sherlock wasn't ignoring the trauma of the last week but he did get bored awfully quickly - especially after Elizabeth vowed not to play Ludo with him ever again. He found he struggled to get her to play any other board game with him. He couldn't work out why.

What he had been able to work out in the mean time though, with all his spare time given he was still 'recovering' from two stab wounds and had still been meaning to be taking it easy (at least for another week after this one too) was where Irene was. Of course he couldn't let The Woman go like that, not when she had been an almost worthy opponent and not when she had impressed him with her intelligence. It would be criminal to lose such a fascinating mind as hers and lose her head she was very close to doing according to his sources.

Sherlock had to save her. It was the least he could do.

But first he had to explain it to Elizabeth. He couldn't lie to her. Everybody else, sure, they didn't need to know, but knowing how the situation went last time, Sherlock understood that the thief would prefer to be informed of this before he just up and left to save Ms Adler.

Elizabeth was sat on their bed in their bedroom, sat against the white, slightly uncomfy headboard, staring at her phone. From the doorway, he watched the thief carefully, gauging her reactions to whatever she was reading. Then, she got a call, answering it immediately.

"Hello?"

Sherlock noted that her voice was plain, almost accusatory, as if she were holding a grudge. He frowned, eavesdropping on her side of the conversation.

"Yeah...okay...so next week, Thursday?...okay...six a.m?...so I'll meet some of the others?...I mean, I hope it will be mostly gone by then, don't wanna scare the customers...oh, I'll be potwashing?...no, no, that's fine...morning shifts only first?...okay...no, I don't have any questions...okay, I'll save this number too then...great, thanks...bye."

Interesting thing about adverbs. Sometimes they told you an awful lot. But sometimes one could read too much into them. I'll save this number too, she had said. Too - an adverb in this context being used to mean 'in addition' or 'also'. Meaning she had already saved a number. Why would her boss have two numbers?

"Sherlock?"

The detective blinked at her, forgetting that he had been present in the moment with her.

"You okay?" She smiled at him curiously, "You look like you've seen a ghost."

He cleared his throat, unsure of what to say. Should he bring it up or not? Should he jump into his news or not? He shook his head, too many thoughts; not enough decision.

"Phone call?"

"Yes? What about it?"

Defensive. Hiding something. He shut his eyes again, dismissing the impulsive thoughts. It was just a phone call to her boss because she had a waitressing job now. She was going to be a waitress. Normal job. Nothing sinister or criminal about it. There wouldn't be. Especially after she had promised not to turn back to crime.

Seeing this odd behaviour from Sherlock, Elizabeth stood and approached him.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

Elizabeth's concern warmed him but his gut instinct refused to be warmed. He could just ask her about it.

"What...was it about?"