Sherlock - The Game Is On!

His Last Vow- Eleven

Chapter Eleven

Third POV

Mary is walks along a road towards Leinster Gardens. It is an expensive looking area, with a long terrace of four storey white plastered Edwardian buildings lining the road. A homeless person squats with his back to the wall at the corner of the road. He has the hood of his jacket pulled over his head, a blanket wrapped around him, and a white plastic tub is on the ground in front of him. "Spare any change, love?"

"No."

"Oh, come on, love. Don't be like all the rest." Stopping, she turns back and gives him a handful of money. Before she can fully straighten up or withdraw her hand, he takes hold of her wrist and looks up at her. It's Bill Wiggins. "Rule One of looking for Sherlock Holmes..." He slaps a phone and a headset into her hand. "He finds you."

"You're working for Sherlock now."

"Keeps me off the streets, dunnit?"

"Well... No." Mary deadpanned. The phone in her hand starts to ring. As she puts the headset into her ear, Bill turns and walks away. She answers the phone. "Where are you?"

"Can't you see me?"

"Well, what am I looking for?"

"The lie, the lie of Leinster Gardens, hidden in plain sight." Stepping a few feet into the road so that she can get a better view of the tall houses, she continues along the road while looking at the house fronts. There is nobody else in the street and no cars are driving along it. "Hardly anyone notices. People live here for years and never see it, but if you are what I think you are, it'll take you less than a minute." She continues to walk slowly along the road. "The houses, Mary. Look at the houses."

"How did you know I'd come here?"

"I knew you'd talk to the people no-one else would bother with."

"I thought I was being clever." She laughs briefly. "You're always clever, Mary. We were relying on that. I planted the information for you to find." Slowing down, she looks to a couple of adjoining houses. "Oh." Although there is no light shining from any of the windows, unlike the others on either side, the houses otherwise look similar to the rest of the terrace. "Thirty seconds."

"What am I looking at?"

"No door knobs, no letter box..." She looks towards the two front doors to confirm this, then raises her eyes to the windows in which the glass is opaque. "Painted windows. Twenty-three and twenty-four Leinster Gardens... The empty houses." He sighs gently, Michelle takes over: "They were demolished years ago to make way for the London Underground, a vent for the old steam trains. Only the very front section of the house remains. It's just a façade. Remind you of anyone, Mary? A façade."

At that moment a picture is projected onto the front of the two houses. Three storeys high, stretching from the first floor to the third, it is a photograph of Mary. The picture taken on her wedding day, is a head shot only and shows her wearing her headdress with the white veil surrounding her head as she smiles happily at the camera. Mary turns and looks behind her, trying to see where the picture is being projected from. "Sorry. I never could resist a touch of drama." Sherlock took over again. "Do come in. It's a little cramped."

"Do you own this place?"

"I won it in a card game with the Clarence House Cannibal. Nearly cost me my kidneys, but fortunately I had a... Straight flush." Mary pushes open the door and looks inside. On the wall inside the door is an empty socket for a large electric plug and beside it is a fuse box. "Quite a gambler, that woman." Mary walks inside. All that remains of the house is a long narrow corridor running along the front of the house. She looks back behind her for a moment and then focuses on the corridor. It is lit at her end, and at the other end a bright light shines towards her, obscuring her view of the far end, but she can just about see a shape sitting on a chair in the shadows under the light. She stares at the shape and draws in a breath. "What do you want, Sherlock? Michelle?"

Looming over at the end of the corridor, looking towards Mary, is two figures. Portrayed to look like Sherlock and Michelle's silhouettes. "Mary Morstan was stillborn in October 1972. Her gravestone is in Chiswick Cemetery where, five years ago, you acquired her name and date of birth and thereafter her identity." She starts to walks slowly along the corridor whilst Sherlock spoke through the phone. "That's why you don't have 'friends' from before that date. It's an old enough technique, known to the kinds of people who can recognise a skip-code on sight..."

Mary is still walking towards the seated figure she can now see a little better. Although the faces are still obscured in shadows she can see that two people sit, one in a chair, the others in a wheelchair. The medical drip is on a stand behind the chair and the recognisable shape of the morphine dispenser can be seen attached to the stand. "Have extraordinarily retentive memories..." Mary stopped about halfway along the corridor. "You were very slow. Both of you were very slow."

"How good a shot are you?" Sherlock asks. She reaches inside her coat, pulls out her pistol and cocks it, holding it down by her side. "How badly do you want to find out?" She counters. "If my darling was to die here, both of our bodies will be found in a building with your face projected on the front of it. Even Scotland Yard could get somewhere with that." Michelle stated. Mary nods slightly, still looking towards the shadowed figures at the end of the corridor. She can see one side of the popped coat collar protruding out and Michelle waving her hands during her explanation.

"I want to know how good you are. Go on. Show me. The doctor's wife must be a little bit bored by now." Michelle prodded on. Shifting the pistol in her grip, Mary looks down and reaches into her shoulder bag and takes out a fifty pence coin. Balancing it on her thumb and forefinger, she looks up to gauge the height of the ceiling, then flicks the coin high into the air, raises the gun and fires at it. The ejected shell pings off the wall in front of her and she turns and lowers her head to avoid the coin as it falls down to the floor. She turns to look at the shadowed figures.

Behind her a shadow appears on the wall as someone walks through the open front door. The shadow is instantly recognisable as Sherlock's with its curly hair and popped collar, and now he lowers his phone from his ear and switches it off while he walks towards her. "May I see?" Mary peers towards the shadowy figures sitting at the end of the corridor,  Michelle's silhouette stands up and walks towards her. "It's a dummy." Mary points to the other figure. "I suppose it was a fairly obvious trick."

Removing the headset, She walks a few paces forward, puts her foot against the coin and sends it sliding across the floor towards him. Sherlock puts his foot onto it to stop it. He looks at her as she continues her slow walk towards him, then he bends down and picks up the coin. "And yet, over a distance of six feet, you failed to make a kill shot." Michelle stated. Sherlock holds up the coin to show the hole shot through it. He looks like hell, shaky on his feet, sweating and breathing heavily as he continues talking. "Enough to hospitalise me; Not enough to kill me. That wasn't a miss. That was surgery." Mary meets his gaze for a moment, then lowers her eyes. "We'll take the case."

"What case?" Michelle walks over to Sherlock, helping to steady him. "Yours. Why didn't you come to us in the first place?"

"Because John can't ever know that I lied to him. It would break him and I would lose him forever and I will never let that happen. Please understand. There is nothing in this world that I would not do to stop that happening."

"Sorry." Michelle walks to the fuse box, switching it on she looks back to Mary. "Not that obvious a trick." Behind Mary at the far end of the corridor there is slight movement. Even though she has not seen it, her face fills with dread as if she has already realised the truth. Lowering her eyes and letting out a breath, she turns to look along the corridor to where the figure at the end can now be seen clearly. She gasps. Her husband is sitting in the wheelchair, looking back at her with no expression in his eyes. His hair is ruffled to make it look bigger and he is wearing a black jacket with the collar popped. Slowly he stands up and begins to stroke his hair back down. "Now talk, and sort it out. Do it quickly."

John takes hold of his coat and pulls it wide, shaking the collar down before settling it back onto his shoulders. Mary lets out an anguished sigh as he slowly starts to walk towards her and then stops several feet away...

"Baker Street. Now."