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Chapter Text

If some idiot charterer had known the first thing about galvanic corrosion, Marjorie Jameson would never have discovered her husband was a murderer.

She climbed stiffly down from the yacht – this getting old lark was no joke – and glared at the nervous young man from the charter management company.

"Well? Why didn't you tell us about this earlier?"

She jabbed her thumb towards the corroded mess which had once been the forestay deck fitting (stainless steel) and a shackle attaching the roller reefing drum to it (galvanised iron). Two dissimilar metals clasped together for several weeks in a salt-water environment added up to an impromptu battery. Both the shackle (which didn't matter) and the forestay fitting (which helped keep the mast up, and so mattered very much indeed) appeared beyond hope of resurrection.

"We called your husband's mobile when we spotted it this morning, but he said you were coming down today anyway, and we should speak to you."

Bloody Julian! Couldn't even be arsed to come back and sort out this mess, just expected her to mop up while he amused himself with that smirking little bitch in Bursledon. Last night was the fifth time this month he hadn't come home. He must think she was born yesterday.

The assistant shifted uneasily from foot to foot; her face had probably revealed a bit too much. She summoned up echoes of the school prefect she had once been.

"It shouldn't have taken till now for you to spot it. We have a contract. We make our yacht available for chartering out eighteen weeks a year. You do all the maintenance. And that includes spotting what idiocies your customers have committed before they cause permanent damage. It's not the first time; look at that pair of tights we found in the fuel tank last August. Anyway, we're due off to Brittany in two days. We can't leave with the deck fitting in that state. You'll have to get it fixed, pronto."

The assistant muttered something about "parts".

"There are how many chandlers and riggers on the South Coast? Let me borrow your PC. Just get her lifted out and line someone up to do the repair, and I'll find you the part, if I have to drive to Weymouth for it."

She struck lucky; one of the Southampton chandlers had the fitting in stock. She took possession of it, paid, and headed off back to her car, parked near the ferry terminal. The hi-speed from Cowes had just arrived; the foot-passengers were disembarking. She caught a glimpse of a familiar figure – a walk she would have recognised anywhere –

She ducked into the shadows as Julian, wearing full oilskins, walked obliviously past her in the crowd.

There was a coffee shop inside the terminal; fake-French and plasticky. Sipping watery cappuccino gave her something to do, while letting Julian get well clear of the area. The thought of his knowing she had seen him made her tremble all over; something about his appearance shrieked, "Wrong!" on some fundamental level.

But what?

Halfway through her coffee she said aloud, "They were the wrong oilies."

No-one in the coffee shop paid her the smallest attention.

A picture flashed into her mind; Rosemary riffling through the bargain rail at the Boat Show, happening on a last season's Musto Offshore jacket; bearing it in triumph to the till, all self-congratulation on finding Phil's perfect birthday present. And then, irritatingly, Julian insisting on having the same jacket, only by that time the bargain rail had been stripped. She'd had to pay over a hundred pounds more for this season's model, though it differed from Phil's only in the tiniest details.

Marjorie had always had an eye for details.

A white reflective peak on a yellow hood, not a yellow peaked hood with white cheek-pieces. Julian's wearing Phil's jacket.

Her hand shook as she replaced the teaspoon in the saucer, rose to her feet and stumbled out into the fragmented, between-showers sunlight of Town Quay.

Any other week of the year there might be a perfectly innocent explanation. The commodore and vice-commodore's pegs at the sailing club were next to each other. People flinging off wet oilies before stampeding to the bar after a blustery Sunday morning's inshore racing didn't always find the right hook.

Today, though, she knew exactly where Julian's own jacket was – piled up in one of the smaller spare bedrooms, where she'd stacked it with the other gear she'd have been taking down to the boat this afternoon if that idiot charterer had had the common sense to use a stainless steel shackle.

And Phil's jacket should be round Phil's shoulders, somewhere on the way to Ireland. Last night's dinner had finished just after eight-thirty, nicely timed to give them the best of the tide through the Needles channel. Julian, as arranged, had driven Phil and Rosemary to the marina, so they didn't have to leave their own car unattended there for a fortnight, not after what had happened last year.

"Don't wait up," he'd said on his way out of the door. "I might drop into the club on my way back. You know what that mob are like for making me lose track of time."

In front of Phil and Rosemary there hadn't been much she could say, apart from a tart wifely reminder about random breathalyser checks and being careful on the drive home. Her eyes had no doubt communicated volumes. And she hadn't waited up and Julian hadn't come home and she'd drawn the expected conclusion – one more small betrayal added to a mountain of weariness and deceit.

Except he hadn't gone to Bursledon. And either he hadn't taken the car or he'd left it over on the Isle of Wight. No – stupid – he'd been wearing complete oilies, not just the jacket. No-one would put on waterproof trousers to drive; he must have been on a yacht. And since those were Phil's oilies, the obvious inference –

She came to a dead stop; someone cannoned into her and swore; she muttered an automatic, unfelt apology.

Wherever Phil is, he doesn't need his oilies. Which means he isn't on a cruise to Ireland. Or on any boat at all.

Fingers gone suddenly clumsy, she reached into her handbag for her mobile phone. Phil's number was on speed dial, as was Rosemary's. She tried Phil's first. One ring. Two rings. Three.

Belatedly, she scrambled for something to say, some excuse for calling. Something about the foredeck fitting? That might do. If Phil and Rosemary hadn't been at sea she'd have certainly called one of them when she discovered the mess – someone to rant at, someone who would understand.

Silence – a blessed, listening silence. Someone had picked up at the other end.

"Phil? That you?" She cleared her throat, about to launch into her prepared speech about the fitting.

Abruptly, the phone went dead. She fumbled, frantically; hit redial. This time, the ringing went on for ever. She found herself praying for it to default to the answering machine. It didn't. She cut the link herself, in the end.

The car loomed in front of her; she walked straight past it. Not safe to drive, not with her hands shaking like this. She walked on, into the pedestrianised part of town, hardly knowing where she was going. The sign "Internet Café" brought her up short. There'd been that crime drama on TV last month –

Before she knew it, she was pushing the door open. Her gaze skittered over the unfamiliar scene. Shabby paint, covered with notice boards bearing scribbled, stained advertisements for flat shares and second-hand drum kits. Rows of desks, equipped with glowing terminals. Young people, in assorted stages of scruffiness, hunched before them. Biscuits and coffee cake under glass bell jars on a formica counter, coffee stewing bitterly on a machine.

"You OK?" The girl behind the counter, a friendly Pakistani with a rural Hampshire accent one could cut with a knife, smiled at her. "Need help?"

"I – need to check something. Can I –?"

Hardly knowing how to start, she paid for a hour's time and tapped the code the girl gave her into the terminal.

She'd learned better than to ask even the most innocuous question about Julian's business affairs; he treated her as if she couldn't be expected to know one side of a balance sheet from the other. (Charles, who'd routinely dealt in tens of millions at his investment bank, had always left her to manage the household finances, claiming she got them in less of a muddle than he would.)

What a fool she'd been to let Julian get away with it all these years. Time things changed.

A Companies House check on Julian's company left her pursing her lips; why had Julian suddenly granted all these charges over the business's assets? And what was this about "directors' personal guarantees"?

Typing Phil's full name into the search engine hit gold. Not Phil himself but his cousin, a local councillor - something she hadn't known. On the planning committee, which gave her an immediate twinge of nerves. Charles had always reserved a special contempt for councillors who chose to go into planning. And the sailing club had a planning application in prospect, too; selling off some of the hard-standing for development.

Indeed, the sailing club forum buzzed with speculation about the proposed sale – most of it, to her startled eyes, verging on the libellous. One poster's tone of smooth arrogance mingled with broad hints of privileged knowledge seemed hauntingly familiar. He posted from a hotmail account; on impulse she found hotmail, entered his username and tried the password Julian used for Amazon.

The account logged on instantly. And then, as she scanned the in-box and the sent items, everything came together; Julian in Phil's oilies on the Cowes hi-speed, Julian's uncharacteristically generous offer to drive Phil and Rosemary to the marina in the first place – even Phil's cousin and his planning committee.

Julian treated her as unable to add two and two but she could do this sum all right.

"Fraud," she breathed at the screen, and then, because even that dread word wasn't enough, not quite enough to account for everything, "Murder."

What did a woman do when she thought her husband was a murderer?

"Police" was a thought raised only to be dismissed. Her hand caressed the wrinkled burn scar on her upper arm. No need to speculate whose story the police would rather believe. She already knew the answer.

Family? None of her own left, Julian's obviously impossible. Charles's relatives? They'd made it abundantly clear at the wedding that they considered her remarriage to be a mistake; too soon, disrespectful to Charles's memory. If she could stand the barrage of "I told you sos" they'd be likely to support her against Julian, at least in theory.

But Bill – the only one of her own generation left – was becoming increasingly ga-ga. Neither of his kids – God, how had Adrian and Jeremy reached their middle thirties without her noticing? – had ever impressed her as having either sense or imagination. (Charles, she recalled with a pang, had had to be forcibly restrained from calling Jeremy "Foggy" to his face during family get-togethers.)

Those two would only refer her back to the police and, when the police did nothing, assume it proved there was nothing for them to do.

And then what? So dark, that twisting lane, three-quarters of a mile to the house at the end. Anyone could prowl along it at night, beneath the tight dark lattice of branches. How long would she have, if she accused Julian of murder and failed to make it stick?

She turned to the computer again, rubbing her fingers thoughtfully over the bridge of her nose.

Searching "Private detective" and similar terms produced legions of people willing to provide divorce evidence, trace assets and serve writs. And nothing else. Finally, in sheer exasperation, she typed, "How's a woman supposed to prove her husband's a murderer, dammit?" into Google and hit search.

Chapter Text

"Interesting," Sherlock breathed, hunching over his laptop in a convoluted, double-jointed way which gave John cramp merely to contemplate. Still, "interesting" was a great step up from the last few days, during which the London criminal element had flatly refused to cooperate with his flatmate's need of mental stimulation. As a result, John had started to give serious consideration to whether Sherlock would find it most stimulating to investigate his own decapitation (the head having been, post-severance, forcibly inserted up his rectum) and whether it was his flatmately duty to put the scenario in place forthwith.

"What is?"

"Website analytics, John. Do pay attention."

John thumped a mug of tea down besides Sherlock's elbow.

"Website analytics. Fascinating, I'm sure. What about them?"

"Someone spent twenty minutes - twenty minutes, John - the average time on a site page is a second and three quarters and the average hit length for the whole site is 4.357 seconds – browsing scienceofdeduction.com. And this is the search term she used to get there: 'How's a woman supposed to prove her husband's a murderer, dammit?' God, that's beautiful."

"It is? As opposed to, say, bonkers? Rhetorical? Demented?"

"Oh, for the umpteenth time, how can you stand to live in a mind that small? Can't you see what's happening here? She's not asking me to investigate, she's asking me to validate her conclusions. 'How can I prove my husband's a murderer?' Oh, for Christ's sake, John, stop looking like that. I'm not providing special needs education; the third person she adopted for her search term is a transparent distancing device. Unless, of course, she's even more devious than I could have hoped, and wants to inveigle me into helping her frame her husband? God, that would be good. Better than good. Brilliant."

John fetched his own cup of tea from the kitchen and dropped down into his armchair.

"OK. Tell me. Since you're obviously going to, anyway."

Without even stopping to acknowledge the weary irony, Sherlock was away and galloping for the far blue yonder.

"Older woman. No-one under the age of fifty – no, make that sixty – would formulate a Google search as a complete grammatical sentence. Probably not born much before 1950, though; uses contractions naturally in writing. Upper middle-class and well-educated for a conservative value of 'well'; girls' boarding school but not university, at a guess – puts the apostrophes in the right places but is confident enough to spell 'dammit' phonetically and too squeamish to say 'fuck it' instead, though the situation clearly warrants the stronger expletive. Confidence in her own judgment – she's not asking me to prove her husband's a murderer, she wants me to confirm it. But she won't go to the police – oh, obvious, why would she be Googling for a site like mine at all if the police were an option?"

"She wouldn't," John murmured, having grasped by this point that Making Vaguely Encouraging Signals was his lot in life, at least if he wanted to have any peace and quiet for the foreseeable future. Or even, for that matter, if he wanted any over-dramatic and insanely interesting disquiet for the foreseeable future. Either would do. Definitely.

At least, compared to a bored Sherlock.

"Precisely. So she's already had experience of the police – not usual for someone of that class and type, mostly they assume that the police are, generically, 'wonderful' and exist to serve their interests. Mostly, when they do experience the police, they're proved right. But the police didn't help this woman last time. What did she go to them about? Most likely, domestic abuse."

He steepled his hands beneath his chin in what John privately thought of as his "crusader tombstone" pose.

"Domestic abuse?"

"Common enough in all social classes; equally commonly disregarded by police forces, especially where the alleged perpetrator's got a decent social position and sounds plausible when questioned. Easier for them to assume day-to-day frictions between people living in close proximity have become temporarily overheated and someone's exaggerating. At least, until it ends in murder. But she suspects – probably rightly – that the police won't even investigate her claim that her husband's committed murder. But she has to do something before he kills her too. Murderers don't want spouses who can put two and two together."

He ran out of steam and flopped back wanly against the sofa cushions.

"So? What now?"

"In her hands." He moved his head. "Don't look at me like that, John. I did try to identify her. IP search. Logged in from one of a small chain of internet cafés in the Southampton region. Hampshire and West Sussex police report no disappearances or unexplained corpses; the murder hasn't come to light yet. Puts her in even more danger, if she's the sole person with suspicions. If she fetches up dead, I've a head start on nailing the murderer. Short of that, unless she makes contact -"

He shrugged.

On the coffee table, Sherlock's mobile trilled. He tensed, then flopped back.

"John. You get it. "

John picked it up. "Excuse me? Yes. No, I'm his flatmate. No, I'm not sure if he's in. Ah - um – I'll see." He muted the phone, looking across to Sherlock. "It's a Marjorie Jameson. She says it's a very personal matter." He glanced down at the screen on the phone. "You should know – she's calling from an 02380 area code."

Sherlock's face lit up. He reached out his hand. John passed across the mobile.

"Mrs Jameson. We've been waiting for your call. So; whom did your husband kill and what evidence do you have to prove it? And how can I help?"

…….

Thank God. Thank God.

Shaky with relief, she let the office door click shut behind her. Gillian, the club secretary (not, of course, the Hon. Sec. but the person who did his work) looked up from her salad. Marjorie pushed the office key towards her across the polished counter top.

"Lime and soda, please, Harry," she said, wriggling onto a bar stool beside Gillian. "And a cheese and pickle toastie."

"Well? How did it go?"

Marjorie picked her words with care. After all, as far as Gillian and Harry were concerned, she'd just been giving the charter company hell, not pouring a melodramatic tale of fraud and murder into the – unexpectedly receptive – ear of a "consulting detective" she only knew from a website and a handful of Google mentions.

"About as well as could be expected, really. I'm not sure what can be done, but it was such a relief to be able to get it all off my chest."

And isn't that true?

The first few syllables from the lush baritone on the other end of the line had provoked a relief so profound she felt almost ashamed. Doubtless it said something awful about her that her first thought was an unspoken prayer of relief that this Sherlock Holmes sounded as if he'd gone to a decent school.

One of us.

Yes, that thought was snobbish nonsense; Adrian and Foggy – Jeremy, dammit – had gone to the same school as their father and uncle and she felt no such confidence in them. But – still – even so –

Someone who understands where I'm coming from. What a relief.

Gillian smiled at her. "I can imagine. God, what a mess, eh?"

Marjorie nodded, sipping her lime and soda, savouring, still, that unexpected comfort.

God, how long has it been since I was last taken seriously? And how did I let that happen?

At which moment Harry looked up from polishing a glass and said, "Oh, Marjorie? Your husband looked in for a minute earlier. He's gone over to Basingstoke and when he gets back he's taking the committee boat out – something about dropping marker buoys for the Bembridge Rally? Anyway, he said he'll probably run late, so he's going to sleep over at Jonners's flat and not to worry."

He concentrated on getting the glass to a shine which would hardly have disgraced Waterford crystal. Besides her Gillian stared down at her salad, as if daring a slug to creep out from the lettuce.

Both, Marjorie realised, were looking anywhere but at her.

Bursledon. They both know about Bursledon. And they aren't sure if I do.

Not the ice-water shock it would have been on any normal day; she felt a brief surge of grim, oddly detached amusement, as if she had become the omniscient narrator of her own life story.

A wife can, at least, enjoy this consolation: once she has formed the opinion that her husband is a murderer, the fact that the whole of her acquaintance know him to be an adulterer becomes a matter of vanishingly small consequence.

She pushed the half-full glass of lime and soda back across the bar to Harry.

"If Julian's away, I don't have to drive for a couple of hours. Pour me a double gin and go easy on the tonic."

Gillian squeezed her arm. "Day like yours, I'd say you've earned it."

There was, self-evidently, more than a corroded foredeck fitting on Gillian's mind; equally, there was more than a corroded foredeck fitting in Marjorie's when she breathed, "Yes. I think I have" and leaned, gratefully, into the touch for just a second or so longer than the situation warranted.

Friends. When was it I stopped having friends, dammit?

Take Christine and Derek. She'd never recovered her old footing with them after the wedding, not once married life had begun to revolve exclusively round Julian's ambitions in the sailing club. The same with all of her and Charles's old set.

God, why had she let that happen?

Her mobile buzzed on the bar in front of her. Text. She glanced down and almost gasped.

APPOINTMENT CONFIRMED BEAULIEU WATER HOTEL SPA. 4.30 PM TODAY.

Blood roared in her ears. She had made no such appointment. But she knew who it came from, nonetheless.

"I'll get a train down from Waterloo and meet you this afternoon," he'd said. "I'll text details of where to meet and what the cover story is. Your husband's main slip so far was being caught in a place you didn't expect to see him. Can't risk making the same mistake." Assured, confident tones, as if he used terms like "cover story" every day. Which, presumably, consulting detectives did.

"You look happy. Good news?" Gillian's question startled her. By way of answer she passed across the phone. Presumably there was no point in having a cover story if you didn't spread it around a bit. Also, if Julian chose to use the sailing club to bolster his alibi, it seemed only poetic justice she should do the same.

"Oh, they're supposed to be brilliant," Gillian enthused. "Been before?"

She shook her head. "Just fancied it. Spur of the moment. Not something I've tried before, but I thought, 'What the hell?'"

"Wonderful idea. Just what you need, a bit of pampering. Sort of thing you should have done years ago."

She nodded and raised her gin to her lips, in case her expression betrayed just how right Gillian was.

Chapter Text

The first surprise was that she did, in fact, have an appointment. For an aromatherapy massage, of all things.

Then came the second surprise, when the deferential girl assistant had requested her to remove all her clothes except her knickers, swathed her in white towelling, led her to a cubicle and invited her to lie, face down, on a couch besides a trolley bearing an array of rubber-stoppered phials bearing the most ridiculous labels – surely no-one would be gullible enough to put half of that muck on their skin?

"Mrs Jameson?" Even from one short telephone call there could be no mistaking that voice. Sherlock Holmes emerged from a side door. Careful of her towelling, she turned on her side, propping herself up on one elbow, to get a good look at him.

Ridiculously young, was her first thought, but then, wasn't thinking that about policemen supposed to be a sign of impending dotage? Presumably consulting detectives came into the same category. Ridiculously good-looking, also; not that that had anything to do with the price of fish. She wasn't instructing him for decorative purposes.

He wore a short sleeved, pale blue tunic jacket with the hotel logo; his face changed as he registered her expression of shock.

"The manager does know I'm here. Personal favour. I was able to resolve some – complications – for him, in his last post." He paused, and added, in a tone which was clearly intended to reassure and which missed by a country mile, "In case you're wondering, I am expert in anatomy. Though I don't practise, usually, on live bodies. At least, not recently."

She fought an urge to giggle.

Nothing like a masseur with a good bedside manner. And that is nothing like a good bedside manner.

"Oh, well. You should be OK with mine, then. It feels as if it's getting closer to the grave each day."

He gave an amused, relieved huff. "On the contrary. I'd say your survival instincts were rather highly developed. Which is why, having gone to some lengths to set up this scenario for a private chat - "

He paused. His pose, as he leaned against the door-jamb seemed almost too nonchalant. Something clicked in her brain. Presumably he couldn't make a habit of meeting clients for the first time when they were wearing nothing but towels?

Mummy had always insisted that the mark of a lady was her ability to put others at their ease, no matter how unpropitious the circumstances.

She smiled.

"I know. You need to give an air of verisimilitude to a otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. Don't worry about me. Go right ahead. Make it look real."

She rested her forearms on the cool cloth of the couch, pillowed her cheek on them and let her eyes fall shut. She heard the sound of a rubber cork being pulled from one of the array of small bottles on the side, smelled the thick aromatic scent of sandalwood.

"Probably the most innocuous of this lot," he murmured. "I've had two murder cases based on so-called complementary therapies. Given the opportunities, I'm only surprised it hasn't been more."

The slow, sure, pressure of his enormous hands – her thoughts skittered, momentarily, down paths of schoolgirlish speculation; she recaptured them with a pronounced effort of will – felt almost hypnotic. One could fall asleep like this, caught beneath the bliss of touch, if so much didn't depend, dammit, on one's staying alert.

"You’re very good at that," she murmured, and hated herself as soon as the words were out of her mouth.

Doting. Forward. Embarrassing. Middle-aged. No – old.

"Like I said." His voice was a deep, throbbing purr; not a voice to take liberties with, but, by the same token, not the voice of someone who would readily assume liberties to have been taken. "I do have an in-depth knowledge of anatomy." His voice changed, became edgier. "When they kicked me out of Oxford, it turned out to be one of my few marketable skills."

Something almost forgotten rushed up in her chest at the shift in his tone, almost choking her with its intensity. Someone should have been there. Someone should have taken his side.

Marjorie spoke almost before the thought had died.

"I met Charles - my first husband - at Oxford. They kicked him out, too." The pause before he responded lasted just a little too long. She guessed what he must be thinking, and amplified, "I was at the Ox and Cow. Secretarial course. Not the brainy type."

"Ah. So your parents did have traditional views on the value of higher education for women. Why did your first husband get sent down?"

"Didn't do a stroke of work in two years. Played a lot of cricket and chaired the Union wine committee instead." Her voice sounded gruff, roughened not just by the remembrance of endless arguments about that – Charles's rooms at Trinity on Sunday mornings, the papers spread across the unmade bed - but by the reminder that she would never argue with Charles about anything, ever again.

"Wine and cricket. Hence little difficulty securing a job in the City when Oxford and he parted company. Lucky, though. By pure chance he landed up in a job he was good at, which earned him enough to retire early."

She resisted the temptation to ask him how he knew. "Charles said he had to get out of the City when the merchant bankers stopped being gentlemen."

"Did they ever start? Your house is buried miles from the nearest station at the end of a country lane. Not a house anyone would buy who was planning to commute. And yet, from the Land Registry search, he bought it over twelve years ago, when he could only have been in his early fifties."

His hands were unknotting muscles that had been held rigid for so long her conscious mind had forgotten they were tense. His voice continued to purr on, above her head.

"Speaking of Gilbert and Sullivan, by the way, you should rejoin the choral society. When your husband – your current husband – pressured you into leaving, it reinforced your social isolation. Probably his intention. You don't find gardening an acceptable substitute; it bores you rigid. You've only started doing it more in the last few months, since your husband insisted you terminate the gardening service you've used for the last ten years. Further proof, incidentally, of his increasingly desperate financial straits."

She jerked her head and shoulders up, only catching the towel just in time to save both their blushes.

"How did -?"

"Speaking voice tells me you're a contralto; probably with a decent range – certainly with impressive power. You've been taught to breathe properly, and practised long enough for it to have become instinctive. Decline in the muscular tone of your diaphragm indicates you ceased practising somewhat over a year ago. No indication of any organic reason; no scars from throat surgery, for example. A serious gardener develops a characteristic pattern of calluses on his or her knees – you should have seen my grandmother's – but despite the fact that you've got approximately half an acre of garden and have lived there some years the calluses on your knees are still at the raw stage, suggesting that you've only started intensive gardening recently."

She digested that for a minute.

"Also, I ordered a minicab to take me to your house when I arrived down here. After disgruntled ex-employees and cast-off mistresses, bored minicab drivers are one of the best sources of information going. Since his brother-in-law worked for the gardening service, I got the ex-employee perspective too. Illuminating."

Somehow the thought of random minicab drivers discussing her personal affairs made her feel far more naked than her physical undress.

"Why did you go to the house?"

"Oh, I needed to burgle it."

Fortunately, her shocked expression was hidden by her forearms. She made her tone frosty. "You did what?"

"I haven't done any damage. Depressingly easy to break in; you might want to consider upgrading your security system. I needed to examine your husband's computer before he decided to start covering his tracks. He doesn't seem the kind of man to leave anything to chance."

"He's not." That came out more bitterly than she would, ideally, have wanted, but Sherlock – impossible to think of him as "Mr Holmes", given the situation – didn't seem bothered by it.

"His shed told me as much. Tools for every eventuality, conceivable and inconceivable. Tell me, what normally rests on the shelf to the left as you enter the shed, about a third of the way along, next to the heavy-duty visor and gauntlets?"

She tried to visualise Julian's shed. A place for everything, and everything in its place. That had always been his motto and, to be fair, he lived by it. How unlike Charles's magnificent carelessness.

"On the left? No, I can't think. Unless – could it have been the pruning saw?"

"Pruning saw. Obvious. Should have realised. Next to visor and gloves. Wood chips. I saw the bonfire pile in the garden; someone must have pruned recently and it can't have been your garden service since they were terminated nine months ago. Powered saw, of course. Pattern of cuts on the branch ends."

The whole conversation had taken a distinct turn for the surreal. Marjorie risked a glance over her shoulder.

"Why does it matter?"

"Powered. Pruning saw. Recent gap, given the lack of dust. Gives me a strong idea about what he's planning to do with the bodies. Oh, you're tensing up again. Sorry. Did I hurt you?"

"No," Marjorie choked out.

"Oh, good. I might have got more out of the place – fortunately I'd secured the PC – if I hadn't heard a key in the lock. I beat a strategic retreat into a bathroom, but from the sound of the high heels on the parquet in the hall I realised it was improbable that it was your husband."

Fury flooded her. He'd thought she'd been tensing up before? Rubbish. This was tensing up. "He gave her a key?"

"Ah. I thought you'd know she existed. I'd be surprised. She probably sneaked his and got a copy cut. Anyway, since her standing in the matter was even more dubious than mine, I emerged from the bathroom and demanded to know who the hell she was."

"And how did you explain who you were?"

"I said I was a nephew by marriage – your first marriage – and that I'd agreed to house-sit while you were away in Brittany."

"And she believed you?"

"Not in the slightest. But then, I didn't intend her to." His lip curled. "After all, having seen your family photographs, I can assure you I'd infinitely prefer to be mistaken for your toyboy than for Foggy Carstairs."

She gasped. Out of a swarm of competing thoughts, one made it to her lips.

"You know Fog – Jeremy?"

"We spent five excruciating years under the same roof in our respective teens, yes. I don't advise mentioning my name, though. We had a painful misunderstanding at school. That is, the misunderstanding was on his side and the pain on mine. He had some very large friends."

There was a distinctly sardonic note in his voice; she cursed herself for the slip.

"What – ah – happened?"

"I mentioned he wasn't being as discreet about his in-school commercial activities – porn mags and vodka, with the odd bit of distinctly sub-standard Lebanese gold – as he thought he was. He interpreted it as 'Cut me in on the proceeds or I'll go to the house-master.' Not my intention, but once Foggy gets an idea in his head he's very reluctant to let it go. It's probably the novelty of the experience."

The successive shocks of the day must be thickening her skin to the texture of rhinoceros hide; all she could manage at the revelation of Foggy's past as a porn purveyor to the Lower Sixth was a wistful pang.

Charles would have laughed so much.

She summoned all the indignation she could muster. "Anyway, my nephew Jeremy isn't the point. You let her – you deliberately encouraged her to think – "

"People always think things. They don't usually need any encouragement. But it can sometimes be useful, nonetheless."

She thought she detected a hint of defensiveness and pressed home the attack. "You break into my house – you destroy my reputation –"

"I'm not a vain man, Mrs Jameson, but I hardly think –"

Nor did she, to be perfectly honest, but she certainly wasn't going to admit it.

"Marjorie," she interrupted. "Given you've just posed as my toyboy to my husband's mistress, I think we can safely conclude we're on first name terms, don't you?"

"Ex-mistress. It couldn't have worked out better if I'd planned it. That's why she was sneaking around with a key she shouldn't have had. I knew when I spotted the packet of cress seeds in her hand."

"A – you what?"

"Pointless act of petty revenge. She probably got it off the internet. Sprinkle cress seeds on a carpet; water, wait. Scattering the seeds through a stencil so as to form rude phrase of choice, optional. Particularly attractive where – as here – the house is expected to be empty for some days. Not so clever to get caught in the act. She offered to buy me a drink in the hope she could flatter or seduce me into keeping quiet about having seen her there. I accepted, of course."

"Of course," Marjorie murmured.

He didn't seem to do irony, or, if he did, he was very good at concealing the fact; his tone didn't change at all.

"So; bored minicab driver, ex-employee and cast-off mistress. Hat-trick. Coupled with the PC records and the hotmail account you so intelligently identified and accessed, establishing your husband's motive is simple. Plus, she dropped a couple of things about your husband's time in the Army which were – suggestive – as to the means. Interesting, the things men tell their girlfriends which they don't mention to their wives. At least, I expect he hasn't?"

"He doesn't talk about his Army days. I gather he was stationed in Ulster at one point – right in the middle of the Troubles – and I suppose he saw some horrible things there."

"From a very specific angle of view, if he wasn't just making it up to turn her on. She does have a pronounced sado-masochistic streak."

Marjorie, prudently, decided to avoid asking how he'd discovered that fact. The underlying suggestion was disquieting enough. Most disturbing was that she had no difficulty believing it. Her fingers strayed toward her burn scar; she snatched them back. Not quite soon enough.

"Ah, yes. The origin of your perfectly reasonable scepticism about the competence of the local police. Given Hampshire must have the third highest per capita number of Agas in the country, even the dimmest local bobby should know the difference between the burn produced by stumbling against an Aga plate, and that produced by being held there. But not, apparently."

Something sharp prickled behind her eyes; she hunched her face down over her forearms. The possibility of speech failed her, utterly. His hands ceased their slow, circling movements; one gripped her right shoulder, hard.

"Not very long now. This time, they will believe you. Means, motive and opportunity. Only one more thing needed. I've deduced where he probably stashed the bodies. Are you on for helping me prove it?"

Bodies. That word again. His voice, as he said it, had dropped almost to a whisper, but she had detected a thread of irrepressible excitement there, too. It made her feel ill. Bodies were something mentioned on the nine o'clock news – "The body of a woman discovered in a shallow grave in woodland" "The body of a man has been identified". This wasn't bodies. This was Rosemary and Phil. Irritating as hell, often, but still, their friends. Or the nearest she had, these days, anyway. She gave a small, unstoppable gasp of pain.

"What is it? Tell me." His voice was honey on steel, caress and threat in one. One might drown in a voice like that.

Marjorie wasn't the drowning type, though. "Born to be hanged," Charles had said, after that nightmarish crossing from St Malo, just the two of them, when a full gale had spun up out of nowhere, the barometer plummeting five millibars in three hours, dead on the nose for fifteen hours straight, and she'd helmed her fair share and then some, with the scuppers running and the waves crashing green over the bow. That had been in the old Contessa, though; no headroom and everything stinking of diesel after a night on board, but a hull that would take you through anything the gods of the sea might throw at you.

"You're talking about Phil – Rosemary – "

"Tell me – how closely did Rosemary resemble you? Not standing next to each other, but in something like your driving licence photo, say?"

She twisted her head round to look at him. He stared back, pale eyes challenging, lips set in a tight line. A serious question, which demanded a careful answer, then.

She shrugged. "Not that close. We've each got short, grey hair. Similar build. Different features; my nose is bigger, for instance. And Rosemary wears glasses all the time, not just for reading."

"People are supposed to take off glasses for ID photos. Nothing to excite suspicion there. Also; older woman. Most people's observational skills are dire. They dwindle to non-existent when the subject is a grey-haired woman. I doubt the bank took a second glance."

"What bank?"

"The one who, three months ago, extended a facility of £1.5 million to your husband's business. Backed by a director's personal guarantee. Secured by a mortgage against your house. Land Registry search, as I said."

Marjorie reared up, pressing a shocked hand to her lips. She grabbed, too late, as the overlooked towel slid, uncontrollably, downwards. He retrieved it with unruffled calm, handing it back with as little fuss as if it had been a handkerchief.

And, if he chooses to tell me what he's deduced from my breasts, in addition to my arm, my knees and my diaphragm, he's dogmeat.

He remained blessedly silent, watching while she brought her features under some semblance of control.

"My house?" she said, once she could speak again. "But I didn't – "

"Then a woman posing as you co-signed the security documents. I'm sure you have an idea who she was?"

"Rosemary."

The name came out as a hiss. She gulped, squeezing a pittance of oxygen into her lungs, hardly enough to sustain life under the crushing weight of betrayal.

"But that's my home. Charles and I found it together. We came down one weekend after we married and went walking in the woods – trespassing, I suppose – and glimpsed it through the trees. He promised to buy it for me, if he ever got rich."

"Were the bluebells out?"

"Yes. Endless blue drifts. How did you know?"

He shrugged. "Characteristic leaves – no flowers, of course, this time of year. I doubt the bank took the bluebells into account when assessing the property's value as security. Or your husband and his friends, when they decided to steal it."

Betrayal, then, smells of sandalwood. Poisons in phials on the trolley near the wall. What does revenge smell of? Belladonna? Hemlock?

Her fists clenched. "I could –"

"Could you?" Again, not a trivial question. He actually wanted to know. She let her mind spiral down, trying to reach past the anger, trying to bring Phil and Rosemary's faces back as they had looked at dinner (last night; only last night).

"I – " She gulped. So far as Phil and Rosemary was concerned, the question was academic; whatever could happen to them, already had. But – truly – even given what she now knew, if by any sacrifice of blood she could have brought them back, she would.

If only so I could tell Rosemary to her face what I thought of her.

"No," she choked out, with a conscious effort of will.

He eyed her narrowly, then gave a small nod. "Well, then. I suggest you get dressed. Pick me up from the staff entrance in ten minutes. We've some corpses to find."

Chapter Text

Jagged sparks of agitation crackled along her nerves as each bend in the road brought them closer to the boatyard. After five miles of increasingly aggravating silence from her companion, Marjorie was, at last, moved to speak.

"We're almost bound to run into someone who knows me there. How am I supposed to explain you away?"

For the umpteenth time, he raised a hand to brush the tangle of hair out of his eyes. For the umpteenth time, it blew back. He looked faintly aggrieved, as if he thought his hair entitled to a specific exemption from the laws of physics. Marjorie bit back the temptation to point out that it had been he who'd insisted on having the roof down in the first place. Ten excruciatingly embarrassing minutes (for her; the filter he used to weed out irony seemed to work equally well on embarrassment) struggling with it in the hotel car park, convinced every minute that someone she knew would walk past. About all that could be said for it was that it had – albeit briefly – distracted her from the fact that she was on a journey which could only end in one or another version of terribly.

"There wasn't a lot of room in the boot of this car even before we folded the roof into it," Sherlock observed, irrelevantly. "Inconsiderate of your husband to take the Landrover last night and not bring it back, when you needed to take gear down to your boat. I expect you were furious when you found out this morning."

"Livid," she agreed. "He could perfectly easily have driven this one; he almost always does. Phil and Rosemary loaded their boat yesterday afternoon; it's not as if they had any luggage." She paused. "Hang on, how did you - ?"

"Your having to get out the manual to see how the roof worked suggested you don't normally drive this car. From your posture and the filthy looks you've been giving to drivers who come shooting round the bends towards you, you're used to a much higher driving position, as in a 4x4. The tyre marks left in mud in the unmade part of the lane show two cars left your house some time before my arrival and after the first heavy rain shower yesterday evening. The heavier vehicle with the broader wheel base left a good bit earlier than this one. There are three or four vehicles it could have been, but a Landrover seemed by far the most likely."

"So you put us through the hassle of getting that blasted roof down just to see which car Julian normally drives? You could, you know, have just asked."

He smiled; a mischievous quirk of those full, mobile lips. "Well, yes. But I always enjoy convertibles. Despite the wind. They create a perfect illusion that one's got nothing to hide."

Marjorie suppressed a blunt retort. The boatyard was fast approaching and illusions weren't going to cut the mustard if anyone she knew was hanging about there.

"Drop me round the corner. I'll go in ahead of you. Wait at least ten minutes before following me."

She pulled over into a field gateway. Sherlock shouldered the enormous gym bag he'd thrown into the back seat on emerging from the hotel's staff entrance and strolled off down the lane, whistling.

And now what was she supposed to do? If sitting in a randomly parked car doing nothing in particular didn't arouse suspicion, she wasn't sure what would. Might rain, too; she didn't at all like the look of that bank of dark clouds blowing in from the south-west.

The thought of rain gave her an inspiration. How to waste ten minutes? Bloody obvious. Despite the grimness of the situation, Marjorie felt a hint of a smile on her lips as she reached into the glove compartment for the manual and girded her loins for an epic battle with the folding roof.

Fortunately, the boatyard was practically deserted by the time she drove in. The paid workers had knocked off already – she noted, with a reflexive flicker of irritation, her own yacht suspended in the cradle of the travelling hoist; clearly the last job on the rota and abandoned when 5.30pm rolled round. A couple of men she knew by sight were adding a few final dabs of varnish to their folk-boat but, from long experience, Marjorie expected they'd be off to the Ring o' Bells for an in-depth comparative analysis of marine-environment coatings technology any moment now.

Someone must have bought that Westerly GK which had been sitting, forlornly, in a corner of the yard since last September; a figure in blue overalls, protective mask and goggles was crouched beneath the hull, intent on the grim task of removing the yacht's old anti-fouling with a powered sander. Toxic blue dust rose in clouds. Marjorie found her eyes and nasal passages itching in sympathy.

And then, as she drew level with the Westerly, the figure ducked out from under the hull, straightened up to full height, and said, in that unmistakeable voice, "My bag's just over there. There's a spare set of gear in it. Put it on."

"But –" She looked up at the Westerly's hull. "Whose yacht is this?"

He shrugged. "Does it matter? It was in the right place. It's statistically unlikely the real owner will choose today to work on it, having neglected it for months."

"You – you can't do this. It's breaking and entering – or something." Even before the words were out of her mouth she felt their absurdity. Quite apart from anything else, Sherlock clearly had no qualms about either breaking or entering –the sander, now she gave it a good look, seemed horribly familiar. And it did seem unlikely he'd have brought his own.

"Certainly not." Impossible to tell his expression, under that much blue grime, but there was a distinctly sardonic note in his voice. "The gates were open. The worst you can accuse me of is trespassing and anti-fouling."

Marjorie snorted. "A crime which comes with its own built-in defence of insanity."

"So I've been finding. But unparalleled as an excuse for an absolutely impenetrable disguise. I've never worn a full scene of the crime suit in broad daylight and had no-one bat an eyelid before."

"Is that what that is?" She eyed the blue overalls in a new light.

"Yes. Courtesy of Scotland Yard. Not that they know it. Anyway, put one on. Goggles, cap, and mask, too. Then give me a guided tour of the yard. Especially any areas that can be locked up. Particularly if sailing committee officers have privileged access to them."

"You mean the racing store," Marjorie said, automatically.

"Get covered up. Then show me."

Sherlock's entire manner had changed since leaving the car. He fizzed with cold, focussed energy, like, she thought with a sick pang, a ferret in a rat-ridden barn. He cast tense looks up at the lowering sky (she'd been right; the first drops of rain were already spitting down) as if weighing how much daylight they had left.

Even his speech patterns had changed, snapped out instructions replacing the earlier flood of information.

"Keys," he demanded, when they were standing outside the blue steel lock-up behind the main shed. Marjorie had them out of her handbag almost before she knew it, certainly before it occurred to her to ask how he knew she'd a key for the store on her ring.

He almost snatched them from her hands. He'd stripped off his heavy duty rubber gloves to reveal latex ones beneath; now he reached into his pockets and slid on fabric overshoes before unlocking the store.

"While I've been accused of contaminating a few crime scenes in my time, I'd prefer not to do it with a substance reputed to make molluscs change sex," he observed, catching her watching him. Before she could retort – and, while modern anti-foulings were supposed to be more ecologically friendly, she wouldn't like to go bail for whatever muck coated the Westerly's hull – he pulled out a torch, switched it on and slid through the narrow entrance to the racing store. His torch beam played over deflated racing marks, a stack of upright markers with bright orange floats; racks of masts and rudders for the cadet section's Toppers.

"Recognise anything here there shouldn't be?" He turned to her out of the gloom, shadowy and looming behind the dazzle of his torch.

She wasn't intimidated, though. Her hand went up to touch her arm again. One June day five years ago she'd walked into nightmare – the hot, waxy scent of lilies in the church stifling her breath as she'd walked down the aisle. Lost in a maze of flowers; expensive, hothouse flowers, needing constant effort and attention, not like the bluebells under the trees which just grew, season after season.

Lost in a maze, and over the years any energy she had once possessed to find her own way out had evaporated. Now, for the first time, she had a guide.

No flowers here. The racing store smelt of mildew and damp rubber, two-stroke oil and a whiff of something else, something faint, fugitive; something animal, something that had no place here.

"Over there." Her voice sounded harsh, unnatural in her own ears. He turned, sweeping the torch round to reflect along the line of her outstretched, pointing finger.

"Those bags?"

"Sail bags. We don't keep sails in here. Too damp."

"Stay back."

He turned, a swift, swooping movement, his back and shoulders – narrow as they were – blocking her view. She heard a long, satisfied exhale.

"Yes."

He dropped to his knees, gloved hands reaching to slacken the draw-string of the nearest bag and peer inside; stabs of light as he took photographs with his mobile phone.

He tightened the drawstring and stood up. "That should ensure the police can't ignore this tip-off. We'd better be going."

Marjorie didn't move. Her brain sent commands to her legs and her legs mutinously refused to listen.

"Is that – them?"

"Well, if it isn't, this case is about to become thoroughly interesting." He must have caught her expression in the half-light by the store entrance because he added, "That is, it's at least one male and one female body. You could try to identify them, but I'd prefer to leave the sacks as undisturbed as possible. "

"Two bodies? But – there are five bags." She realised the implications as she was speaking; a hot tide of bile rose at the back of her throat.

"Pruning saw. As I said. Come on, I've a message to send, before whoever put those bodies there comes back to retrieve them. "

His hand clamped, hard, over her wrist, virtually pulling her to the car. He stood, visibly impatient, while she stripped off the overalls with trembling hands and threw them into the bag. She almost hit the gatepost on her way out of the yard and then had to brake, hard, to avoid a small hatchback that shot out of nowhere.

"Turn into the pub car park." Sherlock waved an autocratic hand towards the Ring o'Bells almost, but not quite, too late for her to make the turn. She swore under her breath.

"Round the back." There was plenty of space at the front, nevertheless she followed his direction, pulling up resentfully in the deserted overflow car park, near the pub's back door.

"What is this about?" she demanded. "We've just found two dead bodies and you want to go to the pub?"

Though, if I weren't driving, a stiff Scotch would be exactly what I need right now.

"Sorry," he said, with absolute insincerity. "But I need hot water and soap to get rid of this dust. Otherwise I'll be leaving a trail wherever I go. Also, this pub commands an excellent view of the approach to the boatyard. If your husband's planning to collect the bodies and dump them this evening, he's cutting it fine."

Marjorie gulped. Something had pinged her internal alarms; she only now realised what. "Earlier, you said, 'whoever put them there'."

"I did, didn't I?" Sherlock made no move to leave the car. "That's how the police will phrase it. Two dismembered bodies concealed in a place to which several people have legitimate access. Including, by the way, you."

She gulped. "You can't think –"

"On the contrary. I do think. It's the police who don't. This isn't a likely crime for a woman, but it isn't an impossible one, either. Not with a powered pruning saw. And various hoists and tackles to assist with shifting heavy weights. You've no alibi for last night, either. The story of seeing your husband at Town Quay rests on your word alone. Even if the CCTV was switched on and looking in the right place – unlikely on both counts – all it could have picked up would be a blurred figure wearing oilskins. You could have betted on there being at least one of those on that ferry. Even if there weren't, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence."

Solid ground turned to quicksand beneath her feet. "But why would I bring you in, if I'd done it?"

His voice was cold, implacable. "The compulsive tendency of the guilty to over-elaborate their innocence past the point of common sense. It's happened a few times, now. On balance, more women than men try it, too. Perhaps they think I'm more likely to be susceptible."

His pale eyes glittered in the reflected light from the dashboard; he seemed about as susceptible as a cobra. Marjorie took a deep breath and switched off the ignition.

"If you've got the brains I hope you have, you should be able to work out whether I'm telling the truth. But – bearing in mind what you said about the bank – I'd be a bloody fool to rely on my abilities to manipulate anyone's susceptibility. I'm thirty years past the eyelash fluttering stage, and I've not reached silver-haired fragility yet. So while you're trying to make up your mind whether to shop me or help me, I could do with a coffee."

"Actually, you could do with a brandy." He sounded amused. He was out of the car holding the driver's door open for her before she could climb out of her seat. "Deserve it, too. But not at this precise moment. We've still got to catch your husband in the act of disposing of the bodies."

"So you do believe me!"

They were almost on the threshold of the pub. He elbowed open the door to let her into the bar. The two varnishers from the yard were, as she'd expected, huddled in a corner, pints half-drunk before them. They continued to discuss coatings, oblivious of her presence.

He took her to a seat in the window, eying up the view from the window, the cover afforded by the curtains.

"Oh, that. Practical demonstration of why I'm not just planning to hand what we've got to the authorities and leave them to get on with it. Circumstantial evidence and the CPS – bad combination. I've known you didn't do it since 16.55 this afternoon."

"Took your time, didn't you?" Marjorie snapped.

"As I said. People do try that sort of thing from time to time. And it would have been a much more elegant crime if you'd done it." For a moment, blast him, his voice sounded almost regretful. "Though, on the whole, I do prefer not having homicidal clients. Except when I'm very bored. Coffee, wasn't it? Keep your eye on the road, then. And, if you see the Landrover, wave."

He moved across the bar with assured grace, apparently unconscious of the absurd panda-eyed appearance given by the blue grime streaks on his face and the contrasting pale skin round his eyes, where the goggles had protected them. He placed an order at the bar, gestured towards her and vanished in the direction of the loos. Marjorie turned her attention to the road outside, willing herself not to think too hard about sail bags. Or pruning saws.

Chapter Text

"You might at least have given me time to finish my coffee." Her hands tightened on the wheel. She edged the car out onto the main road, hyper-aware, this time, of oncoming traffic.

"Hardly." Sherlock didn't look up; his thumbs flickered across the keypad of this phone, texting continuously. "It's not going to take him long to load the bags into the Landrover. What's your yacht called?"

"Why does it matter?"

"The bag I lifted was heavier than it ought to have been, even given its contents. I heard it clink when I dropped it on the metal floor. He's weighted the bags and there's the Solent virtually on his doorstep. Dismembered the bodies to remove the risk of decomposition gases in the body cavities bringing them to the surface, and to give the local crabs and lobsters a head start. What do you think he's planning to do with them?"

His voice curled with disdain; the unspoken comment Why does fate force me to explain myself continually to idiots? might as well have been shouted across the tight confines of the car.

Exhilaration bubbled, incongruously, in her chest.

Not quite as much of a know-it-all as he thinks he is.

It almost made up for his having suspected her of murder for most of the day.

"Not from our yacht, he isn't."

Sherlock's head jerked up; his fingers ceased pattering on his phone. "Why not?"

"I told you. The reason I was in Southampton was picking up a part for the forestay."

"And you told me the charter company had assured you the repair would be done today and that they knew you'd sue them to hell and back if it wasn't."

The very phrase she'd used, too. She wondered, for a second, if he'd recorded the telephone conversation and then rejected the idea; he plainly had an almost superhuman memory.

But he obviously wasn't brought up on the story of Noah & Sons, the only boatyard in history who ever finished a job against the clock.

"What are you smiling about?"

What, indeed? She'd woken that morning in an empty bed; an aging woman in a bad marriage. That woman's life might have been irksome but had, at least, certainty. Things to do, errands to run, places to go - a routine to fall back on.

All that had been swept away in one second at the Town Quay hi-speed terminal.

But – she was still afloat, dammit. Making headway, even. And Christ knew that when the pressures driving her forwards let up for a second she was going to crash-jibe all standing, but until then –

He may know everything there is to know about murder. But I know boats. And Julian.

"Our boat's still out of the water – it was in the crane at the yard. I never thought they'd do the job today. I thought if I made the threats sound impressive enough I might get it back for tomorrow. That's when we need – needed it."

He nodded. "That's a known trait of the yard? One your husband would have known?"

"It's a known trait of all yards. Of course he would."

"Assumptions. In an area outside my expertise. Stupid. I should have known better." He sounded ruefully amused. "So. Enlighten me. Your husband discovers this morning your boat's been hauled out for repairs. He can't keep the bodies in the store another day – I checked the sailing club site when I was reading his PC. Irrespective of your holiday plans, there's racing at the weekend; someone will access the store tomorrow. He has to get rid of the bodies tonight. Where's he going to get another boat?"

She thought of Harry, shining a glass to a diamond-brightness and refusing to meet her eyes. The answer came automatically. "Matilda Briggs."

"Who?"

"What. The sailing club committee boat. We've had seven in total, but they're always named after the wife of the first commodore. She left money for the original one in her will."

"The way this club seems to be run, next time I speak to the Home Secretary I'm going to ask him to have her exhumed, on spec."

His deadpan tone forced a hiccup of hysterical laughter out of her. She thought he flicked her the ghost of a wink in response.

"Right. Take us to the Matilda Briggs, and leave the rest to me."

………

Wind had followed the rain, kicking up an ugly little sea, even in the shelter of the marina. The pontoon lifted and dropped erratically beneath their feet, its wooden decking slick with rain. Marjorie picked her way with care, thanking her stars for sensible shoes. God only knew what grip her companion had, in those elegant, hand-lasted, leather-soled jobbies (Ducker & Sons, in the Turl, or I'm a Dutchman.).

Not that she expected Sherlock was in any danger. He, too, was born to be hanged. If he did fall in, he'd float. Any right-thinking era would certainly have swum him as a warlock.

"There." She gestured towards the familiar, ugly white shape moored against the very end of the pontoon. "That one."

"Hm. Open, apart from that shelter thing protecting the steering wheel. No chance of hiding aboard that."

Her guts clenched; this was the first hint he'd given that he'd intended to go to sea at all. Still less that he'd thought they should stow away aboard a boat helmed by a murderer hell bent on getting rid of the dismembered corpses of his victims.

Beside her, Sherlock's voice continued. "Who owns that yacht moored in the berth next to the committee boat? And are they likely to be using it tonight?"

"I'm not bloody well committing piracy!" Her voice rose to a shriek. Fortunately there was no-one to overhear. The appalling weather had driven the usual evening potterers indoors; they were presumably sitting before warm fires, drinks in hand, looking smugly at the windows every time the wind drove rain against the glass.

Not like her, standing in a marina in a rising gale, keyed up for a confrontation between the lunatic she'd married and the one she'd just hired for the occasion.

Sherlock shook his head. "No – irrespective of my knowledge of boats, I'm extremely sound on physics. There's nothing here that could outpace a boat with such powerful engines relative to its bulk."

Marjorie thought of the safety-boat for the cadets' section, still tied up next to the Wayfarers on the innermost pontoon, and of the ignition key in her handbag, which she'd forgotten to replace after Tuesday evening's training session. The rising gale whipped her hair round her face, sliced through the fabric of her jacket as if it were tissue paper. She kept her mouth shut.

Sherlock, in any event, was already climbing onto the yacht. "We're out of time. Only possible hiding place. We'll have to rely on the Marine Police after all."

She grabbed for the shrouds, using their support to scramble aboard just as he bent to the lock on the main hatch.

"Wait," she said, moving aft past him. She flipped up the lid of the gas-locker, fumbled behind the spare propane bottle, and gave a quick hiss of triumph.

He turned at the sound; she held the boat key out to him.

"Odds-on bet. People do usually keep their spare keys in the cockpit gas-locker."

He unlocked the boat, dropped down into the cabin and – finger on lips – gestured to her to follow. Once inside, she dropped the washboards into place and slid the hatch-cover across. It rendered the cabin almost completely dark, apart from the little light which filtered through the line of portholes which ran along above the saloon berths, giving an odd, knee-high angle of view of the wet pontoon and the side of the committee boat beyond.

"Out of time. Why?" Her whisper was a bare breath.

"Did you not see the headlights? Top of the ramp. Who else could it be?"

She opened her mouth to say something more, but he put his finger to his lips. And then she heard it; a sound she had heard dozens of times in her life; the protesting screeches of an overloaded marina trolley being pushed along a pontoon.

Horror gripped her. As a child she'd been overly imaginative; Mummy had always reproved her for it. Despite everything, she'd not managed to shed the trait completely. To this day the sound of someone knocking on the door after dark summoned up the dry-mouthed dread of reading The Monkey's Paw, torchlit under the bedclothes.

She cowered like a wounded animal, curled up on the saloon berth of a stranger's yacht, hands pressed into her eyes, while the man she had married walked past, unknowing, three feet away, two feet above her head, pushing the dismembered bodies of their friends before him on a marina trolley.

"He's gone."

For a moment the words made no sense. Then a large, strong hand enveloped hers and pulled her to her feet. She blinked as her eyes opened, though the only light in the cabin was the chart-table light, shaded to the red which protected night-vision.

"He's headed out to sea. But he'll not get far. The Marine police have been on stand-by for some time and I texted as soon as he cast off. But just in case – "

He waved her towards the chart-table.

"What?"

By way of emphasis, he leant over and pressed down the "on" button on the VHF radio set. A crackle of static sounded through the microphone.

"Tell me, who's going to be on the Solent on a night like this?" His voice sounded as it had earlier, at the spa, when she'd reacted to his saying "bodies".

Abruptly, her mind made a connection. The massage, she thought, must have lasted about half an hour by that time. Her appointment had been for 4.30pm.

I've known you didn't do it since 16.55.

"You really want to know."

"Why would I ask, if I didn't?"

Plenty of come-backs to that. She stuck with the straight truth.

"I'm not used to my opinions being asked for."

"Most people are idiots. And this sailing club seems to attract a special breed of idiot."

She felt an absurd, warm glow at the implied compliment. She thrust it resolutely down, to be attended to later. "It'll only be the training school boats out tonight. And not many of them. Perhaps just the Services yacht club; they go out in everything. Maybe the odd person on passage. "

"So Matilda Briggs will probably be the only open white motorboat for miles. And it doesn't have a VHF."

"We take one of the portables, for races."

"Highly unlikely your husband will have bothered. In the circumstances."

She snorted. "Julian's never switched on a VHF in his life if he hasn't had me nagging him."

And not even then, often. He was fond of parading his contempt for yachtsmen who "use modern communications as a crutch for poor seamanship." It played to the prejudices of the older members and had gone down tremendously well with that reporter from Yachting Monthly who'd written the club up a couple of months ago.

"Excellent." Sherlock's smile made her think, briefly, of the fate of the young lady of Riga. "In that case, do the honours. I think the coastguard needs to be alerted that your sailing club is missing its committee boat, don't you?"

Marjorie took a deep breath and slid into the navigator's seat. She picked up the hand-held mike, and depressed the "transmit" button.

"Solent coastguard, Solent coastguard, Solent coastguard. Over."

The coastguard answered instantly; assured and calming. Where was madam calling from? How could they assist?

She was broadcasting on Channel 16; every nosy-parker in the Solent could hear her, if they happened to be listening out, from the Ocean Princess to couples in houseboats far up the Test. But not Julian.

She gave the name of the sailing-club, switched to the calling frequency they instructed her, and then, very slowly and deliberately, went on.

"Someone has just taken our committee boat from its moorings. M.V. Matilda Briggs. Open white motor boat; twin outboards. Half-shelter over the wheel position. Headed out towards the Solent. Over."

"Could you confirm your reason for believing this is not a club officer using the boat legitimately? Over."

Her hand clenched on the microphone handset. God. What magic did those people have, who could make smooth, disembodied official voices take them seriously?

"Does this look like the sort of weather in which we'd be legitimately dropping race marks? From an open boat?" she enquired frostily, and then, belatedly, added, "over." There came a cold blast of wind on her cheeks; the harsh screech of the hatch cover being pushed back. She glanced up to see Sherlock half-way up the companionway steps.

A new voice broke in. "This is Hampshire Marine Police, over."

Sherlock turned at the sound. His face blazed with exultation; his hand punched the air. "Go on," he hissed at her. She floundered for a moment, then with a supreme effort made her voice as matter-of-fact as if she were discussing sandwich fillings.

"Hampshire Marine Police, did you note particulars of our missing vessel, over?"

The voice radiated calm assurance. "Roger. Have boat fitting the description on visual now. Boat in question is proceeding without navigation lights, seems to have limited freeboard and may be taking on water. Proceeding to intercept. Solent coastguard, stand by. Over."

Frustratingly, the VHF went silent, which Marjorie hoped translated to "Coastguard and police having a slanging match with each other on one of the restricted frequencies."

"Come on," Sherlock said, heading up the companionway.

The rain was still driving down; bouncing off the surface of the water. Out at the mole at the seaward side of the entry to the marina nothing existed to shelter them from the weather. Rain shut off visibility on all directions. Faint, blurred shapes and the occasional dim glimpse of a navigation light were the only indications even of the largest ships proceeding down the Solent.

A white blaze exploded across her vision, as if God had switched on floodlights.

"What -?"

Two boat shapes – Matilda Briggs, unmistakeable with that half-shelter, and the smaller outline of a RIB, presumably the police – bounced at close quarters on the rough sea, much nearer inshore than she'd expected, illuminated by that fierce, unnatural glow.

"Army pyrotechnics. Should get about forty-five seconds out of that flare, if they're lucky. If your husband ditches the bodies now, at least it should give the police diver a chance."

Sherlock's voice sounded rough, with a kind of yearning tension.

Not used to standing on the sidelines while the action happens to someone else? Well, welcome to my point of view.

She found her hand straying into her handbag, touching the safety-boat key as if it were a talisman.

Someone shouted through a megaphone, the words distorted by wind and distance, the sense instantly recognisable: "Cut your engines; we're coming alongside."

Without even a pretence of obeying, Matilda Briggs swerved, violently. The RIB slammed into her starboard bow. For one second the committee boat rocked up on her ear, half her underside visible. As she came down again, one of the men in the RIB sprang forward, grabbed the committee boat's gunwales and half-vaulted, half scrambled across the gap before the boats could drift apart.

"Christ!" Sherlock's voice wasn't loud but its intensity made her jump. "Get over there and support him, for God's sake! Oh, you're useless!"

Julian spun the committee boat away from the RIB before anyone else could follow the first intruder. He dropped the wheel; the boarder grabbed him round the chest and they both went down fighting.

The flare died to nothing. Someone on the RIB had switched on a search-light, but it illuminated only erratic glimpses of the action – the RIB turning, closing to board, the committee boat swinging round again – one of the men on board must have grabbed the wheel – and then, in slow motion, especially horrible for that, the two vessels colliding, a flash of orange as the RIB rolled, the white hull of the committee boat showing for one endless second as it went up on its ear again and then – with appalling slowness – continued on over, apparently on top of the RIB. The searchlight went out.

"John!" Sherlock's shout seemed torn out of his guts. For a moment he poised on the edge of the mole, then started wrestling out of his coat.

Marjorie grabbed his arm, hanging on for grim death.

"No!" she gasped. "If you're planning on doing something bloody stupid, you're doing it sensibly, dammit."

He shook off her grip; she landed an open-handed slap on the side of his face which left her hand stinging. He fell back a step, his expression furious. As if she could be intimidated by an expression.

She cleared her throat. Let him hear for himself how much power her voice had.

"You idiot. What good's swimming going to do, in that? Follow me."

His expression cleared. "You have a boat?"

"Come on." She jerked her thumb towards the ramp.

He drove a punishing pace. It wasn't far to the safety boat, but Marjorie thought she would die before they got there. She collapsed into the driver's seat; heart pounding, throat raw. She gestured, weakly, at the safety locker aft and thrust her keys at him.

"Flares. In there."

While he wrestled with the locker, she forced herself to go through the pre-checks. Fuel – yes – lifejackets – no, but no help for it – VHF, ditto. She switched on the engine, put it in neutral, flicked on the navigation lights, started to wrestle with the mooring warps. The bow one yielded easily; she set it to slip. The aft line – what blithering idiot had tied that? Bowline, round the leg of the cleat, jammed. Her numb hands seemed twice the size of normal, no nails to speak of and the knot iron hard, immoveable.

The first red flare went up in a roar of propellant and hissing magnesium.

She twisted her head back over her shoulder, to where Sherlock was still crouched over the safety locker, and gestured at the rope.

"Help me."

The opened clasp knife seemed to appear in his hand from nowhere. He slashed down and the taut rope parted like string. The boat started to swing out from the pontoon; she slipped the bow warp, and reversed out of the berth at a speed she'd have given any of the cadets an earful for trying.

At sea level, the conditions were even nastier than she'd expected. If she'd fancied herself soaked to the skin before, the difference made itself felt the moment the first wave hit them. She gritted her teeth and concentrated on steering up the waves, blinking as another flare went up.

"You could try phoning," she grunted.

"Have. Dead. It didn't like salt water. Ah."

He pulled the portable searchlight from its swathes of plastic sheeting, found the attachment to plug it in without her saying a word, and moved to kneel in the bows, scanning forwards with the beam.

Matilda Briggs had turned turtle; the shallow chine of her hull glimmered, dully, in the searchlight. There was a dark shape in the water, clinging to the bow. Each wave that hit the committee boat left it a little lower, clinging a little more precariously.

"In there. Now."

She cut her speed, edging the boat in closer on a shallow angle. Sherlock reached out to grab the casualty just as the largest wave yet smashed into the safety boat and the upturned hull of Matilda Briggs.

"Got him!" Sherlock sounded incandescent with triumph.

Marjorie swung the wheel hard over and gave the boat a sudden burst of power, throttling back only once they were clear of the capsized hull.

It was only then that she steeled herself to look at the black figure collapsed on the bottom of the safety boat. Julian had no power to hurt her now. The balance of power was all the other way.

She leant forward to see the face of a complete stranger blinking up at her from the bottom boards.

Chapter Text

"What do you mean, you lost him?" In the blue light flashing from the numerous emergency vehicles littering the marina car-park Sherlock looked corpse-pale. His face wore an expression of venomous fury. Each precisely enunciated word was pitched to sting.

The constable took a step backwards, almost tripped over a torn and sodden sail-bag, realised what he had nearly trodden on and emitted a strangled gargling noise.

"Calm down." Dr Watson's voice had a quiet authority about it. He didn't even look up from the mug of tea he was cradling. "If you want to yell at anyone, I lost him. Though I didn't expect anyone to try to swim for it, in that."

Marjorie made a tremendous effort to stop her teeth chattering. "Dr Watson –"

"Oh, call me John. Please."

"John, then – if you're Sherlock's flatmate, what were you doing on the police RIB in the first place?"

John grinned, ruefully. "The usual. I suppose. Otherwise known as 'Doing stupid things in the hope of stopping someone else doing them'." He eyed Sherlock, who had cornered the constable against the open ambulance door and was haranguing him about what the police were doing to trace the missing Landrover. "That is, I pulled strings to get there. Surprisingly short strings, once Sherlock sent me the info about your husband's Army career. Trust me, a soldier doesn't get a nickname like 'Mad Dog', in the Paras, in Ulster, in the 70s without putting some real effort into it."

Marjorie thought of the long, dark lane up to the house, the way its upper stories creaked at night, and hoped her shivering would be put down to her recent drenching. Perhaps a hotel? Though – she was damned if she was going to be driven out of her own home. Her own, at least, until the bank came to take it.

"John, I take it you can drive in that gear?" Sherlock had finished his tirade and returned to the back of the ambulance.

John ran his finger round the rubber neck seal on his drysuit. "I've some proper clothes somewhere –"

"Won't wait. We've got to get Marjorie home before her husband finds some dry clothing of his own and shows up at the house."

Despite herself, the matter-of-fact voicing of her deepest dread provoked an involuntary gasp. Sherlock looked at her.

"Well, what else can he do? He needs to establish an alibi. The only person who's seen him at close quarters is John, here. John may be able to identify him in a parade –"

"Not much doubt about that. Nothing wrong with my eyesight, Sherlock. And someone trying to stab me in the kidneys and then holding my head underwater leaves a bit of an impression."

"Stab you?" Her voice came out as a strangled squeak.

John gestured at a gash in the drysuit. "Yup. He may have been out for twenty-odd years, but he's not forgotten his training. Good job I was wearing the Kevlar vest underneath. Though I'd have been buggered if you hadn't shown up. Compromised drysuit and the police boat stuck with a sack of human remains round its prop – I really began to wonder what music Sherlock and my sister would manage to agree on for the funeral. Yes, I can drive in this. Now?"

"Now."

Marjorie had half expected to see the Landrover already parked at the house; during the drive her mind had squirreled through half a dozen excuses to explain John and Sherlock, each more far-fetched than the last. It was an inexpressible relief to find the car ports empty.

Even so, Sherlock checked the lower reception rooms and both the upper stories before allowing her to retreat to her own room, ditch her sodden clothing and take a bath. Even the hottest water barely took the edge out of her bone-deep chill.

She descended to the living room, clad in a sage-green knitted skirt and matching high-necked jumper that had seemed the warmest things she could lay hands on. The tumbler on the little table nearest the fire had two generous fingers of Scotch in it; the sound system, set on low, was half-way through The Death of Klinghoffer, a CD she'd bought, years ago, and rarely played, modern classical music being something Julian despised. The novel Foggy had given her for her birthday lay on the sofa, bookmarked a couple of chapters in, as if she were making a conscientious effort but finding it an uphill struggle. Only the angle-poise lamp was on, making a warm pool of light over the wine-red of the sofa cushions.

Alibi. Her mind formed the word without conscious thought. No-one, walking in on that carefully composed scene, would think anything except that she'd spent a quiet evening in and was enjoying a night-cap before retiring to an early bed.

Marjorie slid onto the sofa, picked up her book, and reached for the tumbler.

Once again, it seemed, they'd only been a couple of steps ahead of Julian. She'd barely read a page before the security lights came on outside and, a moment or so later she heard the scrape of Julian's key in the lock.

He came straight into the living room. Marjorie had been steeling herself for the moment, rehearsing her opening line over and over in her head.

"Oh! I thought – Harry said –"

"Haven't you seen the weather?" Too fast, that comment; prepared in advance, like her own. "It took me longer at Basingstoke than I'd thought, and by the time I'd finished – " He gestured at the windows, which were running with rain, rattling in their frames from the still-violent gusts. "Well, I was hardly going to take an open boat out in this, was I? They'll have to arrange the buoys for the Bembridge Rally tomorrow. Speaking of which, get your coat. If we hurry, we ought to be able to catch Jonners at the club before last orders. "

No need to feign her grunt of protest. "What? But I was just about to go to bed –"

"Well, I'm not planning to stay long." He reached out and picked up the tumbler. "You've not had much of this, have you? No reason for you not to drive."

A mess of conflicting thoughts rushed through her mind, chief among them Go out with you, alone? Knowing what I know? Over my dead body. and then, hard on its heels, Not necessarily a metaphor. What is he really planning?

"Don't be absurd," Marjorie said. "Go yourself, if you like – get a cab, if you want to have a few – but we've got a long day tomorrow and I'm going to bed."

Julian leant over and grasped her wrist, so hard it felt as if the bones were grinding together. She had to bite down on her inner lip to suppress a gasp of pain.

Not giving him that satisfaction. Never again.

His face was only inches from hers; his eyes utterly without any emotion she recognised as human. He didn't raise his voice.

"You're coming out with me."

"I think, you know, you'll find she isn't."

Despite herself, Marjorie jumped. Julian dropped her wrist and swivelled his head in the direction of Sherlock's voice. Sherlock stepped out of the shadows cast by the tallboy in the corner.

And I never noticed a thing.

Julian barely missed a beat. "Get out of my house, whoever you are. You're alarming my wife."

Sherlock studied him for a long moment, as if he were a specimen in a glass case. "I'm not. You are. Not surprising, really; I doubt Marjorie's met many killers."

Julian swirled to face her. "Have you been having one of your episodes again?" He looked over at Sherlock, his face all sincere concern. "I don't know who you are or what my wife's been telling you, but I'm afraid it isn't the first time we've had trouble of this sort. I can refer you to the police, if need be. Regrettably, I've had to make them aware of her problems."

"You are quite smooth, aren't you? I can see how you could make quite an impression on the less-bright members of the Hampshire force. Mason, too. That always makes a difference. But there's one factor you haven’t taken into account. John."

"John?"

Marjorie took advantage of Julian's distraction to edge down the sofa, out of grabbing distance.

"Me?" On cue, John Watson walked in from the hall, still wearing the compromised drysuit. As for his expression –

I suspect the number of killers I've met increased by one this evening.

"Who're you?" Julian's assurance was slipping; his voice came out jerky and rushed.

"Your memory can't be that bad. I'm the man you left for dead an hour ago. Rephrase your question. 'Do you believe in ghosts?'"

"Or, perhaps, 'Do ghosts believe in you?'"

Sherlock had advanced, soundlessly, while Julian's attention had been taken by John. Julian half-turned, then paused, as if assessing which of them represented the bigger threat. Then he drove the side of his hand hard at Sherlock's throat, stamping for his knee at the same time.

Sherlock sidestepped in a blur of long limbs. Neither blow landed. John barrelled into Julian from the side. After that it became a confused, vicious melee, punctuated by grunts and gasps of pain. Marjorie caught up a candlestick from the sideboard and then paused on the fringe of the conflict, feeling useless.

"Don't – move." Sherlock pinned Julian's shoulders to the rug with his knees, long thumbs pressing hard into both sides of his neck. Julian's eyes bulged. "John. Reach into my coat pocket. Right side."

John wriggled his hand into Sherlock's pocket and laughed softly as he extracted something that clanked.

"What have I told you about pickpocketing the constabulary?"

"Just give them to me."

The handcuffs went round Julian's wrists just as he threw Sherlock off his chest with a violent wriggle of his upper body and lashed out with his legs, connecting with John's midriff.

"Jesus!" John doubled over against the sofa, wheezing and gasping. Sherlock scrambled across the floor and flung himself bodily across Julian's legs. His head snapped up.

"Marjorie. Rope!"

She dropped the candlestick onto the sofa and ran for the smallest spare bedroom. All the sailing gear still lay in the neat piles she had stacked yesterday – flotsam from an abandoned life. The red and white glint of the new spinnaker sheet peeped from under the sleeping bags; she was already undoing the coil as she slithered break-neck down the stairs.

Sherlock, still with his back to her as she reappeared, said, "Now." She threw the coil and he plucked it one-handed from the air. A very short time – and some unfamiliar but evidently ruthlessly effective knots – later, a battered but still coolly contemptuous Julian was surveying them from the living room floor.

"I shall have very great pleasure in taking you for enormous damages for trespass, battery and assault," he said. "What name should I give my solicitor, for the writ?"

"Sherlock Holmes." Sherlock smiled. "Address: 221B Baker Street. Profession: consulting detective."

Marjorie detected a very faint flicker of doubt cross Julian's face. Then the sneer came back.

"Consulting detective? So I suppose you claim Marjorie consulted you."

"Oh yes. For a second opinion. I confirmed her initial diagnosis in every particular." He cocked his head on one side. "But I'm afraid the civil claims – and counter-claims – will have to wait. The police are arriving. They've some questions for you. About sail bags. And pruning saws. And the final voyage of the Matilda Briggs."

For the second time that evening, the air became thick with the sound of sirens. Blue light flooded in through the windows. In its reflected glare Julian looked shrunken, defeated.

Marjorie inhaled, a deep, satisfying breath. "I'll just go and let them in, then."