Chapter 12
Now - Eight Years Later.
The intensity at which Sherlock took off down the stairs to see Molly was only matched by the same intensity at which he approached Molly once he made it into her flat. John could only watch in wonder as the detective shamelessly invaded the widow’s personal space, stalking directly up to her with a familiarity of a spouse, not a man with whom she had only just become acquainted.
“What happened to Mrs Fitz?” is what the detective had asked.
The feeling of being two, if not two-dozen, steps behind Sherlock’s brilliance was not a foreign one for John. However, today, he was feeling like he had slipped into another reality and met another version of his friend – so stark were the changes that the diminutive widow had brought out of Sherlock in the mere hours since he met her this morning at the scene of her husband’s death.
The visage of Sherlock, stood as he was in the small parlor of 221C – Molly and Archie’s new (and temporary) home – was unlike any ever witnessed by John in their years of friendship. Eyes wide – intense, hands in hers – so intimate, and with a proximity to her body that Watson would think indecent if he didn’t know his friend to be willfully innocent of anything carnal when it came to the fair sex.
Molly, for her part, was letting this stranger act in such a strange way – a fact that also perplexed John. Why on earth would a freshly grieving widow allow a man she had only met hours ago treat her with such impropriety?
And why was she smiling?
The scene played before Watson – with the players completely unaware of him – a silent, invisible audience standing in Molly’s doorway.
“You’ve got an inkling of something, don’t you?” She asked, there was a depth to her voice, a cadence that John could have sworn was only used by couples in a relationship. Deep, and familiar.
Also familiar was the way she said it, like she’d seen the detective in action before on a case – but John knew for a fact that Molly had never been present for any case that he and Sherlock had worked together.
Sherlock nodded, “Lestrade said Miss Hawkins was the one you sent to reach me. But what of Mrs Fitz? I know she wasn’t in a position to retire from your service.”
John presumed from the context that Mrs Fitz was a prior housekeeper for the Jones household – but what he couldn’t understand was how Sherlock had any idea of who this woman was, and how he could possibly deduce her personal and financial need to work with such little data to go ff?
“Mrs Fitz died four months ago.” Molly said in a way that revealed to John that this woman was more than a mere maid for her.
Sherlock’s eyes were downcast in grief. A strange act for a woman he had never met.
“And when did your h-“ Sherlock stopped, as if unable to say the word, his face registering a disgust that John assumed was only due to the financial ruin the dead man had left his wife and child in. He shook his head and started again.
“When did Thomas’s financial woes begin?”
John shook his head. How could a wife know anything of household finances? What an appalling question to ask!
But Molly had the answer. “About the same time.”
With every minute in this woman’s presence, John was beginning to gain a picture of a one with more keen an intellect than any other woman he’d ever met, even his remarkable wife Mary. But if Molly truly was the mind behind ML Hooper’s most brilliant works, then it all made sense.
Molly’s eyes grew wide as she followed Sherlock’s logic.
“Miss Hawkins was suggested as a replacement by a work connection Thomas knew. Some man named Milverton, I recall.”
Absently, Sherlock shook her hands – still in his – up and down. He was excited.
Leaning in conspiratorially, he asked her. “Are you thinking the same as I am, Molly?”
Molly leaned in towards him, so close their noses were almost touching. In a whisper she replied, “The universe is never so lazy.”
It was a phrase Sherlock had always said, but John had never published. How could she know it?
Sherlock’s eyes closed, his face wearing a look of what on any other man would have been desire.
John couldn’t allow the impropriety to continue. He coughed, drawing attention to his presence.
Both turned, shocked, and quickly placing a more appropriate distance between themselves.
“John!” Sherlock smiled, walking over to his friend as if nothing untoward had happened, “I have plenty to go on with this case.”
“But Sherlock,” John started, wanting to warn him.
“Now now!” Sherlock smiled uncharacteristically. “You are neglecting your wife in her weeks of confinement,” Sherlock said, ushering him out of Molly’s flat and into the Baker Street Foyer.
“It’s just, I’m worried-“ John continued to try to chide his friend.
“Nothing to worry about, the case will be solved within the week!” he led his friend out the front door and onto the street to hail a hansom.
“But I’m concerned about Mrs Jones,” John enunciated the title, a reminder to his friend, hoping to help him realise how utterly inappropriate he was being towards the widow he had only met that morning.
Sherlock’s jovial demeanour vanished in an instant. Gone was the smile and the laughing tone. In its place was a steel gaze and ice cold voice.
“She asked you to call her Molly,” he said.
Sherlock opened the door of the cab for Watson and turned with a flash to head back into Baker Street.
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Then - Eight Years Earlier: March 1878
“And what are you to call me?” She asked as they walked in companionable comfort in the black of night, through streets dark and almost empty, with only a few flickering gas lamps lighting the way.
They were on their way back to his Montague street flat.
“As I said to Mrs Turner before. You are Victor Trevor.”
“And who was Victor?” Her face in the night was indistinct, but her eyes glowed in the dim gaslight, regarding him intently and without judgment.
Sherlock smiled fondly. “An old, dear friend. Fitting, as you are my first since him.” He spoke with a timidity which was foreign on him.
“First what?” She asked, confused.
“Friend." He said with the flat affect of the still-grieving, one who had cut himself off from all relationships as a result of his loss. His words made her heart sink. It hurt to imagine that life had been so lonely for so long.
Fear and uncertainty clouded his face for a moment. "We are friends - aren’t we?”
“I don’t know what we are,” she said. And it was true. But neither of them were willing to examine the depths beneath that statement.
Silence filled the night with a chill, before she warmed him with her voice. "For now, let's get to work."
The first skill Molly needed to acquire should their arrangement succeed was the ability to sneak into his flat undetected. Instead of climbing through his window, which she had shown she was incapable of doing without much noise and attention, Sherlock showed her the access lane to the coal cellar which would suit quite nicely should she need to come and go at odd hours – and he predicted that she would.
In the weeks that followed, they settled into a comfortable routine. Molly – or Trevor, as Sherlock had taken to calling her lest Mrs Turner should overhear - would arrive at his flat around 8pm most evenings. They’d alternate between evenings in the lab at Bart’s and evenings spent stalking London’s seedy underbelly, searching for crime scenes.
The logistics weren’t too difficult for him to arrange, although Sherlock couldn’t approach Mycroft, so warned had he been into allowing Thomas Jones to still marry Molly. Something that he was staunchly opposed to, though Sherlock did not let himself examine exactly why the idea made his skin prickle and bile rise in his throat.
So instead of Mycroft he decided to go to Uncle Rudy instead – choosing his visit to the Diogenes club for a time when Sherlock knew the kitchens were closed and Mycroft wouldn’t haunt the walls.
He presented Molly's findings to his aging, ailing uncle. Rudy was a giant in England and even on the continent. Kings and Prime Ministers sought his council. Scientific discoveries were funded almost entirely from the Vernet Family Fortune. But Sherlock knew from the rasp in his Uncle’s voice that his era of influence was soon to come to an end.
His heir apparent – Mycroft. The one Vernet son entrusted with the reins, rule and riches of their family dynasty.
Although Sherlock hadn’t been raised as Uncle Rudy’s ward as Mycroft had, Rudy still had a soft spot for his nephew – one which Sherlock was known to play into from time to time.
Sherlock laid out the carefully drafted documents and reams of research, all organized neatly in folders. Uncle Rudy only needed a few moments to understand their worth, and Sherlock could see from the gleam in his eyes that not only was he convinced, he was impressed – not an easy feat for the venerable old man who had, fifty years earlier, sponsored the work of the man whose innovations in gas lighting were still illuminated to this day.
Uncle Rudy knew a great mind when he saw one, and he agreed that ML Hooper was indeed great. Of course, Sherlock happened to gloss over the fact of Molly’s gender, revealing only that Hooper was in need of research funding to produce a book – one that Sherlock promised would revolutionise forensic pathology as the world currently knew it.
Simply settled, what Rudy thought were research expenses was actually an income sufficient to allow Molly, Mrs Fitz and her ailing father to live in modest comfort.
And so Sherlock and Molly fell into a pattern – writing case notes, performing experiments at Bart’s, solving crimes together. To anyone who asked they were Sherlock Holmes and Victor Trevor his able assistant.
Lestrade came to trust Molly as much as he had trusted Sherlock – perhaps more sometimes as Molly's insights could at times outshine even the detective himself – particularly when it came to evidentiary studies in the lab or autopsies.
There was one particular crime that showed Molly’s brilliance as a chemist and an investigator.
It all started with a body found in a deserted alleyway. The victim was a young woman, no more than 20 years old, with long blonde hair and a pearl necklace around her neck. The cause of death was not immediately obvious, but Lestrade knew he could count on “Vic” (as he called him) to find out the truth.
As soon as the body was brought to the lab, Molly got to work. She carefully examined the corpse, looking for any signs of trauma, poison, or disease. After several hours of meticulous work, she discovered something that would change the course of the investigation.
There were tiny puncture wounds on the victim's neck, barely visible to the naked eye. Molly suspected that they were caused by a sewing needle, but she needed to confirm her theory. She extracted a small sample of the victim's blood and ran it through a series of tests that she and Sherlock had only designed mere weeks earlier. The results were shocking. The victim had been injected with a needle soaked in Belladonna - a deadly poison that mimicked natural causes. Something that no one would have been able to discover had it not been for their research.
For a time, it seemed like they could continue like this forever.
But fate, and felicity, have ways of surprising us all.