A/N- This is a season 3 AU, the seventh in a series that begins with After the Fall. As such, it does not take into account any events in season 3 or any characters unique to that series. Any resemblance to those plots is entirely unintentional, and my characterisations are internally sound but may not always square with official canon.

The events dealt with in the first chapter of this story are contained in the one before it, On the Sixth Day.

Once again, this is based on a real-life case. Borley Rectory was the subject of many paranormal investigations during the 1920s and 1930s. These were mainly conducted by then-famous paranormal researcher Harry Price. Many of the characters, legends, events and locations mentioned in the following story are also based on real events and people.

Sherlock Holmes cleared his throat and looked across the crowded courtroom at Paul Doherty. Doherty did not return his gaze; he had kept his head down ever since he'd been placed in the dock, still as the statue of blind Justice. The high windows of the courtroom revealed a fine shower of dust, perhaps centuries old, floating down on his stubbled head. But beside him, the bull-necked Brian Merchant was as skittish as a calf. The judge, the estimable Justice Pinkerton, had more than once told the more dim-witted of the accused to pay attention and take the proceedings against him more seriously.

"Mr. Holmes." Miranda Davis, defence barrister representing Messrs Doherty and Merchant, sounded unhurried. She was a solemn, fortyish woman whose skill and no-nonsense attitude were belied by a snub nose smattered with freckles and unruly, greying red hair. By way of calming his nerves, Sherlock had already deduced that she lied about her age, that she had two children with a Turkish man she wasn't married to and who was five years her junior, that she had a secret love for EastEnders and her favourite tipple of choice was Sambuca. "You told my learned friend that at the time you were dragged out of the car by your feet, you heard a screech of car tyres on the road, and then a car door slam."

"Yes." Sherlock heard his voice hit the courthouse walls and ricochet like a bullet. His eyes met Doherty's.

Wake up, sunshine.

He blinked and brought them back to Davis.

"Did you hear nothing else, Mr. Holmes?" she continued. "No voices?"

"Objection, your honour," Keith Allen, barrister for the Crown, interjected. "Leading the witness."

"Upheld." Justice Pinkerton's gnarled hands curled over the lectern before him like a gargoyle's. "Mr. Holmes, you are not required to answer that question."

Sherlock took a breath, a little grateful that he was not being asked to recount that he had heard a voice: his own, making a distinctly unmasculine squeal of pain. He glanced up into the gallery where John sat, and then down toward the back of the courtroom to Greg Lestrade. It would be Lestrade's turn to give evidence after the midday recess, and John the following morning. It even looked likely that the Crown was going to call upon Molly to give evidence about the condition of Stephen's severed ears when she'd examined them. And then, of course, Mycroft...

Well, there was clearly nothing better for keeping old friends together than a nice old case of kidnapping, torture and murder, he reflected. After this, they should all go out for teppanyaki and chat it up about what fun it had been.

Lestrade frowned at him, then nodded. Sherlock turned back to Davis, flinching as his spine gave a vicious spasm of protest at being moved too abruptly.

"Mr. Holmes?"

"Yes," he said through gritted teeth. "Continue."

"Are you certain?"

He forced himself to focus on her. "Continue."

In the silence that followed, Sherlock closed his eyes and awaited Davis's next question.

"How many times did you hear the car door, Mr. Holmes?" she asked, unperturbed by Pinkerton's earlier reprimand. Sherlock knew why: you can't unask a question. The jury would be sure to note that if Sherlock admitted he did not clearly see or hear Paul Doherty during the first few minutes after being kidnapped, he couldn't prove he had been directly involved.

He looked at her. "I wasn't counting," he said. "My priorities were elsewhere: in not dying, in escaping, and in avoiding pain wherever possible, in that order."

"So you cannot confirm for a fact that there was only one other person with you at that time?"

Sherlock's eyes narrowed. "No."

"What happened after you were dragged out of the car?"

For the first time in his cross-examination, Sherlock hesitated for a reason unrelated to the odd twinge in his back or arm. He glanced back at Lestrade, who gave him another encouraging nod.

"My next memory is of being thrown onto the floor of what I later learned was the Eccles Rowing Club headquarters," he finally said.

"And our map references indicate that this is a mile from the spot you were dragged out of the car, indicating that there is quite a gap in your memory. Mr. Holmes, why do you suppose this gap exists?"

Sherlock shut his eyes and drew a slow breath. "If you'd been paying attention to my initial evidence," he said, "you would know that the hospital later confirmed that I had a serious concussion. I probably don't remember any further because Paul Doherty beat me unconscious with a tire-iron there beside the road. Then he transported me to the clubhouse while I was unconscious, or very close to it."

"But you cannot confirm that this sequence of events happened?"

"Oh, for God's sake. I just told you I was unconscious and there is a gap in my memory; to be able to confirm I was knocked unconscious would be to confirm that I was not knocked unconscious. Now you're just wasting my time, and the time of everyone in this courtroom."

"Nonetheless, Mr. Holmes, it's my job to – "

"Your job should be to explain why Forensics found my DNA all over the tire-iron in the back of the car."

"Mr. Holmes -"

"Why don't you ask Paul Doherty to confirm it for you?" Sherlock slapped both palms against the smooth wood of the lectern. "No doubt his memory of that night is just as good as mine."

He glanced up at John again, but John's face was set and his arms folded. A sudden movement in Sherlock's peripheral vision caught his attention. Turning his head he could see Julian Hubert, his psychologist, leaning over Keith Allen's desk and muttering something to him. Miranda Davis, however, ignored the minor ripple in the courtroom behind her.

"Could you please identify, if possible, the person who did this to you, Mr. Holmes?"

"Already done it." Sherlock sighed and pointed. "There," he said. "Paul Doherty."

Davis pursed her lips. "Yet you say you were knocked unconscious, Mr. Holmes, and that your memories surrounding that incident are confused – "

"Your honour," Allen objected again, "Mr. Holmes never said that he was confused in any way as to what happened."

"Upheld," Pinkerton said grimly. "Miss Davis, kindly allow the witness to use his own words. And may I remind you that neither you nor Mr. Holmes are medical professionals, and you are not in a position to provide conjecture on his injuries at that time and what effect they may or may not have had on his ability to recall information correctly. We have a number of experts to give that evidence themselves."

"Oh, my God, just stop this," Sherlock growled through his hands, giving a petulant stamp of his heel. "I've been tolerating this for an hour. 'Oh, don't expect Mr. Holmes to correctly remember a sequence of events'. 'Oh, Mr. Holmes can't possibly recall what his injuries felt like.' 'Oh, a broken arm would surely prevent Mr. Holmes from being able to plainly identify someone by sight.' 'Oh, Mr. Holmes is a nervous wreck whose testimony is worthless'– "

"Your honour." Intercepting a look from Julian Hubert, Keith Allen was on his feet again, cutting off both Sherlock's complaint and Pinkerton's less-than-impressed response at being snapped at in his own courtroom. "Your honour, Mr. Holmes's psychologist requests a fifteen-minute recess so that his client can settle his agitation and regroup."

Sherlock looked up at him. "What?" he blurted out, eyes darting back and forth in alarm. "No, I'm not agitated, and I certainly don't need to regroup."

"Nonetheless, I imagine there are some in the courtroom who would appreciate a short break in the proceedings," Justice Pinkerton said, glancing at Hubert. "In light of that, I'm granting a recess. We will recommence in a quarter of an hour."

John was on his feet almost as soon as Pinkerton had spoken, but Lestrade, who didn't have to negotiate the gallery stairs, reached Sherlock first. John joined them to one side of the courtroom door as everyone milled out in search of coffee or the toilets.

"Those better not have been your orders," Sherlock snapped at John by way of greeting as they made their way across the antechamber.

John glanced at Lestrade, who gave an almost imperceptible shrug. "Sherlock, you saw I was all the way up in the gallery," he protested. "I'm not mind-controlling your psychologist." He decided not to point out that even from the heights of the gallery, he'd seen Sherlock's gaze wander too easily and too often to the closed courtroom doors and occasionally up to the windows, as if he were seeking an escape route. "Look, do you want me to get you a cup of coffee? Or maybe - "

"No." Sherlock had brought out his phone. "I have to call Mycroft and let him know what the jury are like, and I'm dying for a cigarette."

"I could do with one myself," Lestrade remarked innocently. "I'll come out with you."

"If you must," Sherlock muttered. He'd already fished into his pockets for his cigarettes and had an unlit one clamped resolutely between his lips. He rarely got himself into a situation where he had to have a cigarette, and John knew he was already wearing no less than two patches.

"Take your patches off, both of you, before you collapse of nicotine poisoning," John called after them. But Sherlock was halfway to the front entrance by this time. Lestrade, trailing behind him, glanced back at John over his shoulder for a moment.

Sighing, John wandered over to one of the stone benches in the antechamber and sat down, pulling out his own mobile and navigating to Molly's number. It was one of her days at work, and whether her phone had reception or not depended on whether she was in the lab, her workstation or the morgue.

Direct to voicemail. Morgue.

"Hi, it's me. No emergency; I'll call later or see you tonight." He hung up, and the bench he sat on shuddered as an older, heavier man sat down beside him at rather close proximity. John fiddled with his phone's address book, not bothering to look up until the stranger spoke.

"Dr. Watson?"

"Yep." John glanced up good-naturedly. The man beside him was middle-aged, balding and grandfatherly-looking. This last one was helped along by the fact that he smelled strongly of menthol, something John associated with his own grandfather, a chain-smoker who had died when he was seven. He looked keenly at John with what were rapidly becoming a very familiar pair of blue eyes.

Where have I seen him before...?

"Harry Price." The man put his hand out, and John, still trying to place him, distractedly shook it. Very warm, very firm handshake; the handshake of a used car salesman, or maybe a televangelist...

"Oh," he finally said inelegantly as the penny dropped. "From the telly. Hi."

Harry Price, self-proclaimed parapsychologist and medium, did not look particularly thrilled at being identified as "from the telly." But then, John reflected, that was his own fault for having a show on BBC Two with such a mind-numbingly arrogant title as The Amazing Harry Price.

"I understand you're Sherlock Holmes's personal assistant," Price said, neatly folding the lengths of his grey woollen coat over his bony knees.

"That is not a euphemism. I can promise you that there's only so much that I personally assist him with." John curled his fingers around the phone in his lap and finally looked at the stranger properly. Definitely Harry Price. The man looked like a cadaver, if cadavers were capable of exuding almost nauseating levels of self-satisfaction. No doubt both of those things helped with the trade. "Can I help you?"

"Well, I hope so. I have a case Mr. Holmes may be able to assist with."

"No." The word came out like a gunshot. "In case you haven't noticed, Sherlock's in court today 'cause his last case got two men killed and nearly killed two more, including himself. He's not taking any further cases for the time being."

"I imagine you've seen my programme," Price continued, as if he hadn't heard John's refusal.

"Yes, I've seen it." This was true; John and Molly sometimes tuned in to The Amazing Harry Price to laugh at the antics of an obviously staged programme and an obviously fake medium. "What's that got to do with Sherlock?"

"He recently published a paper on the psychological and physiological causes for people to report psychic phenomena."

"Yes. But uh, I've not read it." Sherlock had written and published a great deal over the past couple of months, having little else to do as he recovered. Not all of his writing was academically motivated. John knew he'd also perfected the art of typing with his left hand, just as an experiment; and that after discovering the limitations of the voice recognition technology on his computer he'd been experimenting with ways to improve it. Of course, the fact that this would benefit any number of people also unable to type by hand never occurred to him until John had pointed it out, and then he'd shoved that consideration aside as relatively unimportant.

John had given Sherlock's article, On Infrasound and Other Scientific Causes of Paranormal Phenomena, a solid miss. The title alone was practically a sedative.

"Pity. It was a very interesting article," Price said. "Certainly your friend has a formidable intellect."

John hid a smirk behind his hand. Apparently, Price had never seen The Princess Bride; or if he had, he didn't realise he'd nearly quoted it. There was one line in particular that had become so much funnier since John Watson had met Sherlock Holmes: Ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates...? Morons!

"He's the most intelligent man I've ever met," John said. His phone suddenly buzzed in his hand. Without apologies, he checked the incoming text from Greg.

Right hand.

- Today 10:47am

He gave his attention to the response for a minute or two.

Ignore it and the smoking. Talk about Matthew's novel.

` - Today 10:48am

Matthew Lestrade, still only sixteen, was about to be a published author. Strawberry Hill Publishing House had just accepted his first novel, Death Watch, which was due out in September.

"Yes, it's clear you think highly of him," Price said, bringing John reluctantly back to the conversation in front of him. "Anyhow, it seems that those in the upper echelons of the London Society for Psychical Research have also read Mr. Holmes's essay, and that's put me in an interesting professional position, shall we say. Now tell me, have you heard of a place called Borley Rectory?"

"Nope, can't tell you I have." John shifted, wishing he was outside with Sherlock and Greg, or at least that he was sitting on a chair with a solid back to lean against. "What, is it haunted?"

"Very. I might even say it's the most haunted house in England."

John snorted.

"Ah, see." Price pointed in accusation with one knobbly finger. "See, there. You know nothing about Borley Rectory, Dr. Watson. You've known about its existence for about ten seconds. And yet you insist it can't possibly be haunted. Rather too early to call that one, don't you think? And judging from his printed views, I imagine Mr. Holmes feels the same way."

"Holy God, you should have seen the way he carried on when I got my daughter baptised."

"I can imagine. So you're a man of faith, then?"

"No, not particularly." John folded his arms. "And I'm also under the impression that asking strangers about their religious beliefs is rude."

"My apologies. I was only trying to demonstrate that we all believe things that are a little irrational at times, whether that's ghosts or God."

God, he's as smooth as glass. No fumble. No embarrassment... and no real regret, John realised, behind the man's apologies. "Not Sherlock," he said, wondering again how the conversation outside was transpiring. "He says if it's not scientifically quantifiable, it doesn't exist."

Price's face twitched. It seemed like amusement, but for a second, John wondered if it were closer to a sort of controlled... rage? That was odd.

"What about things like love?" Price asked.

"He gave my wife and me an essay called The Neurochemistry of Love once." For our first anniversary present. With "love" marked out in inverted commas every time he used it.

"From the sounds of things, I'm looking very much forward to meeting him. I'm sure we could have a lot of conversations where we both learn something. Anyhow, so what I'm proposing, Dr. Watson, is for Sherlock Holmes to join me in a full investigation into the rectory. The great detective and the great parapsychologist, hunting down the truth."

Was this guy seriously putting himself on the same level as Sherlock Holmes? His show was full of cheap party tricks. Even the London branch of the SPR apparently didn't think much of him, and they actually believed in that sort of ghosty stuff.

"And all this for your programme," John said warily. "You want to put Sherlock on TV?"

"No, not at all. This will be a strictly scientific and fully-documented investigation for the LSPR. They take themselves and their work seriously, Dr. Watson. No television cameras, no tricks, no gimmicks."

Well, that was one thing, John supposed. "Yeah, well, as interesting as all that sounds, like I said, Sherlock's not taking any cases; not right now," he repeated stubbornly.

"There are no properly documented cases of ghosts ever causing human harm, Dr. Watson."

"I'm not surprised, 'cause I don't think there are any properly documented cases of ghosts," John muttered into his chest, then looked back up at Price. At the last minute, he decided not to point out how he was fairly sure there were plenty of documented cases of dodgy fake mediums causing human harm. "The problem with all this is, one of you has to lose this one," he said instead. "And let me tell you, Mr. Price, the loser won't be Sherlock. He likes to win."

Price smiled. "So do I," he said, standing up stiffly. "Do ask Mr. Holmes to call me when he gets a chance, will you?"

"No."

"Thank you, Dr. Watson." Price slapped John's shoulder affably. "I'm much obliged."