In a rare moment of consideration for John and mercy for Harry Price, Sherlock chose not to divulge his conclusions about the source and nature of the rectory fire until they were back in London that evening. John was, predictably, so angry about it that it was a good thing for Harry Price that he was eighteen miles away at the time. Lestrade was not there to hear the news, having gone directly home with Melissa without even picking up his things from Baker Street.

"I don't think we'll hear from them for a few days," John remarked, once he'd spent eleven solid minutes venting his feelings about Harry Price, mainly in the form of a stunning array of adjectives and creative threats. "But Sherlock, there's a few things I don't understand."

"I'm shocked," Sherlock said.

"No, but seriously. If there was never any ghost, then who locked Ashleigh Foyster up? Bit late to recheck the door now, but if it couldn't even be locked..."

Sherlock was silent. Suddenly, he reached down onto the carpet beside his chair and picked up a science periodical.

"And then," John went on, "Greg and me... we definitely saw someone at that window during the fire. And you did too, didn't you?"

"... Maybe."

"So who was it?"

"I don't know." The periodical in Sherlock's hands was apparently the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen in his life. "We were all suffering from smoke inhalation at the time. Trick of the light. Hallucination. Group delusion. Quite common in religious communities, and ghosts, as Price pointed out several times, do fall under a similar category." Before John could reply, Sherlock rose and went over to his desk, sorting through a cardboard crate on it. "Now," he said over his shoulder, in tones that were suddenly businesslike. "Tell me, which of these do you prefer?"

Before John could ask which of what he preferred, Sherlock had placed a small plastic object in each hand. He looked down at them for a few seconds. "Childproof locks," he said blankly.

"Yes. According to my research it may be only a few months before Charlie's able to walk, and I imagine you'd be upset if you were to bring her over and she opened one of the kitchen cupboards and drank formalin."

"Just slightly." John glanced up at him and decided not to point out that this was the first time in nine months that the name Charlie had ever come out of Sherlock's mouth. He turned the plastic locks over in his hands, looking from one to the other. "Well, uh. Looks to me like either of them will do the job just as well, so it's up to you," he said. Then he smiled. "So you'll babysit Charlie on Tuesday afternoon, then? Molly and I have a funeral to go to..."

"Don't push your luck."

"Okay."

Molly took a rare but justified day off from work the following day, which was a Monday. Mycroft was on the phone before nine that morning to inform her that he'd already ordered an inquiry into both Barts and Berrimer. As Sherlock had predicted, the relevant authorities were in the process of collaborating incriminating data before making any overt moves.

"I did warn you, I've no way of guaranteeing that these events won't be linked back to you," he said, all facts and figures. "It's likely that when it comes to court, you'll be asked to take the stand as a witness."

"I think Professor Harding will know it was me who reported him anyway," Molly said.

"Probably. I shouldn't worry about his harrassing you at work, if that's any consolation."

It was the following morning before Molly full understand what this meant. Arriving at the hospital shortly before eight, she peeked into Ross Harding's office and found that it had been stripped bare. Only the landline handset and the filing cabinet remained, and she was pretty sure just by looking at it that the latter had been emptied of its contents. She made her way up to the lab, finding Sharon Knowles fiddling with a pipette and a slide.

"Sorry, I'll be out of your way in a few minutes." Sharon glanced up. "Don't take this the wrong way, but why are you here? Aren't I covering your shift?"

"Oh, yes, I just came in to grab a few things." Molly hesitated near the doorway. "Um. Professor Harding isn't here?"

Sharon put down her pipette. "Nope," she said, eyes dancing. "You should have seen it, Moll. I'm glad I was in early yesterday morning. Good-looking men in suits swooped in and made him stand out in the corridor while they went through his filing cabinet and confiscated everything. I heard one of them say there was a warrant to seize his laptop, so I think there were people over at his house, too. You should have seen his face. I wonder what it's about?"

"Don't know," Molly replied, flushing hot.

"Oh, well, we'll find out eventually. If nowhere else but the gossip mill. How's John?"

"He's fine, really - he wasn't much hurt." Molly had told Sharon that she needed her shifts covered because John had been in a fire. "Still a bit croaky. Sorry, I've got to dash..."

"Okay. Let me know if you find out any more about what's going on with Harding, will you?"

"Oh, um, yes..." Molly blurted out, all but scurrying away before Sharon could continue her line of enquiry.

~~o0o~~

She went up to her office, sitting down and fishing through the desk for anything she might need at home for the next couple of days. Glancing over the desk itself, she realised that, once again, she'd left her coffee cup on the table with half an inch of cold, murky scum in the bottom of it. Well, she had an excuse this time, she thought, picking it up and wrinkling her nose in disgust. The last time she'd left the office, she'd been a little distracted and not at all thinking about her coffee.

She became suddenly aware of a shadow that had fallen across the doorway. Looking up, she saw exactly who she expected: Ross Harding was looming there, and his face was like an imminent thundersquall.

"Professor Harding," she heard herself say calmly, though her heart was thumping like a jackhammer in her chest and she suddenly felt sick. "I don't think you're meant to be here today, are you?"

"You bitch," he seethed at her. "I've been stood down pending an official Inquiry because of you..."

"Yes, I know," she said. She held fast to the desk in front of her with her fingertips, as if it were a line of defence. "Though, well, I don't think it was because of me, really. It was because you were trafficking body parts illegally. I think you've been doing that since before I worked here – "

He cut her off with a sort of grim chuckle that sent a chill up Molly's spine. To her, it was the sort of sound one might expect to come out of the villain on a Saturday-morning cartoon, not your boss of nine years. "You do realise," he said, "that Berrimer were using those organs for research into the diseases and disorders that kill children?"

"Well, that sort of research is legal," Molly said staunchly, setting her heels into the ground. "Just not when you don't get permission from the families..."

"Oh, yes. Permission." Harding's tone rendered the word obscene. "So tell me, do you know how few parents give permission for diagnostic autopsies, let alone the retention of tissue for research purposes?"

"Yes. It's a very low percentage."

"It's nearly none. They think it's more important to bury all the parts of their own children than to save anyone else's. They're selfish, and so are you. You let your precious little mummy-feelings get in the way of doing your job. Need I remind you that that job is to identify ways to prevent and eliminate disease? You failed, Dr. Hooper. So the next time you need to do an autopsy on someone's kid who died of atrial sepsis, I hope you remember that you killed that kid, just so that Jessica bloody Sadler could bury a lump of meat in the ground."

Molly suddenly realised that the whole time there had been a psychopath who worked at Barts, and it had never been Sherlock Holmes. "Excuse me," she said quietly, "I need to get past. I'm clocking off early today. My husband and I have a funeral to attend."

Molly had been anxiously trying to decide on a suitable outfit for Evie Sadler's funeral for the past two days. John's choice had been easy – the only good suit he had was black. But Molly had read online somewhere that black was inappropriate for a woman to wear to a funeral unless she was Orthodox or was a chief mourner, and most of her "nice clothes" were far too cheerful. Canary yellow? Pink?

In the end it had been navy blue, and then came the agony of trying to decide if St Andrew's was the kind of church where she had to wear something to cover her hair.

"You look fine," John reassured her as she got into the car. "Really. Nobody will notice what you're wearing, anyway."

Yes, she reflected to herself. After all, if she'd lost Charlie... well. She was pretty sure she wouldn't notice what someone she barely knew wore to the funeral, and may not even notice they'd turned up at all.

John was in the driver's seat, but he seemed in no great hurry to start the engine. He leaned over and squeezed her hand, and she took a deep breath. "Proud of you, Lolly," he said.

"I know." She let the breath out. "Thank you."

"Are you ready to do this?"

She nodded, and he released her hand and started the car. But as he merged onto the main road, Molly, looking out absently at the insultingly beautiful spring day, realised she'd lied to him without even meaning to. She wasn't ready to do this. Nobody, she thought, should ever be ready to attend the funeral of a baby.

"So in all, it was the lamest proposal in the history of anything, ever," Melissa said ruefully to her captive audience at Baker Street the following evening. "But I don't mind, somehow." She was twisting her new engagement ring, a single set diamond that Molly had described to her husband as 'the size of a... well, it's really big.'

Molly smiled from where she was curled up on the floor, with Charlie beside her. She suspected that the point wasn't how grand Greg's romantic gestures were.

"Oh, my husband was the same," Mrs Hudson reassured her from where she was ensconced in Sherlock's armchair. She reached out and took a glass of champagne from him. "He inherited the business from his father, and he always said, "Lou, we'll get married once I've inherited the business.' Of course, I thought that business was antiques. I had no idea the shop was actually a front for..." She dropped her voice to a scandalised tone, though every single one of them knew what was about to come out of her mouth. "Drugs."

"'Lou'?" John echoed.

"Oh, nobody but my father ever called me Martha," she explained blithely, waving one red-nailed hand. "My mother wanted to call me "Louise Martha", but I think she changed her mind because "Martha Louise" has a better ring to it. Anyway, so I waited, and waited..."

"Why didn't you ask him?" Melissa sipped her champagne.

"Because that worked out excellently for you," Sherlock muttered. He was standing by the north window, cradling a flute of champagne in his still-bandaged hands. Since Greg and Melissa had arrived he hadn't said much, but it had been his suggestion to "host the event" and he'd so far managed to not look too sour about it.

Mrs Hudson ignored this exchange. "And all this waiting, and you know, I was starting to wonder if Frank really meant it. And then finally he said to me, 'Lou, Dad's probably going to kick on forever just to spite me, so we may as well get hitched now.' We weren't engaged for long, of course."

"He could have made a bit more effort than that, Mrs H," John remarked.

"Yeah, well," Lestrade said in amusement, "I don't think you'd have done any better popping the question than I did, John."

Molly was looking thoughtful. "You know," she said, reaching over to gently tweak one of Charlie's blonde locks, "I don't think he did. I mean, actually propose."

"I'm sure I must have," John protested good-naturedly.

"No, I think you probably didn't," Sherlock said.

"I'll bet you didn't, either." Melissa was twisting her engagement ring again. "Considering you can't remember a thing about it. Come on, then, Molly, tell us the whole sordid story."

"Well, it's just," Molly faltered, glancing uncertainly at John. "How it happened was, Bill and Laura Murray had come around to tell us they were having a baby, and John asked me about whether I wanted to have kids. I said yes but I wanted to be married first, and then I don't know how it came about, but he was asking me if I would be okay with wearing his mother's engagement ring and we were setting a date for October. I think... I mean, I don't think he ever asked me, we just assumed..."

"How romantic," Sherlock said. "You held your uterus for ransom."

"And behold, Charlie." Melissa smiled tolerantly at Charlie, who was standing beside her mother, holding onto the coffee table for support. "I think I'll shut up about Greg's lack of romantic inclinations now."

"What do the kids think, Greg?" John asked him.

Lestrade smiled a little foolishly. "Yeah, I think they're okay with it. Hayley said, 'Jesus, Dad, it's about time you got your shit together', and Matthew went into a panic and said, 'but what if she doesn't even want to marry you?'"

"Gregory, how is that you spawned a genius child who has no observational skills at all?" Melissa asked in faux-despair.

"Have you set a date?" Molly asked, sipping her champagne.

"Not yet." Melissa gave her fiance an impudent glance. "It may not be until next year, though. After complaining for so long about it, I've decided I'm in no hurry."

"Told you," Lestrade teased her.

"Told me what?"

"That the ring was what you were really after."

"No," she protested. "And the dress, Greg. Anyone can wear a ring, married or not. I'd like to see the woman who can get away with wearing a big fluffy white dress and veil for just no particular reason."

"Oh, my God," Lestrade groaned. "You're going to spend about three thousand quid on a dress, aren't you?"

"No, darling." She reached out and gently touched the single stitch over his eyebrow. "I do, however, intend to spend three hundred pounds on a fantastic pair of shoes I've had my eye on for ages. And I will look completely sexy in them, thank you very much."

Lestrade looked across at Mrs. Hudson. "Please, Mrs. H," he said. "I already live in Shoe Hell. Back me up here?"

But Mrs. Hudson looked mischievous. "A woman can't go wrong with a good pair of shoes, Inspector," she said, giving Melissa a covert wink. "I think a nice wedding will be a good excuse to splash out a bit and treat myself to a pair. We should go together, dear, when you've got the time..."

A "shoe-date" was made, but it was never kept. At four o'clock the following morning, a summoner came to Baker Street, seeking out a soul.

A/N- Thank you for the amazing amount of support you guys have given this fic. The next in my AU universe is England Fell, which you can find from my profile.