Medium Dark

by

Owlcroft & Paula Douglas

A/N: Confession: We're American English majors. We do our best with the Briticisms, but even the great Neil Gaiman published a story set in America with the term 'car park' instead of 'parking lot,' so the cultural confusion works both ways. Any accuracy this story achieves on that count is due solely to the help of our Britpicker, Chai, while all mistakes are our own. The same goes for the estimable Dr. D.P. Lyle, who generously answered our medical questions and suggested a plot device we loved and used. Dr. Lyle's awesome fiction and non-fiction books are available at Amazon and other major booksellers, and we highly recommend them.

"It takes two to make every great career: the man who is great and the man-almost rarer-who is great enough to see greatness and say so." - Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

Tuesday

Sherlock groaned. "Not that again."

"You said you'd do anything I asked," John said reproachfully.

"Anything but that."

"That's not what you said an hour ago. You said, and I quote, 'Anything.'"

"The exception was implied."

John laughed. "No, it wasn't. Don't be stroppy."

"It's so...dull," Sherlock said.

"Not if you do it right," John said patiently. "If you'd stop messing about and do it like you mean it-put a little feeling into it-it's quite moving."

Sherlock heaved an aggrieved sigh. "Fine. How do you want it?"

"You know how."

More resistance. "Ugh. It's so boring like that. If I have to do this-"

"You do."

" -at least let me give it some animation."

"It's not supposed to be animated," John replied. "It's supposed to be slow."

"It's not supposed to be a solo act, either. It takes at least three other people." He ran a ball of rosin along the length of his bow. "You do know the meaning of 'canon,' don't you?"

"I should. You've gone on about it often enough."

"To no effect, obviously. Pachelbel's canon is a rondo. It's also a-well, it's hardly a musical cliche, but it's a cliche all the same."

"How is it a cliche?"

"Two words: Ordinary. People."

"What, that old movie?"

"Mm."

"How do you even know that exists?"

"My first violin teacher thought it was some sort of modern classic," Sherlock said with a sour expression and a dismissive wave of his hand. "'The Gone With The Wind of the Eighties'."

John laughed. "You can't distract me with all the backstory, you know."

"Philistine," Sherlock muttered.

"Elitist."

"Boor."

"Tufthunter."

Sherlock snorted a laugh. "'Tufthunter'?"

"'Dear Diary,'" John said, grinning, "'Today I stumped Sherlock on vocabulary.'"

"John."

"It means aspirant. Pretender."

"I see. We've been helping Mrs. Hudson with the crossword again, have we?"

"Actually I came across it in the OED a while back. You know how things stick in your brain better when you have a real life example just at hand?"

"Considering the agonizingly dull chore you're insisting upon, shouldn't you be a little less insulting and a little more ingratiating?"

"'Agonizingly dull.' Spare me. I'm not asking you to play the cello part, am I?"

"I would have to stab you with the bow," Sherlock replied haughtily.

"Largo," John said imperturbably, with a dismissive wave. "Get busy." He picked up a magazine at random and leafed through it.

Sherlock sniffed discontentedly, tossed the rosin aside, and picked up the violin. The truth was that he'd been a bit of a trial to John for the last few hours, and he knew it. Nothing interesting had crossed the 221B threshold since the Ricoletti case concluded more than a week ago, and considering the emotional upset to John that resulted from that investigation it hardly counted as 'interesting' in any event.

Besides being frustrating in the extreme for Sherlock, the lack of work had given John a nearly uninterrupted span of time in which to brood on thoughts of loss, life, death, and middle age. He was neither naive nor habitually morose, and Sherlock was fairly confident that he was happy with their life and work together, but the brutal reality of how people could treat each other, which John saw far too often in their line of work-and which he had seen far too often in his life-tended to disconcert him at the best of times. The Ricoletti murders had been especially senseless and graphic reminders of that human capacity for cruelty. Not to mention that one of John's favorite patients had been among the victims. Conventional wisdom held that the Major's memorial service should have served as a coda to the experience, but whatever funerals were supposed to provide in the way of 'closure' for people, this one had failed to provide for John. He worked his shift at the clinic the day before the service, took his daily walks as usual, and to his friends appeared to be back to his old self. Sherlock knew otherwise. By a dozen subtle signs he understood that John was not quite recovered from the blow. Was 'recovered' the right word? Sherlock didn't know.

Now it was Tuesday. Two days since the service. Sherlock was bored stupid and he'd just spent the last two hours trying John's patience by scraping intermittently and randomly at the violin. This was nothing new; Sherlock often played while he was thinking, or to distract himself, or for no identifiable reason at all. In general John took it all very much in stride, possibly because Sherlock usually finished these sessions of random noise production, which he knew wore somewhat on John's nerves after the first hour, with a few of John's favorite songs. Compensation for the trial on his patience. In fact today he'd been extra annoying in the faint hope of starting a row that would perk John up a bit, but John had declined the invitation. Another sign that life in Baker Street wasn't quite back to normal.

Sherlock thoughtfully dragged the bow over each string in turn. He increased the tension on the A string's peg slightly, tried it again, frowned, and gave it another minute adjustment. Better. He glanced at John-still leafing through the magazine with an air of patient unconcern but obviously determined to wait him out-and after heaving another theatrical sigh he began.

John laid the magazine aside when Sherlock started playing. Now that he'd satisfied his need to whinge, Sherlock addressed the music with a sincerity, sensitivity, and artistry that left John in awe. Although John had requested a meditative largo rendition of his favorite classical tune, Sherlock rebelled to the extent of adding the gigue and soon had John tapping his foot and smiling.

John prized these occasions above his own salvation. He didn't think of them as revealing the "real" Sherlock, because the great mind-the reason and logic and objectivity-that was the real Sherlock; but he did think of them as a window into the rest of Sherlock, the side of his aloof, self-contained friend that Sherlock shared with no one else. His soul, if John were to stoop to what Sherlock himself would scorn as contemptible sentiment. After all, Sherlock always insisted, music was simply mathematics. Mathematics was reason. Therefore music, too, was reason-and he would go on to speak breezily of successive twelfth roots of two, equal temperament tuning, and sinusoidal waves until John told him to stop his gob and just play something.

Now he stood by the window, his eyes closed, wholly intent on his improvised variations and embellishments, and despite his earlier protestations about John's selection very evidently feeling the music. In spite of his insistence that a canon required more than one player he produced a creditable imitation of an ensemble, segueing seamlessly from melody to harmony and back, switching deftly from one voice to another, blending elements of each part into a unique yet familiar whole, and clearly entertaining himself as well as John.

John wished at these times that more people appreciated his friend as something other than the famously cold, dispassionate thinker. He did what he could by blogging about their cases, but there were some things, Sherlock had once told him, which should be kept safe from public pawing. John knew that his friend's capacity for depth of feeling was one of these. So instead he watched and listened, and if the outside world dropped away for Sherlock as he played, so it dropped away for John as he took vicarious delight in his friend's virtuosity.

After nearly seven minutes Sherlock brought the song to a close with a singularly pure and clear final note.

"That," John said with utter sincerity. "Was. Amazing." Sherlock glanced at him, checking for candor, but John had rarely heard him play so well.

"Philistine," Sherlock replied, but a pleased smile pulled at the corner of his mouth-and then his expression shifted abruptly to annoyance. John instantly inferred a visitor. He turned in his chair to see a woman standing silently in the living room doorway: They had a client.

John's first impression was that she was either very tired or very ill or both. She appeared to be in her early sixties but might have been up to ten years younger than that. Her dyed blonde hair was cut in a bob that fell just at her jawline, giving some much-needed fullness to her gaunt face. The application of makeup had successfully minimized neither her pallor nor the dark circles below her large brown eyes. She was not above John's height, although her abnormal thinness made her appear taller.

She fared no better under Sherlock's scrutiny. He still stood behind his chair with the violin and bow in his left hand, but now his head was up and turned slightly to the side as he eyed her with the trenchant edginess he reserved for strangers-and with a little resentment: The contrast between the ease he'd felt while playing and the sudden return of tension annoyed him, and while he wanted a case she didn't look very interesting.

She smiled a little hesitantly and obviously had the sense that she was intruding; in fact she'd hung about on the first landing for three minutes while Sherlock finished playing. "I hope I'm not interrupting," she began.

John was on his feet, having remembered his manners. "No, not at all," he said, and Sherlock shot him a wry look. "Can we help you?"

"Yes, sorry," she said, but had to pause then to cough. "I'm here to see Mr. Holmes," she said when she'd recovered.

Sherlock pointed to John. "He's the one you want."

John glanced at him. "What?"

"You're Mr. Holmes?" she said to John.

"No," John said. "He's Mr. Holmes. I'm John Watson. Hello." He approached and offered his hand.

"Doctor John Watson," Sherlock said pointedly, setting the violin and bow aside and obviously intending to leave the room.

"Why would she be here to see me?"

Sherlock shrugged: Could it be any more obvious? "You're a doctor. She's terminal. You see how that fits?"

"Jesus, Sherlock." That was rude even for him. John turned to the woman. "I'm so sorry-"

"He's right," she said simply, and she seemed strangely unfazed by the fact. She looked thoughtfully at Sherlock. "How did you know?"

While her presence displeased him, the opportunity to show off did not. "You're a widow with three-no, two-adult children," he said, ignoring John's glare. "You've just taken the Tube from Charing Cross station to Baker Street: eight minutes and £4.80. That's on top of the train fare from Dover, where you began this morning, having taken the 9:43 train. It's a short walk from the Baker Street station but with your illness you'd have been justified in taking a cab: So no money, then, although your inexpensive costume jewellery and clothing alone make that obvious. You're modestly dressed but made a real effort to tidy yourself and put on makeup to come into the city. Out of breath from the stairs but pale rather than flushed and you're thin, but that's apparently due to your illness, because previously you would have been fairly well fed, judging from the way your clothes hang loosely now. From their wear and the style verging on outdated you've owned that outfit for at least five years, and yet you haven't replaced it even after your weight loss. Very little point, if you're terminal. You had extensive orthodontia removed...about five weeks ago."

While John was appalled by Sherlock's unsparing evaluation, the woman was obviously at the point psychologically where she accepted her situation, and in fact she seemed more impressed by the accuracy of his inferences than bothered by his manner. "That's quite impressive," she admitted, before pausing again to cough. "Excuse me. I beg your pardon. You're right about all of it," she continued. "Except that I really am here to see you, Mr. Holmes. I need a detective. Not a doctor."

"Sit down, please," John said, placing the client chair for her. He shot a passing glare at Sherlock and sat down at the living room table. "Why do you need a detective? Mrs...?"

"Soranzo," she said, sitting down and putting her handbag on her lap. "Abigail Soranzo."

Sherlock reminded himself that he'd just been hoping for something to distract John and dropped resignedly into the Le Corbusier.

Now that she had their full attention Abigail was a bit shy about getting straight to the point, so she said diffidently to Sherlock, with a nod toward the violin, "You play beautifully. I'm not just saying that," she added hastily, because he scowled as though her noticing was an impertinence rather than a compliment. "My husband was a violinist."

"Yes, very interesting," Sherlock said impatiently. "Please get to your point, Mrs. Soranzo. Why are you here?"

"It's because of the lights."

"The lights."

"The lights in the grove. You see, I'm a resident client at Wellspring, and-"

"Wellspring?" John said.

"The Wellspring Institute. In Dover. About a month ago I went to my doctor because I'd started getting night sweats again. I was tired all the time, short of breath...and it hurt just here." She pointed to a spot on her left side, just under her ribs. "He started talking about lung cancer-I used to smoke years ago-and radiation and massive doses of all sorts of drugs, so I went straight to Wellspring and they've worked miracles. I've been on their program for a month and I feel so much better now that I'm not overloading my system with artificial chemicals."

"Yes," Sherlock said sarcastically, "'natural' is the Good per se, isn't it? But then, disease is natural, too, so it's strange that people don't enjoy cancer more."

"Sherlock!"

Sherlock didn't see why John was so exercised. "Just pointing out the fallacy of intrinsicism," he said.

"Well, save it," John cried. "I'm so sorry," he added to Abigail, but she remained remarkably unfazed.

"It's okay, Dr. Watson," she said with a smile. "Believe me, my family has tried to change my mind, as well, but they can't argue with success."

John tried to get Sherlock back on track. "Have you heard of this Wellspring Institute?"

"No," Sherlock said, "but from the cloying name and Mrs. Soranzo's aversion to reality I'd say the doctors are certified by the University of Quackistan. Am I right?"

"Oh, no," she said. "But I can see why you think that." She gestured toward John. "I mean, your friend is a doctor, so of course-"

"Irrelevant," Sherlock snapped. "My conclusions rely on reality, not relationships."

"I've made peace with my illness" she said, "but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't like to live as long as possible. Dr. Kickham is a medical doctor, but he's not limited by the usual binary treatment models. You're about the same age, I think," she added, looking at John. "Do you know him? Dr. Brian Kickham?"

John shook his head. "I'm surprised," Abigail said. "He's very prominent in his profession."

"So was Coco the Clown," said Sherlock.

"Dammit-" John began.

"Mrs. Soranzo," Sherlock interrupted, "do you know what they call the person who finishes last in his medical school class?"

"No."

"'Doctor.'"

She looked faintly puzzled. "Well, I don't know about that, but I do know how much better I feel, and it's all because of Wellspring." Then, in the tone of one reciting propaganda she said, "They take a holistic, individualized approach that treats the entire patient, not just the symptoms. Dr. Kickham's methods use natural remedies that are non-invasive, non-toxic, non-addictive-"

"Non-functional," Sherlock said.

She smiled serenely: Unflappable. "And yet I feel so much better." She proved this by breaking off to cough again. "I'm sorry," she said. "There are so many toxins in the city air...I know what you're thinking, Dr. Watson: It sounds incredible, and frankly I was skeptical too, at first, but if the Wellspring Protocol doesn't work, why have I felt so much better since I started it? There are some things that science just can't explain. If it wasn't for Wellspring's program of natural remedies and their tumour-shrinking nutrition plan I might be dead by now."

Sherlock reached into his breast pocket for his phone and clapped it to his ear. "Hello, NHS?" he said, and John groaned. "You know all those painstakingly controlled clinical trials you've been conducting for the last eighty years? You can stop now. Yes, I have a client here who can determine treatment efficacy via anecdote. You're welcome." He put the phone away. "Skip the infomercial, Mrs. Soranzo, and tell us why you're here. What about the lights?"

"Well," she said, "your website says that you take only strange and interesting cases, and something very strange happened Friday and Saturday night. The Institute is located right on the cliffs, and they just installed a new meditation grove almost at the very edge; they just finished it on Friday, but it was supposed to be done a week earlier; they had a terrible time with the soil there, they said. It's beautiful, and of course the setting is exquisite, with the view and the sea so near. Very tranquil and calming."

"Ugh," Sherlock groaned.

"Friday night I didn't sleep well and woke up around one in the morning. Sometimes even with the calcarea carbonica the night sweats wake me up. Well, when I couldn't go back to sleep I got up and sat at the window to read. There's a big bay window with a window seat, and I just love to spend time there. It's so peaceful. Well, it's been warm, you know, with this lovely Indian summer weather, so I had the windows open as I read. Eventually I started to get sleepy and then I must have dozed off, because when I woke up I was chilled, so I closed the window before I went back to bed."

"What sort of window?" Sherlock asked.

"Sorry?"

"Sash? Casement?"

"I'm not sure. The kind that opens with a handle at the bottom and swings out. On a hinge at the side?"

"Casement," Sherlock said.

"Well, as I pulled the window closed I noticed two red lights reflected in the glass, so I stopped. I adjusted the window so I could see them better, and I realized that they were coming from out by the new grove. Normally you can't see it from that side of the manor house, but with the window open it was reflected in the glass. It took me a bit to figure out that the lights were coming from there, but that's definitely where they were."

Sherlock just stared at her. This was neither strange nor interesting. "And?"

"And...well, they kept bobbing around out there. Like they were floating. They'd blink on and off, sometimes. Sometimes they'd be up high above the cliff edge and sometimes low. Sometimes they wouldn't move at all. There was no real pattern to it, and one time more than five minutes went by and I didn't see anything. I thought they'd gone, but suddenly there they were again. It went on like that for almost two hours, and then again the next night, too." She stopped as though she'd reached the end of her account.

Sherlock was still staring. "That's it?"

"Well...It's strange, don't you think? And kind of interesting? What do you think it was?"

Sherlock turned to John. "John, call MI6 and tell them Mrs. Soranzo has discovered that the English Channel contains boats." John looked away. Sherlock put his pale, cold eyes back on Abigail. "The house overlooks the Dover Strait, the busiest shipping channel in the world. You saw the navigation lights of ships and boats moving up-Channel. Red lights on the port side; green to starboard."

"Why did they blink on and off, then?" John asked, trying to come to her defense. "And she said they seemed to be floating."

"Yes, well. Ships. Floating. It's a whole thing they do. Wave action and fog explain the movement and intermittency, waves being common to the sea and fog to the coast. Have a nice day, Mrs. Soranzo." And when she showed no sign of knowing she'd been dismissed he added, "Somewhere else."

"That might be true about the lights," she said firmly, "but what about the ghost?"

"The ghost?" John asked, as Sherlock looked away with an exasperated sigh.

"The ghost in the grove," she said. "The ghost that appeared in the exact spot where I saw the red lights. The very next night, too. I was right there in the grove, twenty feet away from it, and it was no ship, Mr. Holmes."

John glanced nervously at Sherlock: He already had the douchebaggery level at eight, and mention of the supernatural was just the kind of thing to make him dial it all the way to eleven.

But Sherlock surprised him by suddenly focusing on Abigail quite intently and saying, "Tell me what happened and leave nothing out. Except for the boring extraneous irrelevant bits."

Abigail Soranzo, Marty Perkins, and Liz Baker, all resident clients at the Wellspring Institute, had made something of a tradition of their after-supper rambles around Wellspring's thirty acres. Mild exercise was encouraged by the medical staff and when the weather cooperated many clients could be found strolling the smooth asphalt trails that laced the grounds, enjoying the fresh breezes off the Strait, the salt air, and the views of the famous chalk cliffs stretching away on either hand and, on clear days, the French coast, thirty-three kilometres distant.

On this recent Sunday evening the three friends eventually settled at the newly-completed meditation grove near the cliff edge, where as the sun set in a blaze of orange and blue they counted the ships and watched as the lights of France sprinkled the growing darkness. Conversation ranged from talk of life and death to the spiritual energy of the ocean and nature. Abigail teared up a bit thinking that she wouldn't live to see the grove mature; she was going to miss so many things of such exquisite beauty. Like Wellspring itself. Such serene natural beauty, so many peaceful, shady copses-and she knew that the new grove would be just as beautiful, in time. Liz and Marty, always so supportive, hugged her then, but she didn't want to burden them with her mood so she switched the conversation to asking after Marty's wife and Liz's kids.

She didn't mention the red lights to them, but that was not from trepidation. While she'd found them puzzling at the time they hadn't frightened her, and in fact she'd nearly forgotten all about them. As the sun sank and the path lighting came on around the walkways, Marty declared himself knackered and returned to the house. Abigail and Liz remained, chatting away, until the western sky turned purple. By then the temperature had fallen enough to produce a distinct chill, and they decided to return to the manor house.

Just as they stepped off the flagstone terrace that defined the grove, however, they were startled to hear a low groan from the seaward side of the grove, near the cliff's edge. Liz called "Hello?" No one answered, but as though in reply to her call a ghost rose up from below the cliff and hovered there. Pale lavender with a silvery tinge to it, it appeared as a beautiful young woman in a full-length, shimmery dress that puddled at her feet. The ghost stared straight at Abigail and Liz, utterly terrifying them, and then it raised one hand and pointed right at them.

"You," it hissed in a low, malignant whisper. "Go from this place. Leave us in peace."

"Is it real?" Liz gasped.

Abigail had the presence of mind to notice that the ghost wavered each time the breeze blew, and that cemented it in her mind: If it could be affected by the wind, it was real. Before she could remark on this observation, however, the ghost spoke again.

"Run," it said, with a dismissive gesture, and then it pointed toward the manor house. "Run. Leave us in peace!"

Liz and Abigail ran-although in her weakened state Abigail fell twice and had to be helped, gasping and coughing, by Liz, who bravely refused to abandon her. The first time she fell Abigail noticed that the ghost had not pursued them, and as they reached the mansion, just before they turned the corner, she again glanced back at the grove. The ghost had vanished.

Once they calmed each other down they parted and returned to their rooms. Abigail resolved that first thing next morning she would take her concerns to Felicity Stokes, Wellspring's spiritual advisor and guide. Felicity and her husband Terence Stokes owned Wellspring, along with Felicity's sister Amanda, the Institute's attorney, and Amanda's husband, Dr. Brian Kickham. Before she could put that plan into action the next morning, however, she met other patients who had seen the ghost; everyone was in an uproar about the spirit in the grove. Terence and especially Felicity addressed everyone at breakfast in an attempt to reassure them, but that vivid, awful, menacing figure was not something that Abigail was likely to forget.

"I love the people at Wellspring, Mr. Holmes," she said, "and Felicity is so clever, so in tune with the spirit world. She's a true Empath, but I'm afraid that she might be over her head here. She's used to contacting benevolent spirits, and this one was definitely not benevolent. And to be honest I wonder whether all the seances that she conducts might not have set it loose on the grounds, or at least encouraged it to move in. And, you know...well, of course you're a detective, you can't exorcise it or anything, but I guess...I just thought...You're skeptical. I can see that. But it's actually a good thing, because I know that someone who doesn't believe in ghosts will be objective about investigating one. Besides, helping Felicity and Terence out by getting to the bottom of the ghost mystery would make me feel so much better about leaving Wellspring."

John was a little hesitant about asking her to clarify that remark. She looked so ill and he was afraid of causing her distress if her departure was due to a worsening prognosis. "You're leaving...?" he said carefully.

But she answered brightly. "Oh, yes," she said. "Dr. Kickham is opening his own practice in South Kensington. He wants to be able to spend more time with Amanda, his wife. Wellspring's in-house attorney. He thinks that by starting a clinic of his own, with her to help, they'll be able to rekindle their marriage. And after all, you know, the Wellspring remedies are all his doing. He won't have any trouble starting over somewhere else."

She reached into her purse and withdrew a 60 ml brown vial with a dropper as a cap and passed it to John. "This is one of the tinctures he prescribed for me."

John examined the bottle: white label, green lettering, and a blue stylized 'healing hands' image with a fountain spouting from the palms. In the lower right corner of the label was Kickham's endorsement. "'This product meets the Wellspring Standard for purity and effectiveness,'" John read aloud. "'I guarantee it. Dr. Brian Kickham, MD.'" He looked up. "'Anemi-Cure'?"

"I could feel it working the first time I tried it," Abigail said. "Dr. Kickham recommended it to promote the transport of oxygen."

Sherlock snorted. John cleared his throat. "Won't that be a bit of a hardship for Wellspring?" he asked. "To have their doctor leave, I mean? He'd be a competitor then."

"Well," Abigail said, "I imagine it will be a bit of an inconvenience, for a while. But there must be doctors breaking the door down to get hired by a place like Wellspring, don't you think?"

Unfortunately, John thought, that was probably true. "Maybe," he said.

Abigail, having relayed all the information she had, waited with her hands resting on the purse in her lap.

Sherlock steepled his hands under his nose, his eyes lost their focus to that thousand-yard stare that John knew so well, and he seemed to forget that she was in the room.

John himself was dreading the denouement of this consultation: The poor doomed woman, still resolutely believing that she was being helped, had separated herself from her family while this Wellspring racket separated her from her money, and now to crown all she was seconds away from being savaged by the man she'd come to for advice. He watched Sherlock with real trepidation.

While she seemed neither impatient nor cowed, after a minute or two Abigail said, with the first real hesitation she'd shown, "When I moved in to Wellspring I...well, I wanted to make sure that my treatment wasn't interrupted or delayed over finances, so...Their remedies and modalities are incredibly effective, but of course you get what you pay for and they aren't free, and...I'm afraid...Well. I'm...This is embarrassing, Mr. Holmes, but I was wondering...If you agree to take my case, would it be...I mean, I'd like to work out-if it's okay-a payment plan." No answer. "Mr. Holmes?" Abigail prompted finally.

Sherlock abruptly returned his focus to her. "Tablet or book?" he demanded.

"Sorry?"

"Were you reading from an electronic device or a traditional book?"

"Oh-from a tablet."

"Lights on or off in your room?"

"Off. Well, dim. There's a nightlight, but it's just enough to see if I have to get up in the night. They say that having the lights on makes it harder to get to sleep, though, so I keep the lamp near the bed off, usually."

"Thank you, Mrs. Soranzo," he said icily. "People like you are why shampoo bottles come with directions, but even a broken clock hits on the correct time now and again. Who did you inform about your trip here today?"

"No one."

"You're sure."

"Yes, definitely."

"When you see John and me at Wellspring you will give absolutely no sign that you know us. You will not wave, smile, phone, text, or otherwise attempt to contact us-and you will speak of this matter to absolutely no one. Doing so would fatally undermine our investigation. Is that understood?"

Abigail blinked. "But the money?" she asked timidly. "Can we...work out a payment plan?"

Sherlock cocked his head. "You want to pay me on an installment plan."

John knew that he was utterly indifferent to the question of payment; he was just objecting to the failure in logic, the pedantic prat. But that's not how it would have looked to Abigail. He turned to her and said firmly, "There's no payment plan. There's no fee. We sometimes do pro bono work and this is one of those times."

She glanced from John to Sherlock and back. "You'll help, then? You'll try to find out about the ghost?"

"The ghost?" Sherlock said vaguely, then remembered that the woman had mentioned a ghost a while back. "Ah, the ghost. We confine our investigations to the natural world at this agency, Mrs. Soranzo, but yes, I will definitely find out about your ghost. Good day." He turned his head slightly away from her and completely disengaged, like a machine reaching the end of its cycle.

Sherlock was widely vilified as a selfish bastard, but what people really meant when they accused him of that was that he wouldn't compromise on what he knew to be true and right and real. That integrity was one of the things that John admired most about him, and he wouldn't dream of asking Sherlock to breach it. All the same, there were forms to be followed and there was civility to be preserved. Integrity and manners didn't have to be mutually exclusive.

"Let me ask you something," he said when he'd returned from seeing Abigail off in a cab. Sherlock had shifted himself to the living room table and was tapping away at his laptop. "Why is it so important that you share your opinions about them with people you don't care about? If you don't care-"

"I care about the truth," Sherlock said, looking up. "It matters. Reality matters. If I start misrepresenting what's real, where does that end?"

"It doesn't have to be either-or. Haven't you ever heard of a white lie? Besides, you lie to people all the time."

"I lie to suspects, John, or to people who have information that can help me establish a suspect so I can solve a crime. Would you rather I didn't?"

"I'd rather you were consistent."

Arrogance. "I am fully consistent."

John shook his head. "If you don't care about what people think-"

"I don't."

"-then why waste your time by keeping them updated on your thoughts about them? Besides, withholding your opinion isn't the same as lying, Captain Logic."

Sherlock sniffed. "You want me to be nicer."

"I want you to do yourself justice," John cried, a little frustrated, but he could see that Sherlock had no idea what he meant. "Sherlock," he said in a more reasonable tone. "The Work is what matters to you. I understand that. You know I do. And I get that the clients aren't your motive for doing it. But like it or not they are a part of it." Sherlock grimaced and looked away sulkily. "Not all of my patients are people I'd like to spend Christmas with, you know, but being civil to them doesn't imply a single thing about my personal opinion of them. It doesn't diminish me-or maybe you think it does?"

Sherlock didn't think anything diminished John. "Of course not," he said sullenly. "But-"

"But I'm not a genius so I can tolerate people? That's crap. Sometimes your Work is boring research. Sometimes it's boring clients. But it's all part of your Work."

Sherlock stared at him without expression and at that moment even John wasn't sure what he was thinking. He might have been considering the validity of John's appeal or he might have been calculating pi to the twenty-third digit. Finally he said, disdainfully, "Nicer."

John moved on to the next topic. "Okay. There's no ghost in Dover, so why did you take the case?"

Now that they were on a subject that interested him, Sherlock perked up considerably. "Remember what she said about how much trouble they had putting in that grove? I've been checking the satellite imagery of that estate, and look." He turned the computer so John could see. "There are all sorts of far more eligible spots for a 'meditation grove.' It could have been built much more easily, cheaply, and in less time by using one of these mature copses and tossing in a stone bench or two."

"Maybe they wanted it to have a better view of the Channel?"

"It's a big ocean. There's a view of the water from every point on that estate. No. According to Mrs. Soranzo her room doesn't provide a view of the grove and none of the other residents' windows in the house have a direct view of it, either. She only saw it by chance, as a reflection when she opened her window. Someone went to a lot of trouble to locate that grove in a corner of the estate where it wouldn't be visible to the patients in the house. Why? And why would someone bother to build something that's allegedly for the patients and then go to even more trouble to scare them away from it?

John shrugged. "Okay. Why?"

"Roots."

John was familiar with the term 'alternative therapies,' but the concept had never really been on his radar in a significant way. Occasionally he'd run across a nurse who claimed to be able to 'drain negative energy' from people by waving her hands over them, but he'd always declined the use of such services. Then, too, the army of his day didn't have the luxury of using auras to heal men whose limbs had been blown off by IEDs. His research into the Wellspring Institute, therefore, represented his first detailed exploration of the idea. He was not pleased by what he learned.

Sherlock had left the flat a little after Abigail Soranzo's departure and didn't return until shortly before supper. By then John was thoroughly disgusted by what he'd read about Wellspring and very willing to be interrupted.

Sherlock stuffed his scarf into his coat pocket and tossed the coat onto its hook. "Making progress?" he asked.

John closed the laptop and slumped back in the chair. "She was lying," he said.

"Who?"

"Abigail Soranzo. The client," he added, when Sherlock looked puzzled.

"Lying about what?"

"About making peace with her diagnosis."

"Oh, that." Sherlock immediately lost interest. Perhaps there were biscuits in the kitchen.

"She's not at peace, she's frightened."

A shrug. "She should have thought of that before she decided to cure cancer with primrose oil."

"She's terminal, Sherlock," John said irritably. "She'd be afraid if she were seeing the best oncologist on the planet."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. Why wouldn't she be?"

"She can't be tooattached to her life if she's willing to throw it away on crap remedies."

After all this time John knew better than to reply to a statement like that with, "How can you say things like that?" He knew how. Sherlock was not incapable of empathy, but he didn't apply it promiscuously. He saved it for people he thought deserved it. Instead John said, "She doesn't know that she's throwing it away! That's the whole point!

"No, the point is that she's not making any effort to know," Sherlock replied. "The truth is available to her just as it is to you and me and everyone else. She declined it." He paused to consider John. "You're not angry because the client's afraid," he decided. "And you already finished shouting at me for being rude to her." He paused. "You are finished?"

John sighed. "Yes."

"Then why are you cross?"

"It's this," John said with an angry wave at the computer. "This Wellspring Institute is an even bigger scam than I thought. Have you seen this stuff? These 'remedies' they're peddling are complete bollocks at best and unethical at worst. Not to mention cruel, since they're taking advantage of desperate people. And you know what the worst part is?" It was a rhetorical question; he didn't wait for Sherlock to answer. "The worst part is, I can almost see why people turn to this garbage. Western medicine can be scary and intimidating and doctors haven't done a very good job of trying to put people at ease and...I don't know. Humanize it?"

"Oh, please," Sherlock sneered, dropping into his chair. "Western medicine saves more lives in a day than all the Chinese herbs and wheatgrass smoothies combined have in the last three thousand years. What sick people need is competence, not hand-holding."

"Really," John said skeptically, crossing his arms. "That's not what you thought when you came round after surgery."

The shot went straight home. Both admiration and unease flitted across Sherlock's face. Those were the kinds of statements that he prized in John, however: that insistence on keeping him honest. "That was personal," he replied after the briefest hesitation. "Not professional. What use would you be if that were all you could offer? In any case I wasn't ill, I was injured."

John rubbed at his eyes. He was not expressing himself adequately, and it frustrated him, as did Sherlock's unrelenting contempt for the scam victims. John didn't find the pseudoscience any more compelling than Sherlock did, yet he understood its attraction to people who were in many cases desperate for answers-and he was angered by the predators who cashed in on that desperation.

He understood desperation and he understood fear, and he knew that Sherlock did, as well. At one time he would have found that idea laughable, but after all they'd been through together he knew better now. Yet for Sherlock, the more desperate the situation the more crucial his reasoning mind became. John didn't disagree, but he knew that many people lacked Sherlock's strength of purpose. Many people, when confronted with questions to which they had no answers, gave up the responsibility of discovering those answers to the first authority figure who came along.

"I'm not saying that I agree with people who believe these scams," he said finally. "I don't. I'm just saying that I can see their motive for turning to them. Not that I find it tempting myself."

"The motive is stupidity."

"It's desperation."

Sherlock shrugged. "You say desperate. I say stupid."

"And I'll tell you something else," John went on, abandoning the stupid/desperate difference as unresolvable. "Have you seen this crap that they're peddling as 'remedies'? Do you know how this works?"

Sherlock knew exactly how it worked. "They dissolve trace amounts of some allegedly beneficial substance in water or alcohol, then dilute it to the vanishing point. The claim is that the remedies are more effective as the dilution is increased. Which is idiotic on the face of it, but the allegation is that a dilution that yields an effective concentration of zero molecules of the original ingredient is more potent than a 100% solution."

John stared at him.

"Oh, sorry," Sherlock said. "Did you want the short answer? Yes. I know how it works."

"But that's crap!" John cried. "How can a company like Wellspring legally stay in business? I don't get it."

"Don't you? You've spent all afternoon researching them. They tell people what they want to hear. If that were a crime every politician and religious leader on the planet would be guilty."

"It might not be illegal, but 'nourishing blood tonics'? What does that even mean? And look: Look at this!" He turned the computer for Sherlock to see, although Sherlock was obviously familiar with the scam. "Everything 'promotes' this and 'supports' that-whatever they're claiming to treat. Penicillin doesn't 'promote' the destruction of bacteria. It just destroys bacteria. Chemotherapy doesn't 'support' the destruction of cancer cells. It just destroys the damned cancer cells. They're not outright lying. They're not outright saying anything at all. They put two pieces of information together on a page, add a paragraph about how their potion is prepared by their experts, then sit back and watch while people put two and two together and get three."

"You sound surprised by all this," Sherlock observed. "Did they not mention it in medical school?"

"Yeah, they mentioned it," John said irritably. "We probably spent as much time on it as you did on alchemy. We weren't studying to be witch doctors, for God's sake. We were dissecting cadavers, not dancing around wineskins." Sherlock laughed. "This is snake oil, Sherlock, and the only way they can peddle it is by dressing it up with jargon they borrow from real medicine."

"'That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright, but a lie which is part of a truth is a harder matter to fight,'" Sherlock said portentously.

"What the hell is that?" John asked.

"Tennyson," Sherlock said. "John, you're wondering how someone selling something so patently irrational, so self-evidently a mealy-mouthed scam, can stay in business more than five minutes? It requires a willing partner in the deception. You've heard the expression that you can't cheat an honest man."

"Oh, come on. All these millions of people can't all be dishonest."

"Intellectually dishonest," Sherlock said.

"Well, what the hell would you do if you found out that you were terminal?" John demanded, knowing even before he asked that it was pointless to do so.

"We're all terminal, John."

"You know what I mean."

"I do. And it changes nothing. No one knows how long they have, formal prognosis or not."

"You don't think you'd grasp at any straw, take any chance you thought might work if it would give you a reprieve?"

"No," Sherlock said with absolute conviction. "I wouldn't grasp at any straw. Only the rational ones. And when science said that I was out of options, I'd be out of options."

John felt unaccountably disappointed. Sherlock was inexorable. It was one of the things that John counted on, one of the things that he admired most about his friend. He always had, and his confidence in Sherlock's intransigence was absolute. "That's rubbish," he said, without a hint of doubt in his tone. "You never quit. Ever."

Sherlock's affectionate smile was tinged with sadness: John was hero-worshipping again. After all this time he should know better. "I would quit," he said deliberately, "if what I faced were the medical equivalent of trying to drive a car from here to the moon. No, I wouldn't like it, and yes, I expect I'd be afraid. But there's no shame in acknowledging that it's not physically possible. There's no shame in facing reality. It's the only thing that can free us. These people you feel so sorry for, John: They've built a prison, walked in of their own free will, locked the door, and flung away the key. You want me to say that I understand why they do it, but I don't. I can't lie to myself like that. I can't live like that. More to your point, I couldn't die like that."

John couldn't bear to dwell on this topic any longer. Instead he pointed to the folder in Sherlock's hand. "What's that?" he asked.

"You."

"Me?"

"Well, your alter-ego for the case. John Wilson." Sherlock passed him the file. "You're a former associate producer with ITV who quit to make independent films for corporate training and motivational seminars. You were especially keen on team-building exercises using stress reduction, barrier identification, and effective communication, although you've since sold the business for a mint of money."

John stared. "What the hell?"

"It's all in the folder. The point is that you're obviously pre-disposed to distributing and by implication swilling rubbish."

"Wait. Sorry. What are we doing here? I'm going to Wellspring...what, undercover?"

"Don't be over-dramatic."

"Great."

"Yes. You've been admitted to Wellspring as a resident patient, and sadly you've been diagnosed with something. Something expensive. Exactly what I'll leave to you. You're a doctor, after all, but I'd recommend something subtle that will leave you relatively active in its early stages. Preferably something fatal but not too fast-acting. We want them to think that they can string you along for a good while. And if you can get some diagnostic images labeled in your new name that would be very helpful."

"Is that what you've been doing all day? Faking records?"

"Mm."

John leafed through the pages in the folder. "How did you arrange all this?"

"Eight years ago. The case of The Geek Interpreter, I believe you called it."

"Oh, right. The computer boffins."

"Yes. Mr. Melas was delighted to help. As John Wilson you now have a complete and very thorough on-line history that will be utterly convincing to anyone who inquires. Among other things, you have a long-standing MyLife page on which you updated your legions of friends with tedious posts about your illness until you were finally advised by one of them to check out the Wellspring Institute. Then there are your significant financial holdings-congratulations on your new-found wealth, by the way, although I'm sorry to say that it exists only in the ether."

"Thanks," John said dryly. "You really think all this is necessary? All this detail?"

"They're scammers, John, not stupid. I'm not sure how thoroughly Wellspring will research you, but I imagine they'll be very keen on finding out your financial status at a minimum. 'Successful television producer with his own production company' has money written all over it."

John was still a bit at sea. "What about you? Aren't you going?"

"Of course I'm going." He passed a second folder to John. "Scott Holmes. Advertising executive. Friend of John Wilson, along for moral support. We met when the advertising agency where I worked was engaged by ITV to produce a series of public service messages on the critical problem of people over-using laundry soap."

"Scott?" John said, somewhat disappointingly.

"It's my name."

"Yeah, but-"

"'Sherlock' is too unusual. They might recognize it, and it is on the website, after all. And your blog. And in half the papers in London."

"I see."

"John Wilson and Scott Holmes formed Spotlight Productions but are now retired. Retired and rich. Also they have an appointment with Wellspring tomorrow morning at half ten. That gives you-" glanced at his watch "-a little over fourteen hours to get familiar with those profiles. And I mean familiar, John. These people are liars and con artists, but they're not stupid. We have to assume that they'll not only look into your background but that they'll test you, as well."

"Test me?"

"Yes. Probing questions, checking for consistency in your answers. All that sort of thing."

"Seriously?"

"Very. They're greedy and have a lot at stake. Whether they really believe in this stuff or not they are adept at parting people from mints of money. They've built a multi-million pound business and they've been doing it for almost twenty years. They may use confederates and certainly other means of gaining information from the clients, one of which is undoubtedly on-line research. You must watch what you say and to whom you say it. You must stay in character at all times unless you and I are alone, and even then we will need to be careful. The place is no doubt wired for sound and video, so until I tell you that we're in the clear, you need to stay in character."

"Okay," John said slowly. Sherlock's gravity on the point impressed him. "How will you know whether we're 'in the clear,' then?"

Sherlock reached into his pocket and produced a tiny electronic device, something like a thumb drive in appearance. "With this." He held it out in the palm of his hand.

John took it and examined it. "What is it?"

"A TSCM."

"Who?"

"A technical surveillance countermeasure. A bug detector, in essence. Detects active and passive bugs that transmit audio and video, infrared eavesdropping devices, and GPS trackers, among other things. Very useful."

John handed it back to him. "I'll bet. From Mycroft?"

"From the Internet."