INT. – The church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London - NIGHT
Wednesday, 5 March 2014
John and Sherlock are in their places in the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, which is packed to the last seat, ready for the concert to begin. Their seats are right in the front row, towards one end. Sherlock is in his customary dark suit, and John, as instructed, has also dressed with particular care. He is wearing his black engagement suit, but with a slightly more cheerful tie this time. John is reading in the programme brochure, slowly turning pages. Sherlock keeps looking over his shoulder, his eyes darting all over the church. All of a sudden, the phone in John's pocket pings a text alert. Sherlock turns back to his friend and raises a disapproving eyebrow. John fumbles to get his phone out, visibly embarrassed that he forgot to switch it off. He glances at the screen while putting it on silence. A fond little smile lights up his face.
SHERLOCK: Still coherent, is she?
JOHN (pointedly): Stone cold sober, at least by her spelling.
SHERLOCK: Well, the night's still young.
He resumes his scrutiny of the concert venue, now focussing unobtrusively on the people sitting immediately next to him.
JOHN (his eyes back on the concert programme): Stop deducing your neighbours, Sherlock. (Sherlock doesn't react.) By the way – (John looks up again.) - why's Mycroft getting shouted at in Zurich?
SHERLOCK: What? Oh, I don't know. Something to do with a bank. They've been negotiating back and forth for months, and their director, who is a textbook choleric, is getting louder every time they meet, and less and less imaginative in his expletives.
JOHN: Why would Mycroft bother talking to a Swiss bank in person? Seems a bit out of his domain.
SHERLOCK: If you asked Mycroft, he'd insist that everything is his domain. But he mentioned HM Revenue and Customs, so at that point I decided that my attention was better served determining how fast I would have to stir my cup of tea for the kinetic energy from my spoon to make the fluid hotter rather than cooler.
JOHN: Does he do that often? Go abroad and sort things out for government agenücies, I mean?
SHERLOCK: Oh yes. He juggles three dozen aliases for that sort of thing. Can't wait to find out what Anthea came up for him on this occasion.
JOHN (with a smirk): Mr Moneypenny?
SHERLOCK: Probably.
JOHN: Are you telling me she's got a sense of humour, too?
SHERLOCK (with a smile): You'd be surprised. But yeah, Mycroft and legwork. He hates it, of course. You should hear how he moans, every time he has to go on one of those trips. Of course, he believes that the world will stop turning if he leaves his London office for more than a day. But lo and behold, he can go away for a whole week and let himself be shouted at from Brussels to Baghdad - Earth's rotation remains unaffected, much to his chagrin.
JOHN (resuming his reading): Well, in case that Swiss banker needs some inspiration for more creative maledictions, this Requiem is full of it. "Burned up by eternal fire"... "sentenced to acrid flames"... real cheery.
At that moment, applause rises from the ranks of the audience as the members of the orchestra and the choir enter to take their places on the stage. Shortly afterwards, the solemn, measured music of the opening movement of Mozart's Requiem is filling the church.
EXT. - Trafalgar Square, outside St. Martin-in-the-Fields – NIGHT
After the concert, Sherlock and John, back in their overcoats, come out of the church and walk down the steps. Before them opens the huge expanse of the brightly lit and still quite busy Trafalgar Square.
SHERLOCK: So, how did you like it?
JOHN: Hmm. Heavy artillery. But, yeah. Impressive. That music makes you feel rather small and … mortal, somehow. If you know what I mean.
SHERLOCK (soberly): Oh, I do. Small and stupid. (John frowns, but before he can comment, Sherlock continues in a much lighter tone.) So, dinner now?
JOHN: Yeah, sure. Is it on Mycroft, too?
SHERLOCK: I'm sure we can find a way.
They turn left along Charing Cross Road, but they've only got a few steps further when the phone in Sherlock's pocket rings. He takes the call while they walk on.
SHERLOCK (into the phone): Yes? … Ah. Yes. (He halts.) … Alright. Where? … Good. We're on our way. (He ends the call and turns to John. His face has lit up with anticipation.) Lestrade.
JOHN: Anyone dead?
SHERLOCK: Arson.
JOHN (drily): How fitting.
Sherlock pockets his phone, steps up to the kerb and flags down a cab. Clearly, the game is on.
EXT. - Residential Street, West Hampstead, London - NIGHT
A residential street in a fairly well-off part of West Hampstead, a little later. The scene is illuminated by glaring floodlight. One of the well-kept terraced houses has been gutted by a raging fire, and it and its neighbouring houses are cordoned off. Firemen are working on securing the site with heavy machinery. There is still a haze of smoke in the air, but the fire is already extinguished. There is a fairly strong police presence, too, and some onlookers are loitering outside the perimeter of the crime scene, but there are no blue lights flashing. The catastrophe isn't all that recent and already under control.
A cab comes driving up and halts. Sherlock and John get out.
They're let through into the cordoned-off area by a uniformed constable as a matter of course. By the iron railing separating the burned-out house's front yard from the street, they're met by Greg Lestrade.
SHERLOCK (looking straight over Lestrade's head, at the burned-out house): Alright, what've you got?
Lestrade nods hello to John, then half-turns back towards the site of the fire.
LESTRADE: Haven't been in there yet, but we're only waiting for the all-clear. (He gestures at the forensics team that's already hovering in the background.) Seems the people who lived here had a built-in sauna installed in their basement. The firemen say it looks like they left the heater on too long, because the fire seems to have started there and then spread out.
JOHN: What idiots would leave the sauna oven on and not notice until the whole house was on fire?
LESTRADE: Dead idiots. They found two bodies down there, right in the sauna itself. A man and a woman. That's why we're here.
JOHN: Sounds like a freak accident.
LESTRADE: I know.
Sherlock, who has been scanning the scene with his eyes all this time, now refocuses on Lestrade.
SHERLOCK: Why am I being requested to look into a freak accident?
LESTRADE: Because it stops looking like an accident when you find people dead in a sauna with their clothes on and the door blocked from the outside.
John grimaces.
SHERLOCK: Have they been identified?
LESTRADE: We'll have to wait for dental records or DNA to be sure. I'm told they're not a pretty sight. But it seems likely that they're the tenants of the house. (He consults his notebook.) A middle-aged Swedish couple. The man's a professional football coach. Used to play for Sweden when he was younger. Their name's Hedlund. David and Sibylla.
Silence. Then John's head suddenly snaps towards Sherlock, his eyes wide.
JOHN (aghast): Jesus.
The fireman in command of the operation, dressed in his heavy protective suit and helmet and carrying a SCBA mask in his hand, comes over to them and addresses Lestrade.
FIREMAN: Sorry, Detective Inspector. I can't let you fellows in just yet. It'll be at least an hour yet til we've got the basement secured so it won't fall on your heads. It's still too full of smoke for you to go in without masks, either.
LESTRADE (resigning himself to a long night): Alright. Give me a shout when you're ready. (To Sherlock and John, apologetically) Sorry about that. He'd said earlier that -
SHERLOCK (generously): Well, never mind. Come to Baker Street tomorrow morning and tell us what you've got.
He turns and walks away. John exchanges a surprised look with Lestrade, but Lestrade only shrugs. John nods goodbye and follows Sherlock. He catches up with him after a few steps.
JOHN: Don't tell me you didn't notice.
SHERLOCK (walking on): Notice what?
John digs the concert programme out of the pocket of his jacket and holds it up.
JOHN: "The day of wrath, that day that will dissolve the world in ashes, as David and the Sybil foretold." The first verse of the "Dies Irae" sequence from the Requiem.
SHERLOCK (dismissively): What's an eighteenth century funeral mass got to do with a twenty-first century crime?
JOHN: That's what I'd like to know. Those names, Sherlock. What kind of sick coincidence is that?
SHERLOCK: What's in a name? (They duck under the police tape and continue down the pavement.) I wouldn't have taken you for a superstitious man, John.
JOHN: It's not superstition, it's a fact! Don't you find it damn odd to come out of Mozart's Requiem to find two people called David and Sybilla reduced to ashes? On Ash Wednesday, too? Don't tell me that's Mycroft's sense of humour.
SHERLOCK: None of this has anything to do with Mycroft, John.
JOHN (stopping in his tracks): What?
SHERLOCK (impatiently): Use your eyes. Look at the tickets, and look properly for once.
John takes the concert tickets back out of the pocket of his jacket where he's stored them. They halt under a streetlamp to look.
SHERLOCK: They're not subscription tickets. They were bought individually, only today, from one of those box office stalls in the West End. See the little numbers there, in the bottom left corner? (He points with a gloved finger.) Date and time of purchase.
JOHN (peering at the printed numerals): 5:48 this afternoon?
SHERLOCK: Exactly. Besides, they were for seats in the first row. As you noticed yourself, in a concert featuring a symphonic orchestra playing with maximum symphonic vehemence ninety percent of the time, placing someone there equals an acoustic assault. You may think what you like of Mycroft otherwise, but he's definitely above suspicion in that department.
JOHN (incredulously): So - so you're saying that you knew all along that those tickets didn't come from Mycroft?
SHERLOCK: As soon as I saw them, yes.
JOHN (with great indignation): But you still sat through that whole concert, cool as a cucumber, while mere miles away two people were burnt horribly to death in their own basement?
SHERLOCK (offended): Excuse me? I know how to use my eyes, John, but I'm not clairvoyant. How was I to know that -
JOHN (still angrily): - that the tickets were a ruse to keep you from stopping a murderer? No, nothing suspicious about them at all, was there? Just a little hocus-pocus with a masked stranger knocking on our door, and -
SHERLOCK (crossing his arms belligerently): Don't tell me you weren't intrigued by that, too!
JOHN (bitterly): If you'd believed that, you wouldn't have kept me in the dark, to make sure I'd come along quietly. You just wanted some private fun with that little puzzle, didn't you? Is that why you couldn't keep your eyes on the performance? You thought someone had sent you to the concert on purpose because something intriguing was going to happen at the church itself?
SHERLOCK (defensively): It was the most likely explanation!
JOHN: Well, you were wrong then, weren't you? And now Greg's got a double murder on his hands, and -
SHERLOCK (cutting him off, with cold dignity): You go on ahead, John. I need to go back. There's something I forgot. I'll see you in the morning.
He turns on his heel and walks back towards the scene of the fire. John shakes his head after him, then squares his shoulders and walks off with firm steps into the direction of the main road, not looking back.
Sherlock, meanwhile, has returned to the crime scene. There's a fire engine parked at the edge of the cordoned-off area, and two or three firemen are sitting on the back steps, facing away from the ruin of the house, taking a short break from their duties. They're sipping from water bottles and talking in an undertone. One of them has taken off his heavy protective jacket, his helmet and his breathing mask, and has hung them on the iron railing in front of the adjoining house, a little aside from where they're sitting. Sherlock comes sneaking up to the equipment and lifts it soundlessly from its impromptu hooks, while the firemen are looking the other way.
Author's Note:
I really must apologise to you all, but this will be the last chapter of our story that I'm posting here on the site. Translating the multi-media content and the interactive aspect into plain narrative just about worked for this chapter, but there are chapters coming up in which it won't work at all. Besides, it seems a shame to strip the story of what - in our eyes - makes it really special.
I really don't want to lure anyone away from your preferred archive - but just for this one story, may I ask you all to come over to AO3 (Archive Of Our Own) and continue reading it there instead of here? You'll find me there under the name Jolie_Black, and the story under the same title as here. My co-author RubraSaetaFictor and I are hoping to keep you all well entertained over the summer, and we'd hate to lose a single reader just because this site doesn't do images/audio and doesn't have a comments section...
If you don't have an AO3 account, no problem. You don't need to be logged in to read and comment. The subscription/follow feature is available only to registered users, but I'd be happy to notify you of any new updates to the story via a PM on this site, too. Just drop me a line if you want me to.
I'm marking this fragment as complete even though it isn't, just so nobody keeps waiting for updates that aren't coming.
Hope to see you all on AO3! The story continues in Chapter 4, over there. :-)