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  ALCHEMY

  MARIE S. CROSSWELL

  When someone starts killing London's homeless, Sherlock Holmes sets out to solve the series of grisly murders, taking her best friend and business partner Jane Watson along for the ride. The killer makes it clear he has a vendetta against Sherlock, and as she pursues him, she discovers there's more to the case than meets the eye.

  While struggling to identify the murderer, Sherlock's close friendship with DI Lestrade reaches a crossroads, and she faces an unprecedented challenge: romance.

  Alchemy

  By Marie S. Crosswell

  Published by Less Than Three Press LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

  Edited by James Loke Hale

  Cover designed by Natasha Snow

  This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.

  First Edition June 2018

  Copyright © 2018 by Marie S. Crosswell

  Printed in the United States of America

  Digital ISBN 9781684312924

  ALCHEMY

  She's dreaming in the shallows of sleep. A dream she's had dozens of times in the last year, the deep blues of water, the cold, sweet silence. Gliding through it like a giant stingray. The light above her feeble and rippling. She gives into the feeling of submergence, the sleek cold, the soundless blue seeping into her body. She doesn't know if she's floating or swimming. When she sees the giant, red octopus sprawled across the top of a coral shelf yards below her, she is not intimidated. The octopus pushes herself up and away on her ballooning tentacles, squirting black ink that turns the water pitch black in every direction. She is suspended in darkness—but she isn't afraid. She looks up and sees the weak, white light beyond the surface, a distant sun transformed into a full moon.

  *~*~*

  Lestrade stands alone next to the covered corpse with her hands in her coat pockets, her mouth set into a grim line. Sherlock heads straight for her, stopping just before the opposite end of the body. She does a quick scan of her surroundings, looking for anything weird or shocking that would explain why Lestrade called her. She notices some of the forensics people and the uniformed coppers glaring at her from a distance, but she ignores them. Plenty of the police force openly dislikes her.

  "Are you alone?" Lestrade says.

  "Watson's on her way," says Sherlock. "What's the story?"

  Lestrade glances at the wet, black tarp covering the body. "One victim. White female, approximately twenty years of age, obviously homeless."

  "All right, and?"

  "Looks like she was beaten to death."

  Sherlock pauses, staring at the older woman. "Lestrade, you did not call me out here to solve a murder an idiotic police detective who just passed his exam could figure out by himself if he bothered to do the work."

  Lestrade crouches down and pulls back the tarp, revealing the victim lying on her back. Her face is covered in black and purple bruises, one eye swollen shut, her peeling lips split and scabbed, flecks of blood dried around her nostrils and the skin above her mouth stained pink, dark blood dried in her dirty blonde hair. Her neck has bruises typical of strangulation victims, but it's likely she was choked only as a means of torture and died from the beating itself. Most of the damage to her body is hidden under layers of ragged clothing, but Sherlock knows her torso is purple and blue without having to strip her.

  It isn't the gruesome condition of the corpse that stuns Sherlock. It's the one detail that sets this corpse apart from every other she's seen in her career as a consulting private detective: her name has been cut into the left inner forearm. SHERLOCK. The blood washed away in the rain, but the skin is still inflamed, red and angry around the dried up wounds.

  Sherlock looks up at Lestrade.

  "Did you know her?" says Lestrade.

  "No," Sherlock replies, only a little outraged at the question.

  "She wasn't one of your network?"

  "No."

  "You know I have to ask."

  "I've never seen this woman before, and if I had, I would tell you."

  Lestrade nods, then leans over to cover the corpse with the tarp again.

  Sherlock would inspect the ground surrounding the victim if she wasn't so disturbed by the notion that Lestrade might suspect her of murder. She watches the other woman in disbelief, waiting for Lestrade to explain herself, but the Detective Inspector doesn't speak, looking at the tarp with her back to the other Yarders.

  "What are you thinking?" Sherlock demands, her shock melting fast in the heat of her mounting indignation.

  "I'm thinking whoever killed this girl has something against you," Lestrade says. "Maybe you know him, and maybe you don't. But he certainly knows who you are."

  "No, you were just considering the possibility I did this or had something to do with it. In what universe does it make any sense to suspect I not only killed this woman but signed my name to the deed?"

  Lestrade gives Sherlock a soft but pointed look. "I had to ask, Sherlock."

  "No, you didn't, Lestrade, because you knew the answer before you asked the question."

  "I had to ask."

  Watson's cab arrives and lets her out on the road. She jogs up to the pair of detectives and stops between them, looking from Sherlock to Lestrade. "Hey, sorry, I didn't get here sooner," she says. "What did I miss?"

  Sherlock doesn't take her eyes off Lestrade for a beat, glaring at her in a way Watson has probably never seen. Lestrade's expression remains conciliatory, almost apologetic, not defensive.

  "What's going on?" Watson says.

  Sherlock finally looks at her and says, "Walk with me."

  She starts moving without waiting for Watson, turning her back on Lestrade and heading away from the police. Watson hurries to catch up with her and falls in step alongside her.

  "The man who did this wants to punish me," Sherlock says, her mind racing but controlled.

  "What?" Watson replies.

  "He cut my name into the body."

  Watson stops, and Sherlock stops with her, the two of them facing each other. Sherlock has her hands in her coat pockets, and she looms over Watson, five foot ten to Watson's five four. Watson looks up at her, brow creased in bewilderment. A light rain begins to drizzle onto their shoulders.

  "The victim's homeless," Sherlock adds.

  Watson pauses. "What are we going to do?" she says, almost whispering.

  Sherlock knows Watson isn't asking for the obvious answer. She's not talking about solving the case. She's asking her question out of kneejerk fear that has more to do with past threats to Sherlock's life than this murder.

  "Treat this like any other case," Sherlock says, to herself as much as Watson. "Work it. And stay level-headed."

  Watson nods but doesn't look any less concerned. "Are you all right?" she says.

  Sherlock glances to her left, at Lestrade and the corpse and the other coppers in the distance. "You know the answer to that better than I do, Watson."

  She starts trudging back to the body, grimacing, refusing to make eye contact with Lestrade.

  *~*~*

  Sherlock meets him in his private study on the third floor of the Diogenes Club, bypassing the common room on the first floor where she always provokes the disapproving looks of the old, white men who sit there in silence with their newspapers and cigarettes. She doesn't knock on the study door or wait for the secretary stationed outside to
announce her, just barges in and shuts the door behind her.

  Mycroft is standing at the window, looking into the rain with his hands in his trouser pockets. The older Holmes doesn't turn toward Sherlock, and this, in combination with his pose, tells her he already knows about the murder. Of course he does. The man is his own branch of government, with his hand in every intelligence agency cookie jar.

  Sherlock doesn't sit down, but she does move further into the room before speaking. "There's been a homeless girl murdered," she says. "In Southwark. She had my name sliced into her arm."

  Mycroft doesn't respond at first or take his attention away from the view outside. "Do the police suspect you?" he says, when he finally speaks.

  "Not officially. But you already know that."

  "Did they interrogate you?" Mycroft looks over his shoulder at Sherlock. "Did they take you to Scotland Yard and do it by the book?"

  "No," says Sherlock, annoyed with her brother's stupid questions. "Lestrade asked at the scene, if I knew the victim. She didn't ask me for an alibi."

  "Do you have one?"

  "Oh, sod off."

  "No, really. Do you?"

  Sherlock glares at her brother, who faces her now with his back to the window.

  "The victim was killed after eleven o'clock last night," she says. "I was home."

  "Can Watson vouch for you?" Mycroft replies.

  "Yes."

  Mycroft, his hands behind his back, moves toward his favorite chair in front of the fire. "Not that her support of your alibi counts for much to the police," he says and sits down.

  There isn't another chair opposite of Mycroft's for Sherlock to sit in, as this study is a place where Mycroft comes to be alone. Sherlock doesn't feel like sitting down anyway. She considers stepping closer to Mycroft but decides to keep her distance, making it more difficult for him to watch and read her face. She starts to pace, slow and steady.

  "What do you plan to do?" he says.

  "I plan to find out who the killer is and finish him," Sherlock snaps, her raised voice jarring in the large and quiet room. "What else would I do?"

  Mycroft looks into the fire without speaking for a long moment. If he's concerned, she can't tell. Her brother is an inscrutable man, even less prone to emotion and sentiment than she is. She's never doubted he cares for her—as far as she knows, she is one of the few people on earth Mycroft feels attached to—but he rarely has occasion to show it.

  "What do you want from me?" he says and casts his gaze on her. "Surely, you didn't come here to be consoled."

  "The body's been mined for DNA samples already, and Lestrade pulled in a favor to have the testing fast tracked at the lab. When the results come in, if there's a match, I need you to do whatever you can to locate the bastard."

  "And if there isn't a match?"

  Sherlock pauses, still pacing. "You can find out everything there is to know about the dead woman. That information may contribute to identifying the killer."

  Mycroft considers her, with that expression he's been directing at Sherlock since she was a girl: clinical observation tinged with personal curiosity. "This bothers you," he says. "Why?"

  Sherlock stops in her tracks and whips around to face her brother, yelling. "He knows who I am, Mycroft! He cut my name into her body! He wants me to work this case, which means he wants me to find him if he doesn't find me first!"

  "So think about who you know," says Mycroft, unperturbed. "I don't have a running list. Despite what you may think. If the murderer is targeting you for personal reasons, then you are the best source of information you have."

  Sherlock stares at him in growing disbelief. "You don't take this seriously, do you?" she says.

  Mycroft blinks at her with a hint of suspicion in his eyes. "I take it as seriously as the situation warrants. You're not afraid of the murderer. You're being dramatic for some other reason. What is it?"

  "Are you going to help me or not?"

  "I've never denied you my help," says Mycroft.

  The Holmes siblings share a look across the room, the fire crackling behind Mycroft and the rain pitter-pattering against the windowpanes. There is a tension in the look, a silent knowing, which reminds Sherlock of the unique mental connection she and Mycroft share. They have always felt they're above most of the world together, in their intellectual prowess. Mycroft's powers of deduction rival Sherlock's, a fact that both annoys her and serves her, and Mycroft seems to find his interactions with her a relief from the lesser minds that surround him. Sherlock could not verbally articulate what passes between them in this loaded eye contact they share, but she can feel it bristling in the back of her mind, confirming something intuitive that hasn't fully materialized yet.

  When Mycroft looks away, the tension in the air dissolves, and Sherlock feels calmer, as if her brother let the air out of her distress. She stands still and breathes.

  "I would promise to keep you informed, but you've already raised the surveillance level on me and Watson, I assume," she says, nonplussed.

  "My people can't track your progress," says Mycroft. "You know I don't have your flat bugged, Sherlock."

  "Right. Well, if you decide to make yourself useful, I won't complain."

  Sherlock turns away from her brother and heads for the door, her pace slow compared to what it was when she entered the room.

  "Sherlock," Mycroft says.

  She stops and looks over her shoulder, already clutching the door handle.

  "I recommend you sort out your personal affairs sooner rather than later."

  She knows exactly what he means. They haven't discussed the issue, but somehow, her brother figured it out. She almost wants to ask him how, but she leaves him without another word.

  *~*~*

  The man goes by the nickname "Chips." Sherlock hasn't known him long and doesn't know him well, but he's helped her out a few times since she met him three years ago. She and Watson go to his daytime haunt in Peckham, under a secluded archway next to a quiet road. He's one of the few homeless there, the others lingering at a distance when Sherlock and Watson arrive and disappearing like mice in a kitchen when they reach Chips. He's standing next to a fire burning in a metal drum, feeding scraps of newspaper into the flames. He doesn't look surprised to see Sherlock—but he doesn't look pleased either.

  "Chips," she says.

  "Holmes," he replies. "You're here about the murder."

  Sherlock nods, caught off guard by the sudden burn in her cheeks. "Yes. That."

  "Do you know who did it?"

  She shakes her head. "No. Not yet."

  "Looking for information, then?"

  "Did you know her?" says Watson. "The dead woman?"

  "No," he says. "Never met her, though maybe I seen her around. Someone told me her name was Sasha."

  "Do you know anything else about her?" Sherlock says. "I need any information you can give me. If I'm going to find this bastard—"

  She doesn't finish her sentence, and he looks at her with that grim press of the lips. He's stopped feeding the fire, and now he stands next to it, close enough to feel the heat against his chest and belly, close enough for the light to tint his face orange.

  "Did anyone see anything that night?" says Sherlock. "Before or after the murder? A strange man walking around, a parked car on the street that didn't belong there, anything?"

  He sniffs and says, "Not that I've heard."

  "Do you know if Sasha—do you know if she ever prostituted?" Watson says.

  He looks at her. "I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, seems like most of the women out here have done it at one point or another, for food or a warm place to sleep. The people I spoke to who knew this Sasha girl didn't mention it, though."

  Sherlock exhales and looks into the distance, her eyes narrowed. "Anybody find the knife or clothes with blood on them?"

  He shakes his head. "Sorry. Wish I knew something more."

  "Chips, do you know who found her?" Watson says. "The police got an anonymous
tip, but there was nobody at the scene when they showed up."

  He does know who found the body. Sherlock can see it in his eyes.

  But he says, "Everybody I talked to heard about it secondhand. Nobody gives up their sources 'round here."

  Sherlock decides not to push it. She doesn't want to risk alienating him this early in the investigation.

  She and Watson stand with Chips around the fire can in silence for a minute.

  "Nobody out here thinks you did it," he says, looking at Sherlock. "Nobody. We may not be your mates, but we know you aren't stupid. We at least know that. So if it seems like people on the streets are giving you the cold shoulder for a little while, looking at you funny and what not, it's just 'cause they're scared of the nutter who killed that girl seeing them with you. Not scared of you."

  Sherlock believes him, but she finds no comfort in it.

  He sniffs and looks back down at the fire. "Anyway, I'll keep my eyes peeled for you. Let you know if I hear anything. Unless I'm the next one to go."

  He grins without any detectable fear.

  "Thank you," Watson says to him.

  Sherlock nods. "We'll be in touch."

  *~*~*

  It's raining again when she shows up at Lestrade's front door, the water one even sheet. For a long beat, she stands outside with her hands in her coat pockets, unsure about visiting. She hasn't heard from Lestrade since the crime scene a few days ago, and while that isn't an unusual amount of time for them to go without speaking, they left off on a tense note. Sherlock feels straightened out now, clear and level-headed, calm again. She didn't come here to talk about work—if there was a new development in the case, Lestrade would've notified her, and Sherlock hasn't figured anything out—but she had to wait until she quieted her mind about it before talking to Lestrade again.

  She rings the doorbell and waits, the rain padding against her shoulders and wetting her hair.

  Lestrade opens up and looks surprised to see her for a second.

  "Bad time?" says Sherlock.

  Lestrade shakes her head. "No. Do you want to come in?"

  Sherlock steps inside as Lestrade moves backward into the foyer. She sheds her coat and hangs it on the rack next to the entrance, as Lestrade heads into the kitchen.