The Woman Who Counted (A Sherlolly Tale)

Chapter 24

            “You don’t tell him,” A voice said.

            Sherlock opened his eyes with much difficulty.

            “Sherlock.” Her voice said in a singsong manner.

            Sherlock looked up. A blurry figure stood beside Sherlock’s hospital bed, but he knew whom it was.

            “You don’t tell John.” Mary Watson leaned over him. “Look at me – and tell me you’re not gonna tell him.” Her whispering was intense; her voice soft, and serious.

            Sherlock’s vision went even burrier, and he fell unconscious again.

            Sherlock awakes to rustling newspaper, and someone is holding up the front page of Daily Express. The main headline reads “SHAG-A-LOT-HOLMES”. The person holding the newspaper puts it down and replaces it with The Daily Mirror. It’s headline reads “7 TIMES A NIGHT IN BAKER STREET”. That one is put down and is replaced with an inside sheet. The headline on that paper reads, “He Made Me Wear the Hat”. There was a photograph in the paper of a smiling Janine wearing a deerstalker.

            “I’m buying a cottage,” Janine says, putting the newspaper down. “I made a lot of money out of you, mister.” She sits at the end of his bed, and smiles at him.

            “You didn’t give these stores to Magnusson,” Sherlock said tiredly. “Did you?”

            “God no – one of his rivals. He was spittin’!”

            Sherlock grunted, and gave her a little smile.

            Janine’s smile turned into a frown, and she narrowed her eyes at Sherlock. “Sherlock Holmes, you are a back-stabbing, heartless, manipulative bastard.”

            Sherlock pressed a button on a remote which lay on his bed, and it began to rise his bed and push him into a seated position. “And you as it turns out are a grasping opportunistic, publicity hungry, tabloid whore.”

            Janine smiled again. “So we’re good then?”

            “Yeah, of course,” Sherlock smiled. “Where’s the cottage?”

            “Sussex Downs.”

            “Hmm, nice.”

            “It’s gorgeous. There’s beehives, but I’m getting rid of those.”

            Sherlock tried to push himself into a seated position, but as he did an intolerable pain hit him and he gasped.

            “Aw,” Janine said. “Hurts, does it? Probably wanna restart your morphine. I might have fiddled with the taps.”

            Sherlock grimaced as he reached over to a machine next to his bed and pressed a few buttons, giving himself the almost maximum dose of morphine. “How much more revenge are you going to need?”

            “Just the occasional top-up,” Janine said. She looked around the room. “Dream come true for you, this place. They actually attach the drugs to you!”

            “Not good for working.”

            “You won’t be working for awhile, Sherl. You lied to me. You lied and lied.”