Welcome to Baker Street

90. Security breach

221B BAKER STREET

The next day

The next afternoon Giulia and Sherlock are sitting in the living room at 221B, while John is in his bedroom. Sherlock hasn't breathed a word since the previous night at the theatre. He hadn't even acknowledged Lestrade when he came to the flat to give him the medical report regarding the night the tenor suffered from an insulin overdose, one month before his death. Sherlock had silently taken the report from the inspector's hands without a sound. After a thorough reading that took him only five minutes, he had tossed the folder in a corner of the flat and flopped down on the sofa with an exasperated groan. No comment.

Today, while studying in the living room, Giulia has been stealing preoccupied glances at him throughout the day. He looks as if he was miles away from everything, locked in his mind palace, a vexed frown permanently sitting on his face.

Now she is slouching in John's armchair while typing furiously on her phone. She suddenly grumbles, annoyed at the screen and stands up to walk to the window. She glances at Sherlock, who is staring at the two marble statues placed on the coffee table, piercing them with his fiery gaze.

"Are you still waiting for them to give you the name of the killer?" she mocks him, looking beyond the glass into the cold dusk.

He looks away from the figurines and closes his eyes, resting his chin on his hands.

"I couldn't care less about the murderer. I want to know how the tenor was killed. If it wasn't atmospheric pressure due to water depth that made his lungs burst, then what?"

She shakes her head despairingly. There's a killer out there, and all he cares about is finding some answers that could reassure him about his infallible anatomical knowledge.

"Speaking of atmospheric phenomena," she takes the hint to change the subject, "it must be freezing outside. I'll invite him in for a warm cup of tea," she says, heading for the door.

"Who? Are you looking at a tramp on the pavement?" Sherlock asks, cracking just one eye open.

"No, my bodyguard." She takes her purse and coat from the rack before going downstairs.

A few minutes later, Giulia re-emerges, followed by a tall, strapping man. Sherlock observes the two of them taking off their coats and hanging them on the coat rack. Giulia disappears into the kitchen to put the kettle on, and the guard rolls up the sleeves of his shirt to compensate for the sudden temperature variation from the outdoors. Then he walks to the centre of the living room, stands in front of the yellow smiley face painted on the wall and riddled with bullets, and comments drily, "Glad to see finally where all the shots I hear you fire in this house end up."

Sherlock does not even bother to lift his eyes on him. "And what are your thoughts on that?"

"Impressive marksmanship: right in the eyes. But in my opinion, smiley faces should never be targets. I'd interpret it as a sign of luck, actually. Did you know that the first typographic emoticon representing a smiley face appears in the poem To Fortune by Robert Herrick? That should say a lot, right? It's proof that a smiley face is a good omen," he jokes amicably.

"Fascinating," Sherlock remarks in the most unfazed tone possible. "Are you going to sit down or would you rather wait for direct order, Southern boy?"

The guard furrows his brows, momentarily taken aback. "Excuse me?"

"Born and raised in Texas or New Mexico? I was never good at telling those dialects apart," Sherlock specifies nonchalantly.