It didn't work, John!

Chapter 3

The next morning Greg came in while they were sitting at breakfast.
He gratefully took a cup of tea. And while John and Sherlock enjoyed fresh rolls with Mrs Hudson's incredibly good homemade strawberry jam, he reported.

"The young woman earned well, working in her father's firm as head accountant and drawing a generous salary. Well, daughter of the boss. She could afford the expensive clothes and perfume."
Greg blew on his tea.
"Madame Jeannette confirmed she came to her house regularly for manicures. Elisabeth Snow was still living at home with her parents. More precisely, her father and stepmother. The neighborhood puts them in good standing, a harmonious family, never quarrels, always doing things together..."
"Pah, gross," Sherlock said. "I can't stand that much harmony. Most of the time, it's wrong. So I prefer those who don't hide from the world how fallible and broken they are."
He looked at Greg.
"No rumors, no hidden scandals?"
"Well..."
Greg hesitated.

"Look, Greg, I know you're a decent guy," Sherlock said.
"Too decent sometimes. In fact, I often wonder how you manage to be such a good cop despite your sometimes girlishly decent manner. But..."
Greg was about to go on a rampage when he realised that it was actually a compliment!
A compliment! From Sherlock!
His eyes got really big, looking up at John, stunned. He was amazed, too.
Sherlock was making enormous strides.

„... Greg, if you could ever decide to listen to me again: If there's a hidden scandal, you tell me. I need to know everything. Please."
Greg swallowed, still dazed by the compliment, and nodded.
"Well, there's this old lady a few doors down ... sort of a gossip on legs, you know?"
Sherlock and John nodded.
"Well, she said there'd been a scandal. The good stepmother isn't quite as well-behaved as she'd like to appear on the surface. If the old lady's right, she's probably having affairs on and off. And the most piquant..."
Greg, the policeman who had already seen a lot, the man who wasn't too good for any "Fuck!" and the husband who had already fucked his husband in all imaginable and some very surprising ways, had the ability to blush at things that seemed really indecent to him.
Like now, for example.
"Well, the last of her lovers is now the fiancé of her murdered stepdaughter. The daughter has stolen him away from her mother."
Sherlock whistled in his teeth.
"Well, that's something to start on, isn't it?"
He took a hearty bite of a croissant, which John noticed with benevolence. Yeah, his eating had got a lot better since he and Sherlock were a thing. And since he actually listened to him. John was quite pleased.
And then Greg's phone rang.
"Holmes-Lestrade?"
...
"Where?"
...
"Yes, I'm coming. I'm bringing Sherlock."
He looked at his two brothers-in-law, well, John hadn't been official, but now that the date had been set, he was generally referred to.
"There's been a new body. Back in King's Park."
Sherlock and John jumped up and rushed into their bedroom, both still in their dressing gowns.
Three minutes later, they were standing in front of Greg, fully dressed. He had his car with him, so the three of them drove out to the scene together.

Anderson started talking, and there was Sherlock's finger again.
"Stop! If I want to hear totally unqualified remarks, I'll have a chat with my brother Mycroft about bringing up a kid."
"Well, um..." said Greg.
Sherlock spun around. He looked at Greg. His eyes were getting bigger.
He was about to open his mouth to say something, when John, who didn't quite understand what was going on, but who suspected disaster, stepped in.
"Remember Sherlock," he whispered, "private things and public...!"
Sherlock swallowed the words he was about to say.
Then he took a deep breath and said:
"Greg, 8:00 tonight, our house. We need to talk. John's cooking."
Greg nodded.
Then Sherlock thought of something.
He turned to John.
"Er... are you OK with that?"
John, who was pleased that he'd thought to ask him, although they would still have to work on the order; in any case, John nodded.

Donovan then explained the discovery of the body. Walkers had discovered her.
Another old-fashioned dress. Hair dyed black again. No belt this time.
John had again determined strangulation as the cause of death.
The young woman's pupils suggested that she had been drugged earlier.
Her handbag had been found nearby.
"Jennifer White," lectured by Donovan, "28, regional manager of a cosmetics chain owned by her dad. Another young career woman by the grace of her daddy."
Sherlock examined her.
She was also wearing normal clothes under that strange dress. She was also extremely well-groomed.
Fine clothes, fine shoes, fine cosmetics. Well-groomed nails.
"Not Madame Jeannette this time. I can't place the work here. Good, no, very good. But not first-class."
He flipped the dress aside a little.
"Grass stains. Here, the killer was kneeling on the hem of the dress."
He kneeled down the same way and tried to reach out to wherever one could reach from there.
It had rained after the body was put down. Yet the dress was dry under her legs. but not under her torso.
Sherlock clasped the upper part of the dead woman's body.
He raised it. He held it with his left arm. With his right hand he brushed across her hair.
Her hair, dyed as clumsy as before. Black again.

His hand stopped.
He had found something in her hair and pulled it out.
A jewelry comb. The kind you put in your hair. It's a fancy piece with a few tiny diamonds on it. It had been put in so tightly that blood was visible at the ends of the prongs.

"Oh, fuck!" moaned John.
This time it was he who brought the investigation forward with a discovery.
"I bet if we find another dead girl, she'll have a piece of a chewed apple in her mouth."