The Devil in Devon

Chapter Eighteen

Six months later

John looked up from the forensics report when Alexei entered the office.

"You've got the translation done already?"

The teenager didn't bother to hide a smug grin. "It would have been done half an hour ago, but there was a deplorable amount of slang."

John smiled too. Modesty and tolerance for the common man had never been Holmes attributes.

The HWL (Holmes-Watson-Lestrade) detective agency was a huge success. It had officially opened after they'd all left the North London safe house, and the media had gone into a feeding frenzy. Separating undercover journalists from genuine clients had been difficult and sometimes required harsh measures: before leaving for her new life in Prague, Petra had broken a poorly disguised Kitty Reilly's nose. Gradually, the circus had abated and the agency took on one case after another.

John loved it. But right now, as he opened the folder of printouts that Alexei handed him, he was also missing Mycroft.

The elder Holmes was in North Africa, representing Britain's interests during a major amendment to a trade agreement. He was due back in three days, which couldn't go by quickly enough for John. During his absence, Alexei was staying with Sherlock and John at Baker Street.

The boy had been depressed for days after Elena's private burial near the Holmes family plot in the Yorkshire Dales. He'd eaten only when coaxed, and didn't sleep so much as collapse from exhaustion after pacing in his room for hours on end. John had tried to talk to him, but only got a pained smile for his efforts. Mycroft, although worried, said, "Sherlock was the same when our mother died. Alexei knows we're here for him. We have to let him set the terms of his recovery."

Letting a fourteen-year-old set the terms for anything sounded dodgy to John, but Mycroft was right. Alexei eventually came out of his self-imposed exile and calmly accepted his new circumstances. He'd always gone by his mother's surname of Nowak, and when he told Mycroft and John one day that he wanted to change it to Nowak-Holmes, they knew that he was ready to get on with his life.

John flipped through the pages Alexei had given him. Two days ago a wealthy woman had come to the office, worried that her eighteen-year-old daughter had left England with her Russian-born ex-husband. She'd found the girl's diary, but it was written in Russian, which she did not understand. Alexei, who went with Sherlock and John to the agency offices each weekday and spent five hours in an impromptu classroom with a tutor, had volunteered to translate the small volume, and completed the task surprisingly quickly.

"So what do you think?" John asked as he perused pages of complaints about co-workers, former friends, and other annoyances that were the bane of a young woman's life. "Did she leave willingly with her father?"

"Willingly, yes, but more quickly than she originally intended," Alexei replied, sitting in the chair opposite John's desk.

"How can you tell?"

"Obvious." He held up the leather-bound diary. "She didn't take this with her. No eighteen-year-old with this much resentment toward her mother would leave her diary around to be translated."

John couldn't hide his awe but, like Sherlock, Alexei revelled in the admiration. Once again, John forgot how young the boy was. He had the speech and mannerisms of an adult, and a seasoned one at that. Mycroft, with whom he lived, had admitted that Alexei was more intelligent and clear-headed than most of the people on his staff. Everyone who met him loved him- once they got over the initial shock of learning that Mycroft Holmes had a son.

Sherlock appeared in the doorway, looking disgruntled. "Nothing interesting is going on here," he groused. "I'm going to Barts. Molly texted and said there's an unclaimed cadaver I can run some tests on."