A/N: So, here's the last installment: chapter 4 and the epilogue. Its a bit longer, but what the heck. Hope you enjoyed; it's been dang fun to write!

Chapter 4

Holmes was already up when I awoke, sitting much as he had been when I had fallen asleep, but his bed was unmade, so at least he seemed to have gone to bed at some point. "Yes, Watson, I had time for a few hours of sleep," he said, puffing on his pipe.

"Have you discovered anything else?"

"Not on the Marbledon-Hinckley front. I am endeavoring to determine my cousin's place in all this. Perhaps it was this apparent murder that Cousin Anita wanted us to know about."

"She did not know it all in advance. She found it out as we did."

"Did she? If she did know in advance, would we be aware of it? If she was careful to extrapolate only upon what she heard, she could reconstruct for us a story that she already knew, while pretending that it was as novel for her as it was for us. The phantom was a strange touch. I cannot imagine that placing the apparition of death before all her patrons would be good for business. Why prepare an apparition if she had no advanced reason to scare her client? Why have us witness it at all, if she did not have something specific for us to see?

"On the other hand, if she wanted to report a murder, why did she not just say so? As we have it, she calls upon a cousin whom she has not seen in ages and with whom she does not get along, asks him to come halfway across London for the contents of a box neither she nor he has any interest in, intentionally elicits a partial confession of murder in front of him which he is certain to pick up on and pursue, but then she refuses to say another word to him about it and leaves him entirely on his own. She went through an incredible amount of trouble to bring it to our attention, but when it came to the easy part, the explanation, she would not say a word."

"That doesn't make any sense, Holmes."

"Unless… unless something changed her mind. She wanted us to see Marbledon, but she seemed honestly terrified by the ghost."

"It was not a real ghost."

"As, no doubt, she was aware. There may be fortunetellers who believe in supernatural explanations, but I very much doubt that Anita Sheldon is one of them. She still did not want to see it there. But was it because she did not want to threaten the client in that way, or because we were there to see it? She called me 'Mr. Holmes,' which implies that she knew or suspected we were observed, and that terrified her, though she is not easily cowed. But why?" Holmes relapsed into silence, staring down through the swirls of smoke from his pipe.

Foreseeing no more conversation from him for a while, I looked out the front window. It was not raining, but the dark sky threatened it at any moment, and everything was grey and dismal. I caught sight of a woman walking, short and thin, the only brightly colored object among the dreariness. As she came nearer, I caught her face in profile.

"Holmes!" I hissed.

Hearing the urgency of my whisper, he was at my side in an instant. The sudden jerk of his shoulders told me he was as surprised as I was. "Speak of the devil…" Holmes' eyes were sparkling.

The woman was none other than Anita Sheldon, though why she was here, I could not guess. Holmes raced to his bag and pulled out the bits of the disguise he had worn the day before, and in less than five minutes the florid, red-haired, out of work servant had rematerialized. Holmes darted out the side window, which I now realized was concealed from almost every side from observation, and was soon sauntering down the street in search of his cousin.

Left to my own devices, I considered going for another walk as I had done the previous day, but the weather seemed too uncertain. After eating breakfast, I wandered through the village a while, looking through shops and making idle conversation with people there. Throughout the day, I checked back at the room now and then, but found no sign of Holmes. After eating dinner at the inn, I went to the local public house. As I sat at a table nursing a drink, I watched the other customers idly, attempting to use Holmes' methods but with no particular success. Among the customers was a rather pretty girl, dressed poorly but neatly, and I wondered whether she was one of the servants that Mr. Marbledon had fired. In a moment, a red-faced, red-haired fellow sidled up to her.

"Can I buy you a drink, lass?" I started, barely refrained from spitting my drink across the table in surprise, as I recognized Holmes' disguise from the morning. I could not hear the girl's answer, but she was smiling coyly. She blushed charmingly as he whispered something in her ear. He gestured to the tables, and they sat down at one directly behind me. I took this as a sign that I was to listen but not look at them or make any sign of recognition, so I settled myself to gaze at the room before me and concentrate on the conversation behind me.

"I don't think I've seen you around her before, sir. I'd remember you, I would."

"Would you now? You're right though, I came into town just yesterday."

"And how long will you be staying, then?"

I heard Holmes shift in his chair as if leaning forward, and I could hear a smile in his voice. "At the present moment, I'd like to be staying as long as is humanly possible." The smile seemed to fade. "Alas though, I'm looking for work, and the lads here last night were telling me there's none to be had."

"No jobs, and plenty looking, let me tell you, what with Mr. Marbledon firing folk right and left. Got 'is safe broke into six times in as many weeks, and fired servants 'til 'e 'ad to admit 'twas none of us what did it. I was a maid there at the time—for all of two weeks, anyway, after the maid he had for years, up 'til he thought good to fire me too. We all knew it was his sons but we could hardly tell 'im that, could we."

Holmes whistled. "Six times! If I were 'im, I woulda moved my money somewhere else, or at least got a better safe!"

"Well, I s'pose he was holding out for the thief to be a servant, wasn't he. Now that 'e knows it's one he can't get rid of, maybe he'll take precautions, but before, he didn't want to give into robbers, you know?"

"Ah. Though it's always possible he just had no other place to put it."

"Oh, he had another place, alright. Mrs. Nittle, the housekeeper—former housekeeper, I mean—swears she saw 'im hide something below a loose board under the hall rug!"

"No! What would 'e be more careful of than 'is money?"

"Dunno. We were curious, o'course, but with the master in the state he was, it was worth more'n our jobs to be caught peeking."

"How very queer!"

"'Twas indeed. You won't tell though, will you? That I told you all this?"

"Course not, lass! 'Twould be a queer gratitude from a stranger to a pretty wench good enough to keep 'im company! But it's getting late. Can I walk you home?"

The pair departed. I waited ten minutes, then left and returned to the inn. I was only in our room a few minutes before Holmes climbed in through the window. He rubbed his hands together, and seemed extremely pleased. "Excellent! You see what a careful shot in the dark can do for us! The key to this mystery may very well lie under Mr. Marbledon's hall rug!"

"Holmes, I really cannot condone you leading poor girls along like that."

Holmes was placidly removing his disguise. "My dear Watson, she was leading me along as least as much as I was her. She has had at least two assignations with other beaus tonight, one of which managed to get a bit of hay in the hook when he was refastening her dress, and the other of which—"

"No more, please, Holmes."

"I was merely illustrating that you need not worry too much on her account."

"Fine. Thank you. About the hall rug then. What do you think is under it?"

"I don't know. It simply occurred to me that if there was any vital evidence about the old fire, it was worth inquiring about, though I do not know that this is it."

"What kind of evidence could there possibly be, and why didn't Marbledon destroy it?"

"That is why it was a shot in the dark. As I said, I don't know, and, as always, I refuse to speculate."

"What do you intend to do? Not more burglary?"

"Are you up for it?"

"If the cause is just…"

Holmes grinned, eyes shining. "You heard what I heard, and know as much about the justice of it as I do."

"What I heard was utterly inconclusive in that regard."

"As was what I heard. So, Watson, I repeat: are you up for it?"

I sighed and shook my head, more at myself than in any gesture of denial. "My dear fellow…" I looked up to meet his wide, questioning eyes. I smiled. "You know I am."

Holmes put his fingers together and brought them to his lips, his bright eyes sparkling with the rapidity of his thought. "It is a quarter to ten now, far too early for this to be wise in any way, but I think it is worth the risk."

"Surely we should wait a little, until we can be sure they have gone to bed?"

"We have less than an hour, I'll explain when there's time. Dress dark, and be prepared to conceal your face as well as you can, since there's no time to make masks. If we should be seen, it would be best not to be recognized." We went out through the window, after Holmes had made sure no one was watching. As soon as we were out of sight of the village, we turned up our collars, pulled our hats low, and wrapped mufflers around the lower parts of our faces. Thus covered, we hurried to Marbledon's house.

Standing before Havilland house once again, the daunting nature of our task occurred to me. "Holmes, there are lights on!" I whispered, but he was already scanning the house for the best entrance. The fact that he had to do that was worrisome: Holmes was usually the most prepared of burglars. I sighed, shook my head, and went to offer him whatever assistance I could. On the side with the fewest lit windows, he began work on one of the lower ones, and soon had it open. We crept inside. It was too dark to tell the nature of the room, but Holmes took my hand and lead my through it unerringly to a short hallway that seemed to lead towards the central area of the house. The central area appeared to be lit, and a little of that light spilled into the hall where we were. Holmes bent down and examined the floor: flagstone. He pointed upwards: we would need to go upstairs. I followed him towards the light.

We found ourselves in the well-lit foyer with the central staircase, painfully exposed to the immediate observation of anyone who chanced to be there. We ascended as quickly as possible. Mercifully, the stairs did not creak. Holmes led us to the right and we found ourselves in a hallway only slightly dimmer than the room we had left. There was a rug in the center. Quickly, Holmes bent down and pulled it aside. He dug his fingernails between each board. They found purchase in one of them. We heard footsteps. Someone—Marbledon—called "Geoffrey? Is that you?" from the room at the end of the hall. We froze. Holmes' hand stole to the knob of the door nearest us. Locked. We could hear Marbledon walking behind the door ten feet away. If we moved we might escape, but we would be heard, and we would forfeit all chance of getting what we came for. If we stayed still, he would see us the moment he opened the door: if he opened the door. We stayed still. The footsteps stopped. A chair creaked. Holmes bent again to the boards beneath the rug. One was lifting… slipping… lifting… resisting… lifting… up! The board came away with a sharp creak. The chair squeaked in the other room. Footsteps approached the door. Holmes was reaching into the dark hollow. Silence from the other room: a man hesitating, perhaps arming himself. Holmes had something in his hand, dark and rectangular. He was replacing the board. The doorknob was turning. Holmes was flattening the rug. The door opened. We ran.

Marbledon gave a loud yell behind us. Holmes had me by the hand and we were nearly flying down the stairs. We came to the front door. It was locked. I can remember performing surgeries in the worst moments of Afghanistan, with bullets flying on every side, even striking the ground beside me now and then. I remember closing my ears to all of it: a man was dying before me, and I had to forget all the distractions in order to save him. Holmes seemed like that now, patiently unlatching what seemed at the time like an incredible number of bolts while Marbledon screamed, literally at our heels. At last, the door was opened and we fled into the night, over the wall, and deep into the woods.

When we were sure at last that no one was following, we sank down against a tree in the middle of the black forest, panting.

"My dear fellow, I am very sorry to have put us in that much danger."

"Don't apologize, just please tell me it was worth it, Holmes."

Holmes opened a lantern that we had not yet had need of, and directed the beam to the object in his hand.

"A bible?" I asked, incredulous.

Holmes opened it. Between the leaves were loose sheets, handwritten. Holmes rifled through and scanned them impatiently. "Love letters, Watson… Marbledon and Mrs. Hinckley… 'My husband believes'… so it was while he was alive… 'I have always loved'… Good God, what drivel… if all this has been for a few amorous notes…! 'For your sake'… hmm, more like it…Then Marbledon says… 'My dear Mrs. Hinckley'… that's interesting… 'I beg of you'…Aha! Watson, we've got it!" Holmes stuffed the papers back between the pages, and leaped up with a look of exaltation, dragging me to my feet after him.

"What did you find?"

"There's no time. I said we had to be done in an hour, and we have no time to waste. We have a tryst to make before midnight."

"Who?"

"My cousin, for one."

"What?"

"Hurry! I'll explain on the way."

I have no idea how Holmes found his way in the dark, in an unfamiliar place, and without a path, but soon we had left the woods, and found our way to a country road, which, for all my wanderings, I had not previously traversed. When he was sure we were on the right road, he began.

"I followed Cousin Anita to a brief appointment. It appears my cousin has, as they say, a young man. Younger than I would have thought likely, in fact, but I suppose I am no judge of these things."

"What? Who?"

"We were wondering about Mr. Hinckley's entanglement with my disreputable fortuneteller relative: it seems the entanglement is more entangled than we previously imagined. I managed to overhear them set a rendezvous, so I thought we would join them, in an uninvited and hopefully invisible capacity, if at all possible." Here, the road wound up a hill, and Holmes led me off the road through a more circuitous upwards route.

"What sort of rendezvous? If we end up simply spying on a pair of lovers…"

"I fervently hope not. But, while my ideas of romance are somewhat indistinct, I have the impression that the place chosen is not the most conducive to amorous enterprises. Observe."

We had reached the top of the hill at this point, but Holmes had maneuvered us so that a promontory of rocks was at our back and our silhouettes would not show against the sky, which had cleared since the morning, and the landscape was bright with moonlight. Before us spanned an untended field, and upon the field lay the rubble of the blackened ruin of what had once been a house. Far from romantic, it was chilling and foreboding, and felt unspeakably tragic.

"Hinckley's—"

"Shh. Yes. No more conversation now. Stay low." Holmes looked around, then motioned me to follow as he crept down the hill and skirted the edge of the field. The road led past the right side of the ruin, but we waded through the high grass of the overgrown left side, until we came to the far end. Holmes peered around the corner cautiously, then again motioned me to follow. There was a small clearing at the back of the house, concealed from almost every angle by the ruin itself and the copse of black trees that were gradually reclaiming what man had taken years ago. We concealed ourselves in the rubble with our eyes on the clearing, and waited.

After perhaps a quarter of an hour had elapsed, a man came into the clearing from the road side of the house. I had never seen Chester Hinckley, but the figure looked older than thirty in his girth and the way he moved—and then I recognized it as Marbledon.

Holmes gave a muffled curse beside me, then whispered very low, "Have you a revolver, Watson?" A thrill, partly of fear, but more of the hunt, went down my spine. Mutely, I shook my head. "Nor I. If you can do so quietly, I would recommend arming yourself with as large a rock as you can comfortably wield." I wanted to ask what was going on and what danger Holmes foresaw, but I did not dare risk being heard. Instead, I rooted around my feet for the appropriate weapon, and prayed I would know when to use it.

After another ten minutes or so, a man who looked more like Chester Hinckley's thirty years entered the clearing. "Chester, at last! Now will you tell me what this is all about?" Marbledon's voice was puzzled, but friendly. Hinckley said nothing, but stood still and severe at a little distance from the older man. Marbledon rose uncertainly from the rock where he had taken a seat. There was rustling from the direction the others had come, and a woman ran up, then stopped at the sight of the two men.

"Chester?" she asked.

"Anita…" growled Holmes, with a warning in his voice, but so low that only I could hear him.

Marbledon had his hands open at his sides, and turned from one to the other of the two newcomers in confusion. "Who are—Are you the fortuneteller? What—What is going on? Chester, what is this?" He was nearest us, with his back to the house where we hid. Hinckley faced us, and we could see his face twist with rage.

Hinckley's voice cracked with fury. "You know what this is! Look around you!"

"Chester—" Madam Anita was pleading, for what, I could not tell.

"Your father's house?" wondered Marbledon, then he gave a startled movement and stepped back a pace, as if a realization had hit him with palpable force. "Oh my God."

Hinckley strode forward. "You killed my father, married my mother, and when she found out about it, it drove her insane."

Marbledon stared a moment, then dropped to his knees with his head in his hands. "No—I—Oh, no, oh, God…"

Madam Anita crossed to stand near Hinckley. Her look was pleading, but she stood beside him all the same. Hinckley held something glinting in both hands. Slowly, he was raising his arms. Holmes leaped up with a shout and ran at him. Hinckley looked shocked for a fraction of a second, but lifted his hands all the faster, to shoot before Holmes reached him.

I leaped in front of Marbledon, with no clear idea of what was happening except that I must prevent anyone from being shot. I realized soon after that this was probably very foolish, but I could only hope that his intentions were more righteous than murderous. Hinckley frowned at me with a sort of perplexed look, then the gun was on me, and his eyes were on Holmes. Holmes froze, strained and panting, but not daring to approach.

Holmes snarled through his teeth, in a voice high with strain. "Kill Watson, and I swear you will not live to regret it." I saw Madam Anita's head jerk towards her cousin in surprise, perhaps at the tone.

Hinckley's eyes were wide, and his mouth was twisted. "You would do the same, I can see you would do the same, why are you stopping me?"

"Because you do not understand."

"You do not understand! You cannot!"

"It did not happen! He did not do it! I have the proof of it in my hand!" Holmes brandished the bible. Behind me, Marbledon let out a moan of horror.

"What proof?"

"Marbledon will not run, we can see to it. Are you more afraid to know the truth than you are to kill a man?"

"I am not afraid of the truth!"

I heard Marbledon struggling to his feet behind me. I helped him up. "My dear boy…" He faltered, and looked at his stepson. He seemed more tired and old than ever before. "My dear boy… you shall be."

Hinckley stared at his stepfather, bewildered. Holmes tore the gun from his grasp and shoved him to the ground. Madam Anita sat beside and a little behind him, and put her arms about his shoulders. Hinckley stared up at Holmes. The detective began to pace through the tall grass between the two men.

"Perhaps from the time your father died when you were nine years old, you suspected Marbledon had started the fire, but there was nothing you could do about it. When he married your mother a short time later, you were certain of it. Their marriage lasted long enough to have another son, but soon after, Gretchen Marbledon, formerly Hinckley, nee Bates, showed signs of mental breakdown. Before long, she was institutionalized. You believed that her collapse was from knowledge of what Marbledon had done. Unable to bear your stepfather's presence and with your last link to him cut, you asked him, or fought him until he had no choice, but to send you to relatives in Scotland, where you have lived your life until now, waiting for your revenge.

"While your mother lived, you would not upset her further by becoming a killer yourself, but once she was dead, you had nothing to lose. You returned to England and pretended to make peace with your stepfather, so that you could enact your revenge without any suspicion from him.

"Knowing his superstitious nature, you went to London to find a fortuneteller corrupt enough to do what you wanted: to drive your stepfather into paroxysms of guilt, to make your revenge cut deeper. The fortuneteller you found was my cousin, Anita." Hinckley started at the word cousin. Silently, Madam Anita pressed her forehead to his temple. "She was initially willing to comply, but became fond of you," Holmes continued. Anita glared at him for the understatement. He met her look and seemed to understand it, but he did not speak it. "Perhaps she was afraid for you, and felt that you were destroying your life with this vendetta. She must have tried and failed to convince you, so she came to me, hoping that I could clear it up without you bloodying your hands. Without telling you, she brought Dr. Watson and me to her shop under flimsy pretenses so that we would witness Marbledon admitting his crime, and so bring him to justice.

"She did not, however, expect you to don the death costume to terrorize Marbledon. You entered by the back door, so she did not know you were there. She had hoped that I would encounter the case without encountering you, since your actions were already questionable, and fast descending towards horrible. Even though you did not show your face, you showed that the psychic reading was staged, that she had prior knowledge of it, and that she and someone else were plotting something dark. After she prevented you from murdering Marbledon in front of us, she panicked that I had seen too much and refused to tell me anything else.

"I don't know what the scene between the two of you was like after we were gone, but somehow you patched things up, and she hid from me and fled home with you. My involvement may have cut short the dramatic fortunetelling scenes, but it did not change the overall plan: you had Marbledon meet you here tonight in order to murder him, which Dr. Watson and I were only barely able to prevent."

"What of it?" Hinckley shouted. "Justice is on my side, even if no law on earth will condone it. You said you had something to tell me!"

"I do." Holmes crouched down in front of Hinckley and gripped him by the jaw, bringing his face close to his own. "It is this: you are utterly and completely wrong." Holmes released him and sat back. Your story was the most obvious explanation of the facts, except for accident, which was ruled out Marbledon's admission to Anita that there had been something criminal, but it was not the only explanation. The possibility that turned out to be the truth first occurred to me when Watson had the sagacity to point out that a man murdering his best friend to marry his widow does so as soon as he can. Marbledon, had he done it, would have waited ten years. There certainly might have been a reason to kill his friend on the tenth year… but it was not necessarily so. When I went over my memory of Marbledon's 'confession,' and realized he had never actually admitted guilt, I began to wonder.

"Perhaps Mrs. Marbledon was not driven insane by the knowledge of the crime, but had been descending on that route long before. Over the ten years of her marriage, perhaps over the years of her life before that, her reason had been breaking away. When she was thirty she could act sane enough that no one suspected, but she was mad enough to murder her husband so she could have his friend instead." Hinckley screamed and clawed at Holmes in grief-stricken fury.

"Prove it, or else, by God—"

Holmes put a hand on his shoulder, and pulled the bible out of his pocket. "It was a long shot finding it. I had no way of knowing whether any proof had survived, or even that it had existed in the first place. But this contains all the proof you need." He moved backwards a little, disentangling himself. "They are the love letters Marbledon and your mother first wrote to each other. She courted him, he resisted out of loyalty to his friend. She did not tell him in advance of her plan, only hinted; Marbledon's letters are frightened, he addresses her as Mrs. Hinckley and asks what she his plotting. After the fact, he vacillates, tries to convince them both that what he suspects could not be."

Marbledon had crept up to crouch beside Holmes, and now spoke quietly. "I convinced myself that what I suspected could not be true. I had loved her since I was a boy. When she wanted to be married as soon as possible, I did not examine it: I did not dare. The suppositions were too monstrous. But in retrospect, it is all clear, and it is written in the letters you now hold.

"I planned never to tell. I kept the letters, because I could not bear to burn them, but I have never shown them to anyone, and I swore I never would. I kept them in the safe, then when that became insecure as, I suppose, Geoffrey took money for his gambling debts, I hid them under a loose board. I had no idea you believed I had done it. If you had threatened me, and—and I had had the choice to tell you or die… Perhaps then I might have told. I do not know."

Hinckley sat in the tall grass and sobbed, with Anita's arms still around his shoulders. Marbledon kneeled before them with his head bowed. Except for the choking sobs, all was silent.

Holmes rose, touched my shoulder, and together we walked back to the village.

Epilogue

That was the end of our stay in Sussex, but I am pleased to say that the story does not end as sadly as it did there. We were sitting in our rooms in Baker Street one morning several weeks later, when a fine-looking envelope came by the post. Holmes picked it up, glanced at it without opening it, and tossed it to me. "This is your department, Watson."

"It's addressed to you, Holmes."

"Yes, but it's fairly obvious what's inside it, so, as flowery prose is your department, I would appreciate if you would be so good as to summarize." I opened the envelope with curiosity. "And if there is anything about flowers, cherubs or doves, please skip over that part," Holmes added grimly.

I glanced over it, than exclaimed with delight. "'You are cordially invited to the marriage of Mr. Chester Hinckley and Miss Anita Sheldon'… and there's a letter from her also enclosed… My dear fellow, she wants you to give her away!"

"I thought it might be something of the sort. Does she say Mycroft is going?"

"Why would she say—" I skimmed the letter. "Yes, it says so right here. But what a strange thing to mention. How could you know she would include that?"

"Leverage, Watson. She knows I loathe this sort of thing. But if Jupiter is descending for the occasion, what excuse can I have? Of course, she may be lying."

"Holmes!"

"Ah well." He sighed resignedly. "Hymen claims another victim. I suppose there's nothing for it. Although…" A happy thought seemed to strike him and he chuckled. "If Mycroft will be there, I know precisely the wedding gift!" Holmes sprang up, and plucked Madam Anita's stolen vase from the mantelpiece. "Perfect, wouldn't you say, Watson?" I shook my head, laughing.

"Will he even remember?"

"He remembers everything. And anyway, since Cousin Anita has kept it all these years, I suppose she might as well hold onto it."

The End