Chapter Text
“One last thing,” Dr Lestrade said, over the din of conversation and chairs moving away from desks. He waited for a pause. “Please keep Doctor Irene Adler in your thoughts. I’m sure you all remember her from her post-doctoral work here. I’m afraid I’ve got word from a colleague at McGill that she’s gone missing while out in the field.” A murmur rose from the faculty.
Sherlock Holmes looked up from his mobile, his attention returning to the room. Adler. The woman was always texting him from Canada. Must be costing her a fortune. He never bothered to reply of course, it was always something inane about dinner, as if they would dine together despite the whole of the Atlantic and everything else between them. She’d been at Kew for a year, cataloguing Araliaceae species and digging through archives for some reason or another. Irrelevant to his work. He’d deleted it from his memory.
He certainly remembered her. The bothersome perfume, stinking up his workspace in the herbarium, red lipstick, perfectly coiffed hair, cleavage-revealing blouses, and of course, the gossip. Word was that she was carrying on with a graduate student 8 years her junior and they’d been frequenting London’s various BDSM clubs, though only Sherlock knew that Irene was the one who’d started the rumours about herself. True, he’d spotted them together, but the clubs were part of his research, it was only a coincidence.
He looked back at his mobile and checked his texts. The last one from Irene. Let’s have dinner. Three days ago. Dr Lestrade must have got word quickly. Sherlock hovered near his seat until most of the faculty had left the room, approaching Dr Lestrade swiftly.
“So,” he announced, and Dr Lestrade quirked a silver eyebrow. “About Doctor Adler.”
“Had a soft spot for Irene, did you, Sherlock? She certainly did for you.”
“Hardly,” Sherlock rumbled quietly. “When did you receive word she was missing?”
“Just today,” he said with a sigh. “She was due for work yesterday, missed giving a lecture, no word from her. They think she was out doing fieldwork, but no one knows anything for sure.”
“Fieldwork in…?”
“Bloody hell, Sherlock, she’s the most well-known authority on Panax quinquefolius in the world, you of all people should know that.” Sherlock blinked. Panax quinquefolius. American ginseng. Aphrodisiac. Like the other Araliaceae. Superior to Panax ginseng in potency, roots extremely valuable as medicine, now valued at £1500, no, scratch that, £2100 per kilo. He could see it on a page in the herbarium in the library of his Mind Palace. Herbaceous, serrate leaf margins, palmately compound leaves known colloquially as "prongs," centripetal umbelliform inflorescence, fruits drupes or berries, red at maturity.
“Ah, yes. Let me know if you get any news,” he said, feigning indifference.
“Of course. Also, you owe me a meeting. We’re due to go over your finances for your last expedition. There are a few…lines in your budget that need a better explanation than ‘drugs,’ or the director will have my head.”
“Shall I specify cocaine?” Sherlock asked. “Would that please them?” Dr Lestrade sighed.
“Look, I’m still your sodding advisor, I don’t care how long ago you graduated. I understand the importance of your research, you know you have my support. You’ve just got to be more careful.”
“They’ll thank me upstairs when Kew has the drug development rights to the world’s first centrally-acting analgesic with no risk of dependence.”
“That’s a dream.”
“I have seen it. The indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin have—”
“Doctor Lestrade?” It was Sally Donovan, his latest graduate student, glaring openly at Sherlock. “Are we still meeting?”
“I’ve got to go,” Dr Lestrade said, his voice lowered, and pointed at Sherlock’s chest. “Meeting. Send me an email.” He turned to speak to Sally.
“I prefer to text,” Sherlock sniffed.
