This Sherlock story stands out to me because it epitomizes the effectiveness of the arrangement my writing partner and I had at the time. My partner would propose an idea for a plot point that I’d never have thought of myself, and I’d then either run with it in that form or be inspired to propose something based on it. The particular example in this story is the idea of a dog with a message tied to its collar and the dog in turn tied out to a tree in the woods for the recipient to find. Awesome, I thought instantly. On further examination, though, my question was, “If the bad guys can tie a dog to a tree, why not just save a step and tie the message directly to the tree? What’s the point of the dog?” But if you make the dog a trained one, one that will show enough initiative to race through the woods carrying untraceable messages between the baddies and play a role in helping Sherlock identify their confederate, then you have something. It’s a pretty typical example of how we worked effectively on the Sherlock fanfics.
The Blog of Doctor John H. Watson. 11 June, 2032.
Over the years that I’ve used this blog to record the cases of my friend, Sherlock Holmes, I find in looking back that many if not most of those cases have called on Sherlock’s incredible intelligence, observational skills, and reasoning ability. Sometimes, though, we’ve been confronted not with official cases, because there wasn’t a client or even much mystery involved, but plain old-fashioned adventures, not to sound too dramatic about it. These adventures don’t call so much on Sherlock’s cleverness as they do his flair for the dramatic and his tendency to generate drama everywhere he goes. The story of the lighthouse, the cormorant, and the trained politician falls into this category, but I couldn’t tell it until now, because while the events that occurred didn’t directly touch on sensitive political considerations, one of the participants was involved in some sub rosa government doings. I’m still not allowed to reveal–and in fact I don’t even know enough to reveal–any of those goings-on, but the gentleman passed away recently, so his part in the story, and therefore the story itself, can now be told.
When we left Somerset in early October of 2016, having dealt with The Highgrove Ritual, as I called it in my post at the time, Sherlock’s brother Mycroft promised, as a peace-offering of sorts, to send us on an expenses-paid holiday. That didn’t make us any less annoyed with him, but we took him up on his offer. I agreed because it meant a free holiday, and Sherlock agreed because…honestly, I’m not sure why. On the face of it, castle ruins, historical sites, and hikes on the moors weren’t his thing at all, but I think he just disliked being left out, so about two weeks after our return from Somerset we set off by hired car for the North of England.
* * * * *
“Bamburgh Castle,” John said, as they passed a sign for that attraction. “That’s on tomorrow’s list.”
“Why don’t we see it now?” Sherlock asked glumly. “Get it over with. No backtracking.”
“You know, I could be wrong,” John said, “but I have the sense that you’re not really getting the point of this venture. It’s not a scavenger hunt for time.”
Sherlock stifled the first reply that came to mind—that if it were a scavenger hunt for time there might at least be an element of interest involved—and focused on driving. He’d already aggravated John once today, for which he was in fact sorry. A bit. Not for making the docent cry. No. He’d do the same again, given a chance. But John had very much been looking forward to this trip and took real interest in British history, and their last stab at seeing some of it, in Somerset, had ended rather badly. In spite of what he’d told Mycroft in the aftermath of that case, Sherlock blamed himself for not seeing the solution until it was far too late to save them from a very close brush with death indeed. John still bore the physical traces of their near miss: a bit of a bare spot above his left ear where the A&E staff had clipped his hair for the sutures, which came out just two days ago. No one had ever accused Sherlock of being squeamish until he’d stood by holding a mirror so John could remove his own stitches.
Sherlock was eminently capable of brooding his way through their entire week-long excursion, but he was much attached to John and unwilling to ruin his holiday, so to cheer himself up he reviewed his triumph over the docent. Alnwick Castle, which housed the Fusiliers Museum, lay almost exactly halfway between Newcastle upon Tyne, where they’d disembarked from the train late that morning and hired a car, and Berwick upon Tweed, where they expected to lodge for two nights while exploring the attractions of Northumberland. Northumberland’s attractions for Sherlock were negligible, but besides the Fusiliers Museum John had already listed Bamburgh Castle, Yeavering Bell, Etal Castle, Hadrian’s Wall, and the Lindisfarne Priory as must-sees, and that was just in the north. He had another list dealing with parts west and south. The Northumberland Fusiliers Museum, however, was the jewel in his holiday crown, and it had been their first stop.
Sherlock had opposed the idea of a guided tour from the start. The displays were all clearly labeled in legible English, John knew a great deal about his regiment’s history already, and Sherlock saw no reason to take the curator up on her offer of a docent to accompany them. It was immediately evident to him that she just wanted to get the docent out of her way, probably because she was carrying on a tolerably obvious affair with the woman’s husband. As they progressed through the museum he was confirmed in his opinion of the tour guide’s worthlessness by her repeated excursions from her script, excursions which were invariably completely unrelated to the items in the display cases, almost always involved personal information in which Sherlock had no interest, and which often strayed into parentheses from which the woman was unable to extricate herself. He knew that John had no interest in her ramblings, either, but John would endure the prating in exchange for being in the company of what Sherlock supposed was at least a marginally attractive woman, though besides being married she was much too young and obviously far too stupid for John. “Practice flirting,“ John called these occasions, to Sherlock’s disgust.
Sherlock filtered out most of the nattering with considerations on the value of common superglue in forensic chemistry, but eventually the realization that John was uneasy about something drew him back to the present. He focused and reviewed the conversation. The docent had asked John where they’d be staying while they visited the area and then, inspired by his answer, launched an anecdote in which her brother and his husband visited Doncaster just last month and were offered separate rooms by the clerk at their hotel, when of course they meant to lodge together. Ah—and there was the line that had irritated John:
“You guys must get that a lot,” she’d said. “People just assuming that you’re not a couple.”
“We’re not,” John replied.
“Oh, don’t worry,” she laughed, patting his arm. “We’re a little rural up here but everyone’s so open-minded. Don’t give it a thought.”
“No,“ John insisted, “we’re not—”
“Open-minded.” Sherlock spoke for the first time, and she blinked at him in surprise. “No doubt that’s why your conversation so strongly suggests that your brain has fallen out.”
“Sherlock!”
“What?” the docent gasped.
Sherlock turned to face her squarely and really looked at her for the first time.
John of course saw what he was about at once. “Don’t. Sherlock. Stop it. Leave her alone.”
Sherlock heard him perfectly well—a simple scan of this idiot woman didn’t require much of his attention—but he had the bit fairly between his teeth. “How open-minded are you about the fact that your husband’s been having an affair for six—” a closer glance at her left earring “—no, seven months—with the curator of this museum? You do know that she fobbed you off on us for the express purpose of phoning him in private, don’t you? If you hurry you might catch her at it.”
“Oh, my God,” John muttered, turning away.
“Well, run along,” Sherlock said, with a flick of his hand.
She stared at him like a cat at the jaws of an oncoming wolfhound, gears slowly turned—God, it was like watching paint dry—and the truth of what he’d said dawned on her. Tears pooled in her eyes and she made an inarticulate noise, something between a gasp and a sob, clapped her hand to her mouth, and fled.
“Not that much, it would seem,” Sherlock decided.
John glared at him. “What the hell do you call that?”
“’Mission accomplished,’” Sherlock said, pleased with the effect.
“What?”
“I wanted her to go away and she’s gone. What would you call it?”
“I still had questions for her!” John cried.
“She talked too much.”
“That’s her job!”
“Her job is to be informative. So far she hasn’t informed us of anything that we can’t read off the placards ourselves. Now we can do that without all the useless prattle.”
John threw up his hands.
“She was irritating you, too,“ Sherlock said reasonably. “Why, by the way?“
“You know why.“
“Yes, because she thinks we’re a couple, but I don’t understand why that bothers you.”
John looked around: The few other people in the museum were all staring at them. “Can we talk about this another time?”
Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Ugh. Fine.”
In retrospect, Sherlock thought, downshifting into a curve, as much as he’d enjoyed it it might not have been quite the thing to revenge himself on the docent at the cost of aggravating John on his holiday. He resolved to consider not doing it so often. Meanwhile, he would try to hit upon something that would both perk John up and conciliate his forgiveness. Offering to carry his tote full of museum souvenirs had been an unqualified failure. Perhaps a more meaningful gesture would improve his mood.
“Did you know,” he began, “that Shilbottle is just a few minutes away from Alnwick?”
“Shilbottle.”
“Saw the signs for it on the way up here. You must have heard of Shilbottle.”
“Mmm…Nope. Why, what about it?”
“Shilbottle,” Sherlock said with satisfaction, “was the site of one of the most interesting murders of the year four. It involved a disused coal scuttle and seven antique ceramic cats. The remains of the victim, the twenty-eight year-old son of the local vicar, were found riced and stuffed into the cats, and—”
“Wait a second. ‘Riced’?”
“Well, I say riced. Rendered into very small bits.”
“Lovely.”
“I know,” Sherlock said with a smile, missing the sarcasm. “But we’re already past it.”
John checked his chart. “There’s no time to see it today, but I’ll put it on the list for first thing tomorrow. If you’d like to see it?” he added.
“Really?” Sherlock glanced over at him, but nothing in John’s tone or expression suggested anything other than an honest request for confirmation.
“Of course. I told you, this isn’t a race. We can take all the time we want. Shilbottle first, then Yeavering Bell, then Bamburgh. That’ll be a full day,” John said with satisfaction, scribbling a note on the chart. He wished he’d thought of that sooner: Half English history tour, half crime history tour. That’d put Sherlock in a better mood. It might even be enough to stop him savaging everyone they met.
* * * * *
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