SHERLOCK I, II, III & IV • #wattys2016

To the Collie

“There! Are you happy now?” Sherlock growled at John as he dramatically clicked the “end call” button on his Smartphone. Breaking from his plastered grin, he dropped into his chair and grumbled loudly.

“Yes, I am. Though, you weren’t particularly respectful to the Duchess of England, but, what can I say? You’re only Sherlock Holmes.” It was John’s turn to flop into a chair. He rested one side of his face against his knuckles as he stared out at the empty fireplace. John’s face crinkled in concern and not wanting to mull over it by himself, he spoke out—,

“I know we’ve been over this before, but I’m getting uncomfortable about us sharing a flat day in and day out. People are talking—and not just the neighbors, but reporters and some officers at Lestrade’s. I should get myself a flat.”

“Oh, John, why do you worry so? You can’t afford paying the rent, especially with those unpaid investments of yours.”

“How did you know that? I hide my mail from you!” John snapped.

“That’s how I knew. No letters for John except advertisements? Well, the letters that arrived along with the advertisements must be important. How important? Shamefully important. So shamefully important that he wouldn’t want his best mate to see them or the landlady. So, what does John do?”

John rolled his eyes and covered his face with his hand as Sherlock continued to deduct.

“Well, John puts aside the advertisements in a visible place so that he lets me know that he’s looked at the mail and that there’s nothing important, when, in fact, he achieves the opposite—there is something important. And the only thing I can think that a well-bred, honorable, and responsible man would like to keep hidden from another equally well-bred, honorable, and some-what responsible man such as myself would only be that of late fees.”

“There you have it,” John muttered. “I’m an irresponsible, cheap sod.”

“Oh, don’t go on like that,” Sherlock snorted, standing up and wandering to the window. As he stared out into the misty street, his phone beeped. It was Mycroft. Groaning in annoyance, Sherlock thumbed over to the ‘delete’ key. He felt no guilt in pressing it. “Will Mycroft ever stop texting me about boring information?” Turning to John, he revealed a random fact, “Don’t you ever find it tedious to be texting someone and then they text back right in middle of your text? Mycroft is famous for that.’

John inhaled through a frigid breath and commented in the exhalation, “Doesn’t surprise me. You do that to me.” At the sound of a knock on the door, John flung himself from his chair to answer it.

“It’s Mrs. Hudson—tell her I don’t have any sugar,” Sherlock said with a careless wave of his hand. He returned to the sofa where he draped himself over it in idleness.

“Hello, Mrs. Hudson,” John greeted warmly as he opened the door wide enough for the landlady’s shuffling body to enter. Seeing a jar in her hands and her mouth directed at Sherlock, John interrupted her modestly, “Sorry, but, he doesn’t have any sugar.”

Mrs. Hudson closed her mouth and pursed it to one side. “Pity. Well, that was a wasted errand then.” Tittering to herself, Mrs. Hudson turned around and walked right back to the doorway.

“Perhaps next time, Mrs. Hudson,” John said, patting her lovingly on the shoulder until she left.  Closing the door after her, John walked over to the fridge and swung it open.

“Don’t worry about the tongues, they’re frozen,” Sherlock hollered over his shoulders.

The fridge door slammed shut and with clenched jaws, John walked over to the cupboard where he filled himself a glass of tap water. At the remembrance of the frozen tongues with their very vivid display of dotted tastebuds, John moved his own tongue around his mouth, thanking the good God above that none of the appendages in the icebox were his.

“Mycroft keeps texting me about this duchess,” the detective moaned, deleting the received message without reading it.

“Oh? Why don’t you tell him you gave her a ring, then,” John suggested, taking a sip of water.

“Rather not. I like to imagine him twitching.  Perhaps biting his nails from time to time.”  Sherlock smiled to himself.

“Great brother you are. Anyway, what do you think about that triangle?”

“I don’t know. The twine is not traceable. It’s just cheap string you’d buy at a hardwood store. However, the braiding is interesting. I took it under my magnifying glass and could make out three different colours.”

“Oh? And what do they stand for?”

“Well, obviously, one is white. That’s the colour for the duchess. One is blue, which stands for loyalty. I’m guessing that’s you…maybe. And the last colour puzzles me.” Sherlock folded his hands and pressed them against his lips in thought.

“Perhaps you’re overthinking,” John said boldly. “If one stands for the duchess, one for me, then the only explanation is that the gold stands for you?”

Sherlock chuckled. “I already figured it out that it was me. Just wondering if you were on the same page.”  

John’s eyes lowered and he walked over to his favored chair. He sat down and finished his water. The room was silent, which John found unusual. Sherlock was usually in the kitchen creating strange concoctions or forcing John to be his temporary experiment if he didn’t have a corpse at hand. Of course, Sherlock was careful, but there wasn’t one experiment from which John escaped without a bruise or two besides.

“So, should we be doing something today?” John asked.

“Dead collie,” Sherlock replied.

“What?”

“A dead collie. Read it on the news the morning. A dog walked into a shallow pond and drowned. The dog’s master has been obviously traumatized and hasn’t said a word since, but, that shall change!” Sherlock sprung from the sofa, landed on his feet as softly as a cat, and dashed to his coat on the hanger. He threw it on, gave John a pleading expression to join him, and then disappeared from the flat.

John remained seated for a moment, wondering if he should go along. But finding it bothersome and somewhat painful to know that he’d miss out on excitement, John gritted his teeth and took to his feet. He snatched his black jacket and followed the detective out into the London streets.