Chapter Text
“Mrs. who?”
“Ives-Patton Smarmington III,” repeated Sherlock, frowning at John. He pulled open a kitchen drawer with more vigor than was strictly necessary. A roll of acrylic tape bounced to the floor, but Sherlock ignored it, extracting a standard straight-edge with a very loose and lethal-looking metal trim strip and a cardboard of thumbtacks. He tossed these onto the kitchen table and continued rooting through the drawer until he had fished out an aluminum geometry compass – the sort one used in school to draw circles of specific sizes. He extracted, and apparently rejected, a handful of coloured pencils, a collection of dice and a deck of playing cards. He reached back into the drawer and tugged at a roll of white twine. It was extremely tangled in the oft-used and ill-cared for drawer, and Sherlock finally succeeded in pulling it out, along with a half dozen paperclips, a book of matches and a wick for a kerosene lamp.
John stood in the doorway, observing Sherlock as calmly as one can ever observe Sherlock. The man had two speeds – comatose and hyperdrive.
“Is she coming here, then?” John looked around the flat. Two weeks had passed since they’d tied up the Aston Martin case – well, untied it, actually. John had been the one tied up and Sherlock had done the untying. Sherlock had slept for three days, then spent two more researching classic British automobiles, which meant that for nine days he’d been bored. The flat was definitely not ready for guests.
“Where did you put the ice pick?” Sherlock was now tearing through a drawer of kitchen utensils. The wire whisk and potato masher were on the counter. He looked over at John, clearly annoyed.
“The ice pick?” John sat back down in front of his laptop. “We have an ice pick?”
“Of course we have an ice pick,” Sherlock said, rummaging deeper into the drawer. “Ahh!” He held up the meat tenderizing hammer triumphantly.
Now John frowned. “That’s not an ice pick,” he stated, rather emphatically.
“But it’s a weapon, don’t you see?”
John glanced at the odd collection of junk drawer items on the table and counter, eyes resting now on the sharp metal point of the geometry compass and the loose metal edge of the straight-edge ruler. He regarded the cardboard of thumbtacks.
“Weapons.” A statement, not a question. This was beginning to make sense, in an odd-sort of way. He watched Sherlock examine a turkey baster. “Sherlock, what – if anything – does all this have to do with Mrs. Ives-Patton Smar-whatever?”
“Smarmington III.” Sherlock sighed as he eyed the knife block but instead of examining the filleting knife, which, in John’s opinion, was the most lethal weapon in the kitchen, if one ignored the old take-away leftovers in the back of the fridge, dropped into the chair opposite John. “She won me.”
“She won you,” John repeated, enunciating each word slowly. “She won you?”
“In the charity auction,” clarified Sherlock. “Better said, she won my services.”
“I hope you mean your consulting detective services,” said John, rather absently, as he typed.
“Right, then,” said Sherlock. He gave John that smile. It was not an apologetic, very sorry for not filling you in on details before I go about tearing the kitchen apart looking for potential weapons sort of smile. It was more of a I know your brain isn’t capable of following without me explaining everything in minute detail so here I go semi-condescending sort of smile.
John sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Just get on with it,” he said.
“Mycroft called in a favor,” began Sherlock. John successfully covered a smile with a cough. Sherlock hated conceding anything to his brother. “For one of his pet charities - the Responsibility in Gambling Trust.”
“Responsibility in Gambling?” John’s eyes opened wider. “Mycroft?”
“Not Mycroft.” Sherlock frowned at John, clearly disappointed in his deductive skills. Between the two of them, there was a good deal of frowning happening. “Our father.” His look clearly conveyed that John should already have known this.
“Oh.” John looked back at his laptop. He hadn’t known that, of course. It was probably the most substantive piece of information he’d ever garnered regarding Sherlock’s parents. He didn’t even know their given names and only assumed they were still alive.
Sherlock went on, seemingly oblivious that this would be newsworthy or important at all to John. “Mrs. Ives-Patton Smarmington III is the very lucky winner of my consulting services, which Mycroft –“ he nearly spat out his brother’s name, voice full of even more derision than usual when discussing his older sibling – “put on offer at a charity auction for the Trust. The terms were one case, up to forty hours of my time, over a period not longer than three weeks. She has booked me for this coming weekend.” He paused, and John could almost see the dark rain cloud over his head. “Mycroft’s terms - and they are exceedingly generous.”
“Forty hours? What did you do?”
“Nothing,” stated Sherlock.
He obviously was not inclined to share, which made John all the more curious. In fact, John knew Sherlock must have owed Mycroft a very large favor to have agreed to those terms.
“So – I take it she called. She has a case for you?” John was careful to say “you” and not “us.” It wasn’t that he didn’t want to presume – he simply didn’t want Sherlock to presume. Cases brought to them by old ladies with names like Ives-Patton Smarmington fell into two categories: philandering husbands, and missing pets or jewelry.
“She has a case,” said Sherlock. He emphasized the word “case” and made it sound like something dirty.
“Husband, pet or jewelry?” asked John, grinning. He couldn’t help it. Sherlock looked so...so miserable.
“The Case of the Kitchen Murderer.”
“The case already has a name?” John had lost all interest in the dating website he’d been perusing. He found himself, once again, much more interested in Sherlock. He succeeded, with some difficulty, in not thinking overly much about what that might imply. “I’m supposed to do the naming, you realize.”
Sherlock leaned back in his chair and steepled his hands on his chest. “And I thought you’d be more intrigued about the murderer,” he mused.
“Oh. Right. Murderer.” John shrugged. “It seems awfully convenient, doesn’t it? Your services were on offer at the charity auction and the person who purchased them just happened to have a murder to solve. Is it a fresh murder or a cold case?” He trailed off, trying to interpret the look on Sherlock’s face.
“It’s a murder that hasn’t happened yet,” said Sherlock, frustrated, dropping his head into his hands. “It’s ridiculous is what it is. Silly. It’s a game, John. An event!”
John blinked. This was new. “I’m sorry?” he asked, cocking his head to the side a bit. “Sherlock?”
“It’s a bloody Murder Mystery Weekend,” muttered Sherlock. “And I’m to be the star detective.”
John quickly looked down and bit his lip. Sherlock looked absolutely miserable, but John was too occupied with trying to keep from roaring with laughter to be able to offer any solace.
“John?” Sherlock sounded suspicious. John quickly schooled his features and looked up.
“So….” John’s gaze swept over the accumulated kitchen and junk drawer gadgetry on the table and counters. “Any reason you’re collecting murder….weapons?” He raised an eyebrow at the cardboard of thumbtacks.
“You don’t expect me to wait and solve this thing until I get there, do you?” Sherlock asked. “We’re to arrive on a Friday evening and she expects us to stay until the case is solved on Sunday. I can save - ”
“Wait.” John held up his hand. He was shaking his head. “We’re to arrive? We?”
“It was in the terms,” Sherlock explained, his tone indicating that John should have known this already. “One consulting detective and one blogger.”
John stared at him. Sherlock did not blink. “You’re having me on.”
“I’m to play detective and you’re to record everything. Mycroft requested hourly posts but I negotiated down to four per day – every four hours beginning at 10 p.m. on Friday night. Of course, if I solve the murder on Friday – which is the most likely scenario as old ladies aren’t all that imaginative – you’ll need to make only one post to wrap the whole thing up.”
John wasn’t sure which point to argue first – that Mycroft and Sherlock had no business negotiating over his services, that the point of a Murder Mystery weekend was the entertainment of the guests over an entire weekend and was not actually about solving the murder expediently, or that old ladies were not imaginative. They’d come across quite a few imaginative old ladies in their time together, Mrs. Hudson included.
"What if I have plans this weekend? A date?"
"You'll change them.
It was a statement of fact. John didn't argue. What was the point?
He pressed his lips together, biting and releasing the bottom one.
“Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?” John asked, a bit crossly.
“Bite your lip like that. It means you’re about to argue with me.”
Did it? John considered. It did.
“I’m not planning to argue with you.” John only just managed not to roll his eyes, even as part of his brain fixated on Sherlock noticing that he bit his lip, before he launched into an argument. Sherlock noticed?
Of course Sherlock noticed. Sherlock noticed everything. It was nothing personal. Nothing personal at all.
He decided to approach the matter of the proposed case objectively.
“What do you know about Murder Mystery weekends, Sherlock?” he asked. He held up his hand before Sherlock could answer, undoubtedly with separate definitions of each of the words in the phrase. “No. Wait.” He did a quick Google search, found an appropriate site, and spun the laptop around to face Sherlock. “Read.”
Sherlock managed – just – to keep his face schooled in a neutral expression as he read the entry. John, with several years under his belt now of exposure to Sherlock Holmes, noted confusion, disbelief, ridicule and dismissal, all in short order.
“This is theater,” he said. “Derived for entertainment purposes.”
“What did you think it was?” asked John, pulling his laptop back across the table. Past experience had taught him to limit the amount of time Sherlock had with his personal computer.
“I thought it was a test of sorts,” admitted Sherlock. “I assumed she would try to craft a murder that I couldn’t solve.”
“So you understand, then, that you’ll only be playing a role?” asked John, just to make perfectly sure that Sherlock understood. “You can’t prance in there and solve the mystery during the cocktail hour?”
“Prance?” Sherlock quirked an eyebrow at John. John lifted one back at him. “Fine. We will do this. Mycroft assures me that Mrs. Ives-Patton Smarmington III has a lovely country estate. And bees, John! A regular apiary.”
“Mycroft sold you on this with bees?” John shook his head. Mycroft could be clever when it counted.
“I owed him a favor.” Sherlock looked away and scowled. “ I’ve told you this already.”
“That’s just it, Sherlock. You owed him. You. What, exactly, is in this for me? Spending a weekend at a boring old woman’s country home, play-acting with…hey!”
Sherlock had reached across the table and had deftly slid the laptop back over. “You clearly do not know a thing about Mrs. Ives-P,” he said, tapping away at the laptop and not looking at John. “Read.” He turned the laptop around and scooted it into the center of the table so John could see it.
“Read it thoroughly,” he said. “I’ll be in the sitting room – plotting my revenge on Mycroft.”
John watched Sherlock stride confidently out of the room. He glanced at the computer.
Mrs. Ives-Patton Smarmington III had an entry in Wikipedia?
Shit.
He read the first paragraph.
No, Mrs. Ives-Patton Smarmington III was certainly not boring. She was old, however. Seventy-two, if the information in the entry was correct.
He kept reading.
Oh my.
Five minutes later, John closed the laptop and slowly stood. He joined Sherlock in the sitting room, sinking into his chair without comment.
“Well?” asked Sherlock after a full minute had passed. He was reclined on the sofa, bare feet elevated on the arm, hands folded over his chest in a corpse-like posture. John hated when he lay like that.
“She killed her husband.”
“Self defense,” said Sherlock.
“With a garden hoe?”
“She was accosted in the garden shed.”
John turned his head and stared at Sherlock. “You were on the case, then?” It was all starting to click into place.
“I was. One of my first, actually. She’s a close friend of Mother. Of course, that was nearly twenty years ago. She remarried a few years later and is widowed again now, living in a different part of the country.”
“Twenty years ago?” John was staring at Sherlock now. “You were – how old?”
“Thirteen, actually. And John, just to keep things on the up and up, you should know she wasn’t entirely blameless. She was having an affair, too.”
John was still staring. He found himself staring at Sherlock quite often. Sometimes in disbelief, like now, but sometimes in awe, and sometimes, when Sherlock was sleeping or caught up in playing the violin or bent over his phone in a texting war with Mycroft or Lestrade, in admiration. He’d hoped Sherlock didn’t know that – he was difficult enough to live with in their current odd platonic sort of relationship – though given Sherlock’s recent statement about his lip biting, he didn’t stand a chance of the admiring looks having gone unnoticed.
“Thirteen? And this was murder? The article said she took off some of his fingers with that hoe, Sherlock. And they let you on the scene to see that?” John’s voice was rising in disbelief.
“She called Mother first. We were there well before the police. Of course, I wouldn’t allow Mother to touch anything, or to get Mrs. Ives-Patton cleaned up at all. Mother made tea. She was really quite calm, considering.”
John had dropped his head into his hands. He found himself in this position frequently. He’d been puzzling out Sherlock Holmes - trying to puzzle him out anyway – since he met him. Knowing that his mother had exposed him to a bloody crime scene when he was thirteen should not have surprised him in the least.
“Oh, it was classic, John. Classic.” John looked up to find Sherlock’s bright eyes on him. “He had a younger lover, of course. But the money was old – from her family. And they had a young horse trainer who had an eye for their oldest daughter. She was an accomplished equestrian….” He stopped and frowned. “You're following, John, aren’t you?”
John mentally shook himself. “Of course,” he blurted. “I’m sure it was all fascinating.” He was relatively certain that, at the age of thirteen, he hadn’t known what adultery was and was absolutely certain he had never seen severed human fingers.
“It was.” Sherlock signed and steepled his hands. “Brilliant, really.” He sat up then and picked up his mobile. “This weekend thing will do for now, but we really do need a new case, John. I’m getting bored.”
“Really, Sherlock?” John pointed the remote control at the television. “Why don’t you go put the kitchen back together before someone gets hurt on a thumbtack?”
“I’m packing.” He turned from the doorway. “You should do the same.”
“Now? It’s three days away.”
“Ahh. But now that I know we’ll be there for the entire weekend, we’ll need to plan for additional activities. Swimming. Tennis. Beekeeping. You may need to make a shopping list.”
“What, no fox hunting?” John asked, rolling his eyes.
“That reminds me – I should pack my riding crop. Oh, and John?”
John turned. He looked defeated.
“What?”
“Your gun. Do pack your gun.”
End Chapter 1