Title: Boxing Day
Author: John M. Mulhern (John Hama)
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Disclaimer: These characters don't belong to me, they belong to the world! A bit more precisely, they belong to A.C. Doyle, BBC1, and Misters Moffat and Gatiss. Thanks!
Boxing Day
In my role as blogger of the casework of my flatmate and friend Sherlock Holmes I am frequently reminded (rather repetitively, really) how great a man he is. Someone at the Met (name withheld) has even speculated that he may be a good one someday. It is true that he has been endowed with extraordinary powers of observation and deduction, that he sees connexions invisible to many trained eyes and that I may - without fear of being labeled a flatterer - call him a genius. He is also a jackass.
I was one of several witnesses to evidence of this latter charge Christmas last when, at a small gathering in our rooms at Baker Street, Sherlock could not help himself - even for one blessed night - from pointlessly, and quite cruelly, deducing the hell out of one of our guests, almost reducing her to tears. That this action quickly redounded against him was small comfort to those in the room but ego, it seems, must be fed or starved; there's nothing in between.
She'd brought Sherlock a present. After he'd left the room rather suddenly I watched her place it on our mantelpiece in the exact spot from which he'd just retrieved a smaller parcel and where it remained for several days. It was early morning sunlight, slanting through our windows and glancing off the bright red wrap that caught my eye as I tried to fuss our Union Jack pillow into some kind of lumbar support for my morning read.
"Are you...going to open it?" I addressed the bath-robed figure which was trying, apparently, to separate a couple of old style microfiche slides that had soaked in an odd smelling chemical overnight.
"...Mm?"
"Molly's pressie. She, um, the mantelpiece; she left it there next to your bills".
"Ah. Little wonder I've taken no notice".
If I had the opportunity to do it over again the conversation would've gone differently. I knew, after all, that Sherlock was in a delicate state and needed whatever support I could give and perhaps a pleasant distraction when it could be found. I ought to have left any criticism of him in my back pocket. Or in the growing trunk under my bed.
"Well...she made a nice gesture. Seems the least you could do is find out what it is".
"I know what it is".
"Oh, you do?"
"It'll be some sort of mawkish, impractical token of misplaced and thankfully dying devotion - a neckerchief with kittens on it - have you seen her web page?" He looked sharply at me at this last; clearly he had taken enough interest to dip a finger into her digital life. I should tell her. ...I most definitely shouldn't tell her.
"She's already been punished sufficiently for her kindness, don't you think?" I hastily remarked. He'd turned back to his work.
"Oh, don't hate me John; as the Lady said, I'm born this way".
"I'll just put it out with the rubbish then, shall I?" I said, pushing myself to my feet and taking up the carefully wrapped box. In one smooth, quick movement my colleague spun about and snatched the gift from me with his free hand. Turning it round to clear the bow out of his way he placed the tweezered slides onto the flat surface and, thus stabilised, proceeded to gently tease them apart. He looked closely at them for a second or two.
"Not stealing it, stealing it BACK, then", he said cryptically. I just looked at him. Hard.
"Oh, very well John", he said with a mix of annoyance and resignation. Tossing his materials onto the table he pulled the gold ribbon off the package and tore the wrapping aside. A plain cardboard box was revealed. Sherlock looked up at me with just a hint of the mischievous twinkle that had been absent since the news of Ms. Adler's death.
"No, Sherlock, no - there will be no ears in THIS box". The keenly angled face collapsed back into a bored passivity.
"...It would make Molly about 30,000% more interesting", he remarked dourly as he worked the top off. Dropping it onto a floor already too littered with papers he reached in and produced a handsome magnifying glass with a brushed chrome mount and ebony handle.
"Well!" I said brightly. "Something practical after all, yeah? Not even covered with kittens. Good show, Molly". Examining the glass, Sherlock shook the box absently, producing a soft sliding sound. He held it out to me.
"Read", said he. I reached in and extracted a small card, handwritten in merry red ink.
"Uh...'I've noticed the small, collapsing lens you've been using in your examinations. Thought you could use something more substantial. Cheers! -Molly', that's, um, very thoughtful, wouldn't you say?"
"Junk", he said not bitterly, just a statement of fact. I could feel the heat rise in my face.
"How is it 'junk', Sherlock? It seems like a fine tool to me".
"That's because your experience with fine tools is confined to those that split tissue and hew bone. Look at the obverse convexion on this lens. Do you see? Nearly two degrees in excess, creating ocular distortion round the whole perimeter. Yes, the lens may be over a hundred millimetres across, but the usable focus is about the size of a sovereign. This is a toy, John, for little boys who want to start fires".
"You're saying that instrument'll do, what, a *worse* job than that little thingy you carry?"
"I'm saying mine works". He dropped the glass back into its box, pushed it into my hands and turned toward the windows to pull the curtains against the strengthening sunlight.
"Alright, okay...fine". Remembering at last my friend's strained condition I decided to just drop the issue entirely and swallow the banquet of annoyed words that were flooding into my head (wrote some of them down later, though. Some really sharp, clever bits I could use when he was feeling better). "So...breakfast out? I'll buy". In answer Sherlock picked up his bow and rosin box and began prepping for a morning of dirges. "...Table for one then", I said quietly, placing the gift back on the mantle and retrieving my jacket from its peg. I could just make out the strained notes all through my omelette and toast.
It was some weeks later that myself and a much improved Sherlock Holmes found ourselves at St. Bart's sniffing out details in the murder of a freshman Parliamentarian. He'd been in the car park of a Sainsbury's when about half a dozen men, each with a container of chocolate syrup, hurled the bottles violently at him before running away. Unfortunately for the MP one of the bottles of syrup had been frozen solid and struck him a fatal blow. Problematic, as even if all the miscreants were caught it'd be a devil of a time sorting out who had thrown the lethal chocolate (details to be found on my blog under "The Bosco Volley Mystery"). Molly Hooper had just escorted us to the examination table upon which the right-honourable remains lay. Pulling back the sheet from the battered form she stood a little ways off, ready to be useful in any way having already recited a brief account of the post-mortem's unsurprising findings. Good ol' Molly. I examined the extensive bruising around the left temple and noted to Sherlock that the impact had been great enough to subtly alter the orientation of the left eye. Sherlock then circled the remains once, his eyes darting to every place but the point of impact. Finally he came round to the head and leaned in, sniffing slightly.
"That's not clinical alcohol", he stated.
"No, right", Molly confirmed, smiling. "He was a bit tipsy, that's as fact. Had a blood-alcohol of .071." Sherlock had snapped on some gloves and was in the process of turning the deceased's head to get more light on the wound. "...Mind, I've been deeper than that on grocery day myself", Molly continued, brightly. Seeing that Sherlock didn't seem to hear she leaned mock-confessionally to me instead. "I HATE food shopping!" She glanced past me toward the table and her modest smile bloomed into a broad - inappropriate seeming - grin. A bit thrown, I turned and was treated to the sight of my colleague, my friend, closely examining the point of impact with Molly's magnifying glass. I could HEAR Molly smiling now.
A moment later Sherlock stood erect and pronounced loudly "I can well see now, John, that the tissue contusions you noted go rather deeper than even you may have guessed! Death was certainly almost immediate." Placing the glass carefully back into an inside pocket of his coat he spun on his heel. "Lestrade will have the market's security camera video by now; let's see whether their face-rec capability has improved any!" I bid goodbye to the still grinning Molly and jogged to catch up to my partner. "Thank-you, Molly!" the detective called back without turning before the door closed behind us.
So he's a genius. And, yes, he's an arse as well. And one day, if we're very lucky, he'll realize he has always been the man we're only allowed to catch in glimpses. -JHW