Disclaimer: I do not lay claim to the BBC's Sherlock, Neil Gaiman's A Study in Emerald, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, or anything to do with the Cthulhu mythos. I make no monetary profit from this.
Black Gods and Ivory Boxes
Greg Lestrade liked to think that he was a good man. A Queen's man, yes, that went without saying – he could hardly be a detective inspector of New Scotland Yard without being a Queen's man – but a good man as well. It should have gone hand in hand, good men in the service of the ruler of Albion, but the truth was that men were men, and they would always have their faults and faulty predilections, even if they were sworn to uphold the law and reign of Victoria Regina. A dark truth, but that was the world for you.
Another dark truth was brewing above his head, storm clouds just like the weather forecast had promised, and Lestrade turned the collar of his coat up against the chill wind and the prospect of rain as he walked away from Tyburn's Triple Tree. A fresh crop of its sorry fruit hung from the gallows, and the last of them had just stopped her fitful kicking.
A good man, and a Queen's man. That was what he was, or what he tried to be, and if the five people strung up on the Tree today had had any sense, they'd have tried to do the same. They hadn't even denied the charges of treason, though one of them had cried at the sentencing, and another had fainted dead away from fear before the cart was pulled out from beneath their feet (they'd had to slap that one awake, no good hanging an unconscious traitor to the crown, the executioner had said). The worst for Lestrade was the one who had tried to be brave.
Poor sods, he thought, keeping his eyes on the pavement as he passed the gibbets on the other side of the square. A few of those would have to be taken down if they wanted to make room for the ones they'd hanged this morning, and he was just glad that it wasn't his job to get that done. Poor stupid sods.
There weren't many people in the square – apparently the novelty of a good hanging had worn off in the past few months – and Lestrade couldn't pretend not to notice the person falling into step with him.
"Morning, Dimmock," he said.
"It's not a very good one, is it?" The younger man hunched up his shoulders, looked up apprehensively at the gray sky. "Still, five anarchists off the Queen's streets. I hear there are fourteen more for the Tree tomorrow."
"That's what I hear too." Above them, the iron cages creaked in the wind, and Lestrade tried not to breathe in the stench from them or listen to the crows at their grisly business. Anderson even said that there were a few for the shoggoths in the pits of Newgate prison tonight, but he took everything Anderson said outside of the forensics lab with a grain of salt.
"They deserve it," said Dimmock, looking over his shoulder at the twisted shape of the Tree. The bodies were still there: they'd be taken down later in the day, when the executioner's crew was certain that they were all quite thoroughly dead. "Those lies about Her Majesty – those horrible lies – and spilling royal blood-"
"Not technically." There hadn't actually been any blood involved, though there had, without question, been murder done.
Dimmock shrugged off the correction. It made no difference to him. "And they admitted to it, they were proud of what they'd done. I don't understand it."
Neither did Lestrade, and he said as much, though his reasons for thinking that were patently different, and he kept those to himself. Dimmock was new to the Yard, relatively unblooded. His eyes still went wide and bright at the thought of serving the Crown, and he still said "Gloriana" and the other names for the Queen that could be pronounced with a human mouth with all the awe and reverence due to the Old Ones and more. He didn't understand how people could come to hate the royals. Lestrade got that bit –far be it for him to judge what royals did, he was just a copper, but other people would have it that they were given to unforgivable excesses and startling cruelties. What he didn't understand was why the Restorationists bothered. Maybe things could be better, yes, but they could also get much worse, and since worse often meant a rope necklace and dancing the hemp fandango…
Lestrade found himself nodding in blind agreement to what Dimmock was saying – something about Her Majesty's upcoming 900-year jubilee – and he would have gone on mutely agreeing with everything on autopilot if the other man hadn't said something about going back to the Yard.
"You go on ahead," he told Dimmock, who already had the keys to his squad car out (he had a keychain with the Queen's coat of arms on it). "I need to pop over to Baker Street for a bit."
"Baker Street? Is this to do with-?"
"With the Admiral? Yeah." Admiral Pyotr Halodniy– called Black Peter, a nephew of the White Lady of the Antarctic Fastness – had been found in his rooms, pinned to the wall with a harpoon like a beetle fixed to a card. That this had happened on the heels of Prince Franz Drago's murder and the uprising in Russia and the trouble at home had the Queen waxing wroth. Lestrade had been assured by his superiors that heads would roll if the crime was not solved, and he few doubts as to whose head would be doing the rolling. That he might lose his job was the least of it.
Dimmock had the decency to shudder. "I don't envy you."
"I don't envy me. This sort of thing isn't supposed to happen."
"Evil times," intoned the other man, twiddling his patriotic keychain, "when mankind, in its ignorance, turns on its rulers and protectors. Still," he went on, suddenly sounding much more normal, "I didn't think you'd be asking for outside help."
"I don't have much of a choice. The higher-ups won't get their hands dirty" – so they can't be blamed if it all goes pear-shaped – "and my team's stumped." I'm desperate, he thought, and he hoped it didn't show on his face.
"But this 'consulting detective'—" The inverted quotation marks were palpable. Dimmock had met him once, and had come away from the experience with a healthy respect for the amateur practitioner, and an even healthier dislike for the man.
"Look, I don't like him either. Not much." Lestrade shrugged. "But Jim Moriarty's the best chance we've got.
