Just What the Landlady Ordered
By Cybra
Note: I am a little hesitant to post this up even here at the Reading Room. I do not think that this story deserves to be up at the Pastiche Parlour, so here is the only other place I could think to put it. Please enjoy.
Disclaimer: The Basil of Baker Street Mysteries belong to Eve Titus while The Great Mouse Detective belongs to the Walt Disney Company.
Before I begin, I'd like to say that if any person out there somehow manages to end up as the landlady or landlord of my most famous tenant, I pity and sympathize with you.
Mr. Basil isn't exactly the easiest person to get along with. I've had a few tenants leave simply because of his unusual habits. (I now give possible tenants fair warning before they move in.) I've heard endless complaints from other tenants who refuse to move out despite Mr. Basil's eccentricities.
There have been times that I've been ready to hand him a refund on the rent and toss him out on his ear; let him find a new flat on Baker Street so he can keep his professional moniker for all I cared.
But then he'll surprise me. Just when I think I can't take him anymore, he'll shock me into giving him another chance.
Like last year on my birthday. He didn't have any cases and seemed to think it would be great fun to pester me. I was about ready to tell him to pack his things and vacate the flat when he suddenly asked me with utmost seriousness to fetch something from his room. (This was strange because there are two places I am practically forbidden to occupy: his bedroom and his large leather chair.) Confused, I did as he asked.
Sitting on his night table was a sloppily wrapped box with a tag addressed to me, signed with a simple "B".
I still don't know how Mr. Basil knew. After all, I never told him.
Mr. Basil's been living in this flat for close to five years now, so his oddities don't truly surprise me anymore. I've accepted him as he is (even though there are times I wish I hadn't invited a certain homeless Oxford graduate in from the rain), and he seems to respect and care for me. (His main difficulty is expressing that respect and care!)
About three years ago I couldn't help noticing that there was a certain loneliness about him. Oh, he didn't seem that way to most people, but working for him made it a bit easier for me to read him. It was just that sometimes I'd notice a sort of longing as if hoping for companionship.
I've introduced him to a few young ladies in hopes of alleviating that loneliness, but he adamantly told me that he wished to remain a bachelor. (By the time I had started trying I'd gotten more comfortable around Mr. Basil. True, he continued to frighten me at times with sudden shifts in mood and behavior that nearly had me convinced to call an asylum, but I was growing more used to that.) After trying for several months, I finally surrendered.
Then seven months ago, a kindly doctor and an adorable little girl showed up on the doorstep.
The rest is, as the old cliché goes, history.
Still, during the times they were home during the Flaversham Case, I couldn't help noticing how each time Mr. Basil was a little more comfortable with Dr. Dawson. When the pair had returned in triumph along with little Olivia and her father, I could not help smiling as Mr. Basil and Dr. Dawson said their good-byes to Mr. Flaversham and Olivia. It appeared to me that Mr. Basil had finally found that companionship he was looking for.
Then my heart twisted when Dr. Dawson told him, "It's time I was on my way, too."
'Oh, please no!' I silently begged, eavesdropping from a corner of the flat as I pretended to try to clean up something.
Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the confused, hurt look in Mr. Basil's eyes.
"But…" Mr. Basil stammered, "but I thought…"
I had never seen – and hopefully never again will see – that look on his face before. He looked thoroughly bewildered and pained. My heart again twisted.
"Well, the…case is over," Dr. Dawson said awkwardly. "And perhaps…Well, perhaps it's best I found my own living quarters."
I was about ready to speak up when there was a knock at the door.
"But…Now who could that be?"
Like what normally happens after Mr. Basil completes a case, another case had come knocking. The young lady mouse apparently had lost a ring as Mr. Basil deduced a few minutes later.
Still, that didn't matter to me as much as seeing Mr. Basil invite Dr. Dawson to work on the case with him, his choice of words hinting at perhaps other cases afterward. I knew at that moment that Mr. Basil would not be alone anymore when Dr. Dawson agreed to more than just the case at hand.
The case with the lady's emerald ring was resolved quickly, and Dr. Dawson moved his things into the spare bedroom. When Mr. Basil gone off to run some errand a day or two after the move was over, I finally had the opportunity to talk to Dr. Dawson.
"Thank you, sir," I said.
"For what?"
I smiled at him as I told him, "You're just what the landlady ordered."