Hey! First Sherlock Holmes fanfiction! Hope this goes well....
Chapter One: Left to the Dust
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The room stank of month-old dust; clothes were strewn across the floor, papers littered the desks and various furniture, hazardous chemicals in sloppy flasks, and bottles. So many bottles. Alcohol of all kinds. Everything smelled of alcohol and tobacco. It was dark, the sunlight smothered by heavy curtains, and a loud snore from a happily sedated dog reverberated in the large room. The carpet was stained, cigars near the couch that they had rolled off of the night before.
In an unorganized corner of a room slept a lump of blankets and unwashed clothing. The snoring from Gladstone, the dog, finally reached his sensitive ears.
Hangover, hangover? Why did he have a hangover? The lump slapped himself with a pillow to cover his hearing, attempting to block the roaring beast. Groan. The pillow was completely and utterly ineffective and so, Sherlock Holmes opened his sleep-covered eyes. He scanned the room briefly, and attempted a drunken shout.
"Watson?" but the room had no response "Watson? Watson!" He rolled under the pile of messy covers and winced as his brain pounded into to skull. Sluggish, more so than usual, he noted. The scotch bottle by the bed, he picked it up and groaned when he saw the small bits of white powder that coated the bottom. He dropped the bottle and shut his tired eyes, groaning again.
"Trust the doctor to slip a healthy dose in my alcohol to keep me sleeping like a dead man," Holmes mumbled to himself and then crawled out from under the den. Stumbling towards the bottles of tonics to search for the sweet release (otherwise known as laudanum) he knew Watson would set on the shelf for him, despite the doctor's obvious betrayal. He wasn't talking about the drugging of course; he probably deserved that for experimenting on Gladstone so often…
Holmes sighed a little when he finally found the antidote with a note attached to it, "take only half a dose—W." Half a dose, half a dose. He searched for a spoon to take the medicine with and then sat down on one of the old couches.
Married. His dear best friend was married. The very word shivered down his spine like he was catching a summer cold. Rubbing his hands through his hair furiously, he sprung up and paced around the room. Married, he was married. Married to Mary, ha, that rhymed. Covering his face, Holmes groaned loudly, he must have taken too much Laudanum. The detective dropped the spoon and stumbled to the table with case files scattered across it. Picking up files and throwing them over his shoulder, he sighed.
"Missing person, missing jewels, missing dead bodies…" He sighed for the umpteenth time that morning, nothing to distract him from the frustrating notion that Watson was married. Married. Never to live with him again, chastise him on his bad habits. None of that. He should be happy for him, but he couldn't be; the mere idea of marriage disgusted him to no end. Love? He didn't know it. Never loved in his life, at least not romantically.
He sighed again; he missed Watson, but what could he do? Make Mary's life miserable? That would just anger the doctor to no end and drive them further apart. He already tried to pry them apart, even physically once (he got a black eye for that, but it was worth the try.) His stubborn nature wouldn't allow it, but now it seemed he had to accept the change. They were on their honeymoon today, of course he wasn't invited, and although he already deduced where they were vacationing, they were entirely too far away for him to follow now. Why was that? Well, why did Watson drug him? Of course of course. Holmes lifted one of the heavy curtains that covered the sunlight peeking through the windows and saw the dirty streets of London bustling about.
He was bored.
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Mrs. Hudson pinched the bridge of her nose. Standing in front of the oaken doors of Holmes' rooms, she couldn't help but start to form a headache. Her need of tidiness and overall a nice clean, dust free, spotless atmosphere always reared its claws at her tenant.
But she was concerned, he hadn't played the violin in strange hours, she didn't hear gunshots echoing from his room and scaring the mice back into the walls, there were no crashes from when he drops flasks on accident during his experiments. He hadn't come out of the room for a month and the food she set in trays were not touched.
He hadn't come out of that room since the dear doctor went on his honeymoon with his newly wed. Last time she heard, they were somewhere in America, leaving poor Holmes in the dust (literally.) And Mrs. Hudson couldn't just stand by and watch the detective starve himself in her apartment, and so, after forcing her need for cleanliness back into the corners of her mind, she took a deep breath, knocked sharply, and then after a pause, opened the door.
"Mr. Holmes, I—" she dropped the tray of biscuits and tea.
The hot liquid splattered across the floor and the delicate china shattered. The room was in total chaos, more so than usual. Shelves were torn down, papers were ripped into shreds, and flasks were carelessly strewn across the floor, their contents pouring out from their bellies. The curtains were torn off their racks, the table was flipped over, and the windows were broken.
And in the center of the room, laid a body. Dried blood that was practically brown caked around the body to its knees, and the pungent smell of rotting flesh signified it had died a long time ago. Dark messy locks, it was in one of Holmes' black overcoats, his shoes, his clothes, but it was lying face down. Surely it couldn't be. But it looked like him. At least, from the angle she was standing. She didn't think to scream, she had to know.
Carefully, she climbed around the piles of trash, papers, and clothes. Cautious not to mess with anything that might be evidence, she placed her hands on the body's shoulder, and used all her might to roll the dead weight over. The head lolled about, the body stiff and cold, and the jacket heavy on its frame, she finally turned it over after several minutes, trying to get good leverage and praying under her breath, her head down. She looked up.
She screamed. She screamed and screamed.
She scrambled away in fear and screamed.
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Sherlock Holmes was dead.
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The room was crowded with the Scotland Yard. Private eyes swarmed every part of the extremely chaotic room, looking for evidence that lead to the death of Great Britain's, the worlds, best detective. Mrs. Hudson was holding an officer, sobbing into his shoulder and refused to look at the body being examined on the ground. Some officers were frantic, yelling at lower ranks to move, shoving through as doctors rushed to Holmes' body, checking for the time of death. While other officers stood in silence, looking down, taking of their caps in respect, teary eyed, but not one sob except for the muffled cries of Mrs. Hudson. The rain fell silent on the roof.
"Mrs. Hudson! Mrs. Hudson!" the addressed lady turned towards the doctor who called her. "This is not Sherlock Holmes." The man smiled, almost grinned in relief, although immediately stopped when he realized there was still a dead man in their presence. One of the officers guided the landlady towards the body as she eagerly discovered if this statement were true. Holmes was not dead?
She peered down to find the doctor dabbing off a thin disguise from the man's face. His fingers were smudging the make-up and blood flaked off along with the powder, the light a doctor flashed in one of his eyes illuminated an unknown face. She crinkled her eyebrows in concentration, had she seen this man before? Passing through the pictures of visages in her memory, she did not recognize him.
"I've never seen this man before."
"Are you sure my lady? His identity is crucial to determining what happened here. Holmes is missing, we do not know if he is dead or alive. We can only hope—"
"Yes, I don't recall him at all." Mrs. Hudson cut Inspector Lestrade off before he could finish his sentence. She then took a closer look at the man, overcoming her fear of the dead body to catch a glimpse.
The man did indeed have brown locks; similar to Holmes, the same body structure, but differences in the slightest, and olive green eyes she wondered why she hadn't noticed before.
The man looked peaceful once a doctor closed his lifeless eyes, and Mrs. Hudson sighed in guilty relief. She was not one to celebrate death, even a stranger's, but she was glad he wasn't Holmes.
"Lestrade."
"Yes?"
"Look what was on the man's person"
The inspector turned towards the cold body and kneeled forward, picking out a possibly silver chain around the dead man. Carefully looping the chain off his neck, Lestrade examined the bright green sapphire centerpiece that it held. A beautiful, most likely expensive, stone was perfectly cut and set into the middle of a pair of entwined silver snakes. It gleamed proudly in the little light that penetrated the raining skies and through the window. The officers around him couldn't help but admire the jewelry.
"This is quite the masterpiece…" Lestrade mumbled to himself, "It must be worth at least—"
"More than your family could ever accumulate." Loud shoes clinked on the wooden floors. A black silken dress, ruffled in the back, a corset tie that crisscrossed in its usual fashion, up-do red curly hair, and the ever-present smirk. Irene Adler walked confidently into the murder scene.
The Yard blatantly stared at her; of course her famed beauty would attract these men. Her smirk grew and she headed towards the Holmes look-alike before perching, a delicate hand placed on her face and a gloved elbow on one of her knees. She was not fazed much by the dead body on the ground, as she was used to such gory scenes by now and her keen eyes scanned the room for any evidence as to what happened.
"What," Mrs. Hudson sputtered, "are you doing here?"
"Helping you find Holmes of course." Irene nimbly got up spun around, her dress brushing the floor. She paced a little before settling into the still standing armchair Holmes normally used and crossing her legs. She smiled a little and then began her story.
"A couple mornings ago, I happened to be in my carriage when a beggar off the street ran up to the door:
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"To the usual place please." Irene waved at the coachman as she sat on the hard leather seats.
"Yes M'am." As the carriage had started to move, she heard a loud bump along the outside of the door. Looking out, she saw a young street boy rubbing his head and then getting up, brushing the dirt off his pants.
"Miss Irene Adler?"
"Yes boy?" The scruffy child reached down into his pockets, and after some difficulty, pulled out a crumpled scrap of paper.
"A really strange man told me to give this to you." The boy wrinkled his forehead and then attempted to straighten his dirty and messy hair a little bit.
Irene daintily took hold of the paper and reminded herself to read it later. First, ask about the strange man.
"What did the strange man look like?"
"He was wearing a ripped black overcoat with lots of holes in it. That wasn't the weird part though; he had a nightgown on under the coat! He had a pipe too, smelled of tobacco."
A nightgown? Irene looked amused. Sounded like Holmes to her.
"Did the strange man have brown, short hair, about 5'9, dark brown eyes?"
"Sounds like him, oh! He was wearing dark colored glasses, so I didn't know what color his eyes were. But he was weird, who wears dark colored glasses when it's raining, especially for days?"
"Men of insanity, or men of genius." Irene mumbled to herself.
"Huh?"
"Nothing my dear, here is a shilling for your troubles." She smiled when the boy accepted it eagerly and ran off.
She looked at the crumpled paper in her hands and slowly smoothed it out in the darkness of the carriage. "Can't see…" she mumbled more to herself. Irene held the paper out into the bare amount of sunlight-
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"What?"
"What what?" Irene inquired
"What did it say?" The inspector growled out loud for the amount of time wasted on the trivial details she had in the story.
"Here." She handed the scrap of paper to Lestrade.
Trouble is coming. Get away. Five days, Don't come find me. Watson in trouble.-SH
The inspector read the message outloud for everyone to hear.
"What is that supposed to mean?" Mrs. Hudson sighed, frustrated.
"It means," Irene solemnly stated, "that he was in trouble, and apparently so was I."
How Holmes even knew she was in London was a mystery to her, but she shouldn't be surprised, he was Holmes after all.
"I would assume that Watson got a similar message as well?" She searched the room for the trusty and loyal doctor to poke his head out of the crowd of people in the room.
"He isn't here." Mrs. Hudson stated, "He's currently still on his honeymoon with Mary in America."
"Honeymoon? He's married? America? " The landlady nodded.
"Poor Holmes…How do we even reach him if he's in America?" Irene commented. Holmes was nothing without his partner. Not just with the cases either, but personally without Watson, Holmes was a mess.
Speaking of the doctor…
How was she going to tell him the bad news?
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Review Review! This is my first Sherlock Holmes Fanfiction! I did a little research about the time period, but if I get something wrong, please tell me! I know the story seems a little vague at the moment, but it gets better!