a/n: This fic comes from a conversation about a pie safe (a box in which to carry pies/cakes/other baked goods) and the fact that there was only one pie safe and two pies; thus, an "unsafed pie", which quickly became a fanfic idea as things often do. I did do some research on the effects of cyanide, but if there is anything that I have got horribly wrong in the poison or in the setting, please do inform me.
This is set in the Victorian era, fyi. If I messed that up horribly, please tell me so I can fix it.
Any and all feedback is greatly loved.
In all my years recording the adventures of that consulting detective known as Sherlock Holmes, I have seen many peculiar cases. This one is not so strange, but I have decided to write it down so I may remember it. It began one Boxing Day morning, some three hours before noon. As it was a holiday, my friend and I had risen late, and the two of us were eating the delicious breakfast prepared by our landlady, Mrs. Hudson, when that same woman came bustling into our sitting-room.
"A visitor for you, Mr. Holmes," said she. "She's brought you a case."
In an instant, my friend was on his feet, his mousecoloured dressing-gown flapping about him. "Show her in, Mrs. Hudson," he commanded, beginning to pace back and forth. It had been some weeks since his last case, the peculiar adventure of the mice in the walls, and he had been suffering greatly from boredom. I had been able to detect a great restlessness in my friend, and I think that had the quiet lasted any longer, Holmes would have resorted to pestering our friend Inspector Lestrade for cases. I, just as my companion, was very grateful for some distraction, as Sherlock Holmes when he is restless is a worse fellow-lodger than Sherlock Holmes when a case is on.
Holmes fell into a chair by the fire as we heard two pairs of feet upon the stairs up to our rooms. I retrieved the little note-book in which I recorded details of our adventures and waited to see what this visitor would bring.
Our visitor was a young woman, perhaps twenty years of age, and clearly fairly well-to-do. A wedding-band gleamed brightly on her left hand and she was quite distraught.
"Have a seat," Holmes ordered coolly, and our visitor sank gratefully into the other armchair, dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief.
"Oh, Mr. Holmes," she began—"you just have to help me. The police have dismissed it as a mere accident, but I just know it had evil motives behind it." She blew her nose delicately.
Holmes steepled his fingers beneath his chin and leant forward to fix our visitor with his piercing grey gaze. "What is this 'it' that you speak of?" said he.
Our visitor sniffed. "My husband was murdered," she said bluntly.
Here Holmes leant back, a spark of interest in his expression. "Tell me more."
"But first—may we know your name?" I interjected.
Our visitor looked a trifle startled. "Oh—of course," said she. "My name is Rebecca Harringford. My husband is—was—Lord Matthew Harringford."
"And now that we have those matters over with," here Holmes's expression of distaste indicated clearly his feelings on the subject—"we can get to the important things. If you could describe precisely what occurred, Lady Harringford."
The Lady Harringford drew in a breath and began to speak. "Yesterday evening, as the household was finishing Christmas dinner—we had started on the pudding, which was a cherry-marzipan pie—my husband began to appear to choke. He clutched at his chest, becoming blue about the lips, then collapsed to the floor, dead." She blinked several times to attempt to banish the tears which had once more welled up in her eyes. "Everyone thinks it was but a tragic accident, but I know that my husband had enemies who would be glad to see him dead." She drew in another breath. "This was no accident. It was murder. I wish to ask you to determine who would do such a thing, and to catch them."
Holmes considered our visitor's request for some minutes, his expression distant. "Very well," he said eventually. "I will take your case, Lady Harringford. Might we see the body?"
The Lady Harringford nodded.
"Excellent!" said Holmes, leaping from his chair and dashing off to collect his coat. "Come, Watson! The game is on!"
I hurried to follow my friend and our visitor down the seventeen steps and out to the road, where a hansom (presumably used by the Lady Harringford to reach our door) waited. The Lady Harringford gave her direction to the cabbie, then we were off.
The Harringfords were evidently staying at a small town-house in London; it took relatively little time to reach our destination, even accounting for the morning traffic. Once there, Holmes quite nearly launched himself from the cab, as might a hound who, after weeks without a chase, has finally scented its quarry.
"You are enthusiastic this morning, Holmes," said I, descending from the cab at a more stately pace and assisting the Lady Harringford down.
"Do try not to state the obvious, my dear fellow," said he, his eyes darting in every direction in search of clues, however slight, that might lead to untangling this puzzle. "Of course I am a trifle excited. All this disgustingly cold weather has kept the criminal class indoors and inactive until now!"
I chuckled at my friend's capacity for understatement. "As ever, Holmes, you are a most peculiar chap," said I.
Holmes chose not to hear me, instead requesting that the Lady Harringford show us where her husband's body lay.
The dining room of the Harringfords' town-house was modest in size, perhaps twenty feet by thirty. An oaken table stood in the middle of the room with two chairs set at the ends and a candelabra placed in the center. Beside the chair at the head of the table lay the body of the late Lord Matthew Harringford.
That lord was nearly as young as his wife; I would place him at twenty-five, perhaps twenty-six years of age. He was lean, in the way of younger men, and not very tall. Of course, no sooner had we entered the room than Sherlock Holmes saw the body and began to employ his brilliant mind to spin out this man's life story from his appearance.
"Young, upper-class, likely second son so not terribly wealthy, recently finished university, happily married to the Lady Harringford some two years," my friend rattled off. "A rather careless sort, though good-natured. Studied law at university, was just about to go into practice for himself when he died."
"Fantastic!" I exclaimed. "How could you possibly know that, Holmes?"
"Elementary," said he. "His status as a second son from an upper-class family was easily deduced from the quality of his clothing. The recent completion of university I received from those papers on the side-board, which also formed the basis for my theory that he had studied law and was about to go into practice for himself. The carelessness can be inferred from the occasional stain on his jacket and the good nature from the disposition of the servants, who seem quite unhappy with the recent demise of their master. The length of his marriage to the Lady Harringford was determined from the date on his wedding ring and the happiness of that marriage from the shine. The state of a man's marriage may be easily seen from the shine on his wedding ring," Holmes added.
The Lady Harringford blinked several times in open astonishment. "I admit, Mr. Holmes, I had some doubts as to the veracity of your reputation," said she. "I have them no longer. Every single thing you said is the complete truth!"
A smug grin stretched Holmes' lips, like that of a cat that has just discovered where the cream is kept. "Excellent," said he. "Watson, my dear fellow, I would have your opinion on the cause of death."
"But you will only refute my every word," I protested. "What point is there in saying something that will be proved untrue within a moment?"
Holmes waved a dismissive hand. "It will be useful as a jumping-off point. Your opinion, if you please."
I sighed and knelt next to the body. The face was pale, blue around the lips, and wore an expression of great pain. The limbs were flung wildly about, in no particular order. "It would appear to me that this fellow has died of a heart-attack," I said confidently, wincing as I got to my feet—my bones were no longer quite so young as they once had been, and protested any great motion. "What think you, my dear Holmes?"
My friend examined the body closely, picking up the hands and dropping them again, peering at the face and mouth. "Very good, my dear Watson," said he. "You missed almost everything of importance. This man did indeed suffer from cardiac arrest, but if one observes the tips of the fingers—pale and blue—and the area around the mouth—the same—it is easy to determine that the cardiac arrest was caused by a poison: cyanide."
The Lady Harringford gasped. "So he was murdered after all," she said softly.
"I am afraid so," Holmes said gravely. He brightened. "Now what there is left to do is to discover how the poison entered his system, and from there I may deduce who murdered him!" He clapped his hands, delighted as a child on Christmas morning. "Oh, there is nothing quite so good as a case!"
"But how shall you determine how the poison entered his system, Holmes?" said I. I was quite familiar with my friend's methods and knew well how he would go about it, but asked the question for the sake of reminding him of his own intent.
My eminently distractible friend chuckled. "By a simple process of elimination, my dear Watson," said he. "Obviously, it could not have been through inhalation of the gas, as no-one else in that room was harmed. Therefore, it must have been through ingestion—the poison must have been in some kind of comestible or beverage. The symptoms did not occur until the pudding, so the poison was in that cherry-marzipan pie or in his after-dinner drink. Was there such a drink? What was it?" he asked of the Lady Harringford.
She nodded. "Matthew always takes—took—a glass of port with pudding, but he hadn't touched his port that evening."
Holmes folded his hands before his face, his piercing grey eyes going soft and distant as they so often did as he thought. "It must have been the pie, then," he muttered. "And the marzipan would disguise the bitter-almond scent of cyanide…brilliant," he breathed, and I withheld a shudder at his obvious admiration of this crime. There are times when I think, even now, that it was a miracle that Sherlock Holmes never turned criminal himself. He would have been uncatchable, except perhaps by the intervention of his brother.
"Did you yourself sample the pie, Lady Harringford?" I asked, turning my attention briefly from my companion and associate.
"I did have a few bites—no less than Matthew had," she answered.
"So the entire pie was not poisoned," said Holmes. "The poison must have been in just that one slice, then…and a fatal dose, spread over a slice, could not possibly have fit into a few bites, unless those bites were uncommonly large." He scowled at the body. "Lady Harringford," he said abruptly—"did anything untoward occur with your husband's slice of pie before it was served to him?"
"Well," she said hesitantly—"our butler, dear Streeter, cut the slices from the pie and placed them before us, and I thought he fussed perhaps a little overmuch over Matthew's slice…" Her eyes widened again in horror. "You don't mean to say that Streeter killed Matthew, do you?" she asked, her voice trembling.
Holmes shrugged, the movement dropping off his shoulders like an unneeded dressing-gown. "It is entirely probable that he was in the pay of one of those enemies you mentioned," he said nonchalantly. "Question him to be certain. Come, Watson, our case is solved, and quickly, too. Let us return to Baker-street."
"What of your fee?" asked the Lady Harringford.
"What of it?" said Holmes, waving a dismissive hand. "None necessary. Consider it a Christmas gift from me."
I was smiling as I accompanied my friend back to our rooms at Baker-street. As heartless as he so often pretended to be, I knew that Sherlock Holmes was indeed capable of human feeling, and there was little better Christmas gift for me than to see indubitable proof of this phenomenon.
"And what has you in such a pleasant mood this morning, my dear Watson?" asked Holmes.
"Merely the holiday spirit, my dear Holmes," said I.
My companion gave only a disgruntled huff in response, and we completed our journey home in comfortable silence.