The Texting Men
This is idiotic. This whole thing is idiotic. And pointless. And idiotic. Have I mentioned this? And, for John's information, I am not ranting. I am simply stating the facts. Also, I will not get on with the "story" until John stops looking over my shoulder.
Thank you.
I wrote a title for this pointless work, but I realize that, whatever suiting title I give it, John will just delete it and replace it with something utterly ridiculous. If you look at the top of the page, you'll see what I mean. I originally titled it, "Titles are Useless," which I thought was quite appropriate. However, it has no doubt been changed.
Ill-devised titles aside, I had been having an awful week. The criminal classes had apparently banded together to be as boring as humanly possible. I tried to be productive with my boredom, but John seemed to think that my experiments were unacceptable.
It was Tuesday [This is John here, by the way. Notice this was only Tuesday. He was only on his second day without a case. Hardly a week, in my opinion.], and, since I couldn't help humanity with my experiments (Do you see that, John? My experiments help humanity. I thought you cared about that. But no, you're as heartless as you accuse me of being.), I was delving into my mind palace and filing information from the crime encyclopedia I had been reading, and deleting unnecessary data (mostly the crap telly shows John had been making me watch), when I was rudely interrupted by a tapping noise.
I opened my eyes, but there was no one in the living room. The noise came again, and I triangulated its location to the kitchen window. Stomping over to the offending window, I pulled back the curtain to investigate.
A pigeon.
A pigeon.
A. Stupid. Pigeon. Was interrupting T3he Work.
That would have to stop.
I glared at the bird, even baring my teeth, giving it a clear signal that (1) I was a predator and (2) I was unhappy. It simply cocked its head and stared back. Clearly, this bird was even dull in the pigeon world. I hit the window with my hand, willing the stupid animal to go away. It didn't move.
"Go!" I whacked the window again. Nothing. "Go away, Anderson!" I thought this was a fitting name for the creature, given its low mental ability. "Go!" Another hit. The little beast didn't go away, but even dared to tap the window again.
I wrenched open the window, forcibly pushing the monster off the ledge. It simply flapped a couple times and landed back on the window sill. That was the last straw. Grabbing the fiend by its feet, I pulled it inside. Finally, it gave me a reaction and started flapping wildly. Too little, too late.
"Sherlock, what are you doing?" It was John. Of course he wouldn't have come earlier to deal with the feathery beast. (I hope you all aren't traumatized by my using dialogue, as John's blog doesn't usually subject you to this kind of writing. He prefers to tell and not show.) [Shut up, Sherlock!]
"Putting Anderson in the fridge."
"Putting An- Did you name that bird Anderson?"
"Yes." I pulled open the fridge door and shoved the bird in.
"You can't just stick a bird in the fridge!"
"Apparently I can, since this bird is definitely in the fridge."
"Take it out. Now."
"Is that a client I hear?" I had seen someone walking by when I was dealing with the pigeon. The man kept looking at house numbers, and hesitated when he finally found ours. He either didn't think his case was important, or thought it a bit too personal.
"What client? Take the pigeon out of the fridge!" Oh, ye of little faith, John.
The doorbell rang. "That client."
Footsteps pounded on the stairs (Is that rubbish, John? Those five words right there are better prose than your entire blog put together!) [Actually, they're a bit cliché, but you wouldn't know that, since you haven't read that much quality literature], and a recently-married man (as was evident from the fact that his wedding ring could still slide around on his finger) with a stressful desk job (which was clear from certain wrinkles on his forehead and callouses on his right hand) walked into the living room.
"Mr. Holmes?"
"That would be me." I walked over and sat down in my typical chair.
"My name is Harold Cubitt. I heard from a friend that you like to solve puzzles?"
"Yes, get on with it."
John shot me a look.
"Well, then," Mr. Cubitt reached into his pocket, taking out a mobile and holding it out to me, "here's the puzzle."
I started looking the phone over.
"I've… been receiving some strange texts lately."
"No."
"Sorry, what?"
"You haven't been receiving them; your wife has. This is clearly her phone and not yours. The color of the phone and the fact that there is still another phone in your pocket make this clear. And, since you lied about her, I'm assuming you don't want to involve her in any questioning. It could be that you want to keep her safe from whatever these messages contain, but lying about anything in a case often hampers the investigation, and, if she truly wanted these messages investigated, she would have talked you into telling the truth. No, it's more likely that she told you not to investigate this, and you don't want her to find out that you did this against her will."
He was struck silent for a moment (Most people are.), but eventually stuttered out, "Y-you're right."
"Obviously." After taking less than two seconds to guess the passcode for the phone, I searched through the messages folder.
"M-my wife has been receiving strange texts."
"These texts; am I correct?" I held up the screen to him, and he nodded rapidly.
"She became very agitated after seeing them, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. They make no sense. It could just be some childish prank, but her reaction made it seem like it was something bigger. I couldn't stand to see her like that. She's just perfect, and if it was something serious, I-"
"And she wouldn't tell you what they said."
"No. She said it was nothing, but I could hear her tossing and turning all night. Can you decode them?"
"Of course. If someone invented it, someone else can discover it. And that person just happens to be me."
The texts were as follows:
APBT TRDET
QB EV TUFRQUW QRTH DRQUTX
QL TRSEFTD
APBT VQAG LP ID
BETT XPI
CT CERR OEUW XPI
TRDET JSTJQST LP BTTL XPIS BQGTS
To make a long story (even though it should have been a very short account of a case) short, I'll simply tell you that this code was childishly simple to decode, seeing as, in the English language, E is the most common letter (this was clearly represented by the T in the messages). After that, the order roughly goes T, A, O, I, N, S, H, R, D, and L. However, T, A, O, and I are almost equal in their usage, so it was better to figure out letters and words from the context the E gave me. Here was my finished translation, which took around two minutes to complete.
COME ELSIE (Elsie was Mrs. Cubitt's name, as I figured out by searching through her messages)
AM IN ENGLAND ALEX SLANEY
AT ELRIGES
COME BACK TO US
MISS YOU
WE WILL FIND YOU
PREPARE TO MEET YOUR MAKER
Mr. Cubitt grew pale, apparently surprised that his "perfect" wife could've had enemies that he didn't know about. Foolish man; everyone has enemies. One of the most charming and seemingly "perfect" women I've ever met was convicted (by yours, truly, I might add) of poisoning four men simply because she couldn't let go of a grudge.
Snapping our client out of his useless shock, I asked, "Did she text him back?"
"N-no."
"Well, then, I think I had better."
"Sherlock," John said, "what are you-"
"Trust me, John." I typed back: APBT LP BT QL LCP LCP OUE V VQGTS DLSTTL.
Mr. Cubitt looked at me curiously. "What did you write?"
"Come to me at 221b Baker Street."
"Great." John threw his hands in the air. "Telling a possible murderer our home address. That's just brilliant, Sherlock."
And it was brilliant (as my plans always are). The message worked exactly as planned, and, approximately half an hour later, the sender of the coded texts showed up at our door.
Since this is boring me to tears, and I've already shown that my work is far superior to John's [As if!], I'll just shorten this up and explain that we caught Alex Slaney, who used to be in a gang with Elsie. She had left to start a new life, but Alex, who was hopelessly in love with her and would never actually follow through on his threats, had finally caught up with her. We arrested Alex, who put up quite the fight and actually knocked out Mr. Cubitt (but Mr. Cubitt was being an idiot, so I really can't blame Mr. Slaney), and managed to track down the rest of the gang, thanks to Alex Slaney's cooperation (in order to get himself out of jail time).
Are you happy now, John? No, of course not. For those of you who were wondering, John apparently thinks my setting was too long and the action too short. For John's information, this is not a story that can just be made up. This was simply a case, and a rather simple one at that. I solved it. I'm not quite sure what else John expects.
He demands a conclusion.
I've already concluded the case. So I'll just tell you about Anderson the pigeon. After Mr. Cubitt and Mr. Slaney left, Lestrade (who had been the officer in charge of the arrest) stuck around to talk, since he does that sometimes.
Right after one of Lestrade's comments about recent robberies, John interrupted him and asked, "Do you like birds?"
Lestrade looked at him in bewilderment. "Um, yeah, I don't mind them, I guess. Wh-"
"Perfect!" John ran to the fridge, grabbing out the demon pigeon.
"Do I want to know why there's a live pigeon in your fridge?" The DI continued to look utterly lost (but this was normal for him).
"He was interrupting The Work," I explained.
"He was- Sherlock, it's a pigeon. Somehow I don't think it was doing it on purpose."
"Oh, Anderson knew exactly what he was doing."
"You named it Anderson?"
"Oh, just take the bird, Lestrade!" John pleaded. [I actually called him "Greg," but apparently Sherlock didn't find this important enough to remember.]
"You don't have to, really. I'm perfectly content to experiment on him."
"Fine! I'll take the dumb bird," he conceded at last, grabbing the feathered monster by the feet.
And so, the beast found a home with Detective Inspector Lestrade, I cracked a code, we caught a criminal gang, and I have finally finished this account that turned out much longer than it ever should have been. And please, don't waste your time reading John's blog.
JWJWJW
Um. Yeah. I suck for making you wait. I am SO sorry about the several months it took me to finish this. Life insisted on getting in the way of my writing.
I hope you enjoyed how this turned out. If you have any thoughts, please leave a review. Have a lovely day, you amazing person!
EB DPSSX
LNQVGD OPS CQELEUF.