Early November

"So," Sherlock said as he returned his magnifying glass to his pocket. "Christmas."

Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade looked up from his notebook. "What?"

Sherlock stepped around the head of the deceased woman on the ground between them and knelt to examine her fingernails. "Christmas," he repeated, as if peering under the fingernails of a dead woman were the perfect segue for the conversation he wanted to have.

Lestrade was unimpressed. "What about it?"

"It's coming up."

A sigh from the inspector drew Sherlock's eyes up from the woman's prone body. "Astute observation, Sherlock. Now can you apply that world-class investigative mind of yours to deducing literally anything at all about the dead girl?"

Sherlock cast his eyes about the room—a drug den if ever he'd seen one, judging by the discarded needles and lighters and metal spoons littering the ground. A dead woman in a place such as this didn't raise too many questions, but Sherlock wasn't entirely sure that this was the simple case of a murdered prostitute or drug addict.

"You want me to solve this for you?"

Lestrade's exasperated sigh was answer enough. "That's the idea, generally."

"And then you'll talk to me about whatever I want to talk about?"

"Yes, I will talk to you about anything you want to talk about," Lestrade griped. "I will talk to you about fractal geometry or geopolitical power plays or Barbie dolls if that's what you want to talk about…"

Sherlock frowned. "Why would I want to talk about Barbie dolls?" he muttered before standing up to his full height. He flicked his index finger over the tip of his nose and took one more long, hard look at the room before speaking. "This woman was not killed here."

"How do you know?"

He pointed to the ground. "Drag marks under her feet. She was brought here from somewhere else."

"Another room?"

"Another part of town," he said. "She didn't frequent these neighbourhoods. Look at her hands. Expensive gel manicure. The Louboutin heels too. Dead giveaway." He paused, casting sheepish eyes at the Inspector. "Pardon the pun."

"How do you know that?" Lestrade gave the girl another once-over. "She's dressed like an extra from Pretty Woman."

Sherlock nodded. "She's posh for an east end drug den. She's not a drug user. She wouldn't come to a place like this. She was brought here by the person who killed her."

"And that would be…?"

"Well that's the easiest part of all," Sherlock pointed to the finger-like abrasions clearly seen around her neck. "Strangulation, from the front. Strangers don't usually strangle their victims—it takes too long, isn't easy to do. She knew her killer. The position of his hands indicates he was above her—that she was lying down and he was on top. The absence of defensive wounds suggests this was not an unwelcome event." He cleared his throat. "This woman was accidentally strangled to death during consensual sexual congress involving erotic strangulation. Her partner panicked, dressed her in appropriate street-walker attire, and brought her here to throw us off the scent." He nodded. "You're looking for a boyfriend, a lover, not a husband—she's unmarried—but definitely someone she knew and was intimate with, regularly."

Lestrade's eyes widened. "Right."

"Now…," Sherlock said. "About Christmas."

Pushing their way out of the small cafe and into the newly-dampened street, Lestrade cleared his throat. "So what are you on about Christmas for?"

Sherlock considered the other man. Feed him a half-truth."I'm conducting a highly unscientific poll."

"Highly unlikely."

Fine. Three-quarter truth. "Maybe it's small talk."

Lestrade scoffed.

"What if I was actually searching for weaknesses that would allow me to manipulate the outcome of this year's Christmas gift exchange in which now I'm almost certainly not going to be invited to participate?"

Lestrade pointed a finger at Sherlock. "There you go! I'd believe that one."

Sherlock sighed. "Are you going to tell me or not?"

The inspector walked along the sidewalk, his heels striking the pavement just slightly out of sync with his longer-legged companions stride. The syncopated clip-clip-clop-clip-clop echoed up off the stone buildings and asphalt that surrounded them, up to the open sky above their heads. It was starting to drizzle again. Sherlock turned his coat collar up even more and pulled his scarf around his throat, hugging the paper cup of coffee in his hands.

Finally, Lestrade sighed. "Favourite Christmas memory, yeah?" he sniffed. "Well, since I haven't had a decent Christmas in forever, I can say with certainty that Christmas dinner is the one thing I miss the most. Does that count?"

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. "Figgy pudding?"

"'Course."

"Pumpkin pie?"

"Not usually," he screwed up his face and wheeled on the detective. "No, really, why are you so curious about this again?"

Sherlock looked up at the sky above their heads, at the thick and heavy clouds that had seemed to settle against the rooftops. "Research," he replied.

"For a case?"

"Of sorts."

Lestrade seemed unconvinced. He took a sip of his coffee once again. "Bit old fashioned, this, asking questions and all that. Usually you'd just be able to look at me and know what I liked about Christmas dinner—"

The detective bristled at the challenge. He rolled his shoulders slightly and looked the inspector up and down. "I already knew Christmas dinner was your favourite because you I know have self-control issues. Your smoking habit bears that out, as does the fact that during the last Christmas you spent with your wife, you came back from your holiday having gained five and a half pounds. And how does one gain weight over the holidays? Eating. Christmas. Dinner." Sherlock paused to breathe before continuing. "Of course, perhaps you gorge yourself on vegetables, but in the run-up to the holidays every year since you've taken to suffering through salads for lunch—and I do mean suffering, judging by the look on your face as you eat it—so I doubt you willingly consume enough veggies to account for the weight gain alone. You also don't have a sweet tooth, so pastries and baked goods are probably not high enough on the list of offenders to count. I must therefore conclude that your holiday overindulgence comes in the form of meat—my guess is turkey—and potatoes—definitely mashed." He paused and took a drink from his own coffee cup.

Lestrade blinked. "Is that all?"

"Hardly," Sherlock replied. "Figgy pudding and not pumpkin pie suggests tradition is important to you. English traditions. Borne out in your choice of traditional English Christmas foods, not American ones. Thus, I surmise that the holidays are rather difficult, being separated from your wife, because you must miss the traditions you were building with her, with her family…"

He observed that Lestrade had grown quite quiet. For a startling moment, Sherlock feared he may have run his mouth and taken his analysis a step too far. He didn't even know why he'd said what he'd said in the first place; it was wholly irrelevant to the topic at hand. He turned to his friend, softening his voice. "Have I offended?"

Lestrade ignored the question, and for his part turned his face heavenward for a brief second as the light shower misted on. "I'll bet your deductions couldn't tell you about the year we decided to do a ham instead of a turkey," he said with a laugh. "That was the first Christmas after we got married."

Sherlock knew better than to interrupt. He may not have been the world's most socially adept human being, but in all the years he'd spent around people with normally functioning emotional centres stored within their limbic systems he had learned a thing or two about when to talk and when to stay silent. In this case, he wisely chose the latter.

"We'd just moved to this great flat," Lestrade continued. "Nearly twice the size of our first place. It was positively palatial. So we offered to host Christmas dinner. And it was an absolute disaster."

"How?"

Lestrade chuckled. "Well, we forgot to cook the ham. We'd made sweet potatoes and a bean casserole and had a lovely dessert baking away. Then her parents arrive, and then her brother and his wife. And suddenly we remembered that the ham roast was still sitting in the freezer." Lestrade continued to laugh. "We'd never had a freezer before, you see. We bought the ham a month earlier and chucked it in there and them promptly forgot we even had it. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess."

"What did you do?"

His laughter had ebbed a bit but still his shoulders shook. "We boiled it to within an inch of its life and served it with some kind of cranberry sauce reduction her brother made in lieu of roasting it the way we'd planned—you know, cloves and all that. Dinner was two hours late and we missed the church service we'd planned on going to, and it all tasted fine, but…"

Sherlock frowned. "Actually sounds like you emerged relatively unscathed."

"Well we never lived it down, that's for sure," he smiled. "And we certainly never cooked another ham, and very nearly turfed the deep freeze just in case anything else got lost in there."

Sherlock watched as Lestrade's face morphed from joyful to sad again as the remembrance passed. The fact of it made Sherlock more than a little bit sad himself. He clutched his coffee cup and took a long pull from within.

"'Course not every Christmas dinner was a disaster," Lestrade continued. "My mum was a great cook, and her mum before her. Always cooking something for someone. Christmas was just an absolute feast. They'd cook enough to feed whole armies but it was just us, a dozen people or so. So we'd have food for days afterwards, just coming out of our ears. Turkey and potatoes, and someone would boil down the bones and make soup and that would get us through till well after the New Year."

The conversation percolated in Sherlock's mind. He felt himself drifting away, not paying attention. "Meal times as a cultural touchstone," he muttered as Lestrade trailed off.

"Hm?"

"Oh," Sherlock shook his head. "Nothing. Carry on."

Lestrade fell silent for a while. "You were right though," he said. "About missing the traditions. After mum passed, and dad was already gone…things just dropped off. My aunts and uncles and cousins had their own families, and of course they always invite me 'round during the holidays—still do—but you feel like such a burden. You're the one with the divorce pending and no one to go home to at the end of the day," he paused. "Though I suppose it's no more depressing than hanging around the pub on Christmas Day. I didn't even know there were pubs open on Christmas Day until the year after she left me…" he said, shrugging into his jacket. "I don't know why I'm telling you all this."

Sherlock felt the weight of Lestrade's confession, and he didn't know what to say in return. If anything. He really wished there were classes on social convention he could take…

Then Lestrade chuckled. "D'you remember Christmas crackers?"

Sherlock was taken aback. "Crackers?"

Lestrade pinched his coffee cup in his teeth and made a gesture with both hands. "You know, yay big, foil tube, stupid hat inside?" he said against the paper rim.

Sherlock scoured his brain until he hit on it. He frowned. "Yeah, more or less."

The inspector grinned and grabbed his cup from his mouth. "It's not Christmas dinner without Christmas crackers…"

Sherlock made a mental note about that one.

"So, does that answer your question?" Lestrade asked, rounding the car.

"Yes, thanks."

"Do you want a lift home?"

"Er, no," Sherlock shook his head. "I've got…errands."

Lestrade nodded. "Okay. Thanks for the coffee." He opened the door and was about to duck in when he stood up to his full height, resting his arm on the roof of the car. "What's your favourite thing about Christmas?"

Sherlock paused, slightly shocked by the reversal of the interrogation. "Ah…same," he lied. "Dinner. Christmas dinner."

"Yeah," he said. "Christmas dinners. All of them. That's what I remember best."

He nodded at Sherlock and climbed into the car, and within a moment was pulling away from the curb and down the street.

Sherlock watched as he departed, sipping his coffee in the misting rainfall. Try as he might, he still couldn't hit on a favourite Christmas memory of his own.

But he didn't have time to worry about it; ideas were brewing.

He finished his coffee and made his way to the Limehouse station, not caring about the rain anymore.

**A/N: There has been some question about whether or not turkey is a traditional English food or not. Turkeys *are* native to the Americas but were brought to Europe by the end of the 16th century, and by the time Queen Victoria took the throne, they were rapidly becoming the preferred centrepiece for the Christmas meal. From a BBC site about Victorian Christmas traditions [www . bbc . co . uk / victorianchristmas / history . shtml]: "The roast turkey also has its beginnings in Victorian Britain. Previously other forms of roasted meat such as beef and goose were the centrepiece of the Christmas dinner. The turkey was added to this by the more wealthy sections of the community in the 19th century, but its perfect size for a middle class family gathering meant it became the dominant dish by the beginning of the 20th century." American and Canadian Christmas traditions borrowed heavily from England, especially the Victorians, which explains why turkeys are found on our tables to this day!**