Title: A delicate test
Author: clarrie
Disclaimer: Most of what you see is owned by, respectively, Joss Whedon, Fox, The WB, The estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jean Marsh and Eileen Atkins, Bram Stoker and Laurie R King.
This is a Sherlock Holmes, Buffy, Dracula, Upstairs Downstairs, Beekeeper crossover. There was a bet.
An illustrated version of this fic can be found at www.geocities.com/bakesale_bitca/deltest.html
'What the f...Albin!' The anger on Spike's visage as he spun to face the doorway turned into an astonished smile that split his face in two. 'Albin you old bugger we thought you were dead.' Spike grasped the hand of the vampire in the doorway and smacked him affectionately across the back. He looked down at the tin in his old friend's hand. 'What in God's name are you eating?'
'It is a stew, William, my pretty little hoodlum.' Albin grinned wickedly and tossed the tin to the ground. 'And I had thought that all young men did like a fine stew, eh Miss Drusilla?'
He clasped the giggling maid by the hand and dropped to his knees in order to place a courtly kiss upon her fingertips. 'I'm sure that you know many a delicate receipt for a stew, don't you Drusilla my petal?' He twinkled flirtatiously. 'I shall tell you how to make a pretty stew indeed, Take several fine ladies of the court of his majesty and a discreet hid house near the Vauxhall gardens, and some malmsey and fine sack, and players on the lute and viol...'
'We have a queen now Albin, you antiquated old poof.' Spike interjected happily. 'Your memory going as well as your looks I see. Where have you been?'
'As I remember.' Albin rose gracefully to his feet, chucking Drusilla gently on the cheek. 'As I remember, when we last spoke I was being thrown from the back of a moving carriage, that some filthy little cur may escape the following mob unharmed with his sweetheart.'
Spike laughed shamelessly. 'Bloody worked too!'
'Hmmm.' Albin raised a cynical eyebrow. 'Well, one does not pass six centuries without picking up a trick or two along the way and while I won't pretend that I wasn't hurt by your ingratitude...' He picked delicately at his fingernails. 'I stand here still. No more or less dead than when last we passed company. I dallied a winter with the shepherds in Grandinsula.' He closed his eyes in wistful memory. 'You know there are mountains there where months pass before they see a new face.'
'I'll bet they're just desperate for someone to talk to.'
'Mmmm, something like that my dear, something like that...' Albin waved a hand dissmissively.
'I travelled a little in Europe, nothing particularly consequential. But my darlings!' He raised his voice joyfully. 'My Darlings! Imagine my delight when it reached my ears that you'd parted company with that insipid little mick and his pox-ridden whore. I scurried here at once.'
He smiled with an exaggerated innocence. 'Although it would appear that you were expecting someone else? A more exalted visitor perhaps?'
Drusilla took to giggling softly again. Spike frowned. 'You heard?' He growled in exasperation.
'Ah.' Albin smiled indulgently. 'Pluck out my eyes, sever my limbs, lock me in the deepest dungeon - but deny me gossip and truly, you deny me life. Now,' Albin sprawled languidly at the table. 'Would it be beyond you to produce a pot of tea? It would? Savages...'
'Dalton?' Van Helsing beckoned to the bespectacled youth as he passed his doorway. 'A moment please.' He ran his tongue along the edge of an envelope and smoothed down the fold with a thin finger as the young man entered his study and stood shyly at the desk. 'I have an errand.' He paused as he added his signature to another piece of paper and slipped it into a second, unsealed envelope. 'Where is Bathory?'
'P...P...P...Pardon?'
'Bathory, where is he?' Van Helsing glared at the stuttering lad as he fumbled with his glasses, and rubbed his eyes in irritation. 'No matter, it is... No matter...' He waved a dismissive hand at the scholar. 'I need you to pay a visit to the Diogenes club, you will ask that this message be given to Mr Wyndham.' He passed the envelope to Dalton who eyed it curiously. 'I am desirous of an hour or two in the company of their fine library, my own meagre resources do not seem to be particularly forthcoming I am afraid.' Van Helsing frowned as his erstwhile help left the room. 'And again we submit ourselves to the tender mercies of our friends at the council...'
'I'm looking for Dr Giles. Excuse me?' Watson attempted once again to catch the attention of the busy charge nurse. 'Excuse me? Sister? I... Excuse me?' He sighed with relief as the nurse paused momentarily in front of him. 'Thank you, My name is Dr Watson and I...'
Such was the good lady's explosive efficiency at the sight of his doctors bag that it was not until four hours later he was to reach his original target.
After, that is, he had diagnosed and dosed more sorry looking specimens that he had seen in all his years of medicine, spent an instructive and infuriating ninety minutes attempting to repair the ministrations of a fellow 'physician' who's name he was sure that would curse until the day he died. Had ushered in one young life and been present at the exit of another.
It was sitting at this bedside that he eventually found, or rather was found by, Dr Giles herself.
'Pleurisy.' He smoothed the hair from around the young girl's face. 'Probably resulting from a prior unreported injury, with complications arising from poor nourishment, sustained alcohol abuse and general weak constitution.'
'Oh dear...' Dr Giles pulled the sheets up over the cooling body and frowned to herself. 'They never come to us when they should you see. Sister?' She beckoned to the hovering nurse. 'If you could find someone to take her to the... Thank you.' She turned to Watson. 'Shall we walk?'
Holmes faced the mirror and extended a cochineal tongue. He stretched a lengthy index finger and pulled down his lower right eyelid in a disinterested way before resuming a more usual aspect. 'Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper. A peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked.' He grinned as the childish rhyme hung in the air. 'I'm not a pheasant plucker I'm a...Mrs Hudson.'
'Ever so sorry if I interrupted you Mr Holmes. I heard you up and about.' The matronly Scotswoman balanced a tray between her hip and the sideboard. 'I brought up a basin of hot water for you, should you wish to shave of course, and a pot of tea. I hope that wasn't too presumptuous?'
'Not at all, my dear lady, not at all.' Holmes took the tray from her hands. 'I was just about to ring for those very things.'
'I'll leave you to it then shall I sir?'
'If you would Mrs Hudson, if you would.' Holmes listened for the click as his employee closed the door behind her and returned to the mirror. He pressed his fingertips against the glass and watched with fascination as even these small points of flesh went unreflected. 'A magnificent vision of all that invisibility might mean to a man.' He murmured to himself softly and stared at the reflection of his room, given novelty by that which was missing. Before turning his mind to the problem which has traditionally perturbed many the practical minded reader of gothic fiction. How exactly does one shave without a reflection?
'You are worried about your Mr Holmes?' Dr Giles stepped hurriedly across the cobbled square which lay between the twin buildings of St Lucy's free hospital. 'He has shown signs of...' She skirted a patch of unidentified refuse on the path. 'He has shown ill effects from last night?' Dr Giles bent slightly to pick up a lurking cat and throw it further from the door. 'Or are you here concerning the Strensall case. Because I'm afraid I'm unable to help you there, we do not allow access to our records, except to the police and I will admit, grudgingly then, you understand.
'I...' Watson watched as a brace of nurses wheeled a spitting and cursing invalid from one building to another, seemingly impervious to her blows and cries of poison in the face of their aid. 'You seem to do a lot of good work here. Among... Among a certain class...'
'Who will if we do not Dr Watson? Sister Peters has spoken to you about volunteering your service for a few hours a week I suppose... No? Well no doubt she will corner you again before you leave. She is a capable woman and much given to the furtherance of our little operation.'
'Hardly little, madam.' Watson paused as they reached he set of steps leading up to the door of Dr Gile's offices. 'There must have been thirty or forty cases in the maternity ward alone.'
'We enjoy the patronage of several organisations, with a little frugality we manage to avoid the clutches of the bailiff. But we have trouble securing medical staff.' She paused as Watson held open the door. 'Surgeons, consultants, it seems that they think our clientele to be rather beneath them...'
'A great pity.'
'Drink?' Dr Giles poured herself a glass from an unlabelled decanter. 'Only a tonic I'm afraid, we received several cases of it from a benefactor in the brewing trade and the patients won't drink it under sufferance.'
Watson refused the offer with a smile and accepted the proffered seat. 'You persevere though?'
'Your Mr Holmes once said something about isolated houses I believe.' Dr Giles seated herself at her desk and began to half-heartedly sort a pile of mail. 'That there was more potential for crime among the lone houses of the countryside than ever there was in the city?'
Watson nodded carefully. 'Something of the sort. Yes.'
'These people are isolated houses Dr Watson. They have no family - or none that care about their fate, they have no real friends. There is no one to raise the alarm, there is no one to turn to.' She paused. 'We do what we can here but... They're almost entirely at the mercy of others.'
'No. Dr Van Helsing you have been told before that...'
'A message was sent... I wish only to.' Van Helsing's knuckles turned white as he grasped tightly at the head of his cane.
'You are not permitted to use the council's facilities.' The slim bookish young man at the desk stared emotionlessly before him. 'The council does not agree with your methods, with your motives, you have been told repeatedly that...'
'Nicht mehr!' Pulling his cloak around him and stepping backwards, Van Helsing pointed an accusing finger and raised his voice in a hoarse shout of anger. 'It enough!' He yelled into the ancient stone of the building around him. ' It is enough for evil to triumph, only that good men sit by and do nothing!'
