Just a quick thanks to The Powers That Be who maintain this bastion of creativity in the vast cultural wasteland. You never know how much you love it until the hard drives crashes.

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Chapter Five
Stakeout

Hollywood lied. Now I know this may come as a shock to some of you, but it's true. In the movies, thieves always just break into someplace with no advance planning and no clear goal and somehow they magically find the safe and crack it. Utter lies. Being a thief, especially a good one, takes preparation and planning. It takes some brain work.

It takes day-long stakeouts on the roof of the office that shares a back alley with 720 Vauxhall Road. Thankfully that part wasn't till later. Right now, I was wandering up and down Vauxhall Road with a map, looking lost, so I could get a good idea of the layout of the neighborhood. Holmes was somewhere up the street, gossiping with some of the servants of the neighboring mansions. We met up for lunch at Piccadilly Circus.

"No one seems to know much about the Grant family." Holmes said about his reconnaissance. "Quiet people. They moved in a year ago, just the husband and wife. No one has seen the wife for quite a while. The neighborhood families don't seem to know that she's dead. There is one servant, a cook, and she never speaks with any of the servants on the block. The house might as well be empty for all the interaction they have with the community."

"Does the cook live there?" I asked.

"No, she has her own house; she leaves every evening around seven." Holmes replied, shaking his head. We walked on for a minute, absorbed in thought.

"What does he do for a living?" I asked.

"Nothing by all accounts. They rarely see him leave the house. Elizabeth thinks he's factory owner or something else that doesn't require him to leave the house."

"Elizabeth?" I asked archly, trying not to snicker. It was rather brilliant of him to figure out that a person will tell you anything if you pretend to flirt with them. Lord knows I've used the same tactic myself.

"She is the maid for the house across the street." He said unperturbed.

"She'll be heartbroken when she sees you talking to the maid next door."

Holmes only chuckled. If Grant never left the house, that presented a new problem for us. I had planned on forcing the back door during the day, when only the cook would be home. But if he was there also, the plan became much more risky.

"I think that I should do the actual breaking and entering part." Holmes said. "I stand a better chance against Grant." Great, now Holmes was going to go all macho on me.

"I think not. First of all, this is my area of expertise, not yours. It's one thing to investigate a robbery; it's another thing to commit one. Second, who knows what this girl has been through? She's bound to be frightened of strange men. You'll have a hard time getting her out of there. She's more likely to trust a fellow female."

"Fine, if you think you can handle it…" Holmes yielded in the face of my overwhelming logic. I couldn't decide if he was being over-protective or just exhibiting some classic male chauvinism. I shook my head clear of interpersonal dramas and returned to the problem at hand.

"We had better try this at night then. If only we could lure him out of the house somehow." I sighed. What would draw a serial killer out of his den?

"Mr. Grant seems to be the type of person who would personally avenge any attack on him." Holmes said. What? That is perhaps the stupidest statement I've ever heard from him.

"If I created a distraction outside, how long would you need to get the girl out?" I stand corrected.

"What do you mean by 'distraction'?" I asked sharply. "I don't think fake fire-bombing his house would work."

Holmes looked a bit surprised for a moment. After all, I wasn't supposed to know about the Irene Adler incident. "No, but if a ruffian were to break out a window of his house, don't you think Grant you chase that ruffian?"

"And beat the shit out of that ruffian once he caught up with him?" Holmes shrugged. "You've finally lost it." I said flatly.

"And breaking into the house of a murderer isn't dangerous? This way you have a better chance of getting her out." Holmes shot back. Good point.

"All right." I threw up my hands. I wasn't going to try to out-stubborn him. That could take all week. "I've got some equipment that will even the odds."


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