Prompt: Pie (Domina Temporis)
December dawned brisk and grey. I awoke some hours later to the creeping chill of an empty bed. Time had dissipated the heat of passion of the evening before and even the warmth of the night's embrace. I shivered, drawing the blankets tighter around me to fend off the sharp air, but it was too late; even they were cold.
Finally, my curiosity at Holmes's whereabouts won out, and I steeled my frigid nerves and threw myself out of bed, bare feet landing upon icy floorboards. My scarred shoulder ached, though it had been years since I received the wound which troubled it.
I knew Holmes's methods, there was but to apply them. My room was much the same as I recalled it from the night before, in comfortable disarray, but I counted only my own clothes scattered across the floor, where they had been abandoned in our haste.
I put them away, dressed and descended into the sitting room to find it too cold and empty, only embers smouldering in the grate, and no remnants of breakfast upon the table. Holmes must have gone out; I could but wonder why.
With nothing to be done, I rang for breakfast and stoked the embers in the hearth back into a crackling fire. I had eaten and was sitting, reading in my chair by the fire, when I heard an eager footstep upon the stair. I could not claim to identify a man's occupation by his shoes, but I knew not who else it could be, and put my book aside in curious anticipation.
The door swung open and in swept none other than Sherlock Holmes, unmistakable even though he was wrapped from head to toe to keep out the chill. "Good morning, my dear Watson. I believe noon has not quite yet struck, though my errand was not quite so little as I had anticipated." He threw a paper parcel upon the table and his scarf shortly followed.
As he made short work of his outermost layers, I went over to the table to examine the parcel which was apparently the result of his morning's adventure. It was not so big as a bread bin, of ordinary brown paper, not yet cold despite the persistent chill, and I wondered if I did not detect a sweet, spiced aroma.
"Holmes, you needn't have!" I exclaimed, as I opened it to reveal half a dozen little mincemeat pies.
"I didn't," Holmes answered almost in my ear, and I startled at the sudden warmth at my back, his heavy winter clothes discarded, so I could feel his lean figure against me as he examined the parcel over my shoulder.
"Then who?" I asked
I felt him shrug. "I cannot say. Mrs. Hudson discovered them this morning with neither note nor messenger, but if their proper owner cannot be found, it would be a shame for them to go to waste."
"It would, but truly you have no notion as to where they might be from?"
Holmes tutted. "I hardly said that."
I craned around to look at him, and our noses nearly bumped together. Mischief sparkled in his bright grey eyes as he drew a card from his pocket and presented it to me. The card apparently belonged to a bakery a little ways outside of London.
"Our astute landlady found this caught in the twine. What do you say to a brief diversion from our fair city?"
"Certainly."