3. Title: Red Hairing

Crossover: E. A. Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue and A. C. Doyle Red-Headed League

Characters: Sherlock, John, Lestrade (S/J gen or squint), mention of Mrs Hudson and Mycroft

Summary: When Sherlock's cold grounds him home, John calls Lestrade to the rescue.

A/N: Neither fic nor title are meant to poke fun at red-haired people. If anyone is made fun of, it's Sherlock, and it's gentle fun.

Autumn, as far as Sherlock was concerned, had forfeited its duties by failing to deliver the promised mists and mellowness. Mist was the perfect atmospheric chemistry to stalk criminal along their nefarious, exciting ways; mellowness Sherlock associated vaguely with Mrs Hudson's parsnip soup and apple dumplings that were enough to placate John after a day spent exhorting stubborn old ladies to take their flu jabs like a man, and distract his attention from Sherlock's latest experiment with their loo sewers.

Unfortunately, the mists had soon turned into a steady drizzle, and a cold had caught Sherlock before he could catch the baddie du jour. The rest of the agenda had degenerated fairly quickly from that point. John, on his best officer-and-gentleman's behaviour, had grounded Sherlock to home base. Mrs Hudson had dug up an old recipe of rum jellies and experimented on every food colouring comprised between ultraviolet and sanguine orange because they were « all in season, Dear, and will pep you up ». She had been less than happy to find a pepped-up Sherlock firing at her precious bat-shaped sconce, and as little amused as Queen Victoria at Sherlock's ripost that he was showing some seasonal spirit.

Mycroft's contribution to the general zest and jollity had been a Get Well Soon card featuring Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Sherlock had pinned it to the wall and used the bears as his next firing target until John noticed that they all bore names – Lestrade's, Mrs Hudson's and his – in minute curlicued characters. Sherlock had ground his teeth and fit a bullet into his brother's signature.

That was when Little Bear had begun to worry and, acting on Mama Bear's wise cue, called Papa Bear for help.

"And how is our favorite cold case?" Lestrade asked with a robust geniality he knew to be excessively annoying as he stepped into the living room with an armful of folders.

Sherlock opened a glassy eye from the couch and merely signaled for the offerings to be deposited on the coffee-table, next to Mrs Hudson's latest puce concoction.

"Afraid they're rather small beer," Lestrade said, accepting John's handshake and John's coffee successively. "I did my best, but there's nothing much going on these days. Still, October's on its last legs, so cheer up – we may have a nice gutted-out pumpkin for you yet."

Sherlock's annoyed hiss ushered in a ten-minute pause, during which the two Bears commented the latest football results in hushed mutters. Lestrade had just appropriated the skull to reconstitute Mr Sagna's brilliant goal-line clearance when a lung-racking sigh called the game to an end.

"Primary school stuff, and I'm generous. Wife, wife, husband, wife, brother-in-law, hamster, wife. Yes, Lestrade, hamster. The wirings were obviously gnawed prior to the electrocution, and the presence of an eight-year single child is indicative of – oh, what's the use. Just go and arrest the little animal, that's what you do best."

"Look, I know they're not quite up Baker Street," Lestrade said pleasantly. "But it's really all I can do. Unless –"

Sherlock, now entwined to the sofa cushions like a fin-de-siècle young rajah, turned his face sharply. "Unless?"

"Well – there's that funny French case. But I'm really not allowed to tell you, even less show you the file. This one is so red-taped it's beginning to look like Christmas on the run. I wasn't even supposed to investigate, the DPG were calling dibs on it but —"

"The Diplomatic Protection Group?" Sherlock sat up, suddenly interested. "I wonder if – oh yes, that would be Mycroft to a T. Have the case transfered to you so you'd mention it to me and —"

"No, no." Lestrade raised a placid hand. "Don't worry, he's not going to bother you about this one. Fact is, he said he'd, er, be glad to offer his own assistance, but discretion was the better part of discretion."

"He would. Trust Mycroft's podgy hand to steal the cake when he sees it. But I'm certain I can beat him to it, even without a file." Sherlock turned to Lestrade and lifted his own long-fingered hand with languid sovereignty. "All right, give me."

"Look, I don't think —"

"Wouldn't you like to impress my brother, Lestrade? He'd certainly make a show of expressing his gratitude if you spared him the time and bother of a trip to Le Quai d'Orsay."

"Well —" Lestrade dipped his nose into his mug, rubbing the back of his silver-cropped neck pensively. "If John and you swear to keep it hush-hush... it's really a weirdo, this one, and I could use a word from the wise."

"Shoot ahead," John said, filling their mugs again.

"Right then. Well, it's about this woman, Madame – I'll call her Madame L. The Ambassador's first wife, who happened to settle in London with their daughter years before he received his marching orders. Looks like he ditched her for a pretty young thing on his very first posting but this was so long ago that no one would have connected them if he hadn't paid a visit to her new flat in Knightsbridge the day before the murders. And they were pretty grisly, let me tell you. The old lady, she had her throat slit with a cutter, and the girl was – was - oh god, I really don't know if –"

"Was what?" Sherlock croaked testily. "Stop pussyfooting, Lestrade. Raped? Maimed? Fed to a pack of bloodthirsty hamsters?"

"Stuck up in the chimney," Lestrade answered in a blanched whisper. He looked around, pinched a tube test from Sherlock's usual clutter on the table and proceeded to demonstrate with his coffee spoon. "Like this, head first, after she'd been —"

"Strangled?" John asked. It was his first quiet contribution since the beginning of the tale and Lestrade cast him a sharp look.

"Why yes, strangled. I thought of you, Sherlock, when I saw her at the Morgue – her neck bore those extraordinary fingerprints, very large and very apart. Way too apart to belong to a decently normal hand. But it can't have been the Golem if Moriarty offed him after the pip-pip fiasco."

"Oh, the pip-pip fiasco did him in all right," Sherlock drawled back. "A girl in a chimney? Intriguing. At least, it could provide John with a new sensationalist title. A Study in Flue, perhaps?"

"You two swore —oh, all right, have your little joke. Anyway. We arranged for a few SOCOs to comb the place discretely, and by the time I arrived, there were just the neighbours to question. And that's where the story gets even more screwed up."

Lestrade glanced quickly at John and carried on. "The flat belongs to one of these pre-War brick affairs they call a bijou residence in posh mags, which really means rotten acoustics and cig paper walls. So everyone heard the daughter cry out before she was strangled, and just before, everyone heard a voice in the flat, speaking some foreign language. But none of them can make up their minds on the damn lingo. One old bird claimed it was Italian. Said she'd just been through a rerun of the Sopranos and would swear to it on her Ma's Bible. Another said it was German. Then there was Russian, French, German and, would you believe it, Scots."

"I see. No, I don't." Sherlock, still seated in his lotus position, raised his steepled fingers to his chin. "Any other data?"

"A few. They found an open window – so the murderer must have escaped via the roofs. Oh, and there was a tuft of hair clutched in Madame L's hand – thick red hair. Well, I say red. Orange-ish, really."

"All in season," John commented suavely from his chair.

Sherlock's fingers began a hasty tattoo on his chin. "Chimney. Girl. Girl in chimney. Diplomatic scandal – no, too blatant. But then, the whole thing is blatant. Overdramatized, so it should be hushed all the quicker. So is it the place they're after, and the women were just an inconvenience? Unidentified lingo. Red hair – oh! Oh!"

"You're not running a fever, are you?" John asked. He tried to slip a hand under the moist bangs but Sherlock batted it away impatiently. "We can't have you on fire just now, chimney or no chimney."

"A Red-Headed League!" Sherlock exploded. "That's why no one could identify the voice – there were several of them, speaking in turn. Lestrade, you're looking for a European coterie of hoodlums ruled by a nine-feet man, Irish, not Scottish, with red hair and a case history of strangling tigers bare-handed. Good old Moran, always up for a lark."

"But —"

"John, you probably want to shut up. Lestrade, didn't you say Madame L had just rented the place? They must have hidden something there and come back for it, unaware that there were new tenants. Knightsbridge, Knightsbridge... yes! The Lloyds robbery – Seb's grapevine was positively buzzing with the news. You'd better start digging at the exact opposite spot to that chimney; put Sally to it, she's an expert in floor remodeling. Ha. I think I've given myself a sore throat, John; I'll have that Ibuprofen now, with a cup of tea."

One Ibuprofen and a rum-laced mug of Darjeeling later, Sherlock was snoring blissfully among the cushions. John tucked the slim legs into a blanket and turned to Lestrade quietly.

"So. Are you going to tell him it was an orangutan all the time?"

Lestrade sighed.

"Nah, don't think I'll have the heart. Though I'll admit that tricking the great Sherlock Holmes is a treat in itself. But Mycroft would claim my skin and bones for his next brolly if he learnt I've been implicating him in my little joke."

John chuckled.

"Well, I owe you for this – the fun and, more importantly, his first night's sleep in ten days. Let me buy you a pint? We'll make it a Killian's russet for good measure."

"You're on. And you can help me massacre The Purloined Letter, in case he needs another bedtime story. I'm rather thinking of making the letter a photograph. This is the twenty-first century, mate – you don't write love letters, you text cute smileys."

"So, a woman compromised by a photograph?"

"D'you really think Sherlock would bother with that? No, the opposite – though we should keep the royal angle, I like it."

"But wait, if it's a King being compromised —"

The old stairs squeaked as they grabbed their coats and padded down into the gray drizzle, sharing the same happy conspiratorial grin.