A/N: After a bit of an absence, I give you a case format. (Now I'm left to wonder for the rest of the day where this idea came from.) -csf


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Stuffy old room, encased with wood panels and high ceilings, on the upper floor of an old detached house built within thick stone walls. Sherlock, in his quiet elegance in a classic lines suit, is never out of his element, not in the newly refurbished house of a wealthy – and recently dead – esquire. DI Lestrade called us in. Not usually his sphere of work. Not the unexplained murder, in a locked room of an otherwise empty house, I don't mean that. Rather the miles stretching from London to a rural area in Cornwall, taking us from the continuously heart-beating lockdown London to the sea-vastness quiet of the coastal area.

I came because Sherlock insisted he needed his assistant, well, assisting him. He seemed rather determined to have me witness as a good luck charm on this first case after weeks on a diet of cold cases. Greg was sure he'd pass the case if I didn't tag along. I found it rather implausible, but I too wanted a run from the olden days' script.

This room was, therefore, a fresh two days old murder setting. 48 hours being just the right ripeness, according to my friend's elation. He's kept a spring in his step side and a low humming all the train ride over.

I missed that side of Sherlock too. Last week he didn't put on outside clothes once. Just pyjamas after pyjamas. Which arguably are just as comfortable as the tailored, slick, form hugging suit he's got on now. It's only his riotous curls that still look a bit housebound at this point, same as ever.

'So the old man died in this room.' Sherlock looks around, with intense interest, twirling around in his long wool coat like a man dazzled by his own brilliance and high speed mind. The inspector and the client slowly stand aside, watching in slight distrust at the unorthodox methods of the consulting detective. Sherlock's metallic grey eyes grow partly unfocused as high-speed deductions trail across his mind, as if he could actually see them sprawling and branching over the dark painted walls in his own unkempt, scratchy handwriting.

All this I watch in awe, but it will always mesmerise me the way that detective flows through his otherworldly intelligence and streamlines it into one, rather amazing, short burst conclusion.

Behind Sherlock, the bewildered client tries to look for complicity in the inspector. Greg studiously avoids his gaze. Giving Sherlock the time to finish his process. Trusting the genius.

And then I see it clearly. The moment has come. A knowing smirk draws a close up on Sherlock's eager face, lighting up the vast plains and hollows of that haunted profile. I see the quick instant when Sherlock allows himself a small pat in the back. Sherlock's moment of glory, before he needs to externalise this all consuming fire of knowledge of deductions to the mental puzzle. It's more than a kneejerk reaction to his brilliance, it's a compulsion.

Sherlock turns around, towards us. And asks the client in his best simile of nonchalance:

'Has your paramedic son taken his career choice owing to his great grandfather's path as small town doctor?'

The recently orphaned client blinks, gulps, and searches for answers in the friendly inspector beside him.

Greg knows the drill. He puts on his most confused expression and gently incentivises the detective.

'Come on. Give us it. How was it done?'

Sherlock is amused. He revels in this moment before the solution is given out freely. Before the praise and the apathy from those who think the solution is so simple – now it's been laid out methodically – that he they disregard the mental prowess needed to assemble the pieces in the correct order. It's a short lived moment, but it's brilliant, and high, and colourful, and all encompassing as its beautifully attuned with the universe. This is the moment that makes it all worthwhile. To a vaguely vain, very human, detective, in constant need to prove his self-worth in a world full of standard people who do not think and act and comprise what being like Sherlock is like. Who see him as an outsider, who never fully understand what goes on inside the deep recesses of my friend's mind. That like a science-fiction television show's star-ship; It's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Grey-green eyes search for me with quieter undertones now. A satiated look, yet reverential, and young, and bubbling, and bursting of energy. It's to me that Sherlock relays his deduction. As if only to me. Does the other audience matter, actually? Sherlock will verbalise the solution as if only to me was it real. I'll give him the admiration he's aiming for with an eagerness of a young child. The acceptance.

'It's quite simple, really. Elementary, even. I wouldn't be needed here at all, if any of you had half a brain cell put together.' Sherlock chats away effusively, mostly to himself.

'Sherlock', I warn him. Faux pas.

'Really I should just walk away!' Hands fly in the air dramatically as the detective threatens to do what he will never do. Walk away, knowing the solution and not relaying it to the world. He's enjoying this a bit too much now?

'Sherlock, Your Highness, just give us the answer.

His smirk shifts inhumanly to the other side of his mouth. And so does its meaning shift. In a quick turn of events, it's now cold. Rational. Suitably dramatic.

'This building, John, surely the age of it has not escaped you, nor did the location. Near the post office, near the town hall's old building. Near the temperance hall and the general store of the olden days. Victorian era, clearly, judging by the façades of all these buildings. Not even you, inspector, or stray tourists brought here from a very different culture, would miss its origin. Also see the front door. Wide, low arching, it leads on to a waiting room. Next to the front door, a high gate built into the masonry façade, with enough width and height to allow passage for horse drawn carriages. As in with patients brought in to see the doctor. Paramedics of the time. No, please no, whatever-your-name-is, don't be surprised, not when you've got a picture of your son in gear, standing in front of his ambulance, among a collage of family photographs littering the stairs wall. Was I not supposed to look? Don't answer that, don't waste my time. I prefer to talk about the death by misadventure.'

'He wasn't murdered?' Greg shrieks, stunned.

'Did I not just ask not to be interrupted? No, the old man wasn't murdered. But first the house. This would have been where a private medic would have made his own private surgery. And this room upstairs, with the plain windows and well lit interiors would be the prime spot for home based laboratory ideal for a quick analysis. A provincial doctor would run his own analysis of samples and toxic poisons and all those delicious ways in which people get killed... But enough of that', he adds with hastily, when he looks upon my face. 'This classic room retains most of its early features, not having underwent so many drastic changes as the rest of the house. Now, as the detective inspector has pointed out so obviously, the body was found on the floor, between the door and the radiator. This should be only need to know to understand what happened to the victim.'

'The layout out of the house?' the client asks, completely bewildered. And that is enough to get Sherlock going again. He needs those little taps on the shoulder, those little manifestations of interest. This is unequivocal proof that his audience is hanging onto each word.

His smirk deepens.

Sherlock makes quick haste to go kneel by the floorboards over which up until a few hours ago rested a corpse.

I follow, curious and loyal, to his side.

'John your knife, please.'

'Excuse me?' I cross my arms in front of me, steady.

'Ankle knife, double serrated blade, 15 centimetres, short and compact like its owner. You're a soldier. You'd have a knife, and I'd know it, even if I couldn't see it from miles away hidden under your trousers' cuff.'

I quietly uncross my arms. 'Yes, that would make sense. Should get myself one.'

'Just drop it, John. Haven't got all day. It's only us, the inspector and a client who is as thick as a brick. They won't think of denouncing you to the authorities for illegal possession of weaponry dating back from your time in the army. If you managed to smuggle in the country an illegal gun, what would have prevented you from bringing in everything else along with you? It shows the sort of man you are.'

I groan and let my guard down. I relent as he expected me to do from the very beginning. I fold, before he manages to uncover more secrets publicly.

I bend down and bring out the knife I'm carrying in a holster wrapped around my ankle. He takes it with the most absolute politeness. Almost an act to make me a bit madder.

'Thank you, John.'

With the knife securely held in his hand, he stabs the floorboards in starts, wedging the knife tip between boards.

Both the inspector and the client are so mesmerised by this strange display, that they don't step forward to stop us before Sherlock yanks back a dry old piece of floorboard. I immediately kneel down and help him hold up the board to reveal what's beneath. Dirt, muck, and hot water pipes leading up to the radiator.

I look up to Sherlock expectantly. Come on, this is your moment. Your glory. Bring it home.

Oh he will.

But not before some showmanship;

and perhaps something else too.

Gloved finger tips reach out, seeking through the dust layers. Over the old pipes. Shiny leather comes up to the daylight inching in from the windows and rubs together over the sample of dust, studiously. Something in his attitude, all scientific and enigmatic, tells me telepathically that I should like to do the same. So I grab on a pair of latex gloves from my jacket pockets of first aid stash, and snap them on. They slowly copy his movements. My white gloves settle over the dark dust and bring some up to light. It's a dark grey purple and shines as a metallic powder. As I look on in bafflement, Sherlock grabs something from further away in the deep recesses of the darkness beneath the floorboards, the very floorboards he's kneeling over, and he brings it out. Fragments of a small old, dark brown glass bottle that seemingly rolled away under the floorboards a very long time ago. Reassembled it would be quite tiny, really. It's what you would expect to hold no more than 10 millilitres. Although the glass fractures seem shinny and fresh, it must have fallen through the floorboard cracks a very, very long time ago. There is a dark. Paper brown label, almost indecipherable, but putting all these things together, I don't need to read the label to know. I become doctor Watson. With a dash of the Captain Watson.

'Greg, open those windows wide now.' I bark an order in absolute authority. 'And you', I further direct the client, 'turn off the heating. Stop dithering. Do it now.'

The echo of my strong orders still resonating in the tiny room, I shiver internally in a quiver of self doubt. I look up to my best friend and recognise the calm amusement and admiration in him. His eyes say I got it, and right then—

'Iodine Crystals', Sherlock announces. 'The house has been empty and vacant for a very long time. Then the client moved in. It was summer time. Superficial checks were been made to the boiler and the heating and every other necessary amenity in the house. They could not pick up a small stray bottle that had fallen between floorboards and skirting at the end of an old room a very long time ago indeed. The bottle had landed over a water pipe feeding into the radiator. Time had elapsed safely until one day the bottle cracked due to the increased temperature of the pipes in a desperately cold winter snap, two nights ago. Iodine vapours were released from the crystals, quickly sublimated to gas by thermal shock. Smoky purple haze will have filled the room with death. Doesn't take much substance. The next morning the victim lay on the floor, suffocated by the toxic fumes, being found by the maid who reported a strange scent lingering in the air. She opened the windows, naturally. Her common sense saved her from a similar lethal fate, thus allowing the precious little evidence left behind of a silent killer, more than a century of years old, to be whisked away by the morning breeze. It would take Sherlock Holmes to decipher this mystery. To slide the neat old puzzle pieces together, the ones that you could see, and the ones that only I could see.'

'Amazing', I whisper. The detective has a hard time concealing his stroked ego inflating.

'Death by house', Sherlock pronounces amused. 'I wonder where that falls into your categories of crime inspector.'

'My categories?' Greg returns.

Sherlock shrugs as if law and morality were ruled differently in his own personal world. Then he had just to transpose is own guidelines to those by which the rest of humanity guided themselves.

'All this was fun', Sherlock comments indecently. He knows the way his words sound. He's enjoying it in his small bubble of safe friendship. But quickly the client comes back and a whole cold detective act slips into place seamlessly.

You can tell by the inspectors face that he's still reeling in the aftershock.

I remove my latex gloves one at a time with loud snaps.

'Guess it's time to return to Baker Street. Our work here is done.'

Sherlock sighs audibly. I'm not without constriction.

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'Death by atomic element. You really must have had some fun in this one, Sherlock.'

The quiet detective chuckles under his breath. We're walking through near empty streets in the cold morning, towards the railway station.

'Who's being nerdy now, John?'

Hey! That's not fair!

'I've learnt it from my flatmate. He's so very good at nerdy.'

'Indeed.'

No fightback?

'What is it, Sherlock? What's up?'

He takes a few seconds to run an analysis on his mental processes and I almost give up on having him answer me on the causes of his restlessness. Just before, I hear him mutter as if it wasn't important, but of course it is. As if it couldn't matter because it couldn't be ordered and put into neat little boxes like elements in the periodic table.

'I always want to go back to Baker Street. My long absence period made the heart grow indeed fonder for home. For Baker Street. And yet I find myself surprisingly in a state of wishing to just go elsewhere first. Anywhere would do.'

'There's nothing to be surprised about that, mate. We've been in lockdown. We've been stuck inside for hours and days on end. Sometimes I feel like going to the supermarket is a nice outing. You should try it sometime.' He smirks. 'One of these days I'll convince myself that taking out the rubbish twice in a day is an act of rebellion. What happened to us?'

'You keep telling me it's for a good cause.'

'It is Sherlock, it is. But good deeds don't come cheap, do they?'

He hums and looks away.

'Come on mate, don't be like that. I'll bet you there will be other passengers on the train. Even I can play the mental murder game on Everyone. Use them.'

Sherlock smiles again. Not that deep, heartfelt grin that deductions may cause him. But I'll take what I can get in these strange times.

'Fine, I can murder them. And you can save them, Doctor.'

'Save them?'

'So I can murder them again. The perfect murder is indeed very rare, John.'

'I should hope so.'

'I know so.'

'We need to keep that perfect brilliant brain of yours engaged.'

He smiles a perfect rounded smile. Well balanced. And full. As a better type of energy. I feel indeed blessed. Thankful for being a part of it. Sherlock may not be aware of this; Home is within us. I feel at home already.

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