A/N: Apologies over the delay. I had ran out of ideas!

Still in lifting lockdown London setting. It's very limiting in a narrative, and just as much in real life. But we try to keep safe.

Still not British, a writer, or a hero. -csf


One.

The client letters had stopped during lockdown. Email inbox was permanently frozen. Sherlock had violently smashed another phone against the wall because his brother had taken up spying on him again. Anyway, there were no missed texts or calls when Sherlock got a new phone delivered. At least not the kind he was looking for, with cases, mystery, intrigue, scandal. Nothing that would make the detective tick.

If not for the meagre supply of cold cases DI Lestrade provided sporadically to the consulting detective, there would have been one very bored, possibly dangerously so, Sherlock Holmes at 221B.

As I know my friend well, I saw it hurt him. Even if he tried to hide his reaction out of wounded pride. He felt useless, kept from doing the one thing that he used to define him, his God given talent to solve cases. Sherlock suffered, as stoically as he could. Being ignored, superfluous, dismissed in a world grappling with an unprecedented virus. This was a perfidious enemy he could not defeat, one that did not fight battles with honour, did not defy Sherlock's wits, and made hostages of us all.

In sharp contrast, my hours as a medical professional multiplied greatly, because I could not push away my first calling. I was needed in Hospital, if not in Baker Street, so I took up as many shifts as I could handle. I was making a difference.

I was the blatant contrast to Sherlock's swamped inactivity, making it stand out the more.

Sherlock soon felt betrayed and forgotten. And I could not forgive the world for doing that to my best friend.

Alright, sure, there were pallid attempts at contact with snippets of cases for the consulting detective. There was a woman who found out the most hurtful way that her husband was a bigamist, although he did try to go to one house during the day under the covert of being a night shifts worker, while during the night he was at the other house, supposedly recuperating from the day shifts. He did not work at all, in fact. All the pretence came to an ending when he caught the virus and became bed bound, as he could only have the one bed to isolate in. The client letter we got, Sherlock and I did not take up on it. We had to explain to the second wife we are not assassins for hire. She apologised, she said she had got her internet tabs mixed up. Lestrade was not pleased as we forwarded the awkward details to him, just in case.

There was an email over a missing cat – turned out he was up a tree on the back yard. It wasn't a difficult case to solve. By that time, Sherlock was willing to take up any scrap of mystery to keep sane. The little girl was very pleased and said Mr Holmes was the best detective ever, which greatly pleased Sherlock for the whole of three seconds.

Don't get me wrong; there were plenty of passionate crimes during full lockdown. They just tended to be less creative, or preventable, more of the mad murderous rush sort. There were plenty of neighbours suspecting domestic violence across the street, as most country turned to impromptu surveillance tactics from behind curtains in living rooms, especially as they grew tired from the telly entertainment. There were scams that took advantage of vulnerable people too. Crime, as an entity, shifted its ugly face, but hardly went underground. It never left our streets and neighbourhoods entirely.

It just got crass, uninteresting, and beneath the talent of Sherlock Holmes.

Mycroft, Sherlock's big brother and creepy commander of London's CCTV cameras, once sent hours of footage to the detective. I thought that was a great idea. It kept the younger brother's wits together as he deciphered crimes by the slightest hints, and forwarded the information to the police.

Then I found out the two brothers were both watching footage from within a certain radius in London, of some blocks I think, and competing for who spotted and solved the most misdemeanours in a certain time frame. Like a board game. It's not decent.

Sherlock won, by the way, because he halted the game when he spotted a murder about to happen and managed to prevent it. Mycroft denies he even saw it, and the rules of the game were petty crimes only, so he won by 23 counts for carrying on. Lestrade begged not to be swamped by everything from badly parked cars to youth occupying shut down retail premises to share some alcohol.

Throughout all the rounded, caring support each of us tried to provide to the languid detective whose fire was being extinguished by lack of proper mental stimulation – according to his own words – there were only two consolations for the desolate detective.

One was his love of science and experimentation. That never truly stopped, although the supply of body parts from the morgue, of exotic plant pollens from the Kew Gardens, or the lending of that High Pressure Liquid to Gas Spectrometry machine that never came through, were halted ruthlessly by the pandemic.

Sherlock kept his mental cogs going on a diet of science and small cases, like a foraging detective in times of difficulty had to.

The other big thing that gave Sherlock's obsessions a magnetic north was his flatmate. That means me. He obsessed a bit over me. My safety. My habits. My endless source of mystery; according to the detective himself, at his most poetic moments.

He says things like that to mess with me.

Why would I be in the league to compete with the vicious murderers and con artists of the past, I can't say. I definitely did not become a master criminal to entertain Sherlock Holmes.

Not this time. If there's ever a second peak coming... it just might save London from being blown up to smithereens.

No, just kidding. The day I turned to evil, Sherlock would lose all interest in his flatmate.

Or worse, he would follow me over to the dark side.

But no, let's not be silly. I'm not that important in Sherlock's life. A conveniently close by distraction, I think.

That was, at least, a role I could fulfil somewhat.

.

'John, there was a letter on the post, early this morning. Mrs Hudson left it on our steps and shouted upstairs for me to get it. Our landlady is a bit lazy, John.'

Social distancing and a bad hip, mate. Unlike the sprawling detective on the sofa. Somehow he managed to peel himself off the leather cushions and go fetch his letter. He probably tried calling me first, but my phone had been negligently left downstairs.

I rub my face tiredly, interrupting my tired march to the shower.

'A letter? What are you so happy about?'

'Stop yawning and look, really look!' he snaps at me, ruthlessly awake himself, pressing a portion of crumpled paper to my chest. Hey, he got up fast, to stand in my way and keep me from my shower. 'Notice the atrocious handwriting, John! Even worse than yours. Possibly the subject was not exposed to many years of formal education, yet, behold the content of the sentences. It is structured, logical and polite, indicating a perfectly functional member of society.'

'What does it say?' I squint to the very scrawled handwriting and wonder how Sherlock read it. Maybe I'm still too sleepy.

'There's time for that before your old sweat scent overpowers the kitchen, worry not.' The git! 'Last night was uncommonly warm and you suffered through it with uncommonly vivid dreams, almost nightmares, that marred dark wells under your eyes. John, I will sequester your duvet until the warm weather subsides. Your internal temperature is already too high to necessitate a duvet and statistically more likely to bring you bad dreams.'

I smirk, amused. 'I'm quite sure you just told me I'm hot', I assure him.

He narrowly misses the innuendo. 'Yes, that is exactly what I mean. Do not distract me, however, from that letter. The ink comes from a common black ink pen. It's cheap and chemical. Bought at a supermarket, possibly in bulk, not much help there. The paper is meant for a printer. Standard thickness, whitewashed, no water marks, a bit dampened, inference; the package has been open a while. It also suffers from being commonplace. Even we have such paper on our printer, John! The samples match! The envelope is standard, the stamp was bought at a petrol station and it was posted in the nearest post box, thus showing buying the stamp was the last gesture before mailing the letter. It was premeditated, John!'

'Most letters are', I state calmly. 'How do you know about the petrol station?'

'There was a particular whiff to the stamp when I unpeeled it to test the saliva. It turns out it wasn't licked. The sender dipped a finger in tea – tea, John! – and whetted the back of the stamp with the ill conceived, automatic machine dispensed beverage, before sticking it on!'

Well, no one in their right mind wants to lick stamps anymore in these times, Sherlock. I can understand Sherlock's anonymous pen pall.

I watch the detective's antics grow as he furiously paces the tiny kitchen. He's going to get bruises from bumping against the chairs and counter if he keeps at it.

'Surely the content of the letter comes first to your analysis of the client's habits.'

That sets Sherlock off, apparently. He stops, looming over me, as he dictates, expressionless: 'Writen by a right handed person with good formal education but poor calligraphy. Possibly suffering from a degenerative disease on their left hand as traits of the letters' inclination indicates they would in fact be left handed by nature. Accident or cultural pressure had them take up the pen with the right hand. Did you know some cultures regarded left-handed people as devilish? No, don't answer, it's not important. Laborious writing, but little hesitation. A person of decisive nature. All the O's loops were closed, denoting morality and structure. The size of the letters was economic, but readable, so a modest nature. The heading was spaced perfectly for someone with good experience at writing letters, of a formal nature. The pen nib dug firmly into the paper, denoting excitement and a romantic nature. Could be a woman, but the style is somewhat short and direct. Most likely a man, a man can be equally fanciful.'

'I think you just managed to insult both sexes in one go.'

'I've no time for that. Statistics, John, it couldn't really bother me less what gender anyone acts like! Now, the stamp.'

'What about the stamp?'

'Posted not far from Baker Street. The sender could have walked over, pushed through the letter box and saved himself 61p. Something kept this person at bay.'

'Yeah. The fact that you're always looking out the window. He didn't sign it, Sherlock. Hardly anonymous if you see him drop off his letter...'

Sherlock smirks, and suddenly turns around to fill the kettle.

'Then there's the letter itself, John.'

'Wait, you're making tea today? That's rare.'

He ignores me, asking me calmly: 'Will you read it to me?'

I look down on the sprawling. 'I can try...' I state dubiously.

"Dear Mr Sherlock Holmes, you don't know me and I wish to remain anonymous, if at all possible. I have followed your cases online with mild curiosity for years now. Doctor Wilson's blog interests me for some fanciful reading—"

'Who's Wilson? Your new sidekick?' I mutter, annoyed. Sherlock smirks. This happens more frequently than I like to admit.

"—but it was your monograph on light reflection and refraction on dull surfaces that really got my attention. I should commend you for your intriguing studies. As to the nature of my letter, I would like to request your assistance with the most bizarre incident I have experienced in a long time. Mr Holmes, I am not a fanciful person, far from it. Yet, yesterday as I cleared up the attic chasing up some damp stain on the bedroom wall below, I found the most extraordinary mask. Some tribal, wooden object embellished with feathers and still bright colours in an old trunk where my great grandfather had collected memories from his travelling abroad. I had only known it to have been full of old paper accounts of foreign societies and cultures he encountered as an explorer. Upon further inspection, I came to find a damaged corner to the trunk, caused no doubt by that nasty rainwater leak rotting the old wood. I believe the mask tumbled out of a secret compartment, a false bottom fitted to this trunk."

I take the cup of tea Sherlock hands me, noticing he keeps one for himself too. The detective keeps dictating from memory:

'If at all convenient, I would ask you to investigate this finding, and do what you will with it and your conclusions once you are done. I shall leave the aforementioned findings at your door during the course of the next night and request of you not to try to identify me, as I would prefer to remain – Your Anonymous Client.'

'Tonight?' I repeat.

'We are to do a stake out, John.'

'On our own front door?' I grimace.

'Highly convenient, don't you agree?'

I frown. 'Can we trust this person?'

'Now you are just pushing me to take this case, John', Sherlock retorts with a defiant smirk, and whirls away to snatch the bathroom before me.

I stand by the kitchen sink, watching the water vapour slowly dissipating from the insufferable cuppa Sherlock made me.

A tribal mask and some old papers. Could they be the case Sherlock Holmes needs to recuperate his mojo?

I have another look at that letter still in my hand, musing over the uneven, almost childish, handwriting.

Almost checking on a further sip of horribly burnt tea, I put down the letter and hurry to rinse both cups, and set wrongs right in this bitter world of ours, by making two palatable cuppas for us.

.

TBC