A/N: Wrapping it up tighter than a pound shop gift. The grand finale of Sitcom Sherlock. -csf


10.

An awkward silence has descended on 221B Baker Street. I'm sat up, reluctantly convalescent, on the sofa. I glance to Sherlock, who ponders the French detective as if he could only come up with wild mismatching deductions about the man. A malfunctioning that is slowly spreading a taint of panic in Sherlock's features. Lestrade, on the other hand, is apoplectic, and has gone nonverbal for a good while now. And the newcomer, Lupin, is a bit hung up on the upside down skull on the mantel, giving it way too much attention. Maybe they don't use human remains for home decor in Paris.

Suddenly Sherlock rises up from the other end of the sofa as if it had been electrified – it hasn't, I would know, we were sharing the sofa – and clasps his hands together in joyous appreciation. Uh-oh.

'We seem to have the greatest minds under one roof', he announces, 'let's play Deductions.'

Our friendly inspector intervenes at once. 'No, I know how that ends. Someone cries, or socks you in the nose, Sherlock.'

The consulting detective is not in the least embarrassed. 'Fine, we can play Quick Fire Cases, then. Challenge each other to deduce the criminal, the murder weapon, or the modus operandi involved, whatever the Yard hasn't quite managed to do, we eliminate contestants as soon as they make an error, and see who lasts the longer.'

Lestrade is reticent, I'm pondering how this may work (wouldn't the best of three be fairer?) and Lupin eagerly accepts. 'Naturally, the inspector will provide recent cases for our analysis', Sherlock dictates.

Greg brightens up at that, I notice.

'It could work', I nod, as Sherlock checks with me. 'Make it best out of three and I can add a case I spotted through my medical fieldwork, to make it fairer.'

Lestrade quickly objects: 'That's not fair, Lupin didn't bring Jean with him.'

'Who's Jean?' the guest asks.

'Your medical examiner sidekick and faithful companion', Greg reminds him through gritted teeth.

'Oh, that Jean!' the Frenchman finally recalls.

I find the whole thing very odd, but I can't quite dwell on it, as Lestrade is already adding: 'Speaking of the absent ones, is that Scottish detective lady alright? She's been gone a long while.'

Sherlock sighs and concedes: 'I'll check. John, you start without me. Take notes, plenty of notes.'

Yeah, while you change into your disguise, mate. I've got you covered.

'We're not starting without you two!' Lupin protests. When everyone looks at him, he adds, less forcefully: 'I'm a gentleman, I wouldn't do that.'

'Oh, I insist', says Sherlock. 'I must... phone my brother anyway. Might take me a while. John will suffice, he's a great assistant.'

And with that unexpected compliment, Sherlock walks off to his bedroom. I grimace. I bet he's forgotten already. Last possible chance, though, he redeems himself by stopping abruptly by the bathroom door, glancing at us, and making a show of knocking. "Can I come in?" "Aye!" As if the git ever knocked on closed doors...

I look back to Lestrade and Lupin, before concocting my best grin. "Sherlock won't be long. So, Greg, do you have a case for this battle of wits?'

'Aren't we waiting for the scary woman? I mean, Ms Scotland's Sleuth?'

'Yeah, but he – she – won't be long. Won't you start?'

Greg shrugs. 'Yeah, sure, I've got a funny one, actually. Just the other day, we got a triple 9 call to the docks area. Someone had been pushed out of the bridge on low tide. The poor sod should have been splattered against the mud banks below. So my guys and the paramedics went down to collect the leftovers, but we couldn't find a body! We searched all over, questioned the witnesses, even checked the tides in case the poor sod had drifted to the sea. Nothing, just nothing.'

From the flat's bathroom Sherlock calls out: 'Bungee jumping rope! The rope got tangled on the bridge pillars structure. That case is terribly familiar, Lestrade, very much like the one I solved last March!'

'Well, Lupin solved it too!'

'I solved it faster!'

I roll my eyes. 'Boys...' I warn. 'Mate, that's a dud. Got anything Sherlock hasn't solved for you?'

Somehow the inspector looks very affronted by my question.

Before I can figure out what ticked off our friend so much, the elegant Ms Sleuth comes out of the bathroom, uttering bashful apologies for the delay.

Oh, so Sherlock does know how normal apologies sound like when he wants to, right...

'Welcome back, miss. Well, I've got a case', Lestrade tries again. 'Sherlock wasn't involved in this one. It's a locked room mystery, I guess.'

'Why wasn't Sherlock involved?' the lady guest interrupts, sounding suspiciously hurt.

'He was out of the country, I think. Wanna hear the case, or not?'

'Yeah.'

I try not to look Sherlock's way. He's pouting a bit under the disguise's layers, I can tell.

'A clown comes home from the last performance at the circus on the other side of London; and when I say "home" what I mean is to his caravan. He was in a travelling circus, you know. As he walked inside from the cold night, he was perfectly safe, escorted by reliable witnesses – and they were the strong man and the tight rope acrobat. All the caravan windows were locked, he locked the only door after himself. The next morning, he's found dead inside the caravan, still in his clown outfit, no marks on him whatsoever. What happened?'

Pout forgotten, Sherlock/Scotty is leaning forward, engaged. Lupin is searching Lestrade's face for something there, presumably the solution.

'Locked caravan mystery. We need to know more', I comment.

'No, you know plenty', Greg keeps quiet.

Suddenly, the Scottish woman wrapped in trench coat and layered in tartan shawls gets up and declares, triumphantly: 'Leaky portable gas heater! The clown's traditional thick makeup disguised the habitual flush redness of the skin that is characteristic of carbon monoxide poisoning!'

Lestrade grins. 'Very well, Ms Scotty!'

Sherlock very nearly looks behind him, but he quickly recalls he's in disguise. He just won an advantage in the game – to a fictional opponent.

'That's not fair, she knew about it!' Lupin accuses, getting up from the chair.

'Of course I didn't, as you very well know... Anderson.'

I gasp. Anderson? Why? Where's the real Lupin?

'How did you know my name?' the forensic investigator asks, bewildered to who he sees as a Scottish tartan loving woman.

'I've got to go to the loo again!' Sherlock huffs and storms off the living room.

Incensed, Anderson grabs off the deerstalker hat with incorporated wig and tosses if to the ground at his feet with the petulance of a child. 'The evidence on the case was perfectly clear, not my fault the corpse had been swathed in so much makeup!'

I blink, still shocked. 'Anderson, is that really you?'

'Of course it's me, and I don't know a word of French. Lestrade, I want my £50 now.'

The inspector lowers his head to his hand, ignoring all my calls to explain himself.

'I couldn't bring Lupin', he finally settles for. I squint at that.

From the bedroom, Sherlock returns with heavy stomping steps as himself, but still wearing the stupid trench coat, now billowing after his long legged steps.

'You're wearing a trench coat too now?' Greg nearly moans.

'There's a cold draft in my bedroom', Sherlock snaps to save his cover. 'Hi, Anderson', he adds coolly.

'Where did the Scottish detective go?' Greg returns from hiding behind his hands.

'How should I know?' Sherlock shrugs, all innocent.

'I'll get you all a second case', I intervene at once, to pacify them all. 'Picture this, if you will. This guy was a reformed criminal, and ended up as my patient at the hospital, so I got called in after he died. His DNA didn't match the records in the police database. Yet he had served his time after admitting his guilt, and never once claimed to be someone else. In fact, it turned out he was who he said he was. So how did he deceive the police DNA database?'

Sherlock rolls his eyes. 'Easy. We should let Anderson answer that one. Should be particularly easy for him.'

Anderson sits back down on the red armchair, seeming genuinely interested and thinking hard. 'No, don't give me clues, I've got this one!'

'We don't have all day', Sherlock warns, quite himself.

I glance at my best mate with amusement. Anderson accuses at once: 'Don't go conniving and giving him answers, John!'

Lestrade assures us: 'It's got me stumped.'

Sherlock breathes in his glory, and explains to us all: 'It's actually a DNA analysis gone wrong case, because the victim had a transplant recently and the DNA sample was taken from the tissue in the kidney recently donated to John's patient. Are you sure you didn't work this case, Anderson?'

The two men nearly go at each other. It helps that a newcomer suddenly materialised at the flat. Mycroft Holmes, of all people.

He gives a pointed look at his baby brother, but remains silent, tight lipped. I think he deduced Sherlock's last half hour from a good glance alone, and I shiver at that omniscience.

'Little homely competition? How amusing!'

Lestrade's eyes narrow, just like when he's setting you up to get drunk at the pub. 'Just who we needed, actually. We need a third and last case, got one for us?'

Pleasantly surprised, Mycroft is quick to acquiesce, grabbing a kitchen chair to seat among our lot, even if he sits princely in the wobbly, humble chair.

'I might do, indeed. Purely speculative, of course, we are absolutely not talking about real people or events, that would be unacceptable, you see.'

'Go on, cut the introduction', Greg calls for, amazingly relaxed with big brother Holmes.

'It's not a long enigma to solve. International intrigue, a formal ball, and just how did a message get passed from a locked room in an embassy to external defectors in a foreign potency?'

Lestrade scrunches his face. 'Smoke signals, or sign language through the window', he suggests quickly.

'Secret tunnel under the floorboards where a UV ink message was left on the rough walls, later decoded', guesses Anderson/Lupin, feigning boredom now.

'Microchip implant with radiofrequency signal on the hired help', says Sherlock. 'That's how I would do it', he adds, helpfully.

'The gardener eavesdropped by the open window', I joke, not wanting to be left out.

Mycroft smirks. 'Unfortunately', he starts, while regarding his perfectly neat umbrella, 'John wasn't on my security vetting team. He is right, in a way. Obviously the gardeners wouldn't work during a ball. It was another house staff breach. The butler was smoking a cigarette, overheard the secret, and, not realising its importance, fed it to the enemy's intel people at the local pub. We have since insisted our windows at the embassy remain closed when international secrets are being discussed. It saves us a lot of bother.'

They all look at me, and I shrug.

'What? I'm occasionally useful', I say, amused.

'You are always useful', Sherlock dismisses, coldly. But his grey-green eyes linger on his assistant with unnecessary fondness for a cold rationalist.

Lestrade reacts first: 'Well, that's a tie. We need another one to call the winner.'

'Lupin is out!' Sherlock frowns on the maths. Finally he realises he got one, I got one, and Scotty got one.

'Don't rub it in. No one likes a gloating winner, Sherlock.'

'I've got one', Anderson says, removing the last characterisation as Lupin. We all look puzzled at him. He shrugs. 'Well, I'm out already, so I might as well finish the competition off.

He's got a point, and we all nod in agreement.

'Here it goes. A man has got water based glue residue on his nasal folds, his hair is rumpled as if it had been tied back for a prolonged period of time, and he walks into a bathroom and comes out of his bedroom. At the same time, his guest sleuth goes MIA. Either he is a James Bond character that just bedded the beauty and left her there to wake up on her own as an inconsiderate lover, or... the Scottish detective is no other than Sherlock Holmes in disguise!' Anderson finishes, rising from the armchair with an outstretched arm and pointing a finger at Sherlock.

Greg gasps.

'Good call', Sherlock spits back.

I'm still eyeing Lestrade, how could he possibly not have found out?

'Do you have anything to say in defence of your little farce?' Anderson insists.

'Oh, please, it was obvious from the start!' Sherlock protests. 'We've all made fools of ourselves and bungled this silly thing way out of proportion! Isn't that right, inspector?'

Greg deflates. 'Yeah, you're right. I started it. I invented Lupin.'

My turn to gasp.

The inspector carries on: 'I thought you weren't giving John the respect and attention he deserves as your faithful assistant and crazy companion, Sherlock. But I was wrong. You really care for him. Just not the way other people would express it, I suppose.'

'I'm not other people', Sherlock defends, proudly.

I smile and point out: 'You persisted even when everything was going wrong, and you were just being goofy, and you did so because you knew it amused me, after my ordeal. I think that proves we can bicker a lot, but we truly care for each other.'

Sherlock nods, blushing beyond any makeup residue to be blamed. In his turn, he declares:

'Lestrade, I will admit, with difficulty, that you solved good cases as Lupin.'

Greg smiles spontaneously at the rarity of the compliment by the uptight consulting detective. 'And I need to say I understand you are feeling the lack of cases, and you are coping really admirably well, Sherlock, you really are.'

I smile too. My turn. 'I admit that, actually, I made up Scotty, so, in the end, I didn't behave a lot better than Greg.'

We all look at each other.

Anderson shrugs. 'I admit I quite enjoyed playing a great detective', he says. Greg pats him in the back, friendly.

We end up looking at Mycroft. The man huffs and arrogantly defends: 'You may continue torturing me, but I'll admit nothing whatsoever.'

.