A/N: Back again for another calendar!

Prompt: a foggy day, from YoughaltheJust

Mrs. Hudson had always enjoyed a foggy day. Good thing too, for in London a day was as likely to be foggy as not. It had always meant a day where she could remain indoors, away from the soot and grime of London's signature fog and relax with a cup of tea and some knitting.

That, however, was before she let rooms to London's only consulting detective.

Mr. Holmes was, in his way, a decent tenant. He paid the rent readily enough, even though Mrs. Hudson could tell it was a struggle for him at times. He complained less than any tenant she had ever heard about, and on a street where more than one woman was forced to take in boarders, she had heard her fair share of ridiculous tenant complaints.

No, but he was untidy, loud when he ought to be quiet (violin concertos at one in the morning, when decent people were in bed), prone to filling his rooms with foul chemical odors, and to inviting unsavory characters of all sorts into his sitting room. Though she found she no longer minded his Baker Street Irregulars so much, poor dears.

Still, Mr. Holmes was away much of the time on one case or another, leaving Dr. Watson, who was never any trouble at all, poor man recovering as he was. Mrs. Hudson found, much to her surprise, that she was fonder of them than she expected to be.

Until the first truly foggy day arrived.

It was the first somewhat warm day in April when they all awoke to the grey fog outside their windows, so thick one could hardly see the gaslamps shining through it.

"I thought I'd never find my way here," Mrs. Turner from next door said as she came to return Mrs. Hudson's best soup tureen, though she was only coming from next door, and no one could very well get lost coming from next door, even in this fog.

Mrs. Hudson was about to answer when a crash sounded from upstairs. Mrs. Turner glanced up worriedly.

Mrs. Hudson merely smiled, used as she was to Mr. Holmes's eccentricities. "I expect he is sorting through his papers."

Mrs. Turner, for her part, looked at her as if worried about her state of mind. "I never heard papers make such a noise, Martha."

Knowing by now what it sounded like when something truly alarming occurred in Mr. Holmes's rooms, and the sorts of things he was likely to store alongside his truly untidy papers, Mrs. Hudson just put the tureen away and offered her neighbor some tea, distracting her from beginning another diatribe against Mr. Holmes (she had heard quite enough of those since letting rooms to the fellow).

Tea served to be suitably distracting for five minutes, until the strains of a violin began making their way downstairs; not pleasant strains either, which Mr. Holmes apparently saved for waking up his neighbors at ungodly hours, but dreadful screeches and dissonant scratches that sounded as if a troupe of monkeys had got hold of the instrument.

"How ever does poor Dr. Watson manage?" Mrs. Turner asked, holding her ears against the noise.

Mrs. Hudson made a pained expression. It was annoying enough when he played at midnight but at least he played then, and played well. She was about to answer when Dr. Watson himself made his opinion clear.

"For goodness' sake, Holmes, must you do that now?"

Mr. Holmes must have answered, though he was so quiet Mrs. Hudson rarely heard him unless she was in the room with him. He wasn't a shouter, that much was a blessing, though he more than made up for it otherwise.

Doctor Watson's answer, however, was clear as day. "Well, I am trapped inside as well, if you hadn't noticed, as is everyone else on the street, and I'm sure none of them appreciate listening to that caterwauling."

It was most unlike Dr. Watson to sound so frustrated, though he had been stuck inside since he'd arrived in January and no doubt was more fed up than anyone.

One last scratch of that blasted violin, a great boom as Mr. Holmes undoubtedly launched himself out of his chair and landed heavily on the floor, and Mrs. Hudson turned back to Mrs. Turner.

"He's quite good when he wants to be," she said.

Mrs. Turner scoffed. "One could be Franz Liszt and I wouldn't want to hear it at two o'clock in the morning."

Mrs. Hudson thought better than to say that she'd learned to fall asleep to the plaintive sounds of Mr. Holmes's violin. Though she could not say with truth that she enjoyed when Mr. Holmes simply dragged his bow across the blasted thing.

This line of thought was interrupted by the bang of a gun, causing them both to jump nearly out of their chairs.

"HOLMES!"

Despite the fright, Mrs. Hudson, could not help but laugh at the exasperation in Dr. Watson's voice.

"I understand you are bored, but that does not excuse indoor gunfire! For goodness' sake!"

Whatever Mr. Holmes' answer was, Dr. Watson's response was to sigh so heavily they could hear it clearly down the stairs and through the sitting room entry. "It does not matter how thick the walls are, one simply cannot fire a weapon indoors!"

"Well, he is correct that the walls are thick enough," Mrs. Hudson said, though she did not like the idea of bullet holes decorating her first floor sitting room, nor what a buyer would someday think of such a thing. "Though I hope the fog lifts soon, else I don't know what he will get up to tomorrow!"

Mrs. Turner was staring at her in astonishment, before picking herself up in a judgmental huff. "Well, I doubt I shall complain about my Mr. Edwards no matter how he vexes me. At least he does not scare me half to death by shooting guns off indoors."

Mrs. Hudson did not say what she wished to, which was that Mrs. Turner complained about Mr. Edwards far more than she ever did about Mr. Holmes, and with far less provocation, and she did not expect that to change. Instead, she replied, "Well, we have each got the right tenant then."

Mrs. Turner looked as if she dearly wished to retort but did not know the best way to do so and simply took herself off to make Mr. Edwards his supper. Mrs. Hudson had best do the same, glad that whatever his faults, at least she knew Mr. Holmes would not complain half as much as Mr. Edwards did about his food.

Though as another gunshot sounded, she did think that perhaps Mrs. Turner had a point. But only regarding the indoor gunfire.