"No!" Sherlock shouted running his hand through his wavy brown hair quickly. It was an early morning and tensions were high at 221b Baker Street. Sherlock was, as per every time he wakes up, wearing nothing but a pair of track suit bottoms.
"Sherlock!" Jo replied, she was still in her silk pyjamas, "You have to sooner or later."
Sherlock angrily walked into what should have been the dining room but Sherlock had converted it into his own, personal office. In the corner of the office room was a cream leather arm chair with an almost artistic arched back and there was a large, glass desk with an apple iMac perched on it facing the back wall. Laying in great mounds around the office were piles upon piles of completed Rubix Cubes.
Sherlock took a seat at his desk and turned the iMac on. It immediately flicked to a Gmail screen on the Internet and Sherlock selected a contact. With a smile he indicated the screen "Look I have a lot of work to do" and he began typing.
Jo smirked, "You're writing an email to Toys R Us."
Sherlock looked at the iMac screen and reviewed the Gmail contact he had selected.
"Ah..." He said quietly "Yes... I have."
Sherlock turned off the iMac and walked back into the living room. He grumpily took a seat on the sofa.
Jo held up a letter with Sherlocks name and address written on the envelope.
"It's from your father" Jo said "You really should read it."
Sherlock stood up in a second and snatched the letter from Jo.
He tried to analyse his fathers handwriting.
??????
Typical Dad, Sherlock growled in his head, only person who can fool me.
Sherlock held the letter in front of Jo's eyes.
"Here's how much I want to read it!" Sherlock exclaimed and he ripped the letter in half and stuffed it into his pocket, "Say nothing!"
And he left the living room and bounded up the stairs.
"You need to accept the fact you have a father soon or later!" Jo shouted back up the stairs.
Might as well get dressed, she thought and she too walked up the stairs and to her bedroom.
20 minutes later Sherlock was back downstairs in a pair of black skinny jeans and a green t-shirt with a clover on it.
Jo followed him around 5 minutes later wearing a pair of jeans, a red jumper and a pair of shoes. Her brown hair was, as usual, long and silky and was today in a pony tail.
When Jo entered the living room she found Sherlock sitting on the sofa tapping his legs impatiently. He saw Jo instantly and spoke quickly.
"Where have you been?" Sherlock asked. Jo was about to speak but he waved his hand at her and continued "No! Doesn't matter! I have somewhere to be. Lestrade sent me a text. Apparently there's been a lovely, juicy robbery of biblical proportions and he wants me to take a look! You want to come with?"
Jo stammered, "Well I..."
"Ah good!" Sherlock smiled as he walked into the hall, closely followed by Jo, and put on his leather jacket "The taxi's waiting outside!"
Sherlock was about to walk out of the door when Jo finally got a word in edge ways, "Where's the robbery?" She asked less than calmly.
"Crescent Moon Lodge, home to Edward Stafford, the chairman of a multi-billion pound corporation that stretches from Britain to America!" Sherlock smiled and he walked out of the door. Jo quickly grabbed her own jacket and followed Sherlock, closing the door behind her.
The taxi journey was almost silent. Sherlock was looking out of the window and watching as the buildings of London passed. Her carefully observed the people walking down the street, the people shopping and the people eating in cafés. And then he could take no more and broke the silence.
"How can they live like that?!" Sherlock exclaimed so loudly the taxi driver jerked the vehicle to the left a little before regaining control. Even Jo was jerked out of her quiet session where she was scolding herself for being drawn into another one of Sherlock's mysteries, "How can people live such abysmally boring lives!! They just too... They're too..."
"Normal?" Jo interrupted.
Sherlock smiled and wagged his finger at Jo "Yes that's the word."
Jo fished inside her jacket pocket. She bypassed her purse and keys to 221b until she found what she was looking for. She pulled out a small, leather bound diary with a pen attached to it. She released the pen from it's bonds and opened the diary, quickly writing something in it.
"Sherlock: Drug test!" Sherlock exclaimed loudly and the driver jerked the taxi again.
Jo looked Sherlock in the eye, "You can read my handwriting upside down."
"More to the point why are you giving me a drugs test on..." Sherlock continued and he took a quick look at her diary again, "The 21st! That's tomorrow!"
"Yes." Jo replied "That's part of transferring you from your drug life of your home life and getting you back on your feet. I have to test you to make sure that you aren't taking any drugs."
"And you just happened to write that in now!" Sherlock added as he raised his eyebrows.
Jo sighed, "You're being overactive! Besides your due a test anyway..."
Sherlock smiled coyly, folded his arms and returned to staring out of the window. "Whatever..." He said quietly.
The taxi journey continued in silence until they reached a large mansion in a walled off courtyard. The large, terra cotta building was hemmed into its alcove by full, green bushes and lively trees. There were two large, white doors in the centre of the building that were open and stretched around the front of the house was yellow tape labeled 'CRIME SCENE'. Police cars were parked outside of the house and officers were milling around quietly.
The taxi driver let Sherlock and Jo out and they headed for the front doors. As they approached the front door a lean man in a tacky grey suit lunged out at them, his hand spread and stopping them from entering. He had slick brown hair which had been cut shirt and his face was unnaturally thin. His eyes were beady and there was something off about his hands.
Sherlock took a good look at the man before speaking.
Divorced, recently.
Coming down with a cold.
Unhappy to see me.
"Woah, woah, woah!" The man chuckled falsely "Where do youse two think you're going?"
"Detective Inspector Lestrade asked me over here." Sherlock smiled even more falsely "I'm Sherlock Holmes. Expert in the field of deductive reasoning and a sort of life boat to the police force!" Sherlock had a real smile spread across his face and it was obvious that the man did not like it.
"Oh yeah." The man said with a grey smile "Lestrade talks about you a lot. I'm Detective Inspector Gregson. Who's the girl?"
"The 'girl' is my sort-of partner. Can we see the crime scene now?" Sherlock replied and he didn't wait for a response. Instead he just barged past Gregson. He entered into a large oak hall which was filled with crisp, cold air and was lathered in darkness.
Sherlock walked through a door directly in front of the door and into a large room that followed. The room he had entered was, in fact, a library with a glass domed ceiling and walls with brocades in them. The carpet was a navy blue and embroiled with golden lions and at the far end of the room there was a large desk facing the door. And in between the door and the desk was a large, smashed glass display case. Sherlock glanced behind him quickly and saw Gregson and Jo entering the library. Sherlock looked around zany analysed everything he saw.
Edwards clearly liked books, he was a great collector.
All published Inspector Rebus novels.
All published Martina Cole crime novels.
Several dictionaries and thesaurus'
Several Thatcher biographies.
Several Churchill biographies.
After that all genres merge into one.
Sherlock walked quickly across the room and began to examine the desk.
Well kept, polished every week [personal cleaners]
3 draws on either side of desk [One needs a key, still locked tight]
Nothing on top of desk
Nothing else of significance
"Shouldn't you be looking at the case?" Gregson said "Whatever was stolen was stolen from there."
Sherlock gritted his teeth "I know what I am doing, Inspector, thank you very much!"
Sherlock moved towards the cabinet and gave it a quick once over. It had certainly been smashed and the lock had not been interfered with. But what had the cabinet once contained?
Rectangle of case lighter than the rest. About the size of a book.
Whatever was in the case was here for a long time.
[What did it mean to the owner?]
"So!" Sherlock smiled "Where's our good friend Eddie Stafford."
Gregson frowned, "Nowhere to be found, I'm afraid."
"What do you mean?" Sherlock asked "He has to be somewhere."
"Nope." Gregson added "He hasn't been seen since the robbery took place. I was thinking robbery turned murder but until we find the body...."
Sherlock interrupted "He's underneath us."
"I'm sorry?" Gregson asked "What do you mean 'he's underneath us?'."
"I mean..." Sherlock began as he ran to the far corner of the room and began tearing the carpet back to reveal some wooden floorboards. Sherlock knelt down and removed several of the floorboards as Jo and Gregson walked over. They all saw what was hidden beneath the floor, "...He's underneath us."
"How the hell did you figure that out?" Jo asked as she knelt down and looked at the cold lifeless body. He was thin with a distinguished jaw and a nest of brown hair. His eyes were blue. Matching every picture of Edward Stafford that J had ever seen in the tabloids.
Sherlock indicated where he had torn up the carpet, the corner,"I noticed it the minute we came in here. The carpet was coming apart from the wall. Closer examination revealed that it had been made to look as if it was coming apart from the wall. When DI Gregson here told me that Eddie was missing and possibly murdered I put it all together and came up with a solution."
"I can see why Lestrade likes you..." Gregson muttered, "looks like we have a murder on our hands."
"Possibly." Sherlock corrected "We need to examine the body first."
"But I think it was murder." Gregson added.
"Don't care!" Sherlock exclaimed as he began to walk out of the library "Take the body to Central Morgue and let me know when it's ready for examination. Get my number from Lestrade!"
Gregson looked at Jo, bewildered, "Is he always like this?"
Jo smiled awkwardly "Hopefully not" and she followed Sherlock outside.
When Jo arrived outside, in the cold, brisk air, Sherlock was standing on the street outside of the mansion. She hurried over to him and tapped him on the shoulder.
"What the hell is the matter with you today?" She exclaimed.
Sherlock looked at her with an expression that told her he couldn't care less about her question "Nothing."
The energy that had been plaguing him all morning had fallen from his voice. He was... Dim.
"Don't lie to me, I know when somebody is lying to me!" Jo said.
Sherlock gritted his teeth for a moment.
"Alright you've rumbled us! It's a massive conspiracy between me, David Tennant and the Prime Minister." Sherlock shouted "So we'll done you, have a Smartie!"
"I'm not going to be fobbed off!" Jo argued.
"See you back at the house." Sherlock growled. He turned up the collar of his jacket, turned away and walked off down the street with Jo staring after him.
"Damn it..." Jo muttered under her breath. She considered going after him but her thoughts were cut short when her phone began to ring. She pulled it out of her pocket and put it to her ear, "Hello?" She asked.
"Miss Watson." A cold, English voice said.
"Yes, Who is this?" She asked.
"Mr Holmes." The voice replied. It was Sherlock's father, Jo now realised.
"Oh... Hello sir" Jo said, unsure of how to address her employer.
"Please, call me Mr Holmes." Sherlock's father continued "How is Sherlock?"
Jo sighed, "He's being overactive and grumpy. He won't tell me what's wrong."
"I could tell you." Mr Holmes said.
Jo considered her next move carefully. She didn't know whether to discover what was up from Sherlock's own mouth or from his father.
"Honestly, Mr Holmes..." Jo said "I'd rather try and get it from Sherlock."
There was a brief moment of silence before Mr Holmes spoke again.
"Very well..." He said and the. He changed the subject completely. When he spoke again his voice seemed a little more somber as if something had shifted in his character "Did... Sherlock receive my letter?"
Jo didn't know what to tell him. The truth she supposed, "I gave it to Sherlock. And... He ripped it in half and he hasn't told me what he did with it."
Mr Holmes let out a long, hard sigh of disappointment, "See if you can get him to read it. Goodbye."
Jo was about to say goodbye however the phone went dead, leaving her wondering what was going on between father and son. What was in that letter? What was troubling Sherlock? She had to find out.
To Be Continued...
Hello there, Captain. Would you like a second opinion?
This sentence could do without the 'quickly'. Mind you, I'm not in favor of an ultra-description, but maybe "Sherlock cried, mussing his wavy brown hair" would work.
This might be part of a series, but there's no sense in just throwing new readers for a loop. There must be some way of informing us that it's the present day. Is he irritated when he runs his hand through hair gel, maybe?
I have two questions about this paragraph. Aren't Jo's speech and her wearing silk pyjamas two separate thoughts? And he has to what?
Why say "angrily walked" when you can say "stomped" or "trudged"? Also, how is the room's conversion relevant to the story?
Allow me this one nitpick. Wouldn't a real British writer spell the word "labelled"?
[quote]"So we'll done you, have a Smartie!"[quote]
I'm not sure, but perhaps you substituted "we'll" for "well" by mistake.
Now for the best part: the general impression.
Hello there!
Thanks for the review.
I'd like to say that the spelling errors (i.e we'll) was an accident.
It wrote the story on an iPad and for some reason it always changes well to we'll (don't know why)
I don't watch the Pink Panther films. I've never liked them (sorry) and I have no intention of ever watching them. I tried watching one a couple of years back, got through the first ten minutes and then gave up.
Hello fellow Green Team member
I will take you up on your review offer. I will be giving out my compliments at the end, so I'm just going to jump in.
Oh dear, that's too. Apostrophes are important, my friend. Remember to use them in contractions and when the word is possessive.
...Juicy? Would Sherlock use juicy as an adjective to describe anything but fruit? Can a robbery really be described as juicy? I'm not liking that at all.
Care to share? I'd like to know what was 'off.' It could be so many things. Is it a tick? A scar? Is there a missing finger... An extra finger?
What a lovely description
...Ya sure?
Not that I really mind, but this is a fragment. It could easily be tacked onto the previous sentence with a comma.
You can't just have dialogue in the middle of your sentence. You either make it it's own sentence or throw in a 'she said.'
I think a word is missing somewhere here.
Alright...
This sounds dangerously close to the show 'Elementary' which I suppose isn't awful. It's fine really if you let people know.
Sherlock here... isn't very Sherlock-esque. He seems quite emotional for Sherlock.
I semi-like the lists. I feel like they give it a Sherlock feel but the brackets aren't as effective as you hope, I think. Just separate from the list, or leave it without the brackets. It couldn't hurt either way.
I do like the mystery itself along with the father twist. I think it's easy to forget that Sherlock Holmes even had parents at some point.
I hoped this helped.
If you have any questions just PM me. If you need another review, the link to my WRFF thread is in my signature.
Megsug
Thanks for your review.
I honestly do realise that this is akin to Elementary.
However in part 2 of the Glass Cabinet (which is coming soon) there is a plot twist that really makes Holmes (the name of my series) it's own.
I realise that Sherlock isn't being very Sherlock-sequence in this piece of work but its revealed WHY in part 2.
Stay tuned if you want to see Holmes become its own modern version of Sherlock Holmes...