Sherlock fic: The Problem with Personal Blogs, Part 20
Title: The Problem with Personal Blogs, Part 20/21
Characters: Holmes, Watson, Lestrade, the BBC gang (Molly, Sarah, Donovan, Anderson)
Rating: PG to Strong Adult - this part PG-13
Warnings: Excessive estrogen, tea
Summary: Sherlock finds himself the recipient of unwanted attention, thanks to the Internet.
Notes: Thank you winterstorrm for the beta and Britpick.
For a complete list of chapters, see: The Problem with Personal Blogs, chapter list.
20. Ultimatum
John and Sherlock turned up the West
End street, checking addresses as they walked. It was nearly night, but enough
light remained in the sky to illuminate the prim façades and consciously kept
front gardens of the middle-class neighborhood. Three houses from the corner stood
their target, a smart but unremarkable specimen amid the neat row houses.
"Doesn't look like the
home of a criminal," John murmured, as they proceeded up the front walk.
"You'd think a piano tutor
would have better taste," Sherlock murmured in reply.
John's nerves fluttered as they
stepped up to the door. Sherlock never hesitated, but promptly rang the bell
and assumed an unforgiving pose.
Phoebe Gill answered the door
herself, looking very much like her faculty staff picture. She betrayed not the
least bit of surprise at seeing the pair of them standing on her doorstep. They
might almost have been expected. At the very least, John surmised, she must
have noticed them coming up the walk.
She said, in a tone neither
conciliatory nor rebellious, "It was the photographs, wasn't it?"
"It was your username,
actually," Sherlock replied.
"Pareidolia," said John.
Phoebe looked confused. "My
username is Cougar."
"Pareidolia is the mechanism
John used to solve the riddle of your username," Sherlock clarified.
"I realized it wasn't meant to
be pronounced it all," John said. "K006ar could be a visual
representation of the word 'Cougar', if one allows for the leniency one often
finds in Internet spelling. Once I had that, it wasn't hard to get on your
track."
Phoebe smiled. "Never drop
hints to a genius."
"Or to a genius's
assistant," Sherlock added.
The compliment warmed John. He'd
never heard such praise from Sherlock before.
"Would you like to come
in?" Phoebe offered.
"Why?" Sherlock
challenged. "So you can take further notes about my clothing and cologne,
or perhaps record additional snippets of my speech to post on your Web
site?"
"No, no. That's all over. We
agreed that, once we'd been nicked, we'd go out of business."
John fretted a little at the word
"we", but Sherlock took it in stride. "Very noble of you."
"Not really. But... I can
explain more comfortably inside."
"Then by all means, let us go
in."
Phoebe stepped aside to let the two
men into her home. Once John had made the step up onto her level, he realized
how small she was. A trim, vigorous woman in her early 50s, her brunette hair
streaked with grey that she wasn't vain enough to cover and a well-modulated
voice that hinted of vocal lessons. Overall, she projected self-confidence,
intelligence-even graciousness.
"You know," John remarked,
turning to follow her and Sherlock down the hall, "I never would have
reckoned you for a stalker."
"It's new to me, too. But, as
they say, everyone needs a hobby."
"By everyone,"
Sherlock said, rounding the corner, "I assume you mean them."
John followed Sherlock into the room
and stopped short. Three nicely dressed, middle-aged women with various degrees
of guilt on their faces sat around a small dining room table. Phoebe took her
place beside them.
John blurted out, "Good Lord. It's
the entire dinner gang."
The group burst into snickers, shattering
the tension. Despite their change into ordinary attire, they resembled once
again the group of raucous women that John had noted (and dismissed) at L'Autre
Pied.
"Is that what we are?" one
of them asked. "A gang?"
"Say rather 'pack',"
Sherlock corrected. "Cougar pack."
The heavyset one looked up at Phoebe.
"I told you that name was too obvious."
"But certainly
appropriate," Sherlock said. "That is, I don't know if you actually
seduce young men, except fictionally, but the proclivities of your online
persona are certainly apparent."
John kept his mouth shut. He had
been the one to explain to Sherlock what a "cougar" was, his flatmate
unsurprisingly being unfamiliar with the current slang about older women
seeking sexual escapades with younger men. But Sherlock was nothing if not a
quick study, and had so fully mastered the material that John doubted whether any
of the women around the table would realize that he'd been ignorant of the term
only two hours earlier.
"It's wish fulfillment," Phoebe
said.
Sherlock gave her his haughtiest
look. "You wouldn't wish me on you."
"Too late!" cracked one of
the others, and they all broke into giggles again.
John found himself suppressing a
smirk of his own. Sherlock merely drew himself up, looking more severe than
ever.
Phoebe stepped forward
apologetically. "Forgive me, love. We aren't this silly ordinarily.
Please, have a seat. You too, Dr. Watson."
John looked round eagerly at the
chair the thin black woman was pushing toward him. They seemed a fun group, and
not at all frightening. He was curious to hear their side of the story.
Sherlock, on the other hand, merely
glared at the offer of a chair. "What I came to say can be said from here.
Stop it." His gaze shifted round the table, stabbing each woman in
turn. "Stop publishing these stories, and take down the material you've
already posted. This will be your only warning. You'll next be hearing from my
solicitor."
Phoebe rolled her eyes. "Yes,
yes, love, we've already established that. Now, make yourself comfy-" She
started to take his coat which Sherlock, considerably startled, relinquished to
her. She patted the chair. "Have a seat, I'll fetch some tea, and you can
tell us all about how you ran us down."
"Oh, please do, Mr.
Holmes," pleaded the heavyset one. "I'm dying to hear how you put it
all together."
Sherlock hesitated. "It was
actually Dr. Watson who-"
All three women round the table gave
a startled gasp, eyes wide with delight. "No!" cried one of them,
then all three turned their speculating glances on John. John suddenly felt
very glad he had retained his jacket; those gleeful gazes were very
speculating, indeed.
"Now, this is a story I must
hear," Phoebe said. "And I expect you want to hear our side of the business
as well."
"I suspect I could tell much of
it to you," Sherlock said-still imperiously, but no longer fighting the
suggestion. John covered a smile. Sherlock did so love to explain himself.
"Then tell us," cried the
redhead. "Let's see how closely you tracked us."
Sherlock looked embarrassed.
"Actually, I wasn't tracking you closely at all. You posted your
information through a server in Denmark-"
The whole gang of women erupted in
cheers, chattering excitedly and high-fiving each other. Phoebe, near the
kettle, hefted a fist in victory.
The black woman was pointing
excitedly. "I told you! I told you he'd go after that IP
address!"
"Good work, Baby!" cried
the redhead.
Sherlock sat stock still throughout
the celebration, though his eyes widened slightly. John found it hard not to
grin. It was wonderful seeing Sherlock being put through his paces by a bunch
of... well, respectable-looking, middle-aged women. Lovely, in fact.
"Baby knows all about IP
addresses," said the heavyset one.
"Baby?" John asked.
The thin woman next to him stuck out
her hand. "Abebi Okiro. I work in IT. I think I routed some of those posts
over the whole damn world!"
"Terminating with a special
friend in Denmark," Sherlock added.
Abebi's eyes twinkled. "I have
more than one special friend, love."
"Yes, but this one had his or
her-her, I expect-own server, and was thereby able to generate a local and
completely unrelated IP address for your 'first-time poster'."
"The first time really was an
accident." Abebi glanced at their hostess. "Phoebe was so new to
posting, she wasn't sure how to do it, and I was busy that night, so I had...
my friend set her up."
"And then you came after
us!" cried the heavyset one, her dark eyes gleaming with excitement.
"Came after Lisa, anyway-that very night!" The group chuckled in
gleeful terror.
"It became a game," said
Abebi. "I wondered how long we could go on without being caught, if we
kept running Phoebe's posts out of Denmark."
"But I-" The group fell
silent, so Sherlock was forced to continue. "I traced a reasonable number
of hits back to each of your homes, including Ms. Gill's."
Abebi smirked. "That's because I
had her place comments to her entries under a different identity. You'd get
suspicious if, after hearing Lisa's story, you went back to check and the lady
who'd supposedly found the story had never accessed the Web page."
Sherlock looked impressed.
"That was very well done."
Abebi looked smug. "I wasn't
born yesterday."
The women exchanged satisfied smirks,
savoring their success. John had to hand it to them; it wasn't everyone who
could misdirect Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock looked thoughtful.
"Abebi Okiro. You're the one who signed for the bill at L'Autre Pied."
"I had to, love," she replied.
"I was the only one whose name you hadn't heard."
"Yes. Lisa Doyle had mentioned
the rest of you when I surprised her the other night. You were clever enough to
take down any pictures of yourselves from your Facebook pages, making ready
identification difficult-"
"Baby made us do that,"
said the redhead. "As soon as she heard you were on our trail."
"-but Ms. Gill didn't have
access to her professional posting, so that picture remained."
Phoebe Gill looked contrite.
"Academy rules; every instructor has to have a profile."
"Which was how Dr. Watson ran
you down at last," Sherlock continued-warming John again with the freedom
with which his assistance was acknowledged. "He searched on your name-and
the others-until he found a picture linking you to the group of women he'd
observed the other night. What disturbs me," Sherlock said, turning toward
the redhead, "was my failure to recognize you, Mrs. Wallace. You
were among the people I'd spoken to only days before."
"Yes, one of the
hundreds," she laughed. "Do you remember every face you've
seen?"
Sherlock narrowed his eyes.
"Normally, yes."
She looked abashed. "Well, this
is the reason." She tweaked her flaming locks. "Most people don't
remember my face at all; they remember this."
"It is rather vivid,"
John said.
"I'm used to it; I take it for
granted now that people won't recognize me without the hair. Even so, I did
myself up completely: gray-haired wig, change of skin tone through makeup, cosmetic
glasses, extra layers of clothing to hide my build..." She met Sherlock's
eye. "I suspected I'd have to go all out to fool you."
"And you did, to my disgrace."
"Love," said Abebi,
"There's no shame in it. We hardly recognized her ourselves. That's part
of what put us in such a hilarious mood that night."
"But this is my
profession," Sherlock persisted. "It is the first quality of a
criminal investigator to be able to see through a disguise."
"You can be sure," Mrs.
Wallace said strongly, "that I stayed well away from you so you wouldn't
notice my... alterations."
"But I did notice
them."
Sherlock's statement silenced the
group.
Mrs. Wallace looked uneasy.
"You noticed the wig?"
"Of course. Unfortunately, that
and the extra clothing led me into the mistake of supposing that you were
undergoing chemotherapy." He smiled weakly. "I do on occasion make
mistakes."
"There's always
something," John murmured, then gave Sherlock an encouraging smile. As
he'd hoped, the allusion restored some of his flatmate's punctured confidence.
Mrs. Wallace clapped a hand over her
heart. "Well, thank heavens I had no idea you were so close on my trail! This
is almost as bad as when you came to the door the other night, and hearing Lisa
telling you all about what had happened that day-our working on the story, our
names, everything."
Sherlock regarded her. "I
assume you were listening at the top of the stairs?"
The heavyset woman grimaced. "We
tried to be quiet."
"And you were. However, the
conversation between Lisa Doyle and myself could only have been overheard by
someone close at hand. As it would be too monstrous for Brenda Doyle to write
pornography that would implicate her own daughter-"
"Hey!" cried Phoebe at the
sink, assembling the cups for tea.
"-I conclude that she was in
fact watching telly in the other room. The noise from the program would have
drowned out our conversation. The only other location that would have been
close enough for eavesdropping was the top of the stairs. There was a
light on in one of the rooms up there. I speculated to Dr. Watson that someone
might have been listening."
"You got that right,"
chuckled Mrs. Wallace. "I'm so glad you didn't come up! It would have been
all over right then."
"Why do you suppose so?"
"Because we were all working on
the next story," the heavyset one giggled. "Although I was half
hoping you would come upstairs-just so I could see you myself, close-up."
Her companions whapped her playfully on the arm.
Sherlock studied the speaker's face
and figure critically. "By your coloring, you must be a Doyle. I assume
you're Mrs. Doyle's sister that Lisa mentioned."
"That's right. Betty Doyle. I'm
Brenda's younger sister."
"But you don't live
there."
"No, but I'm always in and out.
It depends on Walter's schedule. He works nights."
"So you were there the night I
came by to question Miss Doyle about the Internet entry. Unbeknownst to her,
you'd let Ms. Gill and Mrs. Wallace into the house earlier, surreptitiously."
Betty's eyes widened. "How did
you reckon that?"
"Miss Doyle-Lisa-was obviously
unaware of your presence, or she never would have told me her story in such
detail. Miss Doyle was clearly watching television with her mother when I
arrived. Lenny was at his flat. You were the only other family member in town who
would have felt enough at home to open the door."
"The truth was," said
Betty, "I wanted to leave Lisa out of it, after all that fuss we had with
Lenny that afternoon."
"You have a strange way of
'leaving her out of it', as your fictional character reflected the events in
her life so exactly."
"That's because she was so excited
about seeing you," said Mrs. Wallace. "We thought it might be fun for
her to... see herself in print, as it were."
"And it was, too- apart from
Lenny's contribution." Betty made a face.
"But the critique session that
afternoon had given me some ideas for another story," said Phoebe,
bringing over the tea tray. "I brought my rough draft that night to
Fiona's house-"
"And I suggested that we bring
it next door," said the redheaded Mrs. Wallace, "because Betty's
comments had been so helpful to Phoebe earlier."
"So there we were," Phoebe
said, "crouched round Lisa's little writing desk, with my pages spread all
over her university books, doing our best to write steamy twenty-something sex
and trying to keep the others from hearing us laughing-"
"Laughing?" inquired John.
Phoebe smirked. "You have to
admit, writing porn can be pretty funny."
"Especially the way you write
it," Sherlock said dryly.
"Now, now, don't be
unkind," Phoebe said good-naturedly. "It was only my second attempt,
after all. Milk or lemon?"
"I'm fine as I am,"
Sherlock said coldly.
"I take mine with lemon,"
John said hurriedly, keen to keep the conversation going.
The other ladies helped themselves,
while Phoebe served John. "Sherlock takes milk," he murmured, when Phoebe
handed him his cup. Smiling, Phoebe turned to serve her other guest, Sherlock
deigning not to notice either one of them.
"One thing I should like to
clear up," Sherlock said, pointedly ignoring the cup that Phoebe placed in
front of him. "Who was it who was watching me outside Miss Hooper's flat:
Mrs. Brenda Doyle, or her daughter Lisa?"
Betty Doyle gasped. "Lisa said
you never saw her! You never once looked in her direction!"
Sherlock smiled softly over having
his question answered. "That's true; I didn't see her, but Miss
Hooper did."
Betty grinned. "I'm surprised
she had time for looking round, based on what Lisa told us when we got back
home."
"Something about a mutual
tonsillectomy," Mrs. Wallace added, and they all tittered again.
"She's a very good
friend," John said hurriedly, before Sherlock could say something hideous.
"Yes, she appeared to be, from
what I saw at dinner," said Abebi dryly.
"I mean a friend,"
John continued. "She's actually a colleague of ours-of Sherlock's, I
mean."
"I wish I had colleagues like
that," Phoebe said dreamily.
"If you're just
colleagues," said Betty, "what's that giant shag tag doing on your
neck?"
"Just radiating 'keep away'
beams," said John. "Like an electric dog fence."
Betty frowned. "What?"
Sherlock added sardonically,
"Miss Hooper delighted in playing her role of girlfriend to the
hilt."
John quickly looked down, as
unwanted images of Molly up to her favorite "hilt" played through his
head.
"If Miss Doyle wasn't a
participant in your posts," Sherlock continued, "why was she staking
out Molly's flat?"
Betty gave a lopsided smile.
"Well, we'd corrupted her by then."
"I didn't feel I could publish
the second story without her permission," Phoebe explained, settling
herself in a chair. "We wanted to use the 'homeless' disguise, and feared that
would lead you right back to her."
Sherlock glared at her. "You
are aware of the meaning of 'fiction', are you not, Ms. Gill?"
She blushed. "Yes, but..."
"But your coming there in
disguise was better than anything we'd thought of," said Betty.
"Lisa didn't mind," said
Fiona Wallace. "Provided we could keep Lenny off her track."
"So we rang Abebi," said
Phoebe, "and she explained how we could hide our IP addresses, or route
them, or something..."
"And Lenny wouldn't know about
the homeless disguise anyway-"
"So we thought we were
safe."
"And then Dr. Watson announced
this date thing in his blog-"
"And we were all mad to
go," said Betty. "Lisa couldn't, of course, because you'd spot her in
an instant-"
"And Brenda stayed in with her,
to ease the blow," Fiona continued.
"But Lisa couldn't bear to be
left out entirely, so we rang her from the restaurant when your party was readying
to go-"
"And she raced ahead to your
friend's flat, so she could observe the two of you together."
"She wanted to write her own
story by then," Betty said proudly.
"That's what gave us the idea
for the challenge," said Abebi. "Lisa's story, which she based on
your date."
"She was already working on it
when we got back from the restaurant," said Fiona. "And we had all
these photographs. We thought, we should make this a challenge! Get a lot of
dinner date stories."
"And then Baby came up with
SEWISH-"
John noticed that she pronounced it
"Sue-wish", and made a mental note.
"And we picked one of the faces
from among our pictures to use in the banner-"
"Lisa put that together," relayed
Betty, the proud auntie. "She knows how to use Photoshop. It's something
she learned in one of her marketing classes."
Phoebe looked apologetic. "I
guess we were all a little drunk."
"Obviously," Sherlock said
coldly.
John spoke up. "About those
photographs-how did you get so many? I didn't notice your party moving about
the room."
"That was Freddie," said
Phoebe.
"The waiter at L'Autre Pied,"
said Sherlock, with a gleam of sudden recognition.
"Yes, well," Phoebe had
the grace to look embarrassed. "You'd have no way of knowing this, Mr.
Holmes, but he was a student of mine. After I saw Dr. Watson's post, I rang him
at L'Autre Pied, hoping he'd be able to squeeze us in somehow. His girlfriend
is a big RPF fan-we'd talked about it now and then-and he was keen to help us
when I hinted that some more RPF might come out of the evening. Apparently,
he'd had a very good morning due to my story-not that he realized it was mine,
of course-"
"He recruited one of the bus
boys to help," Fiona smirked. "We passed them two of our cameras, and
whenever they could take a shot with complete safety-"
"We emphasized complete,"
Betty said sternly. "One misstep, and you'd be onto us."
"-they took a snap. Most of
them were unusable, but Lisa filtered out the best ones-"
"And enhanced them through
Photoshop," John speculated.
"Yes," continued Fiona.
"It was quite a project. We were up half the night."
"How did you get the
sound?" John asked.
"Freddie had a voice-activated
recorder in his pocket," answered Sherlock.
Phoebe stared. "How did you
know?"
"Obvious. You were too far from
the table to capture the words yourself. The recordings varied in volume, so it
couldn't have been a planted bug. Freddie was present for each of the phrases
posted on your Web site." Sherlock shrugged. "Obvious."
"We intended just to use the
recording for inspiration." Betty's eyes darkened. "You know, you
really do rumble when you talk."
"Actually," Sherlock
growled, "I don't."
"Actually," said Fiona,
"you do. But it was only after we started putting the Web site together
that Lisa said we could post some of these phrases as sound clips to go with
the photos-"
John laughed, startling everyone.
"So it was Lisa who really solved the jewelry theft case."
"She didn't solve
it," Sherlock snapped.
The women were momentarily
speechless. "Lisa solved a case?" Betty whispered.
"She did not solve
it." Sherlock retorted, mostly to John.
"It's just that the words under
the pictures gave him an idea," John explained. "And that's
how he solved it."
The women's eyes gleamed; they were
practically panting with the magnitude of it. "Really?" Fiona
whispered. "We helped?"
John had to bite back a smile over
how their admiration softened Sherlock's mood. He responded arrogantly, "A
bit."
Abebi put a hand over her heart.
"I feel as if my whole life has meaning."
The others agreed emphatically. John
noticed Sherlock's ill temper dissipating in proportion to their appreciative
remarks.
"I'm glad you told us
that," Abebi continued, "because we had come to a sad decision."
Sherlock raised a brow. "I
wondered why you were all gathered together. Without writing materials before
you, that is."
Phoebe looked mournful. "It was
that last post on SEWISH. Have you seen it?"
John noticed Sherlock shaking his
head. He cleared his throat. "Once we solved the puzzle of the username,
we haven't been back."
"Then you missed it," said
Fiona. "There was a recent post, some girl who said she ran into you at Bart's-"
Sherlock smiled. "Ah. It's a
pleasure to know that Anna Christina Morrison can be relied upon."
"Is that her name?" said
Betty quickly. "We only know her by her handle: hot4cops."
Sherlock winced.
"We'd best warn Lestrade,"
John muttered.
"Anyway," Phoebe said sadly,
"she wrote about your meeting: how distressed you appeared to be, how the
case was interfering with your ability to do your work-"
"It was only ever supposed to
be a bit of fun," said Betty.
"-how, instead of being
flattered, you considered it defamation of character."
"We just couldn't see
continuing," said Fiona, "when it was apparent our little fantasy
works were having real-world implications."
"The last thing we
wanted," Abebi said strongly, "was to interfere with your ability to
solve cases. Real cases; things that matter in the real world."
"So," Phoebe concluded,
"I called a meeting of the board, as it were, and we decided to kill
SEWISH."
A short silence followed this
announcement, the women looking suitably grave.
John looked at Sherlock. "It
seems we needn't have bothered to come by at all."
Sherlock tried to hide his
satisfaction-failing miserably, in John's opinion. "I am delighted to
learn that legal action will not be required."
"It wasn't intended as
defamation," Phoebe said pleadingly. "It was meant as celebration."
"Celebration of what?"
"Of you."
Sherlock stared. "Oh."
Silence hung over the table a
moment.
John pushed back his chair.
"Well, I suppose it's time we got on with solving a few more crimes. Murders,
thefts, whatever." He gave Phoebe a warm smile. "Thank you for your
hospitality."
Phoebe stood. "It's little
enough, truly. Thank you for being such a good sport."
Sherlock rose with them, leaving his
tea untouched. He said commandingly, "I don't suppose you could have all
that material down within the next hour?"
"Even faster," Abebi
answered. "When you get home, you'll never even know it existed."
"Excellent."
"Then you can delete the whole
incident," John murmured to him.
Sherlock looked down his nose.
"Hardly."
Abebi sighed, drawing the men's
attention back to her. "You really do have a sexy rumble there,
love."
Sherlock narrowed his eyes. "I
do not rumble."
"He's been telling me that all
week," John said to the group in general. "It's best just to go
along; it keeps him in humor."
Sherlock looked startled. "Do you
think I rumble?"
John shrugged. "There's a
certain tigerish aspect to your speech at times."
Sherlock stared into space.
"Extraordinary."
The group tittered, but quietly.
John was pleased that he could restore some of their former gaiety. He hoped he
would be so lively when he was their age.
Phoebe moved to the door. "I'll
show you out."
The table trio waived. "Thanks
for stopping!" Betty called.
Fiona stage-whispered to her,
"Lisa will be so thrilled."
"I'll be thrilled when
this is over at last," Sherlock grumbled to John, following Phoebe down
the hall.
"If you're thrilled, I'm
thrilled," John answered noncommittally.
"As it should be."
Phoebe opened the door for them.
"Goodnight, Ms. Gill,"
Sherlock sang as he passed. "I'm certain you're a wonderful piano
instructor. Please avoid writing in the future."
"It wasn't that bad," John
said quietly, shaking her hand as he passed. "A little work on your verbs,
and toning down some of your adjectives, and I think you've got a real
future."
"John!" Sherlock called
sharply from the front walk.
"Goodnight!" John finished
hastily, and hurried after him.
Continued in Part 21
Characters: Holmes, Watson, Lestrade, the BBC gang (Molly, Sarah, Donovan, Anderson)
Rating: PG to Strong Adult - this part PG-13
Warnings: Excessive estrogen, tea
Summary: Sherlock finds himself the recipient of unwanted attention, thanks to the Internet.
Notes: Thank you winterstorrm for the beta and Britpick.
For a complete list of chapters, see: The Problem with Personal Blogs, chapter list.
20. Ultimatum
John and Sherlock turned up the West
End street, checking addresses as they walked. It was nearly night, but enough
light remained in the sky to illuminate the prim façades and consciously kept
front gardens of the middle-class neighborhood. Three houses from the corner stood
their target, a smart but unremarkable specimen amid the neat row houses.
"Doesn't look like the
home of a criminal," John murmured, as they proceeded up the front walk.
"You'd think a piano tutor
would have better taste," Sherlock murmured in reply.
John's nerves fluttered as they
stepped up to the door. Sherlock never hesitated, but promptly rang the bell
and assumed an unforgiving pose.
Phoebe Gill answered the door
herself, looking very much like her faculty staff picture. She betrayed not the
least bit of surprise at seeing the pair of them standing on her doorstep. They
might almost have been expected. At the very least, John surmised, she must
have noticed them coming up the walk.
She said, in a tone neither
conciliatory nor rebellious, "It was the photographs, wasn't it?"
"It was your username,
actually," Sherlock replied.
"Pareidolia," said John.
Phoebe looked confused. "My
username is Cougar."
"Pareidolia is the mechanism
John used to solve the riddle of your username," Sherlock clarified.
"I realized it wasn't meant to
be pronounced it all," John said. "K006ar could be a visual
representation of the word 'Cougar', if one allows for the leniency one often
finds in Internet spelling. Once I had that, it wasn't hard to get on your
track."
Phoebe smiled. "Never drop
hints to a genius."
"Or to a genius's
assistant," Sherlock added.
The compliment warmed John. He'd
never heard such praise from Sherlock before.
"Would you like to come
in?" Phoebe offered.
"Why?" Sherlock
challenged. "So you can take further notes about my clothing and cologne,
or perhaps record additional snippets of my speech to post on your Web
site?"
"No, no. That's all over. We
agreed that, once we'd been nicked, we'd go out of business."
John fretted a little at the word
"we", but Sherlock took it in stride. "Very noble of you."
"Not really. But... I can
explain more comfortably inside."
"Then by all means, let us go
in."
Phoebe stepped aside to let the two
men into her home. Once John had made the step up onto her level, he realized
how small she was. A trim, vigorous woman in her early 50s, her brunette hair
streaked with grey that she wasn't vain enough to cover and a well-modulated
voice that hinted of vocal lessons. Overall, she projected self-confidence,
intelligence-even graciousness.
"You know," John remarked,
turning to follow her and Sherlock down the hall, "I never would have
reckoned you for a stalker."
"It's new to me, too. But, as
they say, everyone needs a hobby."
"By everyone,"
Sherlock said, rounding the corner, "I assume you mean them."
John followed Sherlock into the room
and stopped short. Three nicely dressed, middle-aged women with various degrees
of guilt on their faces sat around a small dining room table. Phoebe took her
place beside them.
John blurted out, "Good Lord. It's
the entire dinner gang."
The group burst into snickers, shattering
the tension. Despite their change into ordinary attire, they resembled once
again the group of raucous women that John had noted (and dismissed) at L'Autre
Pied.
"Is that what we are?" one
of them asked. "A gang?"
"Say rather 'pack',"
Sherlock corrected. "Cougar pack."
The heavyset one looked up at Phoebe.
"I told you that name was too obvious."
"But certainly
appropriate," Sherlock said. "That is, I don't know if you actually
seduce young men, except fictionally, but the proclivities of your online
persona are certainly apparent."
John kept his mouth shut. He had
been the one to explain to Sherlock what a "cougar" was, his flatmate
unsurprisingly being unfamiliar with the current slang about older women
seeking sexual escapades with younger men. But Sherlock was nothing if not a
quick study, and had so fully mastered the material that John doubted whether any
of the women around the table would realize that he'd been ignorant of the term
only two hours earlier.
"It's wish fulfillment," Phoebe
said.
Sherlock gave her his haughtiest
look. "You wouldn't wish me on you."
"Too late!" cracked one of
the others, and they all broke into giggles again.
John found himself suppressing a
smirk of his own. Sherlock merely drew himself up, looking more severe than
ever.
Phoebe stepped forward
apologetically. "Forgive me, love. We aren't this silly ordinarily.
Please, have a seat. You too, Dr. Watson."
John looked round eagerly at the
chair the thin black woman was pushing toward him. They seemed a fun group, and
not at all frightening. He was curious to hear their side of the story.
Sherlock, on the other hand, merely
glared at the offer of a chair. "What I came to say can be said from here.
Stop it." His gaze shifted round the table, stabbing each woman in
turn. "Stop publishing these stories, and take down the material you've
already posted. This will be your only warning. You'll next be hearing from my
solicitor."
Phoebe rolled her eyes. "Yes,
yes, love, we've already established that. Now, make yourself comfy-" She
started to take his coat which Sherlock, considerably startled, relinquished to
her. She patted the chair. "Have a seat, I'll fetch some tea, and you can
tell us all about how you ran us down."
"Oh, please do, Mr.
Holmes," pleaded the heavyset one. "I'm dying to hear how you put it
all together."
Sherlock hesitated. "It was
actually Dr. Watson who-"
All three women round the table gave
a startled gasp, eyes wide with delight. "No!" cried one of them,
then all three turned their speculating glances on John. John suddenly felt
very glad he had retained his jacket; those gleeful gazes were very
speculating, indeed.
"Now, this is a story I must
hear," Phoebe said. "And I expect you want to hear our side of the business
as well."
"I suspect I could tell much of
it to you," Sherlock said-still imperiously, but no longer fighting the
suggestion. John covered a smile. Sherlock did so love to explain himself.
"Then tell us," cried the
redhead. "Let's see how closely you tracked us."
Sherlock looked embarrassed.
"Actually, I wasn't tracking you closely at all. You posted your
information through a server in Denmark-"
The whole gang of women erupted in
cheers, chattering excitedly and high-fiving each other. Phoebe, near the
kettle, hefted a fist in victory.
The black woman was pointing
excitedly. "I told you! I told you he'd go after that IP
address!"
"Good work, Baby!" cried
the redhead.
Sherlock sat stock still throughout
the celebration, though his eyes widened slightly. John found it hard not to
grin. It was wonderful seeing Sherlock being put through his paces by a bunch
of... well, respectable-looking, middle-aged women. Lovely, in fact.
"Baby knows all about IP
addresses," said the heavyset one.
"Baby?" John asked.
The thin woman next to him stuck out
her hand. "Abebi Okiro. I work in IT. I think I routed some of those posts
over the whole damn world!"
"Terminating with a special
friend in Denmark," Sherlock added.
Abebi's eyes twinkled. "I have
more than one special friend, love."
"Yes, but this one had his or
her-her, I expect-own server, and was thereby able to generate a local and
completely unrelated IP address for your 'first-time poster'."
"The first time really was an
accident." Abebi glanced at their hostess. "Phoebe was so new to
posting, she wasn't sure how to do it, and I was busy that night, so I had...
my friend set her up."
"And then you came after
us!" cried the heavyset one, her dark eyes gleaming with excitement.
"Came after Lisa, anyway-that very night!" The group chuckled in
gleeful terror.
"It became a game," said
Abebi. "I wondered how long we could go on without being caught, if we
kept running Phoebe's posts out of Denmark."
"But I-" The group fell
silent, so Sherlock was forced to continue. "I traced a reasonable number
of hits back to each of your homes, including Ms. Gill's."
Abebi smirked. "That's because I
had her place comments to her entries under a different identity. You'd get
suspicious if, after hearing Lisa's story, you went back to check and the lady
who'd supposedly found the story had never accessed the Web page."
Sherlock looked impressed.
"That was very well done."
Abebi looked smug. "I wasn't
born yesterday."
The women exchanged satisfied smirks,
savoring their success. John had to hand it to them; it wasn't everyone who
could misdirect Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock looked thoughtful.
"Abebi Okiro. You're the one who signed for the bill at L'Autre Pied."
"I had to, love," she replied.
"I was the only one whose name you hadn't heard."
"Yes. Lisa Doyle had mentioned
the rest of you when I surprised her the other night. You were clever enough to
take down any pictures of yourselves from your Facebook pages, making ready
identification difficult-"
"Baby made us do that,"
said the redhead. "As soon as she heard you were on our trail."
"-but Ms. Gill didn't have
access to her professional posting, so that picture remained."
Phoebe Gill looked contrite.
"Academy rules; every instructor has to have a profile."
"Which was how Dr. Watson ran
you down at last," Sherlock continued-warming John again with the freedom
with which his assistance was acknowledged. "He searched on your name-and
the others-until he found a picture linking you to the group of women he'd
observed the other night. What disturbs me," Sherlock said, turning toward
the redhead, "was my failure to recognize you, Mrs. Wallace. You
were among the people I'd spoken to only days before."
"Yes, one of the
hundreds," she laughed. "Do you remember every face you've
seen?"
Sherlock narrowed his eyes.
"Normally, yes."
She looked abashed. "Well, this
is the reason." She tweaked her flaming locks. "Most people don't
remember my face at all; they remember this."
"It is rather vivid,"
John said.
"I'm used to it; I take it for
granted now that people won't recognize me without the hair. Even so, I did
myself up completely: gray-haired wig, change of skin tone through makeup, cosmetic
glasses, extra layers of clothing to hide my build..." She met Sherlock's
eye. "I suspected I'd have to go all out to fool you."
"And you did, to my disgrace."
"Love," said Abebi,
"There's no shame in it. We hardly recognized her ourselves. That's part
of what put us in such a hilarious mood that night."
"But this is my
profession," Sherlock persisted. "It is the first quality of a
criminal investigator to be able to see through a disguise."
"You can be sure," Mrs.
Wallace said strongly, "that I stayed well away from you so you wouldn't
notice my... alterations."
"But I did notice
them."
Sherlock's statement silenced the
group.
Mrs. Wallace looked uneasy.
"You noticed the wig?"
"Of course. Unfortunately, that
and the extra clothing led me into the mistake of supposing that you were
undergoing chemotherapy." He smiled weakly. "I do on occasion make
mistakes."
"There's always
something," John murmured, then gave Sherlock an encouraging smile. As
he'd hoped, the allusion restored some of his flatmate's punctured confidence.
Mrs. Wallace clapped a hand over her
heart. "Well, thank heavens I had no idea you were so close on my trail! This
is almost as bad as when you came to the door the other night, and hearing Lisa
telling you all about what had happened that day-our working on the story, our
names, everything."
Sherlock regarded her. "I
assume you were listening at the top of the stairs?"
The heavyset woman grimaced. "We
tried to be quiet."
"And you were. However, the
conversation between Lisa Doyle and myself could only have been overheard by
someone close at hand. As it would be too monstrous for Brenda Doyle to write
pornography that would implicate her own daughter-"
"Hey!" cried Phoebe at the
sink, assembling the cups for tea.
"-I conclude that she was in
fact watching telly in the other room. The noise from the program would have
drowned out our conversation. The only other location that would have been
close enough for eavesdropping was the top of the stairs. There was a
light on in one of the rooms up there. I speculated to Dr. Watson that someone
might have been listening."
"You got that right,"
chuckled Mrs. Wallace. "I'm so glad you didn't come up! It would have been
all over right then."
"Why do you suppose so?"
"Because we were all working on
the next story," the heavyset one giggled. "Although I was half
hoping you would come upstairs-just so I could see you myself, close-up."
Her companions whapped her playfully on the arm.
Sherlock studied the speaker's face
and figure critically. "By your coloring, you must be a Doyle. I assume
you're Mrs. Doyle's sister that Lisa mentioned."
"That's right. Betty Doyle. I'm
Brenda's younger sister."
"But you don't live
there."
"No, but I'm always in and out.
It depends on Walter's schedule. He works nights."
"So you were there the night I
came by to question Miss Doyle about the Internet entry. Unbeknownst to her,
you'd let Ms. Gill and Mrs. Wallace into the house earlier, surreptitiously."
Betty's eyes widened. "How did
you reckon that?"
"Miss Doyle-Lisa-was obviously
unaware of your presence, or she never would have told me her story in such
detail. Miss Doyle was clearly watching television with her mother when I
arrived. Lenny was at his flat. You were the only other family member in town who
would have felt enough at home to open the door."
"The truth was," said
Betty, "I wanted to leave Lisa out of it, after all that fuss we had with
Lenny that afternoon."
"You have a strange way of
'leaving her out of it', as your fictional character reflected the events in
her life so exactly."
"That's because she was so excited
about seeing you," said Mrs. Wallace. "We thought it might be fun for
her to... see herself in print, as it were."
"And it was, too- apart from
Lenny's contribution." Betty made a face.
"But the critique session that
afternoon had given me some ideas for another story," said Phoebe,
bringing over the tea tray. "I brought my rough draft that night to
Fiona's house-"
"And I suggested that we bring
it next door," said the redheaded Mrs. Wallace, "because Betty's
comments had been so helpful to Phoebe earlier."
"So there we were," Phoebe
said, "crouched round Lisa's little writing desk, with my pages spread all
over her university books, doing our best to write steamy twenty-something sex
and trying to keep the others from hearing us laughing-"
"Laughing?" inquired John.
Phoebe smirked. "You have to
admit, writing porn can be pretty funny."
"Especially the way you write
it," Sherlock said dryly.
"Now, now, don't be
unkind," Phoebe said good-naturedly. "It was only my second attempt,
after all. Milk or lemon?"
"I'm fine as I am,"
Sherlock said coldly.
"I take mine with lemon,"
John said hurriedly, keen to keep the conversation going.
The other ladies helped themselves,
while Phoebe served John. "Sherlock takes milk," he murmured, when Phoebe
handed him his cup. Smiling, Phoebe turned to serve her other guest, Sherlock
deigning not to notice either one of them.
"One thing I should like to
clear up," Sherlock said, pointedly ignoring the cup that Phoebe placed in
front of him. "Who was it who was watching me outside Miss Hooper's flat:
Mrs. Brenda Doyle, or her daughter Lisa?"
Betty Doyle gasped. "Lisa said
you never saw her! You never once looked in her direction!"
Sherlock smiled softly over having
his question answered. "That's true; I didn't see her, but Miss
Hooper did."
Betty grinned. "I'm surprised
she had time for looking round, based on what Lisa told us when we got back
home."
"Something about a mutual
tonsillectomy," Mrs. Wallace added, and they all tittered again.
"She's a very good
friend," John said hurriedly, before Sherlock could say something hideous.
"Yes, she appeared to be, from
what I saw at dinner," said Abebi dryly.
"I mean a friend,"
John continued. "She's actually a colleague of ours-of Sherlock's, I
mean."
"I wish I had colleagues like
that," Phoebe said dreamily.
"If you're just
colleagues," said Betty, "what's that giant shag tag doing on your
neck?"
"Just radiating 'keep away'
beams," said John. "Like an electric dog fence."
Betty frowned. "What?"
Sherlock added sardonically,
"Miss Hooper delighted in playing her role of girlfriend to the
hilt."
John quickly looked down, as
unwanted images of Molly up to her favorite "hilt" played through his
head.
"If Miss Doyle wasn't a
participant in your posts," Sherlock continued, "why was she staking
out Molly's flat?"
Betty gave a lopsided smile.
"Well, we'd corrupted her by then."
"I didn't feel I could publish
the second story without her permission," Phoebe explained, settling
herself in a chair. "We wanted to use the 'homeless' disguise, and feared that
would lead you right back to her."
Sherlock glared at her. "You
are aware of the meaning of 'fiction', are you not, Ms. Gill?"
She blushed. "Yes, but..."
"But your coming there in
disguise was better than anything we'd thought of," said Betty.
"Lisa didn't mind," said
Fiona Wallace. "Provided we could keep Lenny off her track."
"So we rang Abebi," said
Phoebe, "and she explained how we could hide our IP addresses, or route
them, or something..."
"And Lenny wouldn't know about
the homeless disguise anyway-"
"So we thought we were
safe."
"And then Dr. Watson announced
this date thing in his blog-"
"And we were all mad to
go," said Betty. "Lisa couldn't, of course, because you'd spot her in
an instant-"
"And Brenda stayed in with her,
to ease the blow," Fiona continued.
"But Lisa couldn't bear to be
left out entirely, so we rang her from the restaurant when your party was readying
to go-"
"And she raced ahead to your
friend's flat, so she could observe the two of you together."
"She wanted to write her own
story by then," Betty said proudly.
"That's what gave us the idea
for the challenge," said Abebi. "Lisa's story, which she based on
your date."
"She was already working on it
when we got back from the restaurant," said Fiona. "And we had all
these photographs. We thought, we should make this a challenge! Get a lot of
dinner date stories."
"And then Baby came up with
SEWISH-"
John noticed that she pronounced it
"Sue-wish", and made a mental note.
"And we picked one of the faces
from among our pictures to use in the banner-"
"Lisa put that together," relayed
Betty, the proud auntie. "She knows how to use Photoshop. It's something
she learned in one of her marketing classes."
Phoebe looked apologetic. "I
guess we were all a little drunk."
"Obviously," Sherlock said
coldly.
John spoke up. "About those
photographs-how did you get so many? I didn't notice your party moving about
the room."
"That was Freddie," said
Phoebe.
"The waiter at L'Autre Pied,"
said Sherlock, with a gleam of sudden recognition.
"Yes, well," Phoebe had
the grace to look embarrassed. "You'd have no way of knowing this, Mr.
Holmes, but he was a student of mine. After I saw Dr. Watson's post, I rang him
at L'Autre Pied, hoping he'd be able to squeeze us in somehow. His girlfriend
is a big RPF fan-we'd talked about it now and then-and he was keen to help us
when I hinted that some more RPF might come out of the evening. Apparently,
he'd had a very good morning due to my story-not that he realized it was mine,
of course-"
"He recruited one of the bus
boys to help," Fiona smirked. "We passed them two of our cameras, and
whenever they could take a shot with complete safety-"
"We emphasized complete,"
Betty said sternly. "One misstep, and you'd be onto us."
"-they took a snap. Most of
them were unusable, but Lisa filtered out the best ones-"
"And enhanced them through
Photoshop," John speculated.
"Yes," continued Fiona.
"It was quite a project. We were up half the night."
"How did you get the
sound?" John asked.
"Freddie had a voice-activated
recorder in his pocket," answered Sherlock.
Phoebe stared. "How did you
know?"
"Obvious. You were too far from
the table to capture the words yourself. The recordings varied in volume, so it
couldn't have been a planted bug. Freddie was present for each of the phrases
posted on your Web site." Sherlock shrugged. "Obvious."
"We intended just to use the
recording for inspiration." Betty's eyes darkened. "You know, you
really do rumble when you talk."
"Actually," Sherlock
growled, "I don't."
"Actually," said Fiona,
"you do. But it was only after we started putting the Web site together
that Lisa said we could post some of these phrases as sound clips to go with
the photos-"
John laughed, startling everyone.
"So it was Lisa who really solved the jewelry theft case."
"She didn't solve
it," Sherlock snapped.
The women were momentarily
speechless. "Lisa solved a case?" Betty whispered.
"She did not solve
it." Sherlock retorted, mostly to John.
"It's just that the words under
the pictures gave him an idea," John explained. "And that's
how he solved it."
The women's eyes gleamed; they were
practically panting with the magnitude of it. "Really?" Fiona
whispered. "We helped?"
John had to bite back a smile over
how their admiration softened Sherlock's mood. He responded arrogantly, "A
bit."
Abebi put a hand over her heart.
"I feel as if my whole life has meaning."
The others agreed emphatically. John
noticed Sherlock's ill temper dissipating in proportion to their appreciative
remarks.
"I'm glad you told us
that," Abebi continued, "because we had come to a sad decision."
Sherlock raised a brow. "I
wondered why you were all gathered together. Without writing materials before
you, that is."
Phoebe looked mournful. "It was
that last post on SEWISH. Have you seen it?"
John noticed Sherlock shaking his
head. He cleared his throat. "Once we solved the puzzle of the username,
we haven't been back."
"Then you missed it," said
Fiona. "There was a recent post, some girl who said she ran into you at Bart's-"
Sherlock smiled. "Ah. It's a
pleasure to know that Anna Christina Morrison can be relied upon."
"Is that her name?" said
Betty quickly. "We only know her by her handle: hot4cops."
Sherlock winced.
"We'd best warn Lestrade,"
John muttered.
"Anyway," Phoebe said sadly,
"she wrote about your meeting: how distressed you appeared to be, how the
case was interfering with your ability to do your work-"
"It was only ever supposed to
be a bit of fun," said Betty.
"-how, instead of being
flattered, you considered it defamation of character."
"We just couldn't see
continuing," said Fiona, "when it was apparent our little fantasy
works were having real-world implications."
"The last thing we
wanted," Abebi said strongly, "was to interfere with your ability to
solve cases. Real cases; things that matter in the real world."
"So," Phoebe concluded,
"I called a meeting of the board, as it were, and we decided to kill
SEWISH."
A short silence followed this
announcement, the women looking suitably grave.
John looked at Sherlock. "It
seems we needn't have bothered to come by at all."
Sherlock tried to hide his
satisfaction-failing miserably, in John's opinion. "I am delighted to
learn that legal action will not be required."
"It wasn't intended as
defamation," Phoebe said pleadingly. "It was meant as celebration."
"Celebration of what?"
"Of you."
Sherlock stared. "Oh."
Silence hung over the table a
moment.
John pushed back his chair.
"Well, I suppose it's time we got on with solving a few more crimes. Murders,
thefts, whatever." He gave Phoebe a warm smile. "Thank you for your
hospitality."
Phoebe stood. "It's little
enough, truly. Thank you for being such a good sport."
Sherlock rose with them, leaving his
tea untouched. He said commandingly, "I don't suppose you could have all
that material down within the next hour?"
"Even faster," Abebi
answered. "When you get home, you'll never even know it existed."
"Excellent."
"Then you can delete the whole
incident," John murmured to him.
Sherlock looked down his nose.
"Hardly."
Abebi sighed, drawing the men's
attention back to her. "You really do have a sexy rumble there,
love."
Sherlock narrowed his eyes. "I
do not rumble."
"He's been telling me that all
week," John said to the group in general. "It's best just to go
along; it keeps him in humor."
Sherlock looked startled. "Do you
think I rumble?"
John shrugged. "There's a
certain tigerish aspect to your speech at times."
Sherlock stared into space.
"Extraordinary."
The group tittered, but quietly.
John was pleased that he could restore some of their former gaiety. He hoped he
would be so lively when he was their age.
Phoebe moved to the door. "I'll
show you out."
The table trio waived. "Thanks
for stopping!" Betty called.
Fiona stage-whispered to her,
"Lisa will be so thrilled."
"I'll be thrilled when
this is over at last," Sherlock grumbled to John, following Phoebe down
the hall.
"If you're thrilled, I'm
thrilled," John answered noncommittally.
"As it should be."
Phoebe opened the door for them.
"Goodnight, Ms. Gill,"
Sherlock sang as he passed. "I'm certain you're a wonderful piano
instructor. Please avoid writing in the future."
"It wasn't that bad," John
said quietly, shaking her hand as he passed. "A little work on your verbs,
and toning down some of your adjectives, and I think you've got a real
future."
"John!" Sherlock called
sharply from the front walk.
"Goodnight!" John finished
hastily, and hurried after him.
Continued in Part 21