Lestrade’s eyebrows popped upward. “Is there a reason you can’t ask him yourself, Sherlock?” he called as they moved toward the courtyard.
“He’s not speaking to me, Lestrade,” John sighed, edging around a puddle of mud.
“What is he, twelve?” Sally asked, shooting the amateur a disgusted look.
“In certain areas, I wonder,” the physician grumbled, moving past an extremely severe and glaring Sherlock to kneel by the body, all without even looking up. “Sherlock, what exactly am I supposed to be looking for?” A few beats of silence, and the man looked up in exasperation. “Cromwell, would you ask Mr. Holmes what exactly I am supposed to be looking for, before I decide to apply the nearest pointed object to hand with considerable force to sensitive portions of Mr. Holmes’s anatomy?”
“Cromw…oh, you did not,” Sally exclaimed, shaking her head before planting it in one hand.
“It is a perfectly good and historically significant name,” Sherlock stated loftily, hefting the skull in his left hand and looking into its eye-sockets. “Cromwell, you may inform Dr. Watson that he should be searching for signs of poison, most likely a chemical poisoning, but coupled with one or two odd symptoms which do not usually show in such poisonings.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Sally heard Lestrade murmur beside her.
“Odd symptoms meaning what, exactly? Oh for heaven’s sake…Cromwell, ask Mr. Holmes what odd symptoms, exactly? This is utterly insane.” This last in an undertone, accompanied by a despondent I-am-a-nutter-for-putting-up-with-this shake of the head.
“Cromwell, you may inform Dr. Watson that he is not required to ask questions or draw his own conclusions, merely to observe and corroborate the hypotheses which I am already aware are correct.”
“Cromwell, tell Mr. Holmes if he does not back off he is going to become very unpleasantly acquainted with that bog of mud near the trees, and I will not be fetching that infernally melodramatic coat to the cleaner’s for him afterwards.”
To his credit, Sherlock was wise enough to take a step back from where he was practically standing on top of the doctor. Sally stifled a laugh.
Lestrade had chosen the wise man’s approach to dealing with Sherlock Holmes; close your eyes, hum loudly, and pretend that you’re talking to a semi-sane individual until something becomes so glaringly obvious that you have to remove yourself from the scene for your own safety, or else have him committed. “Now look, Sherlock, if you already know who did it then just tell us, spare us all the theatrics! This isn’t the only case we’ve got to wrap up before the weekend, you know.”
“Oh, please. As if that petty hit-and-run is going to take you more than one hour to finish. Even an idiot could find the driver - and that includes Anderson.”
“Oy! I’m not the one walking around a crime scene talking to a bloody human skull!”
“Cromwell, be a good chap and tell Anderson to go play in the street, preferably in front of a refrigerated lorry?”
“Sherlock,” Lestrade growled. “Listen, it’s been raining all morning, and my people are tired. Just tell us what you know, and let us all go home, eh?”
“Glyphosate poisoning,” John suddenly said, popping back up from the corpse and removing his gloves. “That’s my guess. Advanced cyanosis, evidence of loss of bodily function, eventual death by asphyxiation and abdominal hemorrhage. The irritation of the throat is rare, but not if the poison’s ingested through the mouth?”
“Glyphosate?” Sally asked blankly.
“Common ingredient in weed-killing sprays,” John replied, gesturing to the soggy but well-manicured garden.
“Obviously,” Sherlock sniffed. “Any of the household staff had access to the garden shed during the last week, but only one of their footprints along that walkway holds traces of the weed-killer, evidenced in the dying vegetation ground into the print. Find the man whose boots made that print, and you have your killer. Provided he is also over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, right-handed, and more fond of roses than any other flower in this garden.”
“How do you figure that one?” John asked curiously. “Because the rose beds have been better weeded than the rest of the flowers?”
“Cromwell, inform Dr. Watson if he wishes to make wild conjectures of his own, that I am under no obligation to confirm them.”
“Oh good Lord,” Lestrade muttered, as he typed furiously into his phone. “Donovan, get back to the squad and have them pull up the profiles of the gardening staff, get me impressions of their work boots.”
“Right.” She looked at the two amateurs, who were now bickering loudly over the skull’s head…wait, that was redundant, a bit. Whatever. “Do you think -“
“Cromwell, would you inform Mr. Holmes that he needs to cease behaving like the emotionally-stunted infant he is sociologically?”
“Cromwell, please tell the resident doctor that he is jolly well not my doctor, and he may take his medical opinions and -“
“Just escape while you still can, Sergeant,” Lestrade said, waving her off. She watched as he turned around, hands on hips. “You girls and your bickering, out, now - and take that thing with you!”
FILL: 3b/3 (darn comment limits)
anonymous
October 17 2011, 02:49:20 UTC
Two sets of eyes (plus one set of empty sockets) turned indignantly towards them. Sherlock then held up the macabre relic with a look of deep affront. “I do believe we have been insulted, Cromwell.” Lestrade snorted, and moved toward the courtyard entry with Sally. Behind them, Sherlock was still at it. “Perhaps if you ask nicely, Cromwell, Dr. Watson will avenge your damaged ego.”
“Cromwell, you may tell Mr. Holmes that I will damage more than his ego if he comes anywhere near my face with you again. Keep your mandibles to yourself.”
“Unbelievable,” Lestrade muttered as they slogged through the mud back to the car.
“They’re still at it,” she returned, trying not to laugh.
“Cromwell, would you be so kind as to ask Dr. Watson if an offer of a complex-carbohydrate-loaded breakfast at that patisserie we passed would put him in a better mood?”
“Are you planning on footing the bill, Cromwell?”
“Chequeing account is a bit skeletal at the moment, I’m afraid. Will this ‘emotionally stunted infant’s debit card do in a pinch?”
“Nicely, thank you.”
“Excellent. Here, hold him, would you, whilst I make sure Lestrade has the descriptions correct.”
“Mm, right, I - half a moment, Sherlock! I am not going to stand here on the street corner holding my predecessor!”
“O-kayyy, really did not need to hear that?” Sally muttered, eyeing the ex-soldier with the wariness she reserved to mentally unstable suspects. To her left, Lestrade was doing his level best to shut Sherlock up and was succeeding miserably, judging from Anderson’s smirking over the hood of the police car at them.
“Skulls are so last year, you know,” John was informing the relic with apparent seriousness. “You’ve lost Sherlock completely; apparently I’m more useful and less conspicuous than you ever were.”
The skull only grinned toothily back at him.
“I mean, you may listen better, but I’ll wager you make a rubbish cup of tea.”
Sherlock materialized from out of nowhere in a cloud of black and blue. He appropriated his macabre friend and perched the skull jauntily on one hand, like a sort of ghoulish ventriloquist’s dummy, and then turned toward his companion. “Ready?” he asked, threading his free hand through John’s sleeve and then more yanking than guiding the shorter man along the pavement. “The owner of the café, Madame Lucas, owes me a favor for clearing her name when Mycroft’s people convicted her husband of marketing State documents from a Parliamentary leader’s wife…”
“I have never seen a more dysfunctionally functional relationship in my life,” Lestrade observed, his tone one of awe.
“Tell me you didn’t mean that they’re a threesome.”
“Annnnnd thank you, Sally, for accomplishing what a half-rotted corpse hadn’t yet this morning - putting me off my breakfast,” Anderson moaned from inside the car.
Re: FILL: 3b/3 (darn comment limits)
anonymous
October 17 2011, 03:08:33 UTC
Ah ha ha. This made my night. Poor Cromwell, stuck in the middle of two blabbering lunatics! It's probably a good thing he's dead. I loved John's conversation with the skull at the end -- it's totally something I can see him doing in the show, for some odd reason.
Re: FILL: 3b/3 (darn comment limits)
anonymous
October 17 2011, 10:32:52 UTC
Brilliant! :D I cackled madly when I realised the go-between they were talking through was the skull (and believe me that's hard to do with a mouth full of hot porridge!) and I loved the way they also made up through the skull at the end. And oh dear me, the various police reactions were hilarious too!
I was going to say that when I was sitting in Plant Microbiology lectures my professor took great glee in telling us that the only way glyphosate could kill you was if you drowned in it - and then I looked it up, and it seems there's been a lot more toxicity research since then, and not only is glyphosate not as neutral to humans as previously thought, but when combined with the surfactant that Roundup uses, it can indeed kill people with symptoms similar to those you described. Huh, you learn something new every day!
Oh, that was brilliant and hilarious! I loved the name you found for Cromwell and the bickering felt perfectly IC - up to the reconciling pastry. Kudos for Lestrade's awe-filled punchline and many, many thanks for that hilarious fill!
Did your Sherlock by any chance attend Sidney Sussex college in Cambridge? (Oliver Cromwell's skull is buried there somewhere) because I am now picturing that Sherlock found it and that the skull is actually Oliver Cromwell.
Re: FILL: 3b/3 (darn comment limits)keerawaApril 24 2012, 09:18:27 UTC
Oh. My. God. That was a adorable and hilarious! I can so picture it ahppening! The gradual decrease of the skull's intercession with the offer of breakfast, and the John roundly insulting the skull by telling him that he's out of date and probably makes a rubbish cup of tea. *falls over laughing*
“He’s not speaking to me, Lestrade,” John sighed, edging around a puddle of mud.
“What is he, twelve?” Sally asked, shooting the amateur a disgusted look.
“In certain areas, I wonder,” the physician grumbled, moving past an extremely severe and glaring Sherlock to kneel by the body, all without even looking up. “Sherlock, what exactly am I supposed to be looking for?” A few beats of silence, and the man looked up in exasperation. “Cromwell, would you ask Mr. Holmes what exactly I am supposed to be looking for, before I decide to apply the nearest pointed object to hand with considerable force to sensitive portions of Mr. Holmes’s anatomy?”
“Cromw…oh, you did not,” Sally exclaimed, shaking her head before planting it in one hand.
“It is a perfectly good and historically significant name,” Sherlock stated loftily, hefting the skull in his left hand and looking into its eye-sockets. “Cromwell, you may inform Dr. Watson that he should be searching for signs of poison, most likely a chemical poisoning, but coupled with one or two odd symptoms which do not usually show in such poisonings.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Sally heard Lestrade murmur beside her.
“Odd symptoms meaning what, exactly? Oh for heaven’s sake…Cromwell, ask Mr. Holmes what odd symptoms, exactly? This is utterly insane.” This last in an undertone, accompanied by a despondent I-am-a-nutter-for-putting-up-with-this shake of the head.
“Cromwell, you may inform Dr. Watson that he is not required to ask questions or draw his own conclusions, merely to observe and corroborate the hypotheses which I am already aware are correct.”
“Cromwell, tell Mr. Holmes if he does not back off he is going to become very unpleasantly acquainted with that bog of mud near the trees, and I will not be fetching that infernally melodramatic coat to the cleaner’s for him afterwards.”
To his credit, Sherlock was wise enough to take a step back from where he was practically standing on top of the doctor. Sally stifled a laugh.
Lestrade had chosen the wise man’s approach to dealing with Sherlock Holmes; close your eyes, hum loudly, and pretend that you’re talking to a semi-sane individual until something becomes so glaringly obvious that you have to remove yourself from the scene for your own safety, or else have him committed. “Now look, Sherlock, if you already know who did it then just tell us, spare us all the theatrics! This isn’t the only case we’ve got to wrap up before the weekend, you know.”
“Oh, please. As if that petty hit-and-run is going to take you more than one hour to finish. Even an idiot could find the driver - and that includes Anderson.”
“Oy! I’m not the one walking around a crime scene talking to a bloody human skull!”
“Cromwell, be a good chap and tell Anderson to go play in the street, preferably in front of a refrigerated lorry?”
Reply
“Glyphosate poisoning,” John suddenly said, popping back up from the corpse and removing his gloves. “That’s my guess. Advanced cyanosis, evidence of loss of bodily function, eventual death by asphyxiation and abdominal hemorrhage. The irritation of the throat is rare, but not if the poison’s ingested through the mouth?”
“Glyphosate?” Sally asked blankly.
“Common ingredient in weed-killing sprays,” John replied, gesturing to the soggy but well-manicured garden.
“Obviously,” Sherlock sniffed. “Any of the household staff had access to the garden shed during the last week, but only one of their footprints along that walkway holds traces of the weed-killer, evidenced in the dying vegetation ground into the print. Find the man whose boots made that print, and you have your killer. Provided he is also over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, right-handed, and more fond of roses than any other flower in this garden.”
“How do you figure that one?” John asked curiously. “Because the rose beds have been better weeded than the rest of the flowers?”
“Cromwell, inform Dr. Watson if he wishes to make wild conjectures of his own, that I am under no obligation to confirm them.”
“Oh good Lord,” Lestrade muttered, as he typed furiously into his phone. “Donovan, get back to the squad and have them pull up the profiles of the gardening staff, get me impressions of their work boots.”
“Right.” She looked at the two amateurs, who were now bickering loudly over the skull’s head…wait, that was redundant, a bit. Whatever. “Do you think -“
“Cromwell, would you inform Mr. Holmes that he needs to cease behaving like the emotionally-stunted infant he is sociologically?”
“Cromwell, please tell the resident doctor that he is jolly well not my doctor, and he may take his medical opinions and -“
“Just escape while you still can, Sergeant,” Lestrade said, waving her off. She watched as he turned around, hands on hips. “You girls and your bickering, out, now - and take that thing with you!”
Reply
“Cromwell, you may tell Mr. Holmes that I will damage more than his ego if he comes anywhere near my face with you again. Keep your mandibles to yourself.”
“Unbelievable,” Lestrade muttered as they slogged through the mud back to the car.
“They’re still at it,” she returned, trying not to laugh.
“Cromwell, would you be so kind as to ask Dr. Watson if an offer of a complex-carbohydrate-loaded breakfast at that patisserie we passed would put him in a better mood?”
“Are you planning on footing the bill, Cromwell?”
“Chequeing account is a bit skeletal at the moment, I’m afraid. Will this ‘emotionally stunted infant’s debit card do in a pinch?”
“Nicely, thank you.”
“Excellent. Here, hold him, would you, whilst I make sure Lestrade has the descriptions correct.”
“Mm, right, I - half a moment, Sherlock! I am not going to stand here on the street corner holding my predecessor!”
“O-kayyy, really did not need to hear that?” Sally muttered, eyeing the ex-soldier with the wariness she reserved to mentally unstable suspects. To her left, Lestrade was doing his level best to shut Sherlock up and was succeeding miserably, judging from Anderson’s smirking over the hood of the police car at them.
“Skulls are so last year, you know,” John was informing the relic with apparent seriousness. “You’ve lost Sherlock completely; apparently I’m more useful and less conspicuous than you ever were.”
The skull only grinned toothily back at him.
“I mean, you may listen better, but I’ll wager you make a rubbish cup of tea.”
Sherlock materialized from out of nowhere in a cloud of black and blue. He appropriated his macabre friend and perched the skull jauntily on one hand, like a sort of ghoulish ventriloquist’s dummy, and then turned toward his companion. “Ready?” he asked, threading his free hand through John’s sleeve and then more yanking than guiding the shorter man along the pavement. “The owner of the café, Madame Lucas, owes me a favor for clearing her name when Mycroft’s people convicted her husband of marketing State documents from a Parliamentary leader’s wife…”
“I have never seen a more dysfunctionally functional relationship in my life,” Lestrade observed, his tone one of awe.
“Tell me you didn’t mean that they’re a threesome.”
“Annnnnd thank you, Sally, for accomplishing what a half-rotted corpse hadn’t yet this morning - putting me off my breakfast,” Anderson moaned from inside the car.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
I was going to say that when I was sitting in Plant Microbiology lectures my professor took great glee in telling us that the only way glyphosate could kill you was if you drowned in it - and then I looked it up, and it seems there's been a lot more toxicity research since then, and not only is glyphosate not as neutral to humans as previously thought, but when combined with the surfactant that Roundup uses, it can indeed kill people with symptoms similar to those you described. Huh, you learn something new every day!
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
And the name~!
I couldn't stop laughing all the way through the fic
Reply
Leave a comment