Fic: Plagues: G
Jun. 6th, 2017 10:17 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
okapi1895.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
holmes_minorRating: Gen
Length: 500
Summary: Mrs. Hudson describes events preceding her Egyptian holiday.
Author's Note: Based on Sherlock60 comm discussion. For the monthly prompt: travel.
“The Red Sea! How wondrous!” she sighed, then added, “And appropriate.”
“Excuse me, Madame, another postcard.”
“Oh, thank you.”
“Forgive me, but our guests usually send more postcards than they receive. Someone misses you terribly.”
By way of reply, she passed him the card.
“He is calling you back. A, how do you say, forlorn lover?”
“No, a contrite tenant.”
“Pardon?”
“He brought a plague on my house. No, not one. Ten.”
“C’est vrai?”
“The first was a shock. A singular herb of his found its way into my Ceylon black.”
“And?”
“When I poured, the tea was red as blood.”
“Mais non!”
“Then his curiosity shifted from botany to zoology, specifically the amphibious life cycle. Unbeknownst to me, the basin in his bedroom contained tadpoles, which, of course, became frogs and behaved in a most frog-like manner.”
“How unfortunate!”
“It was unfortunate. For the frogs had no tasted for lice, which arrived with the zebra-skin hearthrug which he received as a gift from a grateful client, and they had all been disposed of by the time the rooms were beset with flies, a result of a collection of severed human thumbs, which were left out, unpreserved, by open windows, on a day which was unseasonably clement.”
“Quelle horreur!”
“Of course, at that point, even Bessie would not stay. There wasn’t a girl in all of London who would agree to work. So, we, the gentleman in question, his fellow lodger, and I had to do for ourselves. And do you know the two of them managed to blacken, bend, chip and damage beyond repair every pot and pan?”
He shook his head.
“He offered to polish the silver, but afterwards I broke out in boils where I’d touched it! Thankfully, work took him out of the city, but he returned the same day. There was some question about weather conditions under which a crime had been committed.”
“And?”
“And despite common thinking, it is possible to create a hailstorm indoors.”
“Oh, Madame, please tell me such a fine lady as yourself did not suffer the sauterelles?”
“If that means ‘locusts’ I most certainly did. They woke when he pried open the lid of a crate of palimpsests. They swarmed. They feasted on the curtains.”
“Oh no!”
“Oh, yes. Then, we were in darkness for three days. During a vigorous bartitsu practice, he punched a hole in the wall with a single-stick and burst a pipe most critical to the entire street’s supply. None of the nearby shopkeepers would sell us any candles, so furious were they with the slow repairs. And finally, the oddest, yet somehow the most maddening of them all.”
“Yes?”
“The toast. The first piece was black. Always the first piece! Always black! Why?” She sighed. “And so, you see, I fled on extended holiday.”
“Quite right, Madame, and the fellow lodger?”
“You’ve met him, Doctor Watson.”
“Ah, the good doctor!”
“I wouldn’t recommend reading his postcards.”
“No, indeed, Madame. May I refresh your drink?”
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no subject
Date: 2017-06-07 04:25 am (UTC)Watson can beg and plead all he likes, but Mrs. Hudson's heart has been hardened.
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Date: 2017-06-07 12:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-06-07 10:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-06-07 12:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-06-07 10:16 pm (UTC)This is so wonderful. And my favourite part is still the toast ^__^
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Date: 2017-06-08 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-06-17 03:39 pm (UTC)And highly inventive.
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Date: 2017-06-17 10:07 pm (UTC)