holmes_minor | Fic: Third Labour: Teen (Reply)

Title: Third Labour
Rating: Teen
Length: 500
Summary: On a dark and stormy night, Watson recalls a case.
Author's note: for the July prompt of ruby and the Watson's Woes July Writing Prompt #7 [And Now The Weather. Involve the climate in some way]. The plot and Colonel and Mrs. Bantry are lifted from "The Herb of Death" by Agatha Christie.

“A brandy for your thoughts, Watson,” said Holmes as he laid the snifter beside me.

Rain pounded upon the roof like bronze hooves, and wind howled in the chimney like a slain stag. The only light was the glow of the fire and the rare flash of lightning, like the glint of a golden antler, inevitably followed by a stampede of thunder.

“I was thinking of a night like tonight,” I said, looking over my shoulder.

Holmes’s head was tilted in contemplation.

“The weekend at Sir Robert Hind’s hunting lodge?” he posed.

“Yes. Our first case, well, excepting the Moran business, after you…”

Even after all these years, I still had difficulty with ‘after you came back from the dead.’

“…not a case, really,” said Holmes. “Just a puzzle.”

“Your brother knew. He suggested a country holiday and arranged for us to go.”

“True. He knew Colonel and Mrs. Bantry would be there, and suspected that you and the Colonel would hit it off and that over
whiskey and cigars, Colonel Bantry might tell the story of the death of Sir Robert’s ward, Ruby Keene.”

“Foxglove mixed in with the sage and served with dinner by a rather stupid cook. A whole party taken very ill, and the girl died. A simple tragedy, on the surface, but you knew, the very moment I repeated the story, that there was more to it.”

“I asked a few questions of the Colonel, then Mrs. Bantry, then Sir Robert himself. I was exceedingly careful with the last, for Sir Robert Hind had friends in very high places. He was a kind of pet of one of the most powerful women in the land.”

“He seemed such a distinguished old gentleman, charming, even.”

“He’d fallen in love with the girl, as charming old men are want to do. He’d put off her engagement to a young man as long as he could, but after a year, she was threatening to elope. Sir Robert couldn’t have that. He’d sown the foxglove with the sage himself, picked it himself, and sent her to the kitchen with it. He’d heart trouble and had digitalis on hand. The food poisoning was just a blind. He’d given the girl a fatal dose of digitalis in some other way, in a drink of some kind, and no one questioned it.”

“No one but you, Holmes, and when Sir Robert realised the game was up, he fled, leaping and bounding like a man half his years!”

“And we followed, through the night…”

“…the blinding rain, the cutting wind…oh, Holmes, you looked magnificent, like a hero of old…then, finally, we found him, crumpled, face twisted in agony…”

“Yes,” sighed Holmes. “It was the weak heart which felled the Hind.”

I laughed in spited of myself, then whispered softly,

“I remember the inn…”

“…and the brandy, and speaking of hinds,” whispered Holmes, drawing the blanket from me, “I’ve a Herculean club for yours.”

“Slay me,” I groaned and arched my back in invitation.