Fic: Front Doors

[smallhobbit]

Title: Front Doors
Form/Word Count: 282
Characters/Pairing:  Dr Watson, Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Lestrade
Rating: G
Warning/Content: Holmes asked what appears to Lestrade and Watson to be a stupid question.

 

It was not entirely surprising that Inspector Lestrade gave Holmes a strange look, when he was asked what colour his front door was.

“It’s dark brown,” he said, with a frown.  “And bits of the paint are peeling off.”

“And do you know what colour our front door is?” Holmes continued.

“It’s black,” he replied.

“Correct.  And if you were telling a visitor how to find your house, or ours for that matter, what would you tell them to be sure they came to the right place.”

Lestrade looked surprised and said, “I’d tell them to look for number 55, or 221, depending on where they were going.”

“So, you wouldn’t, for example, say look for the house with the brown door with the paint peeling off?”

“Of course not.  They’re nearly all brown doors down our street, and I doubt the peeling paint would be distinctive.”

“Precisely.  In the same way, Mrs Hudson wouldn’t tell a tradesman to deliver to the house with the black door, because he would spend all day working his way up the street trying to find the right house.”

Lestrade nodded.  “So, what you’re asking is why did Parsons claim he was told to go to the house with the dark red door.”

“If there was only a name it might be easier to look for a distinctive coloured door,” I said.

“Indeed it would,” Holmes agreed.  “But the delivery was made in the evening, when it would have been hard to discern the door colour, and anyway, the houses in that street do have numbers.  No, I think Parsons is trying to put the Inspector off the scent, having made the delivery somewhere entirely different.”

 

 

Comments

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Ah ha! Clever deduction! The plot thickens!

[smallhobbit]

Thank you! Indeed!

[scfrankles]

It's a neat bit of deduction from Holmes ^__^

But you've also got me wondering now in exactly what circumstances in Victorian times would houses only have numbers and when would they only have names. I must do a bit of rummaging ^___^

[smallhobbit]

It was indeed!

In villages some still have names, and of course large houses have never had numbers, being far too important. There's the Old Vicarage, which is no longer the vicarage, which is naturally called something else ...

[debriswoman]

Clever:-)

[smallhobbit]

Thank you.