Fic: Bringing in the Sheaves: Gen
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holmes_minorTitle: Bringing in the Sheaves
Length: 500
Rating: Gen
Notes: For the January 2021 prompt: singing. I went to my pack of Edward Gorey cards (called The Helpless Doorknob) and shuffled them and picked out three. The three are below the fic.
“What shall we do with it, Watson?” asked Holmes when he had removed the figure, statue, ornament, I was not, and am still not, certain what to call it, from a nest of cotton wool.
“It is a genuine Adele Fortescue creation,” I observed as Holmes lifted the base to my eyes. “Signed and dated. I think it should have pride of place—for a while.”
“I agree.” He carried the piece of art to the mantelpiece and proceeded to make room for it among the domestic detritus and tokens from grateful clients. “She was acquitted as we foresaw.”
“Yes. I don’t know that prison would have been the right place for her.”
“Bedlam?”
“No.” I sighed. “I don’t know.”
“She first called attention to herself by becoming disoriented, theatrically so, at the funeral of her cousin Alaric Fortescue.”
“By singing.”
“’Bringing in the sheaves,’ a hymn of American origin. Another cousin, Andrew Fortescue, happened—”
“—or so he claims—”
“—to have stumbled across a horrid secret in her diary.”
“His motives and actions are highly suspect, Holmes.”
“No doubt, but he was the one who brought the case, before it was a case, to our attention. According to Adele Fortescue’s diary, Alaric had deliberately and maliciously thwarted Adele’s career as a sculptor out of jealousy. This assertion was later confirmed, with your assistance.”
“I found Miss Fortescue to be a charming creature, not quite of this world. I thought you were smitten with her, too.”
“No, I was merely studying her hands and fingernails for signs that she had recently worked with that curious clay which had been used to make the mysterious urn which appeared in the grounds.”
I shivered. “The urn which contained poor Alaric. She trapped him inside and walled him up—alive.”
“You don’t believe her solicitor’s claim that she was under the thumb of her lover, who also happened to be a funeral director and was thus able to supply her a ready corpse for the funeral?”
“No. Andrew heard her singing and dancing round the urn in the middle of the night, and when I asked her about her art and how she worked she said, ‘Oh, Doctor, I do the opposite of those clever Indians, the one who make the elephants, they say they look at a pillar of stone and simply chip away all that is not elephant. I, on the other hand, take an elephant or, say, a snake, and keep adding and adding until it’s a pillar of stone!’ I think she had poor Alaric’s urn in mind.”
“Quite possibly.” Holmes looked upon the figure, which might have been an idol or an urn. “But I’m glad that she’s returned to her art.”
“And bears no grudge.”
Holmes huffed. “Not the type.”
“Holmes, do you think there could be anything inside that?”
“Too small for a whole body, but a piece of one? Perhaps.”
“Art in the blood, Holmes?”
“And the reverse, sometimes, my dear Watson.”
Length: 500
Rating: Gen
Notes: For the January 2021 prompt: singing. I went to my pack of Edward Gorey cards (called The Helpless Doorknob) and shuffled them and picked out three. The three are below the fic.
“What shall we do with it, Watson?” asked Holmes when he had removed the figure, statue, ornament, I was not, and am still not, certain what to call it, from a nest of cotton wool.
“It is a genuine Adele Fortescue creation,” I observed as Holmes lifted the base to my eyes. “Signed and dated. I think it should have pride of place—for a while.”
“I agree.” He carried the piece of art to the mantelpiece and proceeded to make room for it among the domestic detritus and tokens from grateful clients. “She was acquitted as we foresaw.”
“Yes. I don’t know that prison would have been the right place for her.”
“Bedlam?”
“No.” I sighed. “I don’t know.”
“She first called attention to herself by becoming disoriented, theatrically so, at the funeral of her cousin Alaric Fortescue.”
“By singing.”
“’Bringing in the sheaves,’ a hymn of American origin. Another cousin, Andrew Fortescue, happened—”
“—or so he claims—”
“—to have stumbled across a horrid secret in her diary.”
“His motives and actions are highly suspect, Holmes.”
“No doubt, but he was the one who brought the case, before it was a case, to our attention. According to Adele Fortescue’s diary, Alaric had deliberately and maliciously thwarted Adele’s career as a sculptor out of jealousy. This assertion was later confirmed, with your assistance.”
“I found Miss Fortescue to be a charming creature, not quite of this world. I thought you were smitten with her, too.”
“No, I was merely studying her hands and fingernails for signs that she had recently worked with that curious clay which had been used to make the mysterious urn which appeared in the grounds.”
I shivered. “The urn which contained poor Alaric. She trapped him inside and walled him up—alive.”
“You don’t believe her solicitor’s claim that she was under the thumb of her lover, who also happened to be a funeral director and was thus able to supply her a ready corpse for the funeral?”
“No. Andrew heard her singing and dancing round the urn in the middle of the night, and when I asked her about her art and how she worked she said, ‘Oh, Doctor, I do the opposite of those clever Indians, the one who make the elephants, they say they look at a pillar of stone and simply chip away all that is not elephant. I, on the other hand, take an elephant or, say, a snake, and keep adding and adding until it’s a pillar of stone!’ I think she had poor Alaric’s urn in mind.”
“Quite possibly.” Holmes looked upon the figure, which might have been an idol or an urn. “But I’m glad that she’s returned to her art.”
“And bears no grudge.”
Holmes huffed. “Not the type.”
“Holmes, do you think there could be anything inside that?”
“Too small for a whole body, but a piece of one? Perhaps.”
“Art in the blood, Holmes?”
“And the reverse, sometimes, my dear Watson.”
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Date: 2021-01-21 04:47 pm (UTC)You put the three pictures so elegantly together - it's all so delightfully gruesome ^___^
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