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holmes_minorTitle: Which Broom
Author: gardnerhill
Fandom: ACD
Pairing: None
Word Count: 500
Rating: G
Warning: Period terms and attitudes for developmentally disabled / autistic people.
Summary: A warning or a riddle?
Author's Notes: Written for the October 2022 Holmes Minor monthly prompt “broom.”
Story in Dreamwidth
Story in AO3
Beware the crone who carries death in her broom!
Lestrade shook his head as Holmes paid the servant girl and Watson finished jotting down his notes. When Lizzie had dashed back to her duties in Cromwell Hall for the grand banquet that night, he vented. “Ghouls and goblins. Things that go bump in the night. She’s off her head with drink or worse, and believes her granny’s fairy tales.”
Watson frowned. “She was repeating what she’d been told by Natty the kitchen boy.”
“By all accounts the lad is simple.” Holmes pressed a finger to his lips. “I’ve run into this type of simpleness before; it is no mere mindlessness, Inspector, for those affected cannot tell lies and repeat verbatim what they themselves have heard. There are a good number of extra servants in the kitchen right now. Natty clearly heard something worth repeating.”
“If we’re to prevent a tragedy at the banquet we need to do more than look for a gingerbread house, Mr. Holmes.”
“A broom, Lestrade, not a gingerbread house.” Watson smiled a little despite the gravity of the approaching deadline.
“Do we question every maid that sweeps the place, then?”
“Sweeping is a chore relegated to the younger girls in the staff. Any maid old enough to be described as a crone would stand out by doing that work or holding a broom.” Watson looked at what he’d written and then out the window of their inn to the grand house just out of sight. “I’m sure a weapon could be concealed in a broom handle but–“
“Gingerbread!” Sherlock Holmes shouted, startling the other two men. “My god, that boy has saved the family! Watson, Lestrade, we must reach Cromwell before the first course is served! Innkeeper, we need the local police!”
The county law would have shrunk at calling on the great house on their own, but under the aegis of the London specialists and Scotland Yard itself they made their way into the kitchen heedless of the cries and shouts of the staff. Once there Sherlock Holmes singled out fifty-nine-year-old Mrs. Pembroke on loan from another house who’d been put in charge of making the sweets. None had yet eaten the sorghum pudding she’d made, laced with enough arsenic to send her to prison for the rest of her life.
The sleuth elucidated for his companions once back in Baker Street. “Rose Pembroke’s son Jack was killed in a fox-hunting accident while attending Sir Martin Cromwell two years ago, and she became obsessed with the idea of wreaking vengeance on the whole household. And all would have suffered, not merely the Cromwells; the servants would have had their own share of the pudding. Few would have survived.”
Lestrade shuddered at the close call. “But Mr. Holmes, what in blazes does a broom have to do with gingerbread?”
“Your comment made my mind stray. What is a component of gingerbread? Sorghum molasses. What is another name for the sorghum plant?”
Watson answered. “Broom corn.”
Author: gardnerhill
Fandom: ACD
Pairing: None
Word Count: 500
Rating: G
Warning: Period terms and attitudes for developmentally disabled / autistic people.
Summary: A warning or a riddle?
Author's Notes: Written for the October 2022 Holmes Minor monthly prompt “broom.”
Story in Dreamwidth
Story in AO3
Beware the crone who carries death in her broom!
Lestrade shook his head as Holmes paid the servant girl and Watson finished jotting down his notes. When Lizzie had dashed back to her duties in Cromwell Hall for the grand banquet that night, he vented. “Ghouls and goblins. Things that go bump in the night. She’s off her head with drink or worse, and believes her granny’s fairy tales.”
Watson frowned. “She was repeating what she’d been told by Natty the kitchen boy.”
“By all accounts the lad is simple.” Holmes pressed a finger to his lips. “I’ve run into this type of simpleness before; it is no mere mindlessness, Inspector, for those affected cannot tell lies and repeat verbatim what they themselves have heard. There are a good number of extra servants in the kitchen right now. Natty clearly heard something worth repeating.”
“If we’re to prevent a tragedy at the banquet we need to do more than look for a gingerbread house, Mr. Holmes.”
“A broom, Lestrade, not a gingerbread house.” Watson smiled a little despite the gravity of the approaching deadline.
“Do we question every maid that sweeps the place, then?”
“Sweeping is a chore relegated to the younger girls in the staff. Any maid old enough to be described as a crone would stand out by doing that work or holding a broom.” Watson looked at what he’d written and then out the window of their inn to the grand house just out of sight. “I’m sure a weapon could be concealed in a broom handle but–“
“Gingerbread!” Sherlock Holmes shouted, startling the other two men. “My god, that boy has saved the family! Watson, Lestrade, we must reach Cromwell before the first course is served! Innkeeper, we need the local police!”
The county law would have shrunk at calling on the great house on their own, but under the aegis of the London specialists and Scotland Yard itself they made their way into the kitchen heedless of the cries and shouts of the staff. Once there Sherlock Holmes singled out fifty-nine-year-old Mrs. Pembroke on loan from another house who’d been put in charge of making the sweets. None had yet eaten the sorghum pudding she’d made, laced with enough arsenic to send her to prison for the rest of her life.
The sleuth elucidated for his companions once back in Baker Street. “Rose Pembroke’s son Jack was killed in a fox-hunting accident while attending Sir Martin Cromwell two years ago, and she became obsessed with the idea of wreaking vengeance on the whole household. And all would have suffered, not merely the Cromwells; the servants would have had their own share of the pudding. Few would have survived.”
Lestrade shuddered at the close call. “But Mr. Holmes, what in blazes does a broom have to do with gingerbread?”
“Your comment made my mind stray. What is a component of gingerbread? Sorghum molasses. What is another name for the sorghum plant?”
Watson answered. “Broom corn.”
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