Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of The Glorious Finance

 I'm in a bit of a Doctor Who story block. For the moment, I thought it would be amusing to throw my hand at a Sherlock Holmes crackfic. This may be a one-time thing. I'm not dedicated to any particular cast of my Holmes and Watson either. I don't know, I wanted to make a cover and picked the laziest option.

The Adventure of The Glorious Finance

In the good year of 1896, Mr. Sherlock Holmes and I had been living at 221B Baker street for quite some time. Indeed, we had solved an indeterminable number of cases and received a good deal of money in the bargain. It was late in this year that I approached Holmes with a good deal of this money - and beyond the fairly meager amount owed to Mrs. Hudson, we were financially speaking, quite beyond our usual comforts. It had been a busy year. During it we dealt with the matter of the Veiled Lodger (of which I have already chronicled) and the adventure of the slightly larger than average Mouse of the D'Urbervilles. (For which the world will never be ready.) 

When I came to Holmes, he was on the cocaine. "Fucking pufferfish, Watson." Holmes insisted. "I have solved Mrs. Gambrelli's matter with the Elongated Widow, my dear Watson, and it's fucking pufferfish. They're everywhere watson. They might be in your ears."

"Perhaps this isn't the time," I began, knowing quite well when Holmes could get into one of these states. After all, the man, albeit brilliant, had a success greatly dependent on his own mental state at the time. "No, no, sit down," Holmes gestured restlessly towards the chair. "I need activity," he said with some amount of exuberance. "I need to utilize this brain of mine or it will go on the rot. What do you have for me?"

"A trivial matter," I responded, still unsure. "But we have a good deal of financial freedom at the moment, Holmes, thanks to our recent success, and I was wondering how best we could begin to use it."

"No." Holmes responded quietly.

My jaw moved back and forth of it's own accord, confused as to my partner's response. "Whatever do you mean?"

"No, we do not have money, Watson." He stated. "We are, as a matter of fact, thousands of pounds in debt."

My jaw continued on it's journey around the lower half of my face. "...I'm sorry?" 

"Drugs are expensive." Holmes stated, somewhat erratically. 

"Oh, Holmes," I began, deeply disappointed. "These habits of yours are not only unhealthy - but they are beginning to take notice of the public. There are caricatures of you, you know. The crackpot detective!"

Holmes eyes flared, as if to signal he was well aware of these illustrations. "Indeed. They border on the cliche." He said quietly. 

"Ah. Well," I said, rising from my seat. "Perhaps a Journey to the Financial District. If we only but reorganize our savings, I'm quite sure-"

With this, the Baker street door swung open. A disheveled gentlemen with a shiv stepped in, shrieking. "Where's my fuckin money, bitch! Where's the goddamn money?" 

Holmes continued to sit in his chair - not even an eyebrow raised in response as the man began to flip over tables and gyrate psychotically across the room, systematically disassembling anything in his path, like some kind of Cockney tornado. 

"My god, Sherlock!" I exclaimed. "Dear lord, who is this man?"

Sherlock suddenly jumped up as if what had just happened had only just registered. "Watson!" He exclaimed, shaking me by the shoulders. "It's the fucking mob, they want the fucking money, run!"

"I'll break your legs!" Shrieked the man as we turned heel and were chased out of the room. 

* * *

Mrs. Hudson entered the room, startled, and moved towards the center of the room. Once there, she sat down and sipped some tea out of a half broken cup. "Dear me." She whispered. "Me Begonias."

To this day, scientists still do not know why. 

* * *

"Holmes!" I called, rushing over to him, as he, proceeding to shriek madly, climbed haphazardly out of the bathroom window like an deranged marmoset. I scrambled after him, as the anachronistically memetic man shrieking behind us flipped over yet another table and slammed into a cabinet - this setting off an elaborate catapult system that my flatmate had devised in one of his drug-infused midnight ramblings. A pile of socks and other assorted shrapnel ejected towards the man, and he was stunned. I deftly followed Holmes out of the building, losing a good deal of my dignity in the process.

I tripped and scudded across the street to find Holmes once more, rushing with astonishing speed of which I had not seen him move before or since. Indeed, with my leg, I did struggle to keep up. Behind me, the angry man, yelling aggressive expletives, clambered out of the Bathroom window himself.

I called after him, but to no avail - he was already turned down the street and onto the Docks - a foolish maneuver, I thought, especially since most of London’s criminal element lay there in some way or another.  But following after him, and rounding the corner, Holmes grabbed me and pulled me to the side behind a building. “Quiet, Watson!” He hissed. 

With a tense moment, the enforcer rushed past, unsuspecting that we would take a path down to the docks. 

“I say, clever, Holmes!” I commented. 

Holmes thought to himself for a moment. “Oh, damn, Watson!” He exclaimed. “It appears I have gravely miscalculated.” 

“About what?” I asked, confused, as our getaway had been remarkably efficient for our standards. 

“The matter of the Elongated Widow.” He said, urgently. “I’m afraid I was misled. Exciting, Watson. Rarely have we faced such an intense adversary. Oh, the villain tricked me, but not for long. We must make haste to the Gambrelli residence.”

Energized he was - for we now had a mystery to solve. But I was not sure how any of this was perhaps relevant, as we rounded the corner once more, and hailed a cab.

* * *

Upon turning down the street on Barnsville Crescent, we found ourselves off to the outskirts of London, to the Palatial Residence of Madame Gambrelli. A famous tutor, she had forged many a professional dancer in her days, and none of them were more successful than the self-proclaimed "Widow," Lucille Marlow. The title was that of an honorarium - losing a potential husband in relative youth, she had abandoned all considerations of relationships whatsoever. And although this was a long time ago, she had never truly lost the title - her icily proficient demeanor on the stage was her only true focus. 

Indeed, Lucille Marlow was one of the most formidable dancers of the modern era, and it was until recently, believed that she would be as such forever - until the famed Widow was stretched to death on stage by an elaborate machine. 

We rode up to the Mansion Gambrelli, and Holmes deftly stepped out of the cab, applying the famous deerstalker to his skull as he strolled inside. 

Cautiously, I followed. Holmes had obviously been in a state all morning, what on earth was he on about? 

Holmes turned to me as we made our way up the extended steps to the household. "I had been looking at this case from an entirely wrong direction, Watson. I was considering it as a earthly matter, but in fact, it is all the more a case with concerns for the Celestial." 

"For fucks sake, what does that mean?" 

"In good time, Watson. First we must greet the famed Madame Gambrelli." 

We had reached the top of the steps when theatrically, Madame Gambrelli burst out of the door in tears. "OH, MY DEAAARRRR DETECTIVES, OOOOOHHHHHH," She Moaned Operatically. 

"Greetings, Madame." I said, bowing honorably. 

"Why thank you, my dear Doctor." Madame Gambrelli said. "Oh, my girls have been ever so distraught since poor Lucille's death. Are you any closer to a solution?"

"It was aliens." said Holmes. "I'd like my money now please." 

* * * 

Holmes and I left the estate, me utterly perplexed and him flicking through pound notes, counting his money like an Edwardian Scrooge McDuck. 

"Holmes, what the fuck?" I asked. "That poor woman had-"

"Quiet, Watson. We now have money. Enough to pay our debts, at the very least. Madame Gambrelli was a very rich woman." 

"This is literally the worst thing you have ever done."

"Yep," said Holmes without a note of displeasure. 

"I understand we do need the money, I mean, the mob, but couldn't you have actually told the poor woman the truth?"

Holmes considered. "It's not my fault she doesn't know the truth."

I glared at him confused and slightly irate. "The fuck is the truth? Besides, you don't know anything about aliens, Holmes! You don't even know the earth goes around the sun!" 

Holmes smirked. "The Earth is Flat." He stated without a wit of irony, before walking off to the cab. "Come now! Let's go to the Strand for Dinner."

"Why the hell is it always the Strand?" I wondered out loud, but he was off, and so I followed him. At least the Mob would now be off our backs. 

"Oh by the way, I stole some of the Mobs Cocaine when we were down by the harbor, do you want some?” Holmes asked.

Goddamnit.

The End