Out of the strong came forth sweetness

[marysutherland]

Sherlock BBC

Rating 15: slash, crack

Summary: last week Irisbleufic tweeted about getting honey on her laptop. A few tweets from myself, Gayalondiel and Morelindo later, we had a plot bunny about Sherlock solving a case through licking a laptop and John getting distracted by this. Someone obviously had to write that...

Special thanks to Gayalondiel for betaing.

 

The text came on September 3^rd:

Lestrade said you liked the strange cases. Can you please come to 89, The Avenue, Surbiton? Dimmock.

***

The house was detached, but looked a bit run down, in contrast to the manicured neatness of some of its neighbours. Dimmock was standing by the wheelie bin, caught between belligerence and relief at seeing them.

"Why did Lestrade pass the case onto you, and why have you already made such a mess of it?" Sherlock demanded. Not a good start, thought John. Fortunately, Dimmock had obviously resigned himself to Sherlock.

"Mister Holmes," he said, "I'd appreciate your help, but we can we keep this civilised, please? The initial assessment, yesterday,  was that this was a burglary gone wrong. The owner, Mr Edwin Ledbetter, was found at his desk with his head bashed in, and the place looked like it had been turned over. So the local cops reckoned they were looking for a local thug, probably young, strong."

"So what changed their mind?"

"When they had the autopsy done last night, they found there was something wrong with Ledbetter's skull, it was abnormally thin. And...someone pointed out that if he'd been killed in a burglary, why had the TV been taken, but not Ledbetter's laptop? And why had the glass in the door been broken from the inside, not the outside?"

"Obviously, that counts as brilliant police work  in Surbiton. So, the body's been moved, the crime scene's been completely misidentified, and Lestrade's running away from the case. Can't say I blame him, really. Shall we go in?"

***

 "It really is a mess," John couldn't help saying as they went in and saw the chaos in the living room, books, newspaper cuttings, CDs, strewn across the furniture and piled on the stained carpet. It had probably been a nice room once, he thought, tasteful.

"Yes, but it's a slowly-accumulated mess," Sherlock retorted, and then added, "For what he did to that penguin, breaking its spine like that, I'd say Ledbetter deserved to die."

"What?" John gasped.

"Look at the pile of stuff nearest the brown chair, John, about half-way down. Penguin classic edition, been left open at the page Ledbetter had got to, then had heavier books piled on top of it. Why they're isn't a Royal Society for the Protection of Books, I'll never know."

"Right, erm...so you're saying the mess was made by Ledbetter , not his assailant, are you?"

"Of course, and the TV hasn't been stolen, there wasn't one in the first place, no space for it, and I doubt Ledbetter had time for watching it. Too busy reading Beowulf, and ah, the works of David Irving. Well that explains why you got the case passed onto you, Inspector."

"I'm not a racist," Dimmock replied stiffly.

"No, but I'm guessing Ledbetter was, and I can't see his associates taking kindly to an investigation run by a half-French inspector and his mixed-race second in command. So was he BNP or EDL or what?"

"He had his own little organisation. Allegedly not racist, of course, but concerned with preserving English culture. It's called...it's got some weird name, I can't remember it. Here, this is its magazine," Dimmock said, picking up something from one of the heaps. "It's the Engla-Lond Folkbond Monthly."

"I see," said Sherlock. "He believed, presumably, that the English language had itself been corrupted by foreign imports."

"He reckoned everything foreign was wrong. He had this campaign he was running: 'Ban the Banana'. Telling people they should just eat English fruit."

"Well, 'banana', of course, is from the Portuguese," Sherlock replied, "but I suppose 'Ban the Long  Yellow Fruit' would have been  a little non-specific. Can you show me where he was killed now?"

The mess in the kitchen was so great, it made 221B look tidy. Amid all the books and files, and half-eaten sandwiches, there was a table with a laptop nestling between several more tons of paper.

"Killed while working on his laptop," Dimmock said, "so yes, they should have worked out that the murderer must have been someone he knew, trusted. Cracked on the head from behind, with some kind of smooth, blunt implement . Haven't found it, could be anything. Maybe even a mug, his skull was so weak. Killer was right-handed. Do you want to see the photos?"

"In a minute," said Sherlock, rapidly scanning the desk, hands gliding over surfaces. After a few moments, he added:  "He ate at his laptop, didn't he? Messy. And that stain just by the touchpad, sticky, but not blood, I think. Let's have a test."

Suddenly he was bending down, and ...he was licking the laptop, thought John incredulously. Sherlock's long pink tongue, swiping across the dark patch of liquid and...you should definitely not get erections at crime scenes, should you? Really not good, what he was feeling right now.

"Honey," Sherlock said in a resonant voice, which did not help at all. "But what kind? Ah, now that is...interesting."

John decided he needed to concentrate on something else very quickly. He stared down towards the floor, trying to think about white supremacists and IT and other non-sexy topics. Beneath the desk there was a heavy-duty printer..and one of the paper trays was very slightly open.

"He was just about to print something out," he said, "going to put in more paper."

"Well spotted, John," Sherlock said. "And that's why he was at the laptop even though he had a visitor. He was going to print something out for her. But I don't think we need to worry about that yet. First of all, we need to find the honey jar."

"Why?" Dimmock asked.

"I'll tell you later, just get on with it now. The fate of England hangs in the balance.  Well, the fate of Engla Lond, at least."

***

"It must be here," Sherlock insisted, after half an hour's fruitless – and honeyless - search. "She wouldn't have taken it with her, she wouldn't have dared."

"Her? Who are we talking about?" John asked.

"The sub-editor, of course. She's the murderer, at least I presume it's a woman. Look at this rough draft of an article for the last magazine." He handed some printed-out pages to John. "Compare that to the final version in the magazine Dimmock's got."

John and Dimmock stared hard at the two versions. The man had been completely barking, hadn't he, thought John. It was barely English he was writing at all, what with all the words he wouldn't use. The draft started off:  Write too your lith in the speakhouse (MP) now: tell him our woahs.

"Even you two should be able to spot it," Sherlock said, rolling his eyes. "The original is full of errors, the final version isn't. Which means..."

"That someone was correcting his mistakes," John said.

"A lot of corrections. And I'm pretty sure he couldn't afford to pay anyone for that kind of editing, so it must have been a fellow fanatic. He was printing something out for her to correct, probably a woman, they tend to be better editors. Does it say who the sub-editor is?"

"It doesn't have a sub-editor," John said, scanning rapidly through the magazine. "It has an 'under-word-maker' ."

"So who is she?"

"Mrs Mildred White."

"She almost certainly did it," said Sherlock, "but we need the proof. Where can that jar be?"

He was murmuring slightly to himself. John tried not to look at him, because seeing Sherlock's lips move like that would probably just bring back thoughts of Sherlock licking...things, and he'd almost calmed down by now.

"Where do you hide a leaf?" Sherlock announced, eventually. "In a forest. Where do you hide a used leaf. In a recycled forest!"

"What?" demanded Dimmock.

"She expected it to be taken away," Sherlock said, "clever move. But there was a crate of newspapers outside as we came in. August bank holiday this week, recycling collections all got put back a day. It's probably still there. Quick, let's see if the honey jar's outside."

***

"Here it is," Sherlock announced, after a few minutes careful inspection of the recycling box, holding up a jar in one gloved hand. "And this, Inspector, is why Edwin Ledbetter was murdered. I knew it was Greek the moment I licked it: the persistent, savoury taste of thyme honey.  Don't touch the jar. It's been washed carefully, but there'll probably still be traces of Ledbetter's brain on it."

"Ledbetter was killed for eating Greek honey?" Dimmock demanded incredulously.

"Mildred White saw it as a betrayal of all they stood for. I suspect she just meant to smash the jar over his head, not kill him. If you get over to her right now, she might crack almost as easily as Ledbetter's skull."

"Thank you very much, Mr Holmes," said Dimmock. "I'll get an evidence bag if you hang on, and then, yes, I'll get right onto it."

"And make sure if the case does come to court, that you brief the Guardian particularly thoroughly," Sherlock added. "I think they'd enjoy writing about Engla-Lond Folkbond."

***

"I know I've said it before, Sherlock, but you are amazing. Extraordinary," John said, once Dimmock had left.

"Don't you mean that was amazing and extraordinary," said Sherlock, smiling.

"No," said John, after a moment, "Actually, I think I meant exactly what I said. You are amazing, and extraordinary, and brilliant...and sexy."

Sherlock's smile didn't waver, but it somehow took on a slightly more predatory look.

"You know I try and memorise every street in central London," he said.

"That's amazing too," said John, wondering if Sherlock was just going to ignore what he'd said.

"I'm a bit weaker on some of the suburbs," said Sherlock, pulling out his phone. "So I need to have a quick check to see if there's a grotty and undesirable backstreet somewhere nearby for us to have a knee-trembler in. Given I presume that's what you're hoping for?"

"Um...yes, definitely yes," said John. It was because his mouth had suddenly gone dry that he was licking his lips. He was almost sure of that. But from the way Sherlock was frowning at his phone, Surbiton's prospects for alfresco sex were proving disappointing. John looked round: there had to be somewhere, and he'd prefer it to be soon, because he suddenly wasn't sure how easy he'd find walking. Then he spotted something, through the hedge next door.

"There's a building over there," he said, "Some kind of shed, doesn't look like it's currently in use."

"An abandoned cowshed," said Sherlock, heading towards it, "Strange, but good, very good. Right, well, I think it's time that we had another experiment. It's always useful knowing the exact taste of all kinds of things." And he turned, and stuck out his tongue at John.

 


NOTE: The title is from Judges 14:14 (a riddle told by Samson).