221B: The Posh Bachelor

[marysutherland]

BBC Sherlock

Rating: 12 (het)

Summary: DI Lestrade has a new case. How baffling will it be?

Note: I was re-reading ACD's The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor recently and Inspector Lestrade seemed particularly clueless in that case. I decided to make amends to his modern version.

When Lestrade heard that an American heiress had disappeared during her wedding reception in London, his first thought was a publicity stunt. Once he'd met Lord St. Simon, though, he was pretty certain that Hatty Doran had got cold feet just too late. Easier ways of picking up a title nowadays than marrying a moralising twerp.

He had to have the Serpentine dragged, of course, once they found the wedding dress, even though it was probably a decoy. If you wanted to drown someone in London, everyone knew that you used the Thames. Nothing conclusive in the text message left on Hatty's phone from "FHM". Hatty would surely know all about Flora Millar from the tabloids; unlikely she'd go off to meet St. Simon's former mistress only after she'd married him.

Next stop was tracing where the text had come from: mobile last used in a posh hotel in Northumberland Avenue. Bit more digging and Lestrade was playing a call on Francis H. Moulton. Only surprise was that he was Hatty's first husband, who'd supposedly been killed by guerrillas while mining gold in Colombia.

"Get back to the States as quick as you can," he told the pair, "before I have to arrest you for something. I can hold St. Simon for a few days, tell him Scotland Yard are baffled."