The Case of the Missing Detective
Jun. 4th, 2011 01:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jumperfuckerI have a bit of stress-release fic. The telly in the waiting room at the surgery today yesterday was playing the Great Mouse Detective. Naturally, it got in my brain and I had to get it back out again. And now, I am going to bed, because it is late. Whoops
Title: The Case of the Missing Detective
Pairing: None
Length: 2,900
Rating: G
Warnings: This one’s fairly Disney, I’m afraid.
Beta Credit:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
storm_ford
Disclaimer: ACD and Eve Titus might be pretty amused by all this. Please don’t sue me, Disney.
Summary: Basil goes missing, and it’s up to Dawson to find him.
In all my time beneath 221B Baker Street, no case was as baffling as that of the missing detective. I shall start some two days before the actual events occurred, when my friend Mr Basil of Baker Street was stomping wildly through our rooms whilst muttering to himself curses toward the lethargy of London’s criminal classes.
Meanwhile, I took my seat by the fireplace, taking the rare opportunity to catch up on the medical journals I had been so neglecting to read as of late. As it was, time spent with Basil constituted most of what I had available to spend, and even some which I didn’t.
As I settled in, Basil once again came through our sitting room, his arms going in all directions and causing me to have to duck out of the way to avoid having my journals flung across the room.
“I say, Basil,” I ventured, still having no idea what this current mood was about. “Why don’t you have a seat? All this pacing about, it’s not good on the nerves.”
“Whose nerves are you concerned about, Dawson,” asked Basil as he rounded to face me. “Mine, or your own?”
I must admit, he did manage to see through my ploy but I kept at it all the same.
“Well, both of ours,” I said. “You’re wound so tightly that it’s beginning to wind me up. Before we know it, we shall both be having fits should you keep this pacing up.”
My friend gazed at me for a long moment before letting himself fall into his chair with a surprising amount of grace.
“Now, tell me,” I continued, feeling slightly more confident now that he had stopped moving about. “What’s all this for? You’ve been at it all morning.”
Basil took in a deep breath and peered at me over the arm of his chair.
“Tell me it isn’t Ratigan again.” The idea that such a foul and fearsome creature might be back in London was enough to send shivers to my very core.
“No, not Ratigan,” Basil said, and to this day I would swear to it that I could hear a small hint of remorse in his words. “Just the opposite, I’m afraid. I have nothing on. I’ve had nothing on for a fortnight, and at this rate I’ll have nothing on for yet another fortnight.”
So, that was it then. My friend was simply bored. An easy enough fix, I surmised.
“What about your clients?” I asked.
“Nothing worth my time,” Basil declared.
He reached blindly for his violin on a nearby table and began to play something I didn’t recognise. It was soft and mournful, and I suspect something of my friend’s own composition. I watched for a few minutes as his fingers moved delicately and expertly across the strings, knowing exactly where to land without him even needing to look. Once convinced that this temporary fit of mania had subsided, I left him to it and turned my attention back to my journals.
Our rooms remained quiet for the rest of the day and well into the next, which was just as worrisome as the noise. Basil had hardly moved from his chair by the table the entire time, making not a single sound. I had long since given up on trying to coax him out of such moods, knowing instead that he would inevitably work his way out of it on his own. So when I returned down stairs on that third morning to find he had finally vacated the chair by the table, I simply smiled to myself and thought nothing more of it.
I hadn’t begun to worry again until later that evening, when it had become dark and Basil still hadn’t returned home. I enquired with our landlady, Mrs Judson, as to my friend’s whereabouts, but she seemed just as clueless as I on the matter. She assured me that Basil would return in his own time and soon after brought up a tray of scones to help me take my mind off the matter.
When he still hadn’t returned the next morning, it occurred to me that, not for the first time, he may have done something foolish in the course of his black mood. I informed Mrs Judson that I would be away for the day, and not sure where to start my investigation, I headed for Scotland Yard to speak to Inspector Lancaster in the hopes that he had found some case interesting enough to occupy Basil’s mind.
Unfortunately, Inspector Lancaster hadn’t heard from Basil in over a month, and knew nothing of any case he might have been on. However, he did have several cases which had been going cold, and we both agreed that it would not be unlikely that Basil had got wind of them and went out on his own.
The first was in Marylebone, involving a broken safe in a completely locked room. As I made my way to that part of London in the hopes that I might be able to catch Basil up, I found myself colliding with a common tramp, knocking my hat off of my head.
“Be begging your forgiveness, sir,” the tramp said as he picked up my hat from the ground. He began dusting it off with his coat sleeve, which was caked with mud and grime and only making matters worse. “Sincerest apologies, sir,” he continued as he brushed mud all over my hat.
“Yes, that’s quite alright,” I told him as it took back my hat, but he surprised me by trying to position it on my head at a rather precarious angle. “Really, you’ve done quite enough.”
Realising that the mouse would not stop until given reason, I passed him a half-sovereign and waved him on his way.
“Very kind of you, sir,” he told me, bowing dramatically. “Much appreciated. Thank you, sir.”
“Yes,” said I with a nod, watching as he ran into a nearby alleyway.
At the time, I thought nothing of the matter. It was, as far as I was concerned, simple one of those circumstances a resident of London must occasionally endure. I pushed the incident from my mind and straightened my lapels as I continued to the scene in Marylebone on foot until such time as I could catch a cab.
Eventually, one headed in the correct direction did stop and I was able to catch it, barely reaching its undercarriage in time for it start off again. With each minute that passed, I began to doubt that I would find even Basil at the scene, or indeed having anything to do with it. Locked room mysteries were mysterious, yes, but surely he would not have found such a thing interesting. Not when he found them so easy to solve. But it was one of the only leads I had, and I was determined to exhaust every one of them. I continued on to Marylebone, exiting the cab two streets away from the scene.
The mouse who answered me at the door was an older one, and I could see already that the mystery of his safe had been troubling him. He confessed at once that he hadn’t expected anyone to come round to investigate as it had been three full weeks since his correspondence to Basil.
So, it would seem as though my speculations in the cab had been correct. Basil would not have deigned himself to visit the scene, because he had already declared the matter not worth his time. All the same, I was at the mouse’s house and decided I might as well see what insight I could lend to the situation. I had been friends and colleagues with Basil for some time, and had begun to learn his methods, though I do admit that I had never become as trained in them as he.
I asked the mouse, one Mr Philip Dalton, to tell me the story of his broken safe. The safe remained in a room to which only Mr Dalton had access. It was secured to the floor of the cellar, which had only one door, to which Mr Dalton held the only key. I asked him if it were possible that someone might have gained access to the key, whether to use it or to make a copy, and he denied this furiously. He lived alone and kept the key on his person at all times, ensuring that no-one would be able to handle the key without his certain knowledge.
He later showed me the cellar where he kept the safe, and I can report that there was nothing at all special about it. No windows, and simple stone walls and floors, with the exception of a dirt patch in one of the far corners. When I asked him how long the patch had been there, he declared that it was a permanent feature, present when he first took lodgings in the house in his youth. He had never bothered to have it fixed, because he had grown used to it.
By that point, I had several ideas as to the methods used to break his safe, but I must be honest in saying that I had other matters on my mind. So I ensured him instead that someone would contact him shortly with answers and headed on my way. The second lead Inspector Lancaster had given me was one in Whitechapel. It was a considerable journey from where I was in Marylebone, but the lead was more promising. It was more the sort of mystery my friend enjoyed, involving a complicated cipher and a missing girl.
The journey to Whitechapel was a complicated one, as I had to continually exit cabs that had taken an unexpected turn. It was almost as though every cab in London was conspiring against me getting to Whitechapel. Twice I became turned around so badly that I found myself having to stop and ask for directions to the address Lancaster had given me. The first mouse I asked was sitting on a step outside a shop, and I daresay that the directions he gave me had been deliberately wrong, for I followed them to the letter and found myself even more turned around than I had been previously.
The second mouse I asked was an older woman who seemed to know every back alley and shortcut in all of London, for her directions saw me to the address in Whitechapel in just over a quarter hour.
At the Whitechapel address, the situation was the same. There had been no sign of Basil since an attempted correspondence nearly a fortnight earlier, and no indication that he had been anywhere nearby. But as I was there, it seemed the best course of action to attempt to help in any way I could.
The girl who had gone missing was barely out of childhood, innocent of the ways of the world. She had disappeared the day before Mr and Mrs Carlton sent their correspondence to my friend, and they had not heard anything from her since. The only clue they had was a torn piece of paper with a random assortment of letters written on. There were no spaces where words might be, with the letters filling the entire page.
Mrs Carlton swore that the handwriting was that of her daughter’s, but professed no knowledge of the code, or lack thereof, used. I must confess that I was just as baffled by it as she. The more I stared at the thing, the less it made sense.
Knowing of nothing else to be done, I assured the pair of them that I would deliver the clue to Basil and would send a telegram as soon as more information could be found.
By this time, London was growing dark and I was growing weary. I had still come no closer to finding my friend as I had been that morning, but with no further leads I could think of nothing else to do than to return to our rooms beneath 221B Baker Street and wait until morning to start afresh.
This time, finding a cab headed in the correct direction came effortlessly, and I made my way back to Westminster in a daze. I was able to exit the cab just outside our address and managed to drag myself up to our door.
My demeanour changed at once, however, when I entered the house to find Basil in his dressing gown by the fire.
“Basil!” I cried. “What on earth—Where have you been?”
Basil put down his pipe and smiled at me. “Why, my dear Dawson, I have spent the most enlightening day in Marylebone and Whitechapel,” he said.
I sputtered with confusion. “But I was in Marylebone and Whitechapel,” I told him. “Surely we would have run into one another at one point.”
“Are you saying that you don’t remember?” asked Basil.
His grin widened as he tossed a half-sovereign across the room at me. I caught it out of the air and examined it. There was no way to be certain, but I somehow knew that it was the one I had given to the tramp earlier that morning.
“You were following me,” I declared. Slowly, the situation caught up with me and I found myself laughing quite loudly. “You fed me false directions. I’ll have you know I got terribly lost because of you.”
“I know,” Basil admitted. “But it all worked itself out in the end, did it not? A quick cut through a fence and you found yourself right where you needed to be.”
“You’ve been winding me up, Basil,” I declared. “All day. And these leads Lancaster sent me on. Those were your doing as well?”
He joined me in my laughter, seeming much more relaxed than I had seen him all week. “No, Dawson, I must confess that I hadn’t anticipated your going to him for assistance. That his cold cases were ones where the apparent victim had also contacted me was complete coincidence.” He settled back into his chair, steepling his fingers under his long nose.
“Do you want to know how they work out?”
I sat down, eager to hear the outcomes. “Indeed,” I said.
“I never contacted Mr Dalton because there was never a crime,” he explained. “You may remember an announcement in the papers nearly a month past involving an engagement being broken off. That of Mr Edward Clarke and Miss Clara Dalton.”
“I do!” I declared. “Though I must confess that I do not remember the details.”
“Then it’s a good thing I do,” said he. “Mr Clarke had called off the engagement when he learned that Mr Dalton was a former business partner of his father’s. Business had gone sour, and Clarke’s father died in financial ruin.”
“So it was Mr Clarke?” I asked. “How?”
“It was Mr Dalton,” Basil told me. “He simply relocated the items in his safe. The house next to his has been empty for some time, and it would be entirely possible for someone to use it to use it to tunnel into his cellar. I seem to recall a case several years ago where exactly that had happened. Dalton must have read about the same case and thought it easy to use such implied methods to frame Clarke.”
“But there was no actual crime?” asked I.
“Beyond wasting the time of the police, but they get on just fine on their own in that matter,” Basil declared.
“And the Whitechapel case?” I prompted. “Tell me you’ve solved that one as well.”
“I have my ideas,” declared Basil. “I trust you collected the cipher?”
“I did.” I handed him the paper, hoping he’d be able to make sense of it. As far as I could tell, it was someone practising letters, and nothing more.
Basil studied it for just a few moments before crying out in triumph.
“Ah! Yes, just as I expected, Dawson. Her parents will find her in Aberdeen.”
I tried for a moment to imagine how he could have possibly known that, but found my mind blank of possible solutions.
“How could you possibly know that?” asked I.
“Simple,” declared Basil. “The cipher spells out the name of a boy who has also been reported missing – ‘CHARLES’.”
I peered at the paper, but still saw only random letters. “I still don’t see it,” I said.
“The first letter of the string is C,” explained Basil. “The third letter of the alphabet. Skip three letters written on the page and you come to H. Skip eight letters—”
“And you’ll reach A!” I declared. “Basil, I must say, I’ve no idea how you do it sometimes.”
“It’s a simple child’s code, used to pass notes to one another,” Basil explained. “Both of those reported missing were only nineteen this year. She wanted her parents to know where she’d be, but didn’t want them to know right away.”
“I suppose I should tell them where they could find her at least,” I said as I rose to my feet. “If it were my daughter, I’d certainly want to know.”
“Yes, if you must,” Basil said. “Oh, and Dawson.”
I stopped. “Yes?” I asked.
“There appears to be some mud on your hat,” Basil said. “Best get that cleaned before it sets.”
I couldn’t help but laugh as I left the room.
Title: The Case of the Missing Detective
Pairing: None
Length: 2,900
Rating: G
Warnings: This one’s fairly Disney, I’m afraid.
Beta Credit:
storm_fordDisclaimer: ACD and Eve Titus might be pretty amused by all this. Please don’t sue me, Disney.
Summary: Basil goes missing, and it’s up to Dawson to find him.
In all my time beneath 221B Baker Street, no case was as baffling as that of the missing detective. I shall start some two days before the actual events occurred, when my friend Mr Basil of Baker Street was stomping wildly through our rooms whilst muttering to himself curses toward the lethargy of London’s criminal classes.
Meanwhile, I took my seat by the fireplace, taking the rare opportunity to catch up on the medical journals I had been so neglecting to read as of late. As it was, time spent with Basil constituted most of what I had available to spend, and even some which I didn’t.
As I settled in, Basil once again came through our sitting room, his arms going in all directions and causing me to have to duck out of the way to avoid having my journals flung across the room.
“I say, Basil,” I ventured, still having no idea what this current mood was about. “Why don’t you have a seat? All this pacing about, it’s not good on the nerves.”
“Whose nerves are you concerned about, Dawson,” asked Basil as he rounded to face me. “Mine, or your own?”
I must admit, he did manage to see through my ploy but I kept at it all the same.
“Well, both of ours,” I said. “You’re wound so tightly that it’s beginning to wind me up. Before we know it, we shall both be having fits should you keep this pacing up.”
My friend gazed at me for a long moment before letting himself fall into his chair with a surprising amount of grace.
“Now, tell me,” I continued, feeling slightly more confident now that he had stopped moving about. “What’s all this for? You’ve been at it all morning.”
Basil took in a deep breath and peered at me over the arm of his chair.
“Tell me it isn’t Ratigan again.” The idea that such a foul and fearsome creature might be back in London was enough to send shivers to my very core.
“No, not Ratigan,” Basil said, and to this day I would swear to it that I could hear a small hint of remorse in his words. “Just the opposite, I’m afraid. I have nothing on. I’ve had nothing on for a fortnight, and at this rate I’ll have nothing on for yet another fortnight.”
So, that was it then. My friend was simply bored. An easy enough fix, I surmised.
“What about your clients?” I asked.
“Nothing worth my time,” Basil declared.
He reached blindly for his violin on a nearby table and began to play something I didn’t recognise. It was soft and mournful, and I suspect something of my friend’s own composition. I watched for a few minutes as his fingers moved delicately and expertly across the strings, knowing exactly where to land without him even needing to look. Once convinced that this temporary fit of mania had subsided, I left him to it and turned my attention back to my journals.
Our rooms remained quiet for the rest of the day and well into the next, which was just as worrisome as the noise. Basil had hardly moved from his chair by the table the entire time, making not a single sound. I had long since given up on trying to coax him out of such moods, knowing instead that he would inevitably work his way out of it on his own. So when I returned down stairs on that third morning to find he had finally vacated the chair by the table, I simply smiled to myself and thought nothing more of it.
I hadn’t begun to worry again until later that evening, when it had become dark and Basil still hadn’t returned home. I enquired with our landlady, Mrs Judson, as to my friend’s whereabouts, but she seemed just as clueless as I on the matter. She assured me that Basil would return in his own time and soon after brought up a tray of scones to help me take my mind off the matter.
When he still hadn’t returned the next morning, it occurred to me that, not for the first time, he may have done something foolish in the course of his black mood. I informed Mrs Judson that I would be away for the day, and not sure where to start my investigation, I headed for Scotland Yard to speak to Inspector Lancaster in the hopes that he had found some case interesting enough to occupy Basil’s mind.
Unfortunately, Inspector Lancaster hadn’t heard from Basil in over a month, and knew nothing of any case he might have been on. However, he did have several cases which had been going cold, and we both agreed that it would not be unlikely that Basil had got wind of them and went out on his own.
The first was in Marylebone, involving a broken safe in a completely locked room. As I made my way to that part of London in the hopes that I might be able to catch Basil up, I found myself colliding with a common tramp, knocking my hat off of my head.
“Be begging your forgiveness, sir,” the tramp said as he picked up my hat from the ground. He began dusting it off with his coat sleeve, which was caked with mud and grime and only making matters worse. “Sincerest apologies, sir,” he continued as he brushed mud all over my hat.
“Yes, that’s quite alright,” I told him as it took back my hat, but he surprised me by trying to position it on my head at a rather precarious angle. “Really, you’ve done quite enough.”
Realising that the mouse would not stop until given reason, I passed him a half-sovereign and waved him on his way.
“Very kind of you, sir,” he told me, bowing dramatically. “Much appreciated. Thank you, sir.”
“Yes,” said I with a nod, watching as he ran into a nearby alleyway.
At the time, I thought nothing of the matter. It was, as far as I was concerned, simple one of those circumstances a resident of London must occasionally endure. I pushed the incident from my mind and straightened my lapels as I continued to the scene in Marylebone on foot until such time as I could catch a cab.
Eventually, one headed in the correct direction did stop and I was able to catch it, barely reaching its undercarriage in time for it start off again. With each minute that passed, I began to doubt that I would find even Basil at the scene, or indeed having anything to do with it. Locked room mysteries were mysterious, yes, but surely he would not have found such a thing interesting. Not when he found them so easy to solve. But it was one of the only leads I had, and I was determined to exhaust every one of them. I continued on to Marylebone, exiting the cab two streets away from the scene.
The mouse who answered me at the door was an older one, and I could see already that the mystery of his safe had been troubling him. He confessed at once that he hadn’t expected anyone to come round to investigate as it had been three full weeks since his correspondence to Basil.
So, it would seem as though my speculations in the cab had been correct. Basil would not have deigned himself to visit the scene, because he had already declared the matter not worth his time. All the same, I was at the mouse’s house and decided I might as well see what insight I could lend to the situation. I had been friends and colleagues with Basil for some time, and had begun to learn his methods, though I do admit that I had never become as trained in them as he.
I asked the mouse, one Mr Philip Dalton, to tell me the story of his broken safe. The safe remained in a room to which only Mr Dalton had access. It was secured to the floor of the cellar, which had only one door, to which Mr Dalton held the only key. I asked him if it were possible that someone might have gained access to the key, whether to use it or to make a copy, and he denied this furiously. He lived alone and kept the key on his person at all times, ensuring that no-one would be able to handle the key without his certain knowledge.
He later showed me the cellar where he kept the safe, and I can report that there was nothing at all special about it. No windows, and simple stone walls and floors, with the exception of a dirt patch in one of the far corners. When I asked him how long the patch had been there, he declared that it was a permanent feature, present when he first took lodgings in the house in his youth. He had never bothered to have it fixed, because he had grown used to it.
By that point, I had several ideas as to the methods used to break his safe, but I must be honest in saying that I had other matters on my mind. So I ensured him instead that someone would contact him shortly with answers and headed on my way. The second lead Inspector Lancaster had given me was one in Whitechapel. It was a considerable journey from where I was in Marylebone, but the lead was more promising. It was more the sort of mystery my friend enjoyed, involving a complicated cipher and a missing girl.
The journey to Whitechapel was a complicated one, as I had to continually exit cabs that had taken an unexpected turn. It was almost as though every cab in London was conspiring against me getting to Whitechapel. Twice I became turned around so badly that I found myself having to stop and ask for directions to the address Lancaster had given me. The first mouse I asked was sitting on a step outside a shop, and I daresay that the directions he gave me had been deliberately wrong, for I followed them to the letter and found myself even more turned around than I had been previously.
The second mouse I asked was an older woman who seemed to know every back alley and shortcut in all of London, for her directions saw me to the address in Whitechapel in just over a quarter hour.
At the Whitechapel address, the situation was the same. There had been no sign of Basil since an attempted correspondence nearly a fortnight earlier, and no indication that he had been anywhere nearby. But as I was there, it seemed the best course of action to attempt to help in any way I could.
The girl who had gone missing was barely out of childhood, innocent of the ways of the world. She had disappeared the day before Mr and Mrs Carlton sent their correspondence to my friend, and they had not heard anything from her since. The only clue they had was a torn piece of paper with a random assortment of letters written on. There were no spaces where words might be, with the letters filling the entire page.
Mrs Carlton swore that the handwriting was that of her daughter’s, but professed no knowledge of the code, or lack thereof, used. I must confess that I was just as baffled by it as she. The more I stared at the thing, the less it made sense.
Knowing of nothing else to be done, I assured the pair of them that I would deliver the clue to Basil and would send a telegram as soon as more information could be found.
By this time, London was growing dark and I was growing weary. I had still come no closer to finding my friend as I had been that morning, but with no further leads I could think of nothing else to do than to return to our rooms beneath 221B Baker Street and wait until morning to start afresh.
This time, finding a cab headed in the correct direction came effortlessly, and I made my way back to Westminster in a daze. I was able to exit the cab just outside our address and managed to drag myself up to our door.
My demeanour changed at once, however, when I entered the house to find Basil in his dressing gown by the fire.
“Basil!” I cried. “What on earth—Where have you been?”
Basil put down his pipe and smiled at me. “Why, my dear Dawson, I have spent the most enlightening day in Marylebone and Whitechapel,” he said.
I sputtered with confusion. “But I was in Marylebone and Whitechapel,” I told him. “Surely we would have run into one another at one point.”
“Are you saying that you don’t remember?” asked Basil.
His grin widened as he tossed a half-sovereign across the room at me. I caught it out of the air and examined it. There was no way to be certain, but I somehow knew that it was the one I had given to the tramp earlier that morning.
“You were following me,” I declared. Slowly, the situation caught up with me and I found myself laughing quite loudly. “You fed me false directions. I’ll have you know I got terribly lost because of you.”
“I know,” Basil admitted. “But it all worked itself out in the end, did it not? A quick cut through a fence and you found yourself right where you needed to be.”
“You’ve been winding me up, Basil,” I declared. “All day. And these leads Lancaster sent me on. Those were your doing as well?”
He joined me in my laughter, seeming much more relaxed than I had seen him all week. “No, Dawson, I must confess that I hadn’t anticipated your going to him for assistance. That his cold cases were ones where the apparent victim had also contacted me was complete coincidence.” He settled back into his chair, steepling his fingers under his long nose.
“Do you want to know how they work out?”
I sat down, eager to hear the outcomes. “Indeed,” I said.
“I never contacted Mr Dalton because there was never a crime,” he explained. “You may remember an announcement in the papers nearly a month past involving an engagement being broken off. That of Mr Edward Clarke and Miss Clara Dalton.”
“I do!” I declared. “Though I must confess that I do not remember the details.”
“Then it’s a good thing I do,” said he. “Mr Clarke had called off the engagement when he learned that Mr Dalton was a former business partner of his father’s. Business had gone sour, and Clarke’s father died in financial ruin.”
“So it was Mr Clarke?” I asked. “How?”
“It was Mr Dalton,” Basil told me. “He simply relocated the items in his safe. The house next to his has been empty for some time, and it would be entirely possible for someone to use it to use it to tunnel into his cellar. I seem to recall a case several years ago where exactly that had happened. Dalton must have read about the same case and thought it easy to use such implied methods to frame Clarke.”
“But there was no actual crime?” asked I.
“Beyond wasting the time of the police, but they get on just fine on their own in that matter,” Basil declared.
“And the Whitechapel case?” I prompted. “Tell me you’ve solved that one as well.”
“I have my ideas,” declared Basil. “I trust you collected the cipher?”
“I did.” I handed him the paper, hoping he’d be able to make sense of it. As far as I could tell, it was someone practising letters, and nothing more.
Basil studied it for just a few moments before crying out in triumph.
“Ah! Yes, just as I expected, Dawson. Her parents will find her in Aberdeen.”
I tried for a moment to imagine how he could have possibly known that, but found my mind blank of possible solutions.
“How could you possibly know that?” asked I.
“Simple,” declared Basil. “The cipher spells out the name of a boy who has also been reported missing – ‘CHARLES’.”
I peered at the paper, but still saw only random letters. “I still don’t see it,” I said.
“The first letter of the string is C,” explained Basil. “The third letter of the alphabet. Skip three letters written on the page and you come to H. Skip eight letters—”
“And you’ll reach A!” I declared. “Basil, I must say, I’ve no idea how you do it sometimes.”
“It’s a simple child’s code, used to pass notes to one another,” Basil explained. “Both of those reported missing were only nineteen this year. She wanted her parents to know where she’d be, but didn’t want them to know right away.”
“I suppose I should tell them where they could find her at least,” I said as I rose to my feet. “If it were my daughter, I’d certainly want to know.”
“Yes, if you must,” Basil said. “Oh, and Dawson.”
I stopped. “Yes?” I asked.
“There appears to be some mud on your hat,” Basil said. “Best get that cleaned before it sets.”
I couldn’t help but laugh as I left the room.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2011-06-04 12:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 05:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 06:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 06:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 06:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 06:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 01:06 am (UTC)Love how you basically took Titus/Disney characters on a typical ACD mini-adventure. Grand work, as always! :D
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Date: 2011-06-04 05:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 01:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 06:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 01:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 06:10 am (UTC)Thanks for reading!
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Date: 2011-06-04 03:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 06:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 04:55 am (UTC)Explaining to the hubby why I suddenly really want to watch an old disney movie ought to be fun. He understands the ACD obsession, but he's a little bemused by all of fandom.
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Date: 2011-06-04 06:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 05:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 05:49 am (UTC)And thanks for reading! :D
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Date: 2011-06-04 07:06 am (UTC)http://www.letmewatchthis.ch/external.php?title=The+Great+Mouse+Detective&url=aHR0cDovL3ZpZGJveC5uZXQvZmlsZS5waHA/ZmQ9NTIzNDY5MQ==&domain=dmlkYm94Lm5ldA==&loggedin=0
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Date: 2011-06-04 07:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 07:17 am (UTC)Although come to think of it, it may be available on youtube...
Regardless of whether or not there's a watchalong, I fully plan to watch it and then come back to your fic.
(although I must admit that I'm now greatly curious to see what would happen to our usual filthy-minded slasher squee that abounds in the chatlogs...)
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Date: 2011-06-04 07:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 07:24 am (UTC)