acdholmesfest | Fic for tweedisgood: Autumn in Winpole

Title: Autumn in Wimpole
Recipient:

tweedisgood
Author:

sanspatronymic
Rating: PG-13
Characters, including any pairing(s): Holmes/Watson
Summary: Watson struggles to uncover a mystery in a seaside village. Holmes is less than helpful.

Watson hated Wimpole from the very start. The season had already ended and the town looked like an overwrought hostess after a party, colorless and worn out. Overcast skies and the harsh, briny scent of the sea greeted them more warmly than the natives, who were eager to be done with out-of-towners. Even finding the police station proved difficult. No one seemed terribly inclined to give directions, not even when Holmes's name fell into the conversation.

"Sherlock Holmes, is it? I suspect you're here about that Trawley business. Terrible thing that."

"And pray, what can you tell us of it?" asked Holmes.

"Terrible thing, terrible thing," repeated the man with a solemn doffing of his cap. He shook his head and continued on down the lane without another word.

Watson scoffed. "Oh, that's very helpful."

"Never mind him, Watson, I can see the station lamp. And look, there's a telephone kiosk! Well, well, at least here one need not be out of communication with the larger world."

"Though you shouldn't know it from looking," muttered Watson.

"It is remarkable, isn't it? When we were lads, it took two or three days to send word from London to Paris. Now for tuppence, I can speak to Francois Le Villard himself as though he were standing beside me."

While Holmes was expounding the marvels of modern technology, Watson eyed paint peeling from storm shutters and grime clinging to the quoins of nearby buildings. Squat, mottled stone affairs, so dingy from fog that they would seem just as at home in the East End as they did in Wimpole. He wondered whether they managed to look any more gay in fairer weather. Above the lane, a forgotten bit of midsummer bunting flapped in the breeze, its colors faded from the sun.

The inside of the police station smelled of iron and postage glue. A ruddy-faced constable serving as desk clerk greeted them with a stoic nod. From somewhere in a back room came the tinkling of teaspoons on porcelain.

"Can I help you, gentlemen?" the constable said at last, no doubt in response to the casual air with which Holmes had begun flipping through the station log.

"Yes, we're here to see the Inspector, if you please."

Oh, are you now? said the look on the man's face. "And just who should I say is asking?"

"I am Mr. Sherlock Holmes and this is my friend and colleague, Dr. Watson."

The constable's red face suddenly blanched. He crumpled, as though someone had landed a straight left to his belly. A stammered reply fell from his lips before he disappeared into the back room.

"I do wish you wouldn't preen."

"And I wish you wouldn't sulk," said Holmes.

He smiled and gave Watson a look which was utterly inappropriate for two men to share in a village police station. When the constable returned, he was accompanied by a middle-aged man with the unmistakable pomp and dull tweeds of a police inspector.

"Hulloa, hulloa!" exclaimed the inspector, gripping Holmes's hand with merciless enthusiasm, "Mr. Holmes, this really is such an honor to make your acquaintance, sir. Such an honor."

The introduction was dull and endless, and Holmes far too convivial. He is growing chatty and vainglorious in his old age, thought Watson. He found himself losing track of the conversation in favor of watching a spider start her new web off a high shelf. There sat a very dusty bust of someone who must have been either been the Duke of Wellington or William IV; before he could say for certain, they had moved on to the makeshift morgue.

"Do you normally keep bodies in the cold cellar, Inspector?"

"Well, I—"

"Watson, do behave. Tell me, Inspector, what do you make of the late Mr. Trawley?"

"I'm no expert, but I should think he was in the water for a day or two."

"Maybe longer than that," insisted Watson, "if the water was cold enough."

"Does the water get cold here, Inspector Crallan?" asked Holmes with ritual sharpness.

"In winter, surely, but this time of year it's still much too warm to… well, to preserve him."

"Is the pier still open?"

"The kiosks and things you mean? Oh, no. No, they shut up 'round the end of August. Of course, folks are always milling about down there. Good fishing spot. And very... ah... that is to say… if one has a lady friend..."

Holmes rose a hand to silence Crallan there. Over the mottled, bluish shoulder of the late Mr. Trawley, Watson made a faint, irreverent snort. The inspector, certain he had misstepped, though he could never suppose how dreadfully, began to blush.

"Beggin' your pardon, sirs—"

"Let us keep to the facts of the case, Inspector, if you please."

"Yes, of course, Mr. Holmes."

"When and where was he last seen?"

"Two nights ago. He was down at the Red Lion 'til the bell, so says the landlord. Sent him off homeward, but the missus says he never made it. Can't imagine who'd do this to him…"

"And the Red Lion, where is that?"

"On the north side of town, sir, along the main road and just past the tobacconist's."

"Thank you, Inspector. You've been most helpful."

The Red Lion was so narrow and dark that it seemed more apt to call it a den than a public-house. The late-afternoon crowd was meager and meek: a few silent barstool inhabitants and two men in a back booth debating whether the winter would be harsh or mild in gruff, quiet tones. While Holmes questioned the landlord, Watson counted the sails on the model ships behind the bar. Sixty-two.

"Do you happen to know the way Trawley would have taken to go home?"

"Yessur, the north bostal along the Downs. Saw him off that way most ev'ry evening. If you mean to go that way tonight, may I suggest a nip first, sur? It's apt to be gusty."

"An excellent suggestion. Watson?"

"Hm?"

"Something to drink?"

"Whiskey, I suppose."

"Two whiskeys, landlord. And a set of darts. I don't suppose the path or… how did you put it?"

"Bostal, sur."

"I don't suppose the bostal will disappear while we pause for whiskey and darts."

Watson felt this was the first sensible thing Holmes had said all day. He took a drink, coughed, and realized he'd forgotten to ask for soda. The whiskey was sharp enough to make one's eyes water.

"Don't lean back so far; your dart'll curve down."

"If I don't lean back," said Holmes, closing one eye, "I can't see the board properly."

Watson managed another sip of whiskey and shook his head. "You need spectacles, old thing."

"I do not need spectacles; I simply need to lean back a bit."

With his arm up and his back arched, Holmes looked as though he were about to launch a harpoon. A man with a pint in each hand struggled to slither by in the narrow pub. Watson wondered how much ether it would take to numb Holmes's pride and get him in the optometrist's chair.

"Ha-ha! Look there; double-top, nineteen and thirty. Not bad for a blind old man—let's see you, Watson."

Thunk, thunk, thunk. Two in the triple ring and, just to be cheeky, one in the bullseye. Watson tried not to look too pleased as he finished his drink. Another wheeze ruined his otherwise triumphant visage.

"I ought to get you a few more of those, so I can start winning."

"That's enough for today. Let's get on with it."

The road along the Downs was steep; within a half hour's walk, they were high enough to look down on Wimpole. With all of its attractions shut, the pier was a gloomy, dark silhouette against the setting of the sun. The ocean glinted red and orange like a sea of fire. The breeze turned to wind, tinged so pronouncedly with a chill, as if it meant to remind one that autumn was at hand, and the time for seaside revelry was over. With one hand employed in keeping his hat in place, Watson struggled to pull up his jacket collar.

"It's a pity we couldn't have made this trip a month ago," he yelled against the wind to Holmes as they picked their way along the edge of the cliff.

"Shall I inform Mrs. Trawley that you would have preferred her husband to have died in more agreeable weather?"

"Of course not! I only meant…" He did not bother finishing the sentence.

Eighteen months straight in London without so much as a weekend. Eighteen months of fog and soot and train whistles and the seemingly endless stream of work. He had never much minded Holmes's disdain for holidays, but as there grew to be more years stacked up behind them than lay ahead, Watson found himself longing for country air. For the glorious spectacle of the morning sun against the heath. For good weather and good company. For a walk along the coast which did not necessitate Holmes crawling on all fours, peering keenly at the soil through his glass.

"Hold, Watson! And mind your footing; a stone has come loose here."

"So it has," he answered numbly. "It'll be dark soon. Don't you suppose we should head back to town?"

Holmes rose, pinching chalky sediment between his fingers. He glanced about, as if to confirm for himself that night was falling, and nodded.

"Yes, I suppose we should."

"Holmes, what are we doing here?"

"I was examining—"

"You know what I mean. What are we doing here? This wasn't a murder and it certainly isn't a mystery. Trawley's house is a half mile that way. The public-house is a quarter mile back into town. Trawley was a lush; the path is treacherous; he lost his footing in the dark, probably dashed his head on some rocks down there and washed up a few days later. I knew it the moment I saw the body—you probably knew it the minute you read Mrs. Trawley's entreaty."

Holmes stifled a grin. When he said the words, "my dear, dear Watson," they dripped with honey. Watson did not notice their sweetness. Instead, he tossed up his hands in vexation.

"So what the devil are we doing here? Hm?"

"Watson, you have become quite the master of manner of death, yet you still persist in the most egregious errors in logic. You're forever missing the forest for the trees."

Watson gave him such a look that Holmes was compelled to go on:

"There is a nice little cottage up that way. Six rooms, a front garden and a bit of acreage. Quite a nice view of the coast, when the weather's right. A splendid place to which a kind-hearted doctor and his incorrigible pest of a companion might retire."

"Retire?"

"Of course, one wants a sense of the place first—the atmosphere, if you will—before such a commitment. Everyone loves the seaside in summer; better to give it a sober look in bleaker months. Enter the grieving Mrs. Trawley. It was too elegant a coincidence to forsake."

"Retire…Here?"

"But I'm afraid Wimpole has not made a favorable impression on you."

When Watson replied, "very astute of you; you ought to be a detective," it stung with the meaning of fuck you. Holmes's mouth tried on all sorts of expressions before settling for a sheepish smirk. He kicked a rock over the cliff's edge and though the two of them listened hard, the sound of its landing was swallowed up by the surf.

"I might take more favorably to your schemes if you discussed them with me beforehand, instead of always tricking me into this and that."

"We have discussed my retirement—"

"You know what I mean."

Holmes nodded and examined his shoelaces as though they held the answers to all of life's great unknowns. The wind picked up into staccato bursts of icy air. Watson folded his arms against his chest and wished he had remembered his gloves.

"All right," said Watson at last, "where is this cottage, then?"

"A few miles up the hill."

"We'll go tomorrow."

"First thing, if you like."

Watson shook his head. "After lunch. First, I want a look at that book shop we passed. Should much rather have spent the afternoon there, instead of listening to Inspector Crallan's ingratiating opinions of you."

"Are you hungry? I hear there is a little restaurant just inside town which is meant to have the very best oysters. How lucky for us that Trawley washed ashore just as the oysters are in season again."

"You're horrible," Watson said, without much meaning it, and took Holmes by the arm. "And I am hungry."