stonepicnicking_okapi

I love autumn! My favorite season.

I like the cooler weather and Halloween and the color of the leaves. I don't have many autumn-themed stickers left. So I shall have to offer the collage I posted before and my latest jigsaw.

And it was a challenge to figure out how autumn could be part of a murder. But I think I managed it. For

sweetandshort:

Title: A Killing Autumn
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Rating: Gen
Length: 500
Prompt: enemies
Summary: Sherlock explains how autumn murdered a man.

“I don’t understand,” said John.

“No,” agreed Sherlock gazing fondly at the device mounted on the wall of the little no-longer-secret room.
He lifted gloved hands then froze them in mid-trajectory, stopping himself from touching.

“The mechanism which fired the shot was linked to this,” said Sherlock, dropping his hands by his sides.

“It’s a thermostat.”

“The house shot him?!” said John incredulously. He was standing in the hallway. The no-longer-secret room was not large enough for two.

Sherlock’s brow furrowed. “I suppose you could say that autumn killed him.” He tilted his head. “There’s poetry in that, isn’t there?” He shot a quick inquiring look at John.

“Of a kind,” said John weakly. “Macabre poetry. Poe and MR James and the like.”

Sherlock’s lips twitched in a tiny smile, then he turned his attention to the device. “When the ambient temperature dropped to a prescribed degree, the weapon was primed, and when the victim sat in the recliner, the trigger was pulled. The aim was perfect.” Sherlock’s tone dripped with admiration.

John wrinkled his nose. “So, the shot didn’t come from the open window at all?”

“No. The police, as usual, were wrong.” Sherlock dropped his voice to a deep baritone of mock horror. “It came from inside the house!”

“Clever.”

“Exquisitely so.”

“Well, there’s the ‘how.’ Now the ‘who.’”

“That’s obvious, John. This contraption makes the odd terms of the late Edith Carstairs will much more understandable.”

“She forced her brother—”

“The brother she’d hated all her life,” interjected Sherlock. “They were enemies. Blood enemies.”

“—to live in the house of their ancestors, so to speak—”

“For a period of six months. Six months, John! To ensure that he would be here when autumn came. She was counting on his greed, of course.

“—knowing when the temperature dropped, her brother would, of an evening, very naturally drop into that very comfortable-looking chair and—”

“Have his head blown off.”

“After she was dead. Nursing a grudge, much?”

“We know the role her brother played in persuading Edith’s young man not to propose, and that, I suppose, was it.

“Fifty years ago!” cried John. “I thought you said that hate was a paralytic. Not in this case. But wait,
could old Mrs. Carstairs manage this.” His two-handed gesture indicated the little room, the thermostat, and the mounted weapon. “It seems rather sophisticated for the ol’ gal, based on what we know about her.”

“True,” admitted Sherlock. “And it would have put her at the mercy of a lot of workmen, carpenters…”

“Not a lot,” said a voice. “Just one.”

There followed the sound of dress shoes on wooden floorboards.

“Oh,” groaned Sherlock.

“Oh,” groaned John.

“The pandemic was so bad for business,” said the voice. “But like everyone else I got very into my DIY!” A cackle.

“I should’ve guessed. Your enemy, Sherlock,” said John.

“Sherlock and I not enemies, dear pet,” said the voice. “We’re allies. The enemy is boredom. Isn’t that right, Sherly?”

This is a challenge to post about 50 things I'm fannish about in 2024. I did the challenge in 2023 so to make it more interesting, in 2024, it's Everything is Murder edition. More info & to sign up here:https://alexcat.dreamwidth.org/1357645.html

The List (to date)

Fannish 50: 2024: #1: Jeeves & Wooster
Fannish 50: 2024: #2: Libraries
Fannish 50: 2024: #3: Facial Sheet Masks
Fannish 50: 2024: #4: Venom
Fannish 50: 2024: #5: jhope of BTS
Fannish 50: 2024: #6: the art of Edward Gorey
Fannish 50: 2024: #7: The works of Edgar Allan Poe
Fannish 50: 2024: #8: SUGA of BTS
Fannish 50: 2024: #9: Miss Marple - Agatha Christie
Fannish 50: 2024: #10: Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Fannish 50: 2024: #11: Honkaku & shin honkaku detective fiction
Fannish 50: 2024: #12: Audiobooks
Fannish 50: 2024: #13: Holiday blend coffee
Fannish 50: 2024: #14: Jazz
Fannish 50: 2024: #15: Jigsaw puzzles
Fannish 50: 2024: #16: Sherlock Holmes
Fannish 50: 2024: #17: Poetry
Fannish 50: 2024: #18: Chocolate
Fannish 50: 2024: #19: Detective Matthew Venn series - Ann Cleeves
Fannish 50: 2024: #20: Tarot
Fannish 50: 2024: #21: Poirot - Agatha Christie
Fannish 50: 2024: #22: The ocean
Fannish 50: 2024: #23: Hardboiled detectives/noir
Fannish 50: 2024: #24: Tea
Fannish 50: 2024: #25: Bees & honey
Fannish 50: 2024: #26: Campion - Margery Allingham
Fannish 50: 2024: #27: The language of flowers
Fannish 50: 2024: #28: The moon
Fannish 50: 2024: #29: Gervase Fen detective series - Edmund Crispin
Fannish 50: 2024: #30: James Bond
Fannish 50: 2024: #31: Jungkook of BTS
Fannish 50: 2024: #32: Inspector Alleyn series - Ngaio Marsh
Fannish 50: 2024: #33: Collage materials
Fannish 50: 2024: #34: RM of BTS
Fannish 50: 2024: #35: Nanette Hayes mysteries - Charlotte Carter
Fannish 50: 2024: #36: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Fannish 50: 2024: #37: Inspector Littlejohn series - George Bellairs
Fannish 50: 2024: #38: Jimin of BTS
Fannish 50: 2024: #39: Autumn