Priorities

[leone]

Title: Priorities
Author: leone
Rating: G
Character(s): Watson
Summary: Why stone fruit outweighs love
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: Fill for July 22nd prompt: "Epistolary fic, fluff genre; Retirement era/WWI era, I-miss-you!fluff"
Word Count: 168

Being an extract from the papers of Mr Sherlock Holmes; undated fragment, estimated spring 1918

. . . must also thank you for the hints on who been stealing the peach pits. I have certainly been aware of your methods long enough to have considered your theory about young Jenkins extracting the cyanide from them to poison McDaniels in a jealousy-inspired feud. (For the record, if there were to be a love triangle, it would be between those two and Nurse Michaels, not Dr Baker’s daughter.) It turned out, however, that there was simply a mix-up in the delivery to the compound [illegible] ground up for gas masks. The lads are foolish enough, no doubt, but we have had enough [illegible] that they are not so foolish as to think that love is more important than breath. Those were the attitudes of another time, and I thank God every day that I had at least a few years of my youth to entertain such thoughts . . .

Comments

[donutsweeper]

This is so clever and wonderful! Of course Holmes would assume murder when it was merely a mundane reason instead!

[leone]

Thank you! I have always liked The Adventure of the Yellow Face for exactly that reason.

[(Anonymous)]

Delightful! Holmes must have been terribly disappointed... Lovely job! - ScotlandYarder

[leone]

Thanks! I like to think that Holmes is so relieved every time he receives a letter than his pride is not too badly hurt. (I also like to think that Watson sticks little mysteries in his letters to keep Holmes occupied, even if he knows the mundane answer full well from the beginning.)