Chapter Text
“Sherlock! Oh bloody hell – pop out to the Tesco for a half hour and – can you hear me?”
“John? What's the matter?”
“What’s the matter? I come in the entry and there you are lying at the foot of the stairs – thought you were knocked out or worse – don’t move.”
“Why not?”
“Let me check for injuries –”
“John. I realise that your occupation is a calling, and that medical assessment comes as instinctively to you as deduction to me, but you need not perform it at random intervals.”
“Random? You fall down a flight of stairs and you call that random?”
“I did not fall. Or to be more precise, I stumbled, and caught myself, going up the first step. That was when I noticed the intriguing patterns of distress to the floor of 221B’s entry. I cannot think how I failed to notice it before, but there is a wealth of information here about the previous tenants, their sobriety or lack of it, preferred footwear indicating occupation and social standing –”
“Now you’re just taking the piss.”
“Not at all, John. It is an exercise I set myself upon occasion – examination of clues encountered by happenstance. I had deduced a good deal about previous occupants of our quarters, but this fleshes it out; people discard their footwear on arriving home, and clean their carpets and floors with attention that is never given to an entry. The jar of Brinjal pickle broke, I’m afraid.”
"Bollocks. That was the last one on the shelf."
“Another trace for the future. A place where many people have come and gone is like a palimpsest. It’s quite fascinating, how the signs of passage are layered upon one another.”
“Are you planning to become one of the layers?”
“What's the row about? Are you two all – Sherlock?”
“He’s reading a palimpsest, Mrs. Hudson.”
“Well, I’ve no idea what that is, but there are surely better places to read one than in my entry.”
“Just what I was telling him. Up you come.”
“What’s that smell?”
“Pickled eggplant, Mrs. H.”
“Ooh. It’s very strong. I’ll get you some Flash spray, but you're cleaning that.”
“Ah, but the traces will be left on the palimpsest. For those to read who can.”
“Sherlock. Carry the bloody groceries and up the stairs with you.”
“John. Have we got the menu for that takeaway in York Street? I’m suddenly thinking of a vindaloo.”