Chapter Text
It was a murky autumn afternoon in Central London when Mrs. Hudson heard the blast. She hobbled into the hallway on her walker, squinting for a sign of her son and grandchildren.
“Hello? John? Sherlock? Is that you?” she asked. “You’re back earlier than I’d expected. I’m afraid I haven’t any cases for you, darlings.”
Thankfully for the Holmes-Watson children, Mrs. Hudson was batting the same visual acuity as Mr. Magoo on a stormcloud addled night. She couldn’t see anything. Ruth Holmes-Watson, six years old, sat happily upon the back of one baby African elephant, freshly freed from the London Zoo. Her older brother Hamish, however, froze mid-shove with his back pressed to the grey, wrinkled behind inched three-quarters of the way up the stairs. The animal’s feet had broken through the stairs a time or two, and it was a tight squeeze, but all in all, the kidnapping/rescue had gone without a hitch.
Until the bloody creature blasted on its trunk, of course. Lucky for Ruth, the baby’s trumpet sounded like a very loud party favour, as they had just come from Louie-Gabin Seymour’s thirteenth birthday celebration.
Held at the London Zoo.
“But Daddy and Father are out on a case, Granny!” Ruthie chimed. “Isn’t it wonderful? There’s been a murder! Daddy was so pleased.”
The child grinned ear to ear.
“A murder?” blinked Mrs. Hudson. “At Dorian and the Earl of Somerset’s son’s birthday?”
“And it was a good thing too,” Ruthie continued merrily, stroking the large ear of her newfound friend. “Daddy and Father were about to beat someone up!”
“What good is that?” said Hamish, struggling to maintain the same lighthearted composure. “Father should have decked that awful man. He insulted Uncle Greg. I would have liked to have seen Daddy deck someone.”
He tried for a laugh, but the best he managed was his voice breaking on a grunt.
It would have to do.
“Oh, enough of that,” scoffed Mrs. Hudson, as she was growing too old to stay awake for even gossip. “Where’s Altamont?”
“Oh, they’re—!”
“Helping Daddy and Father!” Hamish cut, scrambling to clap his hand over his sister’s mouth, which panicked the elephant and sent it racing up the stairs. Its thundering feet shook family photographs from the walls.
“We’re sorry, Granny!” Hamish apologized before the animal darted into the flat.
“Dear me!” said Mrs. Hudson. “There’s no need to go running up the stairs! You sound like a herd of elephants.” She turned, tisking. “Those boys, taking a child to a murder investigation.”
She finally crossed the threshold of her own doorway. She looked disappointedly down at her phone.
“And Alta's first time! How could John forget to send pictures?”
Upstairs, Hamish was struggling to come up with an explanation. He buried his hands in his sandy blond hair and paced in a panic as blind as Mrs. Hudson.
“Daddy and Father will kill us!”
He snatched Ruthie off the back of the charging animal as it bulldozed about the room. He managed to save Father’s guitar, a relic of God knows when, but not Daddy’s violin.
The elephant stepped on the priceless Strat with a tremendous snap as the strings bid their last farewell to the world in mangled notes which caused the creature to go even more mad. That Strat had been Grandpa Gordon’s violin! He'd only passed away last December.
They were doomed.
“Oh, no,” tutted Ruthie. “Daddy’s going to be sad, isn't he?”
Hamish couldn't stop staring in horror at the pulverized string of woodchips.
Father, as they called John, always said that the Stratovarius was worth more than all of their kidneys combined and that they were never to play with it, were never to so much as hold it or knock it out of tune.
They were a sight away from that, now weren't they?
Daddy, the notorious Sherlock Holmes-Watson to everyone else, might be angry, sure, but he'd simply procure another one after he cooled off for a bit. Daddy wasn't one to hold grudges. A least not against them. The frugal Dr. Watson, on the other hand, would no doubt have their skins.
Hamish thought he heard a choir of angels sing as his university tuition wafted into the air.
“Sad!” exclaimed Hamish. “Father will ship us off to Sherrinford if he’s in a good mood! We’re sunk! We’re dead! We’re—!”
“Complete and total buffoons,” said the eldest of the Holmes-Watsons.
Thirteen-year-old Altamont stood in the doorway, their black hair hanging in one eye and spiked boots planted in a wide stance. Their arms were crossed, and they looked totally unperturbed. Altamont had lived on the streets for so long before being adopted into London's most controversial family that certain-death situations barely fazed them.
“Alta!” said Hamish. The elephant stormed into the kitchen, decimating Daddy’s laboratory. “This isn’t what it looks like!”
Altamont raised a brow.
“Really?” they said. “So there isn’t a fifteen-stone African bush elephant traipsing about our flat?”
Hamish hesitated.
Aunt Molly's ugly, Christmas-gifted vase fell off the fireplace mantle, meeting much the same fate as the violin.
“...it might be a little bit what it looks like.”
Altamont shook their head.
“I wish I could say that I’m surprised,” they said. “But really, Ruthie, how could you let him?”
Out of all the Holmes-Watsons, even the Holmes-Lestrades, Hamish was the only ordinary one of the lot. He was also the only biological Holmes period. No one knew for sure about their cousin, Halston. Uncle Mycroft would never confirm, but the boy had a head of solid silver hair and one round ginger tuft smack on his temple as a birthmark. Halston was bound for greater things than being a Duke, said Uncle Mycroft, though he had retired and settled into the role himself after Grandpa Gordon and Uncle Rudy’s passing. What use was it to Halston being confirmed for biological or not?
That was the main reason for the Holmes-Watsons choosing to have a biological Holmes child. How Hamish ever came out with blonde hair and an ordinary IQ was beyond the scope of his siblings’ imaginations, only that the rest of them, adopted or not, were damned geniuses.
Especially Ruthie.
“It wasn’t my fault!” said Ruthie, shimmying out of her brother’s hold and pointing the accusatory finger. “Hamish is older! Hamish should have stopped me!”
“She’s right, Hamish,” Altamont amended, rubbing their chin. “You could have overpowered her.”
“Me!” Hamish exclaimed.
“She’s ruddy six years old!”
“With an IQ of 188!” Hamish countered. He jutted his own finger in Ruthie’s face. “Blame her! God Almighty, blame her. She Jedi mind-tricked me!”
“Also plausible. You're a simpleton.”
“Hey!”
“Do you want to be absolved of guilt or not?” Altamont cut. A vein throbbed between their eyes. “Hamish,” Altamont said, massaging their face, “you do know we can’t keep an elephant here?”
“OF COURSE I BLOODY WELL KNOW THAT WE CAN’T KEEP AN ELEPHANT HERE!”
“Oh, yes we can,” said Ruthie. “Father was asking me just the other day if we wouldn’t like to get a pet for Daddy for Halloween!”
“Ruthie,” Altamont said, “Father means a dog.”
She frowned.
“But Ellie is so much better!” Ruthie countered, bouncing on her toes in her little tutu dress to look cuter, but such tricks didn’t work on Altamont.
They cocked their head, examining the beast.
“That’s a male elephant.”
Ruthie stomped her foot, fists clenched at her side in the same defiant manner that made Grandma Emmaline nervous.
“ You got to choose your own name and what you wanted to be called! Why can’t Ellie be a girl?”
“An animal can’t tell you what it wants to be.”
“Maybe it can’t you. I’m smarter than you!”
“By four points!”
“Guys,” Hamish cut in. “If we can quit having a big dick contest here for just a second...” The elephant trumpeted in the background. “...then maybe we could come up with a solution?”
Hamish knew he wasn’t the smartest Holmes. He didn’t notice minute details. He struggled in school because of reading problems. But unlike Halston, who’d graduated at thirteen yet was still considered slow by his red-haired father, both of his dad’s constantly praised him on his real areas of strength.
Bravery and battle tactics.
He’d need both if ever he was going to get this elephant out of Baker Street and explain to Daddy why he was without a violin.
Hamish marched the length of the floor with his fingers teepeed beneath his chin, his eyes narrowed when he stepped right smack in a pile of the biggest shit he’d ever seen.
But still, he stayed the course, thinking.
“Well, the elephant can’t go back to the zoo until Father and Daddy are done catching the bad guys,” he said. “And we can’t set it loose because we’re responsible for it.”
“Hooray!” Ruthie cheered, throwing up sheet music and dancing in the chaos.
“Oh, no. Oh, no,” Altamont cut. “We cannot keep it here, not a second longer!” They sneered at the ruined floor. “Just look at what the little beast has done to Granny’s Persian rug! We’re lucky she can’t see it. She got that back when she was still an exotic dancer. Father will be furious.”
“Then what do you propose we do with it, Prime Minister Smart-Ass?” Hamish snapped. “It’s only got fifty diamonds shoved in its gullet! At any rate, we’ve got to get it to an animal hospital. We can’t trust the veterinarian at the zoo! Ruthie and I heard a man talking about shooting the elephant and cutting it open to get them out. How do we know it isn’t him?”
Altamont blinked.
“I’m sorry, did you say fifty diamonds?”
Sherlock and John had Hamish first, had raised him as an only child till the age of six when, in the middle of adopting a Pakistani little girl with a particularly hooked and familiar nose, they came across a gangly, silent youth pickpocketing their way across Edgware and Islington. The child had refused to speak, had refused to do anything except swipe John’s SmartWatch, which they tracked to a particularly nasty crime haven for the homeless of the East End. Even after taking up with Hamish, even after being accepted and adopted as part of a loving family, Altamont never got over one thing:
Valuables.
Valuables meant money. Money meant food, possibly shelter or praise.
Valuables meant security.
Even to this day, Alta was still a bit of a kleptomaniac.
Their left eye twitched.
“Why,” they said gulping, eyeing the kitchen knives themselves, “is this elephant a walking bank account?”
I’ve got them, thought Hamish. I’ve got the bastard right where I want them!
“So you don’t want to throw it out anymore?” Hamish asked.
Altamont was all but unmoving.
They gulped.
“Let’s not be hasty,” they said, holding up their hands. “It is a living creature. Why, Father’s always saying we have a civic duty. I’ll bet if we broke into a veterinary hospital, between Ruthie and I and an abnormal amount of anesthesia, we could operate on the… Ellie. Yes, yes, I do believe we could get the diamonds out. Without killing the poor thing, of course.”
Altamont’s eyes narrowed, caught in calculations upon calculations as to how, as a reward for selflessness in the line of siblingly duty, they might justify keeping a diamond. Or two. Or twelve.
Thirteen. Thirteen was a grand number. Thirteen was their age.
Thirteen out of fifty diamonds was only twenty-six percent, after all. A fine finder's fee.
“Alta,” Ruthie asked. “Why do your pupils look like pound signs again?”
Hamish gently backhanded her in the shoulder.
It was important, when dealing with Alta, to let them think that everything was their idea.
Altamont shook their head.
“Alright,” they declared. “Let’s have it then.”
“Have what?”
“The story, blast it all! I’m not going to risk getting arrested again if the pair of you are duping me. So let’s have it. How did fifty diamonds end up sitting in a baby elephant’s gullet? What exactly did you two do once I left the little princeling’s party, eh?”
Ruthie and Hamish eyed one another.
Neither of them knew where to begin, but the clock was ticking, and if Altamont didn’t help them soon, Father and Daddy might come home.
They’d be grounded for life if Father found an elephant in their flat, and what’s worse, they’d tell Granny, and then there wouldn’t be any biscuits.
“Well,” Ruthie drawled out, her hands behind her back and her foot rubbing the floor as her large-eared friend waddled to her side and tickled her with its trunk.
The elephant was starting to look a little green.
Maybe if they were lucky it would vomit the diamonds out.
“It all started after you left, actually,” Ruthie continued, “and Aunt Betty boxed Leona’s mummy’s jaws.”
Altamont settled into their favourite armchair.
It was going to be a long afternoon.