Fruit-o Thursday

Fruit-o Thursday

There is no Thursday vote-o today, thanks to the overwhelming requests for Balder's tale of citrus mirth and woe. So, by way of a curtain-raiser to "Lemon", here's a little something I tossed off earlier this week.

The Return of the Citra Fiend

"But Holmes, my old friend," I asked after dinner, ever the inquisitive companion, "how the Devil did you deduce that Fortescue was the cur who buggered his victims to death with citrus fruit?"

A shameless ploy, I know, but I felt it my duty to divert my good friend's attention from that nasty business with the missing tent, an incident which vexes Holmes to this day, plunging the great detective into an impenetrable fog of melancholia.

Holmes composed himself in his armchair, smoke from his pipe swirling over his head, a glass of port placed carefully on a side-table as he regarded me with his familiar look of patience and friendship.

After eliminating the impossibilities, the master of deduction explained, he had been left with one simple irrevocable conclusion, as plain as the nose on one's face. How wantonly foolish it was of me not to connect Fortescue's fruit fetish with the foul, sickening death of Eliza Crun, her private orifices bursting with citrus! How easily I had been fooled by the red herring of Fortescue's subscription to the Red Herring Fetishists' club, an establishment both myself and Holmes hold long standing memberships!

It would only be a matter of time, elucidated Holmes, that Fortescue would betray himself, and with our tip-off, Inspector Lastrade was ready for him.

Having concluded his explanation into this darkest of matters, Holmes sunk back into his chair, his face barely visible, and allowed the morphine to do its work. Before slipping into unconsciousness, he uttered just five more words:

"Lemon entry, my dear Watson."

"Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of the Corn-Laden Turd and other stories" - Sir Athur Conan Doyle (1904)