A/N: An attempt at a Sherlock Holmes mystery in something like the classic style. After extensive internal debate, I decided to break it into chapters, since the original is 20 pages long. All four chapters are written, however, and I'll post a new one every few days. All comments and criticisms will be adored.

Enjoy!

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The Adventure of the Fortuneteller's Vase

Chapter 1

I walked into our rooms in Baker Street one afternoon after finishing some errand, to find that some person unknown to me was already seated in our sitting room, reading the newspaper. As I entered, she glanced up, nodded, and returned to her reading. Put off by this odd behavior, I could not think quite what to say, and kept my eye on her with some perplexity as I hung up my coat and hat. She looked in her forties, thin, long nosed, with a receding chin and dressed in a curious costume consisting of a brightly colored scarf or handkerchief around her head tied at the back and a shawl of similar but not matching material over a floral-patterned dress, all of which was less smattered than splattered with innumerable gold bangles and fake-looking costume jewelry. She would have been the perfect image of the gypsy fortuneteller, had her features not looked so very decidedly English.

I sat down facing her, and waited a moment, while she continued imperturbably with her reading. I cleared my throat to rouse her, but she would not be roused. I continued, nevertheless: "Can I help you, madam?"

She glanced up at me a moment, said "No, thank you," and returned to her newspaper. Exasperated, I picked up a book. No doubt, she was some client of Holmes'; silently, I wished him joy of her. But I read several pages without absorbing any of them, being preoccupied with the odd situation I was in, and so resolved to attempt to draw her out again. With that thought, I looked up, only to find her keen grey eyes already on me. Keen grey eyes—my sudden suspicion must have showed on my face, because she laughed.

"He is good, doctor, but he is not this good." Dropping her shawl she stood up, perfectly straight—and not an inch above five foot.

"What the—who the devil—excuse my language, madam—are you?" She smiled, replaced her shawl, sat down, and resumed her reading. I was wondering whether it would be worth another attempt to figure her out, when the door opened, Holmes entered, threw his hat on the stand, noticed our visitor, turned on his heel, picked up his hat, and went out again. She had looked up at his entry and down at his exit, and was now reading exactly as before. I half rose indecisively, wondering whether I should follow Holmes, when he reentered, much less jauntily, looking as if he had an unpleasant chore ahead of him. He crossed the room to her chair, and stood before her, arms folded, glaring down. She continued with her paper—or rather, in all probability, Holmes' paper—but there was only so long she could be pierced by that look without meeting it. She looked up.

"What is it?" Holmes demanded.

"Only, a social call—"

"Unnecessary."

"Fine then… something of interest happened down at my shop—"

"Allow me to congratulate you."

I thought of interjecting upon his rude behavior, thought of her rude behavior, and thought better of interjecting.

"I was going to just send a note for you to come round, but I thought you might not—"

"You were correct."

The woman abandoned her lackadaisical attitude. "I think you really might want to see this, Sherlock. I would not be here if it were not worthwhile."

"I know you would not be here if it were not worth your while." Holmes was grimacing. She got up, laid the newspaper on the table and went to the door.

"Six o'clock, Sherlock. My shop." She handed Holmes a slip of paper with her address and went out.

Sherlock. She was presumptuous, certainly, but surely not so much as to call a stranger or mere acquaintance by his first name, and he had obviously known her. What conceivable woman could possibly address him thus? I had never heard one do it before. Holmes' past was dark to me, and the years had illuminated it hardly at all, but clearly, she had been a part of it. What relationship had that been, to be so bitter now? She appeared about his age, perhaps a trifle older, and rather ugly, but what did I know of Holmes' taste? Taste? It seemed preposterous to associate the idea with him, but also strange to imagine that his past contained no women at all, and youth and character might certainly have augmented her charms in some remote era…

"Watson?" I looked up. "No." Holmes was sitting with his elbow on the arm of the chair the woman had vacated and his chin in his hand, and met my eyes with a familiar ironic look.

"'No,' what, Holmes?"

"No to whatever infernally silly thing you are trying to infer about me."

"Ah. Sorry, Holmes. Who is she, then?"

"A cousin, Anita Sheldon, who thrust herself upon my family in our youth—her family was poor, ours less so, so hers contrived to see a lot of us."

"You didn't ever get along very well, then?"

Holmes raised an eyebrow at what he perceived me to be trying to ascertain, and I am not sure he was wrong. "Oh, the furtive glances, the brush of the fingers, the assignation by midnight, the guilty kisses, the discovery that she was with child, my flight from responsibility, the destruction of all of her prospects in life, while I fled to the university and the life of a consulting detective to atone for my crimes…"

"You might simply have told me there was nothing between you."

"I did already tell you that. You kept prying."

"I was merely asking what the relationship was."

"With certain preposterous preconceptions about what it might be."

"Fine. I accept that any notion of a past romantic affair between you and our visitor is ridiculous and utterly unthinkable. However, I remain curious about why you seem to dislike her so much, if I may ask."

"You may." He had a twinkle in his eye; he was well aware of my ill-concealed eagerness to hear about his past. In a moment, though, he sobered, rose, and began pacing. "As I said, she was a poor relation who foisted herself upon us to better her prospects."

"Surely her parents did the foisting. And anyway, that's not a crime."

"I did not say my aversion was based on anything criminal (which is not to say that she has not committed criminal acts, merely that I would rather not know about them). Rather, it was more the constant presence of an extremely irritating person. She came to get whatever girls in that situation are supposed to get, but she took away something else. Well, something else, along with sundry other knick-knacks I'm convinced she made off with, but that's rather beside the point."

He settled himself against the mantelpiece and gazed somewhere off beyond the ceiling, preparing to edify me. "You have noticed, of course, in connection with my brother Mycroft, that whatever talents I possess are largely hereditary. Mycroft has them in the greatest degree, enabling him to keep in his mind all of the intricacies of the operation of our government. I have them as well, allowing me to deduce chains of events from people and evidence. Our dear cousin does not, in fact, have them, but she did learn from us some of the elementary process of deducing a person's livelihood and some facts about him on the basis of his appearance, an ability which she has used for nothing but chicanery from then to the present day."

"You seem more annoyed that she learned deduction without your permission than that you think she's a thief!"

"Hardly deduction in her case, Watson: simple heuristic devices she misuses for self-aggrandizement. But you are right about my annoyance. The reason is that I have known many thieves, and she is barely worthy of the title. But I have known only very few people who can learn to read others, and perversion of the talent strikes me as more criminal, especially since it was from me that she took it, and so I am partly to blame.

"I use my abilities for good. For the sport, for the excitement of the chase, for the exercise of an art, yes, but also simply to make the world better. It sounds trite, but it is true. Mycroft uses his abilities for good. Politically-minded and possibly Machiavellian as that good may be at times—I suspect we mere mortals may sleep better without some of Mycroft's state secrets on our consciences—his aim is still to better something outside himself, for all of us in this country, and to fill a role that no one else can fill. Miss Sheldon, on the other hand, is a scheming swindler who uses what paltry tricks she knows to extract the sovereigns from the pockets of the gullible, for nothing but a bit of mystification and the commonplaces that might fit any dilemma."

"What does she do?"

"What did she look like?"

"Surely—she's not really a fortune teller, Holmes?"

"If I did not tell people how I know what I know of them, they would think I had some supernatural power, but I explain my conclusions, and, often to my chagrin, their awe vanishes in a puff of logic. If my art were no more than that, none of the piecing together of clues and motives, the chains of logic to fetter the lawbreaker, but just the initial simple conclusions, what would I be? Just a charlatan mystifying the populace with my knowledge of the things they already know about themselves, together with the generalities about the future that anybody could guess. In a word, exactly what my cousin is."

"Do you have any idea why she wants you to come to her shop?"

"None. It might be the most abstruse mystery, or the most prosaic and annoying family business. Have you any engagements this evening, Watson?"

"No. I'll be glad to come, Holmes."

"You may be less glad once you are there. But so be it. At least I'll have my Watson to keep me sane in the clutches of that harpy."

"You're exaggerating."

"Probably. Hopefully."