The Bruce-Partington Plans: Welcome, Sulphur Dioxide

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Title: The Bruce-Partington Plans: Welcome, Sulphur Dioxide
Author: gardnerhill                       
Word Count: 60
Rating: G
Warning: None
Summary: Maybe it wasn’t murder after all. (Title comes from a line in the song “Air” from the musical Hair.)

***

I straightened up. “Holmes. He went for a walk.”

Disappointment was written across my friend’s face – a rather comical denouement to what he had expected to be a tale of murder, intrigue and sedition.

I bent over West’s corpse on the autopsy table. “Look at the state of his lungs. That was deadly weather to look at, let alone breathe.”

Comments

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

Nevertheless, Watson wrote the other version because it was much more exciting for all.

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Aw. Shucks! Asthma's not a fun culprit. My older boy's got it and let me tell you, it's not fun at all.

[debriswoman]

Poor Holmes...this highlights the lethal properties of the fog...not surprised the duo stayed in.

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

I read up a fair bit about London fog for the discussion post and it was shocking the number of people it killed.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Just the ghastly description with which Doyle starts the story ("oily droplets" - ugh) is a quick reminder of what exactly comprised those "romantic" old London fogs. No wonder they stayed inside on such days.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

The correct solution to the true murder was for Londoners to stop burning coal. Way too big and too complicated. So, a nice bit of small petty local intrigue instead.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Ach. My sympathies.

I'm old enough to remember when Los Angeles would have Smog Alert days where parents were told to keep all their kids indoors.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Doyle's description is so vivid you can practically smell what that fog was like, let alone see the oily droplets on the windows.

Los Angeles basin used to have Smog Alert days like that all the time, where children and old people were warned to stay inside.

[sanguinity]

Well, that was anticlimatic. But tragedy often is.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

I'll be darned - it WAS a boating accident after all.