wiseheart | Turn Left - The Veteran's House

This is a brand new story idea of mine, inspired by this game. It's a Sherlock AU, in which John misses Mike Stamford and such doesn't get introduced to Sherlock. So, what will happen? How will he find his footing after getting invalided home? Will he ever meet Sherlock?

After being severely wounded, John Watson wakes up in a Rehab clinic. During his physio, he realises that while his limp is psychosomatic, his shoulder is damaged enough that he won’t be able to operate ever again. Harry visits him, telling him that she’s getting a divorce. They have a fight and Harry gives him her mobile phone. Soon thereafter, he gets invalided home.

Getting back to London, John moves into a bleak little bedsit provided by the Minisitry of Defence and begins his fruitless therapy by Ella Thompson. Coming from one session – he decides not to cross the park and therefore misses Mike Stamford – he runs into Clara Fowles, his ex-sister-in-law, with whom he always got on fabulously. They promise to keep in touch.

John gets a locum job at Sarah Sawyer’s surgery. They even date a few times, but John lets the budding romance dry up and die. He doesn’t see any purpose in his life, and London is too expensive for him, even the miserable bedsit.

Clara, who work at the Fortescue Bank, tries to get a small credit for him, just enough for a better flat, but fails. She then suggests him to sell the house in Nether Wallop* (a small village in Hampshire) from a distant uncle. They contact the real estate agent of the district, a certain Mr Ponsonby, who tells them that the house is a ruin and no-one in their right mind would buy it. So John decides to move into the house himself.

Bill Murray (or some other Army buddy) offers to drive him. They find the house in a sorry state, full of junk and infested with animals. Two homeless blokes crash regularly in the garden, but they won’t enter the house itself, as it’s supposedly haunted. John is treated to the local legend of a hidden treasure, guarded by a zombie, who is sometimes seen to repair parts of the house.

John takes a room by a local widow named Mrs Holding – an old lady with poor helat and 3 cats. She doesn’t believe in zombies, but she does remember people gone missing in that house and never being seen again. As John insists on repairing the house, though, she helpfully introduces him to a certain Mr Reno, who is new to the village but employs reconstructions workers. Later, some of her lady friends come for tea, and the nephew of Mrs Parker-Smythe, Justin Parker, enthusiastically offers his help and that of his friends.

One of said friends, Kate Bradstreet, turns out to be the daughter of the local policeman, Detective Sergeant Bradstreet, and through her John gets to know the DS himself. He and Bradstreet discuss the possibility of an actual hidden treasure in the house. Bradstreet suspects both Mr Reno and a certain “Jungle” Jones to be after that treasure, but he has no proof.

Thins take a turn to the worse, though, when several dead bodies are found buried in the garden. Fortunately, Mrs Holding gets a visit from her sister, Mrs Hudson, who lives in London. Mrs Hudson recognizes “Jungle” Jones as someone who used to work for her husband as a hired gun. She calls in her tenant, the eccentric consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock, bored out of his head with no cases, is willing to come to Nether Whallop, and solves the decades-old case, during which John has to shoot “Jungle” Jones, to save Sherlock’s life.

Afterwards, John returns to London with Sherlock for a while, but keeps the renovated house for himself and Miss Mary Morstan, a local teacher, whom he’s begun to court and whom he intends to marry, eventually.

*Nether Whallop is the village in which the 1980s Miss Marple series (starring Joan Hickson) was filmed.

I've already figured out the case - it is based on the ACD story "The Three Garridebs", but with a mighty twist. There won't be any Garridebs, for starters. And the whole thing will have an Agatha Christie-like touch, although Miss Marple wouldn't actually be part of it.

I'll post the case and the character list later, just for my own amusement. If this will actually become a story has to be seen.