The Fixed Foot

[starfishstar]

THE FIXED FOOT

Fandom: My Dearly Beloved Detective

Summary: In a meeting of equal minds, who rescues whom?

Characters: Shirley Holmes/Jane Watson

Words: 2,600

Notes: Written for okapi1895 for the winter 2017 round of holmestice.

For those who don’t know it, My Dearly Beloved Detective is a wonderfully goofy film (Scotland Yard constables performing song-and-dance routines in their pyjamas??) with a surprisingly melancholy heart. Shirley Holmes and her friend/assistant Jane Watson investigate a complicated case (set up by jealous Inspector Lester, who wants to take Shirley down for daring to be a better detective than him) that requires them to go undercover at a gentlemen’s club. Shirley pushes Jane into this disguise, and after they’re almost discovered, a painful scene ensues where Jane breaks down in tears, tells Shirley she’s demanding too much, and ultimately ends up accepting a marriage proposal from Robbie Summers, a man she’d previously turned down. This fic goes AU after that point!

My great thanks to sanguinity for betareading and enthusiasm!

Read on AO3, or here below:



THE FIXED FOOT

Trepidation of the spheres


“Excuse me, sir, but we’ve closed for today. I’ll have to ask you to return tomorrow.” Shirley frowns at the back of this slim young man she’s found in the front room of 221B Baker Street, his back turned to Shirley as he examines the display case of moustaches. How did he get in? It’s unlike Mr Green to be lax about admitting visitors after business hours.

The figure turns, and the low lamplight catches a flash of bright hair.

“Jane?” Shirley takes an uncharacteristic step backwards in surprise.

But indeed: top hat, tails, questionable attempt at applying fake facial hair, and beneath it all, Jane’s rosebud smile and sparkling eyes.

“Hello, Shirley.” Jane’s lower lip wobbles, but she straightens her spine. “I’ve had an idea for how we can catch the fraudulent solicitor.”

There are so many things Shirley could say. Instead she lifts one eyebrow, letting her face do her talking. It generally suffices.

“No, listen!” Jane is eager now. “He refuses to discuss his business practices with anyone but his clients? Then I’ll become a client. A naïve young man just come into a fortune, desperate for someone trustworthy to guide him. I know I can play the part.”

She stares at Shirley, daring her to doubt Jane’s ability to carry off the disguise. Ever since she broke off her engagement with Robbie Summers, there’s been an edge of steel in Jane, along with her natural sweetness. Shirley doesn’t know whether to be glad for it or sorry.

“Well,” Shirley says at last. “And who am I to be, if you’re playing the naïve young man?”

Jane cocks her head at Shirley and considers. “You can be my uncle,” she says, and then her head tips back with a peal of delighted laughter.


Dull sublunary lovers’ love


Two days after Jane’s angry tears and her furious acceptance of Robbie Summers’ proposal, she returned unexpectedly to 221B Baker Street.

“I told Robbie I’ve changed my mind,” she said. She offered no further explanation, and Shirley didn’t ask. She could deduce surprisingly little: that Jane was sad; that Jane was nonetheless certain of her decision. But not the underlying reasons why.

It bothers Shirley still, sometimes, to think how unhesitatingly Robbie Summers stood up to save Jane that day in the club. It was noble of him, and Shirley hates to admit that Robbie Summers – gambler, callow youth, utterly unworthy of Jane – could be noble. Should Shirley have been the one to do that? Created a fuss by revealing herself, allowing Jane to slip away under cover of the uproar?

If anyone saves Jane, it should be Shirley: her friend and mentor, her partner.

But Shirley doesn’t want a partner who needs saving.


Like gold to airy thinness beat


They alight from a cab in Chancery Lane. The street bustles with housemaids and legal clerks out on errands, all singing cheerful tunes, and Shirley privately rolls her eyes. Is she the only person in London who doesn’t feel this compulsion to sing as she goes about her work?

Shirley watches Jane practising her swagger in her man’s clothes, overdoing it at first to learn the steps, then toning it down to something more like realism. Jane catches Shirley looking at her, blushes and looks down.

“You’re doing very well,” Shirley says, and Jane looks up again in surprise, colour still high in her cheeks.

Shirley regrets this unease between them, but she has not yet found a cure for it. Time has passed since the case of the non-Corsican Corsican and the infiltration of the gentlemen’s club. These days Lester leaves them to get on with their work; in fact, he’s become something of an irritating admirer. But for Shirley and Jane, the ease of their past camaraderie has not quite returned.

They approach the offices of Edmund Melville, solicitor, and step out of the sunlight.

This case began, as they always do, with a client. A nervous young man whose fortune has been mysteriously dwindling, despite his solicitor’s oddly emphatic assurances that all is well. Melville is slippery; all his dealings appear to be correct. And yet, somehow, money goes missing. Their task is to prove it.

Predictably, in the firm’s outer office the clerks are doing their morning calisthenics, leaping nimbly over their typewriters and singing of their great joy at working in the legal profession.

Shirley herself has worked in a solicitor’s firm, and she never once felt like bursting into song. Just before she heaves her usual sigh, though, she happens to glance at Jane, whose eyes are dancing. Jane is so tender-hearted; when she sees someone experiencing happiness, she cannot help but share it, and likewise when she sees someone in pain. It is both a nuisance and one of the dearest things about her.

Shirley swallows back her sigh and gives the clerks a collegial nod.


Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show / To move, but doth, if the other do


“And you’re certain there’s nothing else I need to know before I sign this?” Jane asks Melville, gazing at him across the mahogany expanse of his desk. The office is exactly as ostentatious as one would expect, with tomes lining the shelves and above Melville’s head an enormous, ugly painting of a man astride a rearing horse.

Jane is playing her part to perfection: wide-eyed and eager, anxious but trusting. Shirley, seated beside and slightly behind her in accordance with her role (somewhat daft uncle, present but unthreatening), watches Jane’s profile. The girlish curve of her cheek above that gingery blonde pasted-on moustache, the animation in her eyes.

It’s sentimental, recklessly so, but Shirley has long thought of Jane as her fixed foot, the unwavering inner leg of the compass around which Shirley spins, ranging as far as her deductions require but returning always to that unshakeable centre. In those two terrible days when she thought Jane had left for good, Shirley spent rather more of her time than strictly necessary reading poetry, mostly John Donne paeans to magnificent, long-dead women. She kept returning to that poem, that image: the compass with its roaming foot and its fixed one.

She would deny that now, if asked. Certainly she spent those two days in intellectual contemplation of a complicated case and nothing else.

“Yes, yes, all is well,” Melville is saying. “Simply sign on this line here.”

Not a chink in his armour, still.

“And if my nephew wishes to bring in a second solicitor to assess the validity of what you propose?” Shirley asks. “I assume that will be no problem?”

Ah, there, a flicker in Melville’s calm. He locks eyes with Shirley, and then she sees her mistake: she’s broken out of her meek character, and roused not only his defensiveness but also his suspicions.

“Of course not, sir,” Melville says smoothly. “In fact, allow me to show you a relevant document…”

He rises from his chair, and then he’s moving faster than even Shirley can react, yanking her up from her seat with a powerful grip on her shoulders. He shoves her against the wall.

“Who – are – you – really?” he growls, pinning Shirley in place with his full weight on both her arms.

Well, then, that particular game is up. “I am really a detective,” Shirley snaps. “And you, sir, have rather shown your hand.”

She twists and uses his bulk against him, making him fall heavily against the wall as she slips away to the side. But he rights himself in an instant and comes at her again, tumbling them both to the floor, his hands going for her throat.

Shirley may have slightly underestimated this man’s willingness to employ extreme violence at the slightest threat to his shady business practices. On the positive side, they have evidence against him now, of assault if nothing else. On the negative side, it appears he’s about to strangle her.

There is a CRACK overhead and then a thump as Melville collapses off of Shirley onto the floor. She looks up to see Jane looking very pleased with herself, dangling from one hand the broken remains of that ugly painting of the man and the horse, which she’s evidently yanked from the wall and slammed over Melville’s head.

Shirley looks at Melville, curled on his side and blinking woozily at her. He tries to summon up a glare, but the fight’s gone out of him. Jane’s wielding of the heavy picture frame was perfect, hitting Melville squarely but missing Shirley.

“It was in defence,” Jane explains. “He was hurting you!”

Shirley blinks and lifts her head from the floor, then slowly raises herself up onto her elbows. Jane, gentle and mild-mannered Jane, has just attacked a man. For her.

“Oh, Shirley! Are you injured?” Jane lets the tattered painting fall and flings herself to her knees beside Shirley. Her hands are warm on Shirley’s face. “Shirley. Tell me you’re all right.”

Shirley is not all right. Jane’s gentle hands are cupping her chin, brushing back her hair, Jane’s face is mere inches away, tight with worry. And all Shirley can think to say is, “I was wrong to berate you for not trying hard enough.”

“I – what?” Jane splutters.

After their disastrous first time in disguise as men, when Jane broke down in tears at nearly being found out, Shirley called her unprofessional and declared she must try harder if she ever wanted to be a good detective.

But Jane is already a detective, and a great one. She’s perfect in her disguise, now that she’s had a chance to do it on her own terms, without Shirley pushing her before she was ready. She’s been cool and calm in her role as Melville’s supposed client. And she is, it turns out, magnificently decisive in the face of danger.

“I shouldn’t have called you unprofessional,” Shirley murmurs. The very words are embarrassing now to utter. “You are, indeed, a highly professional detective.”

Jane’s cheeks are flushed now. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Shirley, but please tell me that you’re all right!”

The door to the office flies open, and one of the young clerks from the outer office stares down at them in horror, taking in the sight of two (apparent) men in a near embrace on the floor, and beside them the clerk’s boss laid out flat on the ground.

Shirley sighs, already weary of this. The aftermath of a case is always so much less interesting than the chase. “Your employer may need some minor medical attention,” she tells the clerk, without bothering to get up from the floor. “And you, I’m afraid, will need to find a new place of employ. Scotland Yard will be arresting this man for fraudulent business practices.”


So let us melt and make no noise


There’s a great deal of bustle around them, clerks running in and out and ambulance men arriving, but Shirley pays them no mind. Perhaps she hit her head in the fall without knowing it, for she feels nearly lightheaded, with Jane still kneeling beside her, one hand resting protectively on Shirley’s shoulder.

Cautiously, Shirley sits up. “I’m fine, Jane,” she says to Jane’s continued look of concern.

The ambulance men hurry out of the room, bearing Melville. There’s some further agitated noise in the outer office, but for the moment they’re alone.

“Shirley. If anything had happened to you.” Jane bites her lip, her hand still cradling Shirley’s shoulder. Then she ducks her head, the way she does when she’s embarrassed by her own sentimentality. “It’s…oh, it’s silly, but I’ve been reading some of the poetry from your shelves, and I love that one poem your John Donne collection always falls open to… About the two legs of the compass, how they lean towards each other no matter where they are. You’re the fixed foot, Shirley. I can follow your ideas and I can help with your plans, but what would I do without you there to be that centre?”

Shirley looks at Jane’s face hovering close to hers, her eyes alight with concern. She studies Jane’s round cheeks, her wisps of escaping hair; that gingery moustache, surprisingly at home on Jane’s smooth face. And Shirley understands something she has never understood before.

“Jane,” she says solemnly. “Is it only for my ideas, then, that you keep me around?”

Jane flushes crimson. It’s embarrassment, yes, but there’s something else there as well –

And then her lips are pressing against Shirley’s, warm and urgent. Her breath is warm, her lips incomparably soft, and the moustache tickles. This is the only time in her life Shirley has enjoyed a kiss involving a moustache.

“There!” Jane says when she pulls away, her cheeks still flushed. “That’s why I stay, because I – I –”

Shirley reaches out and cups one hand gently around the back of Jane’s neck. Her skin there is soft and warm, and a few tendrils of Jane’s fine hair are coming loose from their carefully upswept disguise.

“Yes,” Shirley says. “Jane. Yes. It’s quite the same for me as well.”

That’s all she says but Jane must see more in her face, because she flings her arms around Shirley, nearly knocking her back down to the floor.

“I never thought –” Jane breathes beside Shirley’s ear. “Because you are – Shirley, you’re you.”

“And you are far more than an assistant,” Shirley says firmly. “Be my partner, Jane. In every sense.”

Jane sits back on her heels and grins. She is so beautiful. “Yes,” she says. There is no shy ducking of her head now. “Oh, Shirley, yes.”

They smile at each other, and Shirley feels heat rising in her face, another uncharacteristic reaction Jane has managed to elicit from her. There is so much more she’d like to do with Jane than merely smile at her, as soon as they’re away from this public place.

“There’s something I realised with – with Robbie,” Jane says. “I don’t want a partner who thinks he always has to save me from things. I hope you won’t think that, Shirley. I’ve been trying to prove to myself that I’m capable, too, and I think I’m doing all right.”

“More than all right.” Shirley tips her head in the direction of the mangled painting. “This time, you saved me.”

Jane’s grin grows wider, terribly pleased. “I did, didn’t I?”

From the outer office, Shirley hears a voice she recognises as one of Lester’s constables: “Two men, you say? Attacked him? Where are they?”

Shirley sighs the sigh of one who will have to begin at the beginning of the story – quite possibly several times over – for an eager but uncomprehending constable. She carefully pulls off her own moustache and tumbles her hair down from its pinned-up concealment. A constable meeting her in disguise generally requires several explanations that yes, she truly is Miss Holmes. Easier if they can skip that part, at least.

To Jane she says, “We ought to go out and make our explanations. Then – back to Baker Street?”

Jane’s smile is enormous, as she stands and reaches a hand down to Shirley. “Yes,” she agrees. “To Baker Street.”


Such wilt thou be to me, who must, / Like th' other foot, obliquely run; / Thy firmness makes my circle just, / And makes me end where I begun.

End notes:

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
John Donne

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls, to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
The breath goes now, and some say, no:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant,
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love, so much refin'd,
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two,
Thy soul the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as it comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end, where I begun.

.