The Adventure of the Dead Wild Bore by Andrea Frazer

whatever’s left in the middle must be it.’
    â€˜It’s easy being clever after the event. You don’t know what it’s like down those dark back alleyways at night, and with no street lights. All the houses seem to merge into one.’
    â€˜Don’t whine. It doesn’t become you,’ said Garden, sounding exactly like Holmes’ mother, and he pulled up at the end of the row of seven houses and waited for Holmes to get out, which he did, already counting under his breath as he entered the darkness which was the back access alley.
    Garden drove round to the front, parked, and walked up the garden path and knocked the door, there being no bell. Aaron Dibley, for it must be he as he was unmarried, according to Holmes, answered the door with a frown at being disturbed during an evening when he had not been expecting visitors. ‘What do you want?’ he asked brusquely.
    â€˜I wonder if I could come in to have a quick chat with you …’ Garden was thinking furiously, because this was not a busy neighbourhood and, so disturbed had he been by Holmes almost getting rumbled, and himself almost getting a tumble, that he had forgotten to have a cover story ready. ‘… I wanted to discuss what you think of the levels of crime in Farlington Market,’ he concluded, quite proud that he had chosen a subject that was likely to be dear to Dibley’s heart, he being a probation officer.
    â€˜I don’t normally take part in surveys conducted by people who come round to my home disturbing me, but I shall make an exception in this case, as I can see no danger in letting you into my home, and I have a professional interest in that sort of thing. I’m always telling people who live on their own that they should never let strangers into their house when they haven’t someone else with them.’
    He stood aside to let his visitor in, and Garden thought it was lucky he hadn’t tried to get in here by presenting himself as male. He had acquired a number of false moustaches and eyebrows since he and Holmes had gone into business together, and had even remembered to salvage a few of the drab grey and navy office clothes from his last dreary job, for working undercover in just these sorts of circumstances.
    Dibley was quite a forbidding-looking man, with close-cropped dark hair, its short tufts already turning grey, and he wore horn-rimmed glasses, giving him a rather headmasterly look. When Garden was settled, he made a pot of tea, and joined him in the sitting room which, unlike the last house, didn’t go straight through to a dining area, meaning it was quite safe for Holmes to ferret around to his heart’s content, provided he didn’t actually knock over anything noisy.
    An opportunity never presented itself to knock over his tea cup, because Dibley kept them prissily on the tray on a low coffee table. There was a bit of rustling discernibly audible from the back garden, but Dibley didn’t seem to notice it, just interrupting his monologue on the probation service to murmur, ‘Hedgehogs. Nothing to worry about.’
    Garden, rather cunningly in his opinion, got him talking about Edwardian policing, and easily steered the conversation round to the subject of the investigations of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. ‘I’ve got a couple of albums of fascinating photographs up in my loft,’ he suddenly volunteered. ‘They contain photographs of policemen and criminals in the actual time that Conan Doyle was writing. Are you at all interested?’
    Garden was so interested, also loving the Holmes and Watson stories, that he almost forgot to use his female voice to answer in a very enthusiastic affirmative, and Dibley trotted off upstairs, where the sound of a loft ladder descending could be heard.
    With a jolt, Garden realised that – he didn’t know for how long – he had been sitting with his knees apart, as