Category:

Sherlock Holmes

Mycroft’s Delight: the cake

by Diane Duane January 28, 2017

There’s a widespread headcanon among the writers of Sherlock fanfic (and others in the fandom) that Mycroft Holmes — possibly as an associated phenomenon of an old or longstanding weight problem — is very fond of cake. For some reason, chocolate cake is the favored candidate in these theories. So in 2012 or so, when without warning I turned up the notes I’d made on this cake when I ran across it in Switzerland in the very late 1990s, my thoughts turned to Mycroft, and the idea that he’d have really liked this one.

I got busy recreating the cake as accurately as I could. In the neighborhood of Sedrun — the tiny town near the Oberalppass where I ran into it — it was referred to simply as an Urner brenntweintorte, suggesting that its ancestor-cake originally came from over the border. (Andermatt is in Canton Uri: Sedrun is in the Graubunden.) I had no luck in getting the recipe from the little confiserie where it was one of the star items, and with reason: I think they suspected me of being a spy for another bakery.

But over time I’ve learned how to pretty accurately analyze what I’m eating, and my notes from my two visits to the little confiserie were pretty detailed… so I don’t have too many qualms about sharing it here. (It’s kind of overdue for that, anyway: it’s been up in a couple of different versions on Tumblr since 2012, but not at my main blog until now.)

I’d say it’s a cake worthy of a Mycroft’s attention. It’s nowhere near as pretty as the original, for which apologies. (I can still see that lovely cake in my mind’s eye. The glaze on top was smooth enough to skate on, and their version had six significantly skinnier layers. It was a beautiful thing.)

So here’s the recipe. I add one caveat in passing. Others who’ve baked the cake have sometimes found the initial batter overly thick / dry. There’s a more extensive note about this here, but the problem seems to have been something to do with egg size. In particular, Irish eggs run larger than US ones: so get the biggest “extra large” eggs you can find.)

The recipe:

Double Chocolate Courvoisier Torte with Brandied Buttercream Filling and Two Icings (Brandied Nutella Frosting and Cream Cheese & White Chocolate Ganache Glaze) ...otherwise known as Mycroft’s Delight

Note please: this cake will take the guts of an afternoon to make. Don’t attempt it as a last-minute thing. In particular, there’s no harm in baking the layers, soaking them in the syrup, and then refrigerating them overnight – you can then pick up where you left off with the fillings and icings.

Ingredients come first: directions after.

Also note: this recipe is set up for three 8-inch layers. You can, of course, if you like, do what I did here – bake two 9-inch layers in a springform, then cut them in half crossways and stack them.

Ingredients:

For the cake proper:

6 large eggs
1 cup superfine granulated sugar or fine caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or essence
4 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate, melted and slightly cooled
½ cup good quality cocoa
1 cup flour, sifted
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon powdered cinnamon
¼ teaspoon mace
½ teaspoon orange extract and 1 teaspoon orange zest, crushed as smooth as possible in a mortar (or if you’re lucky enough to have access to it, a half teaspoon of orange zest puree)
A few grinds of fresh nutmeg (about 1/8 teaspoon if we’re being picky about it)

For the soaking syrup:

¼ cup sugar
1/3 cup water
2 tablespoons Courvoisier cognac (alternately, you can substitute a good brandy: Hennessey, etc)

For the buttercream frosting base / filling:

3 cups confectioners’ sugar / icing sugar
2/3 cup unsalted butter
2 large egg yolks
4 tablespoons Courvoisier or brandy (whichever you used above)

(A note in passing: you will be dividing this in half. Half goes in between the layers; the other half gets Nutella mixed into it and goes on the sides of the cake.)

For the brandied Nutella side-frosting:

4 ounces Nutella, warmed
2 ounces melted milk or dark chocolate
1 tablespoon Courvoisier or brandy, as above
2 teaspoons cocoa powder

For the ganache / cream cheese glaze:

1 recipe white chocolate ganache (see below)
3-4 ounces Philadelphia or similar cream cheese (plain Neufchatel will also work)

The white chocolate ganache proper:

4 ounces premium-quality white chocolate, finely chopped
1/3 cup heavy cream
¾ tablespoon unsalted butter, at room temperature and cut into 3 pieces

…So let’s take this one thing at a time.

First of all, make the cake layers.

Butter and flour three 8-inch cake pans/tins, even if they’re nonstick. (To prevent the cake acquiring pale patches during baking, you can mix a teaspoon of cocoa with each couple of teaspoons of the flour you use to prep the pans.)

In a mixer with the whisk attachment, beat together the eggs, sugar, vanilla, orange extract and orange zest, until this business is light and fluffy – usually ten to twenty minutes. At the end of this process, slow the speed down and add the dry spices.

When these have been combined, stop the mixer and alternately fold in by hand the combined, remaining dry ingredients and the melted chocolate.

Preheat the oven to 350F / 175C. Bake the layers for about fifteen minutes until done (check for doneness with a skewer if you have any doubts). Remove the layers from the oven and allow to cool for at least 15-20 minutes: then bang the pans on the worktop to loosen things up, and turn the layers out onto a rack to cool completely (usually 30-45 minutes).

When completely cool, use a skewer to poke twenty or so little holes in the top of each layer. Do your best not to go all the way through the bottom of the layer. Put the layers on a cookie sheet or other waterproof surface to prepare for the next stage.

Now make the soaking syrup:

Boil the sugar and water together for five minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool. When cool, stir in the cognac or brandy (whichever you used) and set aside until the layers are ready.

When they are, pour the syrup carefully over the tops of the layers so that it soaks in through the holes. Use a pastry brush to paint any excess syrup evenly over the tops of the cake layers.

Now set the layers aside while you work on the filling and icings.

Make the buttercream filling:

In the mixer bowl, using the “normal” beater or paddle, combine the butter, icing sugar, egg yolks and brandy, and beat like crazy for about ten minutes until perfectly smooth (beat longer if you need to).

Scoop out half the buttercream and use it to “butter” the bottom and middle layers of the cake: then stack them. Press down evenly and gently on them (I usually use a cookie sheet for this) to even out the layers and the filling.

Now make the Nutella-and-buttercream side frosting

Add the cocoa, melted chocolate, brandy and Nutella to the remaining buttercream mixture, and beat very well. Since the goal is for this mixture to stick to the sides of the cake and not run straight off onto the serving plate, check the texture and beat in some extra cocoa if necessary to thicken the frosting until it’s tractable.

Smooth the sides of the cake with the flat of a knife if necessary to deal with any buttercream that’s oozed out the sides. Use the Nutella frosting mixture to coat the sides of the cake. Also frost the upper edge and a little ways up onto the top surface of the cake with the Nutella mixture if you can. If you have enough to frost the whole top without the side frosting being too thin, that’s great: it’ll look better.

Finally, make the white chocolate ganache and cream cheese glaze

Prepare a large bowl with some cold water and ice cubes in it. Then break up the white chocolate into as many pieces as possible, and put them in a heatproof bowl that will fit comfortably in the bigger bowl that contains the cold water and the ice cubes.

Bring the heavy cream to a boil. Then pour it over the white chocolate. Working with a whisk or spatula, gently stir the chocolate and cream together until the white chocolate is completely melted. When the ganache is smooth, stir in the butter.

Now cool the ganache by putting the its bowl into the larger one and stirring constantly so that it doesn’t harden. After about five minutes of this, start beating in the cream cheese by forkfuls. You’ll probably need to whisk it at the end of this process to get rid of the last few lumps. Finally, add a tablespoon or so of brandy to make it easier to work with. (You can correct the thickness of the ganache back and forth by beating in more cream cheese or a little more brandy until it reaches the consistency you’re after.) Spread and/or drizzle this mixture over the top of the cake until it’s evenly covered.

Once all this craziness is finished, you may want to refrigerate the cake for half an hour to stabilize everything a little.

Serve in thin slices. A shot of brandy on the side (to cut the incredible richness) and a double espresso wouldn’t hurt, either.

Enjoy!

And by the way: there’s fanfic to go with the cake.

January 28, 2017

Baking Fanfic Food, restaurants and cooking Sherlock Holmes

Mycroft’s Delight: the fanfic

by Diane Duane January 28, 2017

Every now and then I’ll be minding my own business and doing my work, and then suddenly, without warning, the urge to commit fanfic will strike.

Mostly I ignore it because I have so many other things on my plate. But every now and then comes a day when it can’t be ignored. The story that appears here was the product of one of those days.

When I was making this cake back in 2012 or so, the phrase It was dark, dark at heart… whispered itself in my mind’s ear. Over the days that followed, that phrase fought its way out and dragged a whole bunch of other words behind it. When it was complete, I let it out into the world on my Tumblr, and then (for reasons I still can’t remember) took it down, and then (just because I damn well felt like it, I guess) put it back again. And here it is now, to go with the cake recipe (just reposted for National Chocolate Cake Day).

Stories satisfy the writer in the aftermath of their creation for all kinds of different reasons. But right now this one makes me happiest because it nails down a bit of personal headcanon which has as of Sherlock season 4 been proven true. Otherwise, it also nails down memories of a happy time — when I spent a while in its featured locale while working on the first draft of Stealing The Elf-King’s Roses — and incidentally, there near the source of the Rhine, took a phone call that heralded what was about to become a five-year development process culminating in the miniseries Die Nibelungen*. It was kind of a magic time, and one I enjoyed preserving here… while nodding in the direction of one of my oldest fannish loves, the great Canon, through one of its newer versions.

And the cake’s pretty good, too. 🙂

Once upon a time, in somber mood, Mycroft Holmes asked Dr. John Watson what, in the light of the qualities of Sherlock’s mind and certain piratical tendencies, one might deduce about his brother’s heart. He asked this – so John thought later – seemingly with no great concern that any similar question might be asked about him. And indeed few men, or women either (Anthea aside) would be correctly positioned to either ask or answer. Sherlock, if the subject arose, would probably roll out the heavy-gauge snark and suggest that in his brother’s case, the way to his heart is almost certainly via his stomach – but due to the first organ’s tiny wizened size, something’s apparently gone wrong with the connections to the second, so that incoming material inevitably continues through the system in the normal boring fashion…hence Mycroft’s never-ending diet.

When this issue comes up in conversation, as with Sherlock it always does, Mycroft mostly just sighs: because the nature of his job mandates that he keep himself in proper condition to do it, and this issue has accordingly been folded into his personal security and self-defense portfolio. Other aspects of that portfolio are slightly less controversial between him and Sherlock: the invisibly armored black cars, the overarmed, overtrained drivers, the redoubtable Anthea and her watchstanding colleagues – about whose gifts even Mycroft is glad to relax into don’t-need-to-know mode. He does know that the Double-0’s (though not necessarily their watchful Quartermasters) tend to exit the soi-disant “International Exports” building en masse to avoid embarrassment (theirs) when they see Mycroft’s Angels coming in to do their yearly sidearm and unarmed-combat certifications with their normal no-testosterone-needed competence.

And then of course there’s Mycroft’s final line of defense, which almost no one suspects because that umbrella looks so very, very slim. (The inevitable rumors have made the rounds about hidden ricin pellets, but these are unfounded.) Naturally, Anthea knows what the umbrella’s hiding. Equally naturally, Sherlock long ago deduced what’s in there. And in his very mellowest moods – stretched out beside the midnight fire and cradling the violin, with John cozily dozed-off in the opposite chair – the world’s only consulting detective will sometimes allow himself a tiny, secret smile when the issue comes up for consideration. If he was able to speak a civil word to his brother without arousing his suspicions, he might even some day admit to being obscurely touched that Mycroft carries with him everywhere, invisible in plain sight, a perfectly tempered, razor-edged reminder of the long golden childhood afternoons when they played the Pirate Game together with shouts and sticks, before moving on to edgy adolescence and beginning to routinely drive each other mad.

About the diet, though, Sherlock unfailingly rags Mycroft without mercy: and it’s really most unfair, because it does work. Mycroft has for some years employed the Rotation Diet, which after a truly Holmesian level of assessment he eventually determined was the most effective tool for his own purposes. It sets a rational intake and (surprisingly light) exercise baseline, does a good job of fooling his metabolism into burning more calories than it should, and allows for the inevitable ups and downs of his work life: and in particular it allows for “free weeks” during which one may safely go a bit off the rails.

This is important to Mycroft, because he knows that power, especially when it leans so close to the absolute, must be constantly tested to prove that its foundations are sound. Its bearer’s weak points must be laid bare, examined, reinforced, then stress-tested again. And for Mycroft, cake is a weak point. It would be irrational to deny it.

So when it comes time for him to do the quarterly assessment of his strengths and his ability to manage his weaknesses, not just any cake will do. He requires something truly dangerous, a veritable Moriarty among cakes… so that his mettle can be tested, and proven not wanting, at the highest possible level. And finding the worthy antagonist for such tests has occasionally proven as much fun as the test itself.

Now, Mycroft has more than once had reason to be pleased that he can count among his closer acquaintances a gentleman who occasionally serves a neighboring European government in a capacity similar to Mycroft’s. This gentleman – whose codename is “Colin” – while confabulating with Mycroft late one night over brandies at the Diogenes, let slip (in that particular sort of casual manner meant to suggest to his counterpart that the matter’s not casual at all) that he knows a woman who has a close connection at Confiserie Sprüngli in Zürich.

This made Mycroft’s eyebrows go up with interest. That choice place near the lakeside end of the Bahnhofstrasse, under the shade of the linden trees, is known and honored among chocolate lovers the world over for the suave intensity of its productions; and the best of its cakes, the truffle cake, is truly a thing of beauty, if a bit lightweight for Mycroft’s requirements. However, Sprüngli proper, as it turns out, was not the epicenter of his colleague’s interest. Colin told Mycroft of how in a moment of weakness (possibly fueled by a bit too much after-hours kirsch), the Sprüngli confectioner shared with Colin’s female associate a tale of something extraordinary, a secret hidden away among the mountain peaks a couple hundred kilometers south: a link to something in both his, and Mycroft’s and Colin’s, lines of work – something both richly confectionery and tantalizingly historical, and something that poses a possible solution to Mycroft’s upcoming quarterly quandary.

At the juncture of the two mountain chains that bisect Switzerland north-to-south and east-to-west, there is a strategic pass: and guarding the heart of that pass is a garrison town called Andermatt. The place is placid in the obvious way that only army towns with a secret to keep can be. On the surface everything seems quite calm, the normal Swiss efficiency overlaying everyday life and the normal tourist influx to the local ski areas, while Swiss soldiers on deployment come and go, mostly by rail, doing yearly duty rotations and coming back from operational maneuvers in the most S.O.P.-ish manner.

Mycroft, of course, by virtue of his office knows for a certainty what some Swiss suspect – that all the mountains around Andermatt are tunneled deep with caves not made by nature, and stuffed full nigh to bursting with assorted military hardware of a nature that would cause the most dreadful fuss if word ever got out. Of course it does not: here also the Swiss are most efficient. What Mycroft knows about the business often makes him smile… but not as much as he now smiles about the Andermatt neighborhood’s great nonmilitary secret. For just over the mountain wall to the eastward, through the smaller gateway valley called the Oberalppass, lies something far more interesting to Mycroft in the near term than the three mountains with the fighter-plane dispensers inside, the concealed death rays, and the buried nukes. And this secret is… a cake.

It must be said here that if Mycroft has another weakness besides cake, it’s an unquenchable thirst for life’s resonances. If one can see Moriarty as a manipulative, string-pulling, malice-bloated spider at the heart of a farflung web of information meant to be turned to evil purpose, then one can also conceive of Mycroft as the queen bee (yes, shut up, Sherlock, truly it’s getting quite old) at the heart of a vast, humming hive of historical and modern data; an exquisitely tone-sensitive analyst tuned to the chorused thrumming of past, present and likely future, and graced with the synthesis gift, the ability to hook that old or distant or unlikely solution to this new problem and cause things to sort themselves out for the best. Very occasionally, being human, he fails at this – especially and most painfully when dealing with problems closest to him. The resonances tend to fall out of phase then, or their sines cancel – and when he fails, he does so, to his endless grief, spectacularly. But mostly Mycroft succeeds, and as a result goes on year by year professionally listening to the hum of history, trying to stay alert to past errors while analyzing what’s in tune, what’s not, and how it all resonates with the now. And the resonances are always key. They’re a sign of the universe trying to heal its own wounds or suggesting ways to put its own problems right, and Mycroft has learned that he ignores them at his peril.

When Colin started describing to Mycroft what lay up past the Oberalp mountain wall, this particular resonance thrummed right down into Mycroft’s bones, and his mouth started watering as he heard not only what went into the cake, but who was making it. Not too far over the Oberalppass from Andermatt, Colin told him, on the main pass road, is a little town called Sedrun. It is a quiet place, at once (in the classic Swiss manner) gracious to visitors and inturned and suspicious of strangers in the way of small country towns everywhere. But this place holds something unusual hidden at its heart. In Sedrun’s confiserie works a direct descendant of one of the great names among the professional confectioners whom the Swiss of centuries past called “sugar-bakers”. These men (and a very few women) moved among the great courts of Europe at the beck and call of royalty – free agents who moved from ducal to royal to imperial court for vast sums of money or other considerations – and everywhere they went, they baked pastries and cakes of fabulous quality, and constructed monumental confections beyond the skill of mere mortals.

But these superstar chefs of their time came to carry with them more secrets than just how to make perfect millefiori-style sugar plate that looked like Venetian glass, or what mixture of flours in the dough would produce the optimum rise and flakiness in that (then) hot new treat, the croissant. Wearers of the perfect cover story, and free to travel where lesser men could not because of the skills in their hands and the recipes in their heads, the sugar-bakers pioneered professional organized espionage – spying for one petty king or count or grand duke against another, turning double or triple agent as it pleased them, courting reward and risking death for fun or the joy of travel or the pleasure of matching wits with their rivals (or their clueless masters) and coming off best. They were the great-great-grandparents of the agents of MI5 and MI6, playing the Great Game in times and circumstances as deadly as our modern ones… but their preferred weapons were flour sieves and pastry bags. Their stories are hardly ever told in our time, but again and again the sugar-bakers quietly changed the course of history and the face of political Europe, while at the same time spending their days interleaving butter a hundred layers deep with dough and marzipan, or perfecting the stable buttercream filling.

The cake of Sedrun – a multilayer chocolate torte with an unusual array of icings – was based on a family recipe a quarter-millennium old, and was being baked by the direct descendant of one of these lost experts. Mycroft could no more have refused the prospect of tasting a cake of such noble lineage than he could have refused to shake the umbrella off his closest secret and match swords with his brother under the summer trees of their childhood, were Sherlock only to pick up a blade and challenge him one more time.

So having heard the tale, Mycroft bided his time until an excuse arose to take him to Zürich (a tête-a-tête with an unfortunate British-affiliated private banker caught deep in most ill-advised weapons-related money laundering). Then, that distasteful business handled, in company with Anthea he made his way a couple hours’ drive south and east in the big embassy-lent car, down EuroRoute 2 to the Gotthard Pass, through the camo-ridden streets of Andermatt, and finally up over the Oberalppass to Sedrun. There, on the north side of the two-lane main road, he found the confiserie of his desire. It was no more than the bottom floor of a brown three-story chalet with awninged cafe tables outside and a wood-paneled coffee shop attached: a simple tidy quarry-tiled space full of a truly divine scent of baking bread and a number of polished pine tables and chairs, the whole of it no bigger than Speedy’s. Mycroft sat down at a table for two and ordered a slice of the cake.

When it arrived on the shining table on its plain white plate, Mycroft’s casually ironic thought about the need to seek out a Moriarty among cakes rose up for reconsideration and took him by the throat. The cake’s surface was pale, slick and glossy, elegant and smooth – but underneath, it was dark, dark at heart. Mycroft had rarely gotten the sense before that while he was sizing up a piece of cake, it might be doing the same to him. He was getting it now.

He picked up his fork post haste, stuck it deep into the thing before it could start coming up with any clever ideas, and abandoned himself wholeheartedly to pleasure.

Normally, as a general indicator of a cake’s quality, Mycroft timed himself to see how long it took to finish a slice. This time… he forgot. It wasn’t that time exactly stood still while he was eating, but it certainly slowed down to an amble and paused occasionally to admire the scenery.

Afterwards Mycroft stood up very quietly, ordered himself a milchkaffee, and strolled out briefly through the scatter of sidewalk tables, past gossiping town housewives and middle-school kids chattering in Romansch, past where Anthea sat texting busily away with a glass of the local soft Fendant white wine in front of her. There he stood on the sidewalk and looked westward up the curving pass road, while considering his options and doing sums in his head.

There the afternoon sun had already slid out of sight downsky in a wash of misty air, blinding beams from it striking upward from behind the towering jagged snow-dappled peaks of Oberalp and Piz Cavradi, silhouetting them: rays of a crown of white fire against the paling blue. Mycroft stood there for a little, breathing in that very clean, already-cooling air, thinking of old mistakes made, the pain of making them, the price of putting them right, and the need to keep oneself on an even keel while doing so – because sometimes mere bare self-denial serves nobody’s best interests. Behind him, up the grassy hill behind the bakery, cowbells were making a quiet musical tunk, tunk sound. Across the road, out of sight on the downslope but very close, icy glacier-fed water rushed and tumbled over a bed of big rounded stones; for this was the southernmost source of the Rhine, and the soft kicked-up spray of the living water hung the scent of new beginnings on the still air.

Mycroft stood there a few seconds more, then went back in for his coffee. He sat and drank it, musing; then went to the bakery counter to pay his bill, and finally asked to speak to the master baker.

The man wasn’t long coming out – a craggy silver-haired man of middle height whose stance and look immediately put Mycroft in mind of someone at home. Post-military, Mycroft immediately perceived: but considering the combination of Swiss military tradition (all adult males serve in some capacity) and this particular neighborhood, that was obviously going to be the rule rather than the exception. High-ranking, but gave it up to carry on the family tradition when his father died. Happily married, training his son to carry on the tradition after him, but not ready to retire just yet: tempers his chocolate personally. Proud: and in command. …A few minutes’ conversation made it plain that under no circumstance would this gentleman ever part with the recipe: and of course that made sense. Had to try, though. Nothing ventured, nothing gained…. But after a few minutes more, the two of them worked out an arrangement by which someone from the British Embassy in Bern who had business down this way would swing by once every couple of months, pick up a cake, and send it home to London in the daily diplomatic pouch.

And so it would come to pass. The challenge would be to make such a cake last him two months: if it went away before then (not, of course, counting pieces given to other people) Mycroft would hone his resolve to a finer edge and try again. If he succeeded, then he would chalk up a small victory and allow himself another cake. As he went out to the car (where Anthea was already ensconced) carrying the string-tied cake box, the matter was already managed and ready to be dismissed. In his own mental management storage – no palace of the mind, but a utilitarian space that looked far more like the warehousing facility in Raiders of the Lost Ark – the cake was already sliced up and tucked away in a virtual twin of his own larder freezer.

But the satisfaction of what he’d acquired remained, and Mycroft smiled slightly to himself as he got into the car, already planning the disposition of those careful slices. A few seconds later the driver pulled out, making a doubtless-illegal U-turn in the middle of the Oberalppass road and heading west again for the tall stack of switchback curves that would lead back down to Andermatt and the northbound motorway.

Then Mycroft sighed: because enjoyable as such indulgences were, they were better far when shared. However, Anthea would unfortunately refuse such an offering, as her preferences did not run to chocolate. Sherlock, as a message to the present’s source, would bin it without a second thought. John would most likely eat it, out of a desire not to waste, if nothing else: but his acceptance of the gesture would likely cause him complications later, and Mycroft had no desire whatsoever to destabilize that particular household dynamic. Mrs. Hudson, however, would enjoy some. Mycroft tagged one of those in-mind slices with her name. And Colin must of course have a slice. A moment later that one had been moved into the kitchen freezer in Mycroft’s virtual version of the Diogenes Club.

And there was – he thought while the car wound its way down the switchbacks – one more possibility.

Mycroft hesitated. Yet, still…

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

He pulled his phone out. Anthea glanced over at him. “Something you need, sir?”

Mycroft shook his head. He dialed: waited for the connection: and smiled a small secret smile.

“DI Lestrade, please. …Yes, thank you, I’ll hold…”

*See also Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King (the name under which it aired on SyFy in 2004) and Sword of Xanten (the name under which it aired on Channel 4 in the UK).

January 28, 2017

Dr. Who Fanfic Food, restaurants and cooking science fiction Sherlock Holmes

For World Pasta Day: “A Dinner in Belgravia”

by Diane Duane October 25, 2016

“Tegan…!” the Doctor said, sounding infinitely weary, and very annoyed.

Tegan swallowed and turned toward him, prepared to take her medicine. The two of them stood in the TARDIS’s spacious brick-and-tile galley, and the Doctor, in shirtsleeves and long linen apron, was holding a cylindrical plastic object in his hands. The plastic was milky and webbed with many cracks.

“I seem to recall asking you not to put the bottom of the pasta machine in the dishwasher,” he said.

Tegan rolled her eyes, annoyed. “I wasn’t to know it was a sonic dishwasher, was I?”

The Doctor clenched his hands. The pasta-maker’s bowl simply fell apart and showered to the floor in a rain of clouded plastic fragments.

Tegan groaned softly and turned away.

“Now we’ll have to have the TARDIS extrude another one,” the Doctor said, resigned, “and you know how she can be about such things.”

“Erratic,” Tegan muttered.

“I wouldn’t talk if I were you,” said the Doctor. Then he caught himself, and looked abashed. “Sorry,” he said. “Look, it was a mistake. You won’t make it again. —Will you?”

“No,” Tegan said, trying to sound sulky, but failing. It was hard to be angry with the Doctor when he was in a conciliatory mood.

“That’s all right, then,” he said, and looked around him cheerfully again. “But we’re still out of pasta.”

“That’s no odds,” Tegan said, “we’re out of sauce too. Nyssa made pizza three times last week.”

“Well, we have all the sauce ingredients. But we’ll have to buy pasta out.”

“Earth?” Tegan said, sounding eager.

“Well,” said the Doctor, taking off his apron and pausing to wash his hands, “we could go to Balearis Magna…they make pasta there.”

“Is it any good?”

“Very,” said the Doctor. “If you’re a silicon-based life form. But we’re not…and even my sauce can’t do much for spaghetti made of asbestos. —Though I have to admit it’s certainly very hard to burn….”

They headed out of the galley together, through the long white corridors. “Is it really your sauce?” Tegan said.

“Well…you know how it is.” The Doctor grinned at her, a slightly conspiratorial look. “I got it from a professional liar I know…who got it from Wilma, who got it from Michelle, who got it from Michelle’s mother…who probably got it from Leonardo da Vinci. Just the sort of thing he’d throw together between painting classic pictures and inventing machines that were half a thousand years before their time. In fact, considering the tomato hadn’t reached Italy yet, it probably was Leonardo. I should stop back and ask him. And here we are.”

“Here” was a roundel-fronted door like a thousand others in the TARDIS. The Doctor pulled it open and waved the lights on.

“My word,” Tegan said. The room was about the size of the Sydney Opera House, and full of boxes, crates, cargo containers, bags, sacks and satchels, furniture, tools, knick-knacks, kickshaws, and assorted junk.

“Tertiary storage,” the Doctor said, threading his way among stacks of crates toward the far-away center of the room.

“If this is tertiary storage, what does main storage look like?” Tegan muttered. She stopped by a crate that had stenciled on it the words U.S. ARMY, TOP SECRET! DO NOT OPEN. A soft golden light was welling out of the cracks. “Doctor, what’s this?”

The Doctor glanced over at it, then went back to rummaging among some boxes. “Haven’t the slightest idea,” he said. “Something the Americans were worried about keeping safe. They gave it to MI 5, and a friend there gave it to me. And here it remains.” He straightened up, looking around. “I really ought to catalogue all this mess…it’s getting quite out of hand.”

“I had no idea you were such a packrat,” Tegan said, smiling wickedly at him.

“Oh well,” the Doctor said, stepping over some more crates to get at a bank of freestanding shelves. “It’s hard to stop, sometimes. You pick up things, and then you regenerate, and you get nostalgic about the old regeneration’s stuff, and you never really want to throw any of it away…” He started going through the boxes on the shelves.

“What exactly are we looking for?”

“Money,” the Doctor said.

“In here?”

“Where else, then?”

“Well…in a safe?”

“Why? Who on the TARDIS would steal it?”

“That’s true, but…”

“And generally I don’t need money,” the Doctor said, lifting down a box to get into the one under it. “The TARDIS is planned to run as a self-contained unit…but every now and then, disaster strikes.” He threw a small wicked look at Tegan.

She rolled her eyes and went over to help him. “Don’t Time Lords have any kind of credit facility?” she said, joking.

“Yes, as a matter of fact we do…”

“Why don’t you use yours, then?”

The Doctor coughed and cleared his throat, not because of the dust. “Well, you see, when I left Gallifrey…they, ah…”

“Canceled your credit line…”

“Mmph.”

“But surely you’ve made all that up with them!”

“Oh yes,” said the Doctor, looking slightly annoyed, “but you know how it is…the official communication has to go off to the credit agency, and they have to tidy up the records, and, you know, bureaucracy, red tape, it takes forever….”

Tegan sighed, then grinned. “You ought to get the credit card for renegade Time Lords, then,” she said.

The Doctor looked at her quizzically. “Sorry?”

“MasterCard!”

The Doctor groaned and briefly covered his face. “I’ve sometimes wondered what happens when you throw an unprotected human being out into the time vortex,” he said, and then went back to rummaging through the box at hand. “Never mind, we’ll find out later. —Here we are, then!”

“Money?” Tegan said, looking doubtfully at the dusty contents of the box. It was full of chips and blocks and lumps and nuggets and curls and weird-looking things that might have come out of the insides of alarm clocks.

The Doctor pulled out one example, a small hexagonal wafer of white plastic. “That’s a Balearic demi-thrang,” he said. “Too bad we can’t eat their pasta. Here, look for anything from Earth. Pounds, ideally: I want to go to Fortnum and Mason’s. Or the Food Hall at Harrods.”

Half an hour later Tegan was covered with enough dust to have made her a very rich woman on Rirhath B (where as the Doctor told her, soil for farming was excruciatingly scarce, and had itself become a commodity); but neither of them had so much as a real copper ha’penny to their names. There was precious metal enough—Tegan glanced with amusement at the Denebian “groat”, a three-pound block of platinum gorgeously engraved with pictures of things with tentacles, which the Doctor had burnished on his sleeve and put aside to use as a paperweight. But the smelter in the TARDIS’s machine shop was out of order at the moment, and the attempt to sell off alien coinages would be bound to attract unwanted attention on Earth.

“It’s hopeless,” Tegan said at last. “We could be at this for days, and it’s past dinnertime already. Let’s just go back to the Galley and scare up something else.”

“My stomach is set for spaghetti,” the Doctor said, standing up. “Come on, heart up, Tegan! There’s another way to get money.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll borrow some.” He got up, brushing off his own small fortune in dust. “There are lots of people on Earth who would lend me five pounds!”

“Always assuming you could ever find your way there again to pay them back,” Tegan said, not entirely under her breath, and laughing a little.

“Yes,” the Doctor said as they headed out of the room, and he threw her a look of amiable annoyance. “Let’s find Nyssa. Then, off to the console room.”

They found Nyssa in her room, creating life in a test-tube to pass the time. “Come on, we’re going to Earth,” said the Doctor. “Hallo there!” he said to the test tube, and hurried out of the room again.

“Going to Earth again?” Nyssa said to Tegan. “Or still?”

“We’ll find out.”

***When they got to the Console Room, the Doctor immediately began fiddling with one of the input screens. “I’m going to try something a little different,” he said. “‘Wild card’ operation.”

“Randomization?” Nyssa said, curious.

“No, not exactly. The TARDIS has telepathic circuitry, you know, and the isomorphic controls can be programmed to find what I want without my knowing exactly where it is.” The Doctor paused, peering at the controls, and made a couple of adjustments. “Within limits, of course: and it does use a lot of power, but I’m hungry! Ready?”

Nyssa and Tegan glanced at each other, then both grabbed hold of free areas of the console and held on tight, just in case.

“Now then old girl,” the Doctor said to the console, “take me where I can borrow some money!” And he hit the dematerialization switches.

The time rotor went up and down, the dimensioning circuitry made the usual wheezing and groaning. Then the rotor stopped.

“Well done!” the Doctor said, and opened the forward viewer.

They found themselves looking at a wide-porticoed building, all columns and impressive stairs: a bit old, but very splendid in the Victorian manner. Tegan guffawed. Nyssa looked expectant. The Doctor glanced down at the console with good-natured annoyance.

“Very funny,” he said. “But the Bank of England was not what I had in mind. Try it again…”

He hit the dematerialization switches again. The TARDIS’s screen blurred into the bright miasma of the time vortex, then steadied down as the rotor stopped. Tegan looked at interest at the screen: it showed the front of a block of flats in a small quiet street.

“Ealing,” the Doctor said with a delighted smile, and slipped around to pull up the door control. “Sara Jane’s house!” He ran out.

“Who’s Sara Jane?” Tegan said.

“You’ll like her,” the Doctor’s voice drifted to them from outside. “She’s just your type.”

But they never got a chance to find out if this was true, because Sara Jane turned out not to be at home: nor was someone called K9, and the Doctor looked a bit sad about it as he came back in. “Oh well,” he said. “There’s always Vicki…or Liz, or Lethbridge-Stewart…”

But the TARDIS appeared in rapid succession in front of a boys’ school in the country, and a manor house in Cambridgeshire, and a cottage in the Scilly Isles, and in every case the people they wanted to see were away from home. The Doctor was getting discouraged, and once Nyssa heard his stomach growl.

“I don’t understand it,” he said, as they came back to the TARDIS the fourth time. “Wild card option always works, it can’t be doing this…”

“This is the TARDIS we’re talking about,” Tegan said.

“No, wait,” Nyssa said, forestalling the Doctor’s testy reply. “Perhaps the syntax was off somehow. What was the command?”

“I said to her…thought to her, actually…I said, Take me where I can borrow some money…”

Nyssa smiled. “To where. Not to who.”

“Whom,” the Doctor said, but he flashed a grin at her. “That’s it, of course. Let me revise the command.” He looked down at the TARDIS console for a moment, and shut the doors.

“Here we go, then!”

The time rotor began its rise and fall, then quite abruptly stopped. “We must have been very close,” said the Doctor. He hit the door control and ran out, grabbing his hat off the stand in passing.

Tegan and Nyssa went after him—then paused as he had, looking around them in astonishment. It was evening in a narrow, cobbled street with many houses: the gaslights that lined the sidewalks bloomed softly through sulfur-smelling fog. A horse’s hoofs and the wheels of the cab it was drawing clattered on the uneven stone-setts far down at the street’s end.

The Doctor, with his hat in his hands, looked around him in growing delight. “Of course,” he said, “he’ll lend me money! Though all this may take some explaining….” And he loped off toward one of the house doors and yanked at its bell pull.

A slightly stout woman in her fifties answered the door, and Tegan was interested to see that she seemed not too surprised at the sight of a slight, fair man in cricketing clothes, and two (by Victorian standards) very oddly dressed women. “Good evening, madam,” said the Doctor, “and would you be so kind as to tell your employer that he has a visitor on a business of some mild urgency?”

“Certainly, sir,” said the woman. “Please come straight up.”

The three of them went up the stairs after the lady. Nyssa wrinkled her nose. “What’s that smell?” she whispered to Tegan.

“Pipe smoke.”

“Shag,” the Doctor said from ahead of them. “He did always prefer it, even though it’s strong enough to choke most people.”

A door opened in front of them. They stepped through it and found themselves in a small,crowded study, its several tables littered with books and chemical-set regalia, and many many newspapers. The gas was turned up bright: by it Tegan noticed with amusement that someone appeared to have spelled out the letters V.R. on a nearby wall, in bullet-holes. By the fire two fat overstuffed chairs and a horsehair sofa were drawn up, and from one of the chairs a man was rising. He was tall and lean and (to Tegan’s eye) formally dressed in waistcoat and high collar and stock: a pale man with deepset eyes and a prominent nose.

“How interesting,” he said in a beautiful light tenor voice. “We seem to have a duality of Doctors here tonight.”

The Doctor looked at the man in open astonishment. “My dear Holmes,” he said, “I haven’t been here since my last regeneration. How ever did you know me?”

Sherlock Holmes smiled. A second man got up from the other chair: he was shorter and wider, impressively moustached, and Tegan noticed that he favored his left side a bit as he stood. “We have left the ladies standing,” said Holmes. “Ladies, pray take a seat; the Doctor will introduce you. Watson, you have met this gentleman, though last time he looked rather different. It was during the sordid collusion between Moriarty and that terrible creature the Master. Doctor, do make yourself completely at home. Sherry?”

The amenities took them a few moments. “Perhaps the ladies will indulge me if I smoke?” said Holmes. “I thank you. So.” He relit the famous meerschaum and puffed on it for a moment. “—My deductions are never really that difficult,” he said, “but in your case I must stretch myself a little; for which I am glad of your company. Save for the trusty Watson here, this has been a tiresome day.” Holmes looked up, his eyes merry. “I see, Doctor, that you have been pursuing that most gentlemanly art, the wooing of the Kitchen Muse: that you have run out of some necessary ingredient, purveyed only on this planet: and that you are regrettably short of valuta… hence have come to an old colleague for assistance.”

“But how did you know him when he had regenerated?” Nyssa said.

“Ah, there is a matter requiring a little more nicety of deduction,” said Holmes. “Some few years ago I wrote a monograph on a new science, so new it was until then nameless; a study of the manner in which human beings move, and the ways in which one may infer from such movement much useful information about a person’s habits and provenance. I called the science ‘kinesics’, but it has since been sensationalized in the popular press as ‘body language’.”

“Vulgar,” Watson muttered.

“Though in its way, accurate,” said Holmes. “Now no two human beings move in quite the same way; but there are generalities that affect the whole species—subtleties of expression, of how one holds one’s body, and so forth. And when some years back I was visited by a tall curly-haired gentleman in an odd scarf, whose body language clearly indicated that he had been raised in no culture on the face of this planet, then the only possible conclusion was that he should have been raised off it.”

Holmes puffed reflectively for a moment. “Then,” he said, “tonight I have a visitor, who though entirely different from the first in face and somatype, still exhibits the extraordinary kinesics I have described. I leave aside the purely circumstantial evidence that he knows me; and that he comes accompanied by two young women, one of whom belongs to this planet but to a very different time, and one who like himself is of non-Terrene origin—though most certainly of a different culture, as the kinesics are again different from the Doctor’s.” He passed over Nyssa’s astonished look. “When such evidence presents itself, no other deduction is possible but that this man is the same as the gentleman with the scarf: miraculously altered, to be sure, but the same mind in a different body.”

“My dear Holmes,” said the Doctor, with a slow smile, “unlike me, you haven’t changed a bit.”

Holmes grinned, a look so like the Doctor’s more wicked smiles that Tegan almost broke out laughing at the sight of it. “Besides all that,” said the world’s greatest detective, “I say nothing at all of the absurd blue box that I watched appear groaning and wheezing out of nothing five minutes ago. My previous visitor gave me to understand that its shape was not taken by choice: and few conveyances with such a unique malfunction can be out and about.”

The Doctor grinned back.

“As to the money, you may be easy about it,” said Holmes.“The King of Bohemia’s representative was here only this afternoon to complete payment of a commission, and we are well off indeed. Perhaps you will all dine with us at Romano’s? You shall have your spaghettini there, Doctor: and afterward, the composer Tchaikovsky is conducting his own work at the Garden. —But at any rate, you are curious to know how I knew you were cooking.”

“Tchaikovsky!” the Doctor said softly.

Tegan’s mouth fell open. She shut it, and then said, “Mr. Holmes—”

“How did I know it was pasta the Doctor sought? Attend, madam, if you please. Notice first—” and Holmes pointed with his pipestem— “the faint band or mark on the sides of your companion’s neck. It becomes more noticeable toward the back, does it not? The Doctor has been wearing an apron recently: that is the mark of the neckband. Now he might have been wearing it to protect himself while cleaning…the dust of it is still upon his hair, as it is upon yours, madam—but traces of that dust are also under the areas which the apron would have covered. He therefore was in the kitchen first, and left it to begin his ransack when he found the vital ingredient missing. Also, that fleck of something reddish on his sleeve is yet another informer. I did not see it until just now, when the Doctor reached out to put his tea-cup down. It is in just such a spot as to have been splashed there by a boiling sauce-pot. Careless of you to let the sauce boil, Doctor. It should never go above the simmer.”

“I was looking for the bottom of the pasta machine,” said the Doctor.

“Which you found to be in some disrepair, to judge by this lady’s blush,” said Holmes, “and therefore you found it necessary to contemplate coming out of your remarkable conveyance to procure more. Whereupon you went looking for money—having some about, but having, as you told me last time, little use for it in most occasions—but you found none you could appropriately exchange. You then thought of friends on Earth…and I am honored you came to me.” And Holmes bowed a little where he sat.

“He might have been making chili,” Tegan said.

“But he was not,” said Holmes gently, “for first of all, the aroma of that dish’s spices are both distinctive and penetrating, and would hang about his clothes: and second, the Doctor is allergic to chili. And several gases…as he informed me while satisfying my understandable curiosity concerning the fascinating needs and oddities of an alien physiology.”

“Ketchup,” Tegan said.

“Madam, both walnut ketchup and its newfangled tomato-based variant dry a darker brown.” He smiled at her. “So your Doctor has his Watson as well. I am glad of it.”

He put his teacup down, and rose. “Ladies, Romano’s awaits us,” he said. “You will all want to change for dinner first, of course. But before dinner and the concert, we shall proceed to Fortnum and Mason’s, cause them to open the shop for us—for the management owes me a favor—and bear off in triumph the best pasta fresh from Rome. Which, Doctor, I would be honored if you would allow me to purchase for you.”

“Sir,” the Doctor said, “I would be delighted. Will you come down and have a quick tour of my craft while we change? I’ve made some improvements.”

“Indeed I was hoping you would offer,” said Holmes. “Come, Watson! We shall see wonders.

“—It’s your recipe, by the way,” Holmes added, as they headed down the stairs.

“I beg your pardon?”

“At Romano’s,” said Holmes. “I took the liberty of imparting it to the chef there. Every patron who tastes it proclaims it to be the finest salsa pomodoro alla Napolitana they have ever eaten.” And as they slipped one after another into the TARDIS, Holmes glanced humorously at the Doctor’s lapel.

“I think,” he said, “it has something to do with the celery.”

The Doctor smiled, and went off to look for his black tie and tails.

***

THE DOCTOR’S (FRIEND’S) (FRIEND WILMA’S)(FRIEND MICHELLE’S)(MOTHER’S) SUBJECTIVE SPAGHETTI SAUCE

Brown enough onions and garlic in a deep pan to suit your taste. (This is the subjective part.) Drain off any excess oil.

Add 2 24-ounce cans of tomato paste and two large sized (one-pound) cans of tomato puree.

Add to taste: grated parmesan, salt, pepper, oregano, and bay leaves. (Be sure to put the bay leaves in a little cheesecloth bag or teaball, and remove them when the sauce is done. IT IS DANGEROUS TO EAT BAY LEAVES, NO MATTER HOW WELL COOKED. They are frequently toxic, and at all times can cause intestinal perforation. A word to the wise!)

Cook the above over LOW heat for 4 to 4½ hours, stirring occasionally. DON’T LET IT BOIL!!! Ever.

And add, late in the process:

1/2 cup very, very finely chopped celery

If you like your sauce with meat (thus transforming it into one variant of ragù alla Bolognese):

Use 1 lb of lean ground beef per 6 people. First brown the meat separately and drain off the fat: then add one hour before the sauce will be done.

Make sure you stir the sauce off the bottom of the pot regularly. You don’t want it to burn…even if you’re on Balearis, and the spaghetti won’t.

Afterword:

Something that happens to most working writers over time is that they get asked to contribute writing to charitable ventures (as opposed to being asked to write things for free, a pernicious and annoying habit which the sane jobbing writer gives short shrift).

This happened to me a little more than ten years ago, when the people gathering together material for the charity anthology that would become Perfect Timing 2 contacted me and asked if I would consider donating a little something Whovian to the cause.

As it happened, I already had something. Years and years before — when dinosaurs walked the Earth and CompuServe was about all there was in the way of online life — I had been in the grip of a longstanding love affair that predates the one with my husband and was, in its own way, nearly as strong. Come to think of it, I’m still in the grip. I love the Doctor dearly.

Back then my fave was Five. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Tom Baker, the first Doctor I became acquainted with in the 70’s via the good offices of PBS (and our local affiliate, the splendid WNET). But for me there was something peculiarly attractive about Peter Davison’s portrayal of the Time Lord: something about the way he handled his personal ethos. These days it’s hard to be clear about the reasons in any more detail. In any case, eventually I did what I had done for a long time when I liked a character: I sat down and committed fanfic. The first short story, “The Effect of Dimensional Transcendence on Mozzarella Cheese” — which I wrote mostly as a joke — and later its sequel, wound up in the files area at HOM-29, the venerable SF and Fantasy Forums at CompuServe; and there they sat for ever so long, fading gently into obscurity.

So when the Perfect Timing people came to me, I thought, “Hmm: no need to write anything new: how about giving this an airing?” I submitted the story, they liked it, and it got published. So much for that.

A bit later, another anthology came along, and I fished out the second story, “A Dinner in Belgravia,” which scratched not only the Whovian itch, but another one of even longer standing — my deep love for the original Sherlock Holmes. (Not that I don’t have the writer-hots for the new incarnation, you understand. It’s impossible not to admire such a masterly reboot. But old loyalties die very very hard.)

And finally, to my great joy, the chance came to work in the Who universe under official auspices, and I jumped at it… but not without my own very muted back-reference. Readers of “Goths and Robbers” in Short Trips: the Quality of Leadership will note a certain concern with food: and indeed with pasta, which was a core issue in “Belgravia”. I think we have to assume that at that point, Five had run through the not inconsiderable amount of fettucine-or-whatever that five pounds Sterling would have bought in Holmes’s London, and needed to restock. Though personally I have to assume that the characteristic selfwilled swerve into the outfield of Time (if not Space) that the TARDIS takes during “Goths and Robbers” is about more than just concern over a Time Lord’s carb intake.

In any case, there’s no telling if or when I might ever again have anything to do with the Who universe in a professional capacity. Obviously I’d love to write for them. Who knows what future years will bring? …But if it ever happens — they’re going to have to work pretty hard to keep me from putting my nose into the TARDIS’s galley. — DD

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October 25, 2016

fiction meta Sherlock Holmes

06/01/1854: Happy Birthday, Sherlock Holmes

by Diane Duane January 6, 2014

06/1/1854

Happy birthday, old friend.

Your creator was the first person I consciously took as a tutor in the art of structuring fiction. I didn’t do it because I loved him. I did it because I loved you… and because the way he handled you made you more real than a lot of the (allegedly) real things in my world.

You were the first fictional person to really change my life, and I’ve never forgotten it. Your incisive-yet-benevolent presence has been hanging over my work for a long, long time. I have repeatedly taken your name “in vain” both covertly and in the clear while writing for some of the world’s larger fictional franchises, and (because there’s no way I can keep you out of other things I love) in worlds of my own. And I doubt this is likely to stop.

I think it was Jorge Luis Borges who said some years back that there are only three fictional characters who’re universally known. Of the three he cites, Tarzan has slipped a lot of late, and even Superman has been struggling a bit. But you just keep going from strength to strength, adding dimension with every new iteration. That’s a tough row to hoe, with fiction being the essentially ephemeral art form it is. So few stories, regardless of the passion poured into their creation, will last more than a few handfuls of generations. An Iliad here, a Nibelungenlied there, and precious few more, survive to be retold repeatedly in every century after they manifest themselves. But your story, though young yet as such things go, is showing signs of real staying power. It’ll be interesting to see where you are in a few centuries more.

Meanwhile, I raise a glass to you today, old friend — and inevitably also to the companion who’s always by your side, without whom you wouldn’t be who you are — and think of the streets of the great Metropolis where the two of you can always be found walking together: unstoppable Reason and unshakeable Fidelity, inseparable in search of Truth and (if sometimes only secondarily) in defense of the Right. This is a better world with the two of you in it, even if only in the realms of the imagination — for they inevitably spill over into what passes for the Real, to all our benefit.

So… many happy returns of the day, my dear Holmes. Many.

January 6, 2014