Sherlock advent drabbles :D

Today's word is: Greenhew

Sherlock storms through the ground floor of the cottage, looking through cupboards, tossing things aside and growing increasingly frustrated.

"No. No. No!" He strides back into the living room. "It must be here somewhere. Has to be! No-one sends a note like that to a grieving family if they don't think the deceased was holding onto something valuable."

"Well, maybe," starts John, looking up from where he's going through one of the cupboards in the dresser, "but no-one's seen that brooch for twelve years. How can you be sure that..."

"Of course he had the brooch," snaps Sherlock. "Everything leads to this house!" He turns around on the spot. "It must be here somewhere. Come on."

John stands and stretches. "Yes, well," he looks at the items he's found, "unless you're after a set of napkin holders and an old lottery ticket, I think we're out of luck."

Sherlock shoves his hands in his pockets, takes two steps towards the kitchen, then stops and turns around. "Wait. Lottery ticket? What lottery ticket?"

"This one." John picks it up and waves it in the air.

Sherlock plucks it out of John's hands. "Why did he keep an old lottery ticket?"

John shrugs. "Maybe he forgot to throw it out?"

Sherlock snorts. "Look around, John. The CD collection is in alphabetical order, the photograph albums are labelled, and there's a careful list of birthdays in the calendar. This was not the sort of person who forgot to throw out a used lottery ticket. Conclusion: he must have wanted to keep it for some reason."

"But why?" asks John.

Sherlock's brow wrinkles for a second. Then he gasps so hard that he reels back with the force of it. His mouth curls into a grin. "Oh, clever, clever!" Sherlock pulls out his phone, types something, and dashes out into the garden.

John scrambles after him. "Sherlock? Sherlock! Where are we going?"

Sherlock doesn't answer. Glancing at his phone every now and again, he runs through the garden and out into the field behind. "Come on, John!" He heads along the side of the field, over a stile and down into a small copse of trees.

John catches up just as Sherlock stops beside a mass of undergrowth.

Sherlock paces a little way into the greenery, staring at his phone. "Oh, brilliant!"

"What?" John pauses to catch his breath. "What is it?"

In reply, Sherlock shoves his phone into John's hands. On the screen is a map.

John frowns. "How...?"

"Don't you see?" Sherlock's eyes light up and he passes the lottery ticket to John too. "These numbers. He didn't buy the ticket because he wanted to win the lottery. He bought the ticket because he wanted to remember the numbers without them being obvious to anyone who was looking for them."

John's shakes his head. "I don't..."

"They're co-ordinates, John!" Sherlock falls to his hands and knees and scrabbles through the plants. "He was more clever than we thought. And they lead right... hah!" Sherlock digs a little, then rises to his feet, triumphantly clutching a small tin covered in mud. Inside the tin, when he tugs it open, is an old-looking brooch. Sherlock smirks. "Of course he couldn't sell a famous thing like this, not after it had been stolen. Couldn't bear to part with it either, so he hid it, hoping it would be easier to dispose of in the future."

"That's..." John looks from the brooch to the phone to the lottery ticket and then back to the brooch again. "That's amazing."

"It is." Sherlock smiles as he pockets the tin and starts to head back to the cottage. "And I am." He flashes John a grin over his shoulder.