The Making of Herlock Sholmes

Several weeks into self-isolation, Herlock Shome’s family noticed a change. 

It started a few weeks back, when they began playing the board game Clue to stave off boredom.

“It was time consuming, frustrating, and fun for the whole family,” Watson Shomes, Herlock’s father, said. “Just like it said on the box!”

Herlock’s transformation was slow and subtle. Two weeks into their new family pastime, Shome took to smoking a tobacco pipe during Clue games. “Helps me think,” he said. 

Hudson Shomes, Herlocks’s younger brother, shrugged it off at first. “I mean, everyone’s going a little crazy,” he said. “If Herlock needs a little something to get by, who are we to say anything? The pipe I was fine with. But when I realized I could smell his room from the kitchen, I thought things might be going too far.”

Herlock quickly became a slob. His bed was indistinguishable from his floor. Seeping from the piles of food wrappers, clothes, scrap paper and used mugs was the smell of tobacco mixed with old ink. “You have to hunch in his room because the ceiling’s so low now,” Hudson said. “I tripped and fell in there once, and it took an hour to dig myself out.”

“I’ll clean it later,” Herlock said when questioned about his revolting new habit. “It’s not important. Don’t worry, I can still see the clock, so I know when it’s time to play Clue.”

Despite the warmer weather, Herlock took to wearing long coats with lots of pockets. “One day, when I was minding my own business, looking outside longingly,” Watson said, “Herlock passes by. I tell him I’ve just seen a squirrel, but no one else believes me. He takes a seat, reaches into a pocket and pulls out the biggest magnifying glass you’ve ever seen. He could look through it with two eyes! He stares out the window and identifies the tracks of not one, but two different squirrels and where they went. Somehow, he also forecasted the weather for the rest of the day.”

The Shomes family grew increasingly concerned about Herlock. The pipe and the coat were bad enough, but with the addition of the state of his room, his enormous magnifying glass and his uncanny ability to know what day of the week it was despite every day being exactly the same, things were getting out of hand. 

The sage culminated on Wednesday* evening.

“We took our seats for our first game of Clue,” Hudson said. “I’m sure I dealt the cards.”

Herlock glanced at his hand, his eyes bulging absurdly through his magnifying glass. He  pulled a notepad and a fountain pen from the depths of a coat pocket and began scribbling madly. He puffed his pipe with such ferocity that for a moment the family feared they would asphyxiate.

All of a sudden, the smoke cleared. Herlock set down his hand and stood up. Watson had yet to take his first turn.

“Miss Peakock, in the dining room, with the candlestick,” Herlock said. “Next game.”

This sequence of events repeated for some time. 

“I never even got to take my turn,” Watson said sadly. “But we finally realized what Herlock had become.”

Herlock now lives at 221A, Baker Street, London with his dog Watson (named after his father) and solves mysteries.

In a slightly more worrying turn of events, Herlock’s sister Ghengis is getting really good at Risk.

*Source: According to Herlock Shomes — How else was I supposed to know?