A Candle in the Fog

A Candle in the Fog is a story by Gray Cardinal. Written as a Yuletide gift for rabidsamfan, it is a direct sequel to the Disney live-action film Candleshoe starring Helen Hayes, Jodie Foster, and David Niven. Insofar as Googlemancy shows as of early 2021, it is the only existing traditional fanfic for the film.
== Source ==
In the Disney feature, Casey Brown (Foster) is an orphaned teenager living on the streets of Los Angeles who has no memory of her parents. Small-time crook Harry Bundage (Leo McKern) recruits her to impersonate the long-missing granddaughter of Lady St. Edmund, the 3rd Marchioness of Candleshoe (Hayes), in England. On arriving at the Candleshoe estate, Casey discovers that the supposedly wealthy marchioness is on the verge of losing the property. She has been scraping by partly by taking in other orphans, who help grow or produce goods for a nearby farmers' market. Her butler Priory (Niven) has let every other servant go and is playing all their parts himself using various disguises and accents. After some initial tension, Casey joins in their efforts and also begins a hunt for an ancestral pirate treasure at Bundage's instigation. This leads to a falling-out between Casey and Bundage, the near-loss of the estate via tax sale, and - at the last possible moment - the discovery of the missing treasure.
== Summary ==
Lady St. Edmund’s lawyers had decided the safest way to forestall any awkward questions about one Casey Brown’s legal status was to pretend no such girl had ever existed – essentially, carrying on the deception Harry Bundage had begun. But for Casey, no other girl had ever existed....
== Author's Notes ==
Candleshoe was, is, and always will be a classic Disney feature, which means that the Mouse holds all its copyrights and trademarks. The present narrative is unauthorized and unrepentant, having been authored quite outside the Disney umbrella and purely for entertainment’s sake. (I have completely ignored the book by Michael Innes from which the movie claims to be derived, as that connection is decidedly slender.) Certain other characters appearing herein are drawn from beneath a quite different umbrella, about which we’ll talk more later – but the reader should be assured that this is first and last a Candleshoe story. In that light, profuse thanks are due to duckwhatduck, tunglo, and maevebran for assistance in navigating the eccentricities of the British peerage system. Disney universes being what they are, I trust readers will forgive any glaring lapses (and that they’ll blame them entirely on me, not on my advisors and sources).
Especially alert readers may recognize Lord Marmaduke Ffogg and Lady Penelope Peasoup, whom I have borrowed (and somewhat amplified) from the 1960s television incarnation of Batman. I had initially chosen the two purely for comic effect, but the two canons' timelines turned out to dovetail unexpectedly well. Under the circumstances, I also couldn't resist making certain further assumptions about Priory's background...which also turned out to dovetail more neatly than I'd realized. That said, virtually no knowledge of Bat-canon is required for purposes of the present story, and I hope that no one is confused -- or appalled -- at the minimal crossover elements of the foregoing narrative.
== Comments ==
 
== Additional Easter Eggs ==
At one point, Casey asks Priory outright whether he used to be James Bond, to which he replies, "I’m quite sure I’d have made an amazingly bad spy." This appears to be a nod to Niven's appearance as Bond in the 1967 film version of Casino Royale.
The artifacts in the St. Edmund treasure vault include at least two with recognizable literary antecedents. The clockwork crocodile (said to have been created by "von Hook") implies a connection to Peter Pan, while the silver horn is strongly implied to summon the Wild Hunt (one of many potential counterparts appears in Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series).
Category:2012 Fanfiction
Category:Disney