Basil Baker

**Basil Baker** (a.k.a. **Detective Know It All**) is a character in *With Pearl and Ruby Glowing.* He is based on the character Basil of Baker Street from the movie *The Great Mouse Detective*.

## Biography

Early in his life, Basil was discovered to be a child prodigy, earning several awards and skipping several grades. His father, wanting to nourish this gift, did not give him any praise and scolded him for not having perfect grades, causing him to develop an unhealthy desire to make his father proud. When Basil started college at thirteen, he struggled to maintain excellent marks, but he found his roommate Monty McQueen's cocaine stash and took some, which allowed him to study for longer hours. Monty eventually caught him, but he threatened to report him for drug possession, so Monty got him more cocaine in exchange for doing his assignments.

After graduating, Basil returned home and managed to solve a case that appeared on TV, to which his father merely responded "There may be hope for you yet, my boy" instead of congratulating him. He went on to become a private detective and worked closely with the Calisota City Police Department. Sometime later, Basil started receiving letters from Professor Ratigan and messaged him back and forth over the course of two years before deciding to meet in person. He met Ratigan at a pub and they went back to his apartment, but Ratigan raped him on his vis-à-vis. Basil called his father afterwards, but he blamed him for being too naïve and hung up. He threw out the vis-à-vis, no longer being able to look at it, and then he deadbolted his door and bought a dog he named Toby to keep watch.

A few years, Basil met David Dawson while on a case and noticed that he never used him for his intellect, which made him skeptical, but at the same time he felt safer around him. When Dawson found his stash of cocaine one day, he made him get help to curb his addiction. Sometime after getting clean, Basil went out alone to investigate disappearances in the city, but came back to his dog dead on the floor and Ratigan holding Dawson at gunpoint. Ratigan made Basil lay prone on the bed naked and told Dawson that if he didn't rape him then he would shoot Basil, so he did. When Dawson finished and Ratigan left, Basil yelled at him to leave, then boarded up the bedroom door. Afterwards, he became afraid of being alone in his apartment at night out of fear that Ratigan would come back for him.

Due to lacking money for a therapist and not wanting to disappoint his father even more, Basil started coming to the Palace. He could hear Toby while there, but since others could hear their loved ones, he chalked it up to group hallucinations caused by trauma. Basil also learned that Ratigan hurt people other than him, so he set up a board of notes and photographs in order to gather evidence that could be used to put Ratigan away. He later began staying with Wilhelmina and Wallace when they told him Gromit had a stalker (who unknown to them was Ratigan). After the Corrupt Cops were caught, Ratigan told Lin Beifong that Basil probably knew about what they were doing, and when Lin questioned Basil, she got mad that he didn't notice, but he believed she was right and felt guilty. Most of the officers at the CCPD developed an unfavorable opinion of him after that, some even thinking that he was involved with the corruption somehow.

In *Darkest Hours, Frosting Flowers*, Basil stayed late at work and was heading home when Jake Cardoso confronted him and revealed that he and God's Will First were going to come after his family. Basil ran off, but not before Jake shot him in the shoulder, and when he got home, he told Wilhelmina what happened. The next morning, he went to the police station to report it, but they refused to do anything about it. Basil went into an alley and bought some drugs, breaking his sobriety, but the seller was Goob and it was actually a sedative, so he passed out. He came to in a dimly lit room with Ratigan standing over him, telling him that the Ark wants to rent him out before he can get his hands on him. Basil passed out again and woke up in another room of the warehouse, where he met Lizzy, whom he discovered is Wilhelmina and Melisha's biological daughter, and later Robin Hood when he was moved into the room. Later, Ratigan brought GWF over to assault Basil as part of their deal not to hurt him.

Around the time GWF went on their last attack, the Weasels had been captured by the Ark when they tried to record themselves selling them drugs, but they managed to free themselves and free Basil, Robin, and Lizzy. When everyone was about to leave, Basil thought it was too convenient that there was no one trying to stop them, so he handed Lizzy over to the Weasels, telling her to tell Wilhelmina and her family that he loved them. He grabbed Greasy's gun so he could kill himself, but Robin tried to take it and they struggled over it. Lizzy and the Weasels ran away as the gun went off, leaving Basil's fate uncertain.