The Autobiography of Mycroft Holmes

Chapter 3: 221B

There is one final bit of information that should be presented to the reader before the story can officially begin: there is a time misconception about Sherlock's history as a "Consulting Detective."

I created the term right after I had spent nearly a decade in-between jobs. I was a professional, but I could not stay in one job for long. I was not yet thirty, but nearing it, and I knew I needed a better job to hold down my position in the Diogenes Club. Dues were obscenely expensive. I was only a Novice, and I still wanted to advance.

By then, the Diogenes Club had nearly consumed my existence. I did not live there, yet, but I was close to it. I spent nights there sometimes, sitting in my allotted chair in the sanctorium. I sat diagonally from Tom Saylor, who joined a little after I did, but was not nearly as committed to the Club as I was.

On the day of Sherlock's graduation from Oxford, I was in the audience. I sat with my mother and father in the Alumni section of the audience, wearing a Diogenes Club vest with my rank on its shoulders, a business skirt and black pumps, and a dressing gown-and-sash set with my Oxford honors emblazoned on it from my graduation seven years before.

I was an anomaly compared to the rest of the people in the section; I was half their age and had more decorations than they'd have if they went back to Oxford for ten more years.

When the graduates launched their caps in the air and cheered in celebration, Sherlock walked off the display stage first. She ran up to me, and I embraced her. "Congratulations!" I yelled to her, considering our voices could barely be heard above the noise around us. "Thanks!" she yelled back, laughing.

Sherlock told me she wanted me to take us to my favorite restaurant in London for a celebration.

"Well, my favorite restaurant is in Pall Mall, but I probably can't afford it..."

"Can we go there? Oh, wait, I probably can't talk in there, can I?" she asked jokingly, referring to the odd regulations of membership in the Diogenes Club.

"Maybe not at the bar," I responded to Sherlock's question, laughing a little bit. My parents looked at me as if to ask what all that meant.

"Oh, Mycroft didn't tell you? She's a member of this club..."

I gave my sister a slight push to the side. "Yes, I am a member of a professional society," I told them. I refrained from providing any more details.

Sherlock and I walked down Pall Mall, ahead of our parents, when we got out of the cab that brought us there.

"Are they staying at a hotel?" Sherlock asked me in reference to our parents. She didn't even know that they were going to be at the graduation. Or maybe she did deduce it, and didn't let me know.

"Well, they definitely are not staying at 221B," I told Sherlock. She laughed, knowing that if anyone were to stay with me, it certainly would not be my parents. Not while I was a Diogenes member, not when there was no guarantee whether or not I would return at night after spending all day at the club. "What, do you not have a place to stay?"

"No, and I do not want to return to the United States. I like London, Mycroft. Can I stay with you at 221B?" Sherlock asked. I was a bit surprised, but I wanted to know more before I made a decision.

"Let me respond to your question with yet another question: do you have a job? And can you pay rent?"

"I do not have a job, and I cannot pay rent."

I breathed out and ran my right hand through my long, dark hair. The single diamond stud in the gold band on my right fourth finger snagged in my hair. The shock and sudden pain when I tried to pull my hand out allowed me to return to myself. "If you do not have a job and cannot pay rent, you cannot live with me."