The Autobiography of Mycroft Holmes

Chapter 11: Shots Fired

I remember the day in the beginning of October; it will be forever engrained into my mind. The day Sherlock Holmes nearly killed me.

It was the morning I was to leave for my golf trip with the Seniors of the Diogenes Club and Tom Saylor. I had gone to a grocery shop to pick up a few things and was headed home, when I stopped in Mrs. Hudson's shop.

"Mrs. Hudson!" I shouted into her back room repeatedly from her shop. Some of her clientele looked up at me, but most did not care that there was a girl in a gray suit with a cell phone and six file folders in her hand screaming and yelling inside a café. Mrs Hudson finally emerged from the room, asking me what I wanted.

"You already forgot that you asked me to pick up things for you?' I asked her. When she blinked thrice in confusion, I pulled out the three bottles of medicine out of my handbag that were meant largely for people over the age of sixty-five. "You asked me for these. Do you know how odd it was to walk up to the counter with these in my hand?"

"Likely very odd," Mrs. Hudson remarked back at me.

"Anyway, I have that golf outing today with the people from the Diogenes. They are going to pick me up at nine in the morning, and I'll be gone until about five tonight."

"Your nine-to-five is so much better than my nine-to-five. I wish I was you right about now. Now go suffer through your day already," Mrs. Hudson joked.

"I will," I replied, smiling. That was just before I heard what sounded like planks of wood being broken. The sound rang out through the shop, but still, none of Mrs. Hudson's clientele paid it any mind.

"Did you hear that?" asked I to Mrs. Hudson.

"Oh that's been going on for about an hour, off and on. It sounds like it's coming from your flat, but it could be Stamford working on the basement for all I know. Could that be your sister?" Mrs. Hudson asked.

It was very possible it could be her. I had to see what she was doing to my home, so I elected to leave right then.

"Goodbye," I said. I walked through Mrs. Hudson's back room and into her house, which she had left the door open to. Just as I thought, she left the door into the residence hall open, as well. I walked up the stairs, to hear the sound again, but this time it was not muffled. It was the sound of gunshots.

"Mrs. Hudson! Someone's firing shots!" I yelled into the hall. I heard someone scream, presumably Mrs. Hudson, and I ran back down the stairs. I looked around quickly for something to possibly defend myself with in case of an attack. I ran over to Mrs. Hudson's fireplace and grabbed the solid bronze metal mantelpiece off of it and grabbed the poker from its holder next to the ledge on the fireplace. An odd defense mechanism, but useful being that it was the only thing I could find.

I made my way up the stairs, seemingly ready for battle. I quietly stepped up to the front door to my flat and opened the door just slightly. The person inside stopped shooting for a second and began again soon after. I flung the door open, holding the poker out in front of me and using the metal mantelpiece as a shield. The shooter turned to me. I had my mantelpiece shield up over my face so I could not see who it was, but I knew instantly who it was anyway. Only one person I knew could be so ignorant as to think she left the door to her flat open by choice.

"SHERLOCK!!!!" I yelled, throwing the poker and the mantelpiece down the stairs. Mrs. Hudson shrieked and presumably jumped to avoid it.

"What's going on up here?!" Mrs. Hudson yelled, running into the room. She saw what I saw; Sherlock standing in front of a wood target with rubber on its back, holding a smoking pistol. I even knew the model... I shouldn't have, but I did.

"Oh, Sherlock, are you trying to get me thrown out of this building?" I asked my little sister, who was holding back her laughter.

"It's not funny, Sherlock! I'm deadly serious! Don't think for a minute that this is not my only house and that I can just up and move us to another flat! Do not even think about messing with Mrs. Hudson, because I have nowhere else to go! Do you understand me clearly, or not?"

"I understand, but-"

"No!" I yelled, as Mrs. Hudson began to walk away, decidedly unentertained.

"Ladies, if you don't mind, I'll just get going, I don't want to get stuck in the middle of your row..."

"Please do, Mrs. Hudson. This is something we need to work out on our own, sister to sister. Human to human. Or... whatever I am to whatever you are."

Mrs. Hudson shut the door on her way out. "I cannot believe you are practicing your shooting within doors! You have got to be kidding me right now... I can get thrown out for this, Sherlock."

"Calm down, Mycroft..."

"I will not calm down! This is a serious matter! Even if you don't think so. I did not even know you, well- I did not know you shot at least."

"I don't. This is for a case."

"Everything is 'for a case.' I don't even know what's really for a case and what isn't anymore."

"A person will be convicted for murder if I can't prove that he was too far away to make such a clean shot through a now-dead woman's chest. He must have been standing closer to be the killer, but he was not; since it was in public and many people saw it. They all say he was far away."

"So what? They could be wrong; usually witnesses are wrong."

"But I know there was someone else. This woman was a killer, also. Someone was sent to kill her. Her brother-in-law would not have had a reason to kill her, but someone else might have."

"The brother-in-law could have just been out of his mind! Have Lestrade run a mental exam on him; then we'll talk."

"She and her lackeys already did, and nothing of suspect was found. So I think he's innocent. This is an exact model of the gun that the killer used, down to the slightly crooked barrel of the gun. It must have been crooked because this was shot aimed at the heart, but it hit just below it. She bled out."

"Good work. But try not to do this too, too often."

"Hopefully, I won't ever have to do it again."

"I'm going to go get ready for golf. Please don't blow up my flat while I'm gone for the day."

"No promises, and I wish I could give you my apologies, dear sister, but the look on your face when you ran in here like you were on a battlefield was priceless."

"As was the look on yours to see that I thought of doing all that stuff before I got in here. I know you wouldn't have. No you, Sherlock, would have just run into the line of fire and tried to stop the shooter with your bare hands."

"Don't rub it in, Mycroft. Goodbye."

"And I know you'd have never used a shield, as well. I estimate that's the last thing you'd think of."

"Goodbye, Mycroft."

I walked away, laughing to myself. I had the last word, thankfully. It was still my flat, and I had say in what Sherlock did as long as she paid rent to me. I locked the door to my room and changed into my golf polo and pants; it was getting a bit cold for one of my many pencil skirts. I looked at myself in the mirror, then grabbed from the corner of my room the bag of golf clubs that I had borrowed from Mrs. Hudson's shop a week before.

*Expect more action scenes... Thanks again for making it this far! 95 reads!!! The count went from 69 to 95 in less than twenty-four hours! Seriously, you readers are amazing :) *