The Autobiography of Mycroft Holmes

Chapter 33: Prodigal Sister

Nearly a half a decade after I had last seen her, Sherlock Holmes re-entered my life. But I still cannot say that we reunited willingly...

That day, I was in the Diogenes Club's sanctorium, and I was seated in my chair like I was on almost every other day. It should not have been a day of any sort of excitement, and I was about to leave to go to my Government office for the day.

But I could not leave before Tom picked up his newspaper and looked at me. He darted his eyes over at the Stranger's Room three times, almost as if they were little arrows pointing at it and telling me to get going.

"What do you have to tell me today?" I asked Tom when we shut the door behind us.

"You'll never guess whose face I saw in the newspaper today, Mycroft. And even if you do, you're not going to believe it."

I sighed deeply. "Well, the only person who could really shock me at this point would be... Sherlock?"

"Just look at it yourself!" Tom said, throwing the paper at me in a nearly all-consuming disbelief.

The headline read: RACHE IS DRESSED IN SCARLET!

And right below this headline was a picture of none other than my sister Sherlock standing next to the old Detective Inspector Gregson and a few other Scotland Yard representatives, proclaiming that she solved one of the biggest murder cases in London history.

To top it all off, she was standing with the Prime Minister of Britain as well. But the one person I didn't recognize was the one standing to her immediate right, between her and the Prime Minister; a gentleman who looked about three years older than me, who was listed below the picture as Dr. John H. Watson.

I was incredibly confused. I was realizing at that moment that I'd honestly thought that my sister had dropped off the face of the Earth for all those years. My shock was even greater than I thought it would be.

This is what it read below the picture of Sherlock on the front page:

Consulting Detective Sherlock Holmes (yes, that job does exist) has just solved one of the most perplexing and deadly interesting murder cases in the history of London, with the assistance of Detective Inspector Gregson - and you can read about this case on the website of Dr. John H. Watson as of noon today! (See p. 2 for continuation)

I immediately turned to the second page. Tom was looking over my shoulder. "See, there she is again!" he said, pointing to yet another shot of Sherlock. In this one, she was shaking the Prime Minister's hand with Gregson. This shot took up half the page, and had even more text below it.

Sherlock Holmes, a Consulting Detective for New Scotland Yard and the general public based out of 221B Baker Street, has just been recognized by the Prime Minister for solving a case that was an enigma to Scotland Yard for months - until Ms. Holmes was put on the case. She deduced the meaning of a woman's final written plea for understanding: RACHE, which is actually German for revenge. The more grisly details of the woman's condition will be let out, but the word RACHE was written in blood on a wall in the house in Brixton Street where the murder took place.

It did turn out that it was a revenge killing. Sherlock Holmes' extraordinary deductions revealed such details as the appearance of the murderer and his location. His work at St. Bartholomew's Hospital also helped to identify chemical components used in the poison that killed the lady who was found murdered in the house.

The article proceeded to describe what I had been wondering for years: what Sherlock was doing, where she was living, and who her friends were. It revealed that she'd been living in an apartment on Montague Street before returning to 221B with Watson as if she'd never lived there in the first place. I assumed that Mrs. Hudson must have given her a discounted rate since it can be easily deduced that no one else moved in after she left.

It also stated that she had been a consulting detective for years, but it did not state where she got the idea from for that job. She did not credit me, apparently, for anything she did. I was appalled, but not entirely surprised. I had deduced that she was angry with me for something, and this basically proved it.

The article stated that she had only just met Watson through an old friend named Mike Stamford. Mike, as it said in the article, knew Sherlock from their employment at St. Bart's hospital and their assistance with certain matters at New Scotland Yard. I had now known this; no one even stated their history with me at 221B! I was taken aback by this; I thought Stamford was above that!

Tom left, and I went to work. I took the paper with me, and at noon, I read the published story of Sherlock's adventure titled A Study in Scarlet on Watson's website.

And I could not believe what I was seeing.

The article went more in-depth into how the two of them met and what their professional relationship was like. It described Sherlock's violin-playing and disguises that I found eccentric beyond allowance, and her association with the Baker Street irregulars. The story told how Sherlock proved Lestrade wrong and solved a case that no one thought she could possibly solve.

When I was done, I was exhausted from trying to put all the pieces together in my head. It was three o'clock in the afternoon. I rushed to finish all my work by five o'clock so that I could return to my home at the Diogenes. I did, and I told Tom all I'd found out about my sister in detail.

"That is fascinating," he said as we sat in the Stranger's Room together. So she's still a detective."

"And she credits me for nothing. She does not even mention my name anywhere!"

"What can you deduce about that Watson man?"

"I don't even know! I don't... think... that Sherlock's having a romantic relationship with him. I mean, he's so much older than her. He's got to be a decade older than she is."

"He lives with her?"

"I think he lives in my old room, but I don't even think I can make an accurate deduction about Sherlock anymore... What she's been doing is not at all what I had thought."

"Didn't Watson say somewhere in the article or in the story that he'd continue chronicling her adventures?"

"Yes, he did. I guess we'll have to wait to hear more."

And about a month and a half later, we did hear more. Another one of Watson's stories was published to the tune of even more newspaper recognition, and I sat down at a table in the Stranger's Room one day to read with Tom. We finished it in less than an hour. By that time, he'd caught up on the first story and had known well what was going on just as I did.

"Sherlock's travelling! Without you!"

"Oh, that's not even the thing that makes my blood boil most. Look at this! Watson's married! And Sherlock is still at 221B! Alone!"

"And you're still living in the upper rooms of the Diogenes, alone."

"Well, you know I've been looking around here for good lodgings for a while. I found one that's actually across the street from you and I checked it out. I think I may begin renting it. But it just won't be the same without having Mrs. Hudson as a landlady, though..."

"Do you want to contact Sherlock?"

"I think I'll wait a bit. But she's got to know that I'm seeing all this new information about her."

I never found out for sure whether or not she really did. But by the time I'd elected to contact her, I was already in my new lodgings outside the Diogenes. I was across the street from Tom and around the corner from the Club. Sherlock, by this time, had actually had many other adventures that I'd read about through Watson's webpage. Many of these cases shared a similarity to the case I eventually relinquished for her analysis.

It had come to my attention on one occasion that my neighbor, a Greek interpreter named Mr. Melas, had been kidnapped and forced to translate information for a group of foreign strangers. Or so he'd told me. So I narrowed my eyes in confusion and told him I'd contact someone who could help him.

You don't think I actually called the police, do you? I reluctantly called a more intelligent crime solving machine: my sister Sherlock.

*The team of Sherlock and Mycroft returns!!! Thank you for reading, and especially for helping me CRUSH my reads goals in the past few days!!! The story is about to get exciting again :) so read on into the next chapter for more! --->