Enola Holmes- The Fox In The Henhouse

Chapter 9

Sherlock never could predict Enola. Four days after their mother had been reported as missing, when Sherlock was returning home for the first time in many years, he didn't give much thought as to what Enola would be like. Perhaps this was simply because he thought about her in the same way he thinks of all relatives of a subject in a case, not much more than a witness to be questioned.

But there were a few things he expected. He expected her to be well educated, well dressed and positively emotional as daughters and wives often are under the circumstance of a missing person. An occupational hazard for Sherlock. While she was certainly well educated, she hardly fit the profile of a proper Victorian young lady. She continued to be unpredictable after that. He never anticipated she'd run away, find the Viscount Tewksbury, run away again, become a detective and be able to convince Mycroft not to send her to boarding school.

And Sherlock could never predict what he had found in his sister's absence. The locked desk, the bomb schematics, the discovery that she was the owner of one of the biggest cab companies in London, and now these articles. Along with several editions of a suffragette magazine, she had a letter containing an article in handwriting.

This is a call to all women who want change. Gather your belongings and leave the men who take you for granted. In your absence they will learn the value you hold. We have suffered for too long in silence. Day by day, we grow more restless. Position and standing has crippled our society. Sat in their ivory towers, men who won't listen, run our country. Will a government that doesn't listen to our voices heed our words when it is too late? A new government must be forged from the ash of the old.

Sherlock's stomach twists reading this. The anger behind it. Is this anger his sister felt? The letter is ready to send, and Sherlock would have assumed Enola wrote it but it wasn't her hand. He went through her notes and previous writings to compare but it didn't match. It also did match Lord Tewksbury's or any of her other associates.

Along with these he had found a petition signed by many Victorian officials, including Mycroft. The petition seemed to be for the Battersea club, and while Sherlock was not a member, he knew of the club as it had an important (yet unofficial) place in politics. It was a gentlemen's club, much like Mycroft's beloved Diogenes club, except here talking was allowed. Over the years, it became a place where Lords and members of parliament were to have discussions and debates much like in parliament, but here they had the assertion that it was all off-the-record, and they could drink.

The petition itself was about complications with the Victoria underground station, located under the club and is currently having extensive work done on it. The document goes on for 3 pages detailing what the signatures are needed for, but despite this it makes no sense.

While Sherlock knows he should take immediately this to Mycroft, he hesitates. Up until now he had firmly believed that Enola hadn't run away. He goes over to her desk and begins to scan through each of the suffragette magazines, hoping to find something that shows Enola didn't have ill intent. But his stomach drops when he rereads the article in the letter, for he notices a code.

Taking the word after each full stop it reads- THIS GATHER IN WE DAY POSITION SAT WILL A.

Rearrange that- We will gather in position A this Saturday