Version 3

Mycroft Holmes swept in the door of his boyhood home, stripped off his hat, coat and gloves and piled them in his mother’s arm. “How long this time?”

“Three days,” Violet said, turning to dump the hat, coat and gloves into the arms of Pansy, the housemaid. “Not so much as a sneeze.”

Mycroft headed for the stairs, Violet on his heels, chewing her lower lip. “Did you speak to Superintendent Midwinter, then?”

Mycroft nodded. “It’s a wonder he didn’t heave me into the bloody dungeon.” He cringed, remembering the awkward meeting which had ended with a shaky truce not a half-hour hence: Midwinter behind his desk, gripping the arms of his chair to keep himself from rocketing through the roof in rage, Mycroft hemming and hawing about how the Queen greatly appreciates the Superintendent’s position on the matter, et cetera, et cetera, but there are some things bigger than ourselves, extenuating circumstances, et cetera, et cetera, times when we must all subordinate our personal preferences for the good of the order, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It had been one of the most grueling hours of Mycroft’s life. And this was a man who had negotiated delicate treaties with some of the most notorious heads of state in the northern hemisphere.

Sherlock possessed an intelligence bordering on the unprecedented, and yet at times was as dense as dirt. Not once, but twice he had vanished from his post when its responsibilities inconvenienced him. It was unconscionable. The flaming idiot deserved to be sacked.

It was precisely this sort of interference the police did not need. How many lives had been lost throughout the ages, how many nations had fallen because of politics? Mycroft despised politics. He had taken the position with the crown partially because he had entertained fantasies of impressing his views on some of the more culpable practitioners of the craft. And yet, not five years in, there he was, oiling the old wheels himself.

“I’m so glad you’re here, love,” Violet panted, trying to keep pace. “You’re the only one he’ll listen to, and I’m at my wit’s end. I couldn’t just let him stay up there, could I? What with constables beating down the door at all hours, wondering where Sherlock’s got to. It’s such a strain on my nerves, you know, running this household.” She hesitated a moment, ruminating. “Of course, when I pass, the house will belong to you boys — lock, stock and barrel.”

“I have a house, Mother,” Mycroft said, slowing his pace up the steep staircase. Unlike Sherlock, who had to stoop to get through doors and would be gaunt as a ghost the rest of his days, Mycroft had inherited his father’s tendency to spread from the middle outward. Not too many years ago these stairs had been his playground --- stalking Huns by day, jungle cats by night, for hours on end. And now he was huffing and puffing like a Liverpool & Manchester locomotive.

“Yes, I know you have your own house,” Violet said. “And I’m happy for your brother to have this one. It’s just that–”

She stopped halfway up the staircase and Mycroft, grateful for the breather, turned to face her. “What is it?”

She ran a finger along the banister. “If Sherlock ends up with the house, that’s fine with me. Really, it is. It’s just that, well, your brother isn’t exactly what one might call ‘tidy.’”

Mycroft grunted. “What tipped you to it, Mother, the half-dissected crocodile in the WC or the fag ends under his pillow?”

“That’s what I mean. He’s not at all like you, love. Do you remember how you had your special spot for each of your playthings and always had your bed made before school?” She drew a dreamy expression from her catalog. “Those were precious times, love.”

She sighed. “Your brother will have the house in ruins before I’m cold. My beautiful roses gone to seed, wild animals nesting in the eaves. She frowned. “He wouldn’t care a fig. As long as there’s a door to lock and drapes to draw, your brother’s as contented as a cat by the fire.”

Mycroft patted her on the head. “Not to worry, Mother. I’ll just have the Secretary of War pop round from time to time to see to your roses.”

Violet’s face fell. “Begging your pardon, Mr. Highly Placed Government Official. I didn’t know you’d got too important for your dying mother.”

Mycroft resumed his ascent on Mount Staircase, Violet prattling along behind. “You were always the one eager to please, the one at my elbow — stirring the cake batter in one of my old aprons, brushing my hair with that angelic smile of yours like something out of a nursery rhyme.” She threatened the dreamy bit again.

“Sherlock!” Mycroft boomed, gaining the top step and accosting the bedroom door.

Violet persisted. “How about we bake a lovely cake, dear? Like old times?”

“Sherlock,” Mycroft roared, “open this door before I strangle Mother!”

“Working!” Sherlock bellowed from inside.

“Superintendent Midwinter will be overjoyed to hear it, I’m sure,” Mycroft bellowed back, taking a handkerchief from his pocket and mopping at his forehead. “Perhaps he’ll take that into account when he straps you to the rack.”

The bedsprings creaked and a moment later the door cracked an inch. “My talents are wasted in that comedy of errors, Mycroft,” Sherlock said, one eye visible. Clove-scented cigarette smoke seeped out into the hallway. “Mycroft, are you ill?”

“Why can’t you take a more convenient room, for heaven’s sake?” Mycroft asked, loosening his collar. “I feel like I’ve scaled the Matterhorn.”

Sherlock swung the door open and blew a nimbus of smoke down the hall. “Mother rules the ground floor like a martinet,” he said.

“Ashes!” Violet hissed.

Sherlock brought a dirty saucer from the pocket of his robe, which seemed to be the only article of clothing he worn for the whole of his self-imposed exile. He tapped his ash into the dish. “I rest my case.”

Mycroft waved at the smoke and maneuvered his bulk into the bedroom. No matter how many times he entered the place, it was always a shock. Clothes lay everywhere, wadded and stomped. Glasses, teacups, soup bowls and saucers were stacked upon the bureau, the bookcase and the windowsill, their molded remains unrecognizable. An antique side table that had been in the family for two-hundred years was shoved against the wall, groaning beneath the weight of a bubbling tangle of beakers, flasks and glass tubing which was leaking a black stringy substance which gave off a stink that would have driven Dante from his inferno. And the papers — newspapers, nautical maps, coffee-stained letters in foreign languages, half-finished sketches he couldn’t have begun to identify.

“You’ve wasted your time,” Sherlock said. “I cannot possibly return to the CID.” He tapped another ash. “My last assignment was to go about knocking on doors in order to wake people without clocks.”

Mycroft toed at a particularly unrecognizable mound of questionable material that looked ready to germinate. “Are there people without clocks?”

Sherlock collapsed onto his unmade bed, sending detritus hurtling up and off the mattress like panicked passengers abandoning a sinking ship. “Evidently they are legion.”

“I have a mind to set Pansy loose in here with a match,” Violet said, standing outside the doorway as if she were afraid of exposing herself to a contagion.

“Out of the question!” Sherlock rumbled face down into his pillow. He rolled onto his back and snatched papers into each hand. “The value of any one of these may someday exceed that of the Magna Carta.”

“Close your robe, Sherlock,” Mycroft hissed.

Sherlock tied the sash and sat up on the edge of the bed. “There. Decency is restored.”

Violet braced herself, entered and began picking through the clothes. “You have to get dressed.” She inspected a shirt that seemed a bit less wrinkled than the rest and tossed it to Sherlock.

“Superintendent Midwinter has agreed to speak to you. Isn’t that right, Mycroft?”

Sherlock let the shirt drop to the floor and turned to his brother. “I don’t know what Midwinter told you, but I would be very surprised if it at all resembled what actually transpired.”

“Sherlock, I realize the man is an ass,” Mycroft said. “But he’s hardly a liar. Liars do not end up promoted to Chief Superintendent of the CID.”

Sherlock snorted. “No? Did he tell you I vanished from my post?”

“Yes.”

“Did he say that it has now been–” he consulted the mantle clock atop a teetering minaret of books in the corner of the room “–sixty-two hours since he last heard from me?”

“He did.”

Sherlock crossed his arms and trumpeted, “Lies!”

Mycroft gave his brother a long look. “You’ve been mucking around with your infernal disguises again, haven’t you?”

Sherlock grinned and rushed to his closet where he plunged in up to his chin and began hurling what looked to be the better part of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane costume shop over his right shoulder. Capes, pirate swords, turbans, wigs, beards. “Eureka!” he bellowed, fiddled with his face a moment, then turned round.

Mycroft shrugged. “You could be any old, eccentric gentleman in London.”

“Exactly.”

Mycroft sneered. “And it was as this–”

“Clement Entwhistle.”

“It was as this ‘Clement Entwhistle’ that you took your post and subsequently visited Superintendent Midwinter.”

Sherlock flashed a sly grin. “Naturally, I intended to reveal myself after a moment or two, but the old horse was so taken in. And how would it look if word got round that a lowly PC got the better of the chief superintendent?” He paused. “I think I may have been too successful, Mycroft. I’m afraid that I have yet to devise an end to the masquerade.”

Mycroft moved closer, simmering. “I have overextended myself, Sherlock. At this moment, Midwinter is in his office, believing you were weaned at the royal breast. We can only thank providence that he hasn’t the stones to actually investigate the tales I told him, else we would both be hanged by St. Swithun’s Day.”

Sherlock sulked.

“End it,” Mycroft said. “Tonight.”

Sherlock removed his nose. “I cannot.”

“Why on earth not?”

“Because Mr. Entwhistle has an appointment with a certain young lady and would hate to disappoint her.”

This brought a yelp of joy from Violet. “You don’t mean it! A young lady, Sherlock.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “It’s not what you think, Mother. There is no romantic involvement.”
Violet wasn’t to be denied so easily. Not after all these years on her knees at St. Paul’s begging the good Lord to put a nice girl in Sherlock’s path. A church wedding appeared before her eyes. A thousand twinkling candles illuminating a flower-gilded sanctuary, ten handsome groomsmen standing witness in tie and tails across from a matching ten porcelain bridesmaids. Rows and rows of family, friends and well-wishers sending Violet Holmes’s youngest off into bliss and self-sufficiency.
“Who is she, dear?” Violet asked, taking Sherlock’s hands in hers. “What’s she like?”

“Her name is Edith Baskin,” Sherlock answered and then leveled Violet with one, well-aimed verbal blow. “And she is recently a mother. Though not by me.”

Mycroft muttered, “As if there were any doubt.”

“Do not make the mistake of judging my worth as a suitor on your...prurient criteria,” Sherlock snapped. “Retaining one’s purity until marriage — despite your example, Mycroft — is still the prudent course. Isn’t that right, Mother?”

The friends and flowers vanished. “If you say so, dear.”

“Miss Baskin–”

“‘Miss?’” Mycroft interrupted.

“There is no husband,” Sherlock said. “If there were, she would not have found herself taking the drastic measures that have now forced her to seek my assistance.”

Mycroft grunted, “Mr. Entwhistle’s assistance, you mean.”

“Correct.”

Mycroft plopped down on the foot of the bed. It never seemed to matter how carefully Mycroft planned his route, no matter how resolved he was to stick to the path, Sherlock somehow always managed to pull him into the briar patch. He sighed. “You might as get all of it out.”