The Autobiography of Mycroft Holmes

Chapter 23: Cold Case

When someone else answered Lestrade's office phone, I did not bicker with the man on the other end. I just told him to send a team over to 15 Pall Mall as quickly as possible.

The members began to file out of the Club when they realized what was going on; that another Senior had been killed. And in that crowd, I noticed Villarreal.

"Mr. Villarreal!" I shouted. The man heard me and turned around.

"Mycroft, he's dead! And I'm fine!"

"Where were you? I couldn't find you for nearly thirty minutes! You left Sherlock! Where did you go?"

"I didn't want Eldridge to die, Mycroft. I really didn't," Villarreal said, more forlorn than I had seen anyone in a very long time. "I didn't like him, but I didn't have any hatred for him! Who would do such a thing?"

"I'm trying to figure out the same thing, Mr. Villarreal," I said, ushering him out of the Club.

By the time that everyone had vacated the Club, the body had been hanging on that string for at least ten minutes. I hoped that New Scotland Yard would arrive soon; I didn't want the scene to be compromised any further.

The team from New Scotland Yard arrived just moments later. There were the usual five cars with blazing sirens and a white and blue emergency van for the body. But when not Lestrade but another woman got out of the Detective Inspector's car, I became livid.

"And who are you?" I asked the woman who stepped out of the car.

"Nice to meet you, too," the girl said as her team got out of the cars. That sounded like something Lestrade would say. The people on this girl's team were from Lestrade's team; I recognized them all. But they all seemed pretty fine with this new person ordering them around.

"I'm the one who called," I said. "I'm Mycroft Holmes."

"I did assume that you were the one who called. And again, nice to meet you Ms. Holmes."

I blinked twice. "Do you know who I am? I'm an old friend of Lestrade's!"

"Okay; who's Lestrade?"

"Gina Lestrade? D.I. Gina Lestrade? Assistant Detective Inspector for nearly a decade? Does any of that ring a bell?"

"Oh, I know the D.I. Lestrade! Well, I don't know her personally; I'm her replacement."

I nearly passed out. "Replacement?! Gina was fired?"

"No, she was pregnant. She's on maternity leave now."

I was silent for a minute, dumbstruck. I was debating on whether or not to leave, or burst out into rage. I chose the latter.

"This is an absurdity! Gina wasn't pregnant! I saw her this weekend; I was at her wedding. A man's body was dropped off there, and we investigated it together."

Now, it was the girl's turn to be shocked. As a 23-year old University graduate, (presumably from the University of London, with a degree in Criminal Justice and possibly another in Crime Scene Investigation) she likely had no idea this is what she'd be in for on her first week on the job.

"Ma'am, I honestly don't know what to say to you. I'm not in a position to tell you... All I know is that D.I. Lestrade left on Monday, with direct orders from our supervisors to take a nine-month maternity leave. And another thing you should probably know: once people take that nine-month break, they don't like to come back right away. They usually take, in total, a little over a year off."

I nearly fainted again. I didn't know where Lestrade lived, or how to contact her at all outside of her office and work cell. Neither did Sherlock. I had more questions that I could not ask this girl, whoever she was: What would happen to Sherlock and her job with New Scotland Yard? What would happen to my case? This girl didn't seem willing at all to take on this sort of case. And what would happen if there was another murder or occurrence relating to this case?

"Can I ask your name?"

"I am Detective Inspector Gregson," she stated flatly.

"Fine then, Gregson. This is a very involved case that has been open for nearly a year. I am willing to leave the scene soon, but before I go, I'd like to tell you how to do your job the way Lestrade did, just for the night. Okay?"

"Fine," she said with an irritated tone.

"Good. So what you have here is a case that Lestrade and I worked on extensively together with this team. You can trust them; they know well enough what they're doing. You're dealing with a murderer that, I deduce, will not commit another murder until Lestrade returns, you understand?

He's a psychopath who kills very important men; mostly high-level operatives in the British Government. He plans the murders well; only a highly sophisticated mind can figure out some of the clues he leaves. But I think you'll be fine; he won't come after you. He wants Lestrade. And me."

Gregson just stared at me. "I believe you. You said he leaves clues that presumably only you can deduce. Do you want to survey the crime scene one more time before you go? Maybe he left another clue?" she asked, seeming to lead me back into the case just once more.

"Do I have your permission to re-enter?"

"Yes," Gregson said as she led me onto the scene. We walked back into the sanctorium, where Tom stood waiting for me. He stared absently at the body hanging from the ceiling until I walked up to him and lightly tapped his shoulder. He backed away, and I led Gregson up to the body.

"Do you see anything, Ms. Holmes?"

"No, I do not. But I know this was a man no one liked. Mr. Eldridge was friends with no man. Not even Villarreal, who was the closest thing that Eldridge ever had to a friend. People revered him. But hated him, at the same time. So he's hanging from a ceiling up in the air, where people can both revere and hate him in death just as they revered and hated him in life.

"That's pretty damn deep," Lestrade's replacement said.

"All of his messages are. This one is too obvious for a note. But still, like the others, only I could really figure it out..." I said, trying to think of what this could mean.

"Thank you for your assistance, Ms. Holmes," Gregson stated, ushering me and Tom out. "We'll take care of this, and we'll let you know if any new developments arise," she said almost as an afterthought.

I hailed a cab outside the Club and left the Scotland Yard team to their work. Tom got in with me, and we told the cabbie to drop us off at each of our individual addresses. Tom's happened to be the first drop off, so I bade him farewell as he left the cab, and it continued on to Baker Street. But he stared at the car as it drove away, and after a while, I could no longer see him.

Neither Gregson nor her team ever called me for any new updates on the case. In fact, I heard nothing of New Scotland Yard in my home at 221B Baker Street for over a year. Sherlock stopped working for them when I told her what happened, and she relied only on her client-cases, which were luckily just as profitable for her.

I didn't talk to Lestrade at all. I didn't know how to contact her, and even if I did, I didn't know what I'd actually say to her. And the second-year anniversary of Sherlock's living with me passed uneventfully, as did the rest of that year.

Time, seemingly, had stopped and waited for the perfect moment to begin again. And that moment came the day Detective Inspector Lestrade called me and Sherlock to come over to her house and see her new baby daughter on the day before her scheduled return to New Scotland Yard.

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