The Man With The Umbrella

- 58 -

Culverton Smith stands a few metres away from Sherlock and John just as the cameramen circle the trio plus Smith's PA. "I don't do handshakes." Smith stated just as he inched closer to the Consulting Detective. "It'll have to be a hug." He suggested.

"I know." Sherlock agreed just as reporters with notebooks gather around them all. Chuckling, Smith reaches out to hug the Holmes man. "Oh, Sherlock. What can I say? Thanks to you we're, uh, we're everywhere!" The short man bedazzled.

Holding a pen out pointedly, a male news reporter gestures to Sherlock. "Mister Holmes, how did Culverton talk you into this?"

"Well, he's-he's a detective." Smith fakes a startled look upon visual reputation. "Maybe I just confessed!" He laughs along with the public surrounding them.

Molly and Mary watch from a distance away just as the men follow the most significant undetected serial killer in British criminal history...

***

Mycroft Holmes of course knew of his younger brothers recent fascination with the recently famous Culverton Smith and he couldn't help but to place his deduction skills to the test towards it too.

Just like the living room of two-hundred and twenty-one Baker Street; one of Mr Holmes' the elders less visited offices was lined with pictures of the greasy little man along with red lines that drew connections to his recently deceased wife, Lady Smallwood and his sister, the younger Holmes, Eurus.

He knew in his mind that it somehow all connected in one way or another but he couldn't make sense of his deductions. Perhaps it was because he found within himself that Amelia was running rapid in his mind-palace... Again.

Shooting out a sharp breath ruefully; he tilted his head forward to press his index finger and thumb across his forehead to push into his temples.

It seemed as though that he would be taking a trip to the emotional side of his mind-palace sooner than he had planned...

***

He appeared standing with a straight back in the emptiness of his mind, waiting with little patience for his wife to patter through. He tucked his hands neatly into the sides of his black three-piece suit, an outfit in itself that replicated the public emotion of grief and possible anguish, and rolled his jaw as an imperial door with good out-linings came towards him at a same pace as a conveyer belt would when delivering food.

The movement of the closing-in door casted a light breeze to flutter over Mycroft's sunken face and eyeing the door with familiarity, he knocked in that precise little manner of his before walking through.

Yes, it was impolite to simply walk through without the spoken allowance to do so but he figured that he was most certainly entitled to considering that it was inside of his own bloody mind!

Amelia appeared in her knee-lengthened leggings and the shirt she usually wore when painting and as if to prove the point, he envisioned small speckles of paint splattered onto her forearms, fingers and nose.

He shook his head to get it out of itself and eyed Amelia up with scrutiny and impatience. "Delilah, what do you want? You do realise that I'm working." He emphasised.

Amelia blinked in the forefront of his mind like a blithering idiot before squaring her shoulders back and bestowing her husband with an eye closely accumulated to his own. "Mycroft, you do realise that you're actually arguing with yourself? It's not I that is playing on one's mind..." She sassed with dry amusement. "This is you tormenting yourself." She acknowledged.