I am not lonely [Mystrade]

CHAPTER 171 : Family business

His Diogenes club's office still undergoing refurbishment after the flooding, Mycroft had been forced to retreat to his Home Office Cabinet's place. As always, the building was full of noisy people who seemed to take a great interest into annoying him with stupid concerns every five minutes, preventing him from properly achieving his tasks.

The politician was longuing to be returned to his true office, a place that he would tenderly nickname the Cave. Sherlock had always had a soft spot for the Bunker but tht was were stand what was probably the biggest difference between the brothers. When the youngest was most certainly a modern man from the city, his elder was with no doubts, a countryside lover.

Whatever you called it, the office Mycroft was occupying at the Diogenes Club was a very special one. It was the only office underground, near to the club's archive and with a door directly connected to what was now known as 'the Churchill's bunker', a set of underground tunnels that had been used during the second world war to keep the main ministers and state agency safe and which was therefore connected to most of the important places and offices in the British capital. Most people would have probablyfound the prospect of working beyound the ground level and away from daylight unbearable but, to the elder Holmes, it had never been a bother. The remote position of the study in a remote and quite secrative club allowed him to work peacefully whilst being connected to every important places and, more importantly, never far from the archives where were safeguarded all the most important discovering and the most troubling scandals since the club had been established.

One of the founder of the club was no one else but Emory Holmes, the politician great-great-great-grand-father, a man of strict moral and legendary aversion for small talk. His portrait, as well as those from his three fellow founders, was hanged on display in the main tea room giving everyone the opportunity to admire the pleasing painting a poor artist had attempted to do of a man who, according to the family legends, was something of a hidious runt.

Emory, as one of the founder and taking great pride in his rank, had insisted on being granted the largest office, in the top left corner of the building. He had installed there a couple of comfortable sofas and requested for a kitchen to be located nearby so he could have warm tea at demand for his guest and, as he had remembered of his aversion for others, had had a 'No visitor except the Queen' sign engraved on his door. The official had always found that fact quite amusing and, every time he would pass by Emory's portrait, he wondered what his illustrous ancestor would have thought about him having requested an isolated office.

The sixtheenth knock on the door of the day interupted the elder Holmes in his work and he grunted for the visitor to piss off before building back his composure and greating the person in, trying not to sound to harsh if ever that visitor was to be of importance. A young pale-looking man shyly entered the room, carrying a beige enveloppe.

A simple glance was enough for the politician to deduce where the man was coming from and what the news he was carrying were. In fact, the official hadn't even had to look at his clothes or the information written on the enveloppe, a single gaze at the man's face and the way he had entered the room was enough to understand what was going on.

"Father have died ?" the elder Holmes asked as a confirmation, leaning back in his chair like if he was talking about the weather.

"I'm sorry for your loss sir." the visitor nodded with respect, puting down the enveloppe on the desk. "He passed away at one this afternoon at the Wellington hospital."

"Thank you." the elder Holmes dismissed his visitor still showing no emotion whatsoever.

In fact, he had no idea why a steed had be sent to inform him of the old man's passing as it was notorious in within the family that they clearly despised one another. Mycroft opened the enveloppe, taking out of it the stack of paper it contains. As expected, most of those were hospital reports and a generic letter of condoleances by the hospital's director, but another, smaller, enveloppe fell from the pile. The name Richard Holmes Junior was written in a hand writing that the politician couldn't recognise but that he felt was still familiar. Intrigued, he hastily opened it, revealing its content to be a single sheet of paper.