Sentiment || Sherlock Holmes

The Abominable Bride Part 3

"Do you?" Mycroft asked.

"Do I what?" Holmes said.

Mycroft held up the note from Sir Eustace's body.

Miss me?

"How did you get that?" Holme's voice felt slow, his surroundings seemed hazy. "I left it at the crime scene."

"Crime scene? Where do you pick up these extraordinary expressions?" Mycroft asked. "Do you miss him?"

"Moriarty is dead." Holmes said.

"And yet..."

"His body was never recovered." Holmes said.

"To be expected when one pushes a maths professor over a waterfall." Mycroft said. "Pure reason toppled by sheer melodrama. Your life in a nutshell."

"Where do you pick up these extraordinary expressions?" Holmes repeated back to his brother. "Have you put on weight?"

"You saw me only yesterday. Does that seem possible?" Mycroft said.

"No."

"Yet here I am, increased." Mycroft said. "What does that tell the foremost criminal investigator in England?"

"In England?" Holmes said.

"You're in deep, Sherlock. Deeper than you ever intended to be." Mycroft said. "Have you made a list?"

"Of what?"

"Everything. We will need a list." Mycroft said.

Holmes pulled a piece of paper from his pocket.

"Good boy."

Holmes refused to hand it over.

"No, I haven't finished yet." He said.

"Moriarty may beg to differ." Mycroft said.

Holmes sighed. "He's trying to distract me. To derail me."

"Yes." Mycroft agreed. "He's the crack in the lens, the fly in the ointment, the virus in the data."

"I have to finish this."

"If Moriarty has risen from the Reichenbach Cauldron, he will seek you out." Mycroft waned.

"I'll be waiting." Holmes said before walking out.

"Yes." Mycroft looked at the painting of the falls he kept on his wall. "I'm very much afraid you will."

----------------

Holmes sat cross-legged on the sitting room floor. He faced the fireplace, warmed comfortably by the flames as he passed the hours in his mind palace. Newspaper clippings floated before him, and he grabbed them one by one, trying to connect the dots of the case.

Behind the detective, Evelyn cracked open the door. Lestrade peered over her shoulder into the room.

"He's been meditating like that for nearly two days..." Evelyn whispered worriedly.

"Has he eaten?" Lestrade asked.

"No, nothing." Evelyn said. "I've left food beside him but he rarely ever eats on a case anyway."

"Press are having a ruddy field day. The steward boy is outside." Lestrade said.

"They've been there this entire time. Mother and I can't get rid of them." Evelyn said. "She's exhausted after making all that tea."

"Why'd she make them tea?"

"I don't know," Evelyn mused. "She just sort of does that."

Lestrade turned his attention back to Holmes. "He said there's only one suspect and then he just walks away and now he won't explain."