by Amelia Price
The Hundred Year Wait
Amelia Price
Copyright 2014 Jess Mountifield
Cover Copyright 2014 Elizabeth Mackey
Published by Red feather Writing
Smashwords edition
All rights reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, organisations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Acknowledgements
As always, thank you to my husband for your patience. Sometimes I decide to write at the strangest times. Also a massive thank you to Bear for all your help with the codes and logic embedded in this story, as well as being my sounding board for my versions of Mycroft and Sherlock. I really couldn't have made it work without you.
To Alex for helping polish the story with an edit, and David for all your valuable feedback on Mycroft. Elizabeth, for the amazing cover design. You captured my Amelia perfectly.
Finally to God. Thank you.
Dedication
To all the people in my life, who taught me, mentored me, or were a role-model at some point, whether you knew it or not. You gave up your time and knowledge, often without the expectation of reward. Who I am today is partially shaped by the words you spoke and the encouragement you gave. I owe you so much.
Chapter 1
The rain pattered on the windows as Mycroft was driven through the dreary streets of London. He frowned at the typical English weather. He'd been in his house, working, for ten straight days and it annoyed him to find it raining the minute he needed to leave and see his brother. On top of splotching his tailored suit it made the traffic worse.
As the car pulled up outside Sherlock's flat he turned his nose up at the familiar sight. The number on the door was loose. It was almost never straight. No matter how many times he neatened it, by his next visit it was crooked again. Today was no different.
His driver rushed around to the side of the door with a large black umbrella and Mycroft stepped out into the cold, narrowly missing the puddle at the side of the road. An almost identical umbrella with a silver plated handle dangled from Mycroft's left hand and he realised he'd never used it to keep the rain off. After raising and lowering his eyebrow he strode through the flat door, knowing it wouldn't be locked. He paused for the briefest second to shuffle his feet on the doormat while his chauffeur shut the door behind him and went back to the shining black vehicle to wait.
Sherlock's housekeeper and landlady, the widowed Mrs Wintern, peered around the edge of the living room door. When she noticed it was him she retreated back inside. Knowing she'd be scurrying off to make tea, whether he would be there long enough to drink it or not, he climbed the wooden steps up to the familiar flat. None of them creaked but he'd had plenty of years practice at putting his feet in the right places to ensure his arrival was unnoticed.
Three steps from the top Mycroft paused. Mixed in with the usual scent of dust, damp and body odour was the faint traces of perfume. He knew it could only mean Sherlock had a visitor, probably a client. It only took a few seconds for Mycroft to weigh up his options in light of this discovery. He needed Sherlock to begin investigating at once and couldn't let a client stop him. As he took the last few steps he searched his memory for the name his brother used now. By the time he rapped his knuckles on the door, Sebastian was floating across the back of his mind. Whoever was with his brother would know him as Sebastian Holmes.
Without waiting for an answer he twisted the door knob and strode into the room. Both occupants turned to face him and he scanned the extra person for information. She wore a black corset, styled to look like a waistcoat from the front but laced down the back, over the top of a deep red blouse. The red skirt almost touched the floor, but a slit up one side revealed size seven black boots with a small chain running behind the two inch heels. The corset took her waist in from what would have been twenty-seven inches to twenty-five and her mid-brown hair was up in a netted bun on the back of her head. As she turned he also noticed she deftly held a fountain pen in her right hand. Both hands had fingerless gloves that were made of the same material as a jacket over the arm of a nearby chair.
She smiled and the corners of her eyes wrinkled to match the upturn of her lips. Whoever she was she spent a lot of time writing; there were no ink marks on her despite the style of pen, and she was comfortable and relaxed in the odd mix of old fashioned and modern clothing.
“Myron! To what do I owe this pleasure?” Sherlock said in his usual sarcastic manner, although he knew the woman wouldn't have picked up on the disdain laced in every word. It took him a fraction of a second longer to respond as he took in the pictures of people and places on the board beside them. She had to be a client with all the information presented, although not directly involved, an observer with a vested interest.
“Let me introduce my guest, Amelia Jones.” Sherlock motioned to her. “She's a writer. Amelia, this is my brother, Myron Holmes.”
She swapped the pen over to her other hand and took a few steps towards him, her right outstretched to shake his. He glanced at her offering but kept his right hand in his trouser pocket and his left gripping the umbrella. Whoever she was, Sherlock had used her first name, something he'd not done since his days with John Watson. Mycroft frowned and the woman returned to her position by the board, giving no indication that she was bothered by the snub.
“I need to talk to you, brother of mine,” Mycroft said when he realised the case on the board still held both their attention.
“In a moment. You'll be interested in this. This man is an undercover agent, working a case to find a stolen diamond.” Sherlock pointed to the man's picture and then to the woman's, “She's unmarried, no children, parents are dead and no one else in her life, and we're trying to figure out how she was blackmailed into stealing the diamond, and how he finds out before he has her arrested.”
Mycroft rolled his eyes but took a look at the information anyway. He wanted to know how this Mrs Jones was involved. If the diamond had been hers it wasn't something she was attached to. Perhaps a family heirloom she didn't care for.
“How was the diamond taken?” he asked.
“I don't know, I've not written that part yet,” she said, fixing her blue eyes on him. “I was thinking she might seduce the security guard or get him drunk. She's an amateur under pressure so it can't be too difficult.”
Mycroft raised his eyebrows before he noticed Sherlock grinning at him. He sneered in response. When Mrs Jones went to continue talking he put his hand up, cutting her off.
“This is a fictional scenario?” he asked, his voice dripping with disdain at the very concept.
“Yes. It's what I do for a living. Sebastian helps me get all the facts straight.”
“He does, does he?”
She nodded and waited for him to continue but he had no desire to make her feel more comfortable. She glanced at his brother.
“So... Why are you here, brother. You don't visit unless you need something,” Sherlock said, taking the focus back off his guest.
“I think we ought to discuss that in private.” Mycroft looked pointedly at Sherlock's client, hoping she'd get the hint and
hurry from the building, but she didn't move.
“Nonsense. If it's a case, Amelia can help. She's been proving most useful in my own work, and besides, she helped with the last case you gave me.”
“She did?” Mycroft's annoyance grew. Somehow he'd missed Mrs Jones being a regular in Sherlock's life and he shouldn't have done.
“I did?” She raised an eyebrow and her own surprise made him feel a little better. Sherlock laughed and nodded.
“Come on, out with it brother. What do we need to investigate?” While Sherlock spoke Mrs Jones lifted the board from the two hooks it hung on, revealing a second blank white board underneath. Mycroft coughed then pulled the printout of the intercepted email from his inside jacket pocket.
“I received this coded message from a suspected terrorist email account.” Before Mycroft could begin reading it Sherlock took the paper out of his hands and wandered off with it, leaving both him and Mrs Jones standing and waiting as Sherlock read it.
“It's not a skip code...”
“It's nothing logical, I assure you,” Mycroft said before Sherlock could list everything he already knew it wasn't.
“Read it aloud,” Mrs Jones said. Mycroft frowned as Sherlock did just that. He would have requested one anyway but now he was sure a background check on her would be needed.
Hiya,
Totally failed today – My ringtone went off at the funeral – I've got it set to Staying Alive. :AwkwardFace: I suppose I'd already made it hard on myself, the deceased had bought me one of those ugly Christmas jumpers and I wore it to the funeral. My mother told me to take it off and I don't think she was very impressed when I told her I'd rather cry in a BMW. Then to top my day off I got rick rolled.
Thankfully my kids were cute when I got home – when I asked the eldest what she wanted for dinner she said, 'I can has cheeseburger?' and grinned. Later when I was playing a board game with the twins and I lost they came out with, 'All your counters are belong to us', their English is getting better each day. When I was a kid my dad used to swear and say 'pardon my French – I still remember when my school teacher asked if anyone spoke a foreign language and I put my hand up. :SmileyFace:
It might be a while before I communicate again, I'm staying with relatives and they don't know their own wi-fi password. FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUU. The kids are excited, they said they can get their pink unicorn back, I didn't even know they had one.
Geoff
By the time Sherlock had finished, Mrs Jones was curled up on the chair, clutching her sides and crying as she tried to stop her almost silent laughter.
“What's so amusing?” Mycroft demanded when she didn't stop as soon as the letter was over. She wiped her eyes and sat up straight again.
“It's internet memes. For example, all your counters are belong to us, is a miss-quote of all your base are belong to us from a badly translated game. I can has cheeseburger is a phrase on a lolcat, and I think there was a confession kid in there, as well as the mention of being rick rolled.” She picked up the pen and wrote out the entire letter. Once she'd finished she circled phrases in the text and linked them to the names of the internet memes. Mycroft watched and waited, wanting to see where she was going with it. If it solved the email he could get back to his house and away from her.
She stood back and put both her hands on her hips, staring at the letter, now in her neat but ornamented hand-writing.
“The punctuation is strange, and not right in the slightest,” she said a moment later, when no one else did anything.
“Each full stop marks the end of a coded section, that much is easy to work out,” Mycroft said. His brother nodded and stole the pen from Mrs Jones, their fingers brushing past each other as he did. Mycroft sneered again, although both had their backs to him and wouldn't have noticed. He almost wished they had.
Sherlock put a line in where each sentence ended to break the message up and then she pulled the pen from his hand and wrote in another meme at the end of the letter. After a minute of browsing something on her phone she wrote in two more, completing the final paragraph with:
First World Problems
Rage comic
Invisible Pink Unicorn
Mycroft saw the message and smiled. It pleasantly surprised him that she was on the right track.
“The first letters form the first part of Friday,” Mycroft said, knowing his brother wasn't paying attention and should be. He stepped closer so the whole thing was easier for him to read.
“It looks like each paragraph is a word,” she replied and smiled at him. He ignored her. She was right, but that didn't mean he had to like her or praise her for it.
“The second word has an A and C in the middle and has four letters,” Sherlock said.
“Four?” She turned to him, a puzzled look on her face.
“Yes, there's a fourth sentence.” Mycroft pointed to the smiley face reference in between two colons. She shrugged.
“That's an emoticon gone wrong, but I suppose it might be part of the message.” She put the word in brackets in the list in the two places the references appeared and then turned to his brother. “Search for, I'd rather cry in a BMW, online and see what comes up.”
Immediately Sherlock obeyed and grabbed his laptop. Mycroft found himself sneering yet again. This woman was telling them what to do when she was evidently of inferior intelligence and even worse, his brother wasn't even slightly put out. He'd thought Sherlock over this sort of sentimentality after losing Watson, but it appeared he was even softer than ever.
Twenty minutes later they had one more letter and Mycroft continued to stand and do nothing but stare at the message. The entire time he'd been running through five letter words that fit with the E and N they'd already found for the first word. With the I Mrs Jones now wrote in he knew what it said. Begin Lace Fri was the full message, but he wasn't about to say so and be pressed to explain further. Even if Mrs Jones expressed no further interest, his brother would and with his deductive reasoning might work out more than Mycroft wanted either of them to know.
As he was trying to think of some way to get rid of Mrs Jones she pulled a pocket watch out, checked the time and gasped.
“I've got to go. I'm meant to be signing books in less than half an hour.” She grabbed her jacket and shrugged into it. “Sorry to run before we're done, but I hate being late for anything.”
“I'm sure we can solve this without you,” Mycroft said and gave her a smile which didn't reach his eyes.
“See you tomorrow, Sebastian, and it was a pleasure to meet you, Mr Holmes.” She gave him a half smile, meaning it far more than he would have, and hurried from the room. As the sound of her rapid footsteps receded down the stairs Mycroft relaxed.
“So, you've found a new John Watson.” He looked intently at his brother but Sherlock remained impassive.
“She's brighter than John ever was, but she won't be around for long. She'll go write her next book in a few days. Mostly she's a recluse, like you, especially when in the middle of a book.”
“You're trying to intrigue me by making me think we're similar, but it won't work. She's not as intelligent as you even, so I have no interest in her.” Mycroft walked towards the door, not wanting to continue this conversation.
“She would have been as clever as me had she grown up with you as an elder brother. She's keen to learn from us and pleasant enough.”
“Mrs Jones won't live long enough to ever get close.”
“Miss Jones,” Sherlock said, looking smug. Mycroft shook his head at what his younger brother had overlooked.
“There was a wedding ring.”
“Yes, but she's not married, not anymore anyway. She uses her maiden name on her books and uses Miss in all her dealings.”
“Widow.” Mycroft nodded. He should have seen it in her manner with Sherlock. No woman in a solid relationship would spend time coming to London for book signings and spend so much time alone with another man. At least they wouldn't have when Mycroft had be
en younger. Society had changed since then. He walked out, and called back, “Don't get involved, brother of mine.”
“I'll let you know when I've solved this,” Sherlock yelled after him.
“No need!” Mycroft pulled the door shut. Miss Jones' perfume lingered in the stairwell even stronger than before and Mycroft found himself thinking that as far as perfumes went it could have been a lot worse. At the least it smelt better than Sherlock's flat usually did.
As he walked back to his car he messaged his assistant.
Project lace will begin on Friday. Deploy operation clean-up. Also find all information on the author Amelia Jones and forward it to me.
As soon as the message was delivered he put his phone back in the inside pocket of his jacket and stepped outside. The rain had stopped and Mycroft smiled as he was driven back to his home, his mind already focused on other matters.
Chapter 2
A shiver ran down Amelia's spine as she sat back in the taxi and allowed it to take her to Sebastian's. She'd barely slept since the day before when she met Myron. She'd known he was meant to be both the more intelligent, and the more arrogant of the two brothers, but she hadn't expected to be quite so intrigued by him. Ever since being a young teenager she'd found clever men the most attractive and she'd married the brightest man she could find the first time around. Fate had robbed her of a happy lengthy marriage, however, and left her to find someone else bright enough to gain her respect. A grin spread, uncontained, across her face as she realised, she'd just found him.
Myron Holmes evidently didn't think much of her. He'd sneered at her on more than one occasion but that only made the challenge of getting him to like her more appealing. Sebastian spent time with her and appeared to enjoy helping her despite his initial coldness. Myron would be another difficulty level above, but not impossible.