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.

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.

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.

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.