From desk worker detective to Sergeant at Scotland Yard, Adelaide Gregson has come a long way from her days in Manhattan. When one consulting detective catches her eye, things get complicated. When a case now means life or death, will sentiment prov...
"Phone calls aren't recorded." Mycroft said, but I knew he was lying.
"By the government? I find that hard to believe. Mycroft I need to know what he said... for closure or whatever. Can you make it happen?" I asked again, more forcefully. I was now obsessed with the possibility that there could have been a message left for me, a sign that he was somehow still out there, and I wouldn't stop until I found it.
"Yes," Mycroft sighed, "I can get it to you tomorrow morning."
When Mycroft came back the next day with that flashdrive, I was waiting impatiently for him. I sat on the couch and plugged the drive into the laptop in front of me. I pressed play and sat back on the couch, tucking my knees up to my chest.
"Hello?...John... Hey, Sherlock, you okay?... Turn around and walk back the way you came... No, I'm coming in... Just do as I ask! Please... Where?... Stop there... Sherlock?... Okay, look up, I'm on the rooftop...Oh, God... I can't come down, so we'll just have to do it like this...What's going on?...An apology. It's all true... What?... Everything they said about me. I invented Moriarty... Why are you saying this?... I'm a fake... Sherlock... The newspapers were right all along. I want you to tell Lestrade. I want you to tell Mrs. Hudson. And Adelaide. In fact, tell anyone who will listen to you that I created Moriarty for my own purposes... Okay, shut up, Sherlock, shut up. The first time we met, you knew all about my sister. Right?... Nobody could be that clever... You could... I researched you. Before we met, I discovered everything that I could to impress you. It's a trick. Just a magic trick... No, all right, stop it now... No, stay exactly where you are. Don't move... All right... Keep your eyes fixed on me. Please will you do this for me?... Do what?... This phone call. It's my note. It's what people do, don't they? Leave a note?... Leave a note when?... Goodbye John, tell Adelaide I love her."
The recording ended with a crack, when the phone shattered against the roof when Sherlock had thrown it back. Mycroft turned to me, but I began gathering pieces of paper and moved the laptop to the dining room table and sat down.
I listened to it again, and I began dictating it onto the paper.
"What are you doing?" Mycroft asked.
"There has to be some sort of code or message." I told him, once the whole thing was written out on my paper.
"Why?" Mycroft asked, crossing his arms.
"Because I refuse to believe that he left without so much as a word, a clue. What if the game isn't over Mycroft?" I yelled. He raised his hands in defeat, and left me alone.
I was up all night trying to decipher the call. I finally fell asleep around 4am with the laptop open in front of me and piles of crumpled white paper around me.
Mycroft woke me when he entered in the morning on his way to work, he was disappointed with my new obsession. He grabbed the last paper I had been working on before I fell asleep. The message was written out again, but in large print, 221 was circled at the top.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"221." He muttered, reading it.
"Yes, 221," I ripped the paper from his hand, standing, "There are exactly 221 words in this conversation. He must have left the next clue there! At 221B!"
I threw on a jacket, still looking a mess, and rushing out the door to 221B, much to Mycroft's protests.
Once I was there, I picked the lock and rushed up to Sherlock's room. I opened every drawer, craving a clue. I hadn't realized how loud I was being when I heard footsteps coming towards the room.
"Sherlock?" John's broken voice asked. I turned to face him, I saw the disappointment on his face when it was just me.
"Adelaide? Where the hell have you been? Mrs. Hudson and I tried to go to your flat to see you, but your landlady said some government officials had taken you away." John said, rushing to me and pulling me into a hug.
"She does love to be dramatic. I've been staying with Mycroft." I told him.
"He said he was a fake." John told me, not knowing I knew exactly what Sherlock had said.
"Surely you don't believe that John. You of all people must know he wasn't. And I can prove it! Rich Brook, it means Reichenbach in German. The case that made Sherlock's name, and the man who destroyed him. And there were things that Moriarty knew about me that even Sherlock didn't, so there's no way he could have hired him to play the villain. He knew about my uncle and he knew I was pregnant." I told John frantically, my lack of sleep showing.
I began searching through his room again, before John grabbed my arm, stopping me.
"What are you doing?" He asked, I pushed the note into his hand, and began searching again.
"How did you get this? How could you know?" He asked, knowing exactly what it was.
"I'm living with a government official, you think I don't have access to this kind of information?" I said harshly, he was distracting me from my search.
"Why is 221 circled at the top, what does that mean." John asked, holding it up to me.
"This phone call," I pointed up to the paper in his hand, "has exactly 221 words, a clue, he must have left something here, in 221B. What if he isn't dead, John!"
I opened his dresser where the necklace he got me for Christmas sat. I looked at it quizzically. This was in my flat in my jewelry box last time I saw it, how could it be here? I opened the Harry Winston box slowly, only to find a folded white note over the necklace. My breath hitched. I grabbed it and sat on the floor with my back against his bed. I opened the note slowly and read.
Adelaide,
If you've found this, it means I'm gone, and you were just as brilliant as I always knew you could be. I knew Moriarty's plan once we left the journalist's house. To complete his story, I had to die. To protect you, I had to die. And for this, I am sorry. I am sorry for leaving you, for the pain I know you're in right now, and for not being the man you deserve. I am sorry for so many things, but I am not sorry for loving you. I know I've said that love is a disadvantage, but you were the exception. I don't want you to give up now that I'm gone. You have a chance now, to have the normal life I know you've always wanted. You were meant for bigger and better things than loving a sociopath like me, and I pity anyone who stands in your way. You have a chance. I was foolish to think that things could end well for me, that I deserved someone like you. I did the most dangerous thing I could when I said I love you, and it was worth it. People don't forget girls like you. They try, but they won't ever forget what your love felt like.
What is the meaning of it, Adelaide? What is the object of this circle of misery, violence and fear? It must have a purpose, or our universe has no meaning. And that is unthinkable. But what purpose? That is humanity's great problem to which reason so far has no answer.
This is not a goodbye, my darling, it is a thank you. Thank you for coming into my life and giving me joy, thank you for loving me and receiving my love in return. Thank you for the memories I will cherish forever. We could have been happy. I know that, and it is perhaps the hardest thing to know.
Sherlock
I clutched the letter against my chest and broke down, I hadn't cried in two days, but everything just hit me. He was really gone and there was nothing I could do about it.
