The Emotional Children

XV

Irene was letting a puckish smirk play around on her face as she stood before the inhumanly oversized desk of government official Mycroft Holmes.

He had been busy for the last two days, without any time to properly speak to her (which bruised her pride and forced her to nurse animosity), but now she was finally inside his cold, mortuary-like office and divulging the information she had been itching to tell. 

Mycroft's face voiced his inner skepticism.

"Are you certain of this, Miss Adler?" he asked, uneasily eyeing one of his most trusted agents. His left eyebrow was raised to the point of its nearly touching his hairline, and he drummed his wiry fingers on the table.

"I believe so, Mr. Holmes. He is our man; I have no doubts."

"I'm impressed you unraveled it so quickly."

"I'm flattered."

"Before we begin uprooting this man's identity, do explain how you arrived at your conclusions."

"Gladly," she replied, taking a seat in front of his desk and crossing her white legs.

Her deductions were simple.

Moriarty had unveiled the entire case through his little bite of Swiss cheese. At the mention of a clue being in front of their noses and the ingestion of cheese, she had to take notice. Moriarty left clues in the stupidest of places.

She thought of Godfrey Norton. What if he wasn't German? What if he was Swiss? He had a German accent because he was from Switzerland, not Germany as she had so previously imagined. And then she remembered the paper on which the note had been written, and the words she had spoken to Sherlock in an attempt to impress him: "The paper is Swiss. As I thought, Mr. Holmes. See the watermark?"

The Swiss paper, the Swiss cheese, the man with the German accent. It had to be Godfrey Norton, it simply had to be. But the name: Norton. That wasn't German by any means. She was still confused as to why he had a British name with a German accent. That bit wasn't making any sense.

She continued to listen to the tape until the conversation ended. Moriarty then spoke the last three words at the end of it that seemed to nudge her further into deductions: "Audere est Facere." She knew what it meant: "to dare is to do." She had taken Latin as an adolescent and still remembered quite a bit of it.

The phrase meant not only this, however. As she listened to Sherlock and John ask what it could possibly mean, she couldn't help but grin to herself. There was another meaning to this Latin phrase that neither of them seemed to recognize. Until 2006, it had been the official motto of the Tottenham Hotspur football club. She should know; her grandfather had been mad about Tottenham and always screamed "Audere est Facere" whenever they won a match. She used to sit on his lap and scream with him during the matches. He would coddle her on his knee and give her biscuits against her mother's strictest warnings. For goodness sake, this case was unearthing so many memories she thought she had completely lost.

Resuming her deductions, she began to ask herself if the Tottenham Spurs could have something to do with the Wellington case? Opening a browser tab on her laptop, she searched the most recent team roster and found photos of the current members.

And there he was. Number 66: his handsome visage grinning into the camera. Its perfection made her sick. It made sense; she had always noticed that he had an athletic build, and if she had been more attentive, football player was an obvious conclusion.

Beneath his photo read Godfrey Norton, which surprised her. She had imagined him having a German name, or at least a fake one. Under each player's name and photo was their hometown, and his read Berlin, Germany.