Mycroft Holmes was not an ordinary boy. He was a special boy, mummy and daddy always told him so. Mycroft, the best student in school. Mycroft, the boy who beat a professor on a test. Mycroft, the oldest Holmes brother.
When Mycroft was eight, he was approached with the fact that his mother was pregnant with another child. When Mycroft was nine, the baby was born.
Baby Sherlock took away all the attention that Mycroft had been so used to for all his life. When Sherlock was three, and Mycroft was twelve, Sherlock made great friends with the new family puppy, Redbeard. The two were always on swashbuckling adventures, with pirates and killers and treasure, oh, lots and lots of treasure.
When Sherlock was ten, and Mycroft nineteen, the old dog got put down. This destroyed Mycroft almost as much as Sherlock. Mycroft was going to University the next year, and Sherlock would be alone for the coming years. Of course, he had mummy and daddy, but that wasn't quite the same for Sherlock. Because no matter how much attention Sherlock got after he was a baby, Mycroft got more from his parents. Sherlock mastered the violin within three years of playing it, but Mycroft, of course, got accepted into the most prestigious school in England, so he got all of the praise. When Sherlock wrote a nationally award-winning paper at age nine, Mycroft had gotten back from his boarding school for holiday, so, naturally, the attention was focused on Mycroft.
Sherlock survived Mycroft's university years by isolating himself from others. After the loss of his best friend, he never made a new one. He played countless one-person games of Deduction. Deduction was his favorite game, one he always played with Mycroft when he was back from school. Mycroft always beat him.
There were a few moments of glory for Sherlock from his parents, like when Sherlock was accepted into the same school that Mycroft was accepted into. Mycroft had confronted him later about it.
"Don't be smart," he had said, "I'm the smart one, Sherlock." Needless to say, Mycroft Holmes was a spoiled boy.
Sherlock never made it to university. He never really liked school, he much preferred thinking than learning. Sherlock always did well in school and had top marks, but he simply didn't favor the idea of University.
So, when Sherlock was eighteen, the Holmes family decided to take a 3-month-long holiday to Florida.
Florida was quite boring to Sherlock, until the night that he met Martha's husband.
Martha's husband was tall, brawny, and menacing. Sherlock always looked at him with curiosity, especially because his wife, Martha, was a small, beautiful woman, who was clearly a past user of Marijuana. Still, it was quite surprising to hear of the murder in the hotel.
The scream was bloodcurdling. It was, in fact, from the room next to them. Sherlock woke up to it, as he was a light sleeper. Putting on a robe, he quietly visited the room.
The door was ajar. Obviously, someone had broken in, and it wasn't a suicide. That was simple enough. The wall had a minimal amount of blood on it, and the man who had stayed in the room was lying facedown onto the floor. It had been a blow to the head.
Sherlock looked around. There was no sign of anything else remotely important. He thought of the small woman and her large husband. Did they have anything to do with this?
He called the front desk. "Hi," he said, "there was a murder. Here. In the room that I'm calling from. It's room 396, and I don't know what happened. It looks like a blow to the head, but I'm not quite sure. Please, send the police."
The police quickly arrived, waking up the rest of the Holmes family, who were shocked to find Sherlock out of bed and at the scene of a murder.
"I didn't do this, I swear," he said in questioning. "I woke up to a scream, the man's scream, and I got up to make sure that everything was okay."
"Well, son," said the questioner, "I don't think that you did it. How old are you, twenty?"
"Eighteen, sir," said Sherlock. He was informed by his parents that whenever Sherlock was asked a question directly, he was to end it with 'sir'. People liked it that way for some reason, but Sherlock couldn't figure out why.
"Alright. Thank you, William."
"Sherlock," he said, "I prefer Sherlock."
"...sir…" he added as an afterthought.
The next week, Sherlock was brought back, simply because the station wanted to 'tell him something'. What it was, Sherlock had no idea. But he knew that he couldn't be in trouble.
"There were fingerprints on the room's phone," the officer said to Sherlock. "Yours."
"I called the front desk to call the police. Check the phone, do use your brain," Sherlock said. "Sir."
"We did check it, and there was a phone call made within minutes of when the man died. We listened to it, and it was a British voice. It said, 'done.' Do you know anything about this?"
"I have no idea." Sherlock truthfully said.
"The voice had a British accent, and there were only two families at the hotel that night. The other family, two people on their honeymoon, had left the hour before and their return wasn't on any of the cameras. Unfortunately, there wasn't a camera in the hallway that you were residing in. That leaves it to be your father or yourself, who committed the murder."
"That's impossible. I've told you, I didn't do it, and I am such a light sleeper, I can't fall asleep if theres someone walking over a squeaky floorboard, and since there are plenty in this hotel, my father did not do it. Who were the other two people that were staying?"
"Martha Hudson and her husband, Evan. They left and didn't come back."
Sherlock frowned. "Well, it wasn't a Holmes."
He was escorted to leave. Pondering the situation, he decide to do some investigation.
"Dad," he said, "can I have your key? I want to do some investigation about this, and where the cameras are, because I know that neither of us had committed the murder…" His father willingly gave his key to Sherlock, and Sherlock walked by the entrance. He walked the perimeter of the hotel, seeing a fire escape that would be the perfect entrance. But, alas, there was a camera by it. A ruled out possibility.
He noticed another way in. There were a series of balconies, all layered on top of each other. He easily could have snuck in through the balconies. Alas, another camera. Then Sherlock realized how he got in. He left the hotel normally, and went out for the night. He then stuck close to the perimeter of the hotel, until he was sliding against the wall. He had climbed up the drive-through pole, and he had then gotten through the window, which he had opened, to get to the room.
It was the perfect plan! There was no way to get caught by the cameras. Even Sherlock admitted to himself that it was quite clever. The next thing to figure out was the murderer. Sherlock had one person in mind- Evan Hudson.
But why?
After some research (and a few calls to London), Sherlock found out that Evan apparently was a businessman from Cardiff. Why would he want to kill an American man?
The papers came the next day, with the main article being about the Briar Hotel Murder. The man murdered was Gerry Falls, creator of the company Falls Furniture. He was killed at 2:54 in the morning by someone who is, as of now, unknown. 'We are greatly shook by the tragedy,' says Amelia Dennis, hotel owner. 'We assure you, this will be the first and only time this will happen.'
Sherlock read and reread the article. A few more calls to London later, Sherlock learned that Hudson was trying to buy the company that Falls owned. That would explain it-he was trying to kill him to get control of his company. Then, there was one last question.
Who was the call for?
Sherlock remembered that the hotel was in the name of Martha, and not Evan. That made almost no sense to Sherlock, but then he realized: Martha had a good job, and Evan did not. He wasn't a businessman… he was a conman. It must have been to his partner in crime. Someone that had access to Falls. His wife. She wasn't quoted in the article. She admitted to only marrying him for the money, Sherlock learned, after some research, yet neither had filed for divorce. After one trip to the Falls household, he met Rebecca Falls, and checked the calls on her phone. Sure enough, there was a five second call from Briar Hotel.
He barged into his room after arriving from the Falls', wrote all of his theory down, and walked to the police station. Being presented with this theory, Sherlock was listened to, and the theory was taken into consideration. When it was considered plausible, Sherlock was pleased. When it was considered what actually happened, Mrs. Holmes was ecstatic.
Sherlock had received a key to the city on his last day of Holiday, which he gave to Mrs. Holmes, as he saw no need for it. Mrs. Martha Hudson was surprisingly grateful, saying that if he needed anything in London, he could find her at 221a Baker Street, and that she was the landlady of all the flats at 221. Sherlock doubted that he would need a flat, and he almost said it, but he remembered that his parents told him to say 'Thank you' to all gifts and offers. So he responded with a simple "thank you" and left.
When The Holmes' got home, and Mycroft greeted them (eager for attention), all Mummy and Daddy could talk about was how amazing Sherlock was for solving a murder. Sherlock felt special, for the first time in his life. Mycroft confronted Sherlock after dinner one night and said some very familiar words: "Don't be smart, Sherlock. I'm the smart one."