It was a strange thing, that piano. It was of excellent quality. Deep swirls of black wood stood out against the monotonous beige of the walls and the solidity it lent a room filled with nothing more demanding than a few arm chairs and some packed bookshelves was startling. It seemed to have no other purpose besides adding an air of respectability to a disused room.
It had apparently been swathed in a crocheted doily and forgotten. Only the maid who cleaned that room had any contact with the old marvelous thing.
Oh, it had caught Anthea's eye from time to time, but she had almost written it off as another useless piece of bric-a-brac Mycroft had sitting around a house that was much too large for him.
He had filled each room with expensive, useless things that he paid other people to worry about and clean for him. To all appearances he would seem to be a busy bodied collector of rare, fine things. However he lost no love over his petty objects. She suspected he would not even bat an eyelash if the maid scuttled out with one of his antique vases.
The piano was different though, and for the longest time she had no clue as to why.
Until one night, when the lilting, discordant strains of a melody assaulted her thoughts while she was deep in contemplation in the study; her office away from the office.
It did not take her more than a moment to realize what it was, so she slipped off her shoes and ran, barefoot and silent, through the halls of her home away from home.
The door was open a crack, bleeding gold into a black hallway. It practically begged her to creep up and peer inside at the secrets it held.
Mycroft sat like a statue. His back was crisp and straight. His head was bowed reverently over the keys as his hands made several deliberate stabs at a few mellow notes.
His hands.
They were frightening in their deliberation, like large pale spiders expertly dancing across the ivory keys. They darted back and forth spastically. They danced lightly, or crashed with tremendous strength into a mighty crescendo.
Then, at the height of the music's ecstasy, the tempo slowed to a crawling murmur and faded soothingly into a gentle silence.
"I didn't hear you come in," Mycroft said crisply, not turning to acknowledge her in the least.
"I did not know you could play, sir."
Mycroft did not look at her. He merely patted the bench beside himself and ushered her to join him.
She sat with him shoulder to shoulder and watched his ghostly fingers resurrect Bach with rapturous ease until well into the early night, until the large windows that flanked them on either side were peppered with glittering stars.