Anthea, The Genius

 (Sherlock Meta by ibelieveinmycroft)

Anonymous: Slightly random ask, but is Anthea really smart? Plus isnt she Mycroft's assistant? I imagine to be working for Mycroft Holmes you'd have to be a genius.

ibelieveinmycroft: We have nothing concrete to go on in regards to Anthea’s intelligence, but I agree with you that, to work for Mycroft, she must be highly intelligent.

She has been working directly for Mycroft for at least four years, likely much longer, assuming that the series basically happens in real time. She may or may not be his PA, but is evidentially closer to him than any other employee. It is her he dispatches in his car to collect John Watson, and who accompanies him to the crime scene in A Study in Pink, and she is in his private office in the Diogenes in The Empty Hearse, not remotely surprised - indeed, rather pleased - to see Sherlock back from the dead.



But is she more than a secretary? One of her few lines of dialogue in The Empty Hearse hints at a role above filing, making coffee, escorting army doctors and dressing her boss’ younger brother:

One of our men died getting this information. All the chatter, all the traffic, concurs there’s going to be a terror strike on London – a big one.

These are not the words of a woman who makes the tea. These are the words of an intelligence operative privy to some confidential and delicate information. Her fingers never left her Blackberry in A Study in Pink because she’s busy woman with a great deal of work to do.



Her role in A Study in Pink is very interesting. Mycroft has had his brother’s new friend picked up and brought to an abandoned warehouse so he might intimidate, attempt to bribe and threaten him. This is clearly outside the order of normal government business. That Mycroft has involved Anthea suggests that he trusts her with his personal business.

On top of it all, I love how amused she is by the brothers in The Empty Hearse and by John in A Study in Pink. With John she is so above it all that she can afford to be glib, but with the brothers I suspect there is some fondness there. She steals side-glances at Mycroft when Sherlock is being difficult, and smiles when Sherlock sweeps out of the office in his most dramatic fashion. This is a woman who has been on the periphery of the Holmes brothers’ world for some time now.



For Mycroft to keep the same employee around for a number of years, to trust them not only with state secrets but also with secrets regarding his only ‘pressure point’, his brother, indicates, to me, that this person must necessarily be highly intelligent. She may not be able to keep up with Mycroft - even Sherlock can’t do that - but she is likely a genius in her own right too.