Why did Mycroft let Irene go?

 (Sherlock Meta by thenorwoodbuilder)

As the post was getting very long, and the topic was shifting towards Mycroft’s reasons for letting Irene go, at the end of A Scandal in Belgravia, I thought better to condense the previous passages into a link to threebeerproblem's last reply to the original post.


If you’re feeling kind, lock her up; otherwise let her go. I doubt she’ll survive long without her protection.

So: Mycroft’s reasons for letting Irene go, so practically sentencing her to death.

I too agree: being angry at her for what she had done to his little brother (as well as for the danger, and even harm, she had posed to national security) was one of the main reasons to “not feel kind” to her. Mycroft doesn’t struck me as a particularly merciful, forgiving person. Particularly when one or both of the two things he only cares about - his brother and his work - are endangered or damaged. He couldn’t feel any sympathy, any pity, for a woman who had just hurt, embittered, and almost thrown in a heap of trouble, Sherlock, while at the same time destroying months and years of work to keep people safe from terrorists. I’m sure that a certain desire of revenge was allowed to slip into his decision.

But maybe there was also another, more rational reason, behind Mycroft’s decision to let Irene go, so - hopefully - ensuring her rapid demise.

If he had “locked her up” she would have been interrogated. For weeks. For months. And not only by him and by his men, but also, sooner or later, by other people, people sent by his “masters”, people from other agencies, maybe even by the Americans.

And this would have brought every detail of the whole affair to the knowledge of too many people - presumably also of people who had no interest in protecting Sherlock, or Mycroft. We might be reasonably certain that Mycroft has his enemies also inside the Service and the Government: nobody rises in his career without making enemies, and Mycroft probably rose quickly. And those enemies would have been even too happy to discover how Mycroft’s brother had caused the failure of a secret plan involving such a great amount of prolonged efforts and resources. After all, the Bond Air Project WAS crashed, and Sherlock retrieving the information from Irene’s phone was just a palliative. In the wrong hands, the details of Sherlock’s involvement and mistakes, and the revelation of Mycroft’s willingness to comply with any request from The Woman just in order to cover up for his brother, would not only have caused Mycroft’s ruin, but would have been also almost as dangerous for Sherlock as it was his position before cracking into Irene’s phone.

Actually, what persuaded Mycroft to negotiate with Irene, was mainly her threat to reveal to his “masters” that his “biggest security leak was his own little brother”. And that threat remained, until Irene was able to divulge the details of the whole business to Mycroft’s superiors.

So he HAD to avoid that she told them those details. And he had also, possibly, to ensure that she was never able to tell anyone else in the future.

So, the most elegant solution was to let her go and get killed by one of her many enemies, not even having to dirty his own hands. And you can aways count on Mycroft for an elegant solution.