When Richard Brooke killed himself, his girlfriend Kitty Riley wasn't very happy.
She had pushed him to it in a way; she had wrote the story, the one that exposed Sherlock.
And then Sherlock had somehow talked Richard into going onto the roof top and killing himself. Double suicide. It terrified her that she'd been so close to these people, that she was involved. It felt like somebody else's story.
Her own story did better than she could have dreamed. The death of both parties made the tale all the more alluring, like an old tragedy.
She wasn't happy though. Months later, when it had blown over and it was time to be moving on, writing new stories, she found herself uninterested in them. She went over the evidence over and over 'til she knew Richard's old storyteller episodes by rote; 'til she knew every detail of the case.
And yet, something niggled at her. She'd open a bottle of wine and pour over the facts in her spare time, and it was like a dog chewing on an old bone; comforting.
She figured it out by the summer. It was only a tiny little detail really, but Richard had told her that Sherlock was paying him to play the part of the villain, but there was no lodgements made into his bank account.
Now that she looked at his bank account, it didn't seem fully fleshed out. It had all the usual transactions, but they ran like clockwork. He had never just taken out cash on a whim, or lodged it for that matter. It was too perfect.
After that, she saw everything more clearly.
There were little details that were just too organised, fell into place too well, like they would work hypothetically, but not in a real person's life. Real people withdrew money sometimes.
It took her a year and a half before she had conclusive evidence, and by then, she didn't want the story. She gave all her work to a friend, and let them run it. She had fuelled her career enough on Sherlock Holmes already.
She tore apart everything that made the lie of Richard Brooke, children's entertainer, boyfriend, though it tore her apart too.