He couldn't believe the detective working on a case was such an idiot. Was it really that hard to connect the dots and see what was right in front of him? The brother just finished redecorating the house, the gray dust found inside the head wound of the victim were particles of dry wall and plaster.
Sherlock Holmes, the World's only consulting detective, sighed as he approached the closed doors of the Saint Bartholomew hospital's morgue. The case was barely a three and here he was wasting his time.
But in this case it was necessary since the imbecile from New Scotland Yard arrested the victims wife believing it was her just because she is the beneficiary of her late husband's policy. Hopefully next time police decided to do the right thing and consult him the inspector won't be so annoying, arrogant and stubborn.
"I need to see a body!" Sherlock called as he pushed the morgue doors open and pranced in, his coat flying behind him like a cape. He preferred to make an entrance like that one to keep the equally stupid special register that worked here on his toes. He had an issue with alcoholics working on a place where it's so important to get all the facts right and not to mess with potential crown evidence. The fact doctor Hayman was sometimes drunk enough that he barely managed to hold a scalpel wasn't just extremely dangerous for anyone in his close vicinity but against hospital policy.
But coming from the family of one of hospital's beneficiary certainly paid out for him since he was still employed after three years of barely properly done post-mortems and constantly late paperwork.
"Which one?" a voice asked and Sherlock paused. The voice didn't belong to the doctor he expected to meet during the afternoon shift.
"David Howard." he responded and watched as a young woman entered the room, carrying a tray with instruments needed for a post-mortem. Quickly his eyes scanned her, gathering all the data he needed to correctly deduce her life.
Single child. Mother died years ago, father never remarried. Never smoked. Wears glasses, recently switched to contacts. Right handed. Recently finished medical school. Lives alone. Owns a cat. Drinks coffee with milk. Has horrendous style, the colorful jumper and shapeless trousers she wore were perfect evidence of it.
"I'm going to have to see an ID before I can show it to you. I'm sorry, but I'm not familiar with any of the detectives yet and I can't show a dead body to just about anyone who walks in."
Sherlock watched her closely for few more seconds before concluding, "Doctor Hayman didn't warned you about me."
"Doctor Hayman was suspended recently." she said and Sherlock let a small smile escape his mask of seriousness.
"In the case... I am Sherlock Holmes, a consulting detective."
The woman in front of his frowned, "I never heard of that title."
"Nor could you, I'm the only one in the world. I invented the job." he said confidently.
"In that case you can't see the body." the woman said and turned to leave.
"A woman's freedom depends on it!" Sherlock protested but when she didn't paid him any mind he called after her, "Doctor Hooper!"
The cold air in the morgue just turned several degrees colder when Molly Hooper turned back towards the curly haired man in the big coat. She just got the job two days ago, and she wasn't risking it by showing someone who didn't work for the police a body of a murder victim. She wasn't an idiot.
"Unless you get an inspector here I am not showing you anything." she said coldly.
Sherlock opened his mouth and was about to fire out all the deductions he made about her when the morgue entrance opened and Mike Stamford entered with several large binders in his hands.
"Help me with this, Molly" he said to the woman before adding, "Hello Sherlock." after he noticed the consulting detective standing there, looking rather grim, "Here about a body?"
"Yes. But your newest employee refuses to let me actually see it."
"Hospital policy." Mike and Molly answered at the same time.
"Hayman let me."
Mike grinned at him, "After you blackmailed him, saying you would inform the press about his alcohol problem. Did you honestly think I didn't know that?"
"Finally busted him, did you?" Sherlock asked with a small grin.
"Caught him with a bottle in his hand over the open corpse." Mike answered before turning towards the young doctor who looked rather horrified at that sort of behavior and disrespect towards the dead, "You can show Sherlock the body and help him with anything he needs. No repercussions as long as it's within limits of legal."
Molly nodded and Sherlock gave Mike a beaming smile, one of the few actually honest ones.
Ten minutes later, when Sherlock was examining the body and hoping to find something else that would prove to the idiot of a detective inspector that it was infant the brother who did it, he noticed the newly hired Molly Hooper observe him closely from few feet away. She was biting her bottom lip and trying to steady her hands.
"Say what you want to say." he finally said, making her jump a bit.
Sherlock stood up straight as she approached, still looking slightly apprehensive about something. Few seconds later she took a deep breath and said the last thing he expected to hear.
"I'm a medium. I talk to the people who have crossed over." instantly Sherlock snorted and was about to return to serious business when she added, "Who is the male person that passed away?"
"Everyone has someone who died, you are merely speculating and using the probability of me having a male relative that died as evidence."
Molly closed her eyes and he thought that meant she would leave him alone when she spoke again, "Older but not much older. He was sick... had something to do with bones."
"Doctor Hooper-" Sherlock almost growled at her but it didn't make her stop.
"Does the pirate spyglass mean anything to you? Cause he is holding it close to his heart and says it way buried with him. You placed it in his casket."
"He gave me a spyglass for my forth Birthday." Molly barely heard him whisper, "You can see him?"
"There is a dog by his side. A large Irish setter, I believe, and for some reason it has a pirate hat on his head." when Sherlock only nodded silently she continued, "He's pointing towards the calendar. Did something happened recently, or is something about to happen? Something he is connected to?"
"The anniversary of his death." Sherlock answered, "My brother Frederic died on the sixth of March. He had leukemia."
"You blame yourself." Molly said. It wasn't a question but a statement and Sherlock looked at her, his eyes wide, "You think you could have helped him."
"I was the perfect donor. But I couldn't donate my bone marrow when he needed it."
"He is showing me darkness flowing through veins. Were you using something at the time and that made you an inadequate donor?"
"Heroin." he answered shortly and that was all she needed. She was a doctor, she knew they couldn't transplant bone marrow from a drug addict.
"But you tried to quit when he got diagnosed. He is showing me-"
"I went to a facility just outside of London. But by the time I clean Frederic had gotten worse, he got a pneumonia. I was in a car, being driven straight to the hospital where he was, when I got the call that he died."
The silence surrounded them after that revelation. It was obviously difficult for Sherlock to talk about it, especially he didn't believe something like this was even possible, up until few minutes ago when a woman he never saw before in his life revealed something no one knew. Not even his parents or Mycroft were aware he slipped the old spyglass under the pillow his brother's head was resting on. It was where he himself kept it as a child.
"You have something of his." Molly said before she frowned, "He says you have his skull."
Sherlock smiled at the woman's obvious discomfort and shock, "He bought it on a street fair as a teenager. An act of rebellion. I took it before mummy managed to throw it away."
"He says you talk to it like you used to talk to him. Tell it your thoughts and ideas."
Sherlock nodded, "It's my companion. In the same way your cat is yours."
"How did you know I have a cat?" it was Molly's turn to be surprised by a complete stranger knowing something private about her.
"You have cat hair on the bottom of your trousers. The small scar on your left forefinger tells me you are right-handed. It's faded and barely visible so you must have cut yourself when you were a child."
"I was four and decided to cut bread with my dad's large knife." Molly revealed.
"There are certain things about people, certain details, that reveal their entire life story to those who don't just see but they observe. I call it the Science of Deduction."
A wide smile spread on Molly's face, "It's a good thing the police is consulting you then."
"Unfortunately the detective inspector working Mr. Howard's case is an idiot who arrested the wrong person and now I have to find more evidence to prove him wrong."
"And I am distracting you... I'm sorry..." Molly mumbled, "But he kept insisting, said you needed to know he doesn't hold you responsible."
"What?" Sherlock looked at her, startled like a deer by headlights.
"Because you were unable to donate the bone marrow he needed. He understands you were fighting your own demons and used drugs as an escape. You blame yourself but he doesn't blame you. It wasn't the leukemia that killed him. It was the pneumonia. He is clearly showing it was his lungs that gave up on him before they managed to do the transplantation. And that is his responsibility, he says he wasn't careful."
"It wasn't my fault." she watched as the man in front of her finally realized what he should have known a while ago. The spirit showed her but asked her not to tell that his older brother intentionally kept the real cause of his death from Sherlock in attempt to prevent him from returning to his addiction by making him believe it was his wrongdoing.
"I'll let you get back to your deductions." she turned to leave when a soft touch on her hand made her pause and turn back around.
"Thank you." Sherlock mumbled. He rarely said those words, but when he did then he truly meant them.
"There is no need to thank me. I just did what I can." she said with a smile, "Good luck in proving that detective wrong. Which one is it, by the way?"
"DI Colbert. Has he been here since you started working?"
Molly shook her head, "I only met DI Lestrade. He seems competent, watched me do a post-mortem and didn't vomit, asked good questions and didn't act like a know-it-all."
"Hm..." Sherlock closed his eyes and brought forward everything he knew about detective inspector G. Lestrade. It wasn't much. But it was promising. As doctor Hooper just said, he was more or less competent.
Wonderful.
He now had a better DI to work with, a pathologist who knew her job and a landlady who made good tea. All he needed was a flat mate.
But that will have to wait. He needed to prove that idiot Colbert wrong.