The next day John was at the clinic again. Going through patients like crazy, trying to make up for his rather bad first impression. It was already dark outside when he heard his mobile buzzing on his desk.

221b Bakerstreet.

Come now. Urgent.

John sighed and put the phone away. He had been planning on staying a bit longer today, to show his willingness to put in the hours. He bit his lip and kept glancing at the phone from the corner of his eye.

"Fine,' he said to himself as he got up and left for 221b Bakerstreet.

Even from down here, John could see Sherlock standing by the window, looking out over the street. He wasn

't waiting for John, was he?

"Are you just coming home, dear?" Mrs. Hudson asked. How did she always know exactly when he came in?

"Yes, Mrs. Hudson," John said as he walked up the stairs.

Sherlock turned to face him with a rather eager look on his face, which made John feel uncomfortable.

"John, just in time!"

"For what?" John asked hesitantly.

"For our guest!"

"Our guest?"

"Yes! Mr. Hosmer Angel!" Sherlock walked back to the window.

"You found him?" John asked astonished.

Sherlock turned around with a frown on his face. "Of course I did! Do you still not see?"

John sighed. "No, I still don't see."

Sherlock went back to looking out the window. "Last night I emailed James Windibank, telling him I'd found Hosmer Angel and would confront him soon. I told him I didn't want to upset Mary, and so we should deal with this matter."

"And where is Hosmer?"

Sherlock ignored John's question. "Then, just 30 minutes ago, I emailed Windibank again, telling him I'd confronted Hosmer Angel and that I would be meeting him here tonight. So we can expect Mr. Windibank any moment now."

"Sorry?"

"Trust me, he will have immediately rushed out to get here, the second he got the email."

"Maybe he doesn't read his emails that often."

Sherlock glanced at John and smirked, "I am reasonably sure Mr. Windibank emails quite a lot. And my email of yesterday would've ensured that he will be checking his email every minute."

"Really?" John wasn't convinced.

"Ah, there he is!" Sherlock exclaimed.

John walked over to the window and saw a man standing across the street, looking nervously up and down the street and fidgeting with his left sleeve. Then, out of the blue, the man rushed forward and they could hear the doorbell.

"Sherlock, someone here to see you, dear," Mrs. Hudson said as she led the man up the stairs.

"Ah, Mr. Windibanks," Sherlock said. "That'll be all Mrs. Hudson," Sherlock said.

"Not your landlady, dear," Mrs. Hudson said warningly, waving a hand and disappearing down the stairs again.

"Mr. Holmes, how do you…," James Windibanks started to say.

"Sherlock, please," Sherlock said, "And I'll call you James, if that's alright."

"But how…"

"I've seen your photograph," Sherlock said, "and read your description."

James Windibank was a short man of medium built. He had dark hair, very blue eyes and looked older than his 28 years. John was fairly sure there hadn't been a description of James in the police file.

"Why are you here, James?" Sherlock asked, gesturing for the man to sit while taking a seat himself.

"I just wanted to know if you'd gotten any further in the case. I was on my way back home, so I thought I might as well…"

"Very unlikely," Sherlock interjected.

"I'm sorry?" James seemed startled by this remark.

"You came straight from your home," Sherlock stated simply.

"No I…"

"Straight from your bed, in fact," Sherlock said, looking James up and down. "Right after the email. And judging by the state you're in, you left home in quite a bit of hurry."

James looked absolutely terrified now, obviously caught in the lie. Though John didn't understand why he would feel the need to lie at all.

"I told you, I…"

Sherlock completely ignored this obvious attempt of James' to save face. Instead, he stopped James from saying any more by immediately starting to explain how he'd gotten to his conclusions. As usual Sherlock rattled it all off in one breath, and using hardly any punctuation. "You missed several buttons on your shirt while hastily putting it on, your pants are crinkled, obviously not clean - no time to find anything else. Your shoes, though very similar in colour and model, do not match. Your breath was very minty, suggesting you either stopped for mouth freshener despite your hasty departure, or you had just brushed your teeth. Presumably you'd wanted to make this an early night - maybe to catch up on the sleep you've been missing for several…," Sherlock's eyes narrowed, "…weeks, judging by the bags under your eyes. Then you saw the email, because you were paying close attention to your emails - I'm guessing you had your phone next to your bed. When you saw it was from me and what it said you hastily got up, got dressed in the first things in your reach and came here."

James gave a violent start. "I… I…"

"Read I had found Hosmer Angel and had to come," Sherlock concluded.

James moved uneasily in his chair. John looked at the scene and thought he might have finally figured out what was going on.

"And have you?"

"I told you I did," Sherlock said.

"Yes," James looked at Sherlock. "Will the police be able to catch him?"

"Catch him?" Sherlock locked eyes with James. "I already have," Sherlock said, slowly rising from his seat. His tall figure was now looming over James. "I'm just not certain if they'll be able to get a conviction." Sherlock walked over to the door.

"You caught him?" James turned in his seat to look at Sherlock, he was truly astonished at this fact.

"Yes, of course," Sherlock said, turning the key in the lock. "After all, you are Hosmer Angel."

John would've laughed at this, if the terrified expression on James' face didn't make it completely clear that Sherlock was right.

James managed to compose himself enough to be able to speak again. "That's just ridiculous. I know you have the reputation of…"

"That really won't do," Sherlock said, moving towards James. "There's simply no denying it, the facts paint a very clear picture."

Albeit one only Sherlock Holmes can see, John thought to himself, still recovering from the shock of this latest development. James was still sitting in his seat, little drops of sweat forming on his brow.

"You obviously started courting Rosa Darvill because of her money. It was only later you discovered it was in fact the daughter who has the money, but by then it was too late for you to start courting the daughter, so you married the mother instead. After all, Mary's money was managed by her mother, meaning you could still enjoy it. That's to say, as long as she stayed at home. Which would probably be for a while because she was very distant from people and you made sure she would remain so by telling her she was bad around people and should stay away from parties.

"But when she started to show an interest in meeting new people, you knew it wouldn't be long before she would want a life of her own and would leave the house. And you assumed she would take the money with her. So you conceived of a plan to make her distrusting of new people," Sherlock said.

James just sat there, frozen by fear or maybe shame. John could finally see where this was going, and he felt a cold hatred forming for the man sitting in the chair in front of him.

"Rosa wasn't very strong willed and you are very dominant, so I imagine it didn't take too much effort to convince her to go along with the plan. After all, she also loved the luxuries her daughter's money brought her."

"How did you know they were the same man?" John asked.

"James here is an amateur actor - there were several framed pictures on his bureau, all of shows he'd done. That means he probably has access to everything he needs to disguise himself. And you have to admit, the description of Hosmer Angel was filled with things one would find in a over the top disguise."

John thought back to the description, but it still seemed like a gigantic leap to John. He also couldn't help but be reminded of what Sherlock had told him just yesterday about disguises.

"Then there was the fact that Hosmer only appeared in person, when James was out of the country. And his insistence on Mary's loyalty to him, should he disappear. After all, that was the goal of all of this, to make Mary distrust any new people she would meet from that point on."

"But how did he disappear from the limo?" John asked.

Sherlock sighed. "He went in one door, and got out the other," he stated simply. "That was one of the most important clues. You do not disappear from a moving car, so it was fairly obvious Hosmer had gotten out himself, before the car ever started moving. I'm assuming of course that it was a limo with tainted glass placed between the driver and backseat to create privacy?" Sherlock turned to James, but he wasn't answering.

"Did he…," John glanced at the man Sherlock had trapped in their apartment, worrying about what might set him off. "Did he kill the mother?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Of course he did." Sherlock fixed his gaze on James. "She wanted to tell her daughter the truth, didn't she? She felt guilt. But that would cost you your money."

John looked at Sherlock, then at James and there was no doubt that Sherlock was right.

"I do not know how you did it, how you murdered her - without a body it isn't likely we will find out. But I am fairly certain it was an accident."

"They only found a foot because he tried to get rid of the body?"

"Yes," Sherlock said coldly.

James, meanwhile, seemed to have recovered some of his calm. He slowly rose to his feet and very calmly said, "I don't know how you've come to these absurd conclusions and I certainly haven't heard anything that could be proven beyond a doubt."

Sherlock's expression turned hard, however he had no retort, because James was right.

"Yet I do know," James continued, "that you are breaking the law yourself, by keeping me locked up here. I know your name detective Holmes - I looked you up - and I will be pressing charges against you if you do not open that door. The police can't treat people like this, and you can't lock me up without a provable reason."

"Very true," Sherlock said, moving towards the door. "And I am not certain whether this will stand up in court." He unlocked the door an threw it open. "However, I will be telling your stepdaughter my findings and I'm fairly certain she will take her money - and her house - away from you."

James clenched his jaw.

"I might even advice her to hire someone to take care of you," Sherlock said with a smirk on his face.

"You can't do that, you're police," James said arrogantly, though his fear was only thinly veiled.

"Ah, you have missed something vitally important in your research," Sherlock said as the grin grew wider. "I am only a consulting detective, so I can pretty much do whatever the hell I want." He locked eyes with James. "John," he said without breaking his stare. "Get your gun please."

James' calm disappeared completely as he lunged forward, pushed past Sherlock and dashed down the stairs. John could hear Mrs. Hudson exclaim as the man flew through the front door.

Sherlock smiled, but the smile soon disappeared.

"Do you really think they won't be able to convict him?" John asked.

"Unfortunately, yes, I do think he will get away with it." Sherlock slumped down in a chair and switch on the TV.

"But we will tell Mary what happened?"

"Of course," Sherlock said. John could see he was bothered by the fact they couldn't do anything about it. But Sherlock's brilliant insights could hardly be used as evidence.

John stared at the TV and something else dawned on him. "The ironic thing is, James will have succeeded."

Sherlock looked at John, his eyebrows raised.

"James wanted Mary to be distrusting of people," John explained, "I'm pretty sure he will have succeeded in that now."

Sherlock looked at the TV again. He didn't say anything, maybe because he wasn't willing to try and draw conclusions that had to do with emotions, things you couldn't turn into cold data, effects you couldn't reproduce. But John had started to suspect there were other reasons for Sherlock never wanting to touch the emotional side of their cases.

"When I go and see Mary," John said, assuming Sherlock would not come with him. "Should I still advice her to find someone to take care of James?" John joked.

Sherlock smirked. "Certainly, tell her I'm free next week."