The paramedics took the empty cot back inside the hospital as Molly Hooper ran out and saw Doctor John Watson – wasn't he that guy that helped out Scotland Yard occasionally? – looking forlorn and confused.

"I heard – there was – suicide? Did someone commit suicide?" she asked as she caught her breath.

"I – I don't…know," he replied, turning to look her in the eye.

"Weren't you standing right here when it happened?"

"Yeah, I was. I just – I can't remember."

"Well, where is he? Where's the body?"

"He's gone."

Molly put on her 'confused' face and hoped the distressed man would answer her unasked question. No such luck.

"I have to go." John turned and walked to the road, where he got a cab and told the cabbie, "221B Baker Street."

The door to the flat was open when he got there, so John wasn't surprised to see a slightly familiar figure standing in the middle of his sitting room. The tall, portly, well-dressed man stepped up to the fireplace and took a picture off the mantel.

"You don't mind if I keep this, do you? I can't imagine you'll be needing it," the man said sadly. He turned around and looked at John with a face that John knew he could place if he was given the right context. "I thought not." The familiar stranger cast his eyes downward and quietly remarked, as he put the picture in his pocket, "He would have remembered you, you know…"

The man raised his eyes again and John found his gaze locked with the other's. "What's done is done, I suppose, and you are not to blame." The man turned to the window next to him. "I don't know who is."

"Do I know you?" John asked abruptly.

"Not anymore."

If the man had decided to spout nonsense, then John would have to change tactics.

"What's that photo you took?"

With suddenly a determined and hopeful look, the man crossed the room, taking the picture back out of his pocket.

John recognized the scene from this Christmas just past. He'd taken the photo on his phone and printed it once he'd opened it as an email on his laptop. His eyes recognized all the faces in it; his landlady, Molly Hooper, Greg Lestrade, his ex-girlfriend – there was a face missing. He could've sworn there'd been one more person at that party. There's the corner where he was supposed to be – why was there a violin on the vacant chair?

"I don't have a violin…"

"Oh, good, then you won't mind if I take it back home with me? I – left it here, last time I visited." That strange man had picked up the bow and was fiddling about with it.

John unexplainably filled with anger and he strode over to the fellow, snatching the bow away from him and picking up the instrument. "Actually, I've been meaning to learn the violin, and I don't believe it's yours anyway."

The other man forced a smile to his face and said, "Perhaps you're right. Yes, I think it's better if everything does stay here. Well, it was good seeing you again, Doctor Watson. Replenishing, in fact. I'll be checking up on you periodically." He set off and grasped the door handle, intending to close the door behind him on his way out.

"Who are you?"

The mysterious man smiled at John again, in a more convincing way, this time. "A friend."