"What?" Asked Greg as he walked through the door on cue.
"Do you have anything like this on file?" Asked Sherlock gesturing toward the seal.
"Uh, I'll get the guys to have a look, why?" He took a photo of the seal and stationery.
"It was with a package that Sherlock found outside 221b." John explained, taking another look at the note. "Hang on, Sherlock, is this blood?"
"Hmm? Yeah." His crystal blue eyes were fixed to the microscope.
"Any idea who's blood?" He asked.
"Nope." Sherlock lied.
"Ok, so… This could be like a warning?" Lestrade was serious. Sherlock shrugged.
"Someone could be in danger?" John sounded worried but all he did was shrug again.
"Sherlock!"
"Boring, all this is boring."
"Sherlock, there's a message in blood, a creepy message, how is that 'boring'?" Greg sternly stared at the detective. "Look, I'm gonna get my people to look into this-"
"No, it was addressed to me and I will deal with this- on my own." Sherlock Holmes snatched the package from the police officer's hands. At that moment, Molly Hooper looked up from a computer.
"Um, Sherlock… I found a match for the DNA test and-"
"Thank you Molly. Everyone, get out. Get out now, I need to go to my mind palace." The room cleared and Sherlock was left alone.
He looked around just to be sure that everyone had gone, before waltzing up to the computer and memorising the data that he was presented with. Molly Hooper entered the room.
"Look, I know you told me to get out, but-" She started.
"I know. The blood matched, didn't it?" he sounded serious.
"Yeah, match found for Hol-"
"Molly, I need you to do something for me. Please, no-one must know." Sherlock held her shoulders.
"What is it?" She asked, rather shocked as to how close she was to him.
"Keep my secret?"
"Did freak ask you to do this?" Sargent Donovan asked.
"Yeah, sort of." Greg Lestrade handed his phone to Anderson.
"So, this is real wax?" The forensic scientist was rapidly zooming in on the pattern. "Wait a second, look closely. Right there, you see it?" He asked.
"Um, nope." The Detective Inspector sighed.
"The feather at the bottom of the design symbolises 'the thieving magpie'." For the first time in his life, Anderson had actually found something useful.
After a lengthy conversation to Molly about the importance of this particular secret, Sherlock Holmes un-stuck the wax seal and turned it over. Just as the thought. A thieving Magpie was branded into the red. Clever and vain – like all criminals.