Seven bodies.

Sherlock's mind reveled at the recently introduced crime at hand as he arrived by cab at the front of the art gallery. Lestrade lingered to pay the cabbie while Sherlock leaped from the vehicle with John close behind him. The consulting detective's senses began their acute gathering of visuospatial information as he navigated the hoard of people blockading the entrance of the art gallery. Law enforcement personnel surrounded the building to keep the swarm of nosy bystanders, eager reporters, and hysterical guests from entering.

Woman in blue coat on the left, cheap hair dye, clearly a busybody...
A couple, onlookers, returning from a play, obviously boring, probably Shakespearean...
Chief Officer by the steps, definitely incapable and self-conscious, apparently more accustom to paperwork than fieldwork...
Diabetic, 6 feet 7, owns canary...
Old man played the flute until onset of arthritis...

The camera flashes from the newspaper reporters and social media contributors, shattered his focus. The lightning bolts forced him to shut his eyes. However, it caused his flatmate to take notice.

"Sherlock?" John soothed and placed his palm on the shoulder of his friend's black wool coat. The man turned to face him through the glare of police lights, rushing voices, and a million silent stories begging to be heard. The doctor met his eyes and gave him that concerned and compassionate look that always calmed his thoughts in times of chaos.

"Control it," he said firmly.

Sherlock said nothing but gave a brief nod in understanding. His mind slowly began to unwind and grey out his overwhelming peripheral vision, making his stiff muscles and darting eyes appear to relax. All that was left was John. And the bright archway marking their destination. By that time Lestrade had finished with the cabbie and proceeded to lead them onward. With a glance at the inspector the officers immediately granted them the access to pass.

"This way," he told them as he ducked under the yellow caution tape with the two men in tow, which earned a sarcastic eye roll from Sherlock.

"No...really? The crime scene is located beyond the caution tape and the inadequate officers dispersed among the mob of the irritating public? That's new"

There was an audible sigh from the inspector as they climbed the steps to enter. He was probably already preparing himself for the snarky remarks Sherlock will make when he meets Donovan.

John tried his best to catch up to his partner as he traveled down a white marble hallway lined with paintings and littered with various forgotten items, but the man was practically running to the source where the investigative team congregated. John normally would huff at Sherlock's urgency and disregard for him during his "new case frenzy" but somehow this time was different. As he passed shattered statues, torn shawls, and evening bags, in the muddle of lost things scattered along the regal tile floor, he found himself growing curious as well. It was bizarre for him to think about what Lestrade had said earlier about the bodies being turned into statues.

"Were they covered in plaster or something?" he questioned out loud. Lestrade who was walking quickly beside him shook his head.

"No it wasn't quite like that. More like wax museum statues you know?"

"Oh, right," John nodded but had no idea what the inspector meant by that at all.

The mouth of the hallway opened up into a large oval room where police and crime scene assistants wandered around, documenting evidence and taking photos of the disheveled space. The amount of personnel in the room was almost overwhelming until from the mass emerged a familiar, but not entirely welcome face.

"Well it's about bloody time you showed up! I've been running this show on my own," came Sally Donovan's cold and critical voice. Sherlock bumped past the woman as if she weren't even there and continued to the stage behind her with incredible speed. John's eyes followed his path to the center of the room.

Several feet above the ground was a slightly elevated stage where a glass display case had previously been standing. The glass casement had been carefully removed, most likely being examined, and what remained was just the rectangular metal frame. Within it stood seven naked and stiffly posed forms of female bodies, unmistakably solid in appearance and infected with a postmortem paleness recognizable even at a distance. The most notable trait however, was the wax like sheen of their skin. The texture was smooth and dense with an almost slimy film of coating covering the majority of their exterior. The bodies were nearly spared of decomposition except for their gory faces, eyes gelatinous and only partially intact, jaws exposed where the flesh had retreated and decayed teeth had rotted away under layers of obsidian gums.

On the stage Sherlock's eyes quickly flitted over the corpses, taking in every angle and perspective, stepping inside the metal cage and dancing strangely but gracefully in between them to get a better view of each.

Waxy consistency. Tissue preservation... He pondered. His mind slipped further away.
Triglycerides
NaOH
Oxygen deprivation. Ah...

He grinned with the satisfaction of discovery.

John climbed the steps up to the stage. Following Lestrade, he reached the display case. He took in the sight with a slower method than Sherlock, body by body. He furrowed his brow and wrinkled his forehead in the process of concentration. He struggled to find an explanation for the state of the bodies, for the strange hardness which had taken over the limbs and the slippery appearance of the skin which glowed under the sickly blinding lights above. It made his stomach twist for some reason. Yet compared too many bodies he had seen over the years these ones were in a fairly mild state. He couldn't even see any visible marks of a weapon used on the victims or signs of strangulation. Still he felt an eerie chill run through him at the sight.

"Well," John said clearing his throat "They make my last girlfriend look like a supermodel," he chuckled to lighten the mood. After the looks he received from Donovan and Lestrade, he reminded himself not to make jokes.

"They look like they've been dipped in wax," Sergeant Donovan interrupted his thoughts.

Sherlock's head abruptly shot up from behind the body of a fat middle aged woman. His face contorted in a pained expression. John took a deep breath. He readied himself for the onslaught of insults about intelligence, and then the overdrawn but fantastically detailed explanation of why Sherlock must be the only person who has even a moderate level of reasoning.

"Dipped in wax? Lestrade, are you sure your department isn't suffering from an outbreak of stupidity? It's quite contagious. It takes one idiot to make a subtle comment and the next thing you know your investigation is being led by glaring inaccuracies. Obviously these bodies weren't "dipped in wax". It's the process of saponification," his voice sounded exasperated from needing to explain himself.

John let out the breath he held and rolled his eyes at the drama Sherlock always found a way of causing.

"Sherlock..." he said gently but the man ignored him as usual.

Sergeant Donovan crossed her arms and bit her lip to prevent yelling the list of curses she had whirling in her mind already for Sherlock. But even she was curious about this case and although she would never give Sherlock credit, inside she had the same expectant expression which John and Lestrade wore as they waited for him to go on.

There had barely been a pause since his last outburst when Sherlock groaned in a ridiculously theatrical way and continued his explanation. Here comes the overdrawn but fantastically detailed explanation part... John thought to himself. But truly although exasperated by Sherlock's attitude, he found this particular explanation to be one of intense interest. Sherlock's eyes glowed as he began to sort out the facts in his mind with an obsessed enthusiasm.

"Saponification is the chemical process of turning the alkaline hydrolysis of esters, or more commonly referred to as triglycerides, into carboxylic acids. Sodium hydroxide is a strong alkali which is highly soluble in water and creates the base for the process which when met with triglycerides results in a product of soap and glycerol. The fat in the bodies is an unpurified triglyceride, and just like the common animal fat, is capable of reacting with NaOH but only in very low oxygen environments with high moisture content. It is simply the process which creates the formation of solid soap, however when it occurs in corpses it is referred to as adipocere, a fairly rare process that occurs to corpses due to the specific environmental requirements needed for the process to begin."

"They turned into soap?" John asked incredulously. Even with all the strange occurrences he and Sherlock had witnessed throughout their many cases together, this was still a bizarre and unbelievable concept to him.

"At least partially," Sherlock continued. "Beneath the outer layer of saponified tissues there may be fat which was spared from the adipocere process. The corpse might not have been exposed long enough for the process to penetrate the body tissues completely. However it appears from a first examination that the saponification is moderate. It isn't likely that there are enough unaltered tissues to run DNA tests on the corpses. You'll have to take dental samples for DNA analysis."

"Brilliant," John said in amazement. "Absolutely brilliant," he smiled at his friend in admiration. He was always surprised when Sherlock found new ways to astound him. Not the finding spinal fluid in his favorite Tardis mug kind of astounding, he had come to expect that, but the kind that made him feel electrified and warm in the presence of the consulting detective. It was the kind of astounding he felt when Sherlock noticed when he was having a bad day from his choice of television shows, or by the vending machine snacks he had eaten earlier. Those are the deductions that astound him the most, but occasionally these out of the ordinary intellectual conclusions he arrives at do as well.

Sherlock would never admit it but his pride was given an apparent boost from John's praise, seemingly the only praise of value to him. The need to show off struck him once more and he zeroed in on the subject at hand, beginning to further examine the bodies with renewed fever. Slowly the world around him dissolved into a muffled fog, as if a pane of frosted glass separated him from everything beyond.

All bodies female, his voice spoke within his mind, varying ages, sizes, and ethnicities. No apparent link or relationship.
Moderately to severely saponified.
Saponification takes at least 6 months for moderate development which would place death at roughly 6 months
Damp hair. Dry skin. Stored in water until removed somewhere between 24-30 hours ago. The exposure to air would have dried their skin but not their hair entirely because of the sealed casement they were in.
Hands and feet, red toned from hypostasis or settling of internal blood. Body has been suspended in water, making blood drain to lowest parts of body, the hands and feet.
His eyes glanced to the woman whose neck he studied earlier and to the bodies of the other corpses.
Patches of pink surrounding various areas of the body including neck, stomach, and face.
Hm, face?

Sherlock sniffed the face of one woman and abruptly pulled away.

"Almonds," he muttered to himself. John gave him a peculiar look and wondered what on earth he was thinking.

Cyanide poisoning. It smells of almonds and leaves pink areas of skin caused by increased hemoglobin oxygen saturation.
Darker concentration of blood settling around backside of body. Well naturally, if they were suspended with their backs to the bottom of the lake. Ligature impression around midsection where the rope that held them down was tied. Is that a thread? Interesting...

"Lestrade, tweezers," He blurted out demandingly. Lestrade looked around the room then his eyes landed on Donovan. She rolled her eyes and grudgingly found a forensic analyst to borrow tweezers from. She handed them to Sherlock with as much attitude as she could muster as if this would prevent him from asking her for things in the future. John laughed to himself, knowing that whenever she uses attitude with Sherlock it's always a waste of energy.

Sherlock grabbed the tool from her swiftly like it had simply appeared in the air in front of him. Then the consulting detective reached into his pocket to receive a small magnified glass and crouched to hold it up to the body. He found a glimmer of a curled thread stuck to the skin of a corpse's stomach. He placed it in a plastic bag and returned it to his pocket. John wondered what he had discovered already. He eagerly awaited Sherlock's explanation. Tired of the long show Sherlock performed with his silence, Lestrade let out an audible sigh.

"Well?" The inspector pushed. Sherlock looked up at him, broken from thought finally. He returned to a standing position and began his explanation.

"They've been dead roughly six months. The saponification would take that long to develop moderately. After they were killed, the murderer tied the bodies with jute rope and weighted them under still low oxygen water, probably a lake, within 18 hours of death when internal blood was still affected by movement. The internal blood pooled in their hands and feet because they were suspended in the water, therefore making them the lowest parts of the body. The remaining blood settled in the backside of their body where it eventually set. The other patches of pink toned skin affected the body in seemingly random areas, parts of the neck, the stomach, the face, because these are the obvious external signs of cyanide poisoning. You can smell the faint aroma of bitter almonds where they most likely inhaled it, placing the cause of death as asphyxiation by cyanide poisoning. However, if this killer was so well-rehearsed, from his method of killing to his display of the bodies at a private event, then why would he choose jute rope to tie them up?"

He looked directly at Lestrade and after a moment of pause the inspector realized this was not rhetorical and balked to find an answer to the question.
"Because it's all you have at hand?" he suggested hopefully.

"No," Sherlock replied automatically, growing increasingly energetic "If someone went through all this trouble they wouldn't have been going for "good enough", they wouldn't risk it with such a grand plan at stake. They chose jute rope because they didn't know that it is biodegradable and would eventually release the bindings around the bodies."

"Right..." responded Lestrade, obviously at a loss to understand. Sherlock looked at him with buzzing excitement.

"Don't you see? The killer is not experienced. This is someone who has simply done their research. Now the question is why. Why would someone kill seven women, seemingly random women, saponify them, and then put them on display for an art gallery opening?"

John suddenly followed Sherlock's racing train of thought and the two men caught eyes in the moment, knowing they both understood.

"To send a message," John replied.

"Yes!" Sherlock shouted. "It was dramatic, theatrical. Someone that attended last night was meant to receive a message, perhaps someone who knew these women or perhaps it was a message to the world. A message of what? We need to talk to the gallery director."

Sherlock swung around to look at Sergeant Donovan, still standing unimpressed with her arms crossed. Lestrade gave her a look of warning and she finally consented.

"Yeah alright, follow me," she muttered begrudgingly.