"When angels can no longer fly, they fall to their deaths..."
Four months after their first confrontation in the swimming hall, bored Sherlock Holmes is recontacted by none other than Jim Moriarty and forced into offering his consultations on a rath...
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Monday 23/08/2010, 01:58 p.m.
Molly Hooper had truly outdone herself when identifying the owner of the cigarette case and even discovering a physical copy of Helene Moriarty's medical records. They both knew very well Molly would get in trouble if somebody found out that she had accessed the records of a dead person and passed the information to a third party without permission. But that's what made her so brilliant; obeying with no questions, conducting any given task and sharing the results with him. Molly was almost as efficient a partner as John, Sherlock would give her that.
Or maybe not. No one could replace John Watson. Despite being mentally simple, slightly boring, overly emotional and easily predictable, he was still the most brilliant person Sherlock had ever met. But Molly also appeared to be more interesting than he had originally thought. It was funny how ordinary people's stupidity spiralled Sherlock Holmes' brain into a heightened state of observation and helped him brush aside the trivialities. And surely, they made him feel even more geniusthan he already was.
The consulting detective was, of course, thankful for Molly's efforts, but in his very typical Sherlock-like way, he forgot to express it in his full flush of enthusiasm. The mere notion of making progress in his and Moriarty's game of intellectual chess kept Sherlock's inner furnace alive. Nothing could extinguish those flames of dedication when he was on a captivating case and when the mental links of deduction snowballed down the hill at an accelerating speed, carrying him towards the truth.
"Usually the GP records are destroyed ten years after someone's death," Molly pointed out, gloved hands on her hips. "The last time she attended St Bartholomew's hospital was approximately twenty years ago."
"It's because a crime was involved in her death."
"A crime? Was she murdered?"
"Evidently." Sherlock deposited the bundle of papers on the lab table and began to flick through them impatiently, letting Molly fade into the background. He could smell the decades on the paper that was past its prime with a smattering of yellowish hues and faded printer ink. But the text was still readable: Helene Moriarty. Date of birth: 24.5.1959. Date of death: 11.10.1989. Spouse: Abraham Moriarty. Children: James and Colonel Moriarty. Doctor: David Adamson, Jacob Harris, Otto Richter. Condition: anxiety disorder, depression, akathisia, psychosis. Treatment: clonazepam and...
Clonazepam? Sherlock plucked out his phone to look up a few facts, and in no time, he had scrolled through countless medical websites. There were not many drugs that could be taken via smoking but clonazepam was one of them. The substance came to the market in the 1970s as a medication to treat seizures, anxiety, panic disorder and movement disorders such as akathisia. Its common side effects included sleepiness, poor coordination and agitation, less commonly cognitive impairments, behavioural disturbances, personality changes and psychosis. According to the report, Helene Moriarty had manifested some of the rarest and severest side effects to the point of being susceptible to abrupt outbursts of rage and mood swings, thus leaving Dr Richter with no other option than to alter her prescription, though she remained unstable till the end.
