A Study in Reason

Chapter 15

The next day, Clara headed to Baker Street early that morning. She knocked, apologised to Mrs Hudson for the early hour and headed upstairs.

"I've made a decision," she announced when she saw Sherlock lying, eyes closed, on the sofa by the wall. He feigned a jerky and unwelcome wake up but Clara knew he hadn't been sleeping.

"Oh? And what is it?" he asked in a bored tone.

"I've decided that we're going to catch this bastard today. No matter what it takes."

"Oh, really? It doesn't work like that," Sherlock said dismissively.

"It does for me. So. What have you figured out since last night?" Sherlock frowned.

"Who says I have anything?" he asked.

"Because you've been up all night turning this puzzle over in your mind and after over twelve hours, you'd at least have some ideas to throw around." Sherlock sneered at her.

"I don't 'throw around ideas'," he growled. She held up her hands in a mock surrender.

"Okay, okay. I take it you don't have anything." Sherlock neither confirmed nor denied the statement. "Well that's okay because I do." Sherlock sat up but remained silent. "We've been so intent on finding a connection, we didn't think to find the killer, kidnapper, whatever."

"That was the Yard's job. They use the normal means to find him, we figure it out a different way," he sounded like a child who was defending a mistake to Clara's ears. Nobody else would have noticed, but Clara was very observant and knew his speech patterns well.

"Yeah, well that was our mistake. So today we're going to find this guy."

"What do you propose?"

Just then, John walked in.

"Hi, Clara, I thought Sherlock was talking to someone. I see you keep the same ridiculous hours." Clara smiled up at him.

"John," she said. "If you were confronted with a man who knew how kill someone without leaving a single trace of DNA or other evidence and knows just where to stab a victim so they die very quickly, who would you think they were?" John frowned. After a minute, he glowered.

"MI6 trained maybe? CIA? Something like that." Clara glanced at Sherlock. He didn't seem to be thinking about the case, but he was looking at John as if trying to gauge his reaction to his own theory. John did seem less than impressed, Clara thought.

"Had a bad experience with an MI6 agent?" she asked lightly.

"CIA," Sherlock corrected. "...Probably." Clara looked confusedly between the two. Then, she noticed the wedding band on John's finger.

"Oh. Whoops, sorry. I didn't realise. Is she..." John and Sherlock both looked at her.

"How did you..?" John started.

"Yes. She's alright," Sherlock assured Clara.

"Oh! She is the agent! I thought..." Clara trailed off at the look she received from John. "Sorry. Never mind."

"So, you were saying?" John asked.

"Hmm?"

"The Case, Clara. Your theory," said Sherlock.

"Oh! Right. Well so yeah... So I'm almost certain that our guy is an agent of some kind - or at least he used to be."

"So, couple that with what he's done to the victims we've found so far - he's obviously playing out some sort of fantasy - and add that to his skill set and we have a forcibly retired intelligence agent with a vendetta against Evie Wise," Sherlock finished.