Molly Hooper was the queen of getting herself into uncomfortable situations. It wasn't quite that they were always uncomfortable for her, but usual it was uncomfortable for the other party involved. She never meant to be so awkward, but she supposed that perhaps others just didn't understand her.
Molly was twenty-seven years old. She was an intern in the mortuary of St. Bart's and was quite proud to be working with dead bodies. She knew that it wasn't something that just anyone could handle, so she took the ten years of University that she'd already had and held it proudly out in front of her. She would say mortician jokes at the worst times and everyone obviously found her to be quite a strange creature and were always the ones who were uncomfortable while communicating with her.
Or at least that's how it was.
One day, Molly was working, interning with her usual mentor, Dana Pemberton, who who was asked to prepare a body for examination. The corpse was that of Jemima Oldershaw, an older woman who seemingly committed suicide, so why would the police be interested in examining her body post-autopsy?
A detective from Scotland yard walked into the morgue soon after the body was moved to a table. With him walked a tall, pale man with alarmingly sharp cheekbones and gorgeously dark, curly hair. When the man's icy blue eyes caught hers, she realized she'd been staring at him a complete thirty seconds while the detective was introducing themselves.
Dr Pemberton shook both of the men's hands. "Nice to meet you, Mr Holmes. And, of course, good to see you again, Detective Inspector Lestrade."
The detective, the shorter man with the brown hair specked with grey, took a step toward the body, then looked back at the tall man. "She's all yours."
Mr Holmes stepped forward now, taking a pair of blue latex gloves from the box that Dr Pemberton had stretched out to him. He snapped them onto his hands and began searching the corpse. He slid the body sheet down the woman's torso, examining her waist, then took out a double lens and examined her fingernails. At last, walked around the other side of the table, examining the bullet wound at her right temple.
He stood up straight looking to D.I. Lestrade. "It's not a suicide."
The D.I. wrinkled his nose, brows furrowing. "And how the hell can you tell?"
"Look at her, Lestrade. Really, look. All the signs are there." He snapped off his gloves, tossing them into a nearby waste bin.
Molly was curious. Cause of death had always been fascinating to her, even when she was a kid, back when death should have been the last thing on her mind, she couldn't help but wonder how cause of death was determined. Her grandfather had an aneurysm in his sleep when she was five. How did anyone know? Her great aunt had a heart attack when she was eight. How did they know? It was these events and others that made her decide her career early on in life and she found that even after ten years of schooling that centred around cause of death, she was still being surprised every day.
"Signs?" she questioned, stepping toward the man as he headed towards the door.
He stopped in his tracks, spinning around and stepping closer to her, his long coat swishing with each step. "Yes, the signs."
"W-what do you mean? I-I mean, I know what you mean, just, what signs are there?"
The man let out air through his nose, looking up as he thought. "Everything, Molly, everything about that body screams murder."
Molly's doe eyes were wide. "H-how do you know my name?"
He raised a finger, pointing it at her breast. "Name tag."
"Oh, that's, erh...." A heat rose to Molly's cheeks and she looked down at her shoes. She let out a nervous laugh as she looked back up at him. "For a second I thought you did something spectacular, but I guess I'm just a bit dumb."
"Not dumb, no," he shook his head. "Now, as clever as me? Not even close. Molly, I can do what most people seem to find very complex and impossible."
"And w-what's that?"
Lestrade stepped toward the two. "Sherlock, don't."
Sherlock Holmes ignored him. "What's your cat's name?"
The blush faded from her cheeks as her lips parted in shock. "Toby."
"A Selkirk, yes?"
"Y-yes."
D.I. Lestrade sighed. "Sherlock."
"Oh, and how's the babysitting going?" Sherlock asked, "Perhaps you should try mushing up fresh peas for the kid rather than canned sweet potatoes. Also, maybe you shouldn't babysit overnight when you have to work the next morning. Toddlers have a tendency, as I'm sure you found out last night, to wake you up at any and all hours without a single care to why you need sleep. Perhaps you can babysit on your days off or right after work, it's obvious you must find some extra way to help pay off your student debt faster. Need I go on?"
Molly's lips were more than parted now. Her jaw was dropped, eyes as wide as saucers. Lestrade was a few feet away, shaking his head.
"He's always like that, if you were wondering," he told her.
Molly closed her mouth and swallowed. She then bit her lip in thought. She looked from Sherlock to her mentor back to Sherlock, then back to her mentor again. "Dr Pemberton?"
"Yes?"
"I'm taking my lunch break early."
"Okay," she said slowly, "may I ask why?"
The corners of Molly's lips twitched. "Because I'm taking Mr Sherlock Holmes to the canteen."
Sherlock's eyes grew wide this time. "What?"
"You are?" Lestrade asked at the same time.
"Yes," Molly nodded, "I'd like to hear more about this murder, if you don't mind. This is my only break of the day, so make sure to not be boring."
Sherlock looked to Lestrade, who looked just as shook. The D.I. nodded, waving him off with a hand. Sherlock mouthed something to him, but Lestrade just kept waving him off. Finally, he looked back at her, brows furrowed. He sucked in a breath and let it out just as fast.
"Right, then," he began walking towards the door, Molly following right on his heels, an overly excited grin on her face as she listened to him speak. "I originally had a few theories but now that I've examined the body I've come down to just two...."
