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Holmes gets a call from a dominatrix friend of his that her outcall client is dead. Someone poisoned him and then stuffed him into a latex bodysuit so that the mistress would find him and call the police. That seems like a lot of work, doesn't it? After harassing an innocent sex-shop owner, the trail leads to one of the victim's subordinates, who admits to the part about the latex bodysuit, but not the poisoning. So what did he really do, aside from obstruct justice a little?
The victim's wife and two sons come home from their alibi and are met by the nanny. And here's where it gets a little complicated, because the nanny turns out to be this woman who was acquitted twenty years earlier of killing her father the same way the latest victim died. And Holmes recognized her because he used to write her letters and they struck up a correspondence. The police bring her in, but Holmes immediately decides she's being framed. Prying by Watson reveals that when he wrote the letters, Holmes was being severely bullied at school, and he identified with her because she was being abused by her father. And he's confident she really did poison him, although she was declared Not Guilty.
So the question is -- who framed her? She was being followed by a private investigator hired by the victim's wife, but she has an alibi. Admittedly, her alibi is that she was buying pills to maybe kill her husband with, but it's still an alibi. The older son was in line to get millions of dollars pretty soon, but they can't find any evidence to make it stick. When Watson and Bell find the victim's hidden tablet computer, they discover that the older son was being sexually abused by his father. And he had access to the facts about his nanny's past, so he almost definitely did it. Unfortunately, before he can confess, the nanny finds out everything, so she confesses instead. In a really good scene, she tells Holmes that she's doing it so that the son can live a normal life. And after all, she did kill someone once and get away with it, so maybe this is justice after all.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!There are boxers sparring. Oh, my mistake, kickboxers. One of them falls. The other one is Holmes. After the fight, Watson observes that Sherlock fights dirty, which he recommends. Holmes answers his phone: "Hello, Mistress." He looks a little embarrassed. "What? Hang up and dial 911. Ask that Captain Thomas Gregson be informed of the call. I'll be there shortly. Yes." There's a dead body waiting for them.
A woman dressed provocatively and holding a riding crop stands to a body on the floor. She tells Gregson that she got a call at 10:30 from a new client who wanted CP and OTK. Holmes elucidates the phrases "Corporal Punishment" and "Over-The-Knee (Spanking)" for Gregson, who has apparently led a very sheltered life for a New York cop. The woman was told the door would be unlocked, and the man was lying on the floor when she got there. He was wearing a mask and was unresponsive to her orders and whip. So she called Holmes, who explains, "Mistress Felicia and I got chatting over an exhibition of torture devices throughout history." And then they stayed in tough.
Bell reports that the dead man is Titus Delancey, the CEO of AP&G Financial Consulting. Gregson sends Mistress Felicia off with Bell to make an official statement. He doesn't think Felicia killed the guy, so Watson suggests heart failure. Holmes checks under the latex suit Mr. Delancey was wearing and notes that there's no talcum powder. It's hard to put on a latex suit without talcum powder, so Holmes concludes that he must have had help. And there's blue on his lips, which Watson diagnoses as nitroglycerin overdose. Holmes rejects the theory of accidental overdose, because he'd need eight tablets accidentally. And he spots a glass of bourbon, which he is confident was used to mask the scent of nitroglycerin. He pours some out and lights it, because he's a big showoff who can't wait for the lab to do things properly. The point is… murder! Someone laced Delancey's bourbon with enough nitroglycerin to cause an overdose.
Holmes practices uses a bullwhip to snuff out candles at the brownstone. The candles aren't lit, so I'm guessing he's new at this. Watson comes down and complains about it being morning, but Holmes is too busy being happy at his gift from Mistress Felicia. He also reports that Delancey's wife swears her husband was not into S&M, which Watson believes. There were no signs of bondage gear in the house. Holmes thinks the latex suit was brand new, based on its shininess. Watson asks if a poisoner would shove Delancey into a latex suit and call a dominatrix. I have that question too, because I believe it would take a lot of work to get a non-responsive dead body into a tight latex suit. Anyway, Holmes says there are only two stores in Manhattan that sell this brand of suit, and one of them ("unfortunately for submissives of size") only has it up to a Large. So unless the killer bought the gear online (which he almost certainly did, but never mind that) it came from The Pleasure Parlor. It is my opinion that any leather store that does not carry XXL gear is denying itself a lot of business.
Said Pleasure Parlor is filled with leather goods. Bell introduces himself to the gentleman behind the counter and asks if he sold an XXL latex suit recently. The gentleman replies, "Sure, happy to help, just as soon as you come back with a subpoena." Discretion is an important part of running this sort of place. Holmes makes a joke about the guy being on a "moral high horse" because he's wearing chaps. It's not much of a joke, but he tries. Watson is over at the rack of latex suits and she thinks they should just dust them all for prints because whoever bought one probably touched all of them. Sure, makes sense. Counter-guy says they need a subpoena for that, too, so Bell decides he'll just wait for the subpoena to get there. While prominently wearing his police badge and standing to the counter. That seems like harassment to me, and it works. The country guy says there was an XXL sold last night at around 9:30, and the guy who bought it was "a medium at most." He paid cash, but he got it from the ATM right by the register.
A Mr. Jeffries is in the interrogation room looking at pictures of himself at the ATM. He'd claimed he was at home watching television, but now he says that he forgot he went for a walk. I'm not here to judge people, but if you can forget that one night ago, you spent hundreds of dollars on a latex suit that doesn't even fit you, you might have a problem. Gregson says he shoved his boss into the suit after poisoning him, and Jeffries denies poisoning him. He admits to buying the suit and putting Delancey into it, though. He got to Delancey's house for dinner around 8:45. He was already dead, and Jeffries assumed he had a heart attack. Gregson explains that Jeffries is in charge of acquisitions at AP&G and is in line for CEO, but Jeffries insists that Delancey was stepping down anyway. So what's the deal with the latex suit? Jeffries gets into the details of Delancey's contract's morals clause, which would save the company hundreds of millions of dollars that could have gone to Delancey's children. He admits to being "a greedy jerk with really questionable judgment" but denies being a murderer. I can't imagine how much work it would take to get a dead body into a latex suit without knocking over tables and making a huge mess. Partway through that process, he had to have been wondering if there was a better way to do this.
At the police conference room, the lab confirms the nitroglycerine in the bourbon. Bell says that AP&G security confirms that Jeffries was at the office until 8:00, which is the time of death. Delancey's wife is on the way home.
At the Delancey home, Mrs. Delancey says her husband didn't tell her about any plans for the evening. She and the boys spent the night at their other house. She can't think of anyone specific that might want to hurt her husband, although his success probably caused some enemies. She's worried about the effect this will have on the boys, because their mother died of cancer five years ago, two years before she married their father. Their nanny Ann Barker comes in, and I'm instantly convinced she did it. It's probably not fair of me. She goes to check on the boys (we're told that Zack is particularly distraught), and Holmes takes Watson outside.
Holmes asks if Watson remembers Abigail Spencer, a fifteen-year-old girl who was accused of poisoning her father with nitroglycerine in the early 1990s. She was acquitted, although many people continued to suspect her. And then she vanished. Holmes is convinced it is Ann Barker.
In the interrogation room, Gregson establishes that Abigail Spencer is Ann Barker. She says her father beat her, so she wasn't sad, and that made everyone assume that she killed him. She also denies killing Titus Delancey, which makes Gregson accuse her of being defensive, which makes her explain that it's natural to be defensive when you're being interrogated by the police. I'm surprised her experience with being accused of murder didn't teach her to get a lawyer in these situations. She admits that the nitroglycerine is quite a coincidence, but she insists that she didn't do it. She spent last night alone, because she spends most of her time alone. She got plastic surgery to make it harder for people to recognize her, but Holmes spotted her voice. She takes a breath and says that they clearly don't have proof, so she wants to leave.
Bell thinks she's a great suspect, and Gregson says they don't have enough evidence to hold her. Holmes no longer thinks she did it. He now thinks someone is trying to frame her, although Watson says no one is supposed to have recognized her in fifteen years.
Holmes has set up a crazy-person collage wall back at the brownstone. Watson thinks he didn't just recognize Abigail Spencer's voice. He saw the tattoo on her wrist, but she didn't have that tattoo when she was arrested. Holmes says that he was fascinated with her as a boy, and he wrote letters to her full of direct questions. They corresponded throughout the trial, and she mentioned that she wanted to get a tattoo of a phoenix on her wrist. And she didn't recognize the name "Sherlock Holmes" because he was using the name "Shaun." I can understand how a kid might not want to use the name "Sherlock." Anyway, their correspondence gave Holmes insight into her mind, and he believes she did it. She convinced him that her father was abusive and she was responsible for his death. He calls her "an excellent research subject," which is pretty creepy. He didn't tell anyone about the correspondence because the trial was over and he didn't consider her a threat to kill anyone else. He now believes that whoever uncovered Abigail is the killer.
Abigail is at home, looking at the media trucks across the street. Sherlock's at her apartment door, but she doesn't want to talk to him without a warrant. He uses the name "Shaun Holmes" and she lets him in. He sits and awkwardly says he didn't know how to explain their relationship. She's been fired from her nanny job and couldn't even say goodbye to either of the boys. Holmes apologizes, and she does as well, because she stopped writing. He broaches the subject of her being framed and asks if anyone's been prying into her past. There was a brown sedan following her last month and she wrote down the license plate number. Holmes copies it into his phone and gets up. She doesn't want him to leave, because she doesn't have anyone to talk to and she considers him an old friend. She says, "I'm afraid. And I could really use a friend right now." Holmes stands there awkwardly.
Bell says Abigail was being tailed by a private investigator from Trenton at the NYPD. The PI was hired by Mrs. Perry Delancey, who had a pre-nuptial. There was no evidence of Abigail sleeping with Mr. Delancey, but Abigail's old identity did come to light weeks ago. Bell talked to the Delancey boys without their mother around, and they said they were watching television in their rooms, so she could have sneaked out and poisoned her husband without them noticing. Perry Delancey's lawyer pops his head out into the hallway and says his client is ready to make a statement.
She says that the night her husband died, she met Dr. Phillip Malone at a bar in a different city at 7:00 pm, and many members of the staff will verify that she was there all evening. Dr. Malone distributes prescription drugs illegally, and she bought nitroglycerine from him. Well, that's an awkward thing to confess! She admits that she was considering using it to kill her husband and blaming her nanny but she doesn't think she could have done it. Gregson: "So. Your client's statement is that she couldn't have killed her husband because she was too busy planning to kill her husband." That appears to be the case, yes.
Holmes takes Perry's picture of his crazy-person wall and complains about her ridiculous alibi. Now he's looking at the Delancey boys. The millions of dollars are going into a trust, and Graham will be able to access the money in one year. Graham is the one who wasn't mentioned as being particularly distraught. And he doesn't have an alibi anymore, because the boys were watching television in separate rooms and his mother was gone. Holmes plans to talk to Graham about Abigail Spencer the day at the memorial. Watson asserts that Holmes is trying to prove Abigail is innocent because he's in love with her. After all, he spent three hours at her place today and sent her a lot of letters when he was young. Holmes tells a story about how he was tormented mercilessly as a youth in school. "I was beaten. Fairly savagely. And with great frequency." Watson draws a parallel to Abigail's life, but Holmes insists she was an academic pursuit. Then he describes her as a welcome respite from school…but nothing so "mundane" as love. She was the first person who let him see a murderer's mind, and that gave him a direction for his life. He never accused her because that would make her stop writing. He promises to hand her over if she's guilty, but he wants to help her.
Graham is idly shooting baskets at an outdoor hoop as Watson and Holmes come up. He's bummed out about his father being dead, his nanny being fired, and his stepmother admitting to planning his father's death. His brother Zack is particularly affected by Perry, but he's okay with his Aunt Susan. Holmes brings up the subject of murder for money, and Graham denies it, saying everyone knows Abigail did it, because it's in all the papers. Also, she and his father got in a big argument last week, and he can prove it because he was recording his brother doing a parkour move in the hallway. How convenient!
Holmes shows Abigail the video. Police technicians have enhanced the audio and found that Titus was angry that someone had accessed his tablet, and he blamed Abigail. She denies it and Holmes says that the police are looking for it now. It has been hypothesized that Titus found out her secret and was blackmailing her for...services. Holmes asks why she didn't mention the fight, and she says it wasn't a big deal. She promises she's always been honest with him, and he brings up her poisoning her father. He has the precise date of a letter where she mentioned a neighbor with a heart condition, which is where he believes she got the nitroglycerine. And another letter gave a different alibi than she had at the trial. "I know the truth, Abigail. I've known for twenty-two years." She tells him to get out.
In the Delancey home, Watson is trying to pick the lock on Delancey's fancy desk because someone tried to pry the drawer open. She reminds Bell she used to be a surgeon, which means she'd never "leave a mess like this." I like that. She should become an expert lock-picker with her surgeon skills now. She gets the drawer open, but it's empty. Watson suggests that the scratches might have made him suspicious. Bell's new idea is that the tablet might have been in a case that looks like a book, so maybe it's in one of the bookshelves that line the room. What I want more than anything right now is for one of them to move a book that makes the bookshelf swing out from the wall, revealing the sex dungeon that shows that Titus Delancey really was into bondage the whole time. Watson suddenly notes that this fairly small room has five air vents. She walks around tapping the walls and finds the fake. There's a tablet inside it! So much for my theory.
Watson calls Holmes to tell him to turn around and go back to Abigail's place. The tablet has videos of Titus. Sexually abusing Graham.
At the police station, Gregson, Holmes, and Watson are here to talk to Graham, his aunt, and their lawyer. Gregson brings out the tablet and suggests that Graham was considering hurting his father. Graham doesn't want to talk to his aunt or his lawyer about this and tells them both to leave. Gregson says he's seventeen and is within his rights to talk without a lawyer. Gregson says that Graham had an understandable motive and Graham denies it. Watson shows that Graham's fingerprints were on the file that Perry Delancey got that explained Abigail's past. Holmes concludes that Graham came to the same plan as his stepmother because he didn't want his story to get out and he didn't want Zack to suffer as well.
Abigail storms into the police station looking for Graham because Zack called her. The aunt demands to know if she knew what was happening, and she looks confused. Holmes works on Graham, saying that if he comes forward, he'll save Abigail from going to prison for something he didn't do. Watson asks him to tell the truth. But then the aunt and lawyer come back in and kick the cops out into the hallway. Bell says that Abigail wants to make a confession, claiming that Delancey found out her real identity and was extorting sexual favors.
Holmes goes into Abigail's interrogation room. The DA will not pursue Graham without a confession, which he is unlikely to get now that Abigail's confessed to a murder she didn't do. She explains that she's confessing to save Graham from prison. Holmes says Graham is unlikely to serve more than eighteen months, what with the mitigating circumstances, but Abigail blames herself for not stopping the abuse. "I should have stopped it...sooner." And after all, she did poison someone twenty years ago: "Titus got what's coming to him. And now so am I. Finally."
Graham meets Holmes by one of New York's many picturesque bridges. Holmes warns Graham that he'll be watched, and that he is not to murder anyone at all from now on. Graham hasn't spoken to anyone about what happened to him because it won't change anything, and Holmes awkwardly assures him that "being victimized is corrosive. And sometimes talking about it? That can help." He gives Graham his card in case he should wish to talk to someone who already knows what happened.
Boxing gym: Holmes pummels the heavy bag.
Follow Monty on Twitter at @monty_ashley and read his blog, Mysterious Exhortations.