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Mycroft is still in town, delighting certain recappers… by which I mean me. He spends the first half of the episode trying to get Sherlock to come have dinner at the Diogenes, and the second half trying to get Sherlock to leave New York and come back to London. His claim is that their father is going to cut off his trust fund and access to the brownstone if Sherlock doesn't come home. Sherlock decides not to do it, but he doesn't learn that Mycroft was lying about everything. He's got some kind of scam going on, apparently.
Meanwhile, a woman falls from a balcony onto a delivery truck. The only reason she hit the truck is so Sherlock can show off how good he is at deducing where the truck was when she hit it. She was stabbed in the stomach before she fell, so it's clearly murder. And she's a poor person who was suddenly moved to a big apartment by a billionaire software genius named Ian Gale, so the immediate suspicion is that he killed her.
The first stop is Ian Gale's lawyer, who claims that Gale is in Kuala Lumpur. But it's just a lookalike who is two inches shorter than the man he's imitating, and Sherlock dismisses this immediately. After a bit more research, Holmes locates Gale hiding out at a hotel where he's reserved an entire floor under a fairly obvious pseudonym. And he's trying to recover from a heart transplant, so he probably wasn't out stabbing ladies and throwing them off balconies. In fact, the victim wasn't even his mistress; she was his illegitimate daughter, who he brought to town in hopes of getting some blood. He's got a special condition where only his relatives can donate blood.
Watson checks out the corpse and finds out the stabbing was done with surgical precision, so she accuses Ian Gale's wife who used to be a pediatric surgeon. After all, Ian Gale changed his will so some of his money stopped going to his wife and started going to his daughter. But that money didn't revert to the wife even after the daughter died, so this goes nowhere. Holmes and Watson go back to the apartment and Holmes finds evidence on the DVR that whoever was in the apartment is probably out betting on horses. The police bring in the victim's ex-boyfriend, but he's got a good alibi: he was out buying medicine for the flu his girlfriend seemed to have.
So that brings up the question of why she was donating blood while she had a flu. This doesn't really get explained, but it leads to the solution: Ian Gale's wife wanted to kill him because she'd get a lot more money that way than if she'd just divorced him. So she stole some tissue from his new heart and injected it into his daughter, see, and then she started generating antibodies, which she took and injected into her husband. Whatever; it's a bunch of medical mumbo-jumbo. The point is that the wife did it.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Holmes and someone do some single-stick sparring on the roof. It's very picturesque. They have eggs on their heads, and when Holmes smashes his opponent's we see that it's Mycroft. Sherlock didn't go to the opening of the Diogenes, so Mycroft wants him to come to dinner there before he goes home to London. Holmes was hoping that hitting each other would be enough bonding. They put their masks back on and have at it. A delivery man brings a package out of his truck and asks a bystander for the word of the day: "borborygmus." That's the sound of a stomach rumbling. If you spell it "Borborygmos," it's also the name of a legendary cyclops in Magic: The Gathering. There's a loud clang from the direction of the delivery truck, but nothing seems to have changed. When the man drives away, there's a woman with a stomach wound on the roof of the truck. The usual gang of cops and consultants are gathered around the roof. She was stabbed and the driver doesn't know when she hit the roof. Holmes goes inside the truck, looks at the way the roof is indented, and notes that the shelf marked A.1-178 is lower than the shelf marked A.1-179. The driver is called to come in, and he confirms that everything is loaded in delivery order. Holmes wants to know where box A.1-178 was delivered, and the driver asks why. Bell tries to get out of this without a Sherlockian explanation, but it's too late for that. There are paint chips all over the inside of the truck, but some of them show that boxes were there during the impact.
Bell, Holmes, and Watson look up at the tall buildings in the area where the woman presumably hit the truck. Watson suggests starting with the third balcony up, because it's the only balcony that doesn't have the same tree as all the other ones. Maybe it got knocked over when a woman fell off. Sure, that's worth a try.
Now they're in the apartment. There are blood drops on the carpet and signs of a struggle. Holmes compliments Watson on a job well done. Bell says the superintendent doesn't know the name of their victim because everything is very private here. And there are no cameras. He goes off to call the management company. Holmes investigates shoes and jewelry while he and Watson discuss his relationship with Mycroft. Watson finds a purse and reports that the victim's name was Haley Tyler, age 26. From the closet, Holmes guesses that the address on the drivers' license isn't this apartment, and he's correct: she's from Mineral Wells, Texas. Someone had old, cheap clothes and new, expensive clothes. So he thinks she was a kept woman. Bell reports that the apartment is owned by "Ian Gale," who invented an expensive phone and half the computers in the country.
Now they're at Gale's office. Watson marvels about how he's an icon. Alan Becker, Ian Gale's lawyer, comes out to meet them. He's aware of who Ms. Tyler was, and he's not at liberty to discuss the nature of Mr. Gale's relationship with her. Bell would like to talk to Gale himself. Holmes has some specific suggestions for questions, and Becker claims that Gale is in Kuala Lumpur. I've been there! He's got news footage recorded twelve hours earlier, showing Gale getting into a cab. Holmes spends a couple of seconds on his phone and says that it's really an Ian Gale lookalike. The height of the SUV in the footage is exactly six feet, four inches, and the man who got in was five inches shorter, while Ian is a few inches taller than that. Holmes admires his phone (invented by Ian Gale), and then gets to the point: "Did he murder Haley Tyler himself, or did the company hire someone to do that for him, too?" Becker declares the meeting over.
Brownstone. Watson's phone buzzes annoyingly, waking her up. It's Mycroft, wondering if Sherlock's okay. He didn't meet him at the Diogenes, which can't have surprised him. Watson and he were out looking for Ian Gale, but she promises to get him over to Mycroft's before he leaves for London. Downstairs, Holmes lists places that Ian Gale is not. It's a long list. He hasn't been seen anywhere for at least six weeks, although stand-ins have been in many places. But Ian Gale's private jet is in New York, so he's using contacts in fancy hotels. Watson brings up Mycroft, and Holmes says that he'll be happy to meet with Mycroft if the case gets closed. Watson offers to work it while he's busy. But Sherlock gets a message and they're off.
At a fancy hotel, Sherlock explains that an entire floor has been booked under the name "Frank Beaufort," and of course the Beaufort scale measures the strength of gale-force winds. He finds a hidden key card in a potted plant and drops off an envelope that he claims to be full of rare "Swedish moose cheese" for the chef that acts as his contact.
Once they're on the right floor, security guards stop them. Sherlock introduces himself and says that hotel security sent them, and as he tells them about how Ian Gale is wanted for murder, the main guard's earpiece starts telling him something. He verifies that Holmes said his name was Holmes (he did) and Sherlock takes out his phone. They're allowed in.
Mr. Gale is in a hospital bed surrounded by medical personnel. And his wife Natalie. He's only hiding because he's sick. Natalie explains that the board is hiding the news because they need to prepare the transition. And Ian explains that Haley Tyler wasn't his mistress; she was his daughter.
After a commercial, we get caught up. Gale got a heart transplant a few weeks ago, but his body's rejecting it. He claims, "I'm too much of a fighter for my own good." Good one, dude. Watson notes that he has a very rare blood type that requires a family member for transfusions, which might explain what his daughter is doing in town. His daughter isn't in his biography, which is because she was the result of a one-night-stand in the mid-1980s. He paid her mother two million dollars to disappear. Natalie claims that Haley volunteered to donate blood when she found out that Ian Gale was sick. But his sickness was supposed to be a secret, as was his daughter. They brought her into town when he got sick because he felt that reconciling would be a good idea. Ian promises to give any help he can as long as they find whoever killed his daughter.
Police station. Gregson says there's one set of fingerprints from Haley's apartment that don't match anyone. Watson says there were no signs of a break-in, so maybe it was someone Haley knew. Holmes wants to go to the morgue to see if the police missed something on Haley's body, but Watson wants to cover that while he has dinner with Mycroft. Holmes rants about "the ritualization-slash-infantilization of eating" but Watson has no sympathy for him.
Morgue. The stab wound severed the abdominal aorta with great precision, so the doctor thinks it was someone who knew what they were doing. Bell brings in Maureen Tyler, Haley's mother. Bell verifies that she wants to do this, then he reveals Haley's face. Maureen's last discussion with Haley was an argument because she was upset to learn that Ian Gale was her father. Ian only cared about his daughter when he needed her, but Maureen didn't try to stop her from giving blood. She just didn't want her going to New York because she knew it would end badly. She says, "I know exactly who killed her." And then we don't find out what she says! What a rip-off.
The Diogenes. Sherlock admits that the dinner was exquisite and takes out his phone. Mycroft gives him the keys to 221B. He's had his stuff moved out, so now it's available to Sherlock again. Sherlock says he lives in New York now, possibly permanently. Mycroft doesn't buy it, because London was Sherlock's passion. And "father" is quite perturbed that Sherlock is still in America. Sherlock sighs, "Early onset dementia is so sad." Mycroft warns Sherlock that father might cut him off and evict him. He has discretionary control over the trust fund that Sherlock uses to pay Watson. Sherlock doesn't blink at this, because he's willing to live in a cardboard box if necessary. Mycroft tries to get him to worry about how his decision might affect Watson.
Natalie Gale is at the police station talking to Bell and Watson. Ian Gale's will recently moved a lot of money (something above ten million dollars) from Natalie to Haley Tyler. Natalie admits that. And apparently she left Gale's hotel at around the time that Haley was killed. Natalie says she sat on a bench in the park. Watson verifies that Natalie was a pediatric surgeon, which suggests that she'd be able to find the abdominal aorta easily. Natalie declares that she's going to call all of her attorneys. She says that changing Ian Gale's portion was her idea, and Haley Tyler's death didn't change anything anyway, since the money is still going to her Haley's family.
At the Brownstone, Holmes looks through pictures of Haley's apartment on a real estate website. Watson comes down and says that the Gales are no longer cooperating with the NYPD, and she blames herself. Holmes thinks there's nothing wrong with asking strong questions that people have good answers for. Bell calls with news about those stray fingerprints: Ray McKibbon, Haley's ex-boyfriend who's done time for assault. He seems to have joined her in New York.
Watson and Holmes go through Haley's apartment. There are no signs of McKibbon spending a lot of time there. Watson wants to know how the dinner with Mycroft went, and Holmes tries to find out how attached she is to the Brownstone. Holmes doesn't think his father actually wants him back in London, but he might not realize that right away. They haven't had a paying client in some time, so Holmes has had to dip into his trust fund to pay Watson. He might have to take the paying clients, which he isn't excited about. He offers that they could move to London, which would let them keep doing what they're doing but with Scotland Yard.
Holmes claims that what he wants is irrelevant, although Watson doesn't buy it. He was happy to go to London because it made him appreciate the support system he has in New York, saying, "I feel that I have thrived here, not because of who I am but because of who I have come to know." See, this is what makes Elementary a worthwhile Sherlock Holmes story. It's asking the question of what Sherlock Holmes would be like not only if he was in the twenty-first century, but if he had had his heart broken and then met this Joan Watson. It's still the same character underneath, but he's changed and evolved to become different. So Holmes doesn't want to leave New York. Watson takes a moment, then says she's never met his father, and all she knows is that he got Sherlock help when he needed it. But, as its put, "Screw him. We can find a new place to live."
Holmes takes the remote control and starts flipping through the DVR. Haley appears to have been a huge fan of "The Hinge," a paranormal show about four FBI agents in Texas. There's also something called "Dino Destructors," which I would totally watch. Holmes explains that a DVR learns our preferences, and this show about horse racing called "The Winner's Circle" doesn't match with Haley's cruelty-free makeup. Presumably, someone is into playing the ponies. And there's a recording of a race set for today at 2 PM. McKibbon probably won't bet online, so they just need to stake out the tracks.
Hey, it's Ray McKibbon! He's in the interrogation room, complaining that his horse literally came in right before he got arrested. He says he was out the day Haley died. He saw the blood on the floor and ran for it. His story is that she'd had the flu for two weeks and he was out getting her medicine. Watson presses for more details; it started with fatigue, but soon she had trouble keeping food down and her fever got bad. Ray has an address for the pharmacy.
He's led away. Watson tells Holmes that Haley donated blood a week ago, which she shouldn't have been able to do if she was as sick as Ray says. She calls the place where she gave blood, and the dude in the white coat says she was in good spirits and joked about "topping off the bag." Holmes wants to go after Mrs. Gale, and he gets a call. Ian Gale has just died, and the company will be releasing a statement shortly. Watson realizes that maybe this was all an elaborate plan to murder Ian Gale. Well, billionaires probably draw more elaborate murder plots than the common citizen.
Captain Gregson strolls past Alan Becker (remember the lawyer from before?) into Natalie Gale's apartment, accompanied by Detective Bell, Sherlock Holmes, and Joan Watson. I listed everyone's full title to try to convey the formality of this well-composed shot where everyone is standing nicely spaced out across the room. They're here to talk about the murder of Ian Gale. Holmes says the recovery rate for Ian Gale's surgery is normally 80%, and that Natalie recently employed a divorce attorney and had a prenuptial agreement. Becker says no one could have caused a rejected transplant, and Watson steps forward with her theory. She thinks Natalie got a tissue sample of Ian's new heart and injected it into Haley, claiming it was a supplement. Haley's immune system generated antibodies, which made her sick. Bell explains that the motive was that if Ian Gale died, Natalie would get lots more money than she would have if she'd divorced him, even after Haley got her money.
Those antibodies were the very ones that Ian died from, and one of the lab techs was her confederate. They know this because he's confessed to giving her tissue samples for a million dollars. Natalie killed Haley because she would get too sick, and she didn't have time to stage a robbery because she had to run when Haley fell over the balcony. A new blood screening is taking place on Haley's blood, which could be the conclusive piece of evidence. Gregson recommends that Natalie get ahead of this. She looks worried. I quite like that all four of them, including Bell, got to do some of the "here's how the crime was committed" speech.
Brownstone. Sherlock lets Mycroft in and offers him a letter for their father. Mycroft raises an eyebrow and asks, "I'm to play messenger, am I?" Sherlock says that part of recovery is recognizing when a structure works, and for him, New York and the Brownstone work. So he's written a letter for their father that contains what he judges to be an appropriate amount of gratitude (adding, "It was not unlike carving the words into my very skin") and he hopes that will be enough. He and Mycroft shake hands, and Mycroft marvels at how different Sherlock is. Sherlock answers, "You are, essentially, the same." Mycroft says he'll be back. For his restaurant. I do hope so. He's fun!
Mycroft drinks wine alone in his restaurant. He takes out the envelope and looks at it before tearing it up. Take that, Sherlock! Then he takes out his phone and calls a number in the United Kingdom to say that his gambit didn't work and that Sherlock will stay. The Holmes father was not involved at all. Mycroft tells his mysterious phone contact that they'll have to come at "the problem" a different way. And on that cryptic hint of plot lines to come, the episode ends. So I guess Mycroft is almost certain to come back, huh?
Follow Monty on Twitter at @monty_ashley and read his blog, Mysterious Exhortations.