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This is one of those stories where there's a trial, and most of the plot is told in flashback as Holmes or Watson give testimony. But the trial ends partway through the episode and the resolution proceeds normally. I'm not going to try to replicate that in this recaplet, although you're free to read the paragraphs in a random order if you want to full experience.
The mystery plot starts with a delusional young man with a shotgun who thinks he's a medieval knight who killed his queen. And the lady who was his ex-girlfriend is, in fact, dead with a shotgun blast in her chest. But Holmes doesn't think he did it. In fact, he and Watson establish that she was killed with potassium chloride poisoning prior to her heart being destroyed with the shotgun, because the doctor who was treating her cancer wanted to hide the fact that an experimental drug enlarged her heart.
More importantly, the course of the investigation leads Holmes to harass a guy named James Dylan at work. Holmes finds his work (selling viatical settlements) repulsive, so he's maybe a little loud when he busts the guy for being a convicted felon who's violated his parole by going to a bar. And after the murderer has been put away, James Dylan takes a shot at Holmes, but Bell jumps in the way. He doesn't get killed, but he ends up with an uncontrollable trembling in his right hand.
That's what sets up the trial, because it seems that Holmes broke the law in the course of harassing James Dylan. And now people are questioning whether they really want consulting detectives around the place if they'll just get police officers shot. The result of the trial is a recommendation to fire Holmes and Watson, but the police commissioner talks to Bell about it. And it looks like Bell thinks they should keep them around, although he doesn't want Holmes anywhere near him
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Gregson opens the episode with word about the mayor's reelection campaign, but a crazy person wanders in. He babbles about how he killed the queen, and he turns out to have a shotgun. So his rambling about being "the night" suddenly seems much more important. Holmes is in the room, and a whispered conversation with Gregson results in him being given permission to do...something. Holmes walks in and starts talking to the crazy person about the scarf on his wrist, but he breaks into a coughing fit. And the coughing fit cuts to Holmes as a witness in a trial, also coughing. He starts to resume, but the lawyer questioning him wants to hear about the James Dylan case, not the Rada Hollingsworth murder. Holmes, of course, thinks the two cases are inextricable, and he will not be bullied into explaining only one thing when he could explain two.
So, back to the police station. The scarf came from the crazy person's "queen," and Holmes utilizes his obsession with the Knight's Code to sneak close enough to let the police tackle him. The scarf would have been a token from his lady. Watson asks where the woman might be, and Gregson praises Holmes effusively. But in the courtroom, the judge requests that Holmes confine himself to things that actually happened, rather than making up things he wishes Gregson had said. Holmes suggests that the trial is only an administrative hearing, and that the judge is not, in all respects, a "real judge," which is obviously going to cause trouble. The judge says they're here because Holmes screwed up, and he's here to determine if he and Watson may continue their relationship with the city. Thanks for the exposition, your honor!
The lawyer (Ms. Walker) says they're here because of a breach of protocol. Holmes says the breach is only alleged, and he will not admit that he regularly breaks the law in the course of his activities. However, he runs down a list of habits Miss Walker has that suggest she's very regular in her habits, and asks if she's never crossed against the light to keep a schedule. She's thrown a bit, but she tries to draw a distinction between casual lawbreaking and the kind that really counts. The judge reminds him that an officer is in the hospital, so Holmes denies regular lawbreaking. Ms. Walker lists a number of times that he's obviously broken into private buildings, but he says most of those times involved doors that were surprisingly open. Sometimes they thought they heard a cry for help, but it was only a television or a small puppy. Holmes is not concerned about Watson being asked.
Back to the case, and the flashback. The crazy person is called "The Knight," and he's in the interrogation chamber. He can only talk about his sworn duty and a lair, which Watson diagnoses as being from a psychotic episode. Holmes digs through his coat to find two receipts from a coffee shop, but it's in a very populated part of town. Watson, however has results: their Knight is named Silas Cole. She texted his picture to a friend who works in the psych E.R., which sounds like a really stressful job. Holmes alerts Gregson, who says they'll get a warrant for his home.
Silas has a giant painting on his wall. There's him as a knight, and he's cut the head off a woman who's dressed as a queen. The face on the painting matches the photographs on the wall of Silas and his girlfriend. A necklace suggests her name starts with "R". Bell finds some fashion magazines that were sent to Rada Hollingsworth, who lives on 23rd street.
Back to the courtroom. Ms. Walker makes a point of giving Bell credit for identifying Rada, and Holmes says he's always regarded Bell as being "several standard deviations above the norm." And when they got to Rada's home, her door was, of course, wide open.
We see the police, led by Bell, enter Rada's home. Bell calls Holmes and Watson in, and they find her dead on the floor in the living room. There's a lot of blood on her throat and there are bloody footprints on the ground, but Holmes isn't convinced Silas did it.
Ms. Walker is skeptical that Holmes's first thought would be that Silas didn't kill her. Holmes corrects her that he, in fact, normally has several thoughts in rapid succession. Specifically, Rada had been shot in the chest, obliterating her heart. And a knight wouldn't do that. Silas had said, in the course of his ramblings, that he killed her to save her soul. But his delusion would not let him destroy her heart, because that would have affected her heart. Silas's confession would have been in diminished capacity. Watson enters the courtroom, which she's not supposed to do, because she's the witness. But she has an urgent message for Gregson, whose phone is off. Although Holmes asks what's going on, Watson and Gregson leave without enlightening him, because he's supposed to be giving testimony.
Watson has taken Gregson to a hospital because she got a text from someone named Gretchen. Gretchen says that there was a blood clot while trying to fix an abdominal gunshot wound. They're pointedly not saying who got shot, but there's only one male member of the regular cast that hasn't been seen yet, so it's no surprise that it's Bell. He might recover fully or he might never regain use of his limb. This episode is really going out of its way to tell things in a weird order.
Outside the courtroom. Watson justifies the decision to wait to operate until five days after the gunshot. Gregson lectures Holmes about how condescending he's being when he tells obvious lies to the judge. He tells Holmes to be nice, because it's the smart play. We covered this last week! Oh, and Holmes hasn't visited Bell in the hospital yet.
Ms. Walker has a picture of a statue clipped to her notebook. Holmes has added a Post-It note, on which he has written, "At the head or all understanding is realizing what is and what cannot be, and the consoling of what is not in our power to change. She gives him a look, then verifies with him that he put it there. He shows off that he knows it was written by Solomon ben Judah, whose bust she has a picture of. And it's an early version of the Serenity Prayer, which is popular among recovering alcoholics and drug addicts. She thinks it's a threat, but Holmes clarifies that it's just a "tip of the cap from one obsessive to another." He's trying to reach out to her, but he's so bad at it. It's adorable!
Court resumes, and Ms. Walker asks if Holmes feels any regrets about his methods. The judge redirects the line of questioning, because this isn't a confessional. So, back to the Rada Hollingsworth investigation. Holmes says he and Watson investigated a lot of dead ends trying to find an alternative killer for Rada, and they found that Rada had been seeing an oncologist named Dr. Phineas Hobbs. She had been diagnosed with cancer seven months earlier.
Flashback! Dr. Hobbs says his conversations with Rada were just about her cancer. But she'd mentioned that her former boyfriend was schizophrenic, and Silas showed up at Hobbs's office a week and a half before Rada died. Holmes asks how Rada paid for the expensive cancer treatment on a teacher's salary. It was a "viatical settlement." In the courtroom, Holmes describes it as a despicable trade, where someone cashes in their life insurance because someone else is betting they'll die before spending all the money. In Rada's case, it was James Dylan, an employee of Helping Hands Viaticals.
So Holmes is talking to Dylan at his place of work. He got a financial benefit from Rada dying, but he doesn't want to talk about it at his work. He has some leads from a nursing home to get to. Holmes notes that every cubicle is full, and that several people have diplomas on display, suggesting that there's a lot of competition for the jobs here. And then he says that Dylan is a convicted felon. Dylan asks how he knew that, and Ms. Walker (in the courtroom, listening to the testimony) thinks it's a good question. Holmes loves it when people ask how he knows things. He explains that he did cursory research on the Internet, which is not as satisfying as I'd hoped. Ms. Walker says that Dylan testified from a hospital bed that Holmes got that information from his phone, without a warrant. Holmes suggests that he's lying. But we see the actual scene, where Holmes's answer to the question is to hold up Dylan's phone and say that his outgoing calls go to the precinct's phone number, and his regular Tuesday meetings are at the office of parole.
They go outside. Dylan says he was having a drink at a place called Sharkey's when Rada died. Being in a bar was a violation of his parole, but there are a dozen people who can vouch for him. In the courtroom, Holmes says that the alibi checked out, so Dylan was no longer a suspect. Ms. Walker says that it's a crime to steal private property, but Holmes didn't technically steal it. And he didn't tell the parole officer, so there wasn't any harm done.
So Holmes and Watson went back to the brownstone, where Holmes occupied himself by weighing things. In Silas's ramblings, he said he was summoned to the site, and his phone shows an incoming call at 8:40. But the neighbors heard a car backfiring at 7:35, and that was probably the shotgun blast. Do cars still backfire all the time? I thought fuel injection fixed that. Watson wonders why someone would wait an hour to call someone in. Holmes wonders why there was so much potassium in the body, but it's apparently because you get extra potassium in your body after death. Watson forms a theory that someone killed Rada, then waited an hour for potassium to build up, which would conceal an already elevated level of potassium. They can test this by checking the vitreous fluid in Rada's eyes.
Back to the courtroom. The vitreous fluid confirmed that Rada had been killed with an overdose of potassium chloride, which exonerated Silas Cole, who was just a delusional person with no capacity to plan an elaborate murder. Ms. Walker pounces on Holmes for smiling at the idea of freeing an innocent man. She asks what all this has to do with what happened to Detective Bell, and he gives an impassioned speech about how it has to matter than a mentally ill person is not currently under arrest. Holmes points out that a lot of innocent people have been freed by him and his partner, for no charge. He says a "thank you" would be nice, and Ms. Walker ladles on the sarcasm as she says she'll communicate that to Marcus Bell in his hospital bed.
Brownstone. But in the "current" timeline, not in the "five days ago" timeline. Court is over for the day, I guess. Bell is stable, but he's being kept in his hospital bed. Holmes is making Yorkshire pudding because it calms him. But he throws it away right away because he hates eating them. Watson rips into him about how he's forcing her to lie about open doors and cute puppies. She asks if the way Bell got shot makes him question their methods, and he insists that they follow a morality that supersedes any employee manual. And the viewer, of course, cannot have an opinion because they're talking about something that hasn't happened on the show yet. Television shows are really overusing this technique of telling a story completely out of order in an attempt to manufacture drama. Holmes insists that you can't live life by a rulebook.
Watson is on the stand. Ms. Walker asks if Watson would agree that she and her partner have been at crime scenes ahead of the police. Watson backs up Watson's "cute puppy" story and denies stealing James Dylan's cell phone. She has no further questions, but Holmes wants to cross-examine. He asks how Watson and her partner went about finding the real killer. This should speed up the storytelling considerably! Watson explains that to use potassium chloride the way the killer did suggested a medical background. They went to the morgue and studied Rada's body, although it had been autopsied and dissected. So at the morgue, each internal organ was in its own bag. Holmes has her jump ahead.
Watson observes that the shotgun must have been right at the heart, perhaps to obliterate evidence. A microscope showed dilated cardiomyopathy: her heart was enlarged. But it wouldn't have been a result of her cancer. Holmes asks what Watson thinks could have been caused the enlarged heart, and the answer is that it could be the cancer treatment, especially an experimental drug trial she was in. So Phineas Hobbs had a motive to kill her if he could destroy the heart.
Police station. Hobbs wants a lawyer. He stands up, and Holmes pushes him down, demonstrating that his shoulder is hurt, possibly from shooting a shotgun. He and Watson double-team him, explaining how he knew Silas was crazy and got him to the scene and then sent him to the police station, hoping he'd get gunned down. Holmes says that Hobbs also cut his finger on the trigger, and Bell confirms that they found some blood in the shotgun shells in Silas's pockets. In the courtroom, Watson says that Hobbs confessed and is going to hail.
Ms. Walker's redirect is just the question, "Then what happened?" She wants to know what happened when they left the station. So Watson takes up the story. She, Holmes, and Bell left the station, arguing about single-stick fighting (Holmes's favorite sport) vs. basketball (Bell's). They're confronted by James Dylan, who's angry because he got fired as a result of Holmes mouthing off at his work. And his boss went to his parole officer, so he's going back to jail. Holmes says that's regrettable, which does not console Dylan. He pulls a gun and shoots at Holmes, but Bell jumps in the way. And because they're right outside the police station, there are a lot of police officers ready to shoot Dylan down. Holmes looks shaken. In the courtroom, Watson looks sad. Ms. Walker has no further questions.
So there you go: the trial is because Bell got shot protecting Holmes from somebody who got all riled up by Holmes being Holmes.
The trial is over, and the judge will rule in the morning. Holmes is sitting pensively in the courtroom. Watson leaves to go talk to Bell, although Holmes will not be joining her.
Bell is sitting up when Watson gets there. He's got some movement back in his arm, but he's also got a lot of trembling. The word is that he "might get better." Watson has some mildly reassuring words about nerve damage, but he's concerned that he won't be allowed to be a detective anymore if he can't carry a gun.
Brownstone. Holmes practices single-stick with more violence than usual, and Watson encourages him to visit Bell rather than just practice left-handed. He insists that he has no medical advice to give, and that it would just be an invasion of Bell's privacy. She thinks this is about Holmes feeling guilt, but Holmes can't think of anything he'd say to Bell aside from banal bromides. Watson thinks that's enough. She leaves, and he throws the stick to the floor.
The trial comes to its conclusion. The judge rules that Holmes and Watson are very clever and very useful to the police department, that Bell's shooting was an unfortunate thing that can happen in the course of police duties, and that he's recommending to the commissioner that Holmes and Watson be "terminated" as consultants. Holmes looks behind him as Gregson and Watson leave. Ms. Walker stands before Holmes, and he tells her that gloating is unbecoming of the good work she did. Instead, she invites him to come to a meeting with her. It's good thinking; this is the sort of situation that can be hard for an addict to get through.
Bell's in his bed, watching basketball. The commissioner comes in and talks about the Giants, which is an amusing misstep, since they're not even a basketball team. He's here to talk about the judge's recommendation. Firing Holmes could re-open all his cases, but Holmes is clearly a loose cannon. He's here to ask Bell for his advice. Both because he got shot and because he's worked with Holmes a lot.
Later, Holmes comes to visit Bell, who's having trouble with his trembling right hand. The commissioner decided not to terminate him, but he'll have a little additional oversight. Holmes claims not to know why he changes his mind. He thanks Bell for intervening, and he apologizes for not doing the actual research instead of stealing Dylan's phone, and for provoking Dylan in his workplace. Then he brings up the palsy in Bell's hand; he offers to send him to a great clinic in Gstaad, or to bring the specialist to New York. Bell's voice cracks a little as he says he doesn't want a favor from Holmes. Indeed, he doesn't even want to see Holmes in the hospital. Bell leaves, and Holmes sits alone.