Sherlock Survives: The Theory.

There have now been a hundred and sixty page views of the Sherlock Mystery posts, which suggests that the subject is a matter of some import! So maybe I should offer a theory as to how Sherlock survived.

OK. It seems to me that Sherlock had worked out Moriarty’s plan in advance, and the clue has to be in the following facts:

1) Sherlock chose the meeting place on the roof of Bart’s Hospital, and he chose the place on the ledge from which to jump.

2) Shortly before that, he had gone to see Molly (the mortuary attendant) and when she’d asked him ‘What do you want?’ he’d replied ‘I want you.’ Since Sherlock isn’t the most romantic of men, it’s reasonable to conclude that he wanted to use her as part of a plan.

3) When he was on the ledge and talking to Watson by mobile phone, he was most insistent that Watson should hold his position, and it might be recalled that there was an obstruction preventing full view of the fall.

My guess, then, is that he arranged with Molly to provide something to break his fall, maybe a laundry bin or something. She would also have been able to provide a bottle of human blood to make the scene look authentic, and she would have been able to take care of the mortuary end of things. The body given to the undertaker was probably that of some homeless and nameless individual who would have been destined for a pauper’s funeral anyway. The one thing that troubles me is that Sherlock’s ‘body’ would have been carried inside the hospital where a doctor would have needed to pronounce him dead. Maybe Molly was able to pose as a doctor and get away with the ruse in the heat of the moment. Sherlock had said earlier in the programme that you can make anything believable if you go about it the right way. And I noticed the deliberate way he threw his mobile phone behind him before jumping. I assume he'd recorded the whole conversation with Moriarty and left it there to be found and clear his reputation.

So that’s it, for what it’s worth. I assume there’ll be another series, because it would be cheating indeed to leave the whole thing hanging. We’ll just have to wait for it to arrive, won’t we?