Yes I am saying that the body wasn't killed necessarily on Xmas eve.

So you believe that presumably Irene was alive right up till the time Sherlock opened the gift?

She may have organised the gift to 'arrive' somehow on his mantelpiece sometime before that. The story could have been that she left it with Kate & a note saying "if I am not back by such & such a time, organise to get this onto Sherlock's mantelpiece."

One thing I am curious about at this point in time. I have a vague recollection of discussing this ages ago but cannot remember now so will ask here again.

Sherlock recieves a text from Irene (the ahhh tone) , reads it, picks up the gift & takes it to his room; opens it & finds her phone.
So what phone did she use to send the text? Wouldn't she need her own phone so that her special tone was heard?
Forgive me if I am confused here, but isn't that wrong?


I'll set up a thread for this problem.

kazza474 wrote:

One thing I am curious about at this point in time. I have a vague recollection of discussing this ages ago but cannot remember now so will ask here again.

Sherlock recieves a text from Irene (the ahhh tone) , reads it, picks up the gift & takes it to his room; opens it & finds her phone.
So what phone did she use to send the text? Wouldn't she need her own phone so that her special tone was heard?
Forgive me if I am confused here, but isn't that wrong?


I'll set up a thread for this problem.

I think this is the "two phone" problem. She sent him the "camera phone" (which had all uplink and connection disabled) but would have used her normal phone to send the text. Likewise when Sherlock interprets the email, Sherlock is still holding the camera phone when she uses her normal phone (hidden behind her back) to text the details to Moriarty.

Last edited by Aurora (June 7, 2012 8:31 am)

Aurora wrote:

I think this is the "two phone" problem. She sent him the "camera phone" (which had all uplink and connection disabled) but would have used her normal phone to send the text. Likewise when Sherlock interprets the email, Sherlock is still holding the camera phone when she uses her normal phone (hidden behind her back) to text the details to Moriarty.

What "two phone problem"??!! lol I haven't seen that one before.
*now reads the rest of the post*
Ahhhh yeah, dopey me.



And now that I have separated this little problem into another thread, I am seeing where you are coming from with the time of death thing. Irene sends the text and so Sherlock would assume she was alive and THAT is why you think he'd notice a body that had been dead longer than that. All the times etc were confusing me.

We don't actually know how much time passed between the phone call & them being in the morgue. The party was Xmas eve but was the time they were in the morgue Xmas Eve or Xmas night? Molly mentions people were busying with their Xmas things to do (or something; the page with that dialogue won't load for me at the moment) But this could have been Xmas night.
I know Mycroft is good, but he'd need a little time to investigate if there were a suitable dead body laying around the place.

kazza474 wrote:

Yes I am saying that the body wasn't killed necessarily on Xmas eve.

So you believe that presumably Irene was alive right up till the time Sherlock opened the gift?

She may have organised the gift to 'arrive' somehow on his mantelpiece sometime before that. The story could have been that she left it with Kate & a note saying "if I am not back by such & such a time, organise to get this onto Sherlock's mantelpiece."

Yes, I had assumed that and that it was what Sherlock thought. Probably from him saying Mycroft was going to find her dead that night. She could have organised Kate to send the text if she went missing, but I would have expected a double-take from Sherlock on seeing the old body. Will have to think through the implications a bit more.

kazza474 wrote:

May I just interject for a moment to say this:

To others reading this, it may have appeared that the 2 of us were just at loggerheads over what this & that means, but I know from my end and I believe Aurora's end, we're nutting out some interesting things here. It's sometimes hard to say exactly what you are thinking; words just don't 'do it' ; in conversation you'd hear my voice raise, or sound inquisitive. If we were face to face, this wouldn't take so long, lol!

We're finding some avenues yet to be explored I think.

Hear, hear! That's exactly where I'm coming from too. (Shock, horror! Kazza and Aurora agreeing on something!  )

Seriously, it is tricky to express what you're thinking without having facial expressions and tone of voice to give additional clues about what you mean (and writing was never my forte) - and often you think you've said something or made something clear but when you look back you realise you haven't at all. It is fun and interesting to probe into some of these less explored questions, though, and hopefully gain new insights.

kazza474 wrote:

And now that I have separated this little problem into another thread, I am seeing where you are coming from with the time of death thing. Irene sends the text and so Sherlock would assume she was alive and THAT is why you think he'd notice a body that had been dead longer than that. All the times etc were confusing me.

We don't actually know how much time passed between the phone call & them being in the morgue. The party was Xmas eve but was the time they were in the morgue Xmas Eve or Xmas night? Molly mentions people were busying with their Xmas things to do (or something; the page with that dialogue won't load for me at the moment) But this could have been Xmas night.
I know Mycroft is good, but he'd need a little time to investigate if there were a suitable dead body laying around the place.

Yes! I think we've finally found the same page. 

With the "what day is this?" question, that's one of the things I was looking out for when I reviewed the scene. I'm pretty sure it is still the same night. When Mycroft calls John after the viewing John, Mrs Hudson and Jeanette are all wearing the same clothes as they were at the party. You get a couple of flashes of John's watch and I think it says 12:30 which would make sense if he and Jeanette still had "plans" for the night (and he was supposed to be seeing his sister for Christmas).

kazza474 wrote:

Hmm, see I am not convinced that there is too much difference in the aging of a body in the morgue. Once there, I think it is usually chilled quickly for preservation reasons. I'll suss they guys out at a morgue at one of the hospitals I work at. That way I can get the exact answer to the problem; I daresay Google will give a blanket answer that doesn't quite hit the mark.

Morbid conversation lol.

True. Maybe we've both been too influenced by Sherlock - getting caught up in the case and forgetting that perhaps it's not in the best of taste to discuss the decomposition rates of corpses in a public forum. 

Pretty sure I read an interview with one of the writers, I forget which one, who described Sherlock as "unable to function" around Irene, yet not understanding that the reason for it was because he fancied her. I think he's definitely attracted to her on multiple levels; she's not boring, and she's beautiful. Sherlock being Sherlock, I expect the first reason is much more compelling.

As for the misidentification, that struck me as odd too. Bodies are so very individual -- I hadn't pursued it to its full Fridge Nightmare conclusion, but finding someone with the (forgive my explicitness) right shape of breasts, color/shape of nipples, type of navel, etc etc etc... that would require a terrifying level of cold-bloodedness. So either Sherlock made a very uncharacteristic mistake, he lied to Mycroft, Irene's an aspiring-to-Moriarty-level psychopath, or it's just a garden-variety plot hole.

Hi imane nikko,

Thanks for joining the conversation.  I thought as you do on the difficulty of finding a body double. Other people didn't think it would be that hard, though. I think we'd need to input of a doctor/nurse/pathologist to resolve it.

Hi Davina too, 

Both of you are suggesting it could just be a plot hole. You could well be right. I really hope not, though, because it does affect the way I view Sherlock's character and abilities. I guess that's why it's worrying me so much. I want Sherlock to be clever and controlling the situation, rather than being fooled and manipulated himself. To be honest, in both series it seems on the surface that Sherlock has been pawn in the games of both Irene and Moriarty - he doesn't appear to have any plans or initiative of his own. I really, really want him to be better than this. To be a player rather than just a pawn in at least one of the games that have been played. I'm desperately hoping that he has been up to something in the background or has been more aware than has been let on. Maybe he hasn't. 

I agree, though, there are definitely places in the story where we do have to suspend our belief (that utter farce of a court case!).

Kazza,

I've thought about your idea of the text being sent by Kate and I think this could work. One thing I didn't think of before was the first thing Mycroft would do when looking for Irene would be to send someone around to her house (or wherever he knows she is). When they arrive they find Kate in a state because she hasn't seen or heard from Irene since the morning before - she didn't even take her phone with her - the police wont allow her to file a missing persons report until she's been missing 48 hrs. Kate tells them Irene was scared for her life and had left instructions to send the text to Sherlock if she didn't turn up. This is passed on to Sherlock so he isn't surprised to find an older body. This would also allow the body to have been in the mortuary system for up to 36 hrs so the PM could already have been done. Irene's tame (blackmailed) pathologist could then alter the body after the PM, confident that it's unlikely to be examined closely again.