The Final Problem

Anonymous asked: All the Sherlock theories make sense, but there is one problem, how did he survive the jump? it makes sense how he hid being alive, but Bart's is at least 3 stories and where did the blood come from?

The most common theory about how Sherlock survived the jump is that he managed to land in the laundry truck that was parked nearby. Personally, I am now working with a variation of this idea—I’ll try to do a post on that shortly.

The blood is actually the easy part. If you watch the behavior of basically everyone but John on the street after the fall, you’ll begin to notice that they are not acting normally. They’re all conspiring with Sherlock to make sure John sees just enough to convince him that Sherlock is dead, but no more. (One woman in particular seems to have the job of Chief John Wrangler once he gets to the body. It’s kind of funny to watch from that perspective—she’s all over him.) Since the whole crowd’s helping Sherlock, the prevailing theory is that they’re all members of his Homeless Network.

If you watch the people walking around on the street before the fall, you’ll notice a lot of them have bags. All it takes is one person ready to dash out and dump the blood they’re secretly carrying before John can get to the body. (And John’s been intentionally delayed by the BMX Bandit.) My attention was particularly drawn to the possible Homeless Network operative sitting on the bench closest to where the blood ends up. But really, until we have further evidence, it could’ve been anyone he had down there.

Incidentally, this whole business of Holmes using a fake crowd to trick someone is a lot like what he did in the original version of A Scandal in Bohemia.