Prompting Part XXIX

[sherlockbbc_fic]

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Fill: At Right Angles (2b/?)

[anonymous]

She moved to the opposite side of the table, so the body lay between herself and Sherlock. It was a woman, a few years younger than herself, with dyed blonde hair and a slender build. Unwillingly, she looked down at the woman’s fingernails. She could see what Sherlock meant: the woman’s thin, tapered fingertips were tinted a dark blue-purple, indicating circulation failure and advanced oxygen deprivation before death-a known side effect of some drugs and strong painkillers, but certainly not the only explanation.

When she looked up again, Sherlock was watching her. “What?”

“What’s your opinion, doctor?” he asked.

She frowned at him. “Of?”

“The body.” Another eyeroll. “You are a licensed medical professional, are you not?”

“No need to be snide,” Joan replied, letting her gaze fall back to the young woman. “I’m not used to talking while I work.”

“Neither am I.” She looked up and caught his eye again. “Yet, here we are.” His cheeks shifted, and she thought he might be smiling beneath the mask. “So. The body.”

“Female, young-early thirties, I’d say. Going by the bluish tinge in her extremities, she suffered from hypoxia and arteriole vasospasms leading to cyanosis immediately before death.” Joan leaned closer to the woman’s face, carefully parting her stiffed lips to look inside her mouth, then palpating her throat. “No signs of asphyxiation or strangulation. Overdose is possible,” she glanced at Sherlock, and sure enough he looked smug, “but heart attack or pulmonary embolism are also viable options,” she continued.

“If it were a pulmonary embolism, there would be evidence of respiratory distress,” Sherlock said dismissively, “and there is none. As for a heart attack,” he snorted. “Just look at her armpits.”

“Her armpits?”

“Yes,” Sherlock replied. He lifted the cadaver’s left arm. “See?”

“No, I don’t, actually,” Joan said, peering at the woman’s underarm. It was shaved smooth and looked clean.

“Exactly!” Sherlock let the arm fall back on the table with a sickening smack that made Joan wince in sympathy. “Because there is nothing to see. If she had sweated profusely, as she would have prior to suffering a major heart attack, there would be salt residue and bacterial discoloration. But there’s nothing!”

“Alright.” Joan frowned down at the body. “So, it wasn’t a heart attack then. What makes you so sure it was an overdose though?”

“I’m not sure,” Sherlock said to her surprised. “That’s why I needed to see the body, obviously. A man’s guilt rests on the cause of this woman’s death.”

“Does this have anything to do with the bruising from last time?” Joan asked curiously.

“No, of course not,” Sherlock frowned. “Different case entirely. The last one was much more dull.”

He pushed away from the table, pulling off his facemask and beginning to pace. “The brother had motive to poison her, obviously he wanted the inheritance for himself, but there’s no evidence. It must be staring me in the face!” He whirled back to the corpse in frustration. “Ugh, if only Anderson weren’t such an idiot, I could have questioned him longer…”