Mary Morstan

[Arcadia]

Inge, there's a little excerpt from the script in the "Sherlock Chronicles" book. It says:
 

SHERLOCK (CONT'D)
'To John and Mary. All good wishes for your special day. With love and ... (Do I really have to say this?) ... many big squishy cuddles from Stella and Ted'.
 
John and Mary enjoy this.
 
SHERLOCK (CONT'D)
(Takes another) 'So sorry I'm unable to be with you ... Mike Stamford...' (another) 'Lots of love..."
 
And he falters.
 
JOHN
Yes?
 
SHERLOCK
(Finds this word almost impossible) '... poppet. Oodles of love and heaps of good wishes from Cam. Wish your family could've have seen this'.

 
But sfmpco's right, that doesn't necessarily "prove" anything, as you can see the actual telecast varies slightly from this version of the script.

[Inge l-w]

Dear Arcadia, simply rewatch the sequence, freeze-frame or whatever! The whole thing is from CAM. The Chronicles are very often used as red herrings! As far as the viewer is concerned, in the Blind Banker, John cashed Sebastian's cheque, and Sherlock handed over the pin to the Britsh Government, to thrash the issue out with the Chinese. Long story short...

[Van Buren Supernova]

I'm at the wagon of CAM's telegram.

But I don't have prove, or trying to replay the scene. XD 

That is blind confidence powered by unwillingness to move from my chair at this very moment.

 

Based on rotten memory, I think I paid a special attention to that during the rewatch and convinced myself.

Although it seems odd to me that Mary reacts normally to poppet but not at the family part.

[Arcadia]

Because she didn't yet know it was from CAM when Sherlock read the word "poppet." It sounded like it was another "Stella and Ted" type of telegram, until she heard "CAM", so no reason to react. 

 

And somehow I always assumed the reference to her family was a threat, but I can see now how it could mean something more like "I know who you really are."

[Carol the Dabbler]

Or it could still be a threat -- if he knows who and where her real relatives are.

 

[joanneta1]

If anything, dear old Charles is thorough! That's how he got so far back in Lady Smallwood's family past: who's to say he doesn't have Mary's entire family history in his real vaults, not the mind palace parlour trick he fools Sherlock with, apparently costing him his life in the process.

[sfmpco]

At some point, of course, CAM did have physical files to look at.  I would assume Mary's file would be confidential.  Even so, since she is operating under a name that isn't her real name, how would he have tracked her down at all?

[Arcadia]

Maybe saw her picture in the file, under her real name, then saw her ... and realized they were the same person? I couldn't do it but maybe he could .... or she must've had people help her, to make fake i.d.s, etc. -- maybe somehow he got the information from them? He must've made a habit of looking for anomalies, even if they didn't lead anywhere, just to turn up the occasional gem.

 

My mind soooooo does not work that way that it's hard for me to even imagine.....

 

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Maybe the people who helped her "disappear" weren't immune to bribery?

[Arcadia]

Since she probably bribed them to help her disappear in the first place...

[sfmpco]

Sherlock does say, "Your accent is currently English but you are not."  However, he didn't go into further deductions on that at the time.  He may have thought about it later, however.  What is her true nationality?  We will certainly find out in S4.  She did jobs for the CIA, but that doesn't mean she was American.

[Van Buren Supernova]

Could be same country with Magnussen.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Sherlock does say, "Your accent is currently English but you are not."  However, he didn't go into further deductions on that at the time.  He may have thought about it later, however.  What is her true nationality?  We will certainly find out in S4.  She did jobs for the CIA, but that doesn't mean she was American.

 

Actually, he says "Your accent is currently English but I suspect you are not."  So he's not sure.  Maybe she really is English.  Maybe not.  There was some conjecture a while back that she was Russian or Serbian (due to some Cyrillic writing on the "A.G.R.A." document that we saw briefly in Magnussen's mental files).

 

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

You've seen this picture before -- it's a genuine screencap from "Sign of Three" (and you can see a very similar one here).  But take a good look at it now, and notice what you never noticed before...

 

 

... and then read this article.  Spooky, huh?

 

[J.P.]

Without reading the article - is it the pattern on her blouse?

[Van Buren Supernova]

You've seen this picture before -- it's a genuine screencap from "Sign of Three" (and you can see a very similar one here).  But take a good look at it now, and notice what you never noticed before...

 

... and then read this article.  Spooky, huh?

But... but.. but.... I already mentioned it in HLV thread... I think during rewatch..

[Carol the Dabbler]

Oh -- sorry!  Must have read right over that!  :(

[Carol the Dabbler]

Yup, you sure did (three months ago in the "Sign" thread) -- in fact you noticed it all by yourself (whereas I had to read about it in a blog):
 

Mary has evil horn when she gives the boys thumbs-up (foreshadowing?)

 
Maybe I just didn't understand what you were referring to?  Or -- since that sentence was part of a much longer post -- maybe I just skimmed right over it?  (I have a nasty habit of doing that sometimes when there's a lot of new stuff.)  Probably a bit of both.

 

[sfmpco]

Without reading the article - is it the pattern on her blouse?

 

You see but you do not observe...  ;)

[Carol the Dabbler]

The pattern on her blouse is indeed cute -- but not spooky!  :D

[Van Buren Supernova]

Yup, you sure did (three months ago in the "Sign" thread) -- in fact you noticed it all by yourself (whereas I had to read about it in a blog):

 

Mary has evil horn when she gives the boys thumbs-up (foreshadowing?)

 

Maybe I just didn't understand what you were referring to?  Or -- since that sentence was part of a much longer post -- maybe I just skimmed right over it?  (I have a nasty habit of doing that sometimes when there's a lot of new stuff.)  Probably a bit of both.

 

Wow Carol, I think I would not able to find it and convinced myself that I hallucinate most of the time. :lol: anyway, just kidding I wasn't actually cry. No. NO!

[J.P.]

Ah, THIS. Too obvious. :P And I think the skull is placed so that probably everyone in the series has got his horns once. :D

[Carol the Dabbler]

Too perfectly placed, though.  Yet I never noticed -- presumably because it "didn't fit" with the scene I was watching.

 

[Boton]

Bringing this over from the Series 4 discussion, where I said:

 

 

Well, I like Mary.  I understand why others don't trust her, and, in real life, I wouldn't either.  But, then again, now both John and Sherlock have also shot people who they perceived to be some sort of threat, so, in that regard and in my opinion, Mary is not worse just because she shot Sherlock.  (And I could say more, but I should probably take this to the Mary thread if I want to; I'm just putting that as background.)

 

I don't think Mary is in any way worse than either John and Sherlock at the point at which we leave her at the end of HLV.  In fact, I think that her shooting of Sherlock is somewhere between Sherlock's shooting of CAM and John's shooting of the cabbie, both of which I will deal with in brief before discussing how I see Mary.

 

1.  Sherlock's shooting of CAM is, to me, almost wholly excusable.  In fact, I was thinking today, not entirely tongue-in-cheek, that if the whole Appledore episode had taken place in the living room of 221B but in America, Mycroft could have gotten Sherlock excused under the castle doctrine in many states.  (The castle doctrine, for non-Americans, holds that you can use force to defend your property and the people who live there and is often used in cases of home invasion.)  Sherlock was clearly defending his family in this case: John, Mary, Mycroft, and even Janine.  Although Sherlock made some mis-steps along the way, by the time he stepped out on the Appledore terrace, his only way of defending his family plus, not incidentally, much of the Western world, was to clean out the Appledore vaults.  CAM had admitted that those resided exclusively in his head.  Sherlock's crime was one of passion undertaken as a case of preemptive defense.

 

2.  John's shooting of Jeff Hope was, for me, the least excusable.  We excuse it because it kicks off the Holmes-Watson friendship, but, to me, John had just moved in with a guy he doesn't know who is at minimum a drug user, who inspires ire from everyone he works with, and who has caused one of his "coworkers" to say that she thinks he's capable one day of murder.  Additionally, it's a guy who apparently has a rich and well-connected arch enemy (who John didn't know until the end was really his brother) that doesn't seem to cause Sherlock any kind of concern.  And yet John picks up a gun and kills someone to stop this possibly-psychopathic guy from playing Russian Roulette according to rules that John cannot possibly fully understand because he's standing a building away.  I appreciate that it establishes John as a BAMF, but that was clearly a cold-blooded murder.

 

3.  Which brings us to Mary.  We dislike what she did because she shot Sherlock, but really, her crime was less severe that either of the above and, in addition, more similar to Sherlock's.  Mary was protecting her family.  In this case, her family is John (and the baby-to-be-born), and the threat is one that could expose her background, thus destroying her marriage, and probably get her killed, thus also getting her baby killed.  According to her own reckoning, she's got this under control.  She has snuck into CAM World News (without having to propose to Janine or anything) and is ready to off CAM, which, not incidentally, would also serve the same purpose of removing CAM's knowledge from hurting others.  And here comes Sherlock Holmes, cocky, sure that he's got everything under control, and ready to take over where Mary is doing just fine by herself, really.

 

Look at the way that interaction took place.  Sherlock tries to talk Mary down, and she gives him warning.  "Sherlock, I swear, if you take one more step I will shoot you."  And Sherlock, who doesn't yet know that she's a former intelligence agent (he figured that out in the hospital after turning down the morphine), almost belittles her position by reminding her of John:  "No, Mrs. Watson, you won't."  Sherlock, bless him, was expecting to find a hysterical woman in the form of Lady Smallwood, and he really didn't change his plan of attack just because the woman he found was Mary.  So, in a way, she's another woman he's underestimated.

 

Mary, on the other hand, is willing to change her plan.  She can't implicate her husband now by killing CAM, and she's got this loose cannon in the form of Sherlock Holmes taking a step toward her and almost getting into the frame of action, thus possibly destabilizing her control of the interaction.  She has to incapacitate him by rendering him unable to move and, preferably, unable to further screw this up by speaking.  She can't shoot him in the leg or the shoulder.  In high-intensity situations, the adrenaline involved is often enough to allow someone to work through a bullet wound in an extremity.  If you have to take someone down, you have to actually try to take them down.  So, she took the best shot that she could that would take him down and shut him up while leaving him a chance to survive.  I believe that shot was surgical; she didn't have a lot of choices, and if you have to aim for something abdominal, aim for something that can regenerate like the liver. 

 

Mary's priority right then is John and the baby; Sherlock is third place.  CAM can be dealt with later, because she knows at this point that he's a coward who will grovel to save his own life, so she has no need of killing him right away.  But she does need time to formulate a new plan, and that's highly contingent on Sherlock Holmes shutting the bloody heck up until she can explain what she's doing.  

 

All of these people are soldiers, and every one of them was caught behind the trigger of a gun in a situation in which someone they cared about was threatened.  Only Mary was able to come out the other side with everyone in the equation still alive.  

[Inge l-w]

Oh, then please, kindly explain the whole Leinster Gardens sequence, where Sherlock challenges her to prove how good a shot she is and she taunts him with "Do you really want to find out?" ostensibly to protect her secret from being discovered by the duped husband, who she would have ended up killing, or severely wounding ( no surgical shot this one!) if she hadn't changed her mind and demonstrated on the 50p piece, as she mistook his shadowy form for that of Sherlock. Assassins for hire, male or female have no place in this or any other adaptation of the main characters of ACD.