Date: 2014-01-12 09:42 am (UTC)
You're right that we can't be sure that Mary's an orphan, but I don't see how having her hypothetical family find her could be a major threat by CAM. Mary's not a minor, she can get police protection from Lestrade and personal protection from John, and she's financially independent: she's not vulnerable to pressure or violence from her family in any obvious ways. So the worst possibility would be that her family are staggeringly embarrassing, and that's even less likely to worry John and Sherlock than her being a criminal.

A further vague thought about what her (hypothetical) crime might have been. Someone pointed out that the attack on John in The Empty Hearse (which is never explained) may have been targeting Mary rather than Sherlock. The initial skip code message sent to her also included the phrase "Saint or sinner?" which may be a dig at her. Assuming that Mary committed some very serious crime as a juvenile (explaining how she is free again), could she have been an arsonist who started a fire which killed someone, and that's why the attack took that form?

I think that's the kind of behaviour that someone might feel thoroughly ashamed of and desperate to conceal – and if Magnusson controls some newspapers and so could repeat the story almost ad infinitum, he could really make the lives of both her and John miserable. (Rather than "confirmed bachelor", every story about Sherlock and John includes the reference "John Watson, husband of the notorious Mary Morstan"). I could also see Mary being pretty disillusioned if every time she's got close enough to someone to tell them the truth about the past (John's not her first), they've promptly refused to have anything to do with her ever again.

All this is guesswork, of course, and the real answer will probably be completely different, very ingenious and yet somehow vaguely unsatisfying. But that's BBC Sherlock for you.
This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting

Profile

marysutherland: (Default)
marysutherland

January 2020

S M T W T F S
    1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031 

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 20th, 2025 03:43 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios