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Most people, if they thought about it at all, would assume that the detective would be the one to see the dead body within the shell of the living. After all his business was death in all its varied forms. And people forget that the doctor is trained to see the bones below the flesh, to look, to observe, to deduce and to notice the tiny oddities people betray without notice.
That's a badly set finger, probably did it himself.
People forget, or at least try very hard to not think about, the fact that soldiers see lots of bits of body that really shouldn't be on show at all, to anyone. Unattached legs, shattered rib cages. War is a messy killer even in modern times.
How the hell did you loose the bottom half of both Scapulae and not damage your spine?!
There something about the marvel of engineering that is the human skeleton that calls to John, it whispers to him as he slides past people on the street.
Recently reset shoulder still giving him problems, should really quit playing snooker for a while.
So it shouldn't be a surprise to any one that it's John who spots the leaf first, after all the impression of an orbit is very out of place in a leaf pile. He's in no doubt that that's what it is, the shape is just to right to be anything else.
"Here."
Footsteps squelch over the sodden garden to where he's crouched head on one side mentally tracing where the rest of the body should, could, might lie under the heap.
"It's a leaf pile Dr Watson." some nameless police officer says.
He grunts and traces the outline of the orbit just above the leaves, "Right orbit, deep set, robust sinuses. Looks like a old fashioned blunt force to the zygomatic and almost certainly the temporal bones"
Sherlock stands silently watching him read the pile.
"If it's still articulate the spine runs that way," a waive of the hand indicates the line, "Left hand shoulder and thoracic spine are semi buried or his right humerus would be poking up. Might be disarticulated."
Very gently he reached out and peeled the decaying leaf away to reveal the cracked right eye socket of a skull. Sherlock smiles at him, seeing him as no one else does the possibility beneath the bones and the flesh.