Sherlock keen senses drive the case on tonight’s Elementary season 4, episode 7, “The Adventure of the Nutmeg Concoction.”

Have you ever stared at a kitchen timer waiting the the bell’s ding to grant you access to a sweet reward? Well, the timer is still ticking away long after tonight’s Elementary season 4, episode 7, “The Adventure of the Nutmeg Concoction.” Season 3 is off to a strong start with the relationships stealing the spotlight from the cases week after week. Tonight’s Elementary episode makes the point that this show is, at its heart, a procedural. But we can’t help but feel like we were holding our breathe waiting for the ding to arrive.

Joan takes on the disappearance of Jessica Holder. When Jessica went missing five years ago, the FBI agent in charge, Blake Tanner, linked her case to a serial murderer nicknamed “Pumpkin,” since the only clue left was the lingering smell of nutmeg.

Kitty sends Sherlock over Joan’s notes on the case and he “voluntarily” takes lead on the case. Though Sherlock’s eccentricities should not surprise viewers, there is something off about his behavior in tonight’s episode. In meetings he is trying to maintain a steady pace ahead of Watson and Kitty. A pace that he even applies to his physical walk while he rattles off all the reasons he deduced they should not trust Tanner and how they will divide the case. With the nutmeg identified as a sham, he decides to focus on the disappearance, then, for sport, connect the nutmeg smell to the seven cases.

As the opening credits roll, the ticking of our kitchen timer is working towards solving two stories: the case, and Sherlock’s endgame.

Let’s start with the case. Jessica’s belongings reveal an extra unlabeled key belonging to an apartment in her building that was not hers. But as quickly as his breakthrough comes, he passes it off as scut work, claiming even his volunteerism has limits. The key leads Joan and Kitty to Raymond Carpenter, a defense attorney that Jessica was having an affair with.

The smoke and mirrors continue taking the case through Sing Sing by way of illegally obtained paperwork to meet the man who may be able to give up the names of the killer in connection with the Jessica case. The information does little good since bit and pieces of the the man are floating in the Hudson and East Rivers. Sing Sing seems like a bust, but Ms. Hudson overhears another crime scene that reports traces of nutmeg in the air.

Instead of relying on his own keen senses, Sherlock calls in a sassy Brit by the name of “The Nose.” He swiftly identifies traces of bleach, metallic residue, and one interesting note, sodium hydroxide. Typically used for the melting of bodies, Sherlock and Joan now have their nutmeg connection. It is not a common killer, but rather a common cleaner.

After hearing the word, “nutmeg,” easily twenty times in the opening alone, let’s take a break to Joan’s personal life. Sherlock picks up on her frustrations to mold herself into a conventional dating style. But Sherlock takes a different path to reveal his observations. Enter Sherlock dating counselor. He suggests trying proper correspondence, handwritten letters can elicit meaningful communication. Or perhaps she should pursue her run in with another suitor from her past.

Watson runs into Chris Santos, a medical school colleague whose medical ID was stolen. Faced with his advances even after his identify thief is caught, Joan steps into an interesting predicament. One which Sherlock cannot help but comment on with great vigor. When he shows up to go over some evidence, he suggests that perhaps it is not Andrew or Chris that is giving her pause, but rather the pressure she is placing on her eccentric personality to meld into a conventional dating life. Round hole, square peg. But Sherlock does follow up his “romantic terrorist,” remark with some kinder words admitting that her traits need not be looked on as flaws to correct, but something to accommodate. After all of their time together he finds it hard to believe that she still does not find herself interesting enough to embrace her true nature. In fact, it causes his pain to watch her stifle it.

Their “cleaner” is found, a man by the name of Conrad Woodbine who used to work as a crime scene cleaner before retiring to become a full-time painter. Having to come at the situation with a different tactic to pin him to the murders there is an old Armenian-Costa Rican underworld slaughter that left the faintest hint of nutmeg. When the cops use this information to arrest Woodbine, they find nothing in his studio save a piece of hardware from his knee surgery and the smell of pumpkin pie.

With Woodbines down the drain, Sherlock needs to reset, but Kitty’s cleanup proves to be a useful exercise. She pulls a photo of the man from Sing Sing, and recognizes that his son in the photo is the landlord of Woodbine’s building. He is the contact to prison and the apprentice to the “Pumpkin.” Ultimately Sherlock fails to disprove that Tanner was 100% wrong.

Sherlock brings Kitty the news clipping of the man she brought to justice being escorted into a police car. He leaves her with the freedom to disrupt his reading time with her music. She earned it. Kitty is not one to pick arguments with Sherlock like Joan does, but she will especially keep her mouth shut when he grants her a reward.

Kitty revealed a bit earlier in the episode a piece of her past to Joan, mentioning that the dad was into classical music, but sold her clarinet when she started to explore other genres. As the notes of Beethoven’s 6th Symphony, Pastoral, fill the brownstone, it carries across the city to Joan’s apartment where the table of perfectly balanced dinner setting displaces her thoughts and emotions.

Clyde Watch:

•No reported sightings.

Watch Elementary season 3, episode 8, “End of Watch,” Thursday, December 18 at 10:00 p.m. ET on CBS.