

Watson

ANNA LORD

A Book of Short Stories

Copyright © 2019 by Anna Lord

Melbourne, Australia

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

#  Contents
#

Contents

Foreword

1 The New Cannibal Club

2 LBW

3 Not The Trepoff Affair

4 Shikari

5. Welsh Rarebit

6 Colonel Jumbuck

7 Boneshaker

8 Baffles

# Foreword

Readers of detective fiction may recognise themes in the following short stories which also crop up in novels from the series: WATSON and THE COUNTESS, featuring Dr Watson and Countess Varvara Volodymyrovna, daughter of Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler.

If you enjoy these 'shorts' recounted by Mycroft, Sherlock and John, you may like the longer versions which are not strictly whodunnits, howdunnits or whydunnits, but wheredunnits with an emphasis on sense of place, setting the scene for two mismatched sleuths to strut their stuff on the global stage as the Victorian Age rolls into the Edwardian Era, only to discover plus ça change...

# The New Cannibal Club

It was in the autumn of the year, a few months after Sherlock dropped out of university for the third time due to a cocaine habit which he had developed during his undergraduate days, that Mycroft was forced to acknowledge his younger sibling's superior deductive powers for the first time.

The elder Holmes prided himself on being able to recognize ratiocination on a superlative scale whenever he met it, and by the end of this story it was he who would point Sherlock toward the path that would lead to his future metier as a consulting detective.

Our story, however, begins and ends on a bleak November night in 1873. I heard it directly from Mycroft during the great hiatus as he and I travelled together by train to the Scottish Highlands at the behest of our dear Sovereign.

"You must keep this under your hat, Doctor," warned Mr Holmes, striking a lucifer and lighting up a cigar to help pass the time in amiable fashion. "No slipping it into your casebook for future publication." The tone was droll but the owlish orbs were as serious, unsmiling, and shuddersome as always.

I nodded with an earnestness that was completely unfeigned as I stuffed some blended tobacco into my new calabash pipe – an anniversary gift from my dear wife.

First, some background information circa 1873.

Mycroft Holmes, a formidable savant with an indefatigable work ethic, still young enough to have a spring in his step despite his increasing girth, and having been recently promoted to a position of considerable responsibility in the Home Office, leap-frogging dozens of chagrined senior civil servants, was given a wide remit that allowed, nay, encouraged him to delve into any aspect of British life that might be deemed of interest to the Foreign Office, the War Office, Treasury, and the like. Taking that brief to heart, he had decided to make it his business to look into the recent revival of the once notorious Cannibal Club.

The Club, founded in 1863, was brought low after the death of its charismatic founder, before being thoroughly decimated by sordid rumours of homo-erotic orgies, exotic rituals involving bestiality and sadism, and even indulging in the grisly act of cannibalism itself.

Illustrious club members, including several peers of the realm, numerous respected statesmen, and a few notable men of the cloth, deserted in droves. Drained of funds and with its reputation in tatters, the popular club that once met in the smoky candlelit dining room of Bartolini's near Fleet Street fell into decline.

In 1873 all that was to change.

Lord Prettejon, newly arrived in London after many years abroad, decided to revive the club and backed up his decision with cold hard cash. The new Cannibal Club was to be housed in a Regency showpiece on Pall Mall, a stone's throw from the exclusive Diogenes Club to which Mycroft had gained honorary membership upon being promoted. It may have been the proximity of the two clubs that spurred Mycroft's interest, or perhaps the fact he had just become, for the first time in his life, club-able.

The Holmes brothers were by nature solitary, by inclination asexual, by choice friendless. They were neither averse to company nor blind to feminine charm, but a company of one suited them best.

Blye Peveril Prettejon, big game hunter and randlord of dubious aristocratic lineage, made his fortune in South Africa at a time when such things were easy to make. He was rumoured to be an Illicit Diamond Buyer, but rumour being what it is, it enhanced his mysterious persona and fed public fascination. Excitement grew.

The new Cannibal Club opened up its membership book on the first day of November. Competition was fierce, the fee extortionate, and the waiting list as long as Prettejon's arm. One hundred successful applicants received letters of acceptance and a black carnation by courier the next day.

On the last day of November, this lucky band of brothers, meticulously groomed in white tie and tails, a black carnation in their lapels to signify affinity, were disgorged from carriages that lined the length of Pall Mall. Several fellows, pre-empting the likelihood of a long queue, simply strolled across St James's Park. It was a veritable who's who out of the pages of Debrett's, and several titles that were thought to have become extinct in feudal times were proudly scribbled into the visitor's book.

The entrance hall was bigger than Blenheim's and the dome was modelled on St Paul's. The main library surpassed that of Chatsworth. The other seven libraries recalled Alnwick and Eastnor. The enfilade of billiard rooms was far superior to that found in the Army and Navy Club, and the dining room had more class than the Carlton Club and Claridge's combined.

Fortified by the finest French food, French wine, and French brandy, the honourable members spread out in all directions until such time as the main event should begin. What this main event might be, they had no idea, but this being the new Cannibal Club they expected big things for their rather big fee.

When midnight came and went, some brothers who had over-indulged began to grow fractious. Muttering was heard from the deep recesses of the well-stocked law library and some rumbling was evident between the click-clack of snooker balls being potted.

"When's the fun going to start?" grumbled Lord Edgeware, octogenarian Master of Hounds for the Bickleighvale Hunt; a robust character who kept five mistresses on three continents and was on the lookout for a sixth to plug a recent vacancy.

"Fun?" queried Sir Cedric Vagrom, cracking his knuckles as he did in court just prior to summing up for the benefit of the jury.

Lord Edgeware seamed his bushy brows and scowled. "Fun! You remember fun, you dull dimwit! The thing in short supply at this here expensive wake!"

Admiral Malahide stirred to life and opened one watery eye; the other being indisposed by way of an eye-patch. "Wake me when the nymphettes arrive?"

"Never mind the nymphettes," growled Reverend Lowther-Hythe, momentarily forgetting himself, "where are the choir boys?"

"Bugger the choir boys!" dispatched young Freddie Chuzzlebrooke who'd just celebrated his engagement to Miss Lucinda Tweedie, the match factory heiress. "Where's the torture chamber?"

Viscount Loveridge signalled for another whiskey. "What torture chamber, old bean?"

"That's my point," asserted Freddie with undisguised disgust, slamming his hand against the stiff leather arm rest before realising his highball glass was balanced thus. "I want to know where IT is! Damn and blast! Now look! Same again for me, my good man!" This last was addressed to the servitor attending to the Viscount who had tweaked a brow.

Freddie harboured a special loathing for men with tweaking brows who got what they wanted without effort. He had to raise his hand high in the air to gain the attention of a waiter and sometimes he even had to wave. Lucinda thought it amusing. Amusing! Wait till the wedding night! He'd show her amusing!

Lord Edgeware gave a snort and woke up with a start. "I was expecting a couple of exotic dancers, you know, shiny black-skinned gels wearing bananas, doing a wild tribal dance to tom-tom drums. That's the least I expect for my quid pro quo."

Colonel Creighton Crichton, plenipotentiary of the Foreign Office of the Far East, who had been listening-in from the sidelines of the smoking room, joined the disgruntled fray. "Snakes," he said.

"Snakes?" quizzed Sir Cedric in the manner of an expensive barrister of few words.

"Snakes," repeated the colonel with asperity, biting off the end of his cigar. "I expected an exotic snake dancer. Saw one in Batavia. Boa constrictor; fifteen-footer. Strangled some poor slanty-eyed blighter who got too close. Swallowed him hole."

"I'd like to see that!" chortled Lord Edgeware before nodding off again.

Viscount Loveridge tweaked a brow and took prompt delivery of a clean ashtray. "Has anyone spotted the mysterious Maestro since dinner?"

"Who?" Freddie's malevolent undertone matched his virulent glare.

The colonel was still picturing snakes. "Prettejon," he supplied, masticating his Havana.

"Do you need a lucifer?" enquired the viscount helpfully, preparing to tweak a brow.

Freddie fumbled inside his pocket for a box of matches. "Here you go, old boy. Take these. Keep them if you like. I can get all the matches I want, any time I want them. My prospective father-in-law owns a match factory."

The colonel shook his head briskly; a habit formed in the tropics to fan the sweat settling between the furrows of the sunburnt brow. "No, no, most kind, but doctor's orders, you know, cannot smoke, not allowed, you see, so I have taken to chewing the dratted things, dry as bullock dung in Borneo... I say, where's the Guvnor?"

"Haven't sighted the Captain since dinner," chipped in Sir Cedric, waxing eloquent.

The admiral was jerked out of his coma; whiskey dribbled onto his crotch. "Did someone say captain?"

"He means Prettejon," explained Freddie charitably, keeping one eye on the tweaking brow and the other on the wing-heeled waiter. "Go back to sleep, Admiral Malahide. We'll wake you should anything happen."

"Good lad, Freddie," mumbled the old sea-wolf with the wet patch.

Conversation followed the same circuitous path, broken only by trips to the lavatory between the topping up of glasses.

Bored to snores, Reverend Lowther-Hythe pushed grumpily to his feet. "I've got a sermon to write for tomorrow. Cannot decide between the prodigal son and a camel getting through the eye of a needle. Bless you, one and all. Goodnight and cheerio."

"I might adjourn too," decided Sir Cedric. "I've got some misplaced evidence to examine before tomorrow's guilty verdict is brought down. Care to share a hansom cab, vicar?"

No sooner had the two men departed than the colonel decided he'd had enough of chewing the cud. "I might amble upstairs and check out the four-poster mattress in my room. Anyone else planning to kip here for the night?"

"I am," volunteered Freddie miserably, suppressing a yawn, determined to stay awake in the vain hope Prettejon had been keeping the torture chamber a well-guarded secret until the last. "I told Lucinda not to expect me before midday tomorrow. I think I'll have one more nightcap before I turn in." He raised his hand.

"I don't think the waiter can see you through the fumage," observed Viscount Loveridge, tweaking a brow.

The servitor jogged straight over.

"A nightcap for young Chuzzlebrooke, same same-again, and I'll take a Benedictine. There's a good chap."

Freddie was feeling murderous. If only he knew the location of the hidden torture chamber, he could strap that odious viscount to the rack, crack a few bones pronto, and take a hot branding iron to that tweaker. When his nightcap arrived, he drained it in one and shuddered visibly.

Viscount Loveridge felt inclined to stretch his legs; the right one where he had taken a Jezail bullet was feeling stiff and the left, which had been mauled by a lion on the Serengeti, was twitchy. "I might take a stroll to the billiard room and check out who's still standing," he said laconically, snatching up his Benedictine and limping off. "Will I see you at breakfast, Freddie?"

"Yes, I informed Lucinda I would not see her until luncheon."

"What room are you?"

"Fifty-five."

"Jolly good. We're neighbours. I'm in fifty-six."

Freddie's lip twisted into a poisonous smile. According to Lucinda and her gay crowd, Lance Loveridge was the Beau Brummel of Belgravia and the handsomest horseman in Hyde Park. As if that wasn't annoying enough, The Hon. Freddie Swinburne Chuzzlebrooke was the only chap left in the smoking room with the two old farts snoring in stertorous unison. It was high time to hunt down the proud owner of this expensive morgue and demand a refund forthwith.

With an elephantine effort, he pushed to his feet but his legs felt like lead and the air was foggy and the room was spinning... maybe he should sit back down and close his eyes until the fug cleared. Naturally, the moment he dropped his backside into the leather fold and closed his lids he was instantly transported to the land of Nod, consequently he was not disturbed by the commotion in the staircase hall.

"I say!" called Viscount Loveridge with remarkable sangfroid considering he was looking at a dead body at the bottom of the stairs. "Is there anyone who can hear me? I think we've got a situation on our hands."

Colonel Crichton materialised at the top of the stairs. He had swapped his dinner jacket for an oriental silk dressing gown featuring a golden dragon. "Don't tell me the exotic dancers have finally arrived!" he snarled.

The viscount pivoted toward the golden dragon. "Afraid not, old boy, but if you're decent, come downstairs. There's something you need to see."

Reverend Lowther-Hythe and Sir Cedric Vagrom appeared from north and south, emerging from separate cloak rooms arranged alphabetically. Over their arms were draped coats and scarves and in their hands were clutched gloves and top hats.

"Put a cork in it, Loveridge?" barked the barrister. "Most of the chaps have retired with sore heads!"

"God wot!" exclaimed the reverend, aiming a withering glance at the comptoise clock in the corner. "It's gone half two. You'll wake the devil."

Viscount Loveridge maintained implacable elan in the face of unfair chastisement. "I think the devil's wide awake already. Come and see his handiwork for yourself."

"Gawd!" was the general consensus. "It's Prettejon!"

"Have you moved the body?" posed the barrister urgently.

"No," responded the viscount suavely. "I just came across it this minute. I felt for a pulse in the carotid artery to establish death and then called for help."

The colonel wasn't at all sorry to see Prettejon splayed out on a cold marble floor but it was always wise to show concern when a dead body presented itself; sans cigar, he chewed the end of his moustache instead. "Rum business, this."

The vicar finished mouthing a few prayerful words over the dead body. "We need a medical man. What room is that German doctor chappy – Jungfreude - in?"

"He left straight after dinner," said the viscount. "I saw him leaving with the American armaments millionaire."

"What about that Chinese chappy?" persisted the vicar.

"Dr Hu's a geomancer," supplied the plenipotentiary of the Far East, speaking with some authority. "Feng Shui – lucky numbers and auspicious energy related to architecture and placement of furniture. Not a proper doctor as such."

"This place could do with some auspicious energy," muttered the barrister. "Where's the hall porter? We need to send a message to the Yard."

"Scotland Yard?" confirmed the colonel, mildly alarmed. "Surely this is an accident. He fell down the stairs."

"I doubt it," returned Sir Cedric sternly. "We all heard the whisper doing the rounds tonight. Prettejon was frightened for his life."

Viscount Loveridge agreed. "I saw his face as he walked into the dining room; as if he'd seen a ghost. I saw the same look on the face of a shikari in the jungles of Rajasthan just before he was attacked by a man-eating tiger. It was as if he knew he was going to die."

The vicar was nodding solemnly. "I saw Prettejon in the library. He looked scared, you know, as if he wanted to run but didn't know what direction to take, as if every direction was dangerous. I was called to a haunted house once to support a Jesuit friend who'd been summoned to perform an exorcism. I will never forget the looks on the faces of the occupants of that unhappy house. They were all stricken with terror."

"I remember that rather bizarre case," said the barrister. "The Jesuit murdered the entire family, including five children, then set fire to the house."

"Was he tried and convicted?" asked the colonel, showing the right measure of concern.

"Shortest trial in history; went straight to the madhouse," replied the barrister. "As far as I know, he's still there."

"He wasn't mad," asserted the Anglican vicar, sympathising with his Catholic friend. "Not before he went into that abode of the devil."

"What's going on?" Freddie had finally mustered the wherewithal to make it as far as the stairs. "Don't tell me I missed all the fun. Is this one of those murder-hunt games?"

"Don't be a twat!" snapped the colonel; concern for others only stretched so far. Besides, he'd seen Prettejon in the billiard room. The man looked deranged. Demons were no laughing matter in the Far East.

"Prettejon is dead," announced the viscount, adopting a neutral tone to disguise the fact he felt rattled; the accepted theory being that the person who discovers a body is usually the killer.

"Dead?" echoed Freddie skeptically, not quite sure if the chaps were pulling his leg or not; he was often the butt of jokes and had become wary of japes at his expense.

"Broken neck by the look of it," added the barrister, recalling how unnerved Prettejon looked when he by-passed the smoking room less than an hour ago. "We're about to send for Scotland Yard."

The godawful truth struck Freddie a mortal blow, like a fist to his gut, and all those murderous thoughts came back to him in one hit. He actually dreamed he'd killed someone. At least, he thought he'd dreamed it. No, no, he couldn't have done it for real! He'd been asleep in the smoking room with the two old snorters. They were still there. Oh, God! He felt sick and tried not to vomit. His brain was whirring, spinning, faster and faster...

"Hang... Hang on a minute!" he stammered. "We don't yet know that this is murder and... and we don't want a scandal or we'll be persona non grata, black... blackballed from every club, if we summon Scotland Yard and... and a bunch of burly tecs go... go dragging everyone from their beds to question them – you know the sort of thing: Where were you at such and such a time? Can anyone corroborate that alibi? Can you think of any reason why someone would want to... to kill..."

The others processed the stuttering SOS and blanched. Prettejon was universally despised. Every single member of the new Cannibal Club would have harboured notions of killing him at one time or another. It would have come as no surprise to anyone in London that decent men had dug deep to join this club in order to bring about just such an end.

Blye Peveril Prettejon was a blackguard and a scoundrel, a lecherous seducer who had ruined the lives of dozens of young ladies, including the god-daughter of Admiral Malahide, the ward of Lord Edgeware, and the sister of Viscount Loveridge. He defrauded Reverend Lowther-Hythe's charitable Foundling Hospice, bankrupted the stockbroking business of the Chuzzlebrooke family, abandoned Colonel Crichton to head-hunters during an expedition into the jungles of Borneo, and made a laughing stock of Sir Cedric Vagrom when he was a junior barrister leading his first major trial pertaining to the wilful murder of Ebenezer Abercrombie, diamond-mining partner of the aforesaid.

The litany of Prettejon's crimes against humanity was endless and the five men thus gathered, whose throats were constricting by the minute, knew it. They didn't want anyone to swing – least of all themselves - for the murder of a man as vile as Prettejon. Better that the verdict should be brought in as accidental death. But how to go about it without arousing suspicion and putting the noose around their own necks?

Freddie had sobered up fast and was still thinking on his feet. "Instead of Scotland Yard, why don't we summon that Holmes chap from the Diogenes. It's just across the road. He spends most nights there and stays up late. He can help us decide if this is murder or not. He can then steer Scotland Yard..."

"Freddie's right," seconded the barrister, cutting in. "I've had dealings with Mycroft Holmes and he's a genius of the first order. Where's the bloody porter? We need to send someone..."

Viscount Loveridge was already limping toward the door. "I'll go personally and explain everything. It will be quicker than writing a note and sending a messenger."

He disappeared pronto.

"No point standing around like shags on a rock," suggested the barrister. "Freddie, can you locate a couple of waiters and have them stand guard so that the scene is not compromised in any way. As soon as they come, we can go back into the smoking room. I think we should wake Edgeware and Malahide and let them know what's happened. I think we're the only club members who have not retired for the night. We should stick together from this point on."

The colonel stiffened his upper lip. "Listen here! You're not suggesting one of us fellows is guilty of committing..."

"No, no, course not, but we don't want to give anyone the chance to point the finger, eh? Ah, I see four waiters. I'll brief them and meet you in the smoking room."

Viscount Loveridge had Mycroft Holmes in tow, and following in his wake was a respected Harley Street surgeon known to most of them. The appearance of the two ring-ins filled the seven clubmen with relief and they began to regard Freddie – widely acknowledged as a feather-brained nincompoop - in a fresh and favourable light.

They could not be blamed for concealing a crime, although they readily conceded they were temporarily sidelining the Yard, but fellow club members would surely thank them for it, and their reputations – social and professional - would not suffer, no matter how much the Magistrate, the Coroner, or the Superintendent of the Criminal Investigation Department castigated them at the inquest.

Dr Noe viewed the body and pronounced that death was due to a broken neck. He declared he would be happy to perform a post mortem examination and issue a death certificate on the morrow. There did not appear to be any extenuating circumstance, meaning, no odour signifying poison, no trauma from a blunt weapon, no puncture marks from a blade, no bullet hole, and so on. Everyone was relieved. Perhaps it really was an accident.

But then one of the waiters, the one who had been attending to the smoking room, blurted out the darndest thing. "I'm glad it's an accident," he said to his fellow servitors as they were turning to go back to their normal duties, "because Lord Prettejon was afear'd of his life."

Mycroft Holmes could not let the throwaway line pass unnoticed. He caught up to the four hirelings and squared up to the one who had spoken. "What you just said – how do you know Lord Prettejon was afraid for his life?"

The waiter shifted uneasily. "I'm sure I meant nothing by it, sir. I shouldn't have spoken out of turn. Me mum says I have a loose tongue. It's got me in trouble more than once. Please, sir, I have six brothers and sisters to support and I don't want to lose me job."

The young man was dropping his p's and q's now and he looked frightened. But Mycroft was not about to let him off easily. "You are not in trouble. I will see to it that you don't lose your position here. But tell me why you think his Lordship was afraid... afraid of what?"

Three loyal chums, keen to help out one of their own, stepped up. The tall one spoke first.

"We don't know what his Lordship was afraid of but it is common knowledge among the staff that he was frightened of someone or somethink."

The one with the wide-set eyes took courage. "His Lordship kept looking to his left and his right as if someone might jump out of the woodwork any minute. You can ask anyone working here. They will back me up."

The youngest of the group added his tuppence worth. "His Lordship kept looking back over his shoulder all the time, like someone was following 'im."

The flood gates had opened; information flowed like an ever-righteous stream.

"He would stop and start on the stairs."

"And jump at shadows."

"Easily startled, even by the gaslights."

"Is someone there? - I heard him say it more 'n once."

"Who's there? – he said that a lot too."

"But never was no one there."

"He was like a hunted man."

"A haunted man."

"He even said to the master-mason: You reckon this place is haunted?"

Mycroft wondered if there was anything in it. "Did you or any of the other staff ever see anyone acting suspiciously at any time?"

The four young men shook their heads fervently.

Mycroft tried again. "Anything out of the ordinary that you can recall? Any strange or unexplained incident?"

The tall one was the self-appointed spokesman.

"This place ran like clockwork from the time his Lordship bought it, right up to opening night. You ask anyone. No one will gainsay me."

Unconvinced, Mycroft returned to the smoking room to question the seven men he deemed to be the most likely suspects. Any one of them could have pushed Lord Prettejon down the stairs. They all had opportunity. They all had motive too. He had amassed quite a bit of information about the hundred men lucky enough to be accepted into the new Cannibal Club. And it made for interesting bedtime reading.

Getting nowhere with subtle probing, he went out to view the body one more time in private. The body looked as a body should after a fall down some stairs. No surprises there.

The seven suspects had confirmed what the four servitors had said – Prettejon behaved like a hunted man, a haunted man, like someone who has seen a ghost, like someone who has met the devil and is waiting for him to return and tap him on the shoulder.

Quite frankly, Mycroft was stumped, but he was a rationalist and didn't want to give sway to superstitious nonsense. And yet he couldn't simply dismiss what everyone had noticed. They couldn't all be delusional. They couldn't all be lying.

"Excuse me, sir." It was the hall porter. "A young gentleman has arrived and wishes to speak with you. I put him in the Visitors' Room. This way when you are ready, sir."

Dammit! Mycroft had completely forgotten he'd arranged to meet Sherlock in the Strangers' Room of the Diogenes Club at three o'clock sharp – a time when there would be few men to hear him giving his little brother a drubbing about his lax attitude to study, his pathetic cocaine habit, and the torment he was inflicting on their poor mother.

He returned swiftly to the smoking room and addressed the seven men who all looked as guilty as hell. It was going on for half past three o'clock. "No need to stay up any longer," he announced. "I will contact the Yard. They will take it from here. Good-evening, gentlemen."

Sherlock willingly submitted himself to a flaying from big brother and made no attempt to excuse his behaviour. When Mycroft grew hoarse and collapsed with exhaustion, Sherlock lighted up his briar pipe and took to admiring the mahogany panelling, the renaissance Masters and the Waterford chandelier.

"Well, well, this is all rather grand. You really are moving up in the world – Diogenes Club and Cannibal Club – I fear I shall never be able to live up to your superior example."

"Oh, do shut up, Sherlock. You're an irritating little shit and I'm trying to think."

"Trying? Since when has thinking required effort? You and I do it in our sleep."

Mycroft was about to kick his brother across the room but restrained the violent impulse and explained about the death of Lord Prettejon and the superstitious nonsense he was having difficulty assimilating.

"Can I see the body?"

"Oh, why not! But don't touch it. I'm calling the Yard as soon as you go, and, by the way, I'm not a member here. I believe I was summoned in order to buy the guilty party valuable time."

"Any idea who the guilty party might be?"

"No, that's the thing. Death looks accidental except for..."

"Except for all that guff about spooks and poltergeists and things that go bump in the night. What about orgies and sadistic rituals?"

"Oh, don't be childish, Sherlock. Gossip dressed up as scandal is never what it seems. The original Cannibal Club was an Anthropological Society. Men met in private to air views they could not air in public regarding homosexuality and atheism and ethnology and the like. I was keeping an eye on this new club to make sure it wasn't a hotbed for anarchists and revolutionaries, but I believe it's just the usual financial flim-flam. Prettejon reserved a first-class ticket on the SS Gloriana sailing for Cape Town tomorrow morning. My bet is that the membership fees would have been sailing with him."

When they reached the staircase hall, Sherlock moved around on all fours like a hunting dog sniffing the carcass of a baited fox, viewing the body from every angle, even mounting the stairs and viewing it from the landing and the mezzanine. He then vaulted back down to ground level and kneeled over the corpse to examine it in closer detail.

"I said DON'T TOUCH," snapped the elder Holmes.

"What's this?" mused Sherlock, like one finding a vital clue.

"What's what?"

"Clutched in his right hand." Sherlock extracted a pince-nez. "Hmm, not broken. He took them off before he fell and clung onto them as he tumbled down the stairs. Interesting. Did the dead man suffer from myopia?"

Mycroft considered the question. "I believe he visited an ophthalmologist a month ago."

Sherlock hooked the pince-nez onto his hawk-like nose and looked around at his surroundings, blinking at the garish gold and bronze wallpaper.

Tetchy to begin with, Mycroft was growing increasingly annoyed with himself and angry with his sibling. "What are you doing! Put them back! You're tampering with evidence!"

"Interesting," Sherlock muttered again, climbing the stairs and twitching as he moved his head from side to side lizard-like.

"What the blazes are you doing now, you nitwit! Come back here and put those lenses back in his hand exactly as you found them!"

Sherlock ignored the command and held out the lenses for his brother to take. "Put them on and take a stroll up and down the stairs."

"I will not! Have you lost your senses!"

"Do as I say and I think you will have found your murderer – go ahead."

Against his better judgement, Mycroft relented. "What the deuce!"

"Extraordinary, aren't they?"

"Especially when they catch the gaslight from these glittering wall sconces; even the slightest movement of the head does it."

"No wonder he was seeing ghosts."

"Poor chap – he must have been driven mad. It's enough to push the sanest man over the edge." Mycroft removed the pince-nez and studied them. "It's in the frames."

"Yes, it's those tiny decorative holes drilled into the metal and filled-in with chips of coloured glass. Scattershots of light are reflected back into the lenses."

"Light is dispersed and refracted in the metal as well. It comes at you from all sides."

"Scared witless by witchy lights and will-o-the-wisps, desperate to escape the eldritch flashes that he couldn't shake, he must have jerked off the pince-nez and lost his footing... Well, there you have it. Death by optics. I daresay that will be a first for Scotland Yard."

# LBW

England was experiencing one of those Indian summers, all too rare and best savoured as far from London as possible, when, by invitation, Sherlock and I found ourselves in a delightful part of Shropshire in early September.

Sir Danby Darcre was holding a cricket week at his Jacobean pile, Dark Acre Hall. The much-anticipated event, a highlight of the cricket calendar that season, was in honour of the return of the prodigal son from Southern Rhodesia where the black sheep had been knocking about for years, going through the old man's money hand over fist before striking it lucky by way of a diamond mine.

Sir Danby had been a first-class cricketer in his heyday and the opening match was a contest between Eton and Uppingham. The remainder of the week was a hotly fought battle between gentleman and players, pitting top-notch names such as T.G. Ludlow and A.J. Raffles against the likes of Willy Stretton and Wally Scrope.

But the highlight of the week was undoubtedly the closing match - gentlemen VS mixed race, the latter team cobbled together with unknowns from the West Indies, South Africa and India.

Sherlock had never shown much interest in cricket but he was well versed on how mad keen I was on the game and he gave the impression he accepted the invitation for my sake but I was soon undeceived...

"I say! The penny papers have been making mileage out of this cricket week," said I, as we made our way by train to the West Midlands. "Muscular Christianity has been resurrected and violent debate has broken out in every tavern, pulpit, and street corner from Whitechapel to Westminster."

Sherlock lowered his book and steepled his fingers to demonstrate focus. "Manliness versus gentlemanliness... are the two so incompatible?"

"Not at all," I declared. "But I fear those placard-waving zealots who packed second and third class mean to raise hell once they reach Shrops."

"It is the final day of play that has them hot under the collar."

"Is that why you buried your nose in that book the minute we chugged out of London?" I looked at the title and cringed: How to Play the White Man's Game.

"Simply brushing up on a few rules."

"Have you been invited to umpire?" I tried to keep the green imp out of my voice; it had long been an ambition of mine to umpire a proper game of cricket, not just a friendly grudge-match between tossers and yokels at the annual village fete.

"No, I have been invited to keep an eye on some diamonds."

"Diamonds?"

"Young Darcy Darcre returned to the bosom of his family with a handful of uncut gems and the pater is nervous."

"Doesn't he own a Chubb? The new ones are said to be impregnable."

"Quite right, he has a Chubb, but Darcy is prone to showing off after he's had one too many of the old man's expensive ambrosia."

"He might pass the stones around with the port – is that it?"

"That's it in a nutshell, Watson."

"This is a job for Yard. An ounce of prevention is preferable to a pound of regret."

"Lads from the Yard will be there in droves, plain clothes coppers are patrolling villages and hamlets within a five-mile radius, looking out for suspicious characters and known felons, but Sir Danby wanted someone inside the house who would not put the wind up his guests. Lady Looton-Hoo will be attending with her emerald parure and the Maharajah of Govinda always travels with his famous ruby the size of a pigeon's egg, and that's just two off the top of my head. Ah! Here we are. Westwood Ho Station."

Things went swimmingly all week and I was beginning to think Sherlock had exaggerated the threat. There had been so sign of Jimmy the Weasel or Picklock Perkins or the Cracksman Brothers. Breaking bread with healthy heroes on a daily basis was tonic for the soul. I felt reinvigorated. Maybe there really was something in the old adage about manliness before godliness.

Sherlock remained on high alert day and night. On the last day I thought he was looking rather strained, as if he expected the sky to fall in. But not me, I had to pinch myself to believe my luck.

Bertie Shagwell, the umpire for the final match, went down with ptomaine poisoning. Sir Danby, desperate to fill the post, pressed me to replace him after he'd heard from Bunny Manders that I was related to W.G. Grace on my grandmother's cousin's side twice removed. Nevertheless, innate modesty forced a demur.

"No one knows more about the game than you," encouraged Sherlock, but I could tell he was envious that the high honour fell to me, or perhaps he didn't really want to show how much he relied on me to keep an eye on things in the background.

Raffles decided it for me. "This game will explode if the umpiring isn't above board. It calls for a man who is regarded as fair-minded, even-handed, and without prejudice, a man who has the courage of his convictions and is not afraid of public opinion going against him. That man is you, Dr Watson."

I'm proud to say the game went without a hitch. There was a bit of heckling from the sidelines but overall the crowd behaved themselves. When Darcy Darcre stepped up to the crease in the final over, twelve runs was all that was required for a win. In the name of good sportsmanship, he had placed himself last among the gentlemen, though it was widely accepted he could knock the ball for six with his eyes closed and should rightly have been placed second or third in the batting order.

Straight up, he hit two fours and was playing splendidly with three balls left to go – that six looking a certainty - when the Indian bowler, nicknamed the Prince of the Punjab, sent a bouncer down the line. Darcy stepped forward to meet it, swung early and missed. The ball deflected off his shin-pad. I had no choice but to declare LBW.

The mixed-race team went wild, hooting and cheering and punching the air with their fists. The crowd was gobsmacked. Several men who'd had a skinful of warm beer booed loudly and made monkey calls. Placard-waving zealots chanted obscenities and jeered. It fell to the two captains – Raffles and the Punjab Prince – to demonstrate that cricket was a game that transcended borders and skin colour. They set the right example by shaking hands and congratulating each other on an excellent day's play.

Darcy Darcre, to show there were no hard feelings, behaved magnanimously. He presented the bat and ball to the Punjab Prince, and the stumps and bales to the man who had sponsored the mixed-race team, the Maharajah of Govinda.

After accepting several pats on the back and some unstinting accolades from many of the players, I made my way to the west terrace, trying not to look overly chuffed, where I found Sherlock looking more pensive than usual. He congratulated me but his praise fell flat. The words were mechanical and I was disappointed with my heroic friend.

A footman was balancing a tray of fizzy French champagne but what I really wanted was a glass of icy cold soda water. I was parched and determined to track down something quenching.

"I'll fetch you a cold drink," volunteered Sherlock, taking me by surprise. "Don't move from this spot, Watson."

Well! I felt as if I'd been clean-bowled! Sherlock had never waited on me in all the years I'd known him and I wondered what had got into him, but then I recalled the puzzled look he wore as I met up with him. He had something on his mind and he wanted to discuss it without ado. Perhaps something untoward had happened during the game. But why should he consult me? And how could I help? I had both eyes on the state of play the whole time.

He rushed back and handed me a glass dripping with condensation, willing me to drain it quickly so that he could reveal the thing uppermost on his mind.

"There was something unusual about that last ball," he said, sounding mildly agitated.

I thought he was questioning my umpiring skill and got my back up. "How do you mean?"

"You didn't notice anything odd?"

"No," said I with emphasis.

His high-domed forehead furrowed; beads of sweat gathered in the deeper creases. "It was something Darcy Darcre did."

"He wasn't cheating if that is what you are intimating." Disappointment turned to irritation. My old friend was really annoying me now. Despite the cold drink I felt hotter than ever.

"I don't mean to imply he was cheating but..."

"He changed hands."

Startled, we spun round to find the debonair English captain lighting up a Sullivan. He had sauntered through the French window and had overheard our conversation. With a well-deserved reputation as a ladies' man and with more elan that was surely legal for any one man to possess, Raffles was also one of the finest players in England with an impeccable reputation for fairness. He offered us a cigarette from his gold etui. Sherlock declined but I was happy to accept an Egyptian gasper of quality from a man of his stature.

"Say that again?" prompted Sherlock.

"Darcy changed hands," repeated Raffles, tossing me a box of lucifers.

Sherlock looked thrilled. "That's it!"

"I don't believe there is anything in the rules of cricket about changing hands," said I somewhat indignantly, fumbling the catch.

"No, of course not," agreed Raffles, pretending not to notice my clumsiness while indicating for a footman to come across. "Whiskey and soda, my good fellow."

"Make that two," said I quickly, handing back the lucifers.

Sherlock's brows seamed together in puzzlement. "Enlighten me, Mr Raffles, as to the difference between a left-hander and a right-hander."

"Call me Raffles. Everyone does. Well, it comes down to the fact that a left-hander has the advantage."

"How so?" pursued Sherlock.

Raffles paused to exhale. "The third most common dismissal in cricket is LBW. A batsman cannot be given LBW once a ball lands outside leg stump. LBW is more difficult to achieve if the batsman is left-handed and the bowler is right-handed as most of them are."

"I see," muttered Sherlock, the edge of his lip aquiver. "It stands to reason that most cricketers must be left-handed."

"You'd think so, yes, but it isn't as straightforward as that. A lot of right-handers will train themselves to play with their left hand. Take that mixed-race team. Two-thirds were playing with their left hand but as only ten percent of men are left-handed it is highly likely there were a few right-handers in the mix who had taught themselves to play with the opposite hand. Some of the really good players can swap hands at will to confuse the bowler."

"Which brings us back to Darcy," said Sherlock. "He is right-handed but he played as a left-hander when he hit those two fours."

"Then he swapped to his right hand," affirmed Raffles, nodding. "And was given LBW."

I thought I'd better add something to the conversation. "The Prince of Punjab was a right-handed bowler," said I, taking a long inhalation of my Sullivan. "As most bowlers are."

"Indeed," responded Sherlock, acknowledging my input before returning his sights to the English captain. "Thank you, Raffles, you have been invaluable in helping me understand the finer intricacies of the game."

Raffles smiled suavely and gave a laconic shrug. "Any time, Mr Holmes, any time. Ah! Here's the footman and there's Miss Adelaide Worthington. Not cricket to ignore the ladies." He scooped a glass off the tray, waited for me to do the same, then turned to go before looking back over his shoulder. "Top game, Watson. Best umpiring I've seen for some time. Goodbye, gentlemen. I'll see you at dinner."

Sherlock glanced intently at the thicket of coniferous trees surrounding the lake. "I'm going to take a stroll to that belt of firs. There's a garden bench just out of view from the house. Care to join me, Watson?"

Glass in one hand, cigarette in the other, I nodded happily, keen to take the weight off my weary legs and to discover what had prompted the sudden intensity in his gaze and his current train of thought.

Sherlock wasted no time. As soon as we settled on the bench he opened up, his voice low and grave, preparing me for the worst.

"Waking early, before first light, I went downstairs to check the contents of the Chubb. During the night, I had decided to remove the diamonds from the safe to pre-empt theft. I thought it best to keep them in a secret hiding place. If the stones were going to be stolen, I reasoned the theft would take place during that final match. Imagine my shock, Watson, when I opened the safe to find them missing."

I was gobsmacked. "You mean someone cracked the Chubb?"

"No cracking necessary. It was someone who knew the combination."

"But who?"

"Only two people, apart from myself, knew the secret code – Sir Danby and his son, Darcy."

"You suspect the old man?"

"I cannot rule him out."

"No, no, I guess not. – I say! Suspicion may even fall on you!"

He nodded solemnly and the gravity of the situation began to dawn on me. I tossed my spent cigarette on the ground and expunged it without mercy.

"Did anyone see you?" I tried to contain fear lest it infect my voice.

"A couple of parlour maids were laying the breakfast table in the small dining room and an odd-looking chap, possibly the woodcutter, was replenishing the wood baskets in the principal rooms. They may have spotted me. I made no attempt to play hide'n'seek."

"Could the woodcutter, I mean, the odd-looking chap who appeared to be the woodcutter, be involved in the theft?" I pressed optimistically.

Sherlock shook his head without hesitation. "No, there can be only two suspects but I don't know which one is the culprit and if I accuse the wrong man without evidence this cricket week will be remembered for all the wrong reasons."

My brain was whirring. "Am I correct in assuming no one as yet knows the diamonds have been stolen?"

"Perfectly correct. I let it be known I removed the diamonds for safe-keeping. Both Danby and Darcy took me at my word, though one of them was doing some clever acting."

Rising panic spurred me on. "Why not harness all those men from the Yard and instigate a search of the house and garden? You could invent a story and say my valuable fob watch has gone missing."

"Nice try, Watson, but it would be akin to looking for a needle in a field of haystacks. The Hall has three libraries, four reception rooms, twenty-seven bedrooms, fifteen staircases, and a labyrinth of domestic apartments. The formal garden is eighteen acres with a further thirteen thousand in pasture and woodland. The estate includes two hamlets and a village. You see the problem."

I nodded dumbly. "What's to be done?"

Sherlock steepled his fingers. "I have been brooding on this for the better part of the day. I'm sorry to say it distracted me from your superb umpiring. I have made a little progress but the whereabouts of the diamonds elude me."

"Progress?" I echoed, clutching at straws.

"I received a reply to a telegram I sent straight after breakfast. It told me the diamond mine owned by Darcy Darcre is worthless. Moreover, there was a theft of uncut diamonds from a jeweller - Amos the Jew from Amsterdam – who had taken possession of some rather spectacular stones in Harare. The theft took place several hours before Young Darcy left the capital in a hurry, travelled to the coast, and sailed for England."

My heart leapt. "Darcy stole the stones from the Jew!"

"It stands to reason, but the case is ongoing and if the stones vanish in the meantime, it is unlikely he will be extradited. There is at present no warrant pending for his arrest."

"He must have taken the stones out of the Chubb during the night to thwart an investigation this end!"

"He is the most likely choice, I agree, but his father is not exactly in the clear and it would be premature to disregard him. I found newspapers from Harare in Sir Danby's study. He knows his son's diamond mine is worthless. He knows there was a theft of stones in Harare. He is not stupid. He can put two and two together and come up with a black sheep."

"You think he took the stones from the Chubb to save his son?"

"It cannot be ruled out."

Lost in thought, I tipped the warm dregs of whiskey and soda down my throat as I gazed at the ornamental lake. As irony would have it, the placid water sparkled brilliantly, as if diamonds had been liberally scattered across the surface by some magic hand.

Sherlock had never confided in me to such an extent. He preferred to keep his own counsel and only reveal what he was thinking after he'd thought it through. It showed how truly flummoxed he was. The thing looked hopeless. Father and son could even gang up on him and claim he stole the stones. The Yard, even if its best detectives understood the accusation to be ludicrous, would be hard-pressed to overlook Sherlock Holmes sneaking downstairs to open the Chubb before anyone stirred. My Gawd! Sherlock Holmes in the dock at the Old Bailey was not something I thought I'd ever live so see!

Sherlock slapped his knee. "By Jove! I have been staring at this problem from the wrong end. I need to determine who the buyer is. Darcy knew he would need to shift those stones quickly to avoid being caught red-handed. Yes! Yes! This cricket week was planned with the diamonds in mind. It is no accident the Maharajah of Govinda is here. He covets jewels and has a formidable collection of bijouterie. And Lady Looton-Hoo's brother is rumoured to be an Illicit Diamond Buyer."

I felt a rush of blood to my head. "What about that hairy chap who batted third for Uppingham? His family is in the business of jewellery. They have a store on Old Bond Street and another in the Burlington Arcade. Barrington Van Cootes."

"Splendid, Watson! Now we're getting somewhere! Leave me to light up my pipe and ponder. There is nothing like Mother Nature to rid the mind of superfluous facts before refreshing the intellect."

Of the three contenders for purchasing the diamonds, Sherlock ruled out Van Cootes almost immediately. Exclusive dealers in high-end jewellery cannot afford to have their impeccable reputations tainted by scandal. They would keep abreast of diamond robberies world wide and be alert to anyone peddling stolen gems.

Sherlock ruled out Lady Looton-Hoo on similar grounds. Her brother might be an IDB but were she to be connected to his disreputable dealings, she would be swiftly ostracised from the aristocratic society she loved so well. Her three daughters were all hoping to make good marriages. The eldest girl was recently affianced to the Duc de Saint-Cherville, the middle girl was keeping company with Lord Mountebank, and the youngest was spotted at the races with Prince Glagolnikov. A mother's first duty was to her daughters, not her brother.

That left the Maharajah.

Sherlock wondered who suggested the inclusion of a mixed-race team. Was it Sir Danby or the wayward son? Knowing the answer to that question would help propel him to a swift conclusion, because whoever it was, they must have anticipated the sale of the stolen diamonds to the Maharajah - a busy man with a kingdom to rule, who took the time to sail from the sub-continent to England to watch a team of random unknowns play just one game.

Sherlock spotted Raffles and his chum, Bunny Manders. They were inspecting the row boat moored at the jetty.

"Hoy, there!" he shouted, giving them a bit of a fright; they both jumped as if he'd caught them doing something they shouldn't.

"Ah, Mr Holmes!" said Raffles with composure, recovering quickly. "Didn't see you there among the trees."

"We were just, er, thinking about taking a turn on the lake," added Bunny, looking flushed. "Charming spot, charming park, charming landscaping, eh?"

"Capability Brown, I believe, but it might be a bit late for taking the boat out." Sherlock looked to the bleak heavens. "Storm clouds are gathering. It could be the end of our Indian summer."

"You're quite right," agreed Raffles imperturbably. "We left it too late. I think we might head back to the house and knock a few balls around the billiard table before dressing for dinner."

Sherlock waited until all three were striding across the sward. "Was it you, Mr Manders, who suggested including a mixed-race team?" He knew very well it wasn't Bunny. "Topped off a brilliant cricket week. I think you may have set an exciting precedent."

Bunny coughed awkwardly. "Not me, Mr Holmes, though I wish I could take the credit. I heard it from Barrington Van Cootes that the idea came from Sir Danby. He has business investments in India and counts the nabob a close personal friend; both of them share a love of cricket."

Sherlock allowed that to settle before turning to Raffles. "You were captain of the eleven in that final game; did you organise the batting order?"

"No, why do you ask?"

"I was under the impression the best batsmen are generally placed early to get runs on the board, yet Darcy Darcre was placed last."

"That was at his own insistence. Went down rather well, I think. Scion of the house batting last and quashing what could have been an ugly ending, turning it into a true example of sportsmanship. That's what I call cricket."

The trio entered through the French window into the library where Miss Adelaide Worthington was crying inconsolably. Raffles rushed to comfort her. Sherlock spotted the Van Cootes chap leaning against the door jamb; cigarette smoke drifting lazily up to the coved ceiling.

"What's the trouble with Miss Worthington?" Sherlock directed his way, adopting an interested inflection. "Nothing serious, I hope."

"Lost her pearls," Van Cootes replied epigrammatically before elaborating. "Poor gel had them on during the game but when she went to her room to freshen up, she noticed they were no longer around her rather slender neck. I blame the clasp. Same thing happened to an aunt of mine. You need to have the clasp checked by a reputable jeweller every year. Servants are scouring the ground around the cricket pitch but I think she can kiss those pearls goodbye. Some lucky blighter has pocketed them, Mr Holmes."

Sherlock decided to confirm what Bunny said earlier. "Excellent game, that last one. I believe it was Mr Manders who told me the idea for a mixed-race team came from Sir Danby, a most enlightened chap, ahead of his time."

Barrington Van Cootes straightened up to full height and stroked his hairy thatch. "Sir Danby organised the mixed-race team, but it was Darcy who pitched it to the old man. I'm afraid he's been knocking about with darkies too long. I would have preferred a contest between Harrow and Rugby. Well, I'm off to the billiard room. Cannot stomach the ruddy waterworks. Puts me off my oats."

I dressed hurriedly in black tie and tails, and paid Sherlock's room a visit to tell him the bad news. He was still in his smoking jacket, perched on the window seat, smoking his briar pipe. A fug of stinking shag made my eyes water.

"Have you heard?" I said anxiously, blinking rapidly. "Darcy plans to parade the diamonds during pre-prandial drinks. Guests are gathering in the great hall as I speak."

Sherlock appeared calm. It was the calmest I'd seen him all week. When he closed his eyes, he looked comatose. I wondered if he'd been injecting cocaine.

"Did you hear what I just said?" My voice was bordering on hectic.

"There is nothing wrong with my hearing, Watson. I am ready to face the music. In fact, I am eager. It's time to bring this cricket week to a momentous close."

I felt confused and slightly sick. Did Sherlock mean he was ready to own up to a monumental cock-up... or did he know where the missing diamonds could be found?

Darcy was recounting the time he bagged an elephant near the Limpopo. Guests were enthralled. Miss Adelaide Worthington even forgot about her lost pearls.

"Ah! Here's the man who has my diamonds! Mr Holmes, would you be so good as to retrieve them from their hiding-place and put them in this crystal bowl for all to see."

"Certainly," said Sherlock a touch superciliously. "As soon as the Maharajah of Govinda tells me where his manservant put the bales."

The Maharajah looked astonished, and not a little alarmed. "Bales?"

Darcy looked amused. "You jest, Mr Holmes, what have the bales to do with the diamonds?"

"They have everything to do with them," responded Sherlock, decidedly unamused. "That is where you hid them."

Darcy saw red. "Nonsense! This morning you told me you took the diamonds out of the Chubb and put them in a secret place for safe-keeping. My father was witness to every word."

Sir Danby fixed his sights firmly on Sherlock. "What my son says is correct. That is what you said, Mr Holmes. If you jest, it is in poor taste. If you are serious, explain yourself. But do not test my nerves or abuse my hospitality with word games. Get to the point!"

Sherlock was framed by the huge Jacobean chimney-piece which soared to double height dimensions. The elaborate carved stone edifice dwarfed him and I reflected that he looked pitifully small and insignificant and out of his depth. It boded badly.

"This morning I intended to take the diamonds out of the Chubb for safe-keeping but they had already been removed. I realised at once it could only have been done by father or son. But which? I did not wish to accuse the wrong man. I now believe it was Darcy Darcre. He removed the stones because they did not come from his diamond mine, which is worthless, but are the result of theft. He knew he would need to dispose of them swiftly, before a warrant was issued for his arrest. He arranged to sell them to the Maharajah. That is why he proposed a mixed-race team to play last, and for him to bat last in that game. He knew there would be some hecklers – he may even have planted them in the crowd – which would then enable him to play the role of magnanimous sportsman, presenting the bat and ball to the captain of the mixed-race team, and the stumps and bales to the Maharajah as a gesture of goodwill."

"This is utter lunacy!" blasted Darcy. "You are raving mad, Mr Holmes!"

"Slander!" cried the nabob, pushing to his silk-shod feet. "By the time I have finished with you, Mr Holmes, your reputation as the foremost consulting detective in England will be in the gutter and guttersnipes will be your only clients."

Sherlock shot an arch glance at the door where Inspector Lestrade stood with some cricket bales in his hard-knuckled hand.

"Here you are, Mr Holmes," said Lestrade. "Found 'em among the Maharajah's luggage in the box room. He did not even bother to conceal them. There is a wooden plug like a dowel in both bales just as you predicted. I took the liberty of unplugging the plugs to check, and lo and behold!"

He handed the bales to Sherlock who unplugged them anew before pouring the diamonds into the crystal bowl. Shocked gasps drowned out Darcy's curses.

The Maharajah immediately changed his tune and professed his innocence, claiming he had no idea the diamonds were inside the bales.

Lestrade had the good sense to leave the question of guilt or innocence of a foreign potentate to someone higher up. Darcy was not so lucky. He lost his voice as he was clapped in darbies.

Understandably, Sir Danby excused himself and retired to his room; he had always known his wayward son would come to no good, but the actual moment still came as a terrible shock. He doubted he would ever recover.

The Maharajah departed forthwith, followed by his entourage.

Everyone else filed into the dining hall, famished and keen to hear how the great detective came to know the diamonds were hidden inside the bales.

"Why not the ball or bat or stumps?" pressed Bunny.

"The ball and bat were too risky. A ball can go into a lake and a bat if hollowed out can split if struck hard. And as they were presented to the Punjab Prince, a man with no wealth to speak of, he could not have afforded to pay for them, thus they were mere keepsakes. The stumps were a possibility but they are hammered into the ground and can also give the game away if they rattle when the ball slams into them. Whereas, bales are small. No one takes much notice of them. They are placed carefully atop the stumps and when they fall, they fall not far. The hiding place did not need to be large."

Barrington Van Cootes was not as thick as he looked. "That's why you quizzed me as to who suggested including a mixed-race team?"

"Yes," replied Sherlock. "The man who arranged for the mixed-race team was most likely the same man who arranged to sell the diamonds to the Maharajah."

"The nabob will never be charged," chirped Lady Looton-Hoo, eyes twinkling mischievously.

"Probably not," said Sherlock. "But it will be a long time before he attempts to buy stolen diamonds from an Englishman."

"What was all that about left-handedness and right-handedness?" queried Raffles.

"Ah! That was the most salient clue of all. Darcy trained himself to use both hands, but as you pointed out, Raffles, the left hand is tops when it comes to cricket. He scored two fours using his south paw. With three balls left to go, why did he swap to his right hand, especially as the Punjab Prince was a right-handed bowler? Answer: He wanted to go out in spectacular fashion, causing controversy, and he wanted to avoid the hollowed-out bales being knocked off their perch once too often. LBW spared the bales and got the crowd riled. He could thus pass the diamonds, safely hidden inside the bales, to the Maharajah in full view of everyone with no one the wiser."

"I wish you could find my lost pearls," sighed Miss Worthington.

"I think I can hazard a guess," said Sherlock, careful not to look at anyone as he pretended to fish a bit of cork out of his wine glass. "After dinner, Dr Watson shall escort you down to the lake. If I am not mistaken, I think your pearls may have fallen into the row boat."

# Not The Trepoff Affair

I first met Sherlock on New Year's Day in 1881, hence I was not privy to any adventures before that time, however, my colleague mentioned a case which took place the year before we were acquainted which he referred to as the Trepoff Affair.

Reluctant to elaborate on this case for family-political reasons - foreign relations being a sensitive issue with big brother Mycroft – Sherlock nevertheless said he was free to recount an episode that followed shortly thereafter. Like the Trepoff case, it took place in Odessa on the shores of the Black Sea.

Pausing the colloquy to stuff some shag into his briar pipe while I resuscitated the embers in the grate, he and I eventually settled back into lumpy armchairs either side of the fireplace in the stuffy little sitting room at Baker Street as we did most evenings during those long hours between supper and sleep when cases had dried up.

Between pulls of his pipe, the tale unfolded:

It was 1880 in the month of February. Winter had been ferocious, snow lay thick on the ground, and the north wind sweeping across the Asiatic Steppe from Siberia to Crimea was as relentless as Genghis Khan's Mongol horde armed not with swords and lances but icicles that lacerated every inch of exposed skin and gouged out eyeballs. It was enough to freeze the blood of a battle-hardened Cossack. What hope then for an Englishman?

A fierce blizzard made it impossible to see more than a few yards in any direction, so it came as no surprise when my droshky careered into a troika. While the drivers took to arguing with their fists, I took shelter under the porch of a tiny church whereupon a few minutes later I felt a gentle tug on my coat.

I expected to see a starving beggar, for the city was full of them – old serfs who had been granted freedom from a lifetime of servitude that was nothing more than slavery by another name, with no thought to how they might earn a living once emancipated. To my surprise it was an exquisitely dressed girlchild with an abundance of corkscrew curls spilling out from under a fur hat of genuine mink.

"Pardon, monsieur," said the precocious poppet, adopting an entrancing French accent before switching to pitch perfect English. "Do I have the pleasure of addressing Mr Sherlock Holmes?"

Taken aback by the accomplished little linguist whose age I put at no more than six and not less than five, I nodded dumbly.

"Will you please step inside the church," continued the Sugar Plum fairy in a fey tone softened by trochees that trembled-not despite the thunderous howl of Boreas who whipped every scansion away with virulent haste, "my step-aunt wishes to speak to you in private."

It was the in private that intrigued me – from the mouths of babes! – and since the two drivers were still behaving like a pair of bashiboozooks, and I knew that Orthodox churches contained candles aplenty to warm the cockles of a cold English heart – I acquiesced.

Modest in scale and fashioned from larch which had aged badly, with only one onion dome to announce its status in a metropolis of Belle Epoque abundance, the interior of the little church was a Byzantine jewel. I was instantly transported from a snowy Ukrainian graveyard to a glittering Slavic temple pulsating with vivacious pinpoints of golden light and that vivifying rich palette of vermilion and lapis lazuli reflected in the portraits of saints that decorated every square inch of wall and ceiling.

The church was empty save for a lady kneeling in prayer before an impressive iconostasis showcasing a life-size array of Old Testament heroes. To pass the time, I thawed my frozen fingers on the radiant heat emitted from a nearby candle-stand, while my numb olfactory senses warmed to the perfumed marriage of melting wax and myrrh.

Ere long, the lady, scrupulously dressed from head to toe in funereal black, including a veil that covered her face, crossed herself three times, rose to full height, and without ado approached and introduced herself.

"Countess Zoya Volodymyrovna," said she, extending a black-gloved hand.

Sensing I was in the presence of a boyarina aligned to the Romanovs, I bowed my head and obliged by kissing the limb graciously extended in my direction. Unlike the miniature Siren who had lured me into this bijou box, the step-aunt had the unmistakeable accent, spiced with fricatives, of those born on the Pontic Steppe.

The countess raised her veil and smiled tenderly at the girl. "Varvara, go and light a candle for your dear departed Papa." She waited for the child to move off, though it must be noted an empty church is an echo chamber and the lady made no attempt to muffle the ensuing exchange. The doe-eyed doll was privy to all that passed.

During my brief time in Odessa, I had already noted that Ukrainians rarely spared their children from the vicissitudes of life and death. The dainty girlchild would have attended the funeral of her Papa, kissed the corpse laid out in an open coffin, stood by the graveside as the box was interred, tossed a handful of black earth into the grave, and whispered a final private farewell. Slavs learn in the nursery what philosophers take years to understand and what some Englishmen never master: The meaning of life is that it stops.

"Your reputation precedes you, Mr Holmes. The Trepoff affair has made you famous in the land of the Scythians where fiction weighs more than fact. I promise not to detain you long. Come this way and tell me what you think."

As she led me behind the iconostasis, I had a chance to study her. She was fifty or thereabouts, fair-haired, blue-eyed, with a face that would once have launched a thousand ships, though there was now more of Hippolyta in her than Helen. Romance had given way to reality. If the girlchild was the daughter of the clear-voiced Hesperides, here then was the maiden-aunt of myth and legend, an Amazon warrior riding bare-back into battle, one breast voluntarily cleaved lest it get in the way of the swift dispatch of the lethal arrow of the female archer.

"I have been granted first offer to purchase this icon. Tell me, should I make it mine?"

I hardly glanced at the small saintly relic resting on an easel.

"You mistake me for a dealer in Eastern antiquities," I demurred. "I am not qualified to assess this venerable gem."

"If I had wanted an expert, I would have sent for a trader from a bazaar in Damascus or a Coptic priest from Cairo. It is your opinion I seek, nothing more."

I took her at her word and looked more studiously at the dusky-hued portrait of a haloed female saint in the act of crossing herself. It was painted on wood. The primary colours suffered from the effects of sfumato, suggesting long years displayed in an airless niche in some distant abbey. Provenance suggested that greatly maligned era known as the Dark Ages. But it was pure guesswork, nothing more, nothing less, and I said so emphatically.

"Not an archeiropoieton?" she pressed earnestly.

I was inclined to laugh heartily but restrained the impulse when I spotted the little girl watching me the way a cat watches a dog. "You believe it to be a miraculous image brought into existence of its own accord, created without hands?"

"That is the claim made for it."

"Made by whom?"

"The monk hawking it."

I confess I was becoming interested; her use of the word hawking hinted at a swindler engaged in something sinisterly opportunistic. "Russian or Greek?"

"Your instinct is sharp, Mr Holmes. The monk hails from on oblast in Siberia but the icon hails from a monastery in Greece."

"Mt Athos?"

"Yes."

"The name of this monk?"

"Grishka Yefimovich Rasputin."

"What do you know of him?"

"He is a self-proclaimed holy man, a charismatic young mystic, a wanderer, a pilgrim, the term we use is strannik. He claims to have discovered the icon in a cave on Mt Athos."

"You believe him?"

"I want to believe him."

"That's not the same thing."

"I am a pagan at heart. I believe in superstition, Mr Holmes."

"All religion is superstition."

"Agreed, but it is not every icon which is miraculous. I have a Botticelli of Venus and Mars in my zala. For all its artistry, it is not an archeiropoieton."

"I'm afraid I cannot help you, Countess. You may purchase this icon and believe what you will. That is the essence of belief and the nature of religion."

The lady took no offence. "Let me thank you properly for your valuable time, Mr Holmes. I am giving a soiree tonight. Please do come. You can judge the artistic merit of my Botticelli for yourself. Arrive any hour after eight that suits. Every izvozchik in Odessa knows my address."

Once again, she extended her hand. I kissed it and turned to go and wondered if she had engineered that crash between the troika and droshky in order to waylay me. The curious girlchild caught me at the door.

"Will you light a candle for my Papa before you go?"

"Yes, of course," I said.

"There is an art to lighting candles in church," sang the little songstress, taking me by the hand and leading me back up the aisle to demonstrate the knack. "You light the wick first from a candle that is already alight then hold the bottom of the candle to the flame so that it softens enough to set in place without falling over. Voila!"

I followed her lead. My candle did not topple over.

"You're a quick learner, Mr Holmes. I hope you like our little church. It is not grand but very pretty, don't you think?"

"Yes," I said, allowing my eyes to sweep over the luminous pageant of saints and martyrs and holy warriors, "I like it very much. Which image is your favourite?"

"That one." She pointed to a rather horrifying stylistic image of a harridan with black eyes and elongated fingers raised in the air in defiance of...

"Tell your step-aunt the icon is a fake!"

Countess Volodymyrovna appeared suddenly from behind the iconostasis. "A fake?"

"Recall the Raskolniki," I said, talking quickly now. "What year was that?"

"The schism with the Old Believers was around 1670."

"Before 1670 it was the custom to cross oneself with two fingers as Feodosia Morozova is doing in that image." I indicated the ghastly painting admired by the girlchild. "No Orthodox believer used three fingers until Patriarch Nikon ordered the change on pain of death. Your icon from Mt Athos cannot be older than 1670. It depicts a saint with three fingers poised in prayer but that would have been unthinkable among early Orthodox Christians. Your mystagogic monk is hawking an hierophantic fake."

#  Shikari

There was no disputing he was a big game hunter, fearless, and a crackshot. Everyone called him shikari, though he wasn't a native, despite the weather-beaten skin and the unblinking eyes, sharp as snake eyes, that didn't seem to suffer from heat and dust and grit the way western eyes did, all red and raw and permanently weepy.

Scrawny and sinewy, he moved as the Indians move with a looseness of muscle and bone through the worst heat of the day, expending the least amount of effort for maximum momentum, but it was a mistake to underestimate his core strength.

When roused, he was as fierce as a wounded tiger fighting for survival, but unprovoked he kept a low profile, minding his own business and staying in the shadows like king cobra.

How he came to be knocking about on the sub-continent was anybody's guess. That he had spent time in the army was widely understood, for he was a veteran of several famous battles and had covered himself in glory at all of them before resigning his commission and going off to write a book about mountain-climbing or leopard-hunting, but he never boasted about his exploits and no one had the courage to press him for details.

Never drunk or disorderly, he played his cards close to his sober chest and there was a lot of mystery surrounding him. Men like that eventually take on the status of a god, and so it was with him, that everyone spoke about him in supernatural tones, their eyes gleaming as they recounted rumours they'd heard, and his aura grew.

I was the opposite. I was a dull chap and my drab life was an open book with not much to interest anyone. Back then I had just completed the Army Surgeons' Course at Victoria Hospital in Netley and had been posted to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers.

It was the first big adventure of my life and I was more than ready for it. I'd had a gutful of grey faces, grey fog, grey rain...

Bombay was an explosion of colour, a riot of pungent smells - spices and curries and steaming cow dung - a bombardment of foreign tongues and bullock snorts, and sunlight so blinding it was like a smack to the head every time you stepped outdoors.

Newly arrived chaps, debutants like me, gravitated to each other like sheep. Among the flock was Desmond Murray, a medical orderly who was to play an important role in my life. He was short and wiry and freckled, strong as an ox, with one wonky eye bigger than its twin, and a raucous laugh that could be heard from one end of the mess hall to the other. I liked him instantly.

We survived those early days and settled down to the horrors of war, patching wounds with dirty bandages, gouging bullets and poking about for shrapnel in shredded flesh, amputating limbs hanging by a thread, assuring frightened young men with no future that they would soon be home in the bosom of their loved ones.

Many moons later, Murray and I were both transferred to the Royal Berkshires and set off together for Kandahar. Among the party were Lieutenant Knollys, Captain Frawley, Sergeant Scroggins, ten troopers, and the man who had been hired to guide us through the wilds of the central provinces - the shikari.

We had been allocated our own carriage at the rear of the train for we were travelling with numerous wooden crates carrying medical supplies.

The shikari kept to himself, preferring to travel in third class with the natives, and there was some muttering among the officers about where his loyalty lay, but the sharp-shooter soon proved them wrong.

Our train pulled into a wayside station to take on water when word went around that a snake catcher who had boarded in Bombay with dozens of lidded baskets full of venomous things had been found dead in his first-class compartment, and more worryingly, his baskets were now empty.

Whether it was an act of wilful murder by a rival snakeman or a rebel hoping to sabotage the railway company was open to conjecture. What was not questioned was the bravery of our guide. He immediately boarded the first-class carriage and began pumping bullets into hissing adders and full-throated cobras rearing up to attack. Those he had no time to dispatch, he grabbed by the tail and tossed out the open windows.

Paralysed with fear, travellers locked themselves into their compartments from which the shrill screams of women and children could be heard. Men quaked in their boots lest a viper squeeze through a gap in the woodwork, of which a few did, slithering from one compartment to another to escape certain death. Several venomous guests were promptly shot, but men and women who possessed no loaded gun rushed out of their compartments in terror only to be fatally bitten in the narrow confines of the corridor where the shikari was methodically splattering to kingdom-come anything that moved.

A couple of snake charmers arrived in due course. They cleared the remaining compartments of serpents and were happy to take away those that had survived. The dead passengers were removed to a train shed. A couple of hours behind schedule, we chugged north once more as though nothing had happened.

The next unusual incident was to occur in Rajasthan.

We left the train at Jaipur and commandeered some wagons, proposing to visit Hawa Mahal, the Palace of the Winds, an architectural marvel of pink and red sandstone punctuated with jharokhas in the women's wall, and indeed it was sublimely beautiful under a rose-gold sunset.

The next day, instead of travelling to the Punjab, we turned east. The shikari had heard about a man-eater attacking villagers in the vicinity of the Bhangarh Fort and his dark eyes burned bright at the thought of a tiger hunt. Lieutenant Knollys opposed any deviation but the shikari just shrugged his shoulders as if to say: Good luck to you; see how far you get without me. Knollys capitulated.

Dusk was gathering by the time we made camp beside the ruined walls of the seventeenth century pile that was reputed to be the most haunted place in India, and I confess I felt a cold chill as Murray and I settled around the small campfire nearest our tent.

"What do you think is really in those crates?" Murray passed me a tin mug over-brimmed with thick hot black sludge laced with cheap whiskey to kill the bitter taste.

"Not bandages and liniment," I returned glibly, though I knew what he meant; the crates were guarded day and night.

"Guns?" speculated Murray conspiratorially. "Or ammo?"

My eye had measured the length of the wooden crates more than once. "Martini-Henry rifles is my best guess."

Looking solemn, he nodded briefly and perched beside me on a bit of fallen masonry. The wind soughed through the long weedy grass and we jumped at every stirring – the abandoned fort was a hotbed for poisonous vipers and the incident on the train left us rattled. Sergeant Scroggins, who had been scouting the ruin with a handful of troops, came to join us.

"Have you heard the ghost story yet?"

Scroggins had a ruddy face framed by red mutton-chop whiskers which he habitually stroked with his left hand.

"Ghost story?" Like most men, I enjoyed a Dickensian yarn and I had heard some frightfully good ones over the years. Ghost stories were a tradition in our house on Christmas Eve.

Scroggins glanced back over his shoulder at the ancient stones and crumbling temples, and gave a perceptible shudder. "This here place is cursed," he said with an ironic inflection to prove he wasn't taken in by hoodoo. "Haunted by a wizard and a princess."

Keen to take my mind off snakes, I goaded him a bit, knowing that some healthy scepticism would serve to encourage him. "Sounds more like a fairy story."

Murray guffawed. "Sleeping-bloody-Beauty going by the looks of this godforsaken place. And I'm the handsome-bloody-prince!"

Scroggins took no offence. "Handsome, you ain't, mate! More like Rumpelstiltskin or one of them ugly trolls waiting for Billy Goat... trip-trap trip-trap! Shut up the pair of you and give me a cup of that rot-gut to wet my whistle!"

After draining the cup, he picked up the story. "The wizard fell in love with the princess, see, and he gave her a love potion, but she wasn't fallin' for the old magic trick and poured the potion onto a boulder that flattened him. Before he croaked, he cursed the royal palace where she lived – you can see it outlined against them foothills yonder – and predicted it would fall into ruin. The Mughals attacked a few years later and the curse was proved true."

"Not much of a ghost story," said I, mildly disappointed.

Murray gave a quiet chuckle. "I might sleep with one eye open so as not to miss the chance of a ghostly kiss."

Scroggins grunted and pushed to his feet. "Just make sure it's not the old wizard when you pucker up, you wonky-eyed git!"

White light was streaking the sky when a gunshot had every man-jack jumping out of his skin. I fumbled for the Webley under my makeshift pillow and leapt to action.

Outlined against the east was the shikari, rifle poised, shooting at something leaping over the massy grey stones.

"It's the man-eater!" gurgled Murray, adjusting his braces and tugging on his boots at the same time. "I have to see this!"

We promptly gathered in the shadow of the wall near the Lahori Gate where the shikari was busy reloading his rifle and stuffing extra cartridges into his pockets. He looked meaningfully at Knollys.

"Ever been on a tiger hunt?"

Knollys shook his head. "Not my thing," he dismissed suavely.

Captain Frawley was feverish with anticipation. "I'll join you!"

Murray and I were dead keen. A man only got one chance in life at something like this!

"Count us in," I said eagerly, speaking for both.

At the insistence of the big game hunter, breakfast came first. Once a tiger hunt started it could run for hours and he was not willing to babysit a man who fainted from hunger. He outlined his game plan and we listened, enthralled. The uninhabited fort stretched for miles across the Aravalli Range and there were plenty of places for a big cat to hide. Every postern and tunnel, every narrow passageway and roofless chamber, every crumbling rampart, every overhanging parapet, was a potential death trap.

"Won't the big cat make for the hills?" quizzed Frawley, anxious to get going.

"No," came the rejoinder. "The big boy considers this fort his hunting ground. He knows every block of stone intimately. We are interlopers, and he means to have some fun with us before picking off the weakest link for his dinner."

Murray laughed out loud but the rest of us weren't too sure if the shikari was making a joke at our expense. I shifted uncomfortably and the last bite of breakfast stuck in my craw. I swallowed hard and hoped no one noticed.

The shikari extracted a dagger from his boot and strapped it to his thigh, looking earnestly at Knollys. "Not too late to change your mind."

The lieutenant poured himself a second cup of coffee. "Not my idea of fun. If you haven't bagged the bugger by sunset, return to camp. We set off first thing tomorrow."

Scroggins saluted his superior officer. "Begging pardon, sir. Permission to take part, sir?"

Knollys shook his head adamantly. "I need you to keep the troops in line; some of them are fresh off the boat and cannot tell one end of their rifle from the other. And your first duty is to safeguard the medical supplies. That's an order, Sergeant."

The shikari stood up and we followed suit. My legs were like jelly and I realised I was trembling, more from excitement than trepidation, or so I told myself, likening it to the frisson of fear felt by every hero since time immemorial.

Murray was paired with Frawley. The shikari preferred to go it alone. He looked at me and frowned before glancing at Knollys who was finishing his coffee in leisurely fashion.

"This gung-ho young doc needs back-up. What say you? Not chicken, are you?"

Knollys saw red; the gauntlet had been dropped. Everyone quickly averted their gaze. It was one of those questions: Have you stopped beating your wife? Damned if you said yes, damned if you said no. No superior officer wanted to look a coward in front of his men. Knollys capitulated a second time.

While the lieutenant collected his rifle, the shikari issued strict instructions regarding areas we were not to stray beyond, pointing out landmarks as he went: the four gates, the seven temples, the stream and pond, the marketplace and royal palace.

"No clumsy pot shots," he warned. "A wounded beast is more dangerous than a train full of snakes. Even with a bullet in him, a tiger can take down five men before dropping." He looked each of us in the eye to show he meant every word.

Danger was suddenly a palpable thing and my right leg started to twitch as it used to do before an important rugby match. The others set off while I waited for Knollys, my jelly legs turning slowly, not to water, but lead.

"Let's get this circus on the road," Knollys barked, jamming his sola topee on his head.

We entered through the Ajmeri Gate and headed toward the Hanuman Temple, which we had been assigned to watch, when the lieutenant veered suddenly and began striding off toward the dancer's palace.

"This way, sir," said I, stupidly, before realising my blunder. Knollys had no intention of following orders. His malevolent glare froze my blood and I had a dreadful premonition that something terrible was going to befall one of us before the day was done.

It didn't take long for the action to kick-off. A shot rang out as the big cat sprang from the rubble, navigated fallen stones with practised ease, and vanished into what appeared to be a large drain that fed from the old pond. The man-size drain ran underground and came out god knows where. I didn't think anyone would be foolhardy enough to follow the beast into that death tunnel but I was wrong.

The shikari moved with lightning speed. The last I saw of him was when he paused to check something on the ground at the entrance to the drain and then he was gone.

Not to be outdone, Knollys spat on the ground, and with more to prove than most, or driven by thoughts of vengeance, took off in pursuit, pausing briefly at the entrance before being swallowed by darkness.

When I reached the opening of that gateway to hell, I knew what the two men had stopped to check. Drops of blood. The big cat was bleeding.

I confess I didn't want to enter that drain but something compelled me to give chase. I somehow knew only one of them would come out alive if I stayed put.

There was the wounded tiger too. It was sure to attack. I couldn't leave a man to rot slowly in a drain because I was too scared to bring him out dead or alive. I acted not from bravery but common decency.

I heard Murray shouting, but his Irish burr grew fainter and fainter the deeper I went into that dank tunnel, until I heard it no more, and there was only the skittering of black rats and what I imagined was the hiss of a snake but was probably the wind whistling down the chamber.

Before long I reached a section like a panopticon which branched out in several directions. I listened for any sound which might steer me right and realised with some relief that my eyes had adjusted to the dimness. I'd had visions of being trapped forever in the blind maze and cursed the folly of my decision but it was too late to go back. I had gone too far.

The sound of a gunshot almost blew my ears off as it reverberated down the echo chamber. I chose a tunnel that seemed less black than the others and ran for all I was worth. I was still running when I tripped over something soft and landed hard, winded and gasping.

"Don't move!" It was the shikari. His rifle was aimed at the beast crouched on a stone ledge in the shadows above me. The bullet hit the stone and ricocheted; the big cat leapt down beside me, met my gaze for an instant, then ran off. I saw it a few moments later, silhouetted by a glimmer of daylight at the end of the tunnel.

I tried to steady my voice. "Where's Knollys?"

"You're sitting on him."

I've never moved so fast in my life. "Gawd! He's dead! How...?" The words died on my breath. My hands were steeped in blood and I was shaking uncontrollably.

"He's been mauled. Let's go." The shikari began striding toward the same glimmer of light that attracted the big cat.

"What about Knollys?" I cried. "We can't just leave him!"

"The roof's about to come down. If you want to haunt this cesspit with him for eternity that's your choice."

As soon as he stopped speaking, I could hear a dull rumbling sound, like a death rattle deep in the bowels of the earth, the seismic shift of ancient stones; grains of sand trickled down from the unstable arch that was about to bury us alive. In the next instant we were both running for our lives and only just got out before the whole thing collapsed. It was like outrunning an earthquake.

Coated in dust and sand, splattered with blood from head to foot, we sat on the hillside, gulping clean air into our lungs. The sun was beating down mercilessly and I was boiling inside and out.

"You didn't kill the tiger when you had the chance." What I meant was: You let a wounded animal, a noble animal, an animal that looked me in the eye and let me live, go on to face an ignoble death in the unforgiving wild.

The shikari shrugged. "I bagged what I wanted."

Disgust threatened to overwhelm me. "You murdered Knollys!"

"No," he said a little too casually. "The big cat did that."

"I heard a gunshot just before I joined you," I accused hotly.

"I was shooting at the cat."

"And you missed!" This was a man who could shoot a snake between the eyes at twenty paces. And the tiger was perched on that ledge like a sitting duck.

"Twice."

Appalled at the cavalier attitude, recalling how a sharp bit of stone cut my hand when his second bullet pierced the masonry and sent a chip flying in my direction, I almost failed to process what he was saying. "Hang on! Do you mean to say the tiger wasn't wounded?"

"Now you're starting to catch on." The tone was sardonic.

"What about the blood at the entrance to the drain?" I challenged indignantly.

He rolled up his sleeve to reveal a neat six-inch slice made by a lethal blade.

I was aghast. "You cut yourself in order to lure Knollys into that drain. He believed the tiger to be wounded. You goaded him, dared him, to join the hunt. You planned his death as sure as if you pulled the trigger and shot him at point blank range."

"Bravo!"

My head was reeling from the cold-blooded confession. "But why?"

He reached into his pocket and handed me a scrap of cloth. "What do you make of that?"

"It's muslin. Most likely torn from a woman's dress. But... I don't understand..."

"And the stains?"

"Blood," I responded, still confused.

"Good, good for you. Now, take a closer look – what else do you see?"

"It looks like..." I wasn't certain but I recalled dead skin from a burst blister – it had the same appearance. And once when I was badly sunburnt... I thought the peeling skin resembled what I was looking at. "Human skin."

"Congratulations. Most young doctors who come out here are bloody useless. The sort who wouldn't get a job in a London morgue. But you're not bad. It's human skin. Indian or Anglo?"

"Anglo," I said without hesitation.

"Well done, Dr Watson. There's hope for our poor butchered lads yet."

I overlooked the cynicism as he took back the bloodstained scrap of muslin on which was stuck some pale skin. "It still doesn't explain what happened."

He expelled a long breath and didn't say anything for a length as his eyes travelled over the distant hills. "There goes the big cat. Moving easily, uninjured, as you can see for yourself... You want an explanation – here it is: Knollys and his lovely young wife resided in a bungalow outside Delhi. One day they were preparing for a picnic with some fellow officers when a gang of dacoits attacked without warning. Knollys shot his wife to spare her being kidnapped and raped by bandits..."

"It's her skin on the muslin."

"Don't interrupt. She was shot through the back of the head. This scrap of cloth came from the hem of her dress at the front."

"I see but..."  
"A chap called Major Ardmore was with them. He was also fatally shot."

"By the dacoits?"

"They were armed with rifles. Ardmore was shot with a Webley."

"A Webley?"

"The same weapon that killed Mrs Knollys."

"Are you saying Knollys shot Ardmore too?"

"Twice - once in the leg and then through the heart."

"The leg – so it's his skin on the hem of the dress?"

"That deduction sounds reasonable to me, Doctor."

This was a better fairy story than the one Scroggins told last night but something didn't ring true. "This is the first I've heard of dacoits brazenly kidnapping the wives of British officers in broad daylight."

"You and me both."

"You mean...?"

"Knollys contrived the whole thing. The four bandits were all shot on the spot. There was no one to gainsay him. Mrs Knollys had asked for a divorce. She was intending to return to England. Ardmore was going to marry her as soon as her divorce came through. Knollys had agreed to it but then..."

"Then?"

"He must have had second thoughts... Ardmore was an honourable man and a fine soldier. Mrs Knollys was a lady who made a bad marriage. Knollys got what was coming. But I didn't kill him. If you clear the rubble out of that drain you will find no bullet in him. He was mauled to death by a man-eater – the one I failed to kill."

# Welsh Rarebit

Sherlock rarely talked about his university days and I formed the impression he started at Oxford and finished at Cambridge. I don't know what gave me that impression. Perhaps I just imagined it from things he'd let slip in passing conversation.

Nevertheless, I didn't think my impression was too far off the mark because of his cocaine addiction which took hold when he was still a young man. The addiction could have contributed to lectures being skipped, tutorials being missed, and coursework going by the bye.

Sherlock's infallibility may also have rubbed the Keepers of the sacred flame of Knowledge the wrong way. Dons accustomed to deference and respect may have interpreted Sherlock's genius as arrogance, his rationality as atheistic, his whims as wayward, and his cocaine addiction as cause to be sent down.

"Watson, did I ever tell you about a little trip I took to Wales?" he said when we were dining one evening at Simpson's on the Strand, having just solved the case of the suicide brides in Bristol. "It was when I was drifting between the Cherwell and the Cam."

"No," said I, adopting an interested inflection. "I don't think you ever mentioned spending time in Wales. A holiday, was it?"

"Not quite. I accompanied Mycroft at his insistence; he was settling a few outstanding debts I had run up, sparing our parents unnecessary financial anguish, and made it a condition that I should remove myself from London for a short time. He knew a chap who had retired early from the foreign office due to some nervous disorder. This chap – I hesitate in calling him a friend because Mycroft had no friends – had been given the job of lighthouse keeper on Caldey Island in the Bristol Channel.

Quincy Scullin was his name, a jumpy chap with dancing eyes. I'd never met anyone with nystagmus and initially found it unsettling. He was all skin and bone, a walking cadaver, as is generally the case with men who live on their nerves. Mycroft had it in mind that I might stay with the nervy lighthouse keeper for the summer. I had no great objection to the proposition, nor it seems did Quincy Scullin, so I settled into the spare room of the lighthouse keeper's cottage, unpacked my books, scientific instruments, and binocular field glasses.

Ynys Byr, as the island was also known, was mercilessly exposed to the elements but not entirely without charm, having a number of sandy bays and beautiful beaches for sea bathing, and hunkered between hardy patches of yellow gorse and purple lavender was a sixth century, Celtic abbey which had been revived by the Benedictines in 1136 only to be destroyed in the dissolution of 1536. It had been partially restored by a handful of Cistercian monks who were hoping to restore its ruinous catholic fortunes for the next millennium.

While I beavered away at various chemical experiments and explored all that the island had to offer, Mycroft took himself off to Caldey Abbey. I knew he had no interest in things monkish and surmised he was killing two birds with one stone – me and something fishy going on at the picturesque ruin.

I overheard Mycroft telling Quincy the War Office was considering turning the site into a naval academy. I didn't believe it for a minute. Mycroft's job with the government was opaque, but I felt sure the British Navy had hundreds of underlings for scouting missions. Quincy played along, nodding and setting-off the dancing devils to spin like drunken dervishes.

Quincy and I happily managed to avoid each other's company during the day. By mutual agreement we met up for supper every evening, which was always at the same time and consisted of the same dish: Welsh Rarebit.

Quincy ate just one meal per day and that was it. It was originally spelled Welsh Rabbit, though rabbit had nothing to do it. I don't know if you are familiar with Welsh Rarebit so I will describe it.

It consisted of a slice of thick bread toasted both sides, splashed with ale, a slab of hard cheese toasted both sides and placed on top, then dolloped with mustard. It tasted much better than it looked – which was disgusting - and it didn't take me long to become a connoisseur. If he topped it with a fried egg, he called it Buck Rabbit. If he splashed it with Worcestershire sauce and drowned it in stewed tomatoes, he called it Blushing Bunny.

Summer went on in this uneventful fashion. Mycroft made regular forays to the island to make sure I was behaving myself but most of his time was spent on the mainland doing god-knows-what, though I suspected it had something to do with smuggling.

Fishermen, pilgrims, naturists, ramblers, amateur archaeologists, and artists visited the island every now and again. One day a violent storm blew up and some day-trippers were marooned for the night. The abbot offered to put them up at the abbey. The next morning one of them was dead.

Being at a loose end and naturally curious, I ambled over. The chap was dead all right. Drowned in his bath. Floating In the water were twelve rabbits' feet.

Now, why any man would take a bath – it was a small hip bath – with rabbits' feet was bewildering. Rose petals, maybe, herbs, yes, but rabbits' feet?

The death of Mr Mordecai Cadwalader was a diverting puzzle, and since high seas and fierce winds ruled out a visit from the Pembrokeshire constabulary any time soon, the abbot – knowing I was the younger brother of Mr Mycroft Holmes - encouraged me to speak to his remaining guests to see if I could make sense of the unfortunate incident.

From a group of strangers thrown together by chance during an excursion to Caldey Island, I expected diverse views, but they had pretty much the same thing to say: They arrived by fishing trawler and disembarked at Priory Bay where there was a jetty. The captain of the trawler was a local who often ferried provisions and day-trippers to the island. He agreed to return to pick them up at seven o'clock that same evening. When the storm broke and the sky darkened prematurely, they realised the captain would not be coming for them and the abbot was kind enough to accommodate them overnight.

None was acquainted with Mr Cadwalader prior to meeting him yesterday but they had engaged in friendly conversation over dinner and had learned he was a citizen of the United States, recently removed to England where he had purchased property in Somerset. He appeared in good spirits and good health. They could not shed any light on why he should want to kill himself. They all assumed it was suicide.

I took a list of names and addresses, bagged up the twelve rabbits' feet, and resolved to pondering the whys and wherefores in my private bolt hole. But first, a few questions for the abbot.

"Did any of the other day-trippers take a bath?"

"Yes – the general."

"Why only the two of them?"

"Well, it could be because they'd both been swimming at Sandtop Bay and were coated in salt and sand. The general requested a bath before bed and as we had sufficient hot water I obliged. Upon discovering the general was taking a bath, Mr Cadwalader requested the same."

"Were any of the day-trippers acquainted with any of the monks?"

"No." The response was unequivocal.

"Did Mr Cadwalader appear agitated or anxious in any way?"

"No, er, well... "

"Yes?" I prompted hastily.

"It was during dinner... There were thirteen, you see, and it seemed to put everyone on edge. I noticed several of them bristle when it was pointed out..."

"What was pointed out?"

"Someone noticed there were thirteen at table and made mention of the fact."

"Can you recall who that someone was?"

The abbot's brow pleated. "Not off-hand, sorry, it may come to me later, but right now I cannot think who said it."

"Can you recall what was said?"

"Well, it was something along the lines of that hoary old superstitious chestnut: when thirteen people dine together, the first one to leave the table will die."

"I see, please continue."

"I should explain I had already dined in the refectory with my fellow brothers – we eat early because our day starts early – but I was in the dining room making sure the meal was adequate. We eat sparingly and our food is simple. I recall Mr Cadwalader laughing derisively when the superstition was first mentioned. He said that fear of the number thirteen was nothing but bunkum, yes, that was his word, bunkum, and he would prove it by being the first to leave the table."

"What happened next?"

"One of the ladies suggested they all leave at the same time. Mr Cadwalader laughed at that too. Someone else suggested that at the close of dinner they all stand in unison at the count of three and turn their backs on the table simultaneously. Several men scoffed at that. Others said it was worth a try. Someone said they didn't believe in superstition either but they weren't prepared to be the first to leave... I opened a bottle of our special mead for them to enjoy after dinner and left them to it. I don't know what happened after that. I presume Mr Cadwalader stayed true to his word and was the first to vacate the table."

"You think that's why he died?" I tested.

The abbot appeared momentarily confused. "Well, no, of course not... but if someone planned to murder him... good grief... what am I saying! He died in his bath. He must have passed out, perhaps from a weak heart, and slipped under the water and drowned."

"That doesn't explain the rabbits' feet."

"What?"

"The twelve rabbits' feet," I reminded.

"No, no, I suppose not... quite strange, that. There are no rabbits on the island; too far for them to swim from the mainland and the current runs fast... Strange... I see what you mean." He turned to go. "If you will excuse me, I have work I need to get on with."

"Certainly," said I, puzzled more than ever. That's when I decided to speak to the twelve guests one more time. And this time I intended to note their reason for coming to the island.

The day-trippers turned out to be an odd assortment:

Three Germans were on a walking holiday.

An Italian and a Turk were seamen enjoying a few days shore leave.

Two Scandinavians were lighthouse enthusiasts.

The retired army general told me he used to holiday on the island as a boy and wanted to see if the place was still as he remembered it.

A student from the Low Country was a birdwatcher.

Two ladies, one from India and the other from France, were on holiday together; they intended to do some sketching and painting.

A Scotsman living in Tenby simply wanted to get away from his wife for the day. He had been hanging about the harbour when he saw the others boarding the trawler and decided on a whim to join them.

I couldn't see anything sinister in the responses and I couldn't see any connection to Mr Cadwalader. Deep in thought, I strolled back to the cottage clutching my bag of furry feet.

When Quincy joined me for Welsh Rarebit at our usual time, I showed him the contents of my bag.

"Not rabbit," he said, straight up. "Snowshoe hare."

I was surprised at this confident pronouncement. "How can you be so sure?"

"They're white for a start, plus the feet are wider for travelling across soft snow and the four toes are more splayed for the same reason, and there's more fur on the underside of the foot to counteract the cold. You don't get that with normal hares and certainly not with rabbits who have narrower feet and toes close-set."

I was impressed by this piece of esoteric knowledge and it was one of the things that later spurred me to study obscure topics in depth. My nervy summer companion who had to date demonstrated no great knowledge of anything except cheese on toast proved to me that all knowledge is useful. "Where did you learn this interesting fact?"

"I lived for a time in Canada," he said, choosing not to elaborate.

After dinner, I went back to pondering. I got out the list of names and stared at them until my eyes glazed over. I was sure there was a link but try as I might I couldn't see it. That night I dreamed of snow hares and when I woke, I had my answer.

Some of the names were derived from the word HARE.

The French lady, Francoise le Lievre, was the most obvious. It was so obvious I almost overlooked it.

The German, Herman der Feldhase, was clear too, and it told me I was on the right track.

Hoz Ashkenazy, another German chap, recalled the Yiddish for hare.

The third German was Hues de Bourg, which made a vague link if the name was Luxembourgish.

The chap from the Low Country was Fritz Hazze, a Frisian word meaning hare.

The two Scandinavians were Janis Finn and Heri Landice. Their first names were the words for hare in Finnish and Icelandic. The link was now undeniable.

The remaining names proved trickier.

The Indian lady was Miss Kara Ghosh. If I rearranged the letters, I got kharagosh – Hindi for, you guessed it – hare!

The Scotsman, Scott Gearr, gave me trouble until I made the link to Gaelic. Gearr being the word for hare in Scots Gaelic.

The two sailors were also difficult. My Turkish was rusty and I couldn't see an Italian link. The Turk gave his name as Tavsan and the Italian called himself Chiro Grillius. After straining my brain, I realised the Italian was Latin – chyrogryllius – meaning hare. The Turkish word eluded me but I thought I might be able to check with the abbot or one of the monks.

I got to the last name, which I had written down as: Gen. C. Winn. There was no way I could make a link to hare no matter how much I willed it.

I was not yet a consulting detective, in fact, I was years off my calling, but even at that early stage I knew: One cannot theorise without facts, one cannot leap to conclusions by ignoring things that don't stack up, and most importantly, the strangest fact is always the most vital.

There were twelve hares' feet. There were twelve names. Either they all had to fit the theory or none of them did.

But what was the theory? I wasn't even sure I had a theory. Even if all the names had a link to HARE, how did that link to the death of Mr Cadwalader?

Following a late breakfast, I returned to the abbey and made my way to the library. Imagine my joy when I learned one of the monks had lived in Anatolia and consequently had a smattering of phrases common to Asia Minor, including the Turkish for hare: tavsan!

I was keen to speak to the day-trippers one more time but the fishing trawler returned to the island to pick up its passengers. I had no authority to detain them. I had a theory but no real link to the deceased. I consoled myself with the fact I had the names and addresses of all involved and felt confident that should a definite link be found the twelve suspects could be traced by the Yard.

The abbot explained to the captain why he was one passenger short and instructed him to inform the police of the death of the American at the earliest opportunity. Mr Cadwalader's body would remain at the abbey until such time as the police arrived to take charge.

"By the way," the abbot said to me, as we watched the trawler pull away from the jetty, "the deceased had a broken leg. It was discovered when the body was removed to the infirmary. I cannot explain how or when it might have happened. He was moving freely at dinner."

Confused more than ever, I wandered back to the lighthouse to find that Mycroft had also returned. I wasn't expecting him for another week. He was seated at the kitchen table, talking in low tones with Quincy, pretending to share a pot of tea and a plate of ginger biscuits.

I recounted all that had happened in his absence and showed him the list of names, pointing out the last name that eluded me. Quincy took a look over his shoulder.

"Cwningen," he said, employing the usual economy of words. "Welsh for hare," he clarified. "Gen. C. Winn is an anagram of Cwningen."

That clinched it but I still felt no closer to solving the puzzle. "It still doesn't explain the link to Cadwalader," I bleated pathetically. "And if it is murder – why in the bath? Why not just push the man over a cliff or brain him with a rock or strangle him in his bed? And why the twelve hares' feet?"

"They send a message," said Quincy, looking meaningfully at Mycroft.

"What's going on?" I demanded, glaring at my big brother. "I presume Quincy, here, is keeping his dancing eyes on gun-runners? I presume you returned early because you suspect Mr Cadwalader of working for the Fenians. Is that it? Or is he one of yours?"

Mycroft frowned and drew a deep breath. "Show me that list of names again."

I handed it across and helped myself to a cup of tea and a biscuit while the two of them pored over my scribble like a pair of monks decoding an ancient theological manuscript.

"This so-called retired general," said Quincy dubiously, "never heard of him."

Mycroft nodded gravely. "What about the Scots Gaelic chap hanging about the harbour? Irish, you think?"

It was Quincy's turn to nod.

"Are you going to tell me what's going on?" I growled.

Mycroft relented and revealed that Fenians were using the Bristol Channel to smuggle arms into England. Quincy thought the abbot might be aiding them. The captain of the trawler was also suspected of being a Ribbonman. At this stage they had no hard evidence. Cadwalader was not one of ours and they had no idea who he was working for or why he was killed.

"This tea is cold," I grumbled.

Quincy put the kettle back on the fire. "Why break his leg?"

"You think the killer broke Cadwalader's leg?" I pressed.

"It had to be the killer. But if you're going to kill a man, why break his leg first?"

"Was there much water on the floor surrounding the bath?" quizzed Mycroft.

"Hardly any."

"That indicates there was no struggle. The deceased had his leg broken after he was murdered, not before. How big was the bath?"

"It was a small hip bath and only half full. Which now that I think of it, doesn't tally with something the abbot said. He said the deceased slipped down into the water and drowned. That would not have been possible. The water wasn't deep enough. The legs would have had to be high in the air for the head to be submerged."

"Someone jerked up his legs," surmised Quincy. "That's the easiest way to drown someone in a bath. Lift up their legs and the other half of the body goes under. The leg may have snapped as he struggled to gasp his last."

"In that case, the retired general would be the likeliest culprit," I said. "He was the only other person to take a bath."

"If he was anything like the retired generals I've come across, he'd be strong enough to hold up two legs," agreed Quincy, "and snap a bone while he was at it."

That sounded logical but I thought we might be missing something. "Twelve hares' feet suggest all twelve people were involved."

"Like a jury," muttered Mycroft, "but what was Cadwalader's crime?"

"There's something else," I said, recounting what the abbot told me about that superstition concerning the number thirteen.

"Are you suggesting this could be a case of triskaidekaphobia?" queried Mycroft, regarding me with pity, in the same way he often had occasion to when we were growing up and he had seven extra years of experience under his belt.

"Not really," I replied dismally, "but so far not much makes sense and if it turns out this murder is the result of a superstitious nutter who believes in bad luck then so be it. It would account for the twelve rabbits' feet which are supposed to be symbols of good luck."

"Except they're not rabbits feet," reminded Quincy.

"We three know that," I dispatched with keen-edged diction, "but what if the nutter believed they were rabbits' feet. Most people wouldn't have a clue as to the difference between bunnies and snowshoe hares."

Mycroft suddenly slapped his hand on the table; the cups took fright and wet themselves. "By Jove! Talking about hares! There have been three deaths in England this year related to hare coursing!"

"Hare coursing?" For once, I was able to regard my big brother with pity, and I milked the moment for all it was worth.

Mycroft actually looked uncertain for the first time in his life, albeit briefly, before rallying and coming back stronger than ever. "Scotland Yard believe a group of individuals who are opposed to cruelty to animals have banded together to take revenge on landowners who allow hare coursing on their properties. The last chap to be murdered, Sir Devlin Horrocks, was said to be in the habit of breaking the back leg of a hare just before releasing it and having it run down by grey hounds for sport. He apparently made a fortune laying bets on the result. I think it not unreasonable that a link will be found between Mr Cadwalader and hare coursing. I'll telegraph to our friends in America as soon as I return to the mainland. I believe there will be a history of illegal gambling and scores of disgruntled punters from Mr Cadwalader's home state. He was probably intending to make a fresh start in Somerset."

"You will never trace the guilty twelve," predicted Quincy, sounding relieved and not at all sorry. "Those names were bogus. The addresses will be bogus too."

I tossed the list of names onto the fire while Quincy prepared his usual culinary feast with a lavish topping of tomatoes. Before long we were tucking into a generous serve of Blushing Bunny.

# Colonel Jumbuck

"Ah, Watson! Do come in and join us," declared Sherlock, full-throated and in fine fettle. "You remember Mrs Ronder?"

There was no mistaking the elegant lady with the black veil that concealed the upper part of her face, leaving visible just some rosebud lips and a small girlish chin. That she had maintained her womanly figure in the intervening years was evident, even though she was concertina'd into the stiff upright chair normally reserved for clients.

That's how I guessed it was not a social call that had brought Eugenia Ronder to 221B Baker Street but a personal matter requiring the attention of a consulting detective. The empty teacup resting on a side table told me she had been in our little sitting room for at least thirty minutes. I greeted her cordially.

Sherlock waited for me to take my usual seat. "Mrs Ronder has quitted South Brixton where she lodged with the doughty Mrs Merrilow upon our last meeting, Watson, and has taken up residence at Horselye Grange situated in the salubrious clime of Hampstead Heath." He turned to the veiled visitor and addressed her with utmost courtesy, for he had enormous sympathy for the disfigured lady, but I recognised the polite entreaty for what it was – a ploy to aid his sleuthing. As well as giving him the opportunity to hear her story a second time, he could pay attention to details which may have been omitted in the first telling. "Perhaps you could briefly recount that which you told me so as to make my colleague au fait with your situation."

"Certainly, Mr Holmes."

Watching her clasp her hands in her lap, one over the other as ladies do to stop from fidgeting, forced me to realise she was no longer a young woman; the skin had lost its elasticity and the nails were badly split – commonplace in scullery maids and washerwomen, but to a medically trained eye, a symptom of psoriasis exacerbated by some grave concern.

The softly measured voice had lost none of its allure. "When we last met, I had sufficient income to live comfortably, albeit un-extravagantly, for the remainder of my days. Unfortunately, malfeasance on the part of my accountant coupled with poor investment advice from my stockbroker changed my circumstances, and just when I was wondering how I might make ends meet, I received a letter from a certain Colonel Jumbuck, whom I had no recollection of ever meeting. He asked if he could call on me and stated that his visit would be to my advantage. After some consideration, I wrote back agreeing to the visit. I brought the Colonel's letter with me and Mr Holmes has taken possession of it."

Sherlock \- elbow propped on the mantel as was his wont - scooped up the missive and waved it about. "Here it is, Watson. No postmark; delivered by courier. Return address the Metropole Hotel on Northumberland Avenue; presumably where the mysterious Colonel Jumbuck was staying. Pray continue, Mrs Ronder."

"Well," she paused to recall where she had broken off, "I recognised my caller at once. It was Griggs the clown. After the death of my husband, our circus, which was already in decline, closed permanently. To cut a long story short, Jimmy Griggs migrated to Australia where he started his own circus. It was hugely successful and he soon became a wealthy man. Eventually, he tired of the sawdust and the peripatetic life, and grew ever more homesick. Six months ago, he sold the Jumbuck Circus to a syndicate in Sydney for an enormous sum and returned to England.

I had always had a soft spot for Griggs, for he had a ready smile during those dark days when my brute of a husband made my life a misery. And I believe he had a soft spot for me too, for he knew how much I suffered.

By the way, he knows not the truth – how Leonardo and I conspired to murder my husband and make it seem as if it was the handiwork of Sahara King the lion, how the beast turned and mauled my face, how my lover fled to save himself rather than... rather than..."

Here she broke off to choke back a surge of emotion, that awful episode still fresh in her mind, the pain raw.

"Your secret is safe with us," assured Sherlock. "You need have no fear. Neither Watson nor I will betray you. Justice and Law are not synonyms."

She wrung her hands in despair; the guilty stain would haunt her to her dying day.

"You are doing very well," encouraged Sherlock with a tenderness he reserved for women who had been dealt a cruel hand, for though it was true he was not especially enamoured of the weaker sex, he understood their plight in a Hobbesian world run by men. "Continue when you feel ready."

She reclasped her hands and drew breath. "Keen to catch up with circus folk of old, Griggs hired a private enquiry agent to that end. Most had scattered far and wide and quite a few had passed away. Leonardo, as you know, drowned while swimming at Margate. So, it was to me he came first. Aware of my impecunious state, he made me an offer, as I stated earlier, to my advantage. He had taken possession of an Elizabethan manor house near the Heath and asked if I would take on the role of housekeeper. The terms and conditions were most generous. I believe he wanted someone he felt comfortable with and who he could trust not to rob him blind. It was the answer to my prayers, for who else would employ a woman with half a face. I said yes at once.

The manor house was in excellent repair, the furnishings in good taste. The surrounding park ran to fifty acres with superb views over London. The household was well-staffed and everything ran smoothly. The servants became accustomed to my veil and thereafter treated me not as a curiosity or circus freak as I feared they might. Griggs, ever the clown, always in good humour, was a kind master who made no unreasonable demands.

How to describe him? If you have seen a Toby jug then you have seen Griggs. Short of stature, no more than five feet in his stockings, he is as round as a pork pie minus the crimping. Fond of pudding and a tipple of port after dinner, he is easily pleased. After leading a hectic life, he wanted nothing more than a few quiet years to catch his breath."

Suppressing a yawn, I wondered where this story was leading. It sounded too ruddy jolly. Was Griggs the clown another Bluebeard? Did he have a dungeon stuffed full of dead bodies or a tower full of dead brides? When would the lady get to the point?

Sherlock must have read my mind. "Mrs Ronder is doing a commendable job of painting the picture for us, Watson, and is now coming to the part that may pique our interest."

Eugenia Ronder took the hint. "About three months ago some strangeness crept into our daily affairs. Little things of no consequence. They were not taken seriously, at least not by me, but I look back now and see that Griggs began to lose his sense of humour at about that time. His ready smile became a rictus grin, his easy-going manner became guarded, and he began to lose his temper with the servants – something I had never witnessed. I suddenly realised he was frightened."

"Frightened of what?" I prompted, suppressing another yawn.

"I have no idea, Dr Watson. That's why I am here. I would like you to come to Horselye Grange and get to the bottom of whatever is going on."

Sherlock, looking somewhat intense, straightened up to full height. "It was at this juncture that you entered, Watson. I think a fresh pot of tea is called for and then Mrs Ronder can elaborate on the seemingly inconsequential strangeness that disturbed this happy household." He reached for the bell pull.

Mrs Hudson, a woman of equal parts intuition and experience, arrived ten minutes later with a fresh tea tray and some excellent seed cake warm from the oven. While tea and cake were dispensed, Sherlock located a map of Hampstead Heath, spread it out on the desk and, using a magnifying glass, searched for the Grange. He liked to visualise the landscape in his mind's eye and was able to transform a two-dimensional drawing into a three-dimensional image better than anyone I have ever met. I believe this skill helped solve many a mystery.

Mrs Ronder replaced her teacup and picked up her story. "Before I continue, I must mention that several members of the household are Australian aborigines. They were employed as odd-job men for the Jumbuck Circus and when it was sold, they opted to travel to England with the showman they knew as Colonel Jumbuck, who had always been a fair-minded man, rather than take their chances with a new ringmaster."

"How many aborigines?" quizzed Sherlock.

"Nine."

"Do they work inside the household or outside?"

"Seven work in the stable for they are good with horses and animals in general. Two work inside. Kaddy who was Griggs's dresser, is now his valet, and his sister, Kirra, who was in charge of ticket sales, now attends to all personal mail, of which there is little since Griggs leads a quiet life and prefers not to socialise if he can help it. Household accounts fall under my purview. Financial and legal affairs are handled by a firm of solicitors in Highgate."

"I see. Please proceed."

"The first oddness was a rock left on the front doorstep. I thought nothing of it – a prank by one of the local lads – but Kaddy appeared shocked. I remember the look on his face when I called his attention to it."

"Shocked in what way? Surprised or disturbed?"

"Disturbed - but it is only in hindsight that I can say that with any certainty."

I emptied the dottle from my pipe into the grate and tried to muster enthusiasm. "Was there anything particular about this rock?"

"I did not know it at the time but I have since learned that it was most particular – smooth, oval-shaped, blackish in colour, the size of an emu egg – as were all subsequent rocks."

"How many more?" Sherlock's curiosity knew no bounds.

"Six in all. The next one appeared outside the library window. A fortnight later another was found outside the French window to the drawing room. Another was discovered resting on the windowsill of the large bay window to the dining room. And then last month a rock was found at the foot of the stairs."

"Hmm," gurgled Sherlock, stroking his chin, "inside the house."

Mrs Ronder nodded briskly. "It caused great consternation. Griggs locked himself in his bedroom and took all his meals there for the next five days."

"Why was the rock not disposed-off in the first instance?" Suppressing a yawn, I stuffed fresh tobacco into my pipe and prepared to light it.

"Kaddy swore it was disposed of. He threw it into one of the deep ponds that run adjacent to Horse Pond Lane. Each time a rock materialised, Kaddy disposed of it in the same way and watched it sink to the bottom of the pond."

"So, it was not the same rock?" checked Sherlock.

"That I cannot say. The rocks looked remarkably similar to me but they could have been different rocks."

Sherlock began to pace in front of the mantel. "Rock number six – was that found inside the house?"

"Yes, it was found halfway up the stairs at the first turning. That was two weeks ago."

"Who found it?"

"Kaddy."

"He showed it to his master?"

"Yes, we were all under instruction to report any strange objects found on the premises or grounds."

"How did Griggs react?"

"He began to shake. His bulging eyes stared trance-like as if hypnotised by terror. He stayed in his bedroom for the rest of the week. I am coming to the end of my story now. Yesterday a small object was found suspended from the handle of the front door... inside the house. I have it here." She extracted a cambric handkerchief from her reticule, carefully unfolded it, and handed the object to Sherlock. "It is this object which prompted me to seek help. This is why I am here, gentlemen."

Sherlock appeared excited and took the object immediately to his desk to examine under his magnifying glass. "Interesting," he muttered. "Most interesting. How did Griggs react to this? Did he almost die of fright?"

"Yes, yes," she said, astonished at his prescience. "That was his reaction exactly."

Sherlock handed the object to me. "What do you make of it, Watson?"

I gave it a cursory glance. "It appears to be a bird bone shaped to look like a giant darning needle." To be frank, I couldn't see anything in the strange goings-on at the house of Griggs the clown. Rocks, indeed! If everyone had a nervous breakdown whenever they came across a particular rock, the world would be one huge lunatic asylum. As for the bird bone, it was the sort of thing people found when digging over their vegetable patches. In times of yore, bones were commonly used as darning needles by the poor.

Nodding, Sherlock removed it from my hand and addressed himself to our visitor. "May I hang onto this for the present? I would like to study it in more detail."

"Yes, of course. Does that mean you will come to Horselye Grange?"

"You can expect us tomorrow afternoon. I believe there is an inn – The Red Lion – within walking distance of the Grange. We will take rooms there."

"Oh, no," she countered firmly, "you must stay at the manor house. Griggs will have no objection. He is not a hermit and will gladly welcome you. I think it will be good for him to have diverting company. Most evenings there is just the two of us in the small library - Griggs reading some short stories from a magazine and me at my embroidery. He knows I travel to London to seek help... Oh, dear. I hope I have not left it too late."

I spent the afternoon at my club playing billiards with Thurston while Sherlock buried himself inside the British Museum. We met for dinner at Rules on Maiden Lane; the oldest restaurant in London. They did an exceptional game pie and their wine list was a credit to them.

"How is Thurston doing?" he phrased casually as soon as we'd ordered.

I didn't bother asking how he knew I'd met up with my old chum – probably some tell-tale chalk on my cuff. I decided to surprise him instead. "He's getting married next month. Miss Hermione Weatherby – the American glove heiress – an absolute corker."

"The marriage will never go ahead," he predicted. "Miss Weatherby is actually Fanny Eventail the burlesque fan dancer at the Comedy Club in Covent Garden. When his mother discovers this fact, she will threaten to cut him out of her will. He will go abroad for an extended period. You will need to find another chump for billiards."

"Did you just say chump?"

"I did."

I never knew how he knew the things he knew. They were not things you could research at the British Museum. "How was your day? Productive?"

"Very," he said enthusiastically, moving right along. "The museum had some aboriginal artefacts stored in boxes in the basement and Professor Throsby was keen to educate me. Australian aborigines believe all death to be the result of an evil spirit."

"Even murder?"

"Even murder - not so far-fetched. How often do we say: evil heart or evil nature?"

I wasn't convinced. I had met several murderers who were not necessarily evil. Take Eugenia Ronder. She had murdered her husband. Granted, she did not wield the club studded with five nails to resemble a lion's paw, and the idea had been the brainchild of her lover, Leonardo the Strongman, but she had willingly gone along with his evil plan and had lured her husband to certain death.

"Did Professor Thorsby make anything of the pop-up rocks?"

Sherlock nodded briskly. "Professor Throsby told me that a smooth, oval-shaped, blackish rock is regarded as a killing-rock by aborigines from Australia. It is imbued with magic power and moves of its own volition until such time as it strikes dead its victim."

"No wonder Kaddy was goggle-eyed when he spotted it on the doormat."

"And note how it appeared outside various windows as if it wanted to enter the house."

"It did enter the house," I recalled with clarity.

"Yes, and it then crept from the foot of the stairs to the first landing. Nicely staged, that."

"A bit of theatre?"

"Certainly. Griggs is being manipulated by a clever villain who is biding his time."

"It must be one of the aborigines in his employ. He has made an enemy of one of them. Or perhaps they are in it together."

"Too obvious, Watson," he dismissed glibly. "Why not leave a calling card with a boomerang stencilled on it?"

I was not discouraged by the facetious rejoinder. "But it must be someone with knowledge of aboriginal folklore and culture."

"Yes," he agreed. "Someone who has spent time in Australia or has studied up on the subject as I have just done at the British Museum."

"What else did Professor Thorsby say?"

"Professor Throsby confirmed the bird bone is from an emu. It has been sharpened at one end and through the eye has been threaded a human hair, presumably the hair of the victim, fixed into place using gum resin. It is called a kundela."

"Is it a darning needle?"

"No, it is used in ritual execution. A magic man called a Kurdaitcha Man is selected by the elders of the tribe to point the bone at the victim, usually a wrong-doer. After the bone has been pointed..."

"The victim dies!"

"Exactly. The kundela is also called a spear of thought because it is the thought that you will die that eventually kills you. Self-murder. Powerful stuff... willpower."

"But you have to believe in its power and Griggs is not aboriginal."

"He has spent time among aborigines in Australia and has possibly seen the kundela work its ritual magic. He may have met a Kurdaitcha Man. He may even have featured one in his circus."

"The kundela was suspended from the doorknob," I argued. "It was not actually pointed at Griggs."

"That is why he is still alive. We have no time to lose, Watson."

With thick fog cloaking the city, we boarded the first train to Highgate. No sooner had the guard blown the whistle than Sherlock whipped out the map of the Heath.

"Horselye Grange has three neighbours. A rectory to the west. A farm to the north. And to the east a large estate known as Squireys Court."

"I say! That's a bit of a leap. You cannot possibly suspect one of the neighbours. Griggs has been in residence less than six months."

"Plenty of time to make enemies, Watson."

"By all accounts he is the heartiest hail-fellow-well-met."

"And yet someone has it in for him."

I bit my lip and decided to play along. A few days spent on Hampstead Heath in the autumn was something to look forward to; I had packed my walking boots in anticipation of exploring some nature trails. "True."

"Fortunately, I didn't spend all my time in the basement of the museum. I met with Langdale Pike at the St James Club. He informed me a consortium of investors has registered a railway company to rival the Great Northern Railway. This new company has ambitions to cut a track from Hampstead to Kenwood House and up to St Albans. This new track would necessitate the purchase of Horselye Grange and surrounding park."

"You think this rival railway might want to do away with Griggs to further their ambition?"

"If they have made overtures and he has rejected them then..."

"But to murder a man?"

"Perhaps they simply wish to put the frighteners on him."

"I still don't see how that has anything to do with the neighbours?"

"Sir Bruce Blandyshe, the master of Squireys Court, is the principal investor in the Kenwood Railway Line, the company in question."

"What about the other two neighbours?"

"Reverend Plaisted and Captain Chalmers. Open to conjecture. Local gossip may reveal something. We will alight at Highgate and avail ourselves of a bacon sandwich at The Red Lion before proceeding to Horselye Grange to introduce ourselves to Griggs."

The air was crisp and clear at Highgate; unsurprisingly, grey fog continued to blanket London. A quartet of early morning ramblers, regulars by the looks of it, were enjoying mugs of steaming hot coffee laced with rum while discussing the funeral of someone called Old Binsey.

"Hymn was all wrong. I'm a traditionalist and I will not apologise for it."

"Brian is right! Next thing we'll be clapping our hands and waving our arms they way those evangelicals do in them gospel churches."

"Vicar wants to move with the times, that's all."

"What fer? I like the times we got now."

Sherlock leaned across to borrow some salt, though the smoke-cured bacon was salty enough. "Have you finished with the condiments? Right-ho. Are you by any chance discussing the funeral of Old Binsey?"

The four men glared as if an adder had just slithered across the table.

"What of it?"

Sherlock ignored the belligerent tone filtered through a woolly beard. "Was it Reverend Plaisted officiating?"

"Who wants to know?" persisted the hirsute growler.

"Oh, shut it, Jack! This gent don't mean nothing by his enquiry. Yep, it were Plaisted."

The growler refused to back down. "You a friend of his?"

"Not at all. I cannot take to all this modernising. Muscular Christianity, they call it. Give me old time religion every time."

The growler was won over. "If it were good enough for Jesus it's good enough for us!"

The other men began nodding in unison.

"Plaisted rubs everyone the wrong way. First it were Widow Jessup and then..."

"If it's not a new hymn book, it's the right to roam."

"I reckon he's doin' Squireys' work for 'im."

"Gettin' the parish council to move the boundary in Badger Wood."

"And sayin' the path by Horse Ponds has been a bridle way since King Alfred's day."

"Wants to put the wind up Griggs, that's all."

The door banged open and a stocky man in tweed, two lively springer spaniels at heel, tramped in with muddy boots. A broad smile did not dispel the fierceness of his gaze which measured the occupants of The Red Lion for future reference.

Without a word, the men who had been discussing Reverend Plaisted, stood up simultaneously, gathered their coats, caps, walking canes, and departed forthwith.

The man in tweed ordered a Guinness at the bar and introduced himself. "Captain Chalmers – are you gents just passing through?" He looked meaningfully at the carpet bags stowed at our feet.

"No," responded Sherlock. "We will be staying at the Grange."

The captain appeared bemused. "Horselye Grange?"

"That's right – do you know it?"

"It borders my farm."

"Would that be Withering Heights Farm?"

"Yes... Do you have business with Jimmy Griggs?"

"No, we are old acquaintances from his circus days."

"From Australia?"

"From the time he was a clown with Ronder the Great Showman."

"That goes back a bit. Will you be staying long?"

Sherlock was being his most effusive. "Our plans are not decided. No doubt we will be seeing you at the Grange, Captain Chalmers?"

"I doubt it – I make it a rule not to mix with darkies. I didn't fight in the Anglo-Indian War and the Afghan War for their kind to move into our homes. Griggs has two of 'em in the house! One night they will slit his throat. You best sleep with a gun under your pillow. That's my advice."

With that he drained his Guinness and stormed out, the spaniels bolting after him.

The innkeeper waited till the door slammed back into place. "The captain can be a bit testy, but what he says, well, there's somethin' in it."

I had been silent long enough, happy for Sherlock to do all the talking. "I fought in the Anglo-Indian War and the Afghan War too, and if it taught me anything, it is that all men are human."

The innkeeper took no offence. "I weren't referring to the darkies. There's somethin' queer goin' on at the Grange. You best watch your backs."

The Toby jug on legs looked strained, as if it had been knocked off the shelf once too often and the chips were starting to show. But once a clown, always a clown. Griggs was anxious to please and be a good host.

The Grange was a superb example of the Elizabethan vernacular – commodious rooms, high-beamed ceilings, magnificent chimney-pieces, large windows, many with heraldic glass. Our bedrooms were in the west wing, giving onto Badger Wood and the square tower of the Saxon church.

Sherlock insisted on a tour of the grounds, not because he was especially interested in landscaping, but because he understood that whoever was perpetrating the strange deeds had to possess a good knowledge of the house and its surrounds. Kaddy conducted the tour and made no effort to disguise his concern – "If anything happens to Colonel Jumbuck, we is done for. Me and me blood brothers is one step away from a noose."

Sherlock and I had discussed the conversation which had taken place in the tavern and agreed that both Plaisted and Chalmers could not be discounted as possible suspects. Captain Chalmers made no bones about the fact he loathed Griggs's native servants. It was not out of the question that he might conspire to make them appear guilty. But would he go so far as to commit murder?

Reverend Plaisted, too, seemed to have a grudge against Griggs. Whether it was a right of way, a bridle way, a border dispute, or something more sinister, he appeared to want to make life unpleasant for the old clown, possibly to force him off his own land.

After an excellent lunch of pheasant pie and custard tart, washed down with a palatable Montrachet, Sherlock took the opportunity to speak frankly to Griggs.

"How do you get on with your neighbours?"

Griggs was not shy about expressing an opinion. "I say live and let live, Mr Holmes. Every English village has its idiot, its jumped-up captain with a chip on his shoulder, its pious churchman, its swaggering lord who will have you believe his family's wealth is the result of hard work and talent when in reality it came from plunder. I have no truck with grievances and petty squabbles. I contribute generously to the widows and orphans fund, the church roof fund, and any other fund that is got up. I want to be left to live out my days in peace."

"You trust your servants?"

"I do."

"You are familiar with aboriginal folk-lore?"

"I am, and if there is anything I don't know, I ask Kaddy. He was a Kurdaitcha Man. His sister, Kirra, was an Illapurinja – that is the female equivalent. If you think they are behind these shenanigans then you is barking up the wrong tree."

"Have you made a will?"

"It's funny you should ask. I was not planning to, but since this business started... well, it got me thinking. I paid a visit to my solicitors – Bentnick and Bentnick – yesterday."

"May I ask who gets the bulk of your estate?"

"I would normally tell you to mind your own business, Mr Holmes, but as your enquiry is in my best interests, I will tell you it is Mrs Ronder, and I will add – don't go reading nothing untoward into it. I was raised in a church orphanage. I have no family and have never been married. Mrs Ronder and I go back a long way. I remember when she came to the circus with her sister. She was ten and her sister was twelve. They was pretty little things and Ronder took a liking to them straight off. They jumped through hoops together until the sister died one winter from croup. Ronder married Eugenia when she was just sixteen. He was a monster of a man. All too often in life, monsters flourish and prosper while good folk have their faces ground into the dirt. That's why you won't see me in church and why the vicar has taken a dislike to me. He cannot abide atheists and heathens. The rest of my fortune goes to the nine aboriginals who have been loyal friends to me through thick and thin. There are small bequests to servants. The orphanage where I grew up burnt to the ground. Not that I would have given it a penny. The money would have gone straight to the churchmen at the top. None of it would have trickled down to the poor little blighters... I must sound like a bitter old man, Mr Holmes."

"I never mistake honesty for bitterness, sir. Now, while my colleague and I pursue this investigation in our own manner, I must ask you to keep Kaddy by your side whenever you venture from the house. I see he has moved into the bedroom next to yours in the south wing. And Kirra has the bedroom next to Mrs Ronder in the east wing."

"Anything wrong with that, Mr Holmes?"

"Nothing at all – a good arrangement." He pushed to his feet. "Come, Watson, let us be off."

A bracing wind was slapping our cheeks as we headed to Horse Pond Lane to check the depths of the ponds – all of them too deep to retrieve a rock, provided it was tossed into the water in the first instance, although it sounded as if Sherlock trusted Kaddy and his ilk.

"Yes," he confirmed when I pressed him. "We can discount the aboriginals."

"But the two rocks and the kundela found inside the house suggest someone who has access to the Grange."

"That's elementary, Watson. Who do you think it could be?"

I struggled to keep up with his long stride. "Slow down. It must be one of the servants."

"Once they retire for the night, the green baize door to the servants' quarters is bolted this side by Kaddy. It is unbolted by him at first light. And remember what Griggs said about barking up the wrong tree."

I stopped and caught my breath. "Hmm, there's no one else."

"Think again, Watson."

"Well, there's just... Oh, no! Not Mrs Ronder!"

"Impossible? Improbable?"

"She's our client!" Logic and emotion were at loggerheads. "You cannot be serious!"

"I was born serious, Watson. Perhaps Mrs Ronder thought it would be a practical joke, nothing more, but she has since come to realise the seriousness of her complicity."

"And now she stands to inherit a fortune – if anything happens to Griggs..."

"Indeed, but greed was not her first motivation. Griggs only made the will yesterday while she was in London. The question we need to ask ourselves: Who put her up to it?" He stopped suddenly at the peak of the hill. "Ah! If I am not mistaken, there we have Withering Heights Farmhouse. You can see smoke rising from the chimney. This is where we part ways." He pulled a folded paper from his pocket. "You will proceed to Highgate where you will send this telegraphic message to Lestrade, stressing urgency, and then you will pay a call on Captain Chalmers. As an old soldier you should be able to find common ground. Be as ingratiating as possible."

I was not looking forward to the boot-licking experience. "What about you? Where are you going?"

"I am going to the rectory to meet Reverend Plaisted. I will then take the short cut through Badger Wood to Squireys Court which I presume is that Georgian pile in the distance. We will meet up again just prior to dinner. Take care how you go as you cut across the fields, Watson. I believe the captain is out with his gun and his dogs. Do you have your Webley on you?"

I nodded.

"Good old Watson," he said, striding away.

"I have nothing against Mr Griggs or Colonel Jumbuck or whatever he calls himself," asserted the vicar, a robust chap with large hands and protruding teeth, sightly balding. "He gives generously to the poor, although I am disappointed that he does not come to church."

"Does Mrs Ronder, his housekeeper, attend church?" asked Sherlock, like one making gossip look like idle conversation.

"Never misses a service. Shocking accident, that, which left her horribly disfigured. It is a heavy cross to bear. She is an admirable example of Christian forbearance. It is she who does good deeds on her employer's behalf."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, the colonel has never set foot in church and is hardly ever seen in the village. It is Mrs Ronder who donates on his behalf to all good causes, though it is my impression the money comes from him."

"You have never met Mr Griggs?"

"Never. I made a point of calling at the Grange when I first arrived in the village – that was about four months ago - but his valet told me he was out taking some air. I felt I was being deliberately snubbed and did not call again. Mrs Ronder acts as go-between. But I am hoping to persuade him to attend our special Christmas carols service and thus turn things around."

Sir Bruce Blandyshe was taking tea in the blue drawing room with his two unmarried daughters, Miss Olivia and Miss Evelyn. He was a handsome man in his fifties, clean-shaven, well-groomed, widowed. He looked relieved to have male company and insisted on Sherlock joining them. Neither of the ladies had heard of Mr Sherlock Holmes the consulting detective, but the baronet flinched upon hearing the name when first introduced.

"Mr Griggs is such a funny little man," observed Miss O. "Lemon or milk, Mr Holmes?"

"Milk."

"He has a tattoo of a butterfly on his wrist," added Miss E. "Scone with jam and cream or buttered crumpet, Mr Holmes?"

"Crumpet."

"Not our type, really," opined Sir Bruce. "Keeps an army of abos. Not the sort of thing that is done in Hampstead. I think he'd be happier in Wimbledon or Twickenham. Would you care for a brandy to help wash down your tea, Mr Holmes?"

"Thank you, yes. I understand that a new railway will soon cut through this part of Hampstead?"

"Quite right. Railways are the future, Mr Holmes. We cannot stand in the way of progress. The Kenwood Railway Line will speed things up."

"Things?"

"Commerce, business, trade. The horse and cart are old hat. Too slow. We must move with the times or get left behind. The new line will cut minutes off everyone's journey. Not that we want to spoil the countryside. Not at all. A cutting will go through the Grange. You won't even see the train as it hurtles along. Griggs is not on board yet but I feel sure he will be keen to join us before long."

"And if not, will you contemplate an alternative route?"

"There can be no alternative route, Mr Holmes."

Captain Chalmers was still out in the field with his gun and his gun dogs when I came across him. Supposedly by accident. I called out to make sure he did not mistake me for a rabbit.

"Excellent day for a spot of shooting," said I amiably when I got closer.

"Keeps the eye sharp, the hand steady, and the blood racing. I can see by the way you carry yourself that you're an ex-army man yourself. India or Afghanistan?"

"Both - Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers and Royal Berkshires – army surgeon."

"Queen and country – and all that!" He extracted a silver flask from his jacket. "Care for a whiskey? You've been out tramping for a while now. I spotted you earlier. Where's your chum?"

I had a swig to appear sociable. "He went to the village."

"Not much action happening there. I say! Is it true the lady with the veil had her face mauled by a lion?"

I had another swig and handed it back. "Yes."

"You see that sort of thing in India but not out here in England. The world's changing too fast. They say the Queen is on her last legs. Bertie's an idiot. God help us! What's going on at the Grange? One of the maids is sweet on my groundsman. Word is there's some voodoo nonsense afoot."

I wasn't sure whether to deny it or play it up. I decided on the latter. "Someone is trying to scare Mr Griggs."

"Really! I'd say it was a jealous lover – one of those bloody darkies - except the fat little clown is built like a biscuit barrel and that housekeeper is no picture postcard. It must be Blandyshe."

"What makes you say that?"

"He wants the Grange for his railway line. It'll be over my dead body. Tell Colonel Jumbuck to go down fighting. If he wants back-up, he can count on me." He took aim and fired at something in the furze. "Dammit! The sun was in my eyes. Well, better be getting back to the farm. If you want to do a spot of shooting tomorrow, I've got a spare Purdey. Hey! What's your name?"

"Watson."

"Nice to meet you, Watson. I'm Trevor Chalmers."

Sherlock and I dressed quickly for dinner and met up in the small library, talking in low tones to avoid being overheard by the servants.

"You first, Watson."

"Well, Trevor Chalmers wasn't as bad as I expected. He had heard through servants' gossip that there was some voodoo going on here and when I suggested someone was trying to scare Griggs, he immediately jumped to the conclusion it was a jealous lover, and then changed his mind and named Blandyshe as the likely culprit. He knows about the railway plan and is dead set against it. It didn't sound as if he had it in for Griggs. He actually volunteered to help Griggs out if it came to blows. What about you?"

"Reverend Plaisted wasn't as bad as I imagined. He has no animosity toward Griggs and acknowledged that Griggs was a generous benefactor. Griggs has never met him but I think it is nothing personal. I think Griggs's harsh upbringing has led him to see most churchmen as not worth bothering with. Mrs Ronder is a regular church-goer. Donations are solicited through her. The only interesting point was that Plaisted arrived four months ago, two months after Griggs, and it was three months ago that the strangeness started."

"Not much to hang anything on," said I, disappointed. "What about Blandyshe?"

"He readily admitted to the railway plan and appears to have nothing to hide. If he was up to his neck in skulduggery, he'd be more careful about his choice of words. He gave the impression he expects to win Griggs over before long. It could have been bravado but I am inclined to think it was wishful thinking. Did you send the telegram to Lestrade and stress the urgency?"

I nodded. "Are you checking up on the death of Leonardo the Strongman?"

"Yes, I want to know if the body was washed up on the beach. A drowning at sea is a convenient way to disappear."

"You think he faked his own death?"

"It is mere conjecture at this stage but if anyone could hold sway over Mrs Ronder it would be her ex-lover. If he wanted to threaten her or blackmail her, he would not have to try hard. She is an accessory after the fact regarding the murder of her husband and would spend the rest of her days in prison if her involvement became common knowledge. I hear voices in the dining room. I believe Mrs Ronder will be joining us for dinner."

We woke to find a blackish rock at the top of the stairs. While Griggs was attempting to deal with this bad omen with feigned jollity, he sat down to breakfast and discovered a kundela folded into his napkin... and fainted clean away.

"Things are accelerating, Watson," said Sherlock with a wry smile. "One of us needs to stay here and the other must go to Highgate to see if Lestrade has sent a reply."

I could see nervous energy building up inside my friend; besides, it had started to drizzle. "I'll stay here and keep my Webley close at hand. You go."

I expected Sherlock back in time for lunch. It was an hour walk each way and I allowed extra time for belting rain. But when lunch came and went and there was no sign of him, I began to grow anxious. Griggs took to his bed. Mrs Ronder locked herself in her study to do the accounts.

I kept watch by the library window and when I spotted a tall man striding down the carriageway through puddles the size of horse ponds, I raced to the door.

"What are you doing here?" I blurted; it was Inspector Lestrade.

"Nice greeting, that. Stand aside so I can get out of this downpour. Where's the master sleuth?"

"He went into Highgate straight after breakfast to check if you'd sent a reply."

Lestrade removed his dripping storm-coat and hung it on a hook in the hall where it made a puddle on the oak floor. "I decided to come in person. I have the news he wants. Leonardo Campostello's body was never found. What's more, another guest from the same Margate hotel disappeared the same day. His bill was settled a week later by post. He claimed in his forwarding letter that he had to leave in a hurry and clean forgot. His name was Reverend James Plaisted. The same reverend you have here in the village. A neat coincidence. Coincidence is a Yarders best friend. So, here I am. What's going on?"

I ushered the inspector into the small library, rang for tea, and explained the situation while he slurped and I paced. I had just finished my monologue when Kaddy knocked and entered.

"I thought you might want to know, Dr Watson, that Mrs Ronder took the carriage ten minutes ago. She didn't say where she was going."

My brain cranked and whirred. "Dash it all! She must be going to the rectory. The vicar must be in cahoots with Leonardo. She must be in on it too. Sherlock could find himself outnumbered and ambushed if he decides to call on Reverend Plaisted."

Lestrade and I were pushing through driving rain when a carriage stopped. It was Captain Chalmers.

"What a lift, Watson? I'm going into the village. There's room for three."

I introduced Lestrade as Lestrade and we made small talk. When the village came into view the captain glanced out of the rain-soaked window.

"I say! There's a chap clinging to the belfry. I think it's the vicar. Something not right about him. Has a tattoo on his neck. I saw it once when I called on him and he forgot he wasn't wearing his dog-collar. Never trust a man with a tattoo. It's for chinks and lascars... Good grief! I think he just jumped!"

Lestrade and I sprinted across the village green and burst into the church. The choir was belting out Christmas carols in advance of the big event.

"Has anyone seen a tall man with a hawklike beak?" I shouted in desperation, as Lestrade overtook me and began the steep climb to the belfry.

The organist pointed. "He went that-a-way."

I raced outside and found Sherlock leaning over the dead body of Reverend Plaisted lying in a pool of blood on the flagstones.

"Where's Leonardo?" I cried, looking nervously over my shoulder for the murderous Strongman.

"Leonardo and Reverend Plaisted are one and the same, Watson. It was the real Reverend Plaisted who drowned at Margate. Leonardo decided to personate him in case the murder of Ronder the Showman ever came back to bite him. When he discovered Griggs had returned to England a rich man and that Mrs Ronder was employed as housekeeper, he cooked up a plan to get rid of Griggs, but not before Griggs made a will in favour of Mrs Ronder. He planned to marry her in time. He blackmailed her into doing his bidding. He was always a clever schemer."

"How did you learn all this? You never even got the telegram from Lestrade."

"I was halfway to Highgate when I recalled that Miss Evelyn Blandyshe mentioned a tattoo that Griggs had on his wrist. I realised I had spotted some artistic black lines on the vicar's neck, poking above his dog-collar. Circus folk are fond of tattoos. From that, I surmised Leonardo was still alive and living in the rectory. It wouldn't surprise me if he murdered the incumbent vicar so that he could take his place in this parish to further his evil harassment of Griggs. I hurried to the rectory and confronted him. Arrogant and narcissistic, he willingly divulged the fullness of his dastardly scheme, bragging about how ingenious he was, then panicked when he realised he was not dealing with a weakling he could do away with, and... well, you can see the result. What's wrong, Watson? You look confused."

"I was expecting to see Mrs Ronder. She left the Grange ahead of us in a carriage. I was sure she would come this way."

"I instructed Kirra to give her a message one hour after lunch if I had not returned. I asked her to go to Golders Green to pick up an important parcel. There existed no parcel. In effect, I wanted her out of the house. I thought things might come to a head in my absence and I wanted the lady to be safe. We shall keep her secret, Watson. She has suffered enough. Besides, it is not yet a crime to place rocks and bones inside a man's house."

We kept Mrs Ronder's secret from everyone except Griggs. He forgave her and they lived quietly for several years at Horselye Grange. When Griggs died and she inherited a fortune, she kept but little for herself. The bulk of it went to build almshouses for retired circus folk. She bought a small cottage at Margate and as far as we know she is still there.

The railway did not go through. Captain Chalmers married Miss Olivia. They purchased Horselye Grange and filled it with children. Miss Evelyn married the new vicar, a traditionalist, whom everyone approved.

The aboriginals returned to Australia because England was too bloody cold and wet.

#  Boneshaker

It was impossible to swallow without looking scared, so I did what all cowards do, I stalled for time, emptying the dottle from my pipe before refilling it and hunting everywhere for a lucifer, my eyes unwittingly straying to the old phrenology chart Sherlock had been using for target practise, a neat bullet hole marking each section of the criminal brain – mendacity, misogyny, greed, cunning, egomania, auto-erotica...

What prompted me to transfer from Edinburgh to London during my university years? My friend might well ask! I screwed my courage to the sticking post and drew breath:

Phrenology had fallen out of fashion in London but in Scotland it was still regarded as a credible scientific proposition and several notable medical men were keen adherents of brain science - the theory being that the contours of the skull could accurately predict personality traits. It was even then being adapted to explain the criminal mind and there was talk among the legal fraternity that certain lumps and bumps would soon be admissible as proof of criminal behaviour in courts of law. You may recall that Chopper Dooley, the Brixton Slasher, had a head like a squashed pudding bag and that much was made of it at his trial.

After paying a visit to the Scottish Society of Phrenologists on Bristo Square, curated by that eminent grise of medical science, Professor Murray MacWhirr, I was in fact sold on the science behind the proposition. When I heard that MacWhirr was giving a lecture to the Lord Chancellor's Masters in Lunacy, and that medical students were to be admitted free, I signed up at once.

The lecture was to be held at the Office of Chancery but interest surpassed expectation when speakers from all over England, and our cousins from across the Irish Sea, signed up. The event grew and grew. Lectures would extend over two days. A new venue was chosen – the Danderhill Asylum for the Criminally Insane.

Newly renovated cottages on the vast grounds of the asylum, re-purposed to house doctors and nurses on site, but which had not yet been pressed into service, provided accommodation for those who wished to attend both days of talks. I was domiciled with five fellows from the university.

Among our group was a hearty Irish chap called Clancy. He had a twin sister called Shelagh – one of those modern women who had ditched the corset and petticoat and went about in unflattering bicycle culottes. She attended medical lectures without fail, along with three female friends. They completed all coursework on the understanding they would not earn a degree at the end of it. Females practising medicine was as likely as women flying to the moon in a Jules Verne rocketship.

The four girls, being a plucky lot, had chanced upon a garden shed full of velocipedes meant for patient use – there being at that time a theory that exercise was beneficial to mental health. It was Clancy who suggested we borrow the boneshakers after lunch to kill time because the first lecture was not scheduled until three o'clock and it was a topping day to be outdoors, no sign of rain and a mere smattering of clouds, although an autumn chill clung to the forested slopes. Everyone was dead keen, especially the girls.

The weekend had all the hallmarks of a delightful adventure and I was sure we would all be firm friends by the end of it. The velocipedes were in excellent condition. Clancy, being fighting fit as well as hale and hearty, took the lead. We'd been going about an hour when Shelagh noticed her boot lace was untied and apt to tangle in the spokes.

We were in the midst of an ancient forest of Caledonian pines and I felt obliged to hang back to make sure she did not get left behind because we had been informed that an inmate had absconded in the night and had not yet been apprehended. He was not violent, not like some of them, and there was no danger to the public as long as his mania was not triggered.

"Triggered?" queried one of our gang.

I cannot recall which one. Oh, hang on. It was Julius de Samarand - by far the most interesting fellow in our group. Descended from a freed African slave who had served George IV, he had retained the distinctive negroid features of his race – the wide flare of nostrils, protuberant lips, crinkly hair, and a darkish complexion. Hardy handsome and moderately wealthy, he was sure to graduate with a first.

"Loud noise," responded the gate-keeper of the asylum. "Refrain from using those bells on them handle-bars if you know what's good for you."

"What's the poor fellows name?" asked Shelagh. "In case we bump into him."

"Vidgeon... Cannot recall the first name. But I recall the last because it rhymes with pigeon and he reminds me of a caged bird."

Shelagh retied her boot lace and was off like a shot. "Catch me if you can!" she called flirtatiously over her shoulder as she disappeared behind a stand of pines.

The race was on. I took off in hot pursuit.

A Caledonian pine forest is a sunless place, difficult to navigate because of gigantic tree trunks with bulging roots that impede progress at every turn. I lost sight of Shelagh and stopped to ask a group of foragers, it being the season for mushrooming, if they had seen a young woman on a boneshaker. They were a shifty-eyed bunch and, as they shook their heads, I got the impression they knew they were trespassing on private property. Anyway, that was not my concern – male pride was at stake – however, as I made to push off, I had second thoughts.

"You may be unaware – I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt – that this forest is part of the Danderhill Asylum," I said.

"Och, aye" replied the elder of the bunch. "We knows it but we bin coming here for years. Chanterelles is plentiful for one'n' all. We don't take more 'n our share."

It wasn't the mushrooms I was concerned about. They had small children with them who had wandered off in all directions. "Well, take care," I warned, "there's an inmate on the loose."

I was hardly back in the saddle when an old woman approached me; a tatty wool shawl wrapping head and shoulders. "Somefink flashed past just afore you come by," she croaked, pointing north-west with a bony hand that was more like a claw. "It went yonder."

Having lost valuable time, I was grateful to be heading in the right direction. I don't know when I became aware that something was following me, it happened gradually. I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye more than once but paid it no heed. Roe deer and wild boar were known to haunt the treed hills. In fact, I suspected the foragers might have been poaching for capercaillies. I spotted some bird-netting in their kit.

Anyhow, the thing was moving behind the trees, keeping pace, but staying out of focus. I knew it wasn't Shelagh. It was an animal of some sort.

I veered into a broad flat gully, a bit like Offa's Dyke, and lost sight of it, and a sense of unimagined relief that I couldn't quite fathom washed over me. The thing had quite unnerved me. Down in the gully, everything seemed darker. It was as if the sun had been eclipsed.

After going for a bit, no sign of my own flighty bird, I paused to catch my breath and toss up whether to turn around and go back or press on. I really had no idea how far I'd come, or in which direction I'd travelled. I thought I was going north-west but the way the sun slanted through the canopy made me doubt myself. I even suspected the old hag of lying.

I was still making up my mind which way to go when I looked back over my shoulder and felt a galvanic shock followed by that horrible haptic thrill of imminent threat. The animal or whatever it was, was at the top of the gully looking directly at me.

Irrational fear took hold. I took off as if the devil was on my tail. My feet hardly touched ground as I pushed myself beyond endurance and wondered if my heart might burst from the strain, desperate to put as much distance between myself and the thing as possible.

The gully was over-bowered by low-hanging branches that made it seem like being in a dark tunnel. I felt hemmed in, trapped, and knew instinctively I had to get out.

A gap in the trees appeared and I somehow found the physical strength to scale the steep-sided gully. I emerged onto a patch of level ground that encircled a large pond. Sunlight bouncing off the water was blinding. I was just getting my bearings when the thing that had been following me darted across my path and I realised it was a naked man running on all fours like a dog.

Thoroughly exhausted, imagination running amok, I crashed into a deracinated stump and flew through the air. Bruised, grazed, bleeding, but mercifully unbroken, I wasted no time ditching the boneshaker when I saw the front wheel was buckled and useless.

I ran like the clappers and was still running when I heard someone shout my name.

At first, I thought I was hallucinating, hearing things as well as seeing them, things that weren't real. I was burning up from thirst. I could barely stand. My head was about to explode.

"Hoy, John!" someone cried, and I almost fainted like a girl when I realised it was Clancy.

"'Pon my word, you look like you've had an accident," came the concerned voice of Julius.

I rallied, as you do when a nightmare ends and you realise you have woken up unharmed. "A scrape; nothing serious," I managed to shrug, gasping for air like a fish out of water.

The rest of the gang were all there, including Shelagh.

She thrust a welcome flask my way. "One minute you were behind me and the next you weren't. We were about to mount a search party. What kept you?"

"I ran into a family foraging for mushrooms; they'd lost their way and needed direction," I lied; water dribbling down my chin. "Did you see them?"

"No," she dismissed, "but I ran into our escapee and he really did look like a caged bird – beady eyes and sharp beak, hands like claws and nails like talons... What's more – he had moulted!"

"Moulted?" quizzed someone.

"Starkers – he was!"

"My Gawd!" guffawed Claude; a happy-go-lucky chap with sticking out ears and a propensity for impractical jokes. "I bet you copped an eyeful!"

Shelagh laughed unashamedly. "I told you I ran into him. I almost ran right over him but he flew off into the woods before I could..."

Mervyn blushingly intervened. "What, er, happened to your, er, velocipede?"

"Buckled front wheel," I responded, without elaborating. "I had to ditch it and walk most of the way."

"I say! That's bad luck," mused Angus, a chap with a surprisingly small head housing a surprisingly large brain. "The Master of Lunacy informed me that borrowing velocipedes without permission is not permitted. Any damage would need to be paid for. Do you recall where you ditched it? You should retrieve it before it gets dark, otherwise you might have to foot the bill for a replacement."

Foot the bill! I realised I hadn't yet woken from the nightmare. I didn't have that sort of money. My elder brother, as you know, squandered the family fortune, not that there was much to begin with. I was living on a meagre stipend supplied by a parsimonious godfather until such time as I graduated. I could hardly ask him to dip into his pocket to pay for my carelessness.

I would have to find that velocipede and execute some quick repairs but right at that moment I was too spent to contemplate returning to the forest. The mere thought of it turned my legs to jelly.

"I'll get it tomorrow," I said with determination, sounding more confident than I felt, as we walked back to our cottage and I tried not to limp. "In the meantime, I'll fob the Master off if he asks where it is."

The three o' clock lecture, delivered by Professor MacWhirr, was followed by an exhibition of skulls of rare phrenological importance from the private collection of the charismatic prof, several had come from the Congo, and there was a unique one from an Australian Aboriginal. This was followed by a buffet dinner. By then I had recovered my strength but not my nerve and told myself it was too dark to venture back into the forest.

Shelagh organised a whist tournament for those who liked their card games with a bit of wagering on the side. By the time midnight rolled round I had completely forgotten about the damaged velocipede and was ready to hit the sack.

But my nightmare was not yet over. It was just getting started.

I returned to our cottage to find an envelope on my pillow. I thought it might be from Shelagh. She had been hinting at a clandestine romantic rendezvous all evening and I must say the idea had appeal. But it turned out to be a bill for the cost of a new velocipede. Signed by the Master of Lunacy himself.

My heart sank. My flesh turned cold. I began to tremble all over. It's not that I was lily-livered but the thought of going back into the forest suddenly terrified me. It was no good trying to rationalise with myself. I knew what I had seen. I remembered how badly I'd panicked. I did not wish to relive the experience.

When the other chaps returned to our cottage in high spirits, I slipped the bill under my pillow and prepared for bed as if all was normal, but inside, I was a seething mass of nerves. Try as I might, sleep eluded me.

I tossed and turned. I made a dozen trips to the lavatory. At three a.m. I was still wide awake. There was nothing for it. I would have to bite the bullet. I threw some clothes over the top of my pyjamas and laced my boots over sockless feet.

I had no bullseye lantern and daren't risk borrowing one from a storeroom lest I be accused of theft on top of everything else. Fortunately, it wasn't difficult to scale the fence behind the garden shed which housed the wretched velocipedes which I wished I had never set eyes on. In fact, escaping from the asylum was the easy part. I was surprised more inmates didn't flee.

Thanks to a waxing moon and some noctilucent mist the pine forest was no darker that night than it had been during the day. I forced myself forward, one foot at a time, trying not to notice noises that are part of a forest after nightfall – the owl, the vixen, the rustle in the undergrowth...

There is no doubt that atavistic memories are magnified by darkness and primitive fears are rooted in primeval places. When I entered that ancient forest, I was at the mercy of my imagination. Man the hunter had become the prey. I honestly believed I would die that night. And yet, despite mounting fear, despite my conviction that my time was up, I could not turn back.

Men say that you never know how courageous you are until you are put to the test. The same could be said for cowardice. I was shaking like a leaf, jumping at shadows. Fear had me by the throat.

Don't ask me how I navigated my way to that buckled velocipede, because I cannot tell you how I managed it. Was it dumb luck? Was it some sort of sixth sense that led me back to the spot? Was it an evolutionary quirk - the knowingness that informs the hunter?

Cursing that damned draisine machine, glinting impishly in the moony light like some evil demon, I wheeled it as fast as it would go over rough terrain, up hill and down dale, wincing at every thorn and prickle that scratched and tore, painfully conscious now that someone had informed on me, angry that one of my newfound friends had betrayed me to the Master.

Was it Clancy of the cleft chin? Or that son-of-an-ex-slave, Julius? Claude the big-eared joker? Or shrunken-headed Angus? I doubted it could be nervy Mervyn with the droopy mouth and sweaty hands.

Suddenly it hit me.

Shelagh! I had spotted her flirting with MacWhirr after dinner - a man old enough to be her grandfather - just before she knocked on the private door of the Master of Lunacy to get permission for that whist tournament.

My blood was boiling. I was roiling mad. I was building up the nerve to tell her to her face what a dirty, backstabbing, rotten minx she was when I heard a twig snap. Turning sharply, I came face to face with the naked birdman!

Courage and cowardice had been waging a war inside my head for hours. One told me to drop the boneshaker and flee for my life, the other told me to stand my ground. I believe I was simply too angry to consider saving myself. "Stay back if you know what's good for you!" I shouted, activating the bell as if to prove he wasn't the only loony in the forest that night.

He went nuts, berserk, completely off his head. He cupped his ears then flapped his bony arms in the air as he jumped up and down on the spot like some half-human hideous throwback, the missing link, a truly grotesque sight.

When he picked up a large branch and wielded it like a weapon, I honestly believed he was going to smash my head in. The nightmare couldn't get much worse... And then it did.

Jabbering and gesticulating, he pointed the branch at something just beyond the last belt of trees. It was the asylum, veiled in an eerie nocturnal hazefire that reminded me of smoky bonfires on Guy Fawkes Night. But the fifth of September had already passed.

I dropped the velocipede and ran as fast as my legs would carry me, screaming at the top of my lungs: Fire! Fire!

Imagine my horror when I spotted orange tongues shooting skyward and hungry flames devouring the last cottage. The cottage that was our dormitory. The same cottage that sat next door to the shed that housed tins of kerosene and paraffin and cazeline.

An explosion rocked me off my feet. I landed hard and reeled from shell-shock. Fireballs were going off like pyrotechnic shooting stars. One of them swallowed the cottage in a single gulp. The occupants probably didn't even make it as far as the door. I blacked out...

The aftermath was ugly. Everything in our cottage had been obliterated. There were no remains, just dust and ash. I never spoke to Shelagh after that night. She held it against me that I had survived while her brother had not. Guilt is a terrible burden and I bore it badly.

A month later I received another bill for the missing velocipede. The lunatic must have made off with it. He was never recaptured. Police said the fire was deliberately lit. Cazeline had been poured around the perimeter of the cottage. Shelagh harangued the authorities for me to be charged with arson and murder.

Professor MacWhirr took my side and argued my case. The police took into account the mad escapee and the trespassing foragers and decided not to press charges.

I wanted nothing more than to put the nightmare behind me and was preparing to leave for London but I needed to thank MacWhirr in person. I paused outside the Society of Phrenologists on Bristo Square, trying to find the right words so that I wouldn't make a git of myself by blubbering in public, when I noticed five, new, amazingly lifelike, waxy skulls on display in the handsome bow window.

One had a cleft chin, another had sticking-out ears, the third looked child-like, the fourth was defined by a droopy mouth, and the fifth... negroid.

Nausea swept over me and my knees buckled. I vomited in the gutter as I fled. I left for London that night and a week later read in a penny paper that a young Irish woman had shot Professor MacWhirr in the head at point blank range before flinging herself under an omnibus and dying from her injuries.

#  Baffles

One hot and steamy Singapore night, the thief dubbed 'Baffles' stole a teapot from a hotel situated on Beach Road. It was not just any teapot. It was not just any hotel. And on the case was not just any detective.

It was Colonel Bulwer Cumberbutch, a man distantly related to Sir Stanford Raffles (no relation to Stamford for whom the esteemed establishment was named); a man tall, gaunt, abstemious, in his forties, shrewd, sharp, and immensely egotistical.

The owner of the teapot was Madame Fang, a descendant of the Manchu clan, and a close personal friend of the Empress Dowager Cixi. In a rare and reckless moment of weakness, Madame Fang had been persuaded to loan her priceless teapot to the Chinese Teapot Exhibition organised by Raffles Hotel to celebrate the success of their Tiffin Tearoom, under the auspices of Miss Luxi Gong, curator of exquisite oriental artifacts of sublime provenance.

Madame Fang had been swayed by the fact her loathsome ex-lover, Mr Zhou Zang, was loaning five teapots from his own personal collection to the exhibition. His idiosyncratic collectibles, although charming, ornamental, original, and valuable, were not a patch on her incomparable gem.

Into this imbroglio stepped Mr Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson. They had been invited by the Sarkies Brothers to solve the case of the Giant Rat of Singapore, a species related to the Giant Rat of Sumatra. The mysterious creature had been terrorising staff and guests at number one Beach Road from the time the Palm Court had been added.

"I say, did you see who leapt out of that rickshaw just ahead of us?" I fanned my face with my Panama hat as the shirtless rickshaw boy, reeking of spicy sambal sauce and opium sweat, gasped for breath.

Sherlock was scraping flecks of red laterite mud off the rickshaw wheels to add to his collection. "Are you referring to the Cantonese lady clutching the Pekingese dog?"

"How do you know she's Cantonese?"

"I heard her address her rickshaw wallah in the Yue dialect."

"She barely spoke three words to him," I protested, watching as he gave a large handful of kepengs to the exhausted rickshaw boy.

"Nevertheless, she employed the common Yue tongue which lacks tonal distinctions in the initial and medial consonants."

"I think that rickshaw boy just got the better of you," I remarked with asperity. "I noticed he went around the block instead of taking the shortest route to the hotel."

"He would rather run an extra mile into an evil headwind than pass the mortuary. It is full of hungry ghosts and he doesn't want to pick one up. What was it you were you saying about the rickshaw ahead of us?"

"Oh, that - not the Cantonese lady," I muttered absently, distracted by the cicadas shrilling in the forecourt. "I meant the other rickshaw?"

"The one carrying the oriental Hokkien gentleman?"

"Hokkien?" I challenged, taking my friend to task, feeling fractious in the merciless tropical heat. I was starting to believe he was making things up to annoy me. He scavenged something small and shiny lying near a shredded banana leaf before straightening up to study it more closely. He picked up a bit of green stuff too. I despaired my friend was becoming a connoisseur of the world's detritus! "The oriental gentleman didn't speak one word to the rickshaw wallah, so you couldn't possibly deduce he was Hokkien."

"When the gentleman alighted from the rickshaw he turned to face the street with the Buddhist temple that houses the Princess of Heaven, a goddess worshipped by the Fujian who favour the lingua franca of Singapore: Hokkien. I saw him bow his head reverently ever so slightly in said direction."

"Oh, well, not him either." Damned cicadas! "I meant the other chap – Colonel Bulwer Cumberbutch. I met him once when I was serving with the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers in Bombay. I heard from a chap at my club that he had set himself up as a consulting detective in the Far East. Word has it that he has made quite a name for himself."

Sherlock's left brow shot north, indicating that I finally knew something he didn't! Feeling chuffed, I said, "I could murder a G&T in the famous Raffles bar."

Looking pensive, Sherlock paused momentarily this side of the colonial threshold like a bride sans groom. "Do you notice something missing, Watson?"

"Our luggage," said I with a jocular inflection, heartened by the promise of a G&T. "I hope it hasn't gone by way of Borneo or Batavia!"

He failed to crack a smile. I despaired at his lack of pawky humour and put it down to the fact he sensed a rival on the scene. Colonel Cumberbutch even looked like Sherlock. If it were not for Bulwer's ginger beard they would have passed for twins.

Electric fans circulated cool air through the triple height foyer, and I must say it beat a Bengali punkah puller with a bit of string attached to one toe and the other end attached to a frayed scrap of swaying curtain.

I was looking for the shortest route to the bar when we were accosted by the manager of the hotel, Mr Soolem, who gesticulated like an orang-utan on heat. With some force, he directed us toward the Tiffin Tearoom. I baulked at the prospect of a hot cuppa, but Sherlock, who spoke fluent gibberish on top of Cantonese and Hokkien, allowed himself to be led by the nose.

It didn't take Sherlock long to ascertain Colonel Cumberbutch had returned to Singapore that very morning from Australia, where he had recently solved the case of the phantom jumbuck, and had immediately been summoned to Raffles Hotel. I was somewhat relieved to discover the colonel hadn't been called in on the case of the Giant Rat of Singapore as well. Introductions were conducted and then we listened in earnest to the details of the robbery.

A Yixing teapot had been stolen during the night. It was part of an exhibit organised by Miss Luxi Gong, an attractive Singaporean-Chinese native, to celebrate the success of the Tiffin Tearoom.

I failed to muster concern. Really, these colonial chaps must be suffering from heat stroke and too much curry in their laksa. How valuable could a teapot be? I soon found out. The teapot was priceless. Moulded from purple sand/clay, shaped by hand by a holy monk from the Jinsha Temple during the Ming Dynasty, it belonged to Madame Fang, the po-faced Cantonese lady with the scrunch-faced Pekinese on her lap, sitting in the far corner and listening intently to every word.

In the opposite corner sat the Hokkien gentleman, Mr Zang Zhou - or was it the other way around? He had five valuable teapots in the exhibit; none had been stolen. He had hurried to the scene of the crime nonetheless. By the look on his face, he had come to gloat.

Between the yin and the yang - like a Chinese wall of silence - stood Dr Hu, a tiny wizened fellow with a shaved head and a long pigtail, a Feng Shui geomancer, summoned by the Sarkies Brothers to check for poison arrows. Not real arrows, mind, but invisible ones that are much more dangerous and likely to give the culprit the heebie-jeebies until he confesses.

My tongue was hanging out for that G&T but I could see Sherlock was riveted. Mr Soolem continued to gibber and gesticulate. I quenched my thirst on a platter of jackfruit with a squeeze of fresh lime.

Miss Luxi Gong had disappeared during the night. Things were not looking good for the attractive teapot curator. I thought the case would soon be solved if they searched Rochor Wharf, Johnson's Pier or Sailor Town.

The hotel doorman, a fierce Sikh with a marmoset permanently perched on his broad shoulder, had also disappeared during the night. The marmoset was also missing. Clearly, Sherlock was on top of his game; he had an uncanny sense for the dastardly. Things were looking cut and dried. The Sikh had assisted the cute curator and the two of them had fled into the tropical twilight. The doorman had probably hidden the teapot under his turban. A search of flophouses and sampans would not go amiss. A teapot might be easy to hide but a marmoset not so much.

Attention turned to the vitrine that had housed the purloined teapot. It was a pastiche of colonial-oriental design: glass case on Queen Anne legs with a pagoda style roof. Inside, was a large green python with a large lump about halfway down its sinuous body. It suddenly occurred to me the python may have decided to have some tea with his tiffin. This case was getting easier and easier. I helped myself to some diced pineapple skewered on little bamboo sticks.

The only other thing of note was the horrible scream during the night. Every guest at the hotel had heard it. It sounded as if all the demons of hell had been let loose to party. Half the guests had immediately checked out and transferred to the slightly less fashionable but much cheaper Hotel Europa. The other half were being attended to by the Sarkies Brothers' personal physician.

One last thing. The thief had let slip his signature tool of trade – a black cat-burglar mask - inside the glass vitrine as he made a grab for the teapot. That's how everyone knew it was the work of the inimitable Baffles. I might add at this point, that although a python does not use venom to kill, it does have long sharp fangs for gripping prey, hence, not a good idea to go waving your hand inside his glass pagoda more than once.

Sherlock extracted his magnifying glass and got down on all fours in the meticulous search for clues. Bulwer Cumberbutch did likewise. I stole a glance at the lumpy green python coiling up with indigestion inside the vitrine and lighted my pipe while I took a stroll to the wall of windows where tall palms swayed in the courtyard and a miniature banyan tree grew in a red pot, bonsai style. Tomorrow I fancied sampling some Malay curry served on a banana leaf from a street hawker and catching that lecture by the National Geographic Society on Borneo head-hunters. I tried picturing Sherlock with a shrunken head.

Sherlock found four hairs: One bristly red hair, one fine black hair, one black hair with a greenish tinge, and one short black hair with some white on the tip that had a distinctive on-the-nose smell. He looked incredibly pleased with himself, some might say conceited, but not me.

Bulwer Cumberbutch found some grey pebbles that had a truly noxious odour. "Slowly, slowly, catchee monkey," he said smugly, rolling the pebbles in the palm of his hand like a gambler rolling lucky dice.

The Sarkies Brothers arrived, and the twin detectives stepped forward to outline their theories. Colonel Cumberbutch went first, and I admit I was annoyed when he said the thief wanted everyone to think the teapot was inside the python. The python had in fact been fed a juicy rat so that the thief could make good the grab. Miss Luxi Gong and the Sikh doorman would be found quayside, waiting to board one of the ships due to pull anchor at midnight. He named several cargo vessels heading for the Bay of Bengal. The pebbles were in fact bits of gravel from Outram Road which was being graded by coolies, and which the Sikh traversed on his way to work each morning. They had stuck to the underside of his boots; proof that he had entered the Tiffin Tearoom in the night to assist Miss Gong to purloin the Yixing. The black cat-burglar mask was dropped deliberately to make everyone think the burglar was Baffles. The marmoset gave a shriek of joy that echoed to the rafters as the pair made good their escape. Case closed. The smug smile stretched to a triumphant grin when Mr Soolem lost his head and applauded.

Sherlock gave a dry cough to clear his throat. I feared a long explanation and longed for that G&T. My friend had finally met his match.

"Inside the morelia viridus," said he, never one to concede defeat or choose not to show-off, "the green python," he elaborated for those not au fait with snake taxonomy, "you will find neither a rat nor the teapot, but the marmoset. I have a fine hair here which belongs to the primate family, specifically, callithrix jacchus; the common marmoset." He held it up for all to see; or not. "And I have observed many more such hairs inside the vitrine. The marmoset was lowered into the glass box to retrieve the teapot. Having done so, it was then locked inside and eaten by the python. A noisy marmoset is a liability to a burglar after the act."

Colonel Cumberbutch intervened. "You agree the Sikh was in on the burglary?"

"Yes," replied Sherlock blandly, "but you won't find him quayside waiting to board a ship heading for the Bay of Bengal. After he used the marmoset to steal the teapot, he too became a liability. One of the Chinese triads would have taken care of him."

"Which triad?" Madame Fang's voice was as sharp as a stropped razor.

"You will discover that fact, Madame, when they fish his mutilated body out of the river. Each gang leaves their own special calling card. The gang that purchased the Yixing teapot from the thief will thus reveal itself."

He held the second hair in his fingers for all to see; or not; the black one with the greenish tinge. "Here is a hair from that tautonymous creature which can sometimes have a greenish tinge - rattus rattus; not fed to the python, but a common visitor to the Tiffin Tearoom of an evening to feast on cake crumbs. You will find more of these hairs underneath most tables and around the edges of the room. An unnecessary distraction to the case." He tossed the rat hair back on the floor.

I thought he was overdoing it a bit. It wasn't his best performance.

He pulled out the third hair; the ginger one. "Here I have a distinctive ang-moh from a typical British subject." He used the pejorative term for red hair and I blushed for the colonel; the insult was clearly aimed at him. "This ginger hair was found at the scene of the crime – there are others - and I see by the nicks on the neck of Colonel Cumberbutch that he has recently shaved, not this morning, the nicks are not fresh, but perhaps yesterday, thus his whiskers were shedding more than usual when he paid a visit to the Tiffin Tearoom last night."

"That's absurd!" scoffed the colonel. "I was still on the high seas last night, heading for the Malacca Strait."

"I doubt it," said Sherlock calmly. "You have laterite mud on your boots. It rained last night but by this morning the roads were dry. The only way you could have gotten red mud on your boots was if you walked out last night."

"Rubbish!" shouted the colonel. "This mud is weeks old. It sticks like glue. I haven't cleaned my boots since I left Singapore for Australia."

"Then how do you explain this?" Sherlock plucked a small shiny object out of his top pocket. "This is a piece of oyster shell button. I found this outside the hotel, but not in any spot where you walked, Colonel Cumberbutch. I saw as you leapt from your rickshaw and hurried inside the hotel and yet your broken button was found several yards away. I suggest you dropped it last night when you waited for your accomplice in the dark while eating a curry from a banana leaf. It is easy to check. My supposition is that it will be a perfect match for the broken button of your shirt."

"This is errant nonsense!" retorted the colonel, turning bright red. "Mr Holmes is jealous that I have solved the case and is inventing facts to suit his fancy! Next he will assert that Miss Luxi Gong was my accomplice!"

"I will assert no such thing. Miss Gong was sold to white slavers last night to stop her identifying you as the thief."

"Madness!" yelled the colonel.

"I notice you have several scratches on your right cheek and a vicious red bite mark on your left hand made by a small jaw; female. I assert she scratched and bit as you dragged her to a waiting rickshaw. It was she who broke your button in the struggle. In the process you ripped her dress. There was a scrap of silk under a discarded banana leaf in the forecourt. Easy to confirm. I have it here." He pulled out a fragment of green silk with a repeating golden dragon pattern.

Mr Soolem recognised it and gasped. "She had that pattern on her cheongsam yesterday!"

"If you tell us where she is being held, Colonel Cumberbutch, it may go easier for you at your trial," said Sherlock.

The colonel was apoplectic. "What trial! Your proof is nothing more than a broken button and a scrap of cloth! That will never stand up in a court of law!"

"I daresay things will go easier for you in Outram Prison than with the justice of the street after Madame Fang's triad discovers which rival gang you did business with. A matter of a few hours before the body of the Sikh is washed up. Shall we slice up that python now?" He gave Mr Soolem a nod to proceed.

"What about these grey pebbles?" shouted the colonel. "You must account for every fact in a case! You cannot cherry pick clues!"

"Oh, them," said Sherlock carelessly. "Devil's dung."

"What!" frothed the colonel, staring at the dull little marbles. "Devil's dung?"

"You found the devil's latrine. The shitting spot of the Tasmanian Devil. In other words, you have proved my next case for me...Baffles."

My head was spinning. "The case of the Giant Rat of Singapore?" said I, reeling.

"Yes, Watson," returned my modest friend. "I have long suspected that the Giant Rat of Singapore is in fact a marsupial: the Tasmanian Devil. The black hair with the white tip is a positive sign. A quarter of all Tasmanian Devils have a white patch on their chest. The shriek everyone heard last night adds confirmation. The cry of the Tasmanian Devil is one of the most frightening sounds in existence. The hunt starts tomorrow. I believe the creature arrived by ship from Australia at about the same time the Palm Court was being built. It will have hunkered down somewhere in the garden. Let's hope it was not a pregnant female." He turned to the gutted python. "Ah! What have we here? A marmoset not yet fully digested."

Colonel Bulwer Cumberbutch made a dash for the door but Madame Fang's dagger flew through the air. With a groan he fell.

"Don't worry," she hissed through tea-stained teeth. "He's not dead...not yet. The location of Miss Gong first. My precious teapot second. Then death by a thousand cuts." She turned to Holmes. "Please to accept my gratitude. Name your reward."

Sherlock bowed his head and requested a G&T with a wedge of lime. "Make that two!" he added with a throttling laugh.

