The Curious Case of the Well-Connected Criminal

by Molly Carr

It was a week or so before Christmas, and I was wondering what to give as a present to my friend Sherlock Holmes to mark the occasion.

He would probably give me a box of good cigars (waving away my thanks with a smile and hurrying back to his chemical experiments). But I would have to think hard if I were not to do the same. Retorts, retort stands, petri-dishes, and flasks he had in plenty, and his shelves were full of books, especially books on crime. So it wasn’t surprising that I was walking down Oxford Street (in quite a heavy fall of snow and with my umbrella up,) busy wracking my brains, along with crowds of other shoppers with, like myself, no other thought in their minds than the problem of what to buy for their friends and family at this festive season.

I couldn’t, as a gentleman, give my friend an article of clothing, not even a pair of socks or something as insignificant as a bow-tie, since we were not related in any way. Even if I defied convention, he had enough deerstalkers, Norfolk jackets, and bowlers to make any such gift from me entirely superfluous! But as I pondered the problem, at the same time gazing at each store for inspiration, I saw reflected in their windows a man whom I suspected was following me. Indeed, he seemed to have been doing so for some considerable time. When I stopped, he stopped. When I crossed the road, he did the same. There was nothing for it but to dodge into Portman Square and make my way back to Baker Street.

When I mentioned the incident to Holmes, he seemed interested and asked for a description of the man.

“Small, thin, and, I think, more of a boy than a full-grown adult.”

“Someone you had never seen before, and didn’t recognise?”

“Yes, to the best of my knowledge.”

“Did he ask you for a touch? After all, it is Christmas, and you look the sort of chap who would take pity on someone short of cash at such a time.”

“He never said a word, not even when I turned and stared at him for all I was worth.” Flinging my coat onto the nearest chair, I pulled off my boots and reached for my slippers. The room felt comfortably warm, and a good fire blazed in the grate.

“And he didn’t follow you into the Square to see where you were going?”

“If he did, I was unaware of it. But in any case, I had shaken him off before I reached Baker Street.”

“Could you, perhaps, describe him more accurately? I imagine that part of town was thronged as usual, and probably even more so today, with people too intent on their Christmas shopping to take note of much else.”

“It is as you say about Oxford Street. But do you really think that there were scores of undersized and thin urchins wandering about, hoping for charity?”

“My dear fellow, I’m certain of it, all trying to benefit a great deal from other people’s generosity, including your own.”

“I’ve already told you that the youth didn’t speak to me,” I said with a touch of impatience. “He simply followed me around Oxford Street. But if you want a more detailed description, I can tell you he was neatly dressed, as well as intelligent and alert.”

“Also, by the look of it, determined that you should know what he was doing, without making it too obvious or bothering to engage you in conversation. What I don’t understand is, if he recognised you and wanted you to be aware of him, why he didn’t speak to you or follow you to our rooms. Or indeed, how did he knew you weren’t at home in the first place.”

“As to your first observation about following me to our rooms, he may have done so, in spite of what I said earlier. But I was so rattled I didn’t notice. The second observation, his knowing that I wasn’t at home, appears more baffling. But perhaps he was hanging about on the off-chance of meeting me - something which I admit makes the whole episode appear one of hit-and-miss.”

At that moment, our landlady entered the room. Holmes raised an enquiring eyebrow and she said, “There’s a boy come knocking at the door, sir. Says he needs to see you urgently.”

“Then be so kind as to show him in, Mrs. Hudson, while the Doctor here builds up the fire again, it being such a very cold season of the year.”

A minute or two later, I turned away from tending the now merrily jumping flames within the grate and saw a familiar, but not, to me a particularly welcome, face. “So you did follow me after all?” I said angrily.

“I wanted to make sure I had the right man, sir, and had come to the right place.”

“Right man! Right place! What on earth would you want with me?”

“I knew you could lead me to this gentleman here.”

It was Holmes’s turn to be surprised. “Do you mean, young man, that you recognised Doctor Watson and knew not only that we were friends, but that we also shared rooms?”

“The description I was given fitted your friend exactly, and I was told that I only had to find and follow him to get to you eventually, however long he spent out of doors or, as it happened, mingling with the crowds and looking at the shops in Oxford Street.”

“And who gave you this description?” I demanded.

“My boss,” said the boy simply.

“Who is - ?” said Holmes, relighting his pipe and throwing the spent match into the fire.

“I am not permitted to say.”

“Come now,” said my friend impatiently. “First of all, you put my colleague out of countenance by trailing him along what must at present be the busiest thoroughfare in the whole of London. This forces him to dodge into one of the main squares in an attempt to shake you off. Then you disturb our landlady, who has to open the door when she could be occupied with more important things, such as preparing our supper. Finally, you invade our private rooms without having the good manners to tell us why, or who sent you.”

My medical training made me aware that our visitor was trembling, and I had already made a mental note of how white in the face he looked.

“Holmes,” I said quietly, “I think that it would be wise if we let the boy sit down.”

For answer, my friend indicated one of our armchairs, and the youth sank gratefully into it. “I was told to come here to see you, and to communicate something important,” he said. “But on no account was I to tell you the

name of the person who sent me, at least not until you had agreed to cooperate with us.”

“I’m not sure I care for the term ‘co-operate’,” said Holmes. “But you had better spill the beans as best you can. Otherwise, we are not going to get anywhere. You have already said you’ve been at some pains to ascertain that you’ve found the right place and the right persons to deal with. But so far...”

“So far,” I interrupted, “nothing makes any sense whatever. Holmes, you are so famous that nearly everyone in London must know where you live.

There would be no need to make sure someone recognised and followed me in order to find you, even though you do lead a somewhat retiring life when not on a case.”

“An address well-known in London,” said the young man suddenly. “But my boss normally lives in Paris.”

“So what is he doing here, in the Capital?” demanded Holmes.

“She wants you to find her fiancé.”

“Not cherchez la femme then,” said Holmes with a light laugh, “but rather the opposite.”

“He went out to buy cigarettes and didn’t come back,” said our young visitor.

“A common enough occurrence,” replied Holmes dryly.

“But,” said the youth heatedly, “he is the soul of honour, and they are to be married within a week!”

I got up to put some more coal on the fire and, as I returned the scuttle to its place, thought to myself that this wasn’t getting us anywhere. We were talking to someone who was obviously British about a woman who might or might not be French, and who had a fiancé who might be either. I could see that my friend too was becoming restive, and hoped he would quickly hone in on some more useful data.

“If I am to be of help,” he said with a touch of sarcasm, “you will have to force yourself to be a little more specific, whatever orders you have received.”

Looking closely at him, I saw that the boy had recovered himself somewhat. He no longer trembled, and his face showed a little more colour.

But whether from the warmth of the fire or for some other reason, it was

difficult to tell. “I don’t like to betray my employer,” he said in some confusion. “Especially as she...”

“Come now,” said Holmes kindly, “I agree to take up the case. Does that satisfy you enough to reveal who sent you?”

The young man glanced nervously in my direction, and Holmes said,

“Like your boss’s missing fiancé, Dr. Watson is the soul of honour. You can speak as freely in his presence as you can to me.”

“I have been instructed by Madame the Marquise de Brinvilliers to tell you that if you agreed to help her, she would like to meet you as soon as possible in her suite of rooms at the Savoy Hotel.”

“Marquise de Brinvilliers, the notorious poisoner who’s been dead for nearly two-hundred years!”

“I shouldn’t worry about that,” said the youth suddenly, and with something of a smile. “Just before we left Paris, she was calling herself

‘Madame de Pompadour’.”

I glanced nervously at Holmes, wondering if we should, after all, have anything to do with the woman, since she was obviously as mad as a hatter.

This answer, however, seemed to amuse him and he said, “It’s an easy walk to the Strand, so I suggest all three of us get to the Savoy as soon as possible before the lady becomes someone else!”

The person in question turned out to be barely in her early twenties, and when we were introduced, Holmes, with a sly grin at me, gave her the deepest bow I have ever seen in my life. With a gracious gesture, she indicated that we should sit down and rang the bell for some refreshment while my friend, with another mischievous glance, asked how his client wished to be addressed.

“By my name, of course,” she said tartly. “The one you have just heard: Constance Cameron.”

“Well”, I thought, “that sounds genuine enough,” and prepared myself to hear what would be said next.

It was Holmes who spoke. “I understand that you need my services to find your fiancé,” he said. “This young man has told us that he went out to buy cigarettes and didn’t return. But it would be helpful if you could confirm this, and perhaps supply any additional information which may be of use.”

The girl had produced a handkerchief. She now dabbed her eyes with it and gave us a most mournful look. “Everything seemed as usual between us,” she said. “There had been no disagreement of any kind. In fact, we were happily discussing the wedding arrangements and looking forward to where we were to spend our honeymoon.”

“Which would, I suppose, judging by your family name, be somewhere in Scotland?”

“No. I have lived in France for some years. My mother was French, and when she died, she left me not only a considerable amount of money, but a property in Paris, as well as another in the Dordogne. It was there that we planned to stay for a while.”

“And this trick of calling yourself by different titles?” asked my friend playfully.

The girl smiled for the first time. “I see that Willie has also told you about that silly habit. It amuses me. But I only do it in private. I assure you the management here knows my real name, and quite possibly the exact size of my fortune!”

This might explain her presence in this very expensive hotel, the magnificent suite of rooms with their wonderful views over the river - and the speed with which a waiter had responded to her summons. But it was more difficult to fathom why she had come to London at all, unless it was to buy new clothes in time for the honeymoon. Surely Paris would be the place for that? Also (I reflected somewhat belatedly) how had she obtained such an accurate description of me that the boy knew whom to follow?

“I saw a photograph of you both in Le Monde,” she said, as if reading my thoughts, “soon after an attempt to steal the Mona Lisa from The Louvre was foiled. Something which, if I may say so Mr. Holmes, was handled by you with consummate ease.”

I noticed with amusement that my friend blushed a little, showing that he was not entirely immune from feminine praise, in spite of what he often said about the inscrutable nature of women’s thoughts and actions. After a slight pause, however, he returned to the matter in hand.

“Your fiancé’s name?”

“Albert Block.”

Prosaic, I thought.

“British then?”

“Yes. He owns a chain of import shops, although he made his money, when he was younger, in a variety of other less staid ventures. Or so he led me to believe. I met him on the Continent, when he was arranging for some deliveries.”

“Do you have any idea where your sweetheart might have gone, and why?”

“I believe he has been kidnapped.”

“By whom?”

“Albert has led a somewhat adventurous, not to say rackety, life. In fact, we used to laugh about it, and he often said he was looking forward to settling down.”

“Would you have liked that? I have an impression that you are quite a spirited young person yourself, and feel that too much ‘settling down’

might bore you!”

Holmes shifted slightly in his armchair and took several sips of hot chocolate while our client gazed at him in some surprise. At the same time, she lifted her own cup to her lips before saying, “You are obviously a good judge of character. I do like excitement. But surely you realise that I’m more worried than bored at present.”

“Certainly I do,” said Holmes. “But let me remind you that I asked if there was anything you could tell us which would help to find the missing man. So far you have not done so, but have simply put forward the idea that he has been kidnapped.”

“During the course of his life as an adult, my fiancé has made several enemies in one way and another,” said Miss Cameron with some distress.

“And he recently received a number of peculiar and decidedly unpleasant notes.”

“And there was no way in which he could recognise the handwriting?”

“There is no handwriting to recognise. Letters had simply been cut out of a magazine and stuck on cheap paper to form certain words.”

“A very tedious procedure, I should have thought,” said Holmes taking another sip of chocolate.

“Indeed. But that might explain why the messages were so short. For example, ‘ Where is your wife? ’ and ‘ Why are you overdrawn at your bank? ’ But of course, he has no wife, at least not yet, and he told me that his finances are in perfect order!”

“Could it be a case of mistaken identity? Why didn’t he consult someone immediately?”

The young woman’s lips trembled slightly. “At first, I think he dismissed the whole thing as some childish prank,” she said. “As for the letters being for someone else, his name was printed in block capitals on the envelopes, and the address was the correct one. But it is the latest communication which finally decided him to discuss seeking help.”

At this, our informant made a sign to the young man she called Willie.

He had been sitting quietly, listening to our conversation, fidgeting uneasily from time to time as the story unfolded. Now he rose and went over to a small desk at the further end of the immense room. Opening it, he brought out a crumpled piece of paper and handed it to the woman that he had called his ‘boss’ when speaking to us in Baker Street. She in turn handed the paper to Holmes, who smoothed it out and looked at the printed letters which were stuck to it. I saw from over his shoulder that they seemed to have come from a reputable source, since each was clear and easy to recognise. But it was the message itself which startled both of us. “Be sure wel get you” and (an inch or two further down) “before very long”. I looked twice to verify that the third word in the abominable communication read

“wel,” rather than “we’ll” or “we will”, and there was, in fact, only one “l”.

However, no-one but an imbecile could mistake what was meant.

Holmes looked at the address on the envelope and said musingly, “It is odd how criminals and other persons never quite appreciate how easy it is to recognise letters printed in block capitals, since that does nothing at all to hide the writer’s hand. Any expert could spot who wrote this, given that he had seen other examples of it, in capitals or not. With your permission, Miss Cameron, I will keep this to send to Scotland Yard-”

At that moment, there was an urgent knock at the door. Without waiting for a response, the door burst open and a middle-aged hotel employee, showing every sign of distress, rushed into the room. Miss Cameron jumped to her feet, and much of the hot chocolate in her cup fell

precipitately to the floor. A frightened Willie grasped her hand and began to tremble, just as he had done in our rooms.

“That young man has more than a nervous disposition,” I thought to myself. “He is evidently badly frightened about something, even allowing for the fact that we are all four of us more than a little surprised at this precipitate intrusion.”

“I was downstairs,” gasped our unexpected visitor, “in the lobby supervising some of the staff who were just finishing off the decorations that we normally put up at this time, including decorating the huge Christmas tree in the foyer.” He swallowed. “A police constable rushed in and asked if a Miss Constance Cameron was staying here. Of course, I answered in the affirmative, and he said-” here the man paused for breath,

“-‘Tell her to go as soon as possible to the London Hospital.’ I have a cab waiting downstairs, ma’am, and it seems you must use it immediately.”

“I am a doctor,” I said at once, “and will accompany the lady.

Meanwhile-” I added, with a glance at Holmes, “-the boy could go with my friend to Baker Street, as in the circumstances it is impossible for him to remain here alone.”

“Willie will come with me,” said Miss Cameron firmly.

Holmes was wearing a puzzled frown. Something just wasn’t making sense to him. I was used to not appreciating all the facts of many of the investigations we tackled together until he revealed them to me, but I rarely saw my colleague at a loss. However, there was no time for speculation, and the news when we reached the hospital was so devastating it drove everything else out of my head. An unconscious man had just been brought in, and when trying to identify him, the address of the Savoy Hotel was found on his person, together with a note stating to contact Constance Cameron, staying there, should anything happen to him.

“She reminds me of one or two other enquiries in which we have been involved, where men and women have not been what they seemed,” said a familiar voice. I was waiting in a chair outside the room into which Miss Cameron had been conducted, along with Willie, immediately upon arriving at the hospital.

Holmes settled himself beside me and stamped his feet to remove some snow from his boots. “I’m not exactly accusing her of anything, but I

cannot help feeling that she is disguising herself in some way. However, the real mystery is why she insisted on bringing the boy here with her. He calls her his ‘boss’, but I suspect a quite different relationship.”

“He appears more than a little frightened,” I said carefully.

“A brother, perhaps. Or a son...” said Holmes, ignoring my interruption.

“My dear fellow, you remarked yourself on how young she looked!”

“And you, Watson, remarked on how the person who followed you to Baker Street seemed more of a boy than an adult! Women have ways and means of making themselves look younger than they are. But I must confess I incline more towards a fraternal rather than a maternal relationship.”

“What about the abrupt summons to this hospital?”

“It must be her betrothed, and it would certainly help if we could find out what was behind any attack. I would also be happier if I could discover something more about him. Something perhaps which Miss Cameron might be reluctant to tell us. I don’t recall his name, and I didn’t have time to check my index.”

I glanced out at the still falling snow and noted the few passers-by hurrying in search of shelter. The hospital seemed strangely quiet. There were no nurses moving sedately about, and no sign of a trolley or any patients. No doctor, complete with stethoscope, came out of any door to summon help, and even the clock seemed to have forgotten to tick.

“If those two were really to be married within a week, the Registrar General’s Office might help,” said I.

“And,” replied Holmes enthusiastically, “if we knew the church where the banns should have been called over the last three weeks, that would also get us somewhere.”

At that moment, a distraught Miss Cameron, accompanied by the youth I had become used to thinking of as “the boy”, came towards us with a handkerchief pressed to her mouth and tears gushing from her eyes. “He is dead,” she said simply, and fell to the floor in a dead faint.

Between us, Holmes and I managed to revive her and, along with Willie, we all travelled post-haste back to the Savoy Hotel, where Miss Cameron went straight to her bedroom and the boy sat looking at us from the depths of an armchair, the very picture of the most abject misery. He refused to

provide any of the additional information about the girl’s fiancé that we needed.

“I hate to say this,” said Holmes, “but there is nothing we can do here at present, so I suggest we go back to Baker Street.”

Grasping the boy by the shoulder, my friend looked most kindly and compassionately at him and said, “When your ‘boss’ is sufficiently recovered from such a dreadful shock, I want you to tell her that the doctor and I will be waiting, ready to help in any way we can, and also to do everything in our power to discover what and why this has happened. In the meantime, you must do all that you can to help her. But now it would be better for us to leave.”

“Due to our somewhat precipitate exit,” said I, as we walked towards Baker Street, “there is no way we can tell exactly how this man met his death. The attending physician indicated to me that he was found in an alley several blocks from the Strand. He had died from a blow to the head, but he had numerous other injuries. The initial theory is that he was injured in some sort of road accident.”

Holmes snorted. “I think, old fellow, that there must be more to it than that. I wish that I had been allowed to examine the body.”

“I’m sure that Miss Cameron would have allowed it, if she hadn’t been incapacitated. And as the attending physician professed to have never heard of you...” I added.

Holmes ignored my tweak. “The note on Block’s person about getting in touch with Miss Cameron points to his possibly being aware of some imminent danger, perhaps of an entirely different sort.”

“Such as?”

“While it is perhaps perfectly natural that he had his fiancée’s name and address with him, the note stated that she should be told at once if anything happened to him. Why should he think that something might happen to him, unless he was aware that certain enemies were on his track?”

“Enemies, possibly. But of what kind, and for what purpose?”

“We heard her say that the man had led rather a ‘rackety life’, and was looking forward to ‘settling down’. The question is, what kind of life, and where?”

“And for how long had his enemies have been on his track?” I said carefully.

Holmes bent down to re-tie a recalcitrant bootlace, at the same time as he stamped his feet to remove snow from his boots, just as he had done while we waited in the London Hospital.

“If there was anyone on his track,” he said.

“My dear chap, there can surely be no doubt that he is dead,” I said, striving to keep up with his long stride as we drew nearer to Baker Street.

But all he said was, “Did you see him at all, Watson?”

I had to admit that I hadn’t, deeming it more tactful to allow Miss Cameron to go into the room accompanied only by a nurse and young Willie.

“Not one of us has seen him,” said Ho1mes. “The supposed fiancé and the dead man could be two entirely different people.”

By the time we reached our lodgings, the snow was falling even more steadily than before. Holmes took out his latch-key and, motioning me inside, followed almost immediately up to our sitting room. “Let us recap,”

he murmured, sinking into his armchair and ringing for Mrs. Hudson to ask her to bring in tea. “A young man is sent to find our lodgings so that he can deliver a message to me. That message is from a Scotswoman living in France. However, she is about to marry a man, presumably British, who has been receiving threatening messages, and who has now met with a fatal accident. Does anything odd strike you about all this?”

“Only the way the boy behaved,” I said. “Following me around Oxford Street so that he could discover our whereabouts.”

“Our client mentioned the Mona Lisa theft, if I remember correctly. Since our photograph was also in the French newspaper, it is highly likely our Baker Street address was there too. Truly the plot thickens! But now I have decided, however near we are to Christmas Day, that I must to go up to Scotland, and I imagine, Watson, that at this time of year you will be far too busy to accompany me.” He paused for a moment outside his bedroom door while I looked back in amazement at this sudden and unexplained decision. He continued, “By the way, before I forget, congratulations on being elected to The Authors Club. You might try The Travellers Club next, since your family once lived in Ballarat.”

“Holmes,” I said with a laugh, “I’m a busy doctor with a sizeable number of patients. I write up your investigations for my own amusement, and for the edification of the public. As far as I am able, I help you in these investigations. Isn’t that enough? Next you’ll be suggesting I stand for Parliament!”

“Not a bad idea. We might get something done then.”

“Nonsense. I’d fall asleep in the middle of the first debate.”

“Very well, we’ll say nothing more about it, if only to protect your undoubted modesty.”

Although I was used to my friend’s abrupt decisions, I was rather surprised at his going off without any preamble. However, as regards my medical duties, at this time of year my days were (like those of all my colleagues) full to bursting with patients suffering from colds, coughs, and other similar seasonal complaints. So I was obliged to let Holmes proceed alone in any way he pleased, trusting to him to tell me how I might help if the need arose.

Meanwhile Mrs. Hudson, tired of doing it herself on our behalf, had decided to employ a page-boy, Billy, to perform such tasks as answering the doorbell or bringing us our newspapers. She had even gone so far as to provide him with some sort of livery, something I knew she was well able to afford, since her terms had always been high - which was why I had come to live in Baker Street in the first place, to share the cost of the rent with Holmes, although we could now both quite easily pay our own way alone, as my resources had grown considerably since that time, and his services were in great demand in almost every part of the world.

A couple of days later, Holmes was back from Scotland, but all that he would say in answer to my enquiries was that his visit to the North had been most productive. The next morning, Billy ushered a young woman into our sitting room. She was dressed in the deepest black, and we recognised her at once as Constance Cameron.

“In spite of its being so near Christmas,” said Miss Cameron, “I have left the Savoy Hotel, and taken lodgings in Camberwell for myself and Willie.”

“A bit of a comedown for you,” said Holmes brusquely, climbing to his feet. “But appropriate, since you have hardly a penny to your name! And don’t think you can deceive me, coming here dressed in that way. You have

no fiancé, and have had no fiancé, alive or dead. Before I left here for the Highlands-”

“The Highlands!” gasped our visitor.

“-I ascertained that no banns had been called and no arrangements for a wedding ceremony been made, here or anywhere. The note on the Block’s body was to tell anyone who found it to inform you, so that you would know that particular deed (the first of what was planned to be many in my opinion) had been done, and you could then prepare yourself to take part in the next.

“Come now,” he continued, “it’s time to end this tarradiddle. You remember the note you showed us. It was far too much like an educated writer pretending, rather clumsily, to be an uneducated one.”

I recalled the single ‘ l’ in ‘ wel’ and could only silently agree, surprised that the thought hadn’t occurred to me before. But Holmes was well into his stride. “A report on that note arrived last night,” he said. “Nothing like that has been found by the experts at Scotland Yard. I suggest you had Willie sit down with a newspaper and scissors putting the whole thing together, for reasons yet to be explained.”

“That,” I thought to myself, “might account for his being so scared. He was certainly more than uneasy about something.”

To my great surprise, Miss Cameron suddenly burst into tears. All her self-possession seemed to leave her. She was no longer the sophisticated being we had first encountered.

“I have come here to ask you to rescue me,” she wailed. “Me, and my poor young brother.”

Holmes shot a triumphant look at me, recalling his speculations about her relationship to the youth. “Rescue you from what?” he asked coldly.

“I am wearing black because I was obliged to attend a funeral. The clothes are not even my own, and I had to pretend the funeral was that of my fiancé in order to keep up a dreadful deception and prevent any harm from coming to Willie or to me.”

“In fact,” said Holmes “the dead man, lonely and without friends, was someone you had been told to lure to the Savoy Hotel.”

“But,” I protested, “the boy said the man was ‘the soul of honour’.”

“So he may have been,” said Holmes. “Miss Cameron here took care that she didn’t compromise herself or him. Her brother was always in the room with her.”

“And the idea was..?”

“I’m sure you remember, Watson, that holiday we took in the Highlands last summer? The fishing was good, and I recall that you caught a trout which you threw back into the Loch. When I left you here alone and went back up to that small hotel where we stayed, it was to confirm my suspicions that Miss Cameron had worked there as a chambermaid. When we first met the other day, I was certain that I’d seen her before. In that hotel last year, I had caught a brief glimpse of somebody very like her when we were checking in.

“My questioning revealed that I was right. I found that she had recently attracted the attention of one of the recent guests there, who thought she might be of use to him, and they went off rather abruptly, taking her young brother (who worked as a boot-black at the hotel) with them. Her new friend had heard somehow of a man, Albert Block, a Midland’s merchant who was exceedingly rich. Someone who, if the surroundings were right, would believe that Miss Cameron, too, was wealthy. After a plausible amount of time, and once the intimacy had proceeded beyond mere friendship, the woman would then hint at certain (though of course temporary) money troubles.”

Here Holmes paused to re-light his pipe and got up to stand in front of the fire. “I found your friend, Elsie, still working as a maid at the hotel.”

Miss Cameron looked up sharply. “I convinced her to tell me of what happened before your departure. The rest was easy to piece together. You all ended up here in London. After you had been here for several days, it was time to put the plan in motion. Your supposed fiancé didn’t go out to buy cigarettes, but to visit his bank,” said Holmes, “whereupon he was then set upon and robbed by someone lying in wait for him. Something which, as I said earlier, was planned to be the first of many such episodes involving gentlemen who became susceptible to your undoubted charms.”

“Steady the Buffs,” I said hurriedly. “Robbed, but why killed? And presumably in broad daylight, since banks have restricted opening hours.”

“I rather think the man who committed the murder panicked after leading his quarry to a quiet spot on some pretext or other. Either that, or his victim put up too spirited a resistance. It could be that he always intended to destroy the people he planned to rob, so that they couldn’t set the police on him. However, Miss Cameron’s swoon in the London Hospital was quite genuine. When faced with the stark reality that she had helped to kill a man, she suddenly realised the horror of what she had done, something which you saw caused her to pass out so dramatically.

“She evidently had no scruples about using her brother to tell us a pack of lies,” continued Holmes, “as well as telling us a whole pack of lies herself. Neither did she hesitate when asking him to stick incriminating letters on a piece of paper. I am at a loss why she involved me in the first place, since there was evidently no mystery to find, and no villain she wished to unmask.”

Miss Cameron continued to weep, offering no explanation. “Surely,” I said, “it was to add verisimilitude to her supposed fiancé’s disappearance?”

“Any run of the mill detective would have done for that. There was no need involve the best sleuth in the Metropolis.”

I smiled inwardly at my friend’s conceit, but was careful not to remark on it. Instead, I said to the woman sitting so near me, “It is scandalous, the extent to which you have involved an innocent boy in your schemes, and I’m not at all surprised that he showed fear in our rooms, as well as on one or two other occasions, such as when we came to the Savoy Hotel. As to employing Holmes in default of another detective, I suppose it was to bolster up the idea of how wealthy you were, although I have known occasions when he has foregone his fee if he thought the investigation interesting and important enough, or knew that his client couldn’t afford it.

The one occasion I can definitely recall-”

“Please don’t mention the Duke of Holdernesse,” interrupted Holmes wearily. “Why did you write the kidnap note and pull me into the investigation?”

“Because I did know who you were, Mr. Holmes. I was afraid to tell the truth, but I thought that if I created a mystery that was interesting enough, your involvement would spook Edward, and he would drop the matter. In the meantime, perhaps Willie and I could slip away.”

“Edward being Edward Stokes, the instigator of this whole plot, and the man who killed Albert Block.”

She nodded. “We cut out the letters to make the note. Then, Willie followed Dr. Watson until he was noticed, to make it seem more mysterious. It was all going according to plan, but then we learned that Albert - Mr. Block - had been killed. I knew then it was too late for us.”

Holmes was silent for a moment. Then, “Have you seen Edward Stokes since the murder?”

She simply shook her head.

“It is time for you to get back to Camberwell, Miss Cameron, and that unfortunate brother of yours. I will keep you posted. Be careful, and stay out of sight. But on no account must you leave London. Where are you staying in Camberwell?”

She gave him an address, one that I knew to be a mean little place indeed.

We saw her to the door, and as she left, Holmes gave whispered instructions to Billy. “He will notify one or two of the Irregulars in the vicinity to follow her, making sure that the address she gave is accurate, and to watch for her safety as well. And now,” he added, “it is up to us the find the murderer,”

“And where do we start?”

“Good old Watson! We will begin with the London Clubs. The Turf, for example, since our quarry Stokes, it turns out, is the by-blow of a duke who apparently thinks of himself as one of those often called ‘blue blood’.”

“Disinherited blue blood, most likely!”

“The Turf,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken, “has had its headquarters on the corner of Piccadilly and Clarges Street since 1875 and can be said to be a younger edition of White’s. It is also notably well provided with dukes.”

“My guess is that if he has gone to the bad, you won’t find him there, even if his father is, or was, a duke. It would be much better if we had obtained a full description of him from Miss Cameron.”

“My dear Watson! Surely you know me well enough by now to know that I have already acquired that information.”

And so Holmes and I toured London together, spending the rest of that day going to both The Turf and a number of other likely places, asking

innumerable questions. The one deciding result was a visit from a most unwelcome and dangerous intruder who must have heard of our activities through some sort of grapevine, whether criminal or otherwise.

That evening, Holmes had gone to bed early, whether to sleep or to refresh his catalogue of investigations, I had no means of knowing. I sat up, reading one of my favourite Clark Russell sea stories, keeping the “ungodly hours” I had mentioned to my friend at our first meeting so many years earlier. Just as I was dozing off, I was alarmed to see Holmes standing beside me in dressing gown, brandishing a poker. “There is a stranger in the building,” he hissed, “though I cannot say exactly where.”

Our landlady was away for the night visiting her friend, Mrs. Turner. I could imagine the two women sitting happily drinking tea together and exchanging stories about Holmes. I was glad that she was out of the house.

I knew that Billy would be spending the evening with his young friends, up to all kinds of innocent japes and anticipating Christmas. That was all very well, but this being the Christmas season meant that everyone would be too occupied to suspect a crime taking place in our sitting room. Additionally, many of our neighbours were away visiting relatives and friends. I don’t think I ever felt so lonely and unprotected in my life, not even on the battlefield.

I sprang up and prepared to encounter anything which might happen next. The wait was not long. The door of our sitting-room was flung open and a man I had never seen before stood with a gun trained straight at us.

“This is what happens when people leave the house without locking the area door,” he said with a leer, while I cursed inwardly at Mrs. Hudson’s being so anxious to see Mrs. Turner that she forgot this elementary precaution.

Holmes, however, remained cool. “I believe I have the honour of addressing Edward Stokes, peripherally a member of-” here he named a famous Ducal House, “-whose men and women until now have been models of probity, giving much to their time to the advancement of our great nation.”

“That’s enough of your sneering and your ‘until now’ and ‘models of probity’,” said the man angrily. “Don’t forget, I’m the fellow with the gun, and I’ll make sure you and your friend here don’t live to see another day.”

“On the contrary,” said Holmes with a sudden spring, bringing up his hand and giving the intruder a vicious knock on the wrist with the poker that he had kept hidden until now, so that the gun fell impotently to the floor.

I picked it up at once, pointed it straight at the intruder’s head, and said,

“Summon the police here as quickly as you can, Holmes, while I stand guard over this blackguard. Even if Inspectors Lestrade and Gregson are on leave and getting ready for the festivities, there will be others holding the fort.”

Later (over a breakfast which we enjoyed to the fullest after the night’s adventure,) Holmes said, “It is a very disheartening thing when the events we have been through happen at this special time of goodwill to all men.

However, I have persuaded Miss Cameron to return to Scotland directly after Christmas and take up a post with the local Laird who, you may remember, was so accommodating when letting us fish on his land. She will be his wife’s help, and the boy will be set to learn gardening, eventually taking over from the present man who is due to retire sometime in the next couple of years. There is, I believe, a young Factor who is decidedly sweet on her and who has often made an excuse to come into that small hotel so that he could see and sometimes speak to her. She has learned her lesson and they will, I am sure, eventually marry and settle down. There will be no more Marquise de Brinvilliers, Madame de Pompadour, or any Lucretia Borgias.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” I said, busy cutting into my bacon and eggs. A certain thought had occurred to me concerning Holmes’s remark to Miss Cameron regarding an educated writer pretending to be an uneducated one.

“Surely...” I said.

Holmes was busy buttering a slice of toast. He looked up and replied slowly, “Contrary to her lowly position as a chambermaid, she had, as you saw for yourself, an aristocratic bearing. She spoke well, as do most Scots, and has had, I am sure, at least the rudiments of a good education.”

“Probably as the result of an earlier post as a gentlewoman’s companion.” I said.

But Holmes was busy opening his mail. “A letter from brother Mycroft,”

he cried, “inviting us to spend Christmas with him at his Club. So there will

be partridge and fine wine, convivial conversation in the Stranger’s Room, and a chance to tell him all about our latest adventure!”

“And what a lucky escape we both had from death,” I remarked, pouring out a second cup of coffee for myself.

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