The weather was indeed unseasonably mild, so much so that Holmes pressed me to decline my dessert in favour of another stroll. Our path took us through St James Park and along Birdcage Walk, but as we climbed the steps into Queen Anne’s Gate, Holmes took me by the arm.

“There, Watson. Do you see him?”

I followed his gaze and saw a stout little man swathed in a shaggy astrakhan overcoat, about to step up into a glossy carriage and pair.

“Who is that, Holmes?”, I asked.

“The key - or at least part of the key - to our little mystery out at Croxley Green. Quick, he mustn’t see us”.

With these words, Holmes pulled me back behind a tradesman’s van drawn up at the kerb, behind which we loitered until the coast was clear.

Holmes blew his cab whistle.

“I am glad to have seen him, Watson. Like most creatures of the dark, he rarely ventures out in the day. But truth and justice, now, they shine a bright light and I shall have him under my microscope lamp one of these days. For the present, I must content myself with his creatures”.

“You speak in riddles, Holmes,” I observed.

He gave one of his rare smiles that illuminated his whole face.

“Riddles are my profession, my dear Watson. Ah, here is a cab”.

He leapt up to the step.

“The Middle Temple, chambers of Abraham & Abraham”, he ordered the cabbie.

As we clattered through the streets, Holmes amused me with a constant stream of chatter and gossip about the residents of the streets through which we passed. He seemed in that blithe good humour which usually spoke ill for some miscreant. The mood carried him up the worn steps of the august building in which the famous old lawyers had their business, through the severe lobby and to the green baize-lined door of the office of Abraham senior.

“My dear Abraham”, Holmes cried. “I trust I find you well?”

The man who rose from his high-backed oak chair could have been drawn from the pages of the Old Testament itself. Thrusting aside his flowing white beard, he bowed in the Eastern European fashion.

“I am no longer in terror of my life, Mr Holmes. For that, I will always be in your debt”.

Holmes positively beamed.

“My friend and colleague, of course, Dr Watson”

The grave eyes surveyed me.

“Doctor”

We took our seats and Holmes leant over the desk earnestly

“Monsieur Abraham, I must see the will of Mr Peter Fenwick, of Hagswell in the County of Middlesex”.

Abrahams steepled his hands and gazed serenely at Holmes.

“Although I owe you a great debt, Mr Holmes, you need not have come here in fulfilment of it. Mr Fenwick’s will is not sealed; indeed I imagine you could have obtained a copy at the local newspaper”.

Holmes sat back.

“You amaze me. There is no secret clause or codicil?”

“None. The will is simple: his widow and sister have each a life interest in Hagswell until the widow’s death whereupon it reverts to the sister or, if deceased, to a distant cousin in Northumberland. But the bulk of the estate, the businesses and mills and so on, are to go to Trustees, of which I am one, who will hold it for the benefit of the Garland School and Institute for the Betterment of Working-Class Women”.

“And this has been public knowledge since…?” Holmes asked.

“1893, after the death of Edgar Fenwick”.

Holmes rose.

“Thank you, Monsieur. I see now that I was hunting along a false trail, but you have put me back on the scent”.

We bade our farewells and went out into the quiet street. The afternoon sun was fading swiftly and a chill air blew between the tall buildings, in which lamps were beginning to be lit.

Holmes’s good mood had evaporated and his mouth was set in a grim line.

“This alters everything, Watson, do you see?”

Without waiting for a reply, he continued:

“In a case of this kind, too often the simple cry ‘qui bono’ leads one to the perpetrator. But here, no: the will principally benefits a charity under independent Trustees and none of those associated with the household will be better off after Mr Fenwick’s death, indeed quite the reverse. Neither could they believe that his death might make them rich: Fenwick wisely published his will long ago. So the idea that his relatives and partners killed him for money has to be abandoned”.

“Indeed, Holmes, given that Hyl will face a future as manager of Fenwick’s business under the eye of distant Trustees rather than working with an old friend, it was certainly in Hyl’s interests at least to keep him alive”, I remarked.

Holmes’ long loping pace faltered.

“My dear Watson, I think you have hit upon an important point. Are you engaged this evening? I need to pay a visit and I would value your opinion as a medical man on what I may discover”.

“I am due to play Thurston at billiards, Holmes”, I replied, “but the engagement can be deferred without offence”.

“Good”, cried Holmes. “Here, send a message by this cabbie, and we will take this other to Rotherhithe”.

---

It was fully dark by the time our four-wheeler had negotiated the snarls of rush hour traffic in Holborn and the City Road, and the streets were emptying. We drew up before a handsomely-proportioned house behind ornate railings, the smart residence of some merchant adventurer before the tide of industry swept over the district, now peeling and decayed and wedged between a commercial fish warehouse and a match factory. We alighted with care, picking our way across the filthy pavement to the great iron gate and its rusted bell chain.

“This is a clever man, Watson, but eccentric”, commented Holmes as the deep fractured clang boomed across the night. “He is self-taught, an amateur as they say, but his knowledge of the odder quirks of medicine and the tricks of the medics of India and the Far East is unsurpassed. At the Royal Colleges, they say he is a dangerous meddler, but he has a following among hard-headed business men which is not easily gained”.

“Who is he, Holmes? I have never heard of such a man, and I make it my business to keep up with developments in medicine”

“His name is Culverton-Smith”

---

As Holmes and I rattled back in a cab to Baker Street through the stillness of early morning London, I reflected on the extraordinary interview I had just witnessed. In the dimness of a smoke-hung and cluttered laboratory, crowded with dusty vials and vessels of unknown chemicals and draped with the skins and skeletons of a menagerie of exotic creatures, Holmes and Culverton-Smith had seemed to me like alchemists or sorcerers of the ancient past. I had not heard much of the muttered discussions between these two men, each at the head of his particular interest; and I had not understood much of what I had heard. I was content, after a while, to sit in the basket chair into which Holmes had deposited me, to sip a particularly fine port-wine older than the house in which I sat, and to muse of the eccentricities of greatness.

“You grasped the essentials, I trust, Watson?”

I jerked up from a light doze into which I was not aware I had slipped.

“Yes, Holmes, which is to say, a little of what you said was inaudible, and of a technical nature…”

Holmes’s teeth shone in the darkness of the cab.

“My dear friend, I have kept you up beyond your hour, I think. Let me just give you a resume, then, before we arrive at Baker Street and a well-deserved rest”.

“Hyl was known to Culverton-Smith; indeed he was one of his closest acolytes. Hyl’s family have interests in Ceylon which were useful to him, and in return Culverton-Smith prepared a range of weird remedies with which Hyl hoped to extend poor Peter Fenwick’s life”.

“Extend his life!”, I expostulated.

“Yes, Watson. Hyl’s motives were selfish, to be sure – he did not wish to run the risk of losing his comfortable position as Fenwick’s business manager – but his intent was humanitarian”.

“And among Culverton-Smith’s remedies were…”

“You hit the gold, Watson. Dilute compounds of strychnine and mercury, tetanus toxin, and a variety of attenuated snake poisons. Ah, here we are at Baker Street. Hop out, old chap, you are dead on your feet”

And with that cryptic conversation, I had to be content until the following morning, when Holmes appeared, early for him, wrapped in his old green dressing gown and smoking his vile morning pipe.

“Ah, Watson, I see Mrs Hudson has lived up to her reputation again. Throw me down a kipper and some of that cheddar: fish is brain-food, you know; and cheese is good for the imagination”.

“I deduce, Holmes, that you have progressed in the case”

Holmes laughed.

“Capital, Watson. I have slept on our little problem and my brain-attic has been wonderfully uncluttered by the experience. Eat up, we have a job of work to do today, and I shall need your help: indeed I can say that I will not be able to solve this case without you”.

That was all I could extract from Holmes until the mid-morning, when he received a telegram, which he opened, read with a snort of approval, and promptly threw into the fire.

“Get your coat and hat, Watson. We are off to Hagswell again, by the next train”.

---

A cold driving rain was falling as we passed through the sodden thatched cottages of Croxley village. To my surprise, Holmes directed the cabbie away from the lane leading to Hagswell, ordering him to drive down one of the narrow cobbled streets of the village until we reached a square cream Georgian house outside of which hung a sign declaring it to be the surgery and medical practice of Dr Hugh Sallet.

“We are to call upon Dr Sallet?”, I asked.

“No, Watson, the matter is more serious than that. In a few minutes, I expect Dr Sallet to drive up, enter his surgery and leave carrying a file of papers. If he succeeds in taking those papers away, in all expectations to destroy them, my case will be in ruins. I must have those papers, Watson; and as the law is not on my side in this matter, I must obtain them – borrow them, shall we say - by irregular means. Are you with me?”

I gripped his hand in silent assent.

“Good man,” Holmes said. “Now, Watson, our man will drive himself, and I see from the shine that he is accustomed to tether his horse to that ring by his gate. I wish you to wait under cover of those elms, concealing yourself behind the low wall, and when the doctor enters his surgery, you must spring out and cut the traces on your side, then return to your station. Here is a knife for the job. I shall do the rest”.

And so I found myself, clad in only a light Ulster, in a bitter wind and driving rain, crouching in a puddle behind a dripping wall, waiting for the sound of hooves. They did not reach my ears for an unconscionable time, certainly long enough for the damp to penetrate to my shirt. But all waits are ended eventually, and shortly I was able to dart my head above the parapet, see that the coast was clear and spring to my task, which I accomplished easily owing to the extreme sharpness of the heavy lockblade with which Holmes had furnished me.

Breathing more heavily than the mere exertion would demand, with my senses keyed up, I scrambled back behind the wall and awaited developments. I heard the surgery door open, then close, and the sharp voice of Dr Sallet calling to his horse to move on. Moments later, the hoof noises halted and I heard the man’s exasperated cry, followed by boots clicking on the steps of his carriage.

Tense with anxiety, I waited the denouement. Long minutes passed, with only muffled and obscure sounds to give me any clue as to events. Finally, just as cramp was setting in, a hand gripped my arm.

“Steady, old man! Keep low, and follow me”.

It was Holmes, his lanky frame bent double behind the wall. Together, we half-crawled and half- ran to the end of the wall, then dashed across a stretch of common to the waiting cab. Holmes rapped the roof and we set off immediately.

Holmes was wet through, but gripped with that mood of elation and glee which in him so often accompanied bold deeds. For myself, I could have wished to be less wet.

Proceed to Part Ten