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'Hmm?' Holmes glanced up from the sheaf of notes which he was reading.

'I noticed no change in her demeanour.'

Remembering my thoughts from the previous night, I added human emotion to the list of things that Holmes could sometimes singularly fail to detect.

Holmes joined me at the table as I began to make serious inroads into the scrambled eggs. He ate with one hand and shuffled through the pile of newspapers with the other.

Eventually he abandoned the last broadsheet and set himself to polishing off the bacon.

'You didn't sleep last night,' I observed.

'Well done,' he congratulated me without looking up. 'I see that my example has not been completely wasted on you.'

I persevered.

'If you're not hospitalized before the end of the year, I shall eat my hat! You have completely reversed all of the benefits of our Viennese holiday. The human body was not meant to be driven the way you are driving it.'

'I sense hidden reefs beneath the seemingly placid surface of this case. I needed time to think.'

'And have you come to any conclusions?'

'Some,' he mused, reaching for the toast. 'But a fresh mind is always welcome. Perhaps you would care to summarize the salient features, Watson.'

I was familiar with Holmes's little game, whereby he would ask my opinion on a case, only to completely demolish it with his razor-sharp wits. I always played along with him. Holmes needed his little victories and they cost me nothing, save a moment of bruised pride. To give me time to think, I pushed the saucer of jam across the table to him. He shook his head.

'Thank you, but no,' he said, with the little twitch of his cheek that passed for a polite smile. 'I am not partial to jam, or indeed to any preserve made with sugar.'

'Why is that?' I asked.

'When I was a child, I recall being told by our cook that sugar cane was purified by being put into vats where it would be mixed with bullock's blood and heated up. I have since discovered that the albumin in the blood carries the impurities to the surface, where they are skimmed off.

Knowledge of the chemistry does not, however, enable me to overcome my childhood revulsion. I was a sensitive child, as you may already have appreciated.' He smiled apologetically. 'I cannot imagine what prompted Mrs Hudson to buy any jam. I have made her aware of my taste on many occasions.'

Poor Mrs Hudson, I thought, and applied some to my own slice of toast.

'A theft has occurred from a hidden library in Holborn,' I said finally, 'a library controlled by the higher echelons of the Catholic Church and containing documents felt to be subversive to the natural order.'

'One remembers Galileo, and wonders,' Holmes murmured.

'Or rather, an alleged theft. We have no independent evidence.'

I had the pleasure of watching Holmes's face brighten momentarily.

'A fine distinction,' he admitted, 'but a proper one.'

'We have been provided with a list of those visitors to the library who have attended since the last time the books were seen. They are our suspects, since any one of them may have committed the theft. However, all visitors are searched upon exit, by two separate and rival gangs of ruffians, and we saw ourselves how thorough the search is. Your own experience at the dogfight bears out the fact that there is no love lost between Mr Jitter's gang and Mack "the Knife" Yeovil's mob. The chances of collusion are slight. Each gang seeks to catch the other out.'

'Quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? as Juvenal so rightly remarked.' Holmes refilled both of our cups with steaming coffee. 'His Holiness the Pope seems to have come up with an ideal solution. I detect the twisted logic of the Jesuits.'

'We have questioned two of our suspects, the Doctor and Mrs Prendersly.

The one is evasive, but seems strangely honest. The other is....'

The coffee suddenly tasted rank. Holmes glanced across at me sympathetically.

'Bear up, old chap,' he said quietly. 'If any human agency is behind the lady's death, we will find them.'

Despite the sunshine I felt as if