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I laughed at the vehemence of his protest. “I'm only joking, Mr Miranker. I should say it's every bit as likely that the hive decided it didn't like the subtle emanations coming from the burial mound across the wall.” That outrageous theory silenced him for a moment, and I gathered my things to leave.

But not before he contributed a final shot. “One is always rather concerned when a hive fails to thrive,” he mused. “In Yorkshire and Cornwall they believe that when bees die, the farmer will soon leave his farm.”

I shivered, and said sharply, “It's just as likely the bees deserted because nobody bothered to ‘tell’ them Holmes was away and would return. In any case, if a season is so bad the bees die, I should think it a sign that the farmer's crops were suffering as well. Good day to you, Mr Miranker,” I told him, and made my escape.

Ridiculous, to feel a sharp frisson of disquiet because of this old man and his folk stories.

I spent the rest of the day walking: up to my own farm, where I looked from a distance and decided I did not wish to spend any more of the day in conversation, and then west towards the Cuckmere. I passed the Wilmington Giant—225 feet of enigmatic figure carved into the chalk hillside—and crossed the Cuckmere to Alfriston, to enjoy a restorative cup of tea and a scone nearly as good as Mrs Hudson's. When I had retraced my steps over the bridge, I turned south on the narrow track through Litlington and West Dean. Birds sang, despite the lateness of the season, and the lush countryside soothed my parched skin and my thin-stretched spirit.

I came home sunburnt, footsore, and at peace. What is more, since I had the forethought to stop at The Tiger on my way through the village, I was well fed.

I bathed and put on a silk robe I had bought in Japan, and while the kettle boiled, I went to the library in search of a congenial book. What I wanted was a novel, but there were few of those and none I had not read.

The room looked just as it had when we walked out of the house in January, since Mrs Hudson would not dare to disturb the arrangement of objects—which Holmes claimed was precise and deliberate. The only change was the small mountain of neatly stacked newspapers, which doubtless contained every Times and Telegraph issued since we had left: A sheet of foolscap stuck out every so often, counting down the months in Mrs Hudson's handwriting.

The sight reminded me that, with Lulu away, the newspapers would be accumulating in the box at the end of the drive. While my tea was steeping, I went out to retrieve the four papers—two afternoons, two mornings, all delivered by a boy from Eastbourne many hours after they hit the streets in London—and started to add them to the mountain, then changed my mind. Instead, I took them with the tea onto the terrace, to while away the day's last light.

Little appeared to have changed in the past eight months. Politics were fermenting, the coal unions gathering themselves for another attempt at a living wage. I was mildly disappointed to find no further letters concerning suicidal or riotous Druids, but perhaps my interests were too specialised.

However—the light was almost gone by the time I reached the small box at the bottom of the page and I nearly overlooked it—two men had been charged with conspiring to commit mayhem at Stonehenge on the solstice. That reminded me, I'd meant to hunt down the original articles about the riot, and the suicide in—had it been Dorset?

I found the paper that I had read on the train in the kitchen, waiting to receive the next batch of potato-peelings or coffee grounds. Fortunately, the Letters page was still intact:

Dear Sirs,

I write in urgent concern over the sequence of events, the near-riot between two opposing ideologies at Stonehenge following the desecration by suicide of one of our nation's most spectacular monuments, down in Dorset. When one reflects upon the popularity of peculiar religious rituals among today's young people, one can only expect that