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The furniture of the study, itself of much interest, held an eclectic accumulation of antiques, witness to Henry Staunton’s abiding pursuit. On the thick carpet were muddy patches leading from the window to the opposite wall, where the door of the safe stood open, just as our client had described it. There was little to be learned from the safe, even by such an expert as Sherlock Holmes. We could descry faint smears that might have been made by gloved fingers, and the lock was quite undamaged, indicating that it had been opened with a key. To my friend’s questions, Mr Staunton admitted reluctantly that George Cresswell might have had the opportunity within the past few weeks to take an impression of the safe key. Plainly the thought distressed him, for he seemed truly fond of his cousin, but it was clear to me that the evidence grew ever stronger against the retired gunsmith.

Shortly afterwards, Holmes and I left The Elms, with assurances of that we should certainly pursue the case. My friend was manifestly unsatisfied with his investigation so far, and I in my turn recalled an earlier remark of his that had puzzled me. “You suggested,” said I, “that there was yet another odd feature about the footsteps in the garden. What was it?”

He looked at me in his singular, introspective fashion. “You did not notice it? Why, it was simply that at no point did the steps returning from the house overlap those made in going to the house.”

While I pondered up this, he continued, “My next move must be to call upon Mr George Cresswell – I have his address – and I think that I shall go alone. Time may be of importance now.”

I returned to Baker Street to find our old friend Mr Lestrade of Scotland Yard waiting in our sitting room, positively bursting with news. “It’s the Freeling case, Doctor,” he explained. “You’ll remember that the man escaped from Chelmsford Prison a couple of weeks ago? Well, we think that we’ve found him. I put it like that because the man we have is very dead and savagely mutilated.”

I recalled the case well. Esme Freeling was a smooth, elegant and dangerous man who preyed upon the weak. He was a proven card-sharp, a known blackmailer and a suspected murderer. Holmes had been responsible in part for his arrest and incarceration, and would certainly wish to know of this strange and brutal conclusion to a wicked career.

“It’s not a nice thing, Dr Watson,” said Lestrade. “The man’s face has been quite burned off with acid. Horrible, it is. He was killed by a savage blow to the head, and then … Well, there’s not enough of his face left to identify him, but all the rest fits. He’s a big man, muscles well developed from rowing, thick brown hair. We found him, of all places, in Highgate Cemetery, behind one of the tombs. But here’s an odd thing, now – every single label had been removed from his clothes! Well, perhaps he was going about incognito, but it seems he couldn’t escape his fate.”

Declaring that he would wait until Holmes returned, Lestrade accepted a cigar from me, and we sat in companionable silence until Holmes entered the room, grim-faced, with the news that George Cresswell had not been seen for nearly two days. “Our client wished to keep this matter confidential,” he remarked, “but it seems that we shall have to call in the police after all.”

Upon hearing Lestrade’s information, he shrugged his thin shoulders and said, “Then let us go and see the last of the Freeling case.”

I had seen many unpleasant sights during my time as an Army Surgeon, but nothing quite as grisly as that which lay on a white marble slab in the mortuary at Highgate. Yet to Sherlock Holmes this hideous and pitiful object was not the mutilated shell of a fellow man but merely an object of professional study. Gently he raised the dead head and carefully scrutinized the great bruises at the base of the skull. Then, after a brief glance at the raw wound that had once been a human face, he turned his attention to the muscular arms.