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“As you may have surmised, Watson, it was the supposed burglar’s footsteps that first suggested to me that all was not right. They appeared to lead from the garden wall, but there was no evidence that anyone had ever come over that wall. More important was the singular fact that the outgoing steps did not overtread those incoming. The two lines of prints were close but quite separate. Now, what burglar would ever tread so artistically? There could be but one explanation: the footsteps did not, in fact, lead from the wall to the study and back, but from the study to the wall and back. In all probability, then, our client himself was responsible for this mummery, and had he not stepped too carefully the fact of an inside job would have been plain to the meanest intelligence. For the rest, he wore boots – new ones, you will recall – fully three sizes too large for him, and strode out manfully to give the impression of a taller man. We may eventually find the boots, but I fear that they have been destroyed.”

On this point, however, Holmes was wrong. It is a matter of record that the boots were discovered, carelessly discarded, in the attic of The Elms, and proved to fit exactly those damning footsteps in the garden. This was the final link in the chain of evidence that took Henry Staunton to an unmourned death on a cold morning at Pentonville Prison.

The Case of the Faithful Retainer

Amy Myers

Watson secured publication of several cases that happened in 1897, including “The Abbey Grange”, “The Red Circle”, “The Devil’s Foot” – the case that nearly saw the end of Sherlock Holmes – “The Dancing Men” and “The Missing Three-Quarter”. There were certainly other cases during the year, but the only one that we have been able to date conclusively is “The Case of the Faithful Retainer”. We have been fortunate that this case survived amongst the papers of the family of M. Auguste Didier, the master-chef whose investigations Amy Myers has been reconstructing. I am indebted to her for allowing me access to these papers.

“You are correct, my dear Watson. The hour may indeed have come when it is in the interests of our great nation that your readers should be permitted to know the full truth behind my indisposition of ‘ninety-seven’.”

As so often in the past, my old friend had correctly broken into my thoughts. “How could you know – ” I began. But why should I be amazed that his powers of observation and deduction remained undimmed, infrequently though circumstances had permitted me to visit Mr Sherlock Holmes, during his years of retirement on the Sussex downs? We were taking our ease in his pleasant farm garden, on a summer day in 1911, and I had been studying the grave news reported in my newspaper.

Holmes shrugged. “You are absorbed in The Times report of this Agadir crisis. I noted your frown, and the fact that you read the report several times; hence my conclusion that you consider that the sending of the gunboat to Morocco demonstrates that a certain great European nation is once more flexing its muscles, and casting its shadow over the peace not only of Europe but of the British Empire itself, was simplicity itself. It was then but a small step to deduce from your unconscious glance towards me that in your opinion the unfortunate case of the faithful retainer should now be made known to the world. I agree, but masked, I must insist, in suitable anonymity.”

“Of course, Holmes,” I replied stiffly, somewhat offended that my old friend could imply I had so little delicacy as to reveal the identities of those involved in the services to the nation that had led to Holmes being offered a knighthood in June 1902, the coronation month (had not illness postponed the celebration) of our late and gracious monarch, Edward the Peacemaker. For reasons that must perforce remain undisclosed, these services had been rendered some years earlier, in the spring and early summer of ‘97, at a time when the world supposed Holmes to have been ill, a fiction at which I have hitherto been obliged, from the highest of motives, to connive. His