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“Pray resume your seat, my dear fellow. See, our express train departs at eleven forty-five and that is time enough for you to consume Mrs Hudson’s excellent muffin in its entirety.”

“But where are we going?”

“Why, to Cornwall.”

He would say no more, and shortly before midnight we were established in a tolerably comfortable inn after a drive from the small country railway station of St Erth. On our way I had glanced at a signpost, dimly lit by the cab’s lamp: “The Lizard”.

“The reptile, of course,” I exclaimed.

“It is always ‘of course’ after my explanations, Watson, never before, I note.”

It was unusual for my friend to speak so sharply and a measure of the anxiety that preyed upon him.

Next day we found ourselves a small cottage on a grassy headland near Poldhu Bay, in order to further the fiction of complete rest for my friend. Rest? I have seldom known my friend so restless during the weeks that followed. As day followed day, and bluebells replaced the primroses, daffodils and violets in the tall grassy banks that bordered the quiet lanes, and still nothing appeared in the newspaper, I became concerned once more about his health. The ancient Cornish language, as I recounted in an earlier chronicle, did indeed arrest his attention at this time, convinced as he became that it was rooted in the Chaldean, but it could not sufficiently occupy that great mind. Had it not been for the horrible affair of the Devil’s Foot which so unexpectedly cropped up in the nearby hamlet of Tredannick Wollas, I should indeed have prescribed the rest Dr Agar had supposedly ordered. After the case was solved, however, he relapsed into the same silent preoccupation, with such feverish eyes that made me wonder if the Devil’s Foot root we had both imbibed in his quest for experimentation had not had lasting effects.

However I awoke one morning to a grey spring day, promising yet more of that soft and gentle rain with which Cornwall is so plentifully endowed, and Sherlock Holmes was standing by my bedside. Gone were the signs of feverishness, replaced now with the vital strength I had come to know so well.

“If ever I am presumptuous enough to place my services at the disposal of the nation, Watson, pray remind me of the faithful retainer. We return to London today, and by heaven I trust we are not too late.” He spoke gravely.

“For what reason, Holmes?” I struggled from my bed.

“Why, to study the Chaldean language, my dear fellow.” But the words were kindly spoken, not with the mocking sharpness of the last few weeks.

In a jolting restaurant carriage on the Great Western Railway I ventured to press for an explanation of our sudden departure. Even The Times had remained unread today.

“Come, Watson, surely with this excellent sole before us you can adopt Mr Auguste Didier’s methods, even if mine remain unfathomable to you?”

“Isn’t he that cook fellow at Plum’s Club for Gentlemen who solved one or two cases?”

“Indeed he is. I was curious enough to pay him a visit in ‘ninety-six after the remarkable affair at Plum’s. I cannot approve all his methods, since he will have it that detection is not purely a science, whereas I maintain that it is entirely a process of logical deduction. He holds that cookery is akin to detection in the assembling of ingredients and their selection, and fashioning into a palatable dish requires a measure of creativity. I doubt if Mrs Hudson would agree. However, consider, Watson, the ingredients in the puzzle before us.”

“The letter, the Baroness – ”

“And other bidders, Watson. That is deduction, not creativity. We may also deduce that the Baroness would assume that this affair is too important for my services not to be called upon. It follows, if the Baroness acknowledges this, then so do the other bidders. I have been an ass, Watson.” His bantering tone returned to its former anxiety.

“I assumed,” he continued, “that the message which sent us scurrying so precipitately to Cornwall was from the Baroness. It was not. It was placed in order to throw me off the scent, no doubt by another