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“What extraordinary behaviour,” she observed, sitting stiffly upright, clutching her reticule.

“I am sure my friend will return shortly,” I said, surprised as she was at at Holmes’s sudden departure.

“I presume that you are not in a position to enlighten me as to the purpose of Mr Holmes’s visit.”

“Not precisely,” I replied lamely. “But I am sure he will not be many minutes.”

Her ladyship sighed heavily and I sat in embarrassed silence, awaiting Holmes’s return. Thankfully, he was as good as his word and in less than five minutes he was sitting opposite our client’s wife once more.

“Now, Mr Holmes, as you have already wasted some of my time, I beg you to be brief.”

“My business here will take but a short time, but I thought it would be best if I consulted you first before I told your husband the truth behind the disappearing and reappearing painting and the roles that you and your son played in the mystery.”

Lady Darlington gave a startled gasp. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh yes you do,” asserted my friend coldly. “The time for pretence and dissembling is over. You cannot go on protecting your son any longer.”

“Mr Holmes, I will not tolerate any more of your nonsense. Would you please be kind enough to leave.”

“I will leave, certainly, taking the key with me.”

“The key?”

“I am afraid that I played a little trick on you just now. On leaving the room I did not go to instruct our waiting cabman as I intimated. Instead, I slipped upstairs to your son’s room where it did not take me very long to discover the hiding place where he secreted the key.” Holmes reached into his waistcoat pocket as though to retieve some small object. “The duplicate key that gains him access to your husband’s gallery.”

Lady Darlington’s face turned white. “That is impossible,” she cried in some agitation, snapping open her reticule.

“I agree,” said Holmes, stepping forward and extracting a small golden key from her ladyship’s bag. “I told you a tissue of lies in order for you to reveal the real hiding place of the duplicate key. It was a simple subterfuge engineered to reveal the truth.”

At this, Lady Darlington broke down and sobbed uncontrollably. I was moved by her obvious distress and watched helplessly as her body shook with sorrow but Holmes remained stony-faced and waited until the lady had controlled herself enough to speak to him. “How much do you know,” she asked at last, dabbing her watery eyes with her handkerchief.

“I know all. I know your son has built up a series of very large gambling debts at the Pandora Club. In an endeavour to keep these from your husband you helped pay for them at first, but when the amounts became too great for you to contend with, you aided and abetted your son in his scheme of replacing the paintings in Lord Darlington’s gallery with fakes while your son’s crony Lord Arthur Beacham sold the originals.”

“The situation as you portray it is more damning than the real circumstances,” said Lady Darlington, regaining some of her composure. “Rupert is the son of my first marriage and has never been accepted by Hector. He even denied him the common courtesies. Certainly Rupert was never shown any love by his step-father. I suppose in a reaction to this I lavished love upon him. I gave him liberties and freedoms that were perhaps inappropriate for such a headstrong youth. He lacked a father’s controlling guidance. When he formed a friendship with Lord Arthur Beacham I was pleased at first. I believed that the influence of this older man would be good for him. Alas, I did not know what a scoundrel the fellow was. The truth only emerged when it was too late and Rupert was completely under his evil spell. Beacham led my son into reckless habits. Yes, there were the gambling debts which, despite my pleas to Rupert to abandon the game, grew and grew. I knew that if Hector found out he would disinherit him and cast him out of the house. What would become of the boy then? How could I let that happen?”

Lady Darlington paused for a moment as though