In the course of his long career, however, Sherlock Holmes had with some regularity been faced with a client or witness in a state of shock, and long ago recognised the benefits of the traditional remedies: either a stiff brandy or large quantities of hot, sweet tea to soothe the nerves; some readily digestible food-stuff to set the blood to flowing; and at the properly judged moment, a sharp counteractive shock to restore the patient to useful coherence.

So when he came into his hotel room and found his young wife huddled inertly beneath the bed-clothes, he picked up the telephone to summon tea and biscuits, administered a quick dose of contraband brandy, and then proceeded to an alternative not generally permitted a consulting detective when faced with a distressed client: He bundled Russell into the bath, undergarments and all, and turned the taps on hot and full.

The tea came, the water rose, and he spent the next quarter of an hour bent over the steaming porcelain tub forcing liquid and sweet morsels of cream-filled cakes into the silent woman. Slowly, her eyes returned to a focus. He went into the next room to look for her spectacles, stripping off his coat and rolling up his wet shirt-sleeves as he studied the room for any indication of what had put her into that state. No out-spread newspapers on the table, no crumpled telegrams in the waste-basket, nothing but the trail of discarded possessions and garments from door to bed.

He found her hand-bag just inside the door and turned it upside-down on the bed: money purse, handkerchief, note-book, pen-knife, pistol, and investigative tool-kit—all the usual paraphernalia and nothing out of the ordinary.

He abandoned the hand-bag, eventually found the spectacles under the bed, and took them into the steam-filled room, setting them in a corner of the soap-dish for her. He then poured himself a cup of tea, refilled hers (just one sugar this time instead of two, although usually she took none) and settled onto the vanity stool to wait for her to speak.

Which she did before his cup had reached its dregs.

“She's dead, Holmes.”

He went still, surveying the possible meanings of the pronoun: The death of one of the Greenfield women would explain the shock, but not the despair beneath it. That left one likely candidate. “Your doctor friend?”

“Murdered in her office by someone looking for money, the police say.”

“I am sorry,” he offered, and he was, although it was habit more than anything that caused him to mouth the phrase—generally meaningless, yet its recitation often prompted valuable reminiscence.

“She's the end. There's no-one left now. All these years—I never wrote to her, you know? I always thought I would see her one day, stand in front of her and tell her that it had all worked out. And all these years she's been gone.”