Disapproval and suspicion stiffened every thread of the butler's spotless black suit, but its wearer stood back, bowed Holmes in, and accepted hat, walking-stick, and overcoat, handing them over to the maid. He then picked up the gleaming silver tray from the polished teak table, held it out for Holmes' card, and showed the visitor into the room to the left of the door-way. His gait as he went to take his mistress the card told Holmes that the man was a martyr to rheumatism, but he crossed the freshly waxed marble floor without event and was back in moments, murmuring that Holmes should come with him.

The old lady in the brocade chair was so tiny her head did not clear the chair's oval back, and her creaseless shoes rested on a needlepoint hassock. Her hand in his felt like a bird's foot, so delicate he was afraid to close his fingers lest he leave bruises. But her cornflower blue eyes were undimmed by age, her pure white hair soft but full, and the myriad wrinkles that made up her face seemed to quiver with interest.

“Mr Holmes,” she said in a high, thin voice, “from London. Pray have a seat so I don't get a neck-cramp looking up at you. How do you find London these days?”

He settled onto a chair across the bay window from her, trying to arrange his knees so his legs didn't rise up around his ears. “I left London in January, when a person would find it cold and dreary. I imagine that in April it is most pleasant.”

“And are the fogs as bad as ever they were?”

“So long as the town continues to heat its homes, there will be yellow fogs.”

“I have very fond memories of your ‘pea-soupers,'” the old woman confided. “We spent some months there when I was a young sprig of a thing, and I escaped the eyes of my governess under the blessing of just such a fog. I had a beau,” she explained, one eyelid lowering in a manner that would have been coquettish had it not also been self-mocking.

Holmes laughed aloud, and the old blue eyes danced. Tea was brought then, and as the maid poured and offered the sugar, she surreptitiously watched the visitor. Whatever she saw in him assuaged her suspicion; her spine relaxed and with it her tongue, so that before she left them, she raised an admonitory finger and said to Holmes, “Now you watch that she doesn't get over-tired. And if she tells you she wants you to take her out dancing, she's not allowed out on a Saturday night.”

“I hear, and obey,” Holmes said with a small bow of his head. When the door had closed again, Miss Adderley picked up her child-sized eggshell cup.