The jungle of the garden was oddly appealing, particularly in the quiet of late afternoon. I could hear the sound of children's voices somewhere far away, and closer in, a woman singing softly.

“Do you make anything of those fragments, Holmes?” I asked.

“Very little. The words might be provocative, suggesting some act of violence during the earthquake, and money, but any conclusions built upon them would have foundations of air. If the fragments have any value, it may come to light later in the case. Clearly, the house was fairly thoroughly cleaned before your Mr Norbert turned the key and walked away—unless the fireplaces were scrubbed and the carpets rolled up before your parents actually left. I don't suppose you remember?”

“Norbert senior arranged for the cleaners to come in and roll up the carpets, to ‘protect his clients' assets' as his son put it, put on the dust-covers, and clear out the ice-box. They may have scrubbed the fireplaces then, although September tends to be warm in San Francisco, warmer here than the actual summer. They could have been cleaned at any time.”

“We need to know if Norbert senior left them all clean.”

“Yes, I know,” I said. I sighed—but quietly, to myself—at his insistence that we were investigating a case. There was no point in saying that it was quite likely that the papers were the remnants of some last-minute business letters of my father's, draughts later rewritten and dropped into a post-box, so I got out my note-book and wrote down the instruction to myself: Norbert——fireplaces cleaned?

I glanced over the previous pages, added one or two facts that I had neglected to make note of earlier, then said to Holmes, “Mrs Greenfield was actually very helpful in sorting out our times in San Francisco.”

“And she assured you that your family was all here during the earthquake and fire.”

“She did, yes. You were right, Holmes. But we did come and go a number of times, so my memory of England isn't entirely wrong, either.”

I had been born in England, in January 1900: That much I knew. What I had not known was that we came here when I was just over a year old, in the spring of 1901, at which point Mrs Greenfield met my mother. Eighteen months later, according to Mr Long, my parents and I had gone walking on a wave-swept beach and met him and his father.

We lived in San Francisco for three years that time, leaving again for England in the summer of 1904. My brother was born in February of 1905, so it was probable that Mother, finding herself pregnant, preferred to give birth among her own people. However, once he was six months old, they returned here, arriving just after the couturier on Post Street had opened in September 1905—although my “aunt” vaguely thought that we had stopped in Boston for a time on the way, with my father's family.