“Not to London, Mr Holmes.”

“What about the telegraph?”

“Oh, aye, we’re sure to get a message through by some route or another.”

The two went off, heads together. I looked at the trunks, gathering snowdrifts to themselves, and took myself inside out of the cold.

A couple of hours later something intruded upon my attention: a pair of shoes gleaming at me over the top of the book I’d snatched from Holmes’ shelves on the way out the door. I blinked and straightened my bent spine to look up into my husband’s face. His grey eyes were dancing with amusement.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Russell, I am constantly filled with admiration at your ability to immerse yourself in the task at hand.”

I closed The Riches of Mohenjo-Daro and rose, in some confusion, only noticing when I was upright that the trunks had been brought in and arranged at my side, long enough ago that the snow had not only melted but dried as well. What was more, a tea tray someone had set by my other side bore a half-empty cup and a half-eaten biscuit. I could taste the biscuit in my mouth, but I had no recollection whatsoever of having consumed either.

“Glad I amuse you, Holmes. What have you arranged? An aeroplane journey to Marseilles? A sub-marine boat to run us to Port Said?”

“Nothing so exotic. The delay is due less to the quantity of snow than it is to something on the tracks the other side of Lewes. All other trains, though slow, are still getting through. Mycroft has arranged for the Express to wait for us in Kent.”

I looked at him with astonishment. “I should have thought a sub-marine boat easier to arrange than the delay of a train.”

“The Empire is but a plaything to the whims of Mycroft Holmes,” he commented, glancing around for a porter.

“The Empire, yes, but the Calais Express?”

“So it would appear, even with the Labour Party bearing down on the horizon.”

Not that the catching of it was a simple thing. It meant boarding an east-bound train, one of those locals that pauses at every cattle shed and churchyard, and which cowers in a siding every few miles that an express may thunder past in majesty. Not that anything much was thundering that day; I began to suspect that even Mycroft’s best-laid plans might leave us stranded in the middle of Kent.

Still, I had a book.