Holmes glanced about, as if having forgotten the chaos with which he’d surrounded himself. ‘Give us a moment, please, Mrs Hudson. Watson, why don’t we quickly tidy up?’ He was on his feet, scooping up newspapers in a flash and, irritation notwithstanding, I took up a stack of papers near my chair and rose.

‘Not those, Watson!’ he cried, but I ignored him and threw them into the grate where the flames caught. ‘They are my laboratory notes!’ he cried.

Mrs Hudson shook her head and departed.

Holmes attempted to rescue the burning pages but failed.

‘Holmes!’ He would set us all alight some day!

We heard footsteps on the landing and he flung himself into his chair, instantly assuming a pose of casual interest.

Our client appeared on the threshold. She was a striking woman of perhaps thirty, in a long red dress and an enormous hat topped with a red plume. Her black hair was arranged in a voluminous pompadour, her high cheekbones and olive skin conveying a southern birth. A waft of Oriental perfume assailed my nostrils. She was stunning, forthright, and, despite the heat, seemed coolly impervious. She put me in mind of the bow of a mighty ship.

I rose politely but Holmes remained seated and smiled calmly at her, his hands steepled.

She paused at the doorway and waved a folded newspaper in one hand. ‘Mr Holmes, I did not know you were a famous detective!’ Her voice was a honeyed contralto, with the seductive lilt of an Italian accent. ‘You told me you write about science. But I read of you, in this paper—’

She stepped over the threshold, took in the junkyard that was our sitting-room and laughed. ‘Oh my!’ she exclaimed. But when her eyes alighted on the hanging straitjacket, the laughter caught in her throat, and she made a sudden guttural sound, like a tiger.

‘What! You liar!’ she roared, flinging the newspaper to the floor. ‘You are no scientist. No detective either. You steal our famous illusion!’ She grimaced. ‘I will kill you!’

‘Madame Ilaria Borelli,’ said Holmes cordially. ‘You are early.’

CHAPTER 5

Madame Borelli

Her face a mask of fury, the lady scanned the clutter, glancing past me as though I were something to be stepped over on the street.

Her eyes lit upon the papers mounded on the table. She rushed over to them, snatched them up and waved them at us, her face black with rage. Opening her reticule to receive them, she then thought better of it, and with a dramatic gesture stuffed the papers down the front of her dress.

She stared triumphantly at the two of us as though she had just thwarted a mad effort to stop her.

But neither of us had moved. Holmes remained seated. He smiled.

‘Forgive me if I don’t stand, Madame Borelli.’

‘You beast!’ she cried, facing Holmes. ‘You lie to me!’