‘Shh.’ Indicating we should wait for him behind this building, out of sight of the Wyndhams’, Holmes left us and went around the back of the main house. I noted him examining the ground, pulling his magnifying glass from his pocket as he did so. He disappeared round the back of the house and was gone for a full five minutes. The deacon looked increasingly uncomfortable.

‘What is he doing?’ he asked, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. ‘Shouldn’t we be talking to the family?’

‘In time, Mr Buttons,’ I said. Holmes, I surmised, must have been looking for clues of anyone who might have breached the house surreptitiously to take the doll.

Presently he returned, apparently satisfied, and we proceeded to the Wyndhams’ front door. The frowning sergeant regarded us coldly. The man was sallow, with thinning hair the colour of dirty laundry water, and had upon his bony face a look of permanent indigestion. He glanced at the damp sack containing the doll. ‘There it is! Wait here, Buttons,’ he snarled, and disappeared into the house, locking the door behind him. He brought to mind a scurrying lizard.

Holmes eyed the deacon. ‘Who was that?’

‘Sergeant Pickering. He’s not a very kind—’

‘I take it you did not ask permission of anyone in the police to remove the doll?’

Before he could answer, the reptilian Pickering returned with a senior officer of perhaps fifty. This older man, a tall, well-built and nattily attired fellow with red muttonchops greying at the temples and the eyes of a hawk, gave us one angry glance, then focused on the canvas bag. ‘Give us that, Deacon Buttons!’ he roared. ‘How dare you remove a valuable clue to whatever has transpired? Just because you found it, it was not yours to take!’

‘Inspector H-H-Hadley. Let me explain,’ stammered the deacon.

Pickering grabbed the bag and opened it for his superior. Satisfied the doll was there, Hadley waved it away. ‘Take that inside, Sergeant, and give it to Mrs Wyndham,’ he ordered.

The unpleasant Pickering favoured us with a venomous look and departed.

Hadley took in Holmes and me with a critical glance. ‘And who the devil are you two? Londoners, by the look of you.’

‘This is the esteemed detective Mr Sherlock Holmes, and his associate Dr Watson,’ said the deacon. ‘I – I – brought the doll to London. To induce Mr Holmes to help find Miss Wyndham.’

‘Sherlock Holmes, you say? The London, er, crime solver, detective, or whatever it is that you do. I seem to have read something, somewhere.’ While Holmes’s achievements had occasionally made the papers, at this time he was not yet widely known outside of law enforcement. Inspector Hadley stared hard at my friend as though he could read a man’s worth by this look, or perhaps diminish it by his dismissive gaze.