‘Ten days, Mrs Hudson!’

‘Well, it seems a month. Go see to him.’ She disappeared downstairs. This was hardly the welcome I had expected.

I passed the sitting-room on the first floor landing, but the door was shut. Upstairs in my room, I set down my luggage and took out the small silver box from my mother. It gleamed in the morning light from my window, its tantalizing mystery intact. I locked the beautiful object in my drawer thinking I would find the right locksmith tomorrow.

I was not ready for what I found downstairs.

The first thing my eyes were drawn to was the floor, awash in clutter – inches deep with scattered papers, stained napkins, dirty ashtrays, pipe dottles, plates of dried food and random oddities. A box of snake-skins sat next to a carafe of something that looked like dried blood. Flies swarmed around it.

Mrs Hudson had clearly withdrawn her usual services, no doubt in one of her rare fits of pique.

And the room was as hot as a tea kettle on full boil. Yet a fire burned in the grate! Why? A gust of wind just then shot down the chimney and a spray of sparks escaped and landed on a pile of papers. One ignited, and I ran to it, just in time to toss the smouldering paper into the fireplace before it set the room afire. I drew the fire screen across it.

A near disaster! But that gust down the flue meant a breeze, so I next rushed to the windows and opened two of them against the stifling heat. The violent summer storm continued to pour down rain. But why was the room closed up like this?

And where was Holmes?

I turned to look and that is when I discovered him: hanging silently in a corner of the room. His body dangled from a rope and was suspended four feet off the floor. He was encased from the knees up in a straitjacket! One foot was bare, the other slippered. The bare foot wriggled.

He was alive, at least.

CHAPTER 4

New Skills

I stared at him for a long moment.

He frowned in concentration and began moving silently under the canvas of the restraint. It was a rather elaborate contraption, tightly bound, with leather straps and buckles, fastened with padlocks. The toes of his bare foot wriggled in concert with his efforts.

He must have seen me come in. I cleared my throat.

Nothing.

‘Holmes.’

‘Yes?’

‘Why the fire?’

‘Is that the first question you have, Watson?’

‘Yes. Why the fire?’

‘I was cold.’

‘In this weather! Are you eating?’

‘Burning papers.’

A plate of sandwiches sat untouched next to his chair. His movements under the straitjacket now involved his legs, hanging in the air, jerking from side to side.

‘Who helped you into that?’ I asked.

‘Billy.’