‘No, I am inspired!’ But he did set down his bow. ‘What, no luck with your box again?’

‘How did you—?’

‘Never mind. Just listen! I will play them for you!’ He reached for his violin again, but I snatched it up and placed it in a far corner of the room. I moved over to his desk and tried to pull open the top drawer. It was locked. I turned to face him.

‘What have you taken?’

He shrugged.

‘Tell me now. Or I shall leave you in this mess, go to an hotel and send for my things. I mean it, Holmes.’

‘Just the usual, Watson. A seven per cent solu—’

‘Cocaine! The moment I leave. And something else. What else? Open this drawer. It is locked again.’

He waved and turned away. ‘That is my business.’

‘I would like my chequebook!’

‘I would like an end to starvation and the discovery of the missing seventh Bach Partita.’

Madness! I picked up the fireplace poker, inserted the sharp edge into the drawer and with a loud crack, broke it open.

I yanked out the drawer. There, at the front, was the small morocco case with his hypodermic. Near to it was a half-empty bottle of cocaine solution, and further back in the drawer several small blue bottles. I pulled one out. Upon a flowery pink and blue label were the words ‘Phillips Blissful Baby Soother’. It was a sleeping medicine for infants containing laudanum.

My God, he’d combined laudanum with cocaine! The combination could be lethal.

I glanced down at the small waste receptacle under the desk. Papers were piled to the top. I pushed them aside. At least twelve empty bottles of the Baby Soother were at the bottom. He must have been drugging himself with laudanum for days as I sat in the same room.

I looked up to see his look of guilt and alarm.

‘It was only a mild soother, Watson, no harm done. I would have driven you mad without it. You would have run shouting into the streets, demanding roast beef and chorus girls.’

‘No, you are the one on the edge of madness. Surely you know that laudanum is highly addictive and—?’

‘Not in this small amount.’

‘Holmes, I despair!’ I cried. ‘You are wrong and will turn that God-given intelligence to porridge. And combining it with cocaine? What on earth were you thinking?’

I snatched up the hypodermic, threw it to the floor, and crushed it under my boot, grinding it onto the wood at the edge of the carpet.

‘Watson!’ came an anguished cry.

I took up the small brush by the fireplace, swept the shards into a dustpan, and dumped them into that same waste receptacle. I then marched upstairs with the four bottles and flushed the remaining liquid down the toilet.