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  She was quite sanguine at this recollection. “It was quite possible, Cecil had quite a temper and indeed a motive. I was at my wit’s end, so I decided to enlist the services of a consulting detective.” She smiled, though her description of the detective grew less and less flattering. “He was a very strange individual, not a gentleman by any means. When I think of when I went to his shabby room in Montague Street … how upset I was by him! He did not rise to greet me, and when I told him these details his eyes drifted closed. How dare this man, I thought. I ceased talking, stood up, and announced that I had never been treated so insolently in my life and I would leave. He replied that it was he who should be offended, my problem bored him immensely and he only took on such cases as mine to ease his financial burden.” She then paused and added, “I think you should talk to him.”

  “I shall do no such thing.” I was horrified by her suggestion, which seemed like another joke but a very cruel one given my fragile state of mind.

  “Why not?”

  “He sounds like a horrible man,” I said simply.

  “At first I thought he was the worst man I had ever met,” she agreed, “but watching him divine the true nature of the death - it is unseemly, I know, to see artistry in the unravelling of a gruesome event, but when he was at work, I felt privileged to see something so artistic. It was akin to seeing a mathematician solve a complex quadratic equation, or hearing Pablo de Sarasate’s virtuoso skills on the violin. It was all to do with the pipes in our house - which have since all been replaced, by the way. They had introduced lead into the drinking water-”

  “Please Mrs. Forrester, enough of this morbidity!”

  “All right, but I beg you to consider seeing him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he could solve your father’s disappearance as well.”

  “Now I know you can’t be serious. Not even the police could solve that.”

  “He is no policeman, I can assure you.”

  Despite Mrs. Forrester’s endorsement, I was adamant that I had no need of any consultation. Perhaps such a course might uncover something terrible that was best undisturbed. It is strange how one’s perspective could so radically alter, for though the events that I learned had led to my situation were indeed terrible, I feel myself far the richer for now knowing them.

  As sometimes happens, providence will unwillingly prod one into action. On the morning of July 7, I received a letter. This may not seem an odd occurrence, but as I had no family and a very small circle of friends, I did not receive much correspondence. I remember thinking and hoping it might finally contain the news of my father I longed to hear. Despite my fervent hopes, it was in my nature to predict that whatever news it bore would not be good.

  Nothing about this trivial yet uncanny piece of paper set my mind at rest. It was contained in an envelope of high quality. The paper within was of the finest, most luxurious feeling as well. My heart was light, and so the contents of the letter were doubly shocking.

  It read: “Be at the third pillar from the left outside the Lyceum Theatre tonight at seven o’clock. If you are distrustful bring two friends. You are a wronged woman and shall have justice. Do not bring police. If you do it will be in vain. Your unknown friend.”

  I grew truly faint at this. The sentiment was technically noble, but I found it unsettling. The assignation had a sinister air to it, as did the warning about bringing police. It sounded, in truth, like the kind of missive a kidnapper would send in a penny-dreadful yarn. Yet the writer seemed to extend the possibility of friendship by claiming I was a wronged woman. Even then, the phrase was troubling. In what sense did the writer consider me ‘wronged’? Did it concern my father? Or had the pearls been given to me in error?

  I read these few words over and over, maddening myself trying to extract some subtext from them, something that might explain everything. By the time I gave up, I felt even worse. The prospect of meeting this stranger alone, no matter how beneficent his motives, filled me with the greatest dread. His qualification - that I may bring two friends - offered me little help. Mrs. Forrester was at that time visiting her family, and my only other close friend, Kate Whitney, had been called away to the hospital only the night before, as her husband Isa had taken ill. I could not ask her to leave the poor man’s bedside to resolve some personal mystery of mine, no matter how fearfully I regarded it.

  As for the other few friends I had - well, it was such an impropriety! What could I tell them to expect? Worse than the inconvenience, I might even endanger them by soliciting their help. The prospect of an evening rendezvous in the London streets this year inevitably carried an air of the most depraved horror about it. For even though Jack the Ripper would have been far from his grisly trade at the Lyceum, it still seemed like he might be anywhere, hidden in the night shadows, opera cloak and top hat concealing ghastly instruments of death.

  The alternative was really the only one I could contemplate, such was my desperate train of thought. I would simply have to pay Mrs. Forrester’s consulting detective a visit. I gathered everything that might be termed ‘evidence’ in my case: the letter, the pearls, and the letters that accompanied those objects, in the event that there might be a connection.

  Mrs. Forrester wrote me with enthusiasm when I asked for her advice, but her telegram carried an air of smug thrill. She was, though, truly concerned for me, and had taken the trouble to inquire about him before she departed.

  Telegram from Mrs. Cecil Forrester to Miss Mary Morstan

  DELIGHTED TO HEAR. DETECTIVE’S ADDRESS NOW 221B BAKER STREET. WASTE NO MORE TIME.

  It was not a part of London I had occasion to visit very often, and it did not occasion as much fear on my part as the letter had elicited.

  I just imagined Mrs. Forrester’s assurances as I prepared for my visit.

  “The man is a professional, after all, so what is the worst that could happen?” I would have asked her.

  “Exactly my dear,” Mrs. Forrester would have said. “You’ll thank me, I promise you.”

  Perhaps Mrs. Forrester exaggerated, and he would be a charming and welcoming gentleman who would accompany me this evening and protect me from any dangers I may face.

  Perhaps behind that odd name - Sherlock Holmes - stood a chivalrous and noble knight in shining armour.

  From all this strange turmoil, I was positively gripped with nerves when I called on Sherlock Holmes that afternoon. I remember my feelings so vividly as I alighted from the carriage to that careworn front door at Baker Street, as I entered the disarrayed sitting room and heard a resonant, curiously un-accented voice announce: “Please enter, and sit here by the fire.”

  My first impression was of Mr. Holmes was his enormous rounded head, and the pair of intense eyes that burned in my direction. He wore a frayed mouse-coloured dressing gown, and his soft-collared shirt, with a bowtie tucked underneath it, had a similarly negligent, bohemian appearance. I suppose I was somewhat surprised by this casual attire and lack of formality, but I thought little about it, as I was preoccupied with his unblinking, unwavering gaze directly at me. I felt rather like an unsuspecting herbivore entering the lion’s den.

  Had Holmes alone been there I may very well have turned on my heel and run out the door. But fortunately I surveyed this inhospitable environment nervously and locked eyes upon its other occupant. And as you may expect, more importantly than any of these details, etched into my mind is my first sight of my dear fiancé, James - or as I then knew him, Dr. John Watson.

  How did I initially regard him? As I indicated, I was at first so overwhelmed with Holmes’s predatory gaze that this other gentleman’s presence barely registered. It was that sideways glance I cast him - that seemed, on my recollection, to last both an instant and an eternity - that is my strongest memory of this day. In contrast to his colleague, he stood up as I entered, and when I turned to him, I saw that he was looking upon me in a far more welcoming fashion. He was far more respectably clad, in a tweed lounge suit, a stiff upright collar, and black
necktie. It is somewhat silly to write down, but I remember feeling particularly reassured by his moustache - a full but unobtrusive growth that carried to me the very essence of probity in its bristles.

  When I am nervous, I am given to talk excessively. Holmes and Watson had both introduced themselves, I had taken a seat in front of the fireplace, and silence fell over the room. Fixed with Holmes’s glare, my mind went blank, so I rattled off with some panic Mrs. Forrester’s recommendation.

  “I believe I was of some slight service to her. The case, however, as I remember it, was a simple one.”

  His voice was flat and emotionless, as though he was reading an encyclopaedia entry. I was surprised that the work he had done - that she had considered so positively miraculous - could affect him so little.

  “She did not think so,” I replied. “But at least you cannot say the same of mine. I can hardly imagine anything more strange, more utterly inexplicable, than the situation in which I find myself.”

  This statement, which I said with sadness and gravity, triggered - how should I describe it? - a sentiment very like glee in Holmes. He leaned forward in his chair, rubbed his hands together, and his eyes seemed to light up with enthusiasm. It was clearly visible that he had to physically contain any further enthusiasm. He resumed his curt and professional tone as he said, “State your case.”

  Watson at this point rose from his seat. “You will, I am sure, excuse me,” he said.

  I was filled with panic at the thought. I was desperate that he not depart! So with as much composure as I could muster, I said to Holmes: “If your friend would be good enough to stop, he might be of inestimable service to me.”

  (James has since told me of the informal arrangement of his assistance to Holmes. He often feels, he says, as though he is a spare and unwelcome presence in the room during some of the interviews.)

  Holmes’s arbitrary manners cooled to contempt as I laid the facts of the case. As I described the disappearance of my father, he interrupted my tears to clarify a date. Mrs. Forrester had left me unprepared - he seemed even more inhuman than she described.

  In contrast to Holmes, Watson retained a courteous and polite interest in me.

  Finally, I produced the letter. By this point I was not quite sure whether Holmes would accompany me - and if he did, whether his company would be any help. Once he read the letter, he asked me, “What do you intend to do, Miss Morstan?”

  “That is exactly what I want to ask you,” I replied. I felt like adding in some anger that I was quite at the end of my tether from all this, so did not rightly know what I should do.

  “Then we shall most certainly go,” he declared emphatically. “You and I and - yes, why Dr. Watson is the very man. Your correspondent said two friends. He and I have worked together before.”

  This suddenly made me anticipate this more keenly.

  I asked Holmes sheepishly, “But would he come?”

  He stepped between us, and once again I gazed at his kind eyes and his reassuring moustache. “I should be proud and happy if I can be of any service.”

  It somehow seemed that, with this plan in place, the atmosphere lightened. Though I suspect now that it was mainly in anticipation of his upcoming work, Holmes became more agreeable - he even paid me a compliment. When I produced the letters that accompanied the pearls, so he could compare the handwriting, he said, “You are certainly a model client.”

  It made me smile like a proud student.

  From this interview, I descended from my stable life embroidered with puzzling details, down the rabbit’s hole into a world where those puzzles were all that a rational mind could hold onto amid encroaching chaos. By the end of that very night we met the deeply eccentric man who had sent me the pearls, met a butler with whom Mr. Holmes had boxed, and then seen a dead body in a locked room.

  Mrs. Forrester had not exaggerated Holmes’s miraculous abilities. At the appointed hour, we met at the Lyceum, and from there we were transported by carriage from the Lyceum Theatre to the residence of Mr. Thaddeus Sholto in South London, and thence to the Sholto family home, Pondicherry Lodge, in Norwood. Throughout the journey, Holmes would not be silent, cataloguing each road we took - in spite of the metropolis around us being entirely shrouded in night’s cloak. It was an impressive display, but it struck me as somewhat ostentatious. As I knew neither gentleman well, I half-suspected Holmes was trying to impress me with this skill. Watson in contrast remained silent, and I began to wonder whether he was shy or rude.

  If I had thought Holmes eccentric, upon our arrival in South London, I saw that he was positively mundane compared to Thaddeus Sholto. This man had surrounded his humdrum lodgings with Indian trappings - from every corner hung tapestries and paintings. Thaddeus was keen to show off his connoisseurship, which was rather dubious to say the least (hanging next to artwork by Salvator Rosa, and a fine Corot, was a considerably inferior Bouguereau - perhaps to be fair to him, Thaddeus was merely a man of eclectic tastes). Every other available alcove seemed to have an ornate Oriental vase or hookah ignobly stuffed inside.

  A prematurely bald man (albeit with a strange fringe of bright red hair) of thirty, with irregular yellow teeth, Thaddeus extended the air of gilded decay to himself, clad as he was in a silk kaftan and jewelled slippers.

  It may seem waspish to remember the man this way - and in truth, in the unfolding of these events, I came to understand him as an honourable man, if not to like him. My initial impression of him, I must say, significantly suffered from the manner in which he related the death of my poor father, Captain Arthur Morstan.

  It transpired that on that fateful night, my father had journeyed to Pondicherry to speak with Thaddeus’s father Major John Sholto. Their conversation was about the Agra treasure, a fortune that had built Major Sholto’s vast estate, and which by rights he ought to have shared with my father and two others. Thaddeus further explained that it turned to an argument, which aggravated my father’s weak heart. Thaddeus was only told of this altercation at the elder Sholto’s deathbed, when he also declared to his son that it was his intention to do right by me and restore my rightful share of the treasure Captain Morstan deserved. The secrecy of the gift was necessary as Thaddeus’s twin brother Bartholomew, disapproved of including me in this way.

  James - forgive me, for consistency’s sake I should refer to him as Dr. Watson when I write of this period before our marriage - has since told me that at this point I looked very faint. I remember that he saw my distress and hurriedly handed me a glass of water. As I drank the water, I tried to avoid becoming overly consumed with emotion by concentrating my gaze on Holmes. He leaned back in his chair with his eyes half-shut. His face had a bland look of distraction, and at that moment the stimulation he was getting from every macabre detail Thaddeus happily furnished him seemed very unsavoury.

  I thought the tale Thaddeus had told me was strange and horrifying enough. Not only had my father been dead these ten years - something I had come to know in my heart, if not acknowledge - his final act in life had been the fruitless resolution of such mercenary business. For the price it had cost him, I had dearly wished he could have forgotten the treasure, no matter what he was owed, and never thought again about Major Sholto, no matter how unjust he was. It was not the last time I was forced to re-examine my father’s conduct and wonder exactly how noble his actions had been.

  In fact though, this strange horror was a mere overture for the night. Once we had reached Pondicherry, by which time it was already well past eleven at night, I knew there could be no turning back. For here, Thaddeus’s twin brother Bartholomew lay murdered. I never set eyes on the ghastly sight - both of my companions immediately protected me from it. It was at that moment that I knew my worries about my benefactor were undoubtedly correct.

  That evening afforded me the opportunity to witness first hand the contrast between the methods of Holmes and Watson and the official police. While Holmes, Watson, and Thaddeus Sholto investigated the locked room at
the attic of Pondicherry, I waited downstairs with the maids. It was some time later that the police arrived, led by an exceptionally pompous and thuggish officer, Inspector Athelney Jones. He introduced himself to us brusquely and did not even pause for a statement before ascending to the house’s attic.

  “You may wish to know, sir, that Mister Thaddeus Sholto had involved Mister Holmes and Doctor Watson through myself,” I informed him.

  “Holmes? Sherlock Holmes?” Jones inquired.

  “Indeed.”

  “Oh dear. The theorist, back to haunt me.” The inspector in plain clothes accompanying him raised a sympathetic eyebrow, which suggested to me that Holmes was well known by these officers as ‘the theorist’, and that this name was by no means complimentary. “And I might have guessed that he would be depraved enough to involve … ladies in his sordid criminal investigations.”

  “On the contrary,” I declared. “It is I who have involved him.”

  At an even greater loss for words, Jones sighed again and excused himself from our company. I never spoke with him again, something I cannot say I regret, other than for some resentment that he deemed my part in the story so incidental as to not merit a proper interview.

  Later, I heard some testy exchanges between him and Holmes. It was at this point, overhearing the detective’s dry appraisals of his professional counterpart, that I became firmly convinced that I had made the right decision putting my case in the hands of this man, and the dear Dr. Watson.

  The remainder of the ‘Sign of Four’ case saw Holmes and Dr. Watson uncover a betrayal and robbery related to a treasure recovered at the Agra Fort in India. It was a dark tale rooted in greed, whose putative antagonist, a crippled ex-convict named Jonathan Small, was in many ways a misunderstood and sympathetic figure, despite his unrepentant murderousness. But for pity’s sake, the man endured the loss of his legs by crocodile, a wrongful imprisonment, and a passage of years and decades without something that was owed him. I was convinced that it was the compound of these dreadful calamities, not any inherent vice, that had driven him to the fanatical villain who cast his shadow over the Sholtos. In a perverse way I was even grateful to this man, for it was through Small’s account that I came to more fully understand that this background of corruption had eventually claimed the life of my father. It was not the hands of a savage curse that reached across to sunny England, but a thirst for lucre that was unmistakably English.