“I was working at speed and may have missed some details. To be honest, I don't know if I would have caught sight of another child, had there been one.”

“That's all right. Thank you.”

Mycroft rose. “We shall turn you free to sleep the sleep of the righteous. You have a room?”

“The Travellers' will have one.” He stood, a trifle stiffly, and shook hands all around. Mycroft led him to the door, but Holmes interrupted.

“Lofte?” The man turned to look back. “Altogether, a most impressive feat.”

The younger man's face was transformed by a sudden grin. “It was, wasn't it?” he said, and left.

When Mycroft came back, he was not carrying the photograph.

35

MYCROFT CLEARED AWAY THE EMPTY PLATTER and the glasses, and returned with an antique-looking bottle and smaller glasses. Having cocoa and red wine already arguing in my stomach, I turned down his offer.

“I've been saving this for you to try,” Mycroft told his brother. “I'd have brought it out for Mr Lofte, but I judged that in his condition, strong drink might render him unconscious.” The two men sipped and made appreciative noises and traded opinions on districts and pre-war (pre-Boer war) vintages before my ostentatious glance at my wrist-watch returned us to the task at hand.

“I had two more telephone calls from Lestrade today,” Mycroft said. “On the first, he informed me that he had, in fact, put out arrest warrants for both of you. On the second, he asked if you had fled the country with Damian Adler.”

“Has Damian fled the country?” I asked.

“So far as I could determine, Lestrade's evidence consists of Scotland Yard's inability to find him. So, Sherlock, what have you found for us amongst the primitive monuments?”

Holmes pulled a travel-stained rucksack out from under his chair, undoing the buckle and upending its contents onto the low table: three large and lumpy manila envelopes, their ties securely fastened.

Mycroft went to his desk for a stack of white paper, while Holmes picked up the first envelope and undid the tie, pulling out six sealed standard-sized envelopes of varying lumpiness.

One by one he slit the ends, shaking the contents of each onto a fresh sheet of paper: sandy soil in one; a coin in the next; two burnt matches; a handful of leaves and blades of grass, each stained with what could only be blood; four tiny, dark lumps that looked like pebbles; two different shoe-prints on butcher's paper, from a woman's heeled shoe and a larger man's boot, taken from the plaster casts Holmes had made, inked, and abandoned at the site-plaster casts make for a considerable weight to carry about the countryside.

When the six sheets were displaying their wares, he waited for us to look at them more closely, then began to return the objects to their envelopes. I picked up one of the pebbles, and found it softer than rock. Wax, perhaps. Or-gristle from a picnic lunch? Yes, I had seen their like before.

The second large envelope used four sheets of paper: one for grass with the same stains, one for a piece of cotton cording not more than half an inch long, and a third for a pinch of bi-coloured sand, light and dark brown. The fourth appeared to have nothing on it, except I had watched Holmes upend the envelope with great care. He handed me his powerful magnifying glass; I got to my knees for a closer look, and saw two tiny objects approximately the colour of the paper, little larger than thick eye-lashes. Like finger-nail clippings, without the curve.

With care, I slid the paper across the table to Mycroft and gave him the glass. When we had finished, Holmes packed this manila envelope away, and reached for the third.

This was the thickest, and its contents were similar to that of the others: spattered grass; twists of paper containing three different samples of soil, one of them pure sand; four identical wooden matches; a chewing-gum wrapper; six cigarette ends, none of them the same and two with lipstick stains, pink-red in one case and slightly orange in the other; half a dozen of the soft pebbles; a boot-print that apppeared identical to that in the first envelope; one white thread and the twig that had caught and pulled it; and a final object that Holmes had wrapped first in cotton wool, then in Friday's Times, rolled to make a stiff tube. He snipped the string holding the protective layers, revealing a dirty plaster shape approximately six inches long and curving to a wicked point: a plaster of Paris knife blade. I picked it up, lifting an eyebrow at Holmes.

“This is from a remote site in the Yorkshire Moors, a stone circle known as the High Bridestones. Albert Seaforth chose it as a place to commit suicide. I found it interesting that, after slitting his wrists, he drove the blade into the soil to clean it.”

“He was found with a knife in his hand,” I said. “The blade was bloody, his fingers were not. The blade was not this shape.”

Holmes said, “The hilt left an oval impression on the ground, with the slit in the centre. You can see where the plaster picked up the blood-stains.”

He packed away the envelope, and said, “We'll need the evidence from the Sussex site.”

“It's in my safe,” Mycroft said. “I'll get it.”

“I brought everything up when I heard Lestrade was out for our scalps,” I told Holmes. “I was afraid to leave it for him to find. There were finger-prints, on-”

“On the biscuit wrapper, so Mycroft said.”

“I was glad. Holmes, I am so glad I was wrong about Damian.”

“Not half so glad as I,” he replied.

“What were you doing at eight-thirty Wednesday night?” I asked abruptly.

“Wednesday? I would have been climbing over a church wall in Penrith to get away from a dog. Why do you ask?”

But Mycroft came back with the packet, and I just smiled and shook my head.

Holmes went through the same ritual of envelopes and paper: vegetation, sand, cigarette ends, a black thread, two wooden matches, three of the soft pebbles, and one of the tiny odd fragments that resembled finger-nails. Although in this case, one of those was easier to see against the white sheet, being lined in fading red-brown.

“What are those things?” I finally said.

“Mycroft?” Holmes asked of his brother.

“I haven't seen any for years, but they look to me like the trimmings of a quill pen.” Mycroft's slow voice vibrated with meaning, but it took me a moment to follow.

When I did, I snapped away from the tiny brown scrap, a cold finger trickling down my spine. “A pen? My God, do you mean he…”

I couldn't finish the sentence, so Holmes did. “Dipped a quill pen in his victim's blood and wrote with it? So it would appear.”

“Extraordinary,” Mycroft rumbled.

“But… I mean to say, I can understand-intellectually, I suppose, although not… I can just understand that a mad-man might want to write a message with a victim's blood, but then and there? Trimming his pen while the body lies at his feet, blood still…”

I gulped, unable to finish the sentence.

“Blood remains liquid but a short time,” Holmes said. “I ought to have known six days ago: Sand on chalk soil means something.”

“What, it meant that someone had been to the beach before visiting the Giant?”

“This is not beach sand, Russell. It is blotting sand.”

“Oh,” I said. “God.” I stared in disgust at the minuscule scraps of quill until Holmes had replaced them in their concealing paper, then I picked up his glass and tossed back a dose of brandy. It made me cough and caused my eyes to water, but Mycroft did not even rebuke me for my ill treatment of his precious liquid.