“Now, Mrs Claydon,” Holmes continued after a moment. “Pray, give us a brief account of your day.”

“Very well,” said she. “At about ten o’clock this morning, I received a telegram from my brother, Lenny. It had been sent from Portsmouth.”

“But that cannot be!” interrupted Claydon. “Lenny is in New York, studying law!”

“I know that as well as you do,” returned his wife in a pathetic tone, “but I thought that perhaps some sudden misfortune had befallen him and driven him back home. The telegram asked me to come at once to Portsmouth, where he would meet me at the railway station and explain to me then how matters stood. Concerned that he might be in some terrible difficulties, I set off within the quarter-hour and reached Portsmouth in the early afternoon. There was no sign of Lenny there, and after waiting fretfully on a bench on the platform for nearly forty minutes, I gave my name to an official, and asked if any message had been left there for me. After hunting about the office for a while and consulting with his colleagues, he at length was able to show me a note which had been handed in late that morning, addressed to ‘Mrs Claydon, passenger – care of the station master’. I opened it and found it was from Lenny. He expressed regret for the trouble he was causing me, but said that he had been obliged to go on to Southampton, and asked that I join him there, when he would explain what was afoot. I did as he asked, reaching Southampton about teatime. There I waited for a further hour and a half, but there was no sign of my brother, nor any message left for me. Eventually, I gave up all hope of seeing him, and caught a train back to London. When I reached Waterloo station, I met Rosemary, who had recently arrived there herself, and we came home here together.”

“Do you have the telegram your brother sent?” asked Holmes.

Mrs Claydon shook her head. “The last time I can recall seeing it was when I was waiting at Portsmouth, so I think I must have left it there.”

“No matter,” said Holmes. “Do you have the note he left for you at Portsmouth?”

“Yes, I have that,” said she. “Here it is.”

She handed a folded sheet of paper to Holmes, who glanced at it for a moment and then held it up so we could all see it. It was a very brief missive, containing the message she had described to us and no more.

“Is this definitely your brother’s hand?” asked Holmes, examining the script closely.

“I believe so,” replied Mrs Claydon. “Are you suggesting that it might be a forgery?”

“Well, it is possible, is it not, that the sole purpose of the telegram and note was to get you out of the house and keep you away from London for as long as possible? Do you have a recent letter of your brother’s from America, so that we could compare the handwriting?”

Mrs Claydon opened the top of the bureau, extracted a long white envelope, and passed it to Holmes. He took out the letter and held it up beside the note.

“It is close enough,” said he, “although it would not be too difficult to counterfeit your brother’s hand in so short a note. However, the issue is not a crucial one: if you hear nothing further from your brother, as I suspect, we may take it that, however cleverly done, this note is indeed a forgery. Let us move on now to our last witness, Miss Rosemary Quinn.”

“My account will not take long, sir,” began the housekeeper. “About three hours after Mrs Claydon had left, a telegram arrived here, addressed to me. It was, I found, from Mrs Claydon herself, and had been sent from Portsmouth railway station. It instructed me to take five pounds from the tobacco jar on the mantelpiece and bring it at once to Portsmouth. I packed the maid, Susan, off to her parents’ house at Battersea – she is a mere slip of a girl, and I could not leave her here alone all day – and set off at once. I caught the first train I could, but when I reached Portsmouth, there was no sign of Mrs Claydon. I waited for nearly an hour by the station entrance, then I enquired at the booking office if they knew anything of the matter. Eventually someone there remembered that a woman of that name had waited there for some time about lunch time, but had eventually left for Southampton. I asked if she had left any message for me, but was informed that she had not. I could not think what to do for the best then. I waited a little longer, but eventually decided I would have to give up and return home. It seemed pointless to follow Mrs Claydon to Southampton, for I did not know whereabouts she might be there, and I thought it very unlikely that I would find her. When I got back to Waterloo, I saw that a train was due from Southampton shortly, so I decided to wait and see if Mrs Claydon was on it. To my relief, she was, but I could see at once that her day had been even more tiring and fruitless than my own.”

“Presumably,” said Holmes, addressing Mrs Claydon, “you sent no telegram from Portsmouth.”

“No, I did not,” returned she with emphasis.

“Do you have the telegram?” Holmes asked Miss Quinn.

The housekeeper shook her head, an expression of regret upon her face. “I took it with me,” said she, “but I think I must have left it on the train, for now I can’t find it anywhere.”

“Well, well, it is not important,” said Holmes. “Does anyone else have anything to add?”

There was a general murmuring of voices. The housekeeper went to make a pot of tea, as a discussion of the day’s happenings began.

“If you ask me,” remarked Claydon at length, “the whole business is sheer lunacy! These strange people come in here, take over my house for a while, and then leave again. What could be more pointless and insane than that?”

“They didn’t all leave again,” interjected Inspector Spencer. “One of them was still here when we arrived, if you recall, lying on the dining-room floor.”

“That’s horrible!” cried Mrs Claydon.

“Horrible or not, madam, it is true, nevertheless. It may be that while they were here, these people fell out for some reason, there was violence, and the man, Slattery – if it is indeed he – was murdered.”

“But there were no signs of violence on him,” observed Claydon.

“Well, perhaps they poisoned him,” returned the policeman in a vague tone. “After all, poisoning was rather in their line, seeing as how they slipped something unpleasant into Mr Falk’s drink – or so he says.”

“That’s what puzzles me,” said Falk, “why they should summon me here, only to give me some kind of sleeping-draught almost as soon as I arrived, and then dump me unceremoniously in the back garden!”

“That’s part of the lunacy of it all,” agreed Claydon, nodding his head. “None of it makes any sense!”

“Anyhow, I’d best be off, if no one objects,” said Falk, rising to his feet and looking enquiringly at the policeman. “I’ll have to write a report on Percy Slattery’s death pretty quickly, otherwise I’ll not get it into the morning edition. What is it, Mr Holmes?”

My friend had held his hand up as the housekeeper entered the room with a large tray containing two teapots and a pile of cups and saucers.

“Stay a moment,” said Holmes, “and take tea with us.”

“I don’t know,” replied Falk in a dubious tone. “The last time I had tea here, it didn’t entirely agree with me.”

“I think the experience this time will be somewhat more stimulating,” said Holmes with a chuckle.

I had observed that while the others had been discussing the day’s events, Holmes had remained in silent thought, as if weighing the matter up. Now, as was clear to me who knew his habits well, it was as if he had reached a decision. What he was about to do or say, I had no idea at all, but that the next few minutes would be highly interesting, I could not doubt.

I watched as the housekeeper poured out the tea and passed round the cups. She had also brought in a plate of small cakes, which she placed on the little table by my chair. For some moments Holmes regarded these cakes, a thoughtful expression upon his face.