“At this, he sprang to his feet, but the shock of the occasion proved too much for him. He coughed and spluttered and began to weep, but then all at once clutched his chest and cried out in pain. A moment later he had fallen to the ground in a heap.

“I dashed into the room as Violet cried out in alarm, but it was clear at once that there was nothing we could do for him. He had stopped breathing, his eyes were wide and staring, and he was stone dead.

“At that very moment there came a sharp knock at the front door. ‘It must be Mr Falk, the newspaperman,’ said Violet in alarm. ‘Quickly! Help me get Percy into the back room!’

“We dragged him through there as quickly as we could, then Victoria went to admit the visitor. Violet had brought with her from the dispensary at Portsmouth a small bottle of chloral, in case of emergencies, and she decided at once that she would put some into Mr Falk’s tea. ‘It will not hurt him,’ said she. ‘It will just put him to sleep for a little while.’

“A minute or two later, she joined Mr Falk in the sitting room, and shortly afterwards Victoria took in the tea, with a few drops of chloral already in one of the cups. Within a few moments, Mr Falk had fallen into a deep sleep, and we were just carrying him out into the garden when there came another sharp rap at the front door. Victoria ran to answer it as we laid Mr Falk out on the lawn, then Violet joined her daughter at the front door, and found to her horror that the caller was the rightful occupier of the house, Mr Claydon, who had come home after all. Not only that, but she saw that a policeman was at that moment passing down the street. She decided, on the spur of the moment – Lord forgive her for her lies! – to brazen it out. Well, as you know, she succeeded and Mr Claydon departed. Then the three of us, Violet, Victoria and myself, left by the back door, through the garden and out into the back lane behind the house. So hurried was our departure that we forgot to remove the pictures Violet had brought with her, as you will have noticed. I travelled with Violet and her daughter as far as Waterloo, and saw them onto the train there. Then, seeing that a train from Southampton was due within the hour, I waited there until it arrived, when I met up with Mrs Claydon.”

“What did you intend to do about the body of Mr Slattery?” asked Holmes.

“I thought that Mrs Claydon and I could find it when we got back here, and then notify the authorities,” replied Miss Quinn. “As everything that could have gone wrong with our scheme seemed to have done so, I did not think that anything further could go amiss, until we reached Kendal Terrace and saw a police van waiting there and a huge crowd of people in the street.”

“This is a very grave business,” said Inspector Spencer, rising to his feet. “I must ask you to accompany me to the station and make a full statement there,” he continued, addressing Miss Quinn. “Failure to notify the authorities of a death is a very serious offence.”

“I was going to do so,” returned the housekeeper.

“So you say. But so everyone says who is arrested for not doing so. Then there is the question of the wilful assault on the person of Mr Falk by the administration of a dangerous drug, not to mention a possible charge of blackmail, extortion or demanding money with menaces from the deceased.”

“The woman was his wife, Spencer,” interjected Holmes, “and as such was surely entitled to some claim for financial support from him.”

“Perhaps so – if she really was his wife,” returned the policeman in his most official tone, “but that will be for others to consider. I will make my report and pass it to my superiors and they will decide what action should be taken.”

“Well, I’m off, anyhow,” said Linton Falk, springing to his feet. “What a story! I am obliged to you, Mr Holmes, for suggesting that I delay my departure. I thought I had a story then, but I have an even better one now!”

“You just make sure you stick to the facts, young man!” said Spencer in a stern tone, as the newspaperman made to leave the room. “You reporters are all the same: give you one fact and you make up three!”

A minute later, Holmes and I had left the house that had been the scene of such mysterious and surprising events, and were walking up the main road in the twilight.

“You can hardly maintain, after the events of this evening,” I remarked, “that the present age has ceased to produce interesting mysteries.”

“That is true,” conceded my companion. “And yet, after all, it was a simple affair.”

“I confess it did not strike me in that way,” I returned with a chuckle.

“Well, of course, it possessed a certain superficial complexity, but beneath the surface it was simple enough.”

“What do you think will become of Miss Quinn?”

“It is hard to say. Claydon strikes me as a decent and forgiving soul, so I don’t imagine he will press charges of any kind; but I doubt he will keep her on, for the bond of trust, which is essential between those sharing a household, has been broken. Besides, he has his wife’s opinion to accommodate, and she is, I perceive, made of somewhat sterner metal than her husband.”

“You are probably right,” I concurred. “What led you to suspect that the housekeeper was at the bottom of it all? And how on earth did you know she had a sister called Violet, and all the rest of it?”

“Ah! There you touch on the one really interesting point in the whole business,” replied my friend with enthusiasm. “Should you ever include an account of this case in that chronicle of my professional life which you have threatened for so long, Watson, you must ensure that you stress the importance of the slivers of glass on the sitting-room carpet, and the fact that there were two clocks in the room. These things constitute a perfect example – a text-book illustration, one might say – of the maxim that the solution of a problem is generally to be found by a close examination of its details.

“You see,” he continued, “when we entered the sitting room for the first time, upon our arrival at the house, Claydon remarked almost at once upon the unknown picture on the wall, the photograph upon the piano and the missing roses. But the first thing that caught my own eye was a reflected glint of light from something upon the floor. When I examined it, I found that it was a tiny sliver of glass. Then I saw a second, and a third, nearby, beneath one of the chairs. The glass was thin, but seemed fairly strong, and each of the slivers had a slight curve to it. It struck me that they might be from a broken wine glass, but I kept an open mind on the matter.

“When we discovered Slattery’s body, a quick investigation revealed that the glass on the face of his watch was broken. As I examined what remained of it, I could not doubt that the particles of glass in the sitting room were from the same source. Clearly the damage to the watch had occurred in the other room. I tried to close the cover of the watch, which was open, and found that I could not do so, as it had been twisted slightly on its hinges. This would have required some force, and I conjectured that the damage to the watch had been caused when its owner had fallen unconscious to the floor. I tried the watch in the waistcoat pocket. It was a tight fit and would not have slipped out as he fell. Therefore he had had it in his hand at the time he fell. This was suggested also by the damage to the hinge, which must have occurred while the lid was open.

“The shards of glass informed me that it was in the sitting room that Slattery had fallen. But why did he have his watch in his hand in the sitting room? For in the sitting room there is not one clock, but two, both working and both showing the correct time.”

“He might have taken it from his pocket by sheer force of habit,” I suggested, “oblivious to the presence of other timepieces in the room.”