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“Holmes!” I called, trotting across the lawn as briskly as I could. “Holmes!”

Even at fifty yards I could see he was deeply absorbed in his observation of the new hive. His profile never moved; he merely waved an off-putting hand in my direction. He did not, therefore, see the fair-haired young woman who was nearly chasing me across the sward. She had appeared without warning on the doorstep of our cottage and asked to see Holmes. One minute’s conversation with her had impressed upon me the importance of giving Holmes adequate warning before she found him. But she had refused to wait for me to bring him back to the house, and now despite my efforts she was gaining on me. Her progress was impeded by her shoes and her somewhat shorter legs; but contrary to popular wisdom, time does not heal all wounds, and in the years since the Garrideb Incident my bad leg had only grown worse.

“Holmes!” I whispered furiously, casting an anxious glance over my shoulder at our visitor’s broad-brimmed brown hat and the determined features framed by it. “Holmes, we have a client.”

Holmes stood up with a hiss of annoyance. “I would not willingly call you a liar, Watson, but I must point out that your statement can only be untrue.”

“But Holmes—“

“If you will recall, I have retired to lead the life of a hermit and keep bees on a small farm in the South Downs. And that is precisely what I will be engaged in doing, today and every day thereafter.”

From behind me, a feminine voice said—with a curiously refined version of the local accent--“But this is not the South Downs, Mr. Holmes. This is Yorkshire. And you’re not leading the life of a hermit,” she added, glancing in my direction. “Are you, sir.”

Outside of the criminal world, Holmes rarely meets with a person whose disregard for social conventions is greater than his own. The experience rendered him momentarily speechless.

She was a neat little thing—no great beauty, but well-shaped, and without a hair out of place. Though she was dressing herself on a very modest income, her traveling costume was as pleasing as it could be. After years on end of fresh air and apiculture, it was a positive relief to set eyes on a bit of modern style.

“I beg your pardon,” said Holmes. “But apart from the obvious facts that you are recently married, that you have lately suffered some terrible grief, and that your employers maintain what must be a highly frustrating state of indecision about whether you are a housemaid or a lady’s maid, I am afraid I am quite at a loss as to who you are or what your business is on our property.”

Our visitor smiled briefly. “Aunt Violet told me you were a wizard, Mr. Holmes.”

“There are no wizards,” Holmes retorted. “Any detective who cannot recognize a housemaid’s hands at first sight ought to be shot. Your wedding ring is still bright as the day you first wore it, and the clothes that my friend Dr. Watson is admiring with such a deplorable lack of subtlety are very well tailored but slightly too large for you. They have also been expertly and almost invisibly mended, more than once. As for ‘aunt Violet’--”

“I mean Miss Violet Smith, Mr. Holmes—now Mrs. Cyril Morton. My name is—was—Anna Smith. I was married last winter, and now I am Mrs. John Bates. It was Aunt Violet who told me where to find you.”

“She could not possibly know,” Holmes snapped.

I cleared my throat.

“Watson? You have some light to shed on this mystery?”

“My dear Holmes, as per a common informal arrangement of which you are well aware, the former Miss Violet Smith receives ten per cent of my royalties for ‘Solitary Cyclist.’ Naturally we must keep in touch. You remain actively employed in the world of letters, however retired you may be from the world of crime.”

Holmes received this information in grim silence. Our visitor compressed her lips and returned his glare.

“Come now, Holmes,” I said. “The young lady has come a long way and is--if you will allow me the liberty, Mrs. Bates--in great distress. You can’t simply say that you are not at home to callers.”

“Mrs. Bates,” Holmes began, with a half-hearted attempt at civility. “Please understand that I am no longer a practicing detective. I work only for king and country, and thankfully since the late war ended king and country seem able to do without my services. Do please accept my best wishes for a solution to your problem, and take it off to someone younger and stronger and eager for the chase.”

“No,” said the woman.

“My dear—“ I began.

“No,” she repeated. “I’m not leaving until you say you’ll help me. I don’t care what excuses you make or how insulting you become. If you put me bodily off the property today I will come back tomorrow. I am not a lady, Mr. Holmes. I am a desperate woman. I have no shame, no fear, and no reason at all to take no for an answer.”

She began to shiver, just perceptibly.

“I have tried to save him myself. I cannot. I need help. I need your help.”

Unwillingly, Holmes said, “To whom do you refer?”

“To my husband, John Bates, who is rotting in a filthy gaol for a murder he never did.”

Tears streamed from her eyes and a stifled sob pulsed in her throat. When her clasped hands began to tremble, I put a hand on her shoulder. The touch drew Holmes’s eyes to me. I met his meaningful gaze with one of my own.

“Well, Mrs. Bates,” Holmes finally said. “Come with us back to the house and let us have some tea. You can tell us your story for nothing, and any advice I may give you will be worth just as much. The bees can wait at least that long.”

The bees, I fear, had a longer wait than Holmes imagined. Mrs. Bates’s story was long and intricate and intertwined with the lives of nearly two dozen other people in whom I was not the least bit interested. But the sum of it was this: in 1912, this John Bates had come to the great house of Downton Abbey to serve as valet to Lord Grantham. He had been wounded in the South African war and there had initially been some difficulty about his lameness; but years of intrigue and melodrama later, he had made himself indispensible and the former Anna Smith were in love. Bates was thus inspired to set about freeing himself of Vera Bates, his estranged wife. Long ago Bates had voluntarily served a prison term for a theft that Vera had committed—a gallant sacrifice which Vera had rewarded by abandoning him. She reappeared after the death of Bates’s mother, and Bates thought it possible to persuade her to a divorce. But Vera’s malicious caprice threw up obstacle after obstacle until at last, thanks to a generous cash payment from Bates, the divorce was all but settled. Then, at the last moment, Vera caused a smash-up by telling the judge about the generous cash payment. Bates traveled to London to attempt to reason with Vera, returning in poor spirits and with an unexplained wound on one cheek. The following day Vera Bates was found dead in her flat, having eaten a pie laced with arsenic. Sensing that the wind was against him, Bates married Anna quietly at the registrar’s. In short order Bates was arrested, tried, and convicted of his first wife’s murder.

“I know how it looks,” said our visitor, clutching my damp handkerchief in one clenched hand. “But I know that my husband is innocent. He’s the best man I’ve ever known, Mr. Holmes, and I know he could not do this. And yet all the evidence is against him.”

“Excuse me, Mrs. Bates,” said Holmes. “Circumstances are against him. As to evidence, it does not appear from your most absorbing narrative that the official police scraped together enough to fill an egg-cup. This must sound to you like a purely technical distinction, but I assure you that it is not.”

“But…there’s Vera's letter, and the fact that he bought rat poison,” she said, startled by his vehemence.

Holmes snorted. “I know, or rather once knew, that part of London well. Not buying rat poison would have exposed him to charges of criminal negligence. As for the letter to her friend in which the first Mrs. Bates expresses fear of her husband’s anger, what is so remarkable in that? No doubt he was angry. If every man who was angry with his wife was compelled to kill her, our streets would run ankle-deep in blood. No, Mrs. Bates,” said Holmes, leaning toward her. “It looks bad. But a court of law is not one of those dreadful modern detective novels, and a man doesn’t hang simply because he’s the most likely suspect. At least he shouldn’t. Watson, before we pack our bags, would you care to make a wager about exactly which of our erstwhile colleagues at Scotland Yard was in charge of bungling this investigation?”

There was a sharp intake of breath from our visitor.

“Yes, Mrs. Bates,” said Holmes. “After all, it is a matter of king and country. Isn’t that right, Watson?”

“Absolutely, Holmes. A veteran of our colonial wars, wounded in the service of—“

“Quite so. Mrs. Bates, you may consider me engaged. Before we take any further steps I have three possibly painful questions to ask you.”

Our visitor lifted her chin and clasped her hands. “Ask away, Mr. Holmes.”

“First, has your husband related to you what passed at his last interview with Vera Bates?”

She shook her head. “No, Mr. Holmes. I asked and asked and he would only say that it wouldn’t be any use for anyone to know. The police questioned him, of course; but I know there’s more happened than what he told them.”

“Well, he must be persuaded to tell us the rest.”

“I know it,” she said. “I know he’s trying to spare me something. He’s got some idea in his head that it will ruin me to hear about it, and he must keep silent for my sake—as if anything could be worse than this! But…” She shook her head, laughed a little, and looked at me. “It’s a strange thing, Dr. Watson. I love even the things about him that drive me mad.”

“Yes,” I said. “One does.”

“Now for the second question,” Holmes said, with a sharp glance in my direction. "You say your husband nearly got his divorce on the grounds of Mrs. Bates's infidelity. Did he tell you what this 'proof' was, or who the other party is?"

Anna shook her head. "I don't think he knew who the man was. He said it wasn't letters, or anything like that--that it was more definite. He said he didn't like to say exactly what but that the judge had accepted it as a fact."

"Hm," Holmes responded. “Well, no matter. And now for the third question. Mrs. Bates…I wonder if you have a theory about why—since he did not kill Vera Bates—it looks so very much as if he did.”

Our client let out a sob that was half a scream.

“I don’t know, Mr. Holmes,” she said. “I can’t account for it. I can only suppose that my poor husband is the unluckiest man on earth.”

For a few moments her weeping was the only sound.

“Watson,” said Holmes at last, “I think there is no time to lose. Mrs. Bates intends a visit to the gaol in York; we will drive her down, and begin the investigation at once.”

“Oh,” said our client. “Oh yes, thank you so much, Mr. Holmes. I’ll get my things.”

The poor woman was off like a shot.

“Watson,” Holmes whispered, urgently.

I put an arm around his shoulders.

“My dear Holmes,” I said. “I will interview the husband. Surely you will need to consult the records of the trial.”

Holmes nodded. “Thank you, Watson.”

I looked in his eyes and, once again, my heart broke for him.

He leaned on me for a moment. And then said, with a laugh, “Poor Mr. Bates. If we do save him, he may someday accumulate as many wives as you had.”

* * *

You must excuse my failure to provide a sensational description of the gaol’s looming and dark facade. I know my readers enjoy such things, but I, at this time of life, cannot. I will say only that it appeared to me as if this gaol had been expressly designed to hale any remaining wisps of hope right out of the breast of any man who looked upon it. The waiting room was, unfortunately, quite full. I crowded onto the bench next to Mrs. Bates. The ardent anticipation that transfigured her face was almost painful to look upon. I was still smarting from the requisite pre-visit search, and finding that I was in fact far less ready for this than I had imagined.

I heard her gasp. And even if he had not been heading our way as fast as his lame leg would let him, I would have known Bates by the joy that lit up his face when he saw Anna. He was a powerfully built man in his forties—thick-set, dark-haired, and not at all handsome. And yet it was easy enough to see that he was beautiful in her eyes.

They exchanged some secret greeting that evidently stood in for the kiss they were forbidden to share, and he sat down on the bench. “Who’s this?” he said, turning to me.

Any other man in his position would have been filled with fear and suspicion at the sight of a strange man sitting next to his wife at visiting-time—even if that man was nearing seventy and rather stout, with a grey moustache and a game leg. Mr. Bates was merely curious; and as his eyes met mine I felt that he was reading me the way Holmes would read a client.

“My name is Dr. John Watson,” I said. “My friend and colleague, Mr. Sherlock Holmes—“

Mr. Bates let out a strange little cry. I recognized, even in this incongruous place, all the signs that indicate that the person with whom one is conversing is about to say that he has read every one of the Sherlock Holmes stories—multiple times—and then uncork a bottle of ghastly and embarrassing gush.

But Mr. Bates, instead, turned eagerly back to his wife. “Tell me it’s not a joke, Anna,” said Mr. Bates. “Are they—are they really—“

“Yes,” she said. “Mr. Holmes has taken your case. He’s going to find out what happened and clear your name and get you out of this place.”

Mr. Bates’s mouth began to tremble.

“Mr. Bates,” I said, when his wife had helped him regain his composure. “Anna has told us what she knows. I am charged with finding out what she doesn’t know.”

“Of course,” he said. “But I cannot think of any clue that Anna and I haven’t talked over and over. It’s our favorite topic of conversation, apart from Thomas’s comeuppance.”

Anna said, “They need to know what happened between you and Vera when you went up to London that time.”

He fell silent.

“I didn’t kill her,” he said to me.

“My dear fellow,” I answered. “If we believed you had I should not be here. But Holmes insists on having all the facts at his disposal. We will consult the trial documents, of course; but Mrs. Bates thinks that you are keeping something back out of what she believes is a misguided desire to protect her.”

His face was impassive; but in his eyes I could see agony.

“I can’t,” he said, looking furtively around. “Not here.”

I glanced at the guard, who was taking a keen interest in our conversation.

“What about putting it in a letter?”

He shook his head. “They read all my letters before they send them out. It's not that I'm afraid of hurting my case, Dr. Watson--things couldn’t get any blacker--but…”

I realized quite suddenly that if I looked, for one more minute, at his poor miserable face and the shame in his eyes, something terrible would happen inside me, and the interview would end with Anna trying to help a broken and blubbering old man to the door. Desperation prompted inspiration.

“Are you allowed books in here?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Mr. Bates, cautiously.

“Would you like a signed copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes?”

“Very much,” he answered.

His eyes were sharp now, his brain busy working, and I found I would be able to stand it after all.

“I’ll send you one,” I said. “If it inspires you, you may get the results to Anna and she will deliver your message to us.”

The whistle blew the warning. I stood up and stepped briskly to the door, leaving Anna and her husband to make their goodbyes. I had not wanted to watch. And yet I saw their parting as clear as day, even in the hall outside. Even with my eyes closed.

* * *

“Well, Holmes,” I said, as he got into the car. “What have you been doing?”

He sat for a moment, wrapped in thought, while I pulled out onto the road.

“I have been trying to decide which of our great British institutions has disappointed me most today: the police, the legal profession, or the jury.”

“Indeed.”

“Watson, I am as you know a lifelong student of human incompetence. But never in all my dealings with the official machinery of law and order have I been privileged to witness an absurdity comparable to the trial of Mr. John Bates. The transcript reads like the condensed score of a whole Wagnerian opera of failure.”

“Really,” I said.

“For one thing, his lawyer was dreadful,” Holmes began. “I suppose the Earl of Grantham meant well by lending Mr. Bates his own attorney; but unless Mr. Murray knows estate law much better than he knows criminal law, Downton Abbey cannot be long for this world. The man introduced no exhibits, made no objections, and did not cross-examine anyone. He seems to have believed that all he had to do was put the Earl of Grantham on the stand and induce him to say that the defendant was a good man. Even in the eighteenth century that wouldn’t have sufficed, let alone the twentieth. It’s all the more infuriating because the prosecution’s case was so weak.”

The blood was rising in him as his anger mounted, and I found it difficult to keep my attention on the roads.

“The only evidence entered was the coroner’s report showing she died of arsenic poisoning, and the tests indicating that the source of the poison was the pie. Very well. How did the poison get into the pie? What was the time of death? Were there signs of struggle? Were there footprints on the kitchen floor? Were there fingerprints on her body? She was found, apparently, prostrate on the floor near the broken remains of a china teapot. And? And nothing. I can only assume that there was in fact no investigation of the scene. Otherwise, one is forced to conclude that all the material evidence was deliberately suppressed, as precisely none of it found its way into the prosecution’s case. Instead, the King’s counsel sought to deprive a man of his life and freedom on the basis of a few ominous remarks let drop within the hearing of the set of spies and intriguers populating his place of work. That is the oddest thing of all, Watson—the great pains the prosecuting attorney took to wring from each of Mr. Bates’s very reluctant friends and colleagues the one piece of semi-incriminating dialogue each had overheard. One would think that instead of building a murder case, the prosecutor simply desired to hurt the poor man’s feelings.”

“But Holmes,” I said, “one cannot deny that Mr. Bates had means, motive, and opportunity.”

“No, one absolutely cannot deny it; and that, my dear Watson, is the strongest point in his favor.”

“I don’t see how.”

“Let us imagine the worst. Let us suppose that instead of the upright, decent, honest, and gallant man that nearly all of his intimates and associates believe him to be, Mr. Bates is in fact a man capable of cold-bloodedly poisoning his wife in order to get her out of the way. Let us suppose, even, that he does not sincerely love Anna--that he is one of those handsome silver-tongued devils who get credulous women into their power for some nefarious purpose of their own.”

“That he cannot be,” I said. “His physique, even allowing for the degradations of prison life, is not calculated to flutter the heart of the common housemaid.”

“Hm,” Holmes said. “Another point in his favor. Well, let us suppose, leaving out the handsomeness, that he is a thorough blackguard who has dishonestly gained the trust and love not only of our client but of the Earl of Grantham, who after all has known Mr. Bates for more than a decade. Such a blackguard must be a cunning rogue, a patient plotter, and a rare actor. And we are to accept that at the moment when all his plans are coming to maturity, this Machiavel of manipulation lets everyone in the house know that he is traveling to London to confront his hated wife, taking care first to be overheard expressing his hatred and resentment of her, and to gratuitously remark to his employer that he desires his wife’s death. He kills his wife there and then, using poison that he knows the police will trace back to him, and deliberately undermines any alibi he might be planning to construct by arriving later than expected—explaining, the better to incite the curiosity of his fellow-servants, that he walked all the way from the train station on his wounded leg. By this brilliant strategy he provides himself with an eager audience of eavesdroppers for the moment at which he chooses to tell Anna that his interview with Vera was the scene of some unimaginable horror. I’m sorry, Watson; a man is either an imbecile or he isn’t. The same wretch cannot be both the subtlest schemer the devil ever inspired and the merest bungler ever to swing from a noose.”

I considered this for a moment.

“The most peculiar thing about the trial,” Holmes went on, “is that it is not clear how the prosecution even knew that these incriminating remarks of Bates had been made. Astonishingly, none of the witnesses from Downton Abbey were deposed before the trial. The prosecutor referred to Mr. Bates’s interview; but I’ve seen the transcript of that, and of course Mr. Bates, though perhaps honest to a fault, was intelligent enough not to volunteer the fact that he had wished his wife dead in the Earl’s presence.”

“How do you account for it, then?”

“Unless the prosecuting attorney has been invisibly and spectrally present at Dowton Abbey and somehow observing and recording everyone's actions like some omniscient camera,” Holmes mused, “I must conclude that the prosecution had an informant at Downton—most likely someone who had free access to the servants’ hall. Working from that premise, Watson, I have an assignment for you in the days to come—if you will accept it.”

“I will be glad to help, as always, in any way I can.”

“I have taken the liberty of purchasing some reading material for you.”

He held up the book. Glancing over at its cover, I was somewhat alarmed to read the words The Compleat Gentleman’s Gentleman, Revised Sixth Edition.

“Holmes, you can’t mean…”

“We must have access to the servants, Watson; and they must not know what we are about. We will ask our client to take one of the Crawleys into her confidence, and persuade this person to invite me to Downton under an assumed identity. You will come with me—“

“—as your valet.”

“My dear fellow, pray believe me when I say that I intend no reflection on your…on our…”

“Why can’t you be my valet?”

Holmes thought about this in silence. When I glanced over at him, he was smiling, so naturally and happily that I felt my heart twist.

“No, Watson,” he said, shaking his head. “The possibilities are indeed enticing; but no. I would never pass. You know yourself that I am an utter stranger to the clothes-brush. I cannot even brew a pot of tea without doing us both an injury. I should be most shamefully exposed within minutes of my arrival.”

“I cannot deny it, Holmes.”

“It’s settled then,” Holmes said happily. “We shall return home; you will study your temporary profession while I run down to London to find out what I can; and then we will embark together on the adventure of Downton Abbey.”

Holmes braced himself with one arm as the car swerved. I gave the wheel another wrench, rattled us off the road onto the grass shoulder, and put on the brake while I searched my pockets for a handkerchief.

“My dear Watson,” Holmes said, touching the tears on my face. “What is the matter?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Only…it’s so good to have you back.”

He lifted my hand gently off the wheel and pressed it in his own.

“Yes, Watson,” he said softly. “I’m back.”

We sat there for a few moments, listening to the soft rain that had begun to fall.

“Come, Watson!” he shouted gaily, flinging my hand from him. “The game’s afoot!”

Our car lurched happily back onto the road, slicing through the raindrops as we sped toward our next chapter.

* * *
“Some post at last, Watson!” Holmes called, waving a bundle of tiny sealed envelopes. “One from Lady Mary Crawley, one from our old friend Lestrade, and one…yes…one from our client.”

I tried not to imagine what thoughts had been in Lady Mary Crawley’s mind as she addressed that envelope. Our journey to London had not taken us to fashionable quarters. Holmes, with his mania for steeping himself in the crime’s atmosphere, insisted on staying in a significantly dilapidated boarding-house near the former abode of the former Mrs. Bates. It was all one to him, since he spent little time in our dingy room, preferring to scamper about investigating the neighborhood while I was cooped up listening to the skitter of rodent feet behind the wallboards while poring over The Compleat Gentleman’s Gentleman.

Holmes threw himself into a torn leather armchair, and began opening the letters with a paring-knife.

“We do have a letter-opener,” I observed.

Of course he paid no attention, deep in his perusal of the first missive.

“Lestrade has little to add, you will be unsurprised to hear,” Holmes said. “This document is remarkable more as a touching proof of the loyalty of old friends than as a contribution to our investigation. He has interviewed Strether, the young detective who superintended the police investigation, and expresses himself in a most entertaining manner regarding the young man’s shortcomings. How does he put it… ‘For Inspector Strether, as for many of the younger men on the Yard, a dead wife and a husband with a police record are the only two terms you need to solve any equation.’ I feel for friend Lestrade, Watson, I truly do. The young officers are well up in the new forensic technology, but it seems to go along with a decline in intelligence.”

I moved on, with a sigh, to an extremely long excursus on the proper pressing of shirt-cuffs.

“Excellent!” Holmes cried. “Lady Mary has secured an invitation for us for Friday next. I shall write and advise the current Mrs. Bates of our imminent arrival. By the way, Watson, I am presenting myself as Mr. Altamont Grainger, a gentleman whose dabbling in chemistry led him to invent a new and very lucrative process for treating newsprint so that it takes the ink better. They will look me up in Burke’s as soon as they hear who I am, so it is no good pretending to a title or an estate. Lady Mary will explain that I am an old friend of Sir Richard Carlyle—“

Holmes stopped when he heard my involuntary hiss.

“Yes, it is rather fine, isn’t it, Watson? Did you know that before she married Mr. Matthew Crawley, Lady Mary was engaged to our friend Mr. Carlyle?”

“Thank God she broke with him.”

“Amen. So, Lady Mary met me, she liked me, when she last encountered me in London she invited me to shoot at Downton sometime, and so on. Her widowed aunt Lady Rosamond will also be of the party, and Lady Mary warns me in the prettiest terms not to be too charming to her. Your name, by the way, is Charles Milverton.”

“Holmes! You didn’t!”

“No, Watson, I didn’t. In fact, you will be Mr. Watson. It is a common enough name and it will prevent your giving yourself away by failing to respond to your alias.”

I let out a sigh of relief.

“And now…” Holmes tore open the third letter, unfolded the pages, turned them round, and let out a whoop of triumph.

“You’ve done it, Watson!” he shouted, brandishing the reverse side of the paper at me. I could see line upon line of stick figures drawn on it, whirling in their eternal dance, waving their tiny flags.

“Mr. Bates has done it, I should say.”

“My dear fellow, take credit for once when it is offered. It was a brilliant move perfectly executed. Mr. Bates has taken your hint, and thanks to your very painstaking explication of the gangster code in “The Dancing Men,” he has written out, in cypher, the whole narrative of his meeting with Vera on the back of what appears to be a routine letter to Anna. I will not be so ungallant as to read the conjugal missive, but I will start decoding the other message posthaste.”

He smiled at me, and I felt almost like a young man.

“Come, Watson,” he said. “What of your researches into the mystic brotherhood of mansevants? What have you learned today?”

I closed the book with a smile.

“I have learned,” I said, “that I am, in fact, already your valet. Indeed, I have been serving in that capacity for decades, without pay.”

Holmes laughed, though I thought he was eyeing me rather apprehensively.

“After this case is closed,” I said, “I have a good mind to teach you how to mend your own clothes. For now, however, I must beg that you come with me to your tailor’s, because your current wardrobe is certainly inadequate for a visit to one of England’s great houses.”

“Later,” Holmes said, snatching up Bates’s missive. “Once I have decoded this letter, I am at your disposal.”

He worked away at it while I penetrated deeper into the mysteries of stain removal.

An exclamation of mingled astonishment and dismay recalled my attention to him.

“Watson…” he said, spreading the papers out over the table. “Watson…come and look at this.”

I read Holmes’s translation of the dancing men.

“My God,” I said.

Holmes merely shook his head.

“Is it possible there was some error in the…”

“No,” Holmes said. “No, our Mr. Bates is clearly a highly intelligent and adaptive man, and I can find no inconsistencies in his use of the symbols. He has adopted exactly the system you detail in your story, and I have decoded them according to the same system. And yet his narrative runs…thus.”

I read it again from the beginning. It did not help.

“Anna writes in her cover letter that Mr. Bates has asked that we tell her only as much as we judge that she needs to know,” said Holmes.

I let out a low whistle.

“Well, Watson?” Holmes said, evidently still baffled. “The fair sex remains your department. How much does our client need to know?”

I considered my reply carefully.

“All of it,” I said.

“All of it?” Holmes ejaculated.

“Yes. All of it.”

“You believe,” Holmes said, slowly, “that our client needs to know that on the last afternoon of Vera Bates’s life, Mr. Bates committed what I cannot help but perversely consider the sin of having sexual intercourse with his own wife?”

“I do,” I said.

“Would that news not…well…crush her?”

“No,” I said. “I do not believe it will. I have seen them together, Holmes, and I know who Mr. Bates loves and so, certainly, must she. He obviously believes that when Anna discovers that he made love with Vera on their last visit—“

“I do not know that I would use that term for it,” Holmes demurred.

“Well, yes, from Mr. Bates’s description it does not appear that love for Vera was uppermost in his mind. Nevertheless, he believes that once our client learns what really passed between them, her love for him will die. I understand why he believes this, but he is wrong, Holmes,” I said, my voice rising despite my intentions. “He is wrong. Just as you were.”

I do not know why Holmes looked at me with that stunned expression. Surely he had been thinking about it too.

“I don’t deserve you, Watson,” Holmes finally said.

“You do!” I shouted. “You do. That is the lesson, Holmes. That is what Providence meant to teach you. If indeed Providence still wants anything to do with either of us.”

Holmes turned the letter over and over in his hands, watching the dancing men flash back and forth. I wondered if, in some ways, even after all this time, love for him was still a cryptic message. If he could understand it only with difficulty, after laborious and meticulous translation.

“Well,” he said. “I will try to deserve you. How’s that?”

I could not help but return his smile. “I suppose it will have to do.”

“Let us to the tailor’s, Watson,” he said. “I put myself entirely in your hands.”

* * *

My work with Holmes had taken us to many a great house in the past—but never under precisely these circumstances. A detective—even a world-famous one—is typically not greeted by a line of housemaids and footmen standing stiffly at attention, all smarting under the sharp surveillance of their housekeeper and butler. When Holmes stepped through the car door that I opened for him, I could not suppress the feeling that I had entered an entirely different world. He had dyed his thinning hair a dark chestnut color, and stained his newly-sprouted moustache to match. Climbing down onto the gravel with a careless swing of his cane, strolling up to Lady Mary Crawley with an ease and grace that assured all and sundry that he was perfectly at home here, he looked not only completely different from the Holmes I knew at home, but at least five years younger. I watched him so long I nearly forgot to shut the car door.

My one attempt at disguise had been to shave off my own moustache. I regretted it instantly; but it certainly did change my appearance.

“This is my man Watson,” Holmes said, gesturing negligently in my direction.

“Of course.” Lady Mary nodded to the butler, who walked discreetly toward me. I hurried to meet him.

“My name is Carson, Mr. Watson,” he said. “Come this way.”

With some trepidation, I left Holmes to play his part and followed the path of my new destiny. It proved a laborious one, leading first up the stairs to the sumptuous guest room in the humorously named Bachelors’ Row in which Holmes was to be installed, then down again and up a different set of stairs to the bare garret room which was to be my demesne, and down again, through subterranean paths and pantries, to the servants’ hall.

The men and women sitting at the table rose when Mr. Carson entered. “Everyone,” he said, “this is Mr. Watson, who looks after Mr. Altamont Grainger, who is here for the week-end as a guest of Lady Mary. Mr. Watson, may I present the Countess of Grantham’s maid, Miss O’Brien…”

A hard-featured woman wearing an ominously stiff dark frock and an equally severe topknot inclined her head almost imperceptibly, piercing me with a look of supreme contempt.

“Mrs. Bates, who looks after Lady Mary Crawley…”

Anna smiled at me and nodded encouragingly.

“Mr. Moseley, valet to Mr. Matthew Crawley…”

The balding man who sat mending a dress shirt turned his moonlike face to me, regarding me with a sad pair of eyes that put me very much in mind of a basset hound.

“Mr. Watson,” he said.

“Mr. Moseley,” I replied.

“His lordship’s valet, Mr. Barrow, is of course not to be found when he’s wanted, but you will encounter him soon enough, no doubt when you least expect it…and this, rather unexpectedly, is Daisy, our kitchen maid. Daisy,” he said, to the dark-haired, diffident girl who had tentatively approached from the passageway, “is there some explanation for your presence here, and your consequent absence from the kitchen?”

“Please, Mr. Carson,” Daisy began, “it’s Alfred.”

“What about Alfred, Daisy?” Carson said, summoning up from somewhere new reserves of icy dignity.

“Just come, please, Mr. Carson. He’s in the kitchen.”

Heaving the sigh of a tragic hero who has once again been betrayed by his faithless subordinates, Mr. Carson followed her out of the room.

“Do sit down, Mr. Watson,” said Anna. “Would you like some tea?”

I sat down across from Moseley. “I can’t stay long,” I said. “I’ve all Mr. Grainger’s luggage to unpack. But thanks.”

Anna pushed over the teapot. As I extended a hand toward it, I caught Mr. Moseley glancing at Anna. She glanced back at him, her face perfectly blank, her manner perfectly courteous.

“Would you like some too, Mr. Moseley?”

“No, no thank you,” said Moseley, gesturing at the shirt in his hands. “That’s all I need is a tea stain on one of Mr. Matthew’s shirts.”

Carson’s re-entrance brought everyone to their feet again. I popped up belatedly, but, I hoped, sufficiently eagerly.

“Mr. Watson,” said Mr. Carson, his brow furrowed in vexation. “Our footman, young Alfred, has indavertently poisoned himself with an overlarge helping of Mrs. Patmore’s steak and kidney pie, and is unfit for work. As Mr. Barrow is cultivating a distaste for honest toil, and as Mr. Moseley has show himself unfit to wait at table, might I call upon you to assist us with service at dinner tonight?”

I silently cursed myself for having only skimmed Chapter 6 of The Compleat Gentleman’s Gentleman, “In The Forest Of The Many Utensils.”

“I will be happy if I can be of service,” I said. “I am afraid Mr. Grainger’s establishment is quite simple, but with proper instruction, I hope to come within shooting distance of the high standards you so obviously set for Downton.”

“Thank you, Mr. Watson,” said Carson graciously. “Anna can give you some pointers beforehand, and if you can lay your hands on Mr. Barrow you may be able to extract some useful information from him. I authorize you to use all reasonable force.”

Miss O’Brien let out the tiniest of laugh-like sounds.

“Thank you, Mr. Carson,” I said. “I’ll just go up and unpack.”

I fled the kitchen and its occupants for the relative safety of Holmes’s room. I unpacked, pocketed The Compleat Gentleman’s Gentleman, and slipped out the door, hoping to escape unobserved and begin cramming. I was arrested by the sight of a strikingly handsome youth with dark hair and dark eyes, who regarded me as Holmes might regard an interesting and possibly harmful insect that had crawled under his magnifying glass.

“I’m Mr. Barrow,” he said. “I’m his lordship’s valet. You must be Mr. Grainger’s man.”

“Mr. Watson,” I said, extending a hand which he declined to take. “I’m glad to meet you. Mr. Carson has impressed me into service at the dinner table.”

“Has he?” said Barrow, with a sneer. “You want to watch it with Carson, he’ll have you cleaning the chimneys before he’s done. You don’t have to take it, you know. It’s ridiculous, anyhow, a seventy-five-year-old footman.”

I decided that Mr. Barrow was not, in fact, handsome.

“I am happy to serve,” I said, frostily.

“It was nice knowing you,” Mr. Barrow said, laughing.

He stalked down the end of the corridor. I decided I would go down by another route.

“There you are,” said Anna, who was evidently haunting the stairwell I ducked into. “Serving at table. You go in on the deep end, don’t you?”

“Mrs. Bates,” I whispered, “I have news for you. Where in this cursed place can one have a private conversation?”

I heard a door open on the story just above me. Miss O’Brien glided silently onto the landing, glaring balefully down upon us before climbing up yet another level.

“Yes, I should warn you about…” she began.

“Don’t bother,” I answered. “I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but I can spot a basilisk all right.”

Anna smiled.

“The courtyard, after dinner’s over,” she said. “Thomas—Mr. Barrow—and Miss O’Brien used to smoke out there, but lately there seems to be trouble in paradise. We should have a clear field.”

“And you’ll help me with dinner?”

“I’ll do my—“

A low, sonorous, brazen note reverberated through the house.

“Lord have mercy, it’s the dressing gong,” Anna muttered. “You’d best get a move on.”

Thumping up the stairs on my not-yet-seventy-year-old legs, I wondered how Mr. Bates had stood it. But once I reached the room, I found the work not unpleasant. I was laying out Holmes’s dress shirt, smoothing the front of it and thinking of nothing in particular, when I heard Holmes steal in behind me and close the door.

“My goodness, Watson,” he said, gently touching the shirt with his fingertips. “I can’t recall the last time I wore anything so fine.”

Age had been unkind to his skin; one could not distinguish between the marks of age and the stains left behind by the chemicals to which he had exposed them over the decades. But his fingers were still slender, still sensitive, still capable of surprise.

“So how does this work?” he said, with a smile. “Am I to undress myself, or is that your job?”

“If you’ll allow me, sir,” I said.

I took the tweed coat from his shoulders and hung it in the closet. Holmes undid his tie automatically, but allowed me to unbutton the shirt and slip if off him. He stood quite still, as if my touch meant nothing in particular to him.

“I’ve given our client the Full Governess,” Holmes remarked.

He meant, of course, that he had traced Anna’s family and acquaintances to determine whether there were any legacies coming to Anna of which she might be unaware. Long experience had taught Holmes that a young, single, reasonably attractive female client was more likely than not to have been left a little money by some forgotten or unknown relative, and that this was often the ultimate source of her troubles.

“What did you find?”

“What I expected. Anna Smith's family has been content to remain within the precints of Yorkshire for the past ten generations. There are no South African goldmines or Agra treasures in her family tree. The young lady herself had a savings account at the local bank under her maiden name. Its contents speak well of her thrift and prudence, but it wouldn’t even be a snack for a fortune-hunter of even modest ambition. She’d be quite a catch now, by local standards; but all of that money has come to her through her marriage to Mr. Bates. We can rule out the idea that Mr. Bates was laying a trap for Anna by marrying her.”

“Unless we assume he married her to prevent her testifying against him.”

“Are you speaking seriously, Watson?”

“No, of course not.”

“What a relief. That is precisely the kind of thinking that sends innocent men to prison.”

I held the dress shirt open, standing behind him, facing the mirror. Holmes slid his arms into the sleeves. I pulled it over his shoulders. Holmes buttoned it, glancing up at my reflection in the mirror.

“Well, Watson,” he said, turning around. “How does it look?”

I stepped forward to smooth out the shoulders. I ran my hands lightly down his chest, to shake out any wrinkles. I heard Holmes take an odd, vibrating breath, and I looked up at him.

The rasp of Holmes’s new moustache, I found, only heightened the other sensations. He fell back a pace as I clung to him, bracing himself against the wardrobe door and its long, narrow mirror. One of his hands kept my head pressed against his, while the other snaked around the small of my back.

“This is not smart, Watson,” he breathed.

“I can’t help it,” I said.

“Neither can I.”

His mouth plunged forward, and his arms clutched me tighter. My knee twisted slightly, and I cried out in pain.

“Watson,” Holmes whispered, relaxing his hold. “What is it? Are you hurt?”

I staggered back to sit on the bed, struggling with tears.

“Oh no,” Holmes murmured, kneeling down and putting his hands gently around my bad knee. “I’ve done it again, haven’t I.”

Holmes began massaging the muscles that had given us both so much trouble so many times.

“You know,” I muttered, “Sometimes I wish that bastard had shot my good leg instead of the wounded one. Then at least I’d be on an even keel.”

“My poor Watson,” Holmes said. The fiery pains shooting up and down my thigh began to subside under his ministrations. “Will you be all right?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s passed. Thank you.”

“I can do the rest myself,” Holmes said.

“No, no,” I answered. “I’ll finish the job. Do please control your urges as best you can.”

While he laughed at me, I helped him into the rest of his suit, brushed it for him, and put in his cufflinks.

“You do look stunning,” I said.

“Thank you, Watson,” he answered. “With you dressing me I feel—as the Americans say—like a million bucks.”

I opened the door. A tall, dark, trousered silhouette sprang into view in the hallway, just outside the doorway.

“Was there something you wanted, Mr. Barrow?” I demanded, icily.

He swept me up and down with an insinuating glance, and with a smile he melted away.

“That can bode no good,” I murmured.

“Let us work quickly, Watson,” Holmes replied. “For we know not when they will chase us off the property with dogs and torches.”

He said it with a smile.

“No regrets?” I said.

“No, Watson,” Holmes answered, quite solemnly. “No regrets. Not any more.”

Holmes sailed down the grand staircase, and I clattered off to the servants’ hall.

* * *

“I have never seen such ineptitude in my life. I am highly disappointed in you, Watson. You really have done remarkably badly.”

“Yes, Mr. Carson,” I said, wearily.

“It is as if you had never served in a dining room at all.”

“I did tell you, Mr. Carson, that Mr. Grainger maintains a very simple establishment.”

“Well it must be a highly irregular one!”

“Yes it is,” I murmured, as humbly as I could.

“Before God, I would sooner put Mr. Moseley, miserable tippler that he is, back in there with the main course than you.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Moseley’s chin quiver slightly.

“Please accept my deepest apologies for the fish incident, Mr. Carson,” I said. “The Dowager Countess made a sudden bend toward the platter, and I am afraid that I had not accurately calculated the trajectory—“

“Enough!” Mr. Carson snapped. “You are relieved of your extra duties. Go where and do what you like, only stay out of my way.”

Removing myself, with a humiliation half feigned and half real, from the servants’ hall—and from the silent stares of Daisy, Miss O’Brien, Mrs. Patmore, Anna, Mr. Barrow, Mrs. Hughes, Mr. Moseley, and various and sundry kitchen help who had trickled in to watch the show--I found my way out of the building and into the courtyard.

I stood sulking in silence, waiting for our client to arrive. In the meantime, I tried to put from my mind the thought of Holmes, in his new-dyed hair, seated between Lady Edith and Lady Rosamond, charming them both nearly out of their diamonds while feasting on duck confit with cherries.

I looked up; but the footsteps I had heard were a man’s. Mr. Barrow’s, to be exact.

He paused next to me, lit up a cigarette, and offered it to me.

“No thanks,” I said. I would have been glad of my pipe, but I had a horror of cigarettes.

“Don’t mind old Carson,” Mr. Barrow said. “He rips the head off some poor bastard once a day.”

“I don’t mind Carson,” I said. “I’ve had worse.”

Mr. Barrow took a drag on the filthy thing, then exhaled the smoke in a slow stream that seemed to take obscure and vaguely obscene shapes in the air.

“And poor Moseley standing there like a prat,” Barrow said. “Always the bridesmaid, that one. Thought for a while he’d get my job, but Bates turned up again at the last minute and pipped him.”

“And then when Mr. Bates was arrested…”

“I pipped him,” Barrow said, with an unkind smile. “At least he’s stopped mooning after Anna. I hate to see a man trying to do what he’s not capable of.”

“There at least we can agree,” I said.

Barrow turned toward me, and he smiled, with something I might almost have called affection.

“Listen,” he said, throwing his cigarette away and stamping it out. “You’re no film star and I’m no choirboy, but I’m starving out here and a prick is a prick. What do you say, Mr. Watson?”

I blinked.

“I believe that what I would say,” I said, “if indeed I thought any decent young man capable of offering such a proposition, would be ‘no.’ Furthermore, I might add,” I said, turning around to face him, “that if you think, simply because you are young and hard and I am old and lame, that you are the prize here, you have much to learn about life and the ways of love. I am sorry about your famished condition, Mr. Barrow, but I fear I must decline to be made a meal of.”

After the shock of his previous speech I had no idea what to expect. Threats, tears, violence, blackmail. I was not prepared for a laugh that was really almost merry, leading to a quite companionable silence.

“Tell me how you did it,” he finally said.

“Did what?”

“How you got into your…situation with Mr. Grainger.”

I could not, of course, answer the question—nor did I wish to. And yet I felt, as he waited for the answer, that a desperate desire was concealed beneath that maddening smile. He was desperate to find out how he might one day become what he thought I was: a valet being kept as a lover by his employer. By a considerate employer; an employer who was loyal to him; an employer who had once been young and beautiful when I was young and beautiful; an employer who could still afford a young and beautiful man but yet had not turned me off when I grew old and unlovely. And he wanted to know this because it was the best he thought he could ever do. Because he could not imagine any way towards what I really was: a man, loved by another man, living with him in relative peace and not untroubled happiness, for life.

“I’ll say only this,” I said. “It takes a lot of patience.”

“Too bad,” he said, and walked back into the house.

I was abundantly relieved to see Anna’s slender figure finally approaching through the gloom.

“Thought Thomas would never leave you alone,” she said. “What did he want?”

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s not related to the investigation. Only…”

I trailed off. Anna waited for a moment, then said, “You said you had news for me, Dr. Watson.”

“Oh. Yes.” I sighed. “Let me give you the good news first. Your husband was right about the first Mrs. Bates’s infidelity. During the time Mr. Bates was first here, Vera Bates sought out a colleague of my associate Lilith—“

“Lilith?” Anna asked.

“It is a long story, Mrs. Bates. Lilith is a wise woman. And she has discovered that Mrs. Bates saw one of her colleagues and purchased from her what science would call a chemical abortifacient.”

“A what?”

“Vera Bates was pregnant, Anna, and she wanted to induce miscarriage. And she did, too; but she overdid the dose somehow, and wound up in hospital. That is how your husband learned of it. He found the bill for her care.”

Anna took this in, stony-faced and silent.

“What’s this to do with her death?” she said.

“Nothing, perhaps,” I said. “It’s just a loose end Holmes thought he ought to tie up. Holmes has also decoded the message your husband sent, and…I think you should read it yourself. I brought a copy of the translation. You should burn it when you’ve done; we’ve kept the original.”

Anna glanced at me, and moved off to a corner where there was better light. I thought it incumbent on me to give her her privacy.

“Oh!” I heard her shout. “That…that…that…MAN!”

Hearing the mingled sorrow and rage in her voice, I stepped over to see if she wanted any help.

“I will kill him,” she said, tearing the copy in half. “I will kill him with my own hands, if I ever get to see his poor dear face again.”

“Oh dear,” I said.

“Not for sleeping with her,” Anna spat. “For thinking that I would care!”

She leaned for support against the wall of the shed as she broke down sobbing.

“She told him, she said to him, one last time, and I’ll let you go,” she said, rattling the pages at me. “And he believed her because he loved her once and he can’t see she never loved him, because he wouldn’t marry someone he didn’t love. Because he wouldn’t trap someone into sex who didn’t want it, because he wouldn’t scratch someone’s face off once they’d lowered their guard, just for the pleasure of seeing blood.”

“I don’t know your husband as well as you,” I said, “but it did seem to me, when I read it myself, that that’s what happened. She inveigled him into this…and then told him she’d tell you what happened if he didn’t give you up and go back to her. She would have told him that it was better he leave you behind, thinking well of him, than to have you break with him over his infidelity.”

“And he thought she was right?” she shouted bitterly. “God almighty! Does he think I won’t know that he did it for us?” she demanded of me, her face red and distorted from crying. “My God, if I’d thought it would get her to agree to the divorce I’d have slept with her myself!”

She looked at me, and I looked at her, and through her tears she laughed.

“I don’t know what you must think of me, Dr. Watson.”

“I think you and I have more in common than you realize,” I said. “I think that you know what it is to love a good man who believes, because of the abuse he has taken at the hands of a malicious world, that he is unredeemable. I think that Mr. Bates is lucky to have you. That is what I think.”

Anna smiled, and snuffled back her tears. I handed her my handkerchief.

“I’m glad you think that, Dr. Watson,” she said.

“Holmes and I didn’t want to read his letter to you,” I said. “Was there anything useful in it?”

Anna shook her head. “He said he’d been thinking over what I said about speaking to Mrs. Bartlett, but he didn’t want to write about it,” she said. “He’s gotten terribly careful now about what he puts in his letters. About the case, I mean.” She smiled. “Did Mr. Holmes turn up anything?”

“He found her,” I said. “She wouldn’t talk to him. She must be something special, because Holmes can get round most anyone.”

“Oh, she is,” said Anna. “And she hates me, and my husband.” She wiped her eyes.

“Holmes also found,” I said, gently, “that there is no evidence he was ever violent toward Vera. Plenty of drunken shouting and broken crockery. But the only time anyone Holmes interviewed ever saw marks of violence, they were on your husband’s body.”

She nodded.

“It is not proof of his innocence, of course; but I thought you would like to know.”

“That’s kind,” she said. “You’ve been so kind to me—to us—I can’t thank you enough for it. And you don’t know what it means for poor John. Even before all this, he always thought so highly of you. Oh, that’s another thing he put in that letter to me. He wants me to thank you for the book, and he’s told me I must start reading your stories.”

I don’t like gush; but I will confess to enjoying a little flattery now and again.

“Did he recommend any particular ones?” I asked, eagerly.

“He said I should start with ‘The Problem of Thor Bridge.’”

She was puzzled by my astonishment.

“Dr. Watson?”

“Well, it’s not my best work,” I said candidly. “And beyond that…it’s an odd choice for a new reader. I might have suggested ‘Scandal in Bohemia,’ or…”

Anna was now seriously alarmed on my behalf. “Dr. Watson? Are you all right? Shall I fetch Dr. Clarkson?”

“No,” I said, grasping her by the shoulders in my excitement. “I am not ill. I am perfectly all right. I am capital. I am on top of the world. I am, for once in my wretched life, there ahead of him.”

Anna shook her head, not understanding.

“Come with me,” I said. “I need you to show me where the servants’ rooms are.”

* * * *

The drawers of the worn deal dresser had yielded nothing, so I moved on to the bed. I was kneeling by it, sliding my hands under the mattress in search, when I heard someone in the doorway.

Hang it all, it was Moseley.

“Mr. Watson?” he said, blinking rapidly. “Your room is two doors down. This is my room.”

I still didn’t have anything and I hadn’t finished the search. An image of Mr. Barrow’s insinuating grin floated through my mind, leaving inspiration in its wake.

“Yes,” I said, softly, advancing on him slowly. “I know it’s your room, Mr. Moseley.”

He didn’t understand, but I saw terror rising in him anyway.

I held up a hand. “No. Don’t speak.” I stepped forward and laid a finger on his lips. “I think we both know why I’m here.”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” he said, taking a step back.

“You will,” I said, leaning in.

He ran like a startled rabbit.

Shutting the door behind me, I tore through the bedding. Between the mattress and the fitted sheet I found a hard little packet of folded papers tucked into faded lavender envelopes still faintly perfumed with cheap scent. A glance at the superscription on the envelopes was enough to convince me I had the prize.

I tore out of Moseley’s room. Anna was waiting in the stairwell.

“Well, did you—“

“Holmes,” I gasped. “Where’s Holmes?”

“In the smaller drawing room,” she said.

“Show me where that is.”

I followed her down the stairs. Holmes was leaving the drawing room, and moving nearly as fast as I was.

“Watson,” he whispered. “Thank God. I need your help—“

“I need yours,” I said. “Come up to your room, quick.”

When all three of us had barricaded ourselves into Holmes’s guest room, I threw the packet at him.

“What’s this?”

“Proof,” I said. “I’ve solved the mystery, Holmes. It’s Thor Bridge all over again. Vera poisoned herself and framed Bates for it so that he would go to prison for it.”

He looked up, annoyed. “Well of course she did, Watson. I’ve known that ever since Mrs. Bates told us her story.”

“You have?” Anna and I demanded at the same time.

“Of course I have,” Holmes snapped, opening and scanning the sheets of paper folded up into the envelopes. “As soon as I heard she’d been poisoned with a pie, I saw the whole thing laid out before me. A desperate man overwhelmed with rage and hatred for a woman he once loved may indeed kill her, Watson. It is a tragically common occurrence, in fact. But we know, don’t we, how that story ends. It ends with a beating, or with a knife, or with a bullet, or with a broken neck. It does not end with poison. What betrayed husband or jealous lover or depraved violent woman-hating monster ever destroyed a woman’s life by baking her a pie?”

“Now that you say it,” I said meekly, “it does seem obvious.”

“Determining what happened was never the problem, Watson,” Holmes said. “The problem was to prove it to a court’s satisfaction, and…”

He paused over one of the letters.

“Good man, Watson!”

He turned to me with a look of the purest delight. I felt my heart burst wide open.

The door swung back with astonishing violence.

“There you are!” shouted a very angry Mr. Matthew Crawley.

Moseley hovered behind him, eyes wide with terror as he pointed at me.

“I wish to have a word with you, Grainger,” Mr. Matthew shouted, “about the outrageous conduct of your valet!”

“And I,” said Holmes, with that steel smile that had chilled the hearts of so many villains, “would like to have a word with you about the criminal conduct of your valet.”

Moseley looked past Mr. Matthew to see what Holmes was holding in his hands.

Moseley’s feet went thundering down the corridor. Mr. Matthew gave chase, trailed by Holmes.

“Aren’t you going to run after them?” Anna asked, with a smile.

“No need,” I said. “If they can’t subdue him, I’m sure Mr. Carson will.”

* * * *

The Earl of Grantham struck me as an intelligent man, but not one who dealt well with sudden change. Even Mr. Carson, who had been called in to witness the proceedings, seemed quicker on the draw.

“Let me get this right,” said the earl. “You are not Altamont Grainger, you are Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”

Holmes nodded.

“And you,” said Mr. Carson, turning upon me his malevolent glare, “are not a valet at all.”

“No,” I said. “I am a doctor.”

Mr. Carson snorted. “I thought as much.”

“You tell me,” said the earl, “that you have proof that Vera Bates committed suicide for the purpose of framing Mr. Bates for her own murder.”

“I would make only one emendation to that statement, your lordship,” said Holmes. “The only thing that ever truly bothered me about this case was the character of the deceased woman. All the signs indicate that she is not someone who would ever think anything more important than her own precious life—not even her revenge. I think that Vera Bates wanted her husband back in her clutches—I should say, her arms—and if she could not have that, what she wanted for Bates to be done on a charge of attempted murder. The penalty is severe enough, and it would have satisfied her vengeance without requiring her to destroy her own life. Had she survived as a witness, the case against Mr. Bates could have been made much stronger than it was. It is possible to survive mild arsenic poisoning, and from her communications with Mr. Moseley it appears that she was looking forward to a possible future with him.”

“With Moseley?” demanded the earl.

“Yes. Mr. Moseley appears to have deliberately sought her out, soon after he perceived that Mr. Bates was his rival for Anna’s affections. He entered into an understanding with her, which left her pregnant, though only briefly. It was from Moseley that Vera really learned the true story of the death of the late Mr. Pamouk, or at any rate what everyone in this house believes is the true story…”

“You don’t think it’s true?” Anna demanded.

“I think it true but not complete,” Holmes replied. “A young, athletic man does not simply drop dead, even during strenuous exercise, without some help. I do think that it is a pity that nobody called me in at the time...but of course I was unavailable then.”

I saw Anna look from him to me. Holmes saw it too, but went on.

“From Vera’s letters to Mr. Moseley, which my friend and colleague Dr. Watson discovered secreted in his room,” Holmes said, “it appears that when Vera’s first attempt to blackmail Mr. Bates into giving Anna up failed to shake her devotion to him, Mr. Moseley’s hatred of Mr. Bates became an obsession. This was compounded when Mr. Bates returned to this house and to your good graces, thus dashing Mr. Moseley’s hopes of becoming valet to your lordship. Vera’s own anger was whipped to frenzy by her failed attempt to ruin Lady Mary. Together, as these letters show, they concocted a scheme that would avenge them on both Bates and Anna. Moseley pretended to Vera that he would run away with her afterward, using the money Mr. Bates had given her; but in fact that was never his plan. Instead, he told Vera Bates to use a dose of arsenic that was in fact lethal, and busied himself in collecting bits and pieces of incriminating conversation which he was careful to pass on to the prosecutors once the investigation began. Vera had a secret plan of her own, of which she never apprised Moseley; but that never came to fruition.”

“What plan?” Mr. Matthew asked.

“I am afraid that is privileged information,” Holmes replied loftily. “Mosely believed, of course, that once Mr. Bates was executed, Anna would be open to his advances; and of course Mr. Bates would settle all he could on her before his death, so that she would be a tidy little prize from a financial as well as a romantic point of view.”

The Earl, Mr. Matthew, Mr. Carson, and Anna all turned their eyes on Moseley.

“Mr. Moseley,” bellowed Carson, summoning all his awful dignity. “Is this true?”

Moseley broke down completely. It was horrible to watch. I will not repeat what he said. It was humiliating, and pathetic, and was in any case repeated at length in the reports of the trial. Let a muck-eating parasite like Richard Carlyle have the joy of trumpeting to the world the sad and piteous pleadings of a man who had been doomed from his birth never to prosper at anything he put his hand to.

“Well,” said the earl, when Mr. Moseley had subsided into quiet whimpering. “We must get all this evidence to Murray at once.”

“Your lordship,” Holmes said. “It grieves me to say it, but Mr. Murray is a fool. Please do not expose anyone or anything you care about to his incompetence for a moment longer. Even Mr. Crawley here would do a better job of representing poor Mr. Bates. But I must insist that you engage the services of a lawyer who has some experience with criminal defense. I will of course be happy to serve as consultant.”

The earl was not used to being contradicted. But he took it from Holmes, as men with more lustrous titles and larger estates had before.

“Just as you say, Mr. Holmes,” he said. “Thank you for all you’ve done. I don’t know if we can ever repay you—“

“I no longer work for money, your lordship,” said Holmes haughtily. “There is, however, a favor I might beg of you.”

“Name it,” said the earl.

“Lady Edith seems to believe she is engaged to me,” said Holmes, with a blush. “I do not know how it happened. We were discussing our common interest in writing, and then somehow suddenly she was talking about speaking to you in the morning. Please do give her my regards, and tell her that I am sensible of the honor she offers me but that I am not free to accept it.”

The earl smiled. “I’ll tell her, Mr. Holmes.”

“We’ll leave tomorrow by the morning train,” said Holmes.

“Certainly,” said the earl. “I’ll have Alfred assist you; there’s no need for Dr. Watson to keep up the pretense.”

I cleared my throat.

“With your permission, your lordship,” I said, “I will take care of the necessary arrangements. I always do.”

“Yes,” he said. “Very well, if that’s how you’ll have it.”

Mr. Crawley led the unfortunate Moseley away to wait for the local constabulary to arrive. Holmes turned to follow, but stopped on his way and bent toward my ear.

“Come to me after they’re all asleep,” he whispered. “And bring the shaving kit.”

I watched him walk away. I would miss the disguise; but only a little.

* * * *

“Dr. Watson,” said Anna, as I lugged Holmes’s portmanteau down the stairs. “Please, let me help you with that.”

We carried it out to the shed where the earl’s motorcar was kept. Anna scouted the area carefully to see that we were alone in the early morning light.

“What did you mean, that we have more in common than I realize?”

I sighed.

“You’ve been to prison too, haven’t you,” said Anna, gently. “Or else Mr. Holmes has.”

“How did you know?” I asked.

“It was a hunch of John’s,” she said. “He told me after you left that you looked as if you’d been in a prison before, and hated it nearly as much as he did.”

I shook my head.

“You know, Dr. Watson,” she said. “I know you’ve probably never told a living soul what it was like. But I know what it’s like. And I can keep a secret.”

I looked back at her kind, compassionate, generous face. And I started talking.

“In the summer of 1912,” I began, “Holmes started work on a case that kept him out at strange hours. At least that’s what he told me. One night he didn’t come home. That in itself was not entirely alarming. But the following day, I read in the newspaper that the Hyacinth Club had been raided.”

“The Hyacinth Club?”

“It’s…it’s a place where men go to be with other men. Young men, usually. Young men with peculiar tastes.”

“Oh,” said Anna.

“Such places are, of course, illegal,” I went on. “Naturally I took an interest in the story. It was reported that some of those arrested had refused to give their names. Of course the paper printed their descriptions. And then I knew where Holmes had been going at night, and why he hadn’t come home.”

“Oh my stars.” Anna put her hands up to her mouth.

“It was four days before I found him,” I said. “He had refused to give his name, he had deliberately destroyed any identifying information, and he had been in a cell with a motley assortment of common criminals the whole time. He had not contacted me, he had not contacted Lestrade or Gregson or anyone who knew him. He was planning to just sit there in his shame until…I don’t know, until I gave him up for dead. I found him, I put up the money, I took him home.”

“And what happened?” Anna breathed.

“Holmes had friends in the police and in the courts,” I said. “Lestrade stuck by him, and one or two others. But he had enemies too—old ones and new ones. Too many people in the system had been made to look like fools by Holmes, and they wanted to see him cast down. The best we could do in the end was to plead guilty, get his sentence reduced to six months, and bankrupt ourselves paying Richard Carlyle to keep his name out of the papers. You’ll say six months isn’t long, Mrs. Bates; but believe me, it’s long enough. Holmes is tough. I’m sure your husband is too. But it was hell.”

There were tears in her eyes. She put a hand on my sleeve.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“He came out of that place a broken man,” I said. “He refused to take any more cases. He didn’t want to send men to prison.”

“Oh Dr. Watson,” she cried.

“We went to America for a while; but he was lost there. He is lost without his work, full stop. Then the foreign office traced him and started begging him to work for them as a spy. This was in the year just before the war. We came back; he did his duty to his country; and then we bought that farm in Yorkshire and tried to disappear. Thank God for the bees. If he hadn’t had a project he would have gone mad. They were all that was keeping him together. Until you found us.”

Anna shook her head. “What an awful story.”

“No worse than yours,” I said. “And now we have our happy endings. Holmes will get Bates out of that place…and Holmes is back to work now, where he always should have been. I’m grateful to you, Mrs. Bates,” I said. “And I wish you and your husband every good thing in the years ahead. Prison will have changed him. It changes everyone. But that doesn’t mean you won’t get him back.”

“I know,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Thank you.”

“And don’t start with ‘Thor Bridge,’” I said. “And for God’s sake don’t read any of the ones Holmes has published.”

“Are they any good?” she asked, eyeing me keenly.

“They’re terrible,” I replied. “But don’t tell him I said that. He does take such pride in them. It's good for him to have these little projects. But I’ll be glad when we’re both back in our proper places.”

We walked back toward the entrance to the servants’ hall. There I saw Mr. Carson, who was conversing quite respectfully with Holmes.

“Good morning, Doctor Watson,” said Mr. Carson, affably. “I do hope you will not hold the words we exchanged last night against me. I had no idea you were a good angel in disguise, working to clear Mr. Bates’s name.”

“Please think nothing of it, Mr. Carson,” I said.

“This is a happy day in the servants’ hall, sir,” said Mr. Carson. “Everyone is so pleased to hear that Mr. Bates’s torment is nearly at an end. Well, everyone but Miss O’Brien.”

Holmes smiled. “I’m happy too,” he said. “It was ticklish work. I’m only glad I was able to solve the mystery before Moseley was promoted to butler.”

Mr. Carson fixed him with a terrible gaze.

“Sir,” said Mr. Carson coldly. “There was never any danger of that.”

“Oh my dear fellow,” said Holmes quickly. “No, of course not. It is only my little joke.”

“Joke, sir?”

"You see, Mr. Carson,” said Holmes, with that impish grin I had always loved. “I have lived a long and varied life and have few remaining ambitions. But one of them is to reach the end of my mortal existence without ever having to utter the words, ‘The butler did it.’”

* * * *

“Well, Watson,” said Holmes, as we watched the countryside speed past the window of the train. “You were a disaster as a footman, but I will say you made an excellent valet. Though if you don’t mind my saying, you were an even better detective.”

“Nonsense, Holmes,” I said. “You found the solution first."

"But it was your work that saved the client, Watson," he said. "And that is what is most important. Especially in this case." He sighed. "I will rest better when I know the poor man is out of that place."

"So will I," I said.

Holmes put a hand on my knee.

“I am so sorry, Watson,” he said. “I have always been so very sorry.”

“Holmes,” I answered. “You crave new and strange sensations for their own sake. I have always known that about you. I never asked about your movements because I knew if anything serious ever happened I should know. I am glad you have given up seeking those particular sensations. It was dangerous, and it did hurt me. But you did not have to punish yourself. You should have told me. I would have forgiven you.”

“Yes,” he said, as the tears came. “I know.”

We rode in silence for a while.

“I have been thinking, Watson,” he said. “The earl has, despite my protestations, sent me off with a shockingly large cheque. Do you think…do you think we might sell up and move back to London? With this in my pocket we could buy 221b.”

I smiled, so slowly and for so long that he understood the answer without saying a word.

"I can afford to be selective," he said, "and take only these cases involving miscarriage of justice. I've found this one very rewarding--and it presents new challenges. Indeed you yourself seem to have a turn for this kind of work."

"I wouldn't rely too much on my hidden talents if I were you," I said. "But I should always be happy to help."

“I will miss being dressed by you,” Holmes replied, with a smile. “It is a new and strange sensation, and quite delicious.” He leaned forward to murmur in my ear. “You must let me dress you sometime.”

“By all means,” I said, as the train rattled onward.

* * *

I sat at our breakfast table, looking out at the lawn, and the hives that dotted the far end. I would miss the sunlight and the green grass. The bees I would not miss. I had, over the past several years, developed an aversion to even the smell of honey.

Holmes came down and threw himself into the other chair. “Well, Watson,” he said. “I’ve had a very interesting letter from Lady Edith Crawley.”

“Oh no,” I said.

He waved a hand. “The young lady has other fish to fry by this time, Watson. She has apparently begun a quite successful career as a writer. In fact, she is planning to begin a serial novel about her life at Downton Abbey. It will be published in installments—anonymously, of course.”

“Of course,” I said.

“She wishes it to be as true an account as she can make it,” he went on. “But she asks if I will mind too terribly much if she suppresses me entirely, and gives the credit for solving the case to others. Apparently she still thinks of me with a certain amount of chagrin.”

I shrugged. “Let her suppress both of us. It will leave me a clear field, when the time is right.”

“I’ve had another equally interesting communication from Mrs. Bates,” he said, tossing me an opened telegram. “She is coming here for a visit, before we sell…with her husband.”

“He’s out?” I cried.

“He is out, Watson. Out, free, vindicated, reunited with his wife. And Mr. Moseley is in. And Mr. Bates wants to come here and thank you, as one old soldier to another.”

I seized Holmes’s hand and pressed it. We looked at each other across the table—across all the litter we lived in, across all the years we had shared the same chaos. The world had changed and would go on changing. But there he was. Always us. Always together. And always, now, ready for whatever the future would bring.

THE END