“Surely you have made a mistake,” said he abruptly to the housekeeper, as she made to withdraw from the room.

“Sir?” responded she in a puzzled tone, looking from Holmes to the plate of cakes.

“No, not in the confectionery,” said he, shaking his head. “They appear excellent, and I am sure they are, for I understand that you are a first-rate pastry cook.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“But in your account of the telegram you received.”

“Sir?”

“You mentioned that the telegram instructed you to remove a sum of money from the tobacco jar on the mantelpiece and take it to Portsmouth. Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is that the jar in question?” asked Holmes, indicating a small barrel-shaped jar made of two different types of wood, which stood on the corner of the mantelpiece.

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, the instruction about the tobacco jar might seem reasonable if the telegram in question had in fact been sent by Mrs Claydon, but we know that it was not. It was therefore sent by a stranger, intent, presumably, on luring everyone away from the house. But how could this stranger know that Mrs Claydon kept a reserve of money in the tobacco jar on the mantelpiece? It is hardly a general rule in every household in the land.”

“No, sir. I don’t know, sir,” responded the housekeeper, glancing at her employer.

“It’s no good anyone looking at me,” remarked Mrs Claydon. “I can’t shed any light on it, for I didn’t send the telegram.”

“Have you told anyone about the money in the tobacco jar?” asked Holmes.

“Certainly not,” replied Mrs Claydon.

“Then how could anyone know about it?” Holmes asked the housekeeper again.

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Is it possible, do you think, that you have misremembered the matter, and that the telegram did not actually mention the tobacco jar at all?” queried Holmes. “Perhaps it merely instructed you to bring some money, without specifically mentioning where the money was to be found. Could that have been the case?”

I saw the housekeeper hesitate and frown, but I could not tell what was passing in her mind.

“Perhaps, sir,” said she at length.

“But you are not certain upon the point?”

“No, sir, I am certain. I remember now: it did not mention the tobacco jar, but of course I knew that was where Mrs Claydon kept the money.”

“I see. Some people might think it surprising that in a communication which was doubtless less than a dozen words, you should have been unsure as to whether the words ‘tobacco jar’ occurred or not, but I pass over that. The message instructed you to take five pounds from the jar. Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And was that amount in the jar?”

“Yes, sir.”

“In sovereigns?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Here is another mystery, then: how could a stranger to the household have known that such a sum would be available? There cannot be many households in which a sum as large as five pounds is left in an unlocked jar on a mantelpiece.”

“No, sir; it is a lot of money. I was anxious all the time I had it with me, in case I lost any of it, and gave it over to Mrs Claydon as soon as we met, at Waterloo station. I took very great care of it, sir.”

“I do not doubt it, but that is not the point at issue, which is, rather, how anyone outside of this household could have known of the money. Of course, if such a telegram had in fact been sent by Mrs Claydon, the question would not arise, as she must be presumed to know how much money is in her own house, but Mrs Claydon did not send the telegram. You see the problem?”

“Yes, sir,” responded the housekeeper, nodding her head.

“Fortunately, I have a solution.”

“Sir?”

“Yes. What I suggest is that the telegram stipulated neither the tobacco jar nor the sum of five pounds, nor, for that matter, Portsmouth, nor anything else that you mentioned, for the simple reason that the telegram never existed. It is a figment of your imagination, designed to explain your own apparent absence from the house this afternoon.”

“No, sir!” cried the housekeeper in protest, taking a step backwards.

“I imagine that you waited until the maid, Susan, was busy elsewhere in the house, then you opened the front door and rattled the knocker yourself. Moments later, you informed her that a telegram had arrived for you, necessitating a journey to Portsmouth, and that she would therefore have to return home for the day. She is very young, I understand, and would accept what you told her without query. Once she was out of the way, your plan could proceed.”

“No, sir! It’s not true!” cried the housekeeper.

“I further suggest that you did not travel to Portsmouth at all, but were busy in London all afternoon. Later you went down to Waterloo station specifically to intercept Mrs Claydon, which you thought would help to confirm your make-believe story.”

“Madam!” cried the housekeeper, turning to her employer in entreaty. “This is unjust! Why is this gentleman accusing me?”

“You have a sister, I believe?” continued Holmes, ignoring the woman’s protest.

At this she hesitated. Her mouth opened, but she did not speak.

“Come, come,” said Holmes in a genial tone. “It is no crime in this country to have a sister. You need not fear arrest on the grounds of having a sister. You have a sister?”

“Yes, sir,” responded the housekeeper at length, in a reluctant tone.

“Her name, I believe, is Violet,” continued Holmes.

The housekeeper’s jaw dropped, her eyes opened wide with surprise and fear and she flung her hands up to her face.

“How can you know that?” asked she in a strained, cracked voice.

“It is my business to know things,” responded Holmes calmly, regarding her face very closely. “They are pretty names, Violet and Rosemary. Your parents must have been very fond of wild flowers. Your sister, Violet, was, I believe, married to Percival Slattery in 1870, that is to say, seventeen years ago. He later deserted her and treated her very shamefully.”

For a moment, the housekeeper seemed to sway unsteadily on her feet, then she fell to her knees on the floor, clutched her head in her hands and burst into a storm of sobbing.

“Is this true, Rosemary?” asked Henry Claydon after a moment.

She tried to answer, but was sobbing so heavily and loudly that she was unable to form the words. Instead, she nodded her head vigorously.

“Perhaps you could describe to us exactly what occurred today,” suggested Holmes in a soft, kindly tone, “and then we might understand it a little better.”

Again the housekeeper nodded her head, but it was several minutes before she had composed herself sufficiently to begin her account. Then, seated on a chair that Claydon had brought in for her from the dining room, she made the following statement:

“My sister, Violet, is two years older than me. She and I were born and raised here in London, the only children of Patrick and Mary Quinn. When she was fourteen and I was twelve, the family moved to Melbourne, Australia, where my father had hopes of good employment in the gold fields. I became a kitchen maid, then later cook, in the household of Colonel Hayward, who was posted out there at the time. When he and his family returned to England, he asked me to accompany them, which I agreed to do. My sister, meanwhile, had married Percival Slattery at St Paul’s Church in Melbourne when she was twenty-one. Percy was a fine figure of a man, I must say, and I could not fault her decision in that respect. But although fine to look at, and a grand talker, he never achieved anything. He was always speaking of great schemes, and making glorious predictions for their future, but nothing ever seemed to come of any of it. Then, when they had been married a little over two years, he took himself off to some newly discovered gold fields, hundreds of miles from Melbourne, declaring that he would return home a wealthy man. Alas, he never returned at all, and my sister heard a year later that he had been killed in an avalanche. By that time she had a baby girl, for she had been with child when he left her. Her life in Melbourne, where she worked as a nurse, was not an easy one, as I learned from her letters.