“What will you tell him?”

“About the pendant, nothing. About the ring, only that I have been unable to locate it, and believe that, as his wife stated, she has put it somewhere. I am retained only to find and recover that object you have in your hand, not to furnish any explanations. The fundamental cause of this whole business, Watson, lies in the relations between Viscount Latchmere and his wife, and that is a problem they must solve for themselves.”

The Adventure of

THE RICHMOND RECLUSE

PART ONE: A NIGHT AT HILL HOUSE

IN PUBLISHING THIS SERIES OF MEMOIRS, my constant aim, however imperfectly realized, has been to illustrate the remarkable mental qualities of my friend, Mr Sherlock Holmes. In most of the cases he took up, his involvement was decisive: without it, it is likely that the problems would have remained unsolved, and the truth for ever unknown. In a few cases, however, the part he played was less pronounced, and it is possible that the truth would eventually have come to light without his intervention. In the main I have passed over these cases when selecting those which were to be published. Yet among this group are some in which the facts of the matter are in themselves of sufficient interest to warrant publication, despite offering my friend few opportunities for the exercise of those gifts of observation and deduction that he possessed in so high a degree. Especially memorable among cases of this kind were the affair of the Purple Hand, and the Boldero Mystery. It is the latter case I now propose to recount. Regular readers of the Surrey County Observer will need little reminding of what that newspaper termed “The Richmond Horror”. But the press accounts of the time were all very brief, and concentrated solely on the dramatic conclusion of the matter, to the exclusion of what had gone before, so that even those who are familiar with the case are unlikely to be aware of what lay behind those shocking events.

Our introduction to the matter came on a pleasant afternoon in the early spring of ’84. Sherlock Holmes had received a letter from Farrow and Redfearn of Lincoln’s Inn, the well-known firm of solicitors. He glanced over it, tossed it across to me and returned to the papers he had been studying before the letter’s arrival had distracted him. I read the following:

Sir,

We beg to advise you as follows: that our client, Mr David Boldero, is desirous of learning the whereabouts of his elder brother, Mr Simon Boldero; that the whereabouts of the latter having been unknown for some three months and the circumstances being unusual, we have recommended that our client consult you, which he proposes to do at four o’clock this afternoon, when he will be able to apprise you of the details of the matter.

We remain, sir, your obedient servants,

Farrow and Redfearn

“They have put a number of choice cases my way in the past,” remarked Holmes as I finished reading. “Let us hope that it is not too troublesome a matter. I am somewhat preoccupied at present with this business of Archduke Dmitri’s diamonds.”

“It does not sound a very desperate affair,” I remarked, aware of my friend’s oft-stated rule that one case should not be allowed to intrude upon another. This was not from any fear that his mental capacities might be over-stretched, for in truth there was little doubt that, like a chess master giving an exhibition, he might successfully have handled half a dozen separate cases at once had he so wished. It was rather that his neat and logical mind preferred above all things an orderly, concentrated mode of thought. Yet it was also true of him that he rarely declined a case that had succeeded in capturing his interest, so that, despite his preference, this, of all his personal rules of work, was the one he most frequently set aside. As I waited for Holmes’s client to arrive, I speculated idly as to the nature of his case, and wondered if it would provide any of those touches of the outré that so delighted my friend’s intellect. The dry communication he had received from the solicitor did not appear to presage a case of any very great interest, I judged. But in this opinion, as it turned out, I was quite mistaken.

Mr David Boldero arrived on the dot of four. He was a tall, broad-shouldered and strongly built young man, of about seven-and-twenty, with wavy black hair and a determined set to his strong, clean-shaven features.

“I see you are smokers,” said he, observing the wreaths of blue smoke that spiralled in the air above my companion’s head. “I will venture to fill my own pipe, then, if I may.”

“By all means,” responded Holmes, waving our visitor to a chair. “Pray make yourself comfortable and let us know how we can help you. It is always a pleasure,” he added after a moment, “to greet a member of the diplomatic corps, newly returned from overseas.”

Boldero looked up in surprise as he lit his pipe. “Now, how on earth do you know that?” said he. “I can hardly suppose that my return to England warranted a paragraph in the morning papers!”

“Your suit, Mr Boldero, while of excellent quality, is of a distinctively continental cut. The top button is a touch higher than English tailors are wont to place it. You have evidently bought the suit abroad. The same, I might add, applies to your boots. Nor has your period abroad been merely a brief excursion, for your tobacco, too, is very characteristic of continental mixtures. Most English travellers, in my experience, take with them sufficient home-produced tobacco to see out their journey. You have clearly been abroad long enough to acquire a taste for the native variety. It is not Dutch and it is not French, but could possibly be Danish. You do not have the cut of a man of commerce, and the pallor of your skin precludes any prolonged exposure to the Mediterranean sun. I am therefore inclined to place you as an attaché at one of our embassies in the north of Europe.”

“Well I never!” cried our visitor, leaning back in his chair.

“To be precise,” said Holmes, “you have been at the British Embassy in Stockholm for over two years.”

Boldero’s mouth fell open in astonishment.

“You have a small medallion on your watch chain,” explained Holmes, “which I observed as you sat back. It is a decoration – the Order of St Margaret, I believe – which is conferred by the Court of Scandinavia on all foreign diplomats who have served there for a period of at least two years.”

“That is amazing!” cried Boldero.

“On the contrary, it is perfectly elementary,” said Holmes. “Now, if we might hear the details of your problem? I know only that you wish to discover the whereabouts of your brother.”

“He has disappeared without trace in the most mysterious circumstances,” returned our visitor, his features assuming a grave look. “But there is more to the matter than that, Mr Holmes. Last night, so I believe, an attempt was made upon my life.”

“How very interesting! Pray, let us have the details!”

“My brother and I have seen little of each other in recent years. Circumstances have obliged each of us to pursue his own individual course through life. We were left very poorly off when our father died. There is great wealth elsewhere in the Boldero family, but little of it came our way. I was fortunate enough to secure a post in the diplomatic service some four years ago, but it has meant that I have spent much of that time abroad, after my posting to Stockholm. My brother, meanwhile, has been pursuing a career with a firm of solicitors. I last saw him three months ago, in January, on the occasion of my engagement. He attended the little celebration we had, and seemed at that time to be in excellent spirits.”

“He had no pressing financial concerns?”