In ten minutes we had reached the village. Our guide led us on, past the vicarage and the curving wall of the churchyard, and down the high street a little way to the crossroads. Here he turned left and, passing a few outlying cottages, we found ourselves in a pleasant lane, lined on either side with hawthorn hedges and large, spreading trees. Presently, when we had gone perhaps half a mile, we came to a small thatched cottage, behind which was a jumble of farm buildings.

“This is the place,” said Yarrow, pushing open a small wicket gate and leading us along a path, which passed by the side of the cottage and brought us, through another gate, into a yard at the back. “Old Dickens has something of a reputation for keeping an untidy farm,” murmured the vicar under his breath, and as I glanced about the yard I could not but think the reputation was well earned. Ducks, geese and hens milled about in apparent confusion around crates, sacks, mounds of straw and pieces of old machinery. In one muddy corner, a stout pig with a chain around its neck was rooting about in the earth, and in another corner, tethered to a post, a goat was chewing on a dirty-looking pile of hay, and eyeing us with no very friendly expression.

The vicar’s knock at the door was answered by a robust woman in an apron, whom he greeted as Mrs Dickens. She invited us in, but he declined the offer, saying he would not trouble them, but wished to speak to her son, John, for a few moments. She disappeared from the doorway, and a moment later a short, powerfully built young man of perhaps four-and-twenty appeared. His manner was friendly enough, until Yarrow explained to him our purpose in calling there, whereupon he assumed a look of stubborn intransigence.

“No offence intended to you, Vicar,” said he in a resolute voice, “but I should like to know why I should oblige John Reid or his friends.”

“It is not a question of your obliging them, but only of obliging me,” the vicar returned.

Several minutes of such debate ensued, the upshot being that Dickens grudgingly agreed to let us see his sister’s final note. “You can hold it, Mr Yarrow,” said he, “but I don’t want these gentlemen touching it.”

He disappeared into the shaded interior of the house and returned a moment later with a slip of white paper in his hand, which he passed to the vicar.

“I’ll just take it out of the shadow of the house, if I may,” said Yarrow, taking a few steps into the middle of the yard. “Here, gentlemen,” he continued, holding it out so we could see.

It was an unexceptional little sheet of white notepaper, which showed evidence of having been folded and refolded many times. Upon it, written in pencil, in a copybook script, were the following lines:

My heart is broken, for you have cast me away and do not care for me any more. You have gone away and left me, all alone in my sorrow. Now what can I do? I trusted you and you betrayed me. I loved you and you used me. How could you use a poor girl so?

It was a touching little epistle, moving in its simplicity, and I read it through several times. Holmes, too, read it over and over, his brows drawn into a frown of concentration. Then he took from his pocket a small lens and, craning forward until his nose almost touched the paper, examined it with the minutest attention.

“Here! What’s your game?” came a cry from behind us. I turned as John Dickens advanced towards us, a look of anger upon his face. “I said you wasn’t to touch it!” said he, taking the sheet from Yarrow’s hand.

“No more they have,” responded the vicar.

“Thank you for letting us see this note,” said Holmes to Dickens in a pleasant, measured tone. “It has been most helpful.”

The young farmer regarded him with a sullen expression, clearly indicating that he had not the slightest desire to be helpful.

“I understand,” Holmes continued, “that your sister composed poetry, which she kept in a special exercise book.”

“What of it?” demanded Dickens gruffly.

“I wonder if it would be possible for us to see it, just for a moment?”

“No, it would not,” retorted the other. “You’ve got a nerve,” he added in an angry tone. The set of the young farmer’s face was one of resolute defiance, and there appeared little prospect of his agreeing to my companion’s request. But Mr Yarrow intervened once more and, after considerable entreaty and persuasion, Dickens disappeared into the house again, with a great show of reluctance, and emerged a minute later with a slim, blue-covered exercise book in his hand.

“I’ll hold it and turn the pages,” said he in a tone that precluded debate upon the issue.

“By all means,” responded Holmes affably.

On the first page of the book was inscribed a poem entitled “The Storm”, which began with the words “The seagulls cry; the clouds race by” and described very well, I thought, the gathering gloom that precedes such an event. The poem on the second page was entitled “The Robin”, and captured nicely the character of that friendly little bird. Thus the poems continued, painting a charming picture of everyday country life in that secluded corner of rural England.

“These really are very good,” said the vicar after a moment in a quiet voice, to which I murmured my assent. Holmes, however, said nothing, but craned his head forward like some strange bird of prey inspecting its quarry. His face was tense and still, his every feature displaying his intense concentration. Only his eyes moved, darting about the pages swiftly as Dickens slowly turned them over for us, as if determined to absorb every square inch of their surface.

The poems came to an end just a few pages short of the middle of the book. The remainder of the leaves were blank. I could not wonder at Dickens regarding the book with some reverence; it was perhaps the most personal memento anyone could possibly have of the girl, displaying as it did so clearly the author’s simple and unaffected character.

“Thank you,” said Holmes again as Dickens closed the book at last. He extended his hand but the young man declined to take it.

“We shall speak again,” said Holmes.

“I think not,” returned the other.

“Perhaps not, but we shall nevertheless. I intend to get to the bottom of this matter.”

With that, Holmes turned on his heel, and Yarrow and I followed him out of the farmyard. I glanced back as I closed the gate, and saw that John Dickens was still standing by the back door of the cottage, observing our departure. There was an odd expression upon his features, which had something of defiance about it, certainly, but something also, I thought, of grudging respect, and even perhaps of apprehension.

We parted from the vicar in the village high street, Holmes thanking him warmly for his kind assistance, and made our way back to the White Hart.

“The girl’s exercise book yielded several points of interest, did it not?” remarked Holmes as we walked along together. “You observed, I take it, that two pages had been removed?”

“I saw that one leaf had been torn out near the middle of the book,” I responded. “As it came after the last poem, I assumed that it was a blank sheet.”

Holmes nodded. “Yes, that was of interest, although it was no more than we might have expected, of course. But the second missing leaf is certainly of very great significance.”

“I did not observe any other.”

“Really? It was near the beginning of the book, between the poem about the robin and the one about the daffodils – which, incidentally, I thought somewhat superior to Wordsworth’s effort on a similar theme. It had been removed very neatly, with a small pair of nail scissors.”

“But surely these things are of no great importance?” I protested.

“On the contrary,” returned my friend in a tone of surprise, “they are very significant links in the chain of events that stretches unbroken from the summer of ’78 to the present time.”