“You will not, I hope, take it amiss,” I ventured after a moment, “if I express my opinion on the whole matter?”

“Not at all,” returned my companion, raising his eyebrow slightly. “Indeed, I should welcome your observations.”

“Then I must, in all honesty, declare that I see little point in much of what we have done today, Holmes. A few details of the matter may perhaps have been elucidated – the circumstances surrounding the girl’s death, for instance – but aside from that, which, in any case, scarcely seems pertinent to your client’s predicament, our day’s work has surely been essentially profitless.”

“There, my dear fellow,” returned Holmes, “I must beg leave to differ. You clearly believe that we have wasted our energies today. That is a suggestion with which I must disagree most strongly.”

“Why so?” I asked, surprised at the vehemence with which he spoke.

“Because,” said he, “I have solved the case.”

IV: AT THE WHITE HART

When the mood was upon him, my friend Sherlock Holmes was undoubtedly the most maddeningly uncommunicative person I have ever known. Upon our return from Hawthorn Farm he had called in at the post office and sent a wire to Captain Reid, but had then fallen into a moody silence, and all my efforts to engage him in conversation had been answered only by preoccupied grunts, when they had been answered at all. At length I had admitted defeat and abandoned my attempts altogether. By dinner time that evening, however, he had evidently resolved whatever it was that had been exercising his mind, for he seemed more at ease as we ate, and spoke freely of many matters, although not of the case.

After dinner we repaired to the private sitting room of the inn, which was on the first floor, overlooking the market square. There, over a cup of coffee and a pipe, my friend’s thoughts at last turned once more to the business that had brought us down to Sussex.

“I have a case here, Watson, which will ring about the country!” said he in a tone of suppressed excitement. “If this case does not make my name, then no case ever will! I have the whole matter here,” he continued, holding out his hand with his fingers extended, “in the very palm of my hand!”

“You astound me, Holmes,” I cried. “You spoke earlier of having solved the case, and I confess I was never so surprised in all my life! Surely you cannot be in earnest?”

“Perfectly so.”

“But how can it be?” I protested. “For save only the information you gained from the newspaper office, which has been confirmed and amplified a little by Mr Yarrow, I cannot see that the case has advanced to any significant extent since we left Baker Street. You have certainly amassed a considerable amount of detail concerning the death of Sarah Dickens; you have established beyond all reasonable doubt that it is ill-use of that girl that is alleged against Captain Reid; but much of this must be common knowledge in these parts, so how can it go any way to proving Reid’s innocence, or the guilt of another?”

“Is it possible that you do not yet perceive the truth of the matter?” said my friend. “Why, Watson, you have seen all I have seen, and have heard all I have heard! Like archaeologists sifting through the remains of some ancient Greek city, we have been delving into the past. The separate facts we have unearthed are like the shattered fragments of a decorated amphora, found scattered in the dust. Each fragment, considered in isolation, conveys very little to us, but we know that once, when joined together, the fragments bore a clear picture. Can you not put all the fragments of this puzzle together to reveal that picture?”

I shook my head. “It does seem that Sarah Dickens was seeing someone,” I responded, “and if it was not Reid, then it was someone else. But there seem too many possibilities for us to be able to form a clear picture of the events, too many questions to which we are unlikely ever to find the answers.”

“When we began our enquiries,” said Holmes in a measured tone, after a moment, “there were indeed a number of possible explanations of the affair. But each little item of knowledge that we have collected has served to narrow down the field, until now only one remains. It is, as you know, an axiom of mine that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the truth.”

“I should very much like to hear your view of the matter,” I remarked. “You stated earlier this afternoon that you regarded it as important to establish, in your own mind at least, the precise circumstances of the girl’s death. I cannot see that this issue is of the first importance, but if you regard it as such, I am willing to allow it, for the sake of the argument. I take it that you are now satisfied that you know the truth of that matter?”

“I am.”

“What then, Holmes, is your opinion?”

“I shall give you my opinion,” responded my companion after a moment, “and then, I think, you will appreciate, Watson, why the issue is such an important one. But, wait! What is that?”

There had come the sound of footsteps on the stair and voices outside our room. A moment later there was a knock at the door, and Mr Coleman put his head into the room.

“Two gentlemen to see you,” said he, opening the door a little wider to admit a broad-chested elderly man, with grizzled grey hair and beard, who carried a heavy, bulbous-headed stick. Accompanying him was a thin, dark-haired, pale-faced young man whom I recognized as the man on horseback to whom we had spoken near Jenkin’s Clump earlier in the day. “Admiral Blythe-Headley and Mr Anthony Blythe-Headley,” announced the landlord as he withdrew.

Holmes waved the two men to a seat and regarded them with an expression of curiosity. “To what do we owe this pleasure?” he asked at length.

Admiral Blythe-Headley thumped his stick upon the floor with a snort.

“It is no pleasure for us, sir!” said he in an angry tone. “It is no pleasure to be obliged to leave one’s hearth and home in the evening to pay a visit to vermin!”

“Well, pleasure or not, I did not compel you to come,” returned Holmes in an affable tone.

“Have a care, sir!” said the younger man sharply.

“You are come down here from London, I understand,” continued the admiral in a loud voice.

“That is true,” returned Holmes.

“You are acting on behalf of Colonel Reid’s son.”

“That is also true.”

“You young men from London!” said the admiral in a tone of distaste. “You think you are so clever, in proving once a season that black is white and white is black.”

Holmes’s eyebrows went up in surprise, but he did not respond.

“Well, you had better understand this, young man,” the other continued: “we do not care for your sort in these parts, and the sooner you are gone the better.”

“We shall be leaving just as soon as we have righted the wrong that has been done to John Reid.”

“Pah!” cried the old man. “In my day, any young man found guilty of such disgraceful behaviour as his would have lost his place in society for ever.”

“Those who would take away a man’s place in society would do well to be sure of their facts.”

“Facts? Pah!” cried the admiral angrily, banging his stick on the floor once more. “For your information, Reid’s conduct is common knowledge in these parts. Is the blackguard ashamed of himself? Does he seek to hide his face? Not a bit of it! The first thing he does upon his return is to call upon us as if nothing had happened, to pay court to my daughter! The brazen impudence of the fellow! The arrogant presumption that my daughter would want anything to do with such a vile scoundrel! He ought to be horsewhipped, and drummed out of the county! And as for your leaving, young man, you can pack your bags this evening, for you are leaving in the morning!”

“We shall leave when we are ready.”