Chapter 8

THE MIGHTY MEETING

1

The concourse outside Euston was a place where cabriolets assembled, to carry new arrivals to their various destinations. It was somewhere in Holmes’s scattered thoughts to mount one and return home – to greet his wife and babe, and from there to coordinate with Bucket, and the authorities, to report the strange events that had happened, and set the instruments of the law upon the apprehension of the criminals who had threatened and assaulted him.

But, on this day, instead of ranked carriages there was only a great crowd of people, most dressed in their working clothes, milling and wandering.

With some difficulty, Holmes pushed his way through the crowd to the road beyond, where he found one hackney carriage parked, an island in the sea of people. “Can you take me to Baker Street?” he called up, but the driver, his whip tucked into his back pocket like a fishing rod, only glowered at him. “Force a way through this mob?” he returned. “Not bloody likely, my good sir. I’m a-sitting it out.”

“Sitting what out? What is going on?”

“You haven’t heard? Them Chartists are gathered. They have a prodigious petition, five million names have signed they say. They intend to force open the doors of Parliament, drag the speaker from his woolsack and set up the petition in his place.”

“Good grief,” said Holmes, and set off on foot.

It was a slow business working his way south from the station. The main thoroughfares were clogged with folk, and a steady stream of people kept emerging from the side-alleys. There was some mockery of his gentlemanly clothes: women hooting and yelling, men threatening to box “Lord Ponsonby here” in the eye, or calling him “his Duke-ship” and “No-Cheese”.

He worked his way up Marylebone, against the direction of human flow: for most people were swarming into town, to join the mighty meeting: south of the river, at Kennington, is what Holmes overheard. He saw, too, some strange goings-on. As he peered through the crush of folk, trying to spy-out a way of proceeding, he sometimes chanced to see an arm stretched out – sometimes the arms reached under his own perhaps, or perhaps across him – to thrust some paper into the hand or pocket of another person in the crowd, then be withdrawn so suddenly that it was impossible to tell from whom it came. Nor could he see in any face, on glancing quickly round, the least confusion or surprise.

Many people were carrying bottles and billy-cans which they frequently fitted to their lips. The murmur was good natured, augmented by occasional bursts of song. Holmes struggled further on.

He turned down Luxborough Street, hoping to cut through to Baker Street from the side. But the crush was as great down there. The stream of life was all pouring one way, joining the throng of persons looking to cross the river from the Middlesex to the Surrey shore, all in unusual haste and evident excitement. Nearly every man and woman – a human stream which still came pouring past, without slackening – wore in their hat a red cockade.

It was strange for Holmes to feel, in his heart, an acute sense of his solitude, a strange and novel thing to feel considering the size and press of the great crowd all around him.

His train journey with Griffin had, in his memory, the feverish quality of a strange dream. And yet it had taken place.

Had he not, then, been dosed with an hallucinogen? Griffin claimed so, but he was hardly a trustworthy source. And the alternative was much more fantastical – that bringing two temporal iterations of the same man into proximity each with the other would lead to such a mental derangement. Yet, as he dismissed the very possibility, a voice in his head confirmed it. Holmes had worked with electrical equipment. He knew that touching two live wires together, without an object of galvanic resistance to mediate the flow, would cause a short-spark explosion in which the entire circuit collapsed. Might there be a similar logic in the world of time-voyaging?

It was too bizarre. And then, with a jolt not unlike a galvanic shock, a great rush of memory returned to Holmes. The carriage ride to Middlemarch. Meeting Griffin in the inn. Their conversation. It all fell back into place.

What he said on the train was correct: he had – he had explained the whole extraordinary state of affairs. He had given Holmes money, drawn on a local bank, and encouraged him to avert the danger of the mob. Had Griffin fully grasped the imminency of the uprising?

But if he hadn’t been dosed with an hallucinogen… perhaps there was no such substance. His explanation for the bizarre visions that had accompanied the deaths of Sir Martin and Bryde was exploded.

“This,” Holmes burst out, as he wriggled and squeezed through the crowd, “is ridiculous! Ridiculous!”

He found himself at the side of the street. All the shops and businesses had closed for the day, and many had taken the precaution of boarding-up their windows. Holmes clambered up a brick wall and over the top into a private garden.

He dashed across this space and climbed over the far wall. Now he was in a back-yard court of miniature size, in which an elderly woman was seated, on a stool, peeling potatoes into a bucket.

“I apologise for this intrusion, ma’am,” Holmes said. He reached to tip her his hat and then remembered that he had lost it, in Middlemarch. “I am only passing through.”

He ran down the side of this house and wrenched open a rude gate, emerging into Baker Street at last. But here the crowd was even thicker.

The houses here were taller, and the shops again all shut up – the passage of so great a crowd having alarmed the tradesmen for their goods and windows. Holmes saw, in the upper stories, various inhabitants congregated, looking down into the street below. A few applauded, and others hissed; but regardless of these commentaries upon their action the vast congregation of people continued their tidal flow southwards.

It took Holmes a long time, and it cost him a hard physical labour before he reached the front door of his London lodgings. He fumbled the key, jostled and shoved by passers-by, and finally made his way inside to the temporary sanctuary of his hallway.

“Gwendolin?” he called, leaping up the stairs in threes. “Gwendolin!”

But his wife was not there. “Mrs Holmes departed yesterday sir,” said his landlady. “When she received your letter.”

“Departed where?” Holmes demanded, gasping.

“She didn’t tell me sir; only she took her baby, and her maid, and they all got into a cabriolet outside. Mayhap she was returning to your house in the countryside, sir? I can only commend her foresight, to get out before today, for now the whole of London has been possessed by a mob as shocking and alarming as ever chopped off a king’s head, or set out barricades in the road!”

“Stay here,” Holmes instructed her.

The usual deliveries of food having been interrupted by the mob, there was little to eat in the apartment. This was unfortunate, since Holmes was fiercely hungry. Mrs Hudson found a heel of bread, and some cheese, and uncorked a bottle of good beer, which Holmes devoured. Then he washed and changed his tattered, grimy clothes. Peering at his own face in the mirror he examined the contusion on it that ran from the bridge of his nose to the top of his left cheek. He had almost forgotten it, but dabbing it with a wet cloth to clean the wound brought it stingingly back into his consciousness.

He thought of himself looking upon himself. Then he thought of older Griffin looking at himself, younger, in a different way. Could it be true?

“Is the world going mad, Mr Holmes?” Mrs Hudson asked, plaintively.

“The city certainly seems to be doing so,” Holmes replied.

“They are all off to Kennington Green,” said Mrs Hudson.

“Is that so?”

“The Boots was saying, yesterday. Don’t dismiss him, sir: he’s young.”

“You’re young yourself, Mrs Hudson.”

“But I’ve been married and widowed, and so I’m older than my years. He’s only a foolish lad.”

“What did he say?”

“It’s the Chartists, sir. They are orchestrating, they say, a mighty meeting, at Kennington Green south of the river. They have a – what is the word? I would say list, but that ain’t the proper term.”

“A list of demands?”

“A list of names. Millions upon millions of names, signed, and ready to present to Parliament.”

“A petition,” said Holmes.

“That’s the word! They will gather and march as one upon the Houses of Parliament, and present the petition. The Boots says he’s not cleaning any boots today, for he’s off down to the river, and across it, to join the mighty meeting.”

“Mrs Hudson,” said Holmes. “I must get to Scotland Yard – though I fear I may already be too late.”

From the window, looking down, it seemed as though the crowd was beginning to thin. “I think the majority have moved on, down to their destination. There are still many people in the streets, but the numbers are fewer. Mrs Hudson: I must go out.”

He went to his writing table and scribbled a note.

“When the crowd has died down, I’d be grateful if you would post this – to my wife, addressed to where I hope and trust she has gone… home.”

“Where else would she be, sir?”

“I wrote to her from Middlemarch yesterday, and it’s possible she has gone there hoping to find me. But if so I would not expect her to have taken the baby – and her maid. No, I trust she has gone home, where she will be safe.”

Holmes handed his landlady the note, put on his overcoat, retrieved another hat, and went out again to face the crowd.

2

There were still enough people milling along the streets to make passage difficult, a strenuous and continuous effort to force a way. Holmes began, as English people tend to, by voicing a string of “excuse me’s and “I beg your pardon’s, but the crowd was so focused on its own designs, on singing revolutionary songs, waving scarlet flags and bottles, that there was no merit in politeness. By shoving and pushing Holmes made his way to the new Square, with its minaret-like Trafalgar monument. This open space gave him an easier pass, and he moved to the head of the Mall, so as to cut through to Scotland Yard.

“Holmes!” cried a voice, hoarse but recognisable. “Vavasour Holmes!”

It was Aster.

The two men embraced, Holmes joyful. “My friend,” he cried, as the passing press of people jostled and jarred them. “I had thought you lost – perhaps dead. The last I saw, Queen Ludd’s men were shooting their flintlocks at you.”

“Their aim was as poor as their morality,” Aster replied. “I was fortunate to chance upon a team of horses, being brought into town under police orders, and was able to persuade the mounted constable of my urgent need. I rode one such straight to Scotland Yard, arriving as the dawn was breaking – and just as this monstrous crowd was beginning to assemble all around.”

“I am on my way to Scotland Yard now,” said Holmes. “My progress has been slower – but I have had the most illuminating, or perhaps the most unimaginable, conversation with Mr Griffin on the way.”

“If you are going to find Bucket, then he has already left the Yard. The dragoons have been mustered, and cannons are being readied outside Buckingham Palace. But what did Griffin tell you?”

“Too much to compress into speech in such a place,” said Holmes, shoved so hard by a passing labourer that he almost fell. “When leisure is ours I will tell you all.”

“The urgent task is to contain this uprising,” called Aster. A gush of new people pushed their way between the two men. Holmes felt himself being carried away from his friend, as a swimmer is borne against his will by a strong current.

“Aster,” he called. “The protestors are assembling in Kennington. They plan to march on Parliament!”

“Yes,” Aster called back. “The mob must be stopped – contained, as I say, south of the river!”

“Aster!” Holmes called again, lifting his arm. But the crush of people was too overwhelming, and he was shoved away, and bundled down Whitehall.

It was beyond Holmes’s power to resist: an influx of new people, all eager and hurrying to cross the stone arches of Westminster Bridge to arrive at the meeting place in time. Holmes struggled to avoid slipping and falling between the urgent bodies – a fearful effort at times, for to fall would surely to be trampled underfoot.

The crowd flowed over the bridge and Holmes was carried along. The force of it moved not only his physical form, but swept through him, penetrating his interiority. Perhaps it was some remnant of the hallucinogen (though, he recalled, Griffin had denied that there had ever been such a drug) but he felt his individuality dissipate, his distinctness as a separable human being eroded, washed away grain by grain with each wave of the pulse of the crowd. Was he, in the fullest sense, an individual? Are any of us? Here, as a molecule in the great flow, he became aware of a different perspective. This stampede rumble of many feet on the stony floor, this sense of continual motion, this heat and press and smell and sound of so many other folk. The flags and banners red as cherry, red as blood, red as sunset, red as poppies, red as the breast of a robin or the stippling of a trout, was his blood, his tongue, his sky. As certain adepts in the skills of witchcraft speak of departing their corporeal form and floating through the sky as a mere spirit, so Holmes felt himself somehow looking down upon the progress of which he was a part. It was no longer a gathering of separates; it was instead a giant organism, in which each man and woman was a cellular component. He saw it pulse and slide along the channels carved into the fabric of the city by its streets and bridges – a serpent, the brown and tan and black and green of the various clothes and hats blending into a moleskin taupe colour, spotted with dots of red.

The creature drew itself into Kennington Common, and Holmes was a cell of it. Here this immense multitude was collected, bearing flags of various kinds and sizes, but all of the same colour – red, like the cockades – some sections marching to and fro in military array, and others drawn up in circles, squares, and lines. A large portion, both of the bodies which paraded the ground, and of those which remained stationary, were occupied in singing revolutionary hymns and songs. With whomsoever this originated, it was well done, for the sound of so many thousand voices in the air must have stirred the heart of any man within him, and could not fail to have a wonderful effect upon enthusiasts, however mistaken.

Holmes struggled, inwardly, to shake himself out of this mass-identity. He shook himself physically, and returned, with a jolt, to his individuation. He was a single man, though surrounded by a vast number of single women and single men.

“Come now,” he told himself. “It won’t do to stay here.”

Struggling through the outer area of the crowd, he began the process of zagging and zigging, wriggling and pushing to extricate himself from the main crush of the gathering. The mass had fallen quiet, such that the fluttering of a banner struck the ear, and caught the eyes. Holmes looked back. A platform had been erected in the middest of the common, and various folk stood there, awaiting the arrival of the governing figures of this assemblage.

The quiet, and motionless, enabled Holmes to move more quickly. Soon enough he was at the edge of the common, where the press of people was thinner. He stopped for a moment, and turned back, just as the entire crowd burst into a tremendous shout, into another, and another; and the air seemed rent and shaken, as by the discharge of cannon.

Two figures had mounted the central platform. Even from this great distance Holmes could see who they were: the King and Queen themselves – Carts, Ludd, the peoples’ appointed monarchy of revolution. They were speaking, although the distance and the murmur and chatter of the crowd made it impossible for Holmes, at the very edge, to make-out what was being said. But he didn’t need to hear the specific words: the import was clear. March, they were saying. Move this mighty serpent to the Houses of Parliament, and Buckingham Palace. They were saying: the tongue of this serpent is a vast petition, signed by five million and more, which will unroll between the fangs of the dragon’s head and lick at the great door of the House of Commons. They were saying: the bite of this serpent’s jaws will break the walls of power asunder, crash it to rubble, and slither across the ruins. They were saying: we shall build a new land from the detritus of the old. Liberty, and Justice; Fairness and Equality; Work for all and Play for all; Love the Beloved Republic.

Holmes couldn’t hear the words, but he understood them.

3

He turned back and hurried up the streets, where now only a few stragglers were coming the other way. At Westminster Bridge he crossed to the Middlesex shore, and on that northern side of the river he met Mr Bucket, a dozen police constables, and Aster. Some few curious passers-by, idlers and dallying servants interrupted such errands as their masters and mistresses had sent them on to see what this small group of Peelers was about.

“Mr Bucket,” Holmes cried, somewhat out of breath. “I cannot say how pleased I am to see you here.”

“Mr Holmes,” said Bucket, nodding.

“I have travelled – Aster and I have travelled – far, as fast as we could, to reach you.”

“And here we have both arrived,” said Aster. “Though I fear we come too late.”

Aster and Holmes both shook hands with Bucket. “I have this very moment run up from Kennington Common,” said Holmes. “The crowd there is very large – very large indeed. It is currently being addressed by the King of Carts – and by Queen Ludd as well. It is clear what they will do next.”

“They plan to march on Parliament,” said Aster, “no doubt.”

“And we are here to stop ’em,” said Bucket, firmly.

Holmes looked at the twelve constables. Ten of them were young – extremely young, or so they seemed to Holmes’s glance – and thin. Two older policemen, with the triple-lambda of sergeants’ stripes on their shoulders, looked more substantial and more experienced.

“Forgive me,” said Holmes. “I have no wish to impugn the integrity or courage of your officers, Bucket. But will – will a dozen men be enough?”

“As Mr Aster notes,” said Bucket with his characteristic imperturbability, “we have been apprized of the danger reasonably late in the day. Had I known a day or two earlier we might have brought in extra bodies to swell the ranks, here. As it is, the force is stretched thin across the centre of town. Dragoons have been mustered, and cannon set and loaded outside Buckingham House. But as to the present redoubt, we will have to make do with what we can.”

“A dozen is a small number,” said Holmes. He rubbed his face with both hands and turned to look back across the bridge. “But then again, having seen – having experienced – the magnitude of the crowd, I fear even a hundred men would not be enough.”

A carriage came rattling down Saint George Street, and rolled to a stop, across the northward side of the bridge. Holmes was surprised to see the crest of Sir Persimmon Hawk on the side of the vehicle, and more surprised when Sir Percy himself stepped through the carriage door.

“Would have been here sooner,” the baronet barked, “but there was a shocking press of paupers through the streets. Only now are the roads clear enough for my cart to come through. Chartists, what?”

“Quite correct, Sir Percy,” said Bucket, calmly. “A large gathering of agitators south of the river. We believe they will soon be marching on Parliament, so as to present their petition for political reform.”

“Petition my eye,” cried Sir Percy, crossly. “Petition my belt and breeches. They mean nothing so mild. They’re revolutionaries – anarchists and smashers. The Luddites are back, I hear? It’s upheaval on a dreadful scale.”

“That’s as may be, Sir Percy,” said Bucket. “But I must ask you to remove yourself from this scene. I cannot undertake for your safety once the mob start coming across this bridge. They will, it is only too likely, be no respecters of rank or seniority. They may outrage your person, destroy your carriage – it would be best for you to return to your house, and barricade the door.”

“Nonsense!” said Hawk. “I’m a justice of the peace, what?”

“Notwithstanding your civic responsibilities and roles,” Bucket continued, in the same measured, unaggressive, irresistible tone, “ which nobody respects more than I, Sir Percy, I must ask you to take a withdraw from this particular arena.”

“You think I’m scared,” barked the baronet, “of a rabble of geese?”

“Sir Percy,” Holmes inserted. “I don’t mean to presume, for you and I are hardly intimates. But I am obliged to report that I have just myself fled from the nexus of this great gathering – tens of thousands, and possibly hundreds of thousands, of folk, all fired-up with revolutionary fervour, presently having the fires in their engines stoked and heated by incendiary rhetoric from their revolutionary leaders. They will march here, and soon.”

This appeared to catch Sir Percy by surprise. “Thousands?” he said. “Tens of thousands, ye say? Surely it is but a gaggle of excitable geese, nothing more?”

“I fear,” Inspector Bucket said, gravely, “it is considerably more. I entirely believe Mr Holmes’s estimations, as regards numbers.”

“Damnation!” ejaculated Sir Percy. “So many? How could you permit such a large body of agitators to assemble, Bucket?”

The Inspector was unflappable: “With a little more advance warning, Sir Percy, it might have been possible to intervene and prevent so dangerous a build-up. However, we must deal with the situation with which we are presented.”

“I’ll not believe there are so many malcontents and socialists in all London!” Sir Percy declared, loudly. But, as he spoke, Holmes could see that his attention was not upon the Inspector, nor directly at Aster – the secretary of his former partner – nor Holmes. He was instead looking past them at the southern reach of the bridge.

Holmes turned to look. On the surrey shore, a huge milling crowd was apparent. Heads and shoulders, banners carried aloft, spread across the southern bank of the Thames and the first of what was, evidently, a vast army of revolutionary foot soldiers was stepping out onto the southern reach of the bridge.

“Gracious,” said Sir Percy, in quite another tone of voice. “Perhaps, Inspector, you are correct. A modicum of discretion, here, might be the better strategy.”

“I am pleased, Sir Percy, that you,” Bucket began. But the baronet had already shown his back, and then, as he clambered into his carriage, his heels. The door slammed shut, and the sound of Sir Percy knocking his walking stick on the roof of his compartment, to tell his driver to hurry away, was clearly audible.

But there was no driver.

Holmes, afterwards, tried to remember if he had actually seen the carriage driver slip away – alarmed at the size and ferocity of the approaching crowd – or only filled-in that detail after the fact. Either way there they were: with nobody to stir-up the horses, the carriage sat where it had been parked.

“Do you think…?” Holmes asked Aster.

“… that one of us should clamber up there and drive Sir Percy’s carriage?” completed Aster. “But, Holmes, I don’t know how.”

“Nor I.”

“Gentlemen,” said Bucket, standing foresquare to meet the advancing crowd. “The time for such shifts is behind us.”

There was no more time. The cheering throng was pouring across the bridge. Poles and pikes jabbed at the air in amongst the scarlet banners. It came to Holmes that so vast a press of people would simply sweep them away, as a mountain avalanche blasts though fences made of stick. It was perfectly useless simply to stand there. And yet neither he nor Aster moved.

“Mr Holmes,” said Bucket, imperturbably. “If you cannot drive Sir Percy’s carriage, perhaps you could at least lead the horses by their bridles, and so move it out of the immediate path of this advancing crowd. Otherwise I fear it will be upended, and trampled.”

“Yes,” said Holmes, breaking from his reverie. “Yes of course.” As he stepped over towards the horses he heard Bucket order his small detachment of policemen into a line. It seemed so extraordinarily futile a thing to do that Holmes almost laughed. He put his hand on the rein where it dangled from the bit of the nearest horse and clucked at the beast. “Come along. Let’s be on our way.”

But he did not move, for, looking back at the bridge, he was arrested by an unprecedented sight. There was Bucket, and his dozen men, forming a thin line across the bridge’s egress. Aster stood behind this line, his right hand in his jacket pocket. Holmes for a moment wondered if he had a pistol in there, although he also considered the perfect uselessness of such a weapon against so multifarious an adversary.

The petitioners formed a solid phalanx and advanced determinedly until they were so close that Holmes could make out the individual teeth in their grinning mouths and could see the wrinkles at the side of their eyes. The cheering grew in volume. Staffs were being waved. A stone flew, hurled out of the mob. It clattered onto the ground, before Holmes. Then another was thrown – and another. One of the policemen was struck on the chest, but the fellow didn’t flinch. Half a brick soared, came down – half a brick, half a brick onwards – and caught Holmes on the side of his head. Holmes staggered backwards, more startled than stunned. He rubbed his cranium, stepped forward again.

The bridge was empty. Or was it? Holmes looked again. The crowd was there, coming from the far end. And they were still coming, marching aggressively straight towards him.

They came in noise and tumult, the sound swelling again like a crashing sea, the poles and banners bouncing and waving over their heads. Why had he thought the bridge was empty? Was it the knock on his head?

Again the crowd advanced across the bridge, a more confused crush, a mass. Holmes walked forward to get a better look at what was happening. On the far bank the crush of people, coming up from Kennington, continued to grow. It was as if the advance party crossing the bridge reached the Middlesex bank, and somehow returned again to the Surrey shore, where they found themselves in a more crowded place, and fewer of them could fight through the mass to get back onto the bridge. But how were they returning so rapidly? Why were they retreating in such a fashion? How had they not crossed over the bridge entirely? Holmes could not comprehend.

It was baffling. The men at the front of the advancing group lowered their pikes and broke into a run – and just before they broke against the line of policemen they were gone.

The group started across the bridge, but the crowd upon the way was smaller, somehow, diminished in numbers, and from their expressions as they approached a degree of confusion had passed through their ranks. On the far bank the crowd had become an effective log jam, preventing the many people behind from coming any closer. The advanced guard reached the line of policemen and, straight away, were back on the far side again.

By now it was not possible to co-ordinate a march over the bridge: there were simply too many people crowded into the space on the Surrey side. Indeed Holmes watched as people were shoved, or squeezed, over the balustrade to fall into the Thames, and splash their way unhappily back to shore; others spilled out along the bankside, or were lifted and carried over the heads of people. It was a mess – a crush – a blockage comprised of raw humanity.

For long minutes, Bucket stood, his hands behind his back, as the crowd slowly disintegrated on the far bank. Some made their way northwards, to hurry round the bend of the river and cross at the Strand Bridge – the tollbooths were empty, and the bridge was unguarded. But too few made their way to be a threat, and those that crossed dissipated into the centre of town. More simply retreated back to the Common at Kennington. Over the course of the next hour, the whole gathering melted away.

Holmes came back over to Bucket. “What happened?” he asked. “What did I just witness?”

“Commendations, men,” Bucket told his officers. “You held firm, and rebuffed them.”

“But,” Holmes said. “You surely saw the same thing I saw, Bucket! You saw the crowd approach and then, as if whisked away by a genie from the Arabian lamp, return instantly to the far shore – did you not see that?”

Bucket turned his face, slowly, to Holmes. “Mr Holmes,” he said, in a deliberate and measured tone. “I can tell you what I saw. I saw my men hold firm, and the rioters returned to the far side of the river. That is what I saw.”

“But the manner of their return!” Holmes insisted. “It was not a regular retreat on foot.”

“Of course it was,” said Bucket. “How else could it have been?”

“Inspector, I implore you – ask yourself – is that truly what you saw?”

“I can hardly have seen anything else, Mr Holmes.”

“It is not what I saw!”

“Come now,” said Bucket. “Be reasonable. Surely you do not mean to impugn the courage of my men? Standing firm as the mob advanced, their steadfastness deterred the riotous assemblage from proceeding.”

“I mean no disrespect, no disrespect at all, Inspector. I only appeal to the evidence of your own eyes.”

“My eyes can hardly have observed an impossible thing, Mr Holmes.”

“Aster!” Holmes cried. “You saw it – didn’t you?”

“I’m not entirely sure what I saw,” said Aster, uncertainly. “Though, like the Inspector, I commend the courage of these police constables.”

“Mr Holmes, forgive me,” said Bucket, all uncertainty now banished from his expression. “I must advert to the strain under which you have been labouring: you suffered a trauma, seeing your friend killed in front of you, mere feet away, some few weeks ago. A horrible and destabilising thing to see. Your account of that accident was, as we must be honest with one another, bizarre, improbable – a vision of nightmare, occasioned by the shock you had suffered. Since then you have been hither and yon, and suffered more stresses and strains. Might you accept that your sensorium has been, for understandable reasons, disarranged by all you have been through?”

“Aster –“ Holmes pressed. “You know it is not so simple. You know!”

“I’m honestly not sure,” said Aster, looking distressed.

At this juncture the door to Sir Percy Hawk’s carriage smacked open, and the baronet’s head emerged. “Have they gone then?” he boomed. “I knew it – mere geese. Scotch mist. Cowards!”

“I am pleased to report, Sir Percy, that my men stood firm.”

“Turned and ran, did they?” the baronet called. “I daresay the sight of my carriage, blocking their way, dissuaded them! Not just a cart, but a fine carriage bearing a baronet’s device on its side – that surely cowed them into retreating.”

“No doubt,” Bucket said, diplomatically.

“No question. Mere geese! Fools.” The baronetal head withdrew into the carriage and shut the door. There was the sound of Sir Percy banging on the roof of his compartment with his walking stick, for he seemed to have forgotten that his driver had absented himself. There was a pause, and then the door opened again. “Inspector, might I trouble you – perhaps one of your men could drive my carriage back to my house? My driver seems to have run off.”

“Of course, Sir Percy,” said Bucket. “Armstrong: you can drive the carriage, I think?”

“Yes Inspector.”

Holmes watched all this with an increasing feeling of unreality: a corrosive sensation that the world was not cohering after the logic of common sense the way it should. Bucket’s certainty, and Aster’s refusal to back him up, were causing him to doubt what he had just seen. But he had seen it! – hadn’t he?

“Come Mr Holmes,” said Bucket, approaching him. “I suggest you return home. I am no doctor, but surely a period of rest and recuperation would be advisable, to restore the balance of your mind.”

“Perhaps,” said Holmes. “Perhaps you are correct.”