Chapter 32

My first thought after reading this shocking story was to immediately contact Winifred, then quickly make plans to journey by train to Gravesend.

Once I had arrived and settled in she and I would work together and investigate the events leading to what I suspected was not an accidental death but the cold murder of the Doctor.

But I did not follow through with this plan because I realized that it most likely had been somehow discovered that Doctor Briggs had been forwarding to me relevant medial information (that was never meant to be shared) which had been of great assistance towards my uncovering the medical details of John’s death.

Now experiencing some guilt due to our informal association I felt that the general physician’s death had somehow been inexorably linked to the circumstances of my personal investigation.

With this conclusion I realized that the only knowledge Winifred might have of this matter would only have come from what she had read in the newspaper.

In the end I did not want to disturb her situation with any investigation as it might result in trouble or complications for her.

Feeling Sherlock’s reassuring presence quietly standing behind me and watching me while I was seated at the desk in my study... I placed a blank piece of paper in front of me and with a fountain pen wrote down in succession four names... Willem Bastiaan van Steenwyk... Marius Bakeberg... Albrecht Metzger and Patricia Mclean.

Then I put the pen down and asked myself a series of rhetorical questions “which one of you had carried out this act... or are all of you somehow responsible for what happened in Gravesend?”

I followed with “what was so important... what wrong had to be righted... what message had to be sent that it cost the lives of two men who did not have to die” As if to respond to my last question I heard the echo of a familiar man’s voice behind me reply “what indeed Watson?”

***

Then before my eyes appearing like the last long thin wisp of grey white smoke that rises into the late night time sky from the embers of an extinguished camp fire was the name Mata Hari.