Holmes sat a moment in silence, his elbows on the table, his chin resting on his fingertips.

“There is no one to whom you can turn?” he enquired at last, “no relative or friend whom I could inform of your situation, and who might perhaps take an interest?”

Miss Borrow shook her head. “Apart from Aunt Margaret,” she replied, her lip quivering slightly, “there is no one.”

“Very well,” said Holmes, “I shall do what I can. You have no idea of your aunt’s address?”

“Only that it is somewhere near Tattingham in Sussex, I believe.”

“Quite so. And Mr Theakston’s address? I think I should like to have a word with that gentleman, if it is possible.”

“As a matter of fact, I do remember that,” Miss Borrow replied, brightening up slightly. “He mentioned to us once or twice that his mother lived at Rose Cottage, in the village of Hembleby, near Wetherby, in Yorkshire. His father had been a teacher in Wetherby, I believe, but died some years ago. His mother then took Rose Cottage which, Mr Theakston said, stands beside the village green, close by the church. I am sure that a letter to Rose Cottage would find him.”

“Excellent!” said Holmes, taking out his notebook. “You see, Miss Borrow, we are making progress already!” He glanced at his watch. “Our allotted time is nearly up, and Miss Rogerson may return at any moment. Would you be so good as to wait by the door, Watson, and give a signal if you see her coming? I wish to take down a few particulars.”

I did as he requested, and a few minutes later observed the carriage in which Miss Borrow had arrived draw up once more at the front of the library. I caught my wife’s eye, nodded my head, and saw her speak to Miss Borrow, who at once stood up from the table and made a show of examining the books on a nearby shelf. It was fortunate that she had acted so promptly, for as I turned back to the doorway, Miss Rogerson herself pushed past me with a swish of skirts. “I thought I told you to wait at the doorway,” I heard her say in a harsh tone to Miss Borrow. The girl mumbled some reply and followed the older woman meekly from the room. In a moment, I had rejoined my two companions at the table.

“Miss Borrow and Miss Rogerson return to Leicester-shire on Friday afternoon,” remarked Holmes as I sat down. “Miss Borrow has requested, however, that before she and Miss Rogerson leave London, she be allowed to pay a visit to the church of St Martin-within-Ludgate, where there is apparently a memorial to the Borrow family. She will be at St Martin’s on Friday morning, and I have told her that I shall try to speak to her then, with any information I have managed to acquire.”

“What do you intend to do?” I asked.

My friend shook his head, a wry expression upon his face. “Miss Borrow reminds me a little of a distant relative of mine, with whom I once had a connection. She is a plucky girl, and as such deserves our help. But it is a delicate matter,” said he, “and the best course of action is not yet clear to me. Will you come with me to St Martin’s, Watson?”

“I should certainly wish to, if I may.”

“Then meet me at the corner of Fleet Street and Farringdon Street at a quarter to eleven on Friday morning and I may have some news of the matter.”

St Martin-within-Ludgate

My wife and I discussed the matter for some time that evening, but could not think what to suggest. The circumstances in which Harriet Borrow and her brother found themselves were not ideal. That could scarcely be denied. But the circumstances of many children, it had to be admitted, were far from ideal. At least the Borrow children appeared to be well clothed and well nourished, and Hartley Lessingham’s violent, frightening threats notwithstanding, they did not appear to have been seriously ill-treated.

Of Hartley Lessingham himself, it was difficult to know what to think. He was clearly a man of strong, dominating character, who pursued his own forceful course through life, and did not care to be crossed in any way. My wife remarked that he would not be the first person one would consider when drawing up a list of invitations to a dinner party, and I could hardly disagree with that, but fortunately for many people, it is no crime in the eyes of the law to be thoroughly obnoxious. For a man of his type, coarse and selfish as he appeared to be, to have someone else’s children visited upon him must have seemed a scarcely bearable imposition, but for all his evident short-tempered intolerance of their childish ways, he did not appear to have done anything seriously wrong as far as the Borrow children were concerned, and had even appeared, in his own angry way, to show some concern for the young boy’s safety.

Perhaps more intriguing than these general considerations were the curious night-time events that Miss Borrow and her brother had witnessed. Who was the witchlike woman who came in the night? What was her purpose? And what was the significance of the slips of paper she appeared to leave upon the sundial? Captain Legbourne Legge was clearly implicated in this matter in some way, as Miss Borrow had observed him take one of the slips of paper, without exhibiting any apparent surprise that it should have been there upon the sundial; but what the connection might be between Legbourne Legge and the strange nocturnal visitor, it was difficult to imagine. The best explanation we could suggest was that this business was connected in some way with his gambling activities – that the woman was the conveyor of some secret information concerning forthcoming race meetings.

I was running over the whole matter again in my mind on Friday morning when I set off to meet Sherlock Holmes as we had arranged. It was a wet, blustery day, and the streets were thronged with slow-moving traffic. In the Strand, a cart had lost a wheel and collapsed onto the road surface, strewing the barrels and sacks it was carrying all across the road. Eventually, when my cab had remained stationary for more than five minutes and it began to appear that I would be late for my appointment, I paid off the cabbie and made my way along Fleet Street on foot. As I neared the eastern end of the street, a train passed over the viaduct above Ludgate Hill, sending up huge clouds of smoke, which hid the dome of St Paul’s from view. My mind returned at that moment to Miss Borrow’s account of the mysteries at East Harrington Hall, and they struck me all at once as quite incredible. Here we were, just a few years from the end of the nineteenth century, in a modern, noisy world, a world of great cities, of steam engines and express trains, of gaslight and electricity and telegrams, surrounded constantly by the noise and smoke and bustle of vigorous modernity. In contrast, the account Miss Borrow had given us, of excessive drinking and gambling in a country house, of half-overheard and perhaps misunderstood conversations, and of the witchlike figure who came in the night-time, seemed to belong to another century altogether, and I found myself, somewhat against my own will, beginning to doubt the girl’s veracity. She had certainly impressed me, at the meeting in the library, as being honest, intelligent and trustworthy, but in truth we had no real corroborative evidence for any of what she had told us. One does occasionally in life meet people for whom the truth appears to be of no special significance. Such people will say whatever occurs to them, whether true or completely untrue, so long as it furthers the impression they wish to make upon their audience. Could Harriet Borrow be of this type? She did not find her present situation entirely congenial, which was understandable, and would naturally do what she could to escape from it. Would this include exaggerating and lying about what had been happening at East Harrington Hall, and about what she had overheard there? I could scarcely believe it of such an innocent-faced young girl, but I admit that there were doubts in my mind upon the point when I met Holmes at the corner of Fleet Street.