said nothing, as I had a mouthful of nails, but nodded and went back to plying my hammer on the baseboard.
'Mr Holmes, you said you had evidence of a murder for me to look at. Have you a dead body under that pile of rubbish?'
'Not here, Lestrade, this is purely secondary. If you'd like to have your man set to in the kitchen, when he's through we can offer you a cup of tea. I've marked the few possible prints, though I think we'll find that our visitors last night wore gloves. Here, Lestrade, take this chair; it still has four legs.' He did not see, or ignored, the look of patient humour that passed between the two men and the photographer's shrug before he took his bulky equipment into Mrs Hudson's normally spotless kitchen.
Lestrade settled gingerly into the chair and pulled out a notebook. Holmes returned to his armfuls of papers, I to my nails.
'Right, then, Mr Holmes. Would you care to tell me what this mess of yours has to do with Miss Dorothy Ruskin, and what the deuces a 'demeter archaeopteryx' is?'
Holmes looked at Lestrade as if the man had begun to spout Hamlet's soliloquy, and then suddenly his face cleared.
'Ah yes, the telephone connexion was a bit rough, wasn't it? No, the phrase was 'amateur archaeologist,' Lestrade. Miss Ruskin's passion, the archaeology of the Holy Land.'
'I see,' said Lestrade, who quite obviously did not. He went on, with the air of licking a pencil. 'And Miss Ruskin was a friend of yours?'
'More of Russell's, I should say. She came to see us Wednesday, gave Russell a box and a manuscript, stayed to tea. She then returned to London and got herself killed.' His voice drifted off as he studied one of the pages in his hand. Lestrade waited with growing impatience.
'And then?' he finally prompted.
'Eh? Oh, yes. We know only the outlines of 'what then.' She returned to her hotel room, exchanged her bag for her briefcase and went to dinner with a man who didn't know her, left the restaurant, walked into a simple but effective trap, and died. Her briefcase was stolen and early on Thursday her hotel room searched, and the following evening they came here and searched this house, with rather more enthusiasm and violence than they had talent.'
'They?'
'You are looking for at least three individuals,' Holmes said absently, his attention again absorbed by the paper. 'Two of them stand five feet nine or ten inches, thirteen stone or thereabouts; at least one of them has black hair, both are right-handed, and one of them fancies himself as a flashy dresser, with a tendency towards the extreme in footwear, but betrays himself by purchasing inferior-quality goods— hence the dents in the floor'— he gestured vaguely towards a clear patch of boards—'and by the fact that he bites his fingernails. The other is a man of simpler tastes, wearing new boots with rounded toes, a brown tweed suit, and— kindly note, Russell— a dark blue woollen knit cap. One of them sports a neck scarf of white cashmere and a camel-hair overcoat— probably Pointed Toes. Of the third party, the director of the operation, I can say only that he has unfashionably long grey hair and displayed an entirely unwarranted confidence in the abilities of his confederates by remaining in the car while the house was being ransacked.' He rattled off the final information in an uninterested rush and turned to wave the paper at me. 'I say, Russell, do you remember that forgery case we handled two years ago? I'm suddenly struck by the fact—'
'Mr Holmes!' Lestrade bristled in irritation, and Holmes looked at him in surprise.
'Yes, Lestrade?'
'Who are these men?'
'I've just told you.'
'But who are they?'
'My dear Lestrade, I bowed beneath the concerted authority of the only two people in the world, aside from my sovereign, who have any influence over me, under the insistence that Scotland Yard ought to be given a chance to prove themselves capable of hunting down the murderers of Dorothy Ruskin. I have told you who they are. You need only find them.' He turned imperiously away from the near-frantic police detective, shot me a glance that was perilously close to a wink, and dropped to the floor amidst his papers, his right knee tucked under his chin.
Lestrade looked torn between tearing his thinning hair in despair and storming angrily out. I relented and explained what he had seen but not truly observed.
'They were looking for a piece of paper, Inspector Lestrade. When they didn't find it amongst her things, they came here, possibly assuming that she was bringing it to us.'
'What sort of paper?'
'That, we don't know yet.'
'Then how do you know it was a piece of paper?'
Holmes made a rude noise. I ignored him.
'The way they searched, both here and in her hotel room. The books were shaken out before being dumped, the pictures taken from their frames, carpets pulled up, our various files carefully gone through and a number of pages stolen.'
'But you said she left you some papers?'
'A single manuscript page, but it's made of papyrus. It wouldn't have fit into a book without being folded, which would damage it.'
'Would they have known that?'
'Lestrade,' exclaimed Holmes from his nest of debris on the floor, 'that was a most perceptive question. Russell, I do believe a cup of tea would come most welcome to all concerned and that Mr Ellis is finished in the kitchen. Would you be so good ...'
I accepted my charge and waded out to the kitchen, where I scraped a handful of tea leaves and some sugar
