The servant who opened the door was well-dressed, clean-shaven, and polite, if puzzled at our sudden arrival.

"Good afternoon," said Holmes. "I am Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Will you please inquire if your master is at home? I know the call is unexpected, but it is rather urgent."

The servant ushered us into the sitting room, and went to inquire.

"His name is Lord Ethelred St. John Smythe-Moran," Holmes murmured, while we waited. "He is currently embarked on a Parliamentary career which promises to be distinguished if not brilliant. His mother's family did rather well for itself during the industrial revolution, and in their case income has just about kept pace with their rank. Unfortunately, they do not now possess the cash reserves that would be necessary to restore and revive Roylott's pile."

Holmes probably would have continued, but a slim young man with blond hair and a cheerful, broad face had entered the room, and was looking at us expectantly. Holmes leapt to his feet and bowed.

"Good afternoon, your grace," he said. "I am Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and this is my partner Dr. Watson."

I was so busy staring at Holmes that I almost forgot to return Lord Smythe-Moran's bow.

"Of course, of course!" cried Lord Smythe-Moran genially. "You look just like Mr. Paget's portraits of you. To what do I owe this great pleasure?"

"My lord," Holmes began. "As you are aware, after the death of Dr. Grimesby-Roylott, you came into possession of a country estate with a very dark and sinister history..."

"Which I must say makes me like it all the better," he said, with a laugh. "I wish I had the money to refurbish it now. When I do, Mr. Holmes, I will be sure to invite you and Dr. Watson out as soon as the place is fit for visitors. It will after all be thanks to you if the place ever brings in any money."

"Money?" Holmes repeated, politely.

"From the holiday-makers," he explained. "That is the wave of the future, Mr. Holmes. I intend to convert it into an exclusive hotel. The romance connected with it, as a result of Dr. Watson's excellent work, will give it an advantage over the others in the area."

"Yes...yes, that is an excellent idea," Holmes said, surely as appalled by the thought as I was. "It is in fact in connection with that...romance, as you put it, that I wish to speak to you. I suppose that you yourself never had any personal contact with Dr. Grimesby-Roylott before his death, as you were so distantly related?"

"No, never," said Lord Smythe-Moran frankly. "My father always regarded the Roylotts as a subject best left closed. I am afraid he was not very pleased to learn that the estate had finally come to me. But I don't hold with these ideas about curses and ghosts and so on, and if the place has bankrupted five generations of Roylotts, well, that must be the Roylotts' fault. I am a Smythe-Moran, and quite a different article."

"Yes, that is abundantly clear to me even from this short meeting," said Holmes, with a polite smile. "I wondered what had become of Dr. Roylott's personal effects--papers, journals, medical curios, that sort of thing."

"Well, Mr. Holmes, I'm afraid I don't know. You see, I only inherited the property very recently, and when I went to examine the place it was clear that the previous owner had converted most of the valuable property into ready cash. What has happened to Roylott's personal papers I do not know, unless they are still locked within that infernal safe, which nobody could pry open."

"The previous owner," Holmes said, quietly. "This would be Colonel Sebastian Moran?"

Lord Smythe-Moran looked startled. He could not possibly, however, have looked half as startled as I felt.

"Who the previous owner was, and how I came to inherit, are family matters," said Lord Smythe-Moran haughtily. "I regret that I am not at liberty to discuss them with you."

"What I am investigating is a family matter too, your grace," said Holmes, suddenly steel where he had been silk. "And I absolutely must have the answer, one way or another. If you tell me what I wish to know now, I can promise you that it will never leave this room. If I have to discover it through my own methods at my own time and expense, I really cannot say what I might ultimately do with information that I should consider at that point to be rightfully mine."

I was not surprised to see that Lord Smythe-Moran was backing down. I had seen better men than him crumble at moments like this.

"Of course it is not as if it has to be a closely guarded secret," said Lord Smythe-Moran. "It is already quite well known in our circles that Moran is the final product of an illegitimate alliance between one of my great-uncles and a domestic servant of no name or family whatever. What is less well known is that this ancestor actually married the woman--in secret, but with witnesses and full legal and religious pomp--and therefore bestowed upon Moran's bastard ancestor the right to the name and all that came with it. That included his right to inherit; and in the end, through many accidents of genealogy, Colonel Moran was the nearest male heir who was eligible to inherit Stoke Moran after Roylott's death.

"When Moran actually inherited he was in India. He eventually returned, but not to reside there. He made periodic journeys to Surrey to plunder what he could, but that was only so that he would have more money with which to indulge his vices in London. I have no doubt he would have mortgaged the place if a bank could have been found to take him up on it. Fortunately, he was arrested over that terrible business with Adair, and since his escape from custody he has become a fugitive and thus forfeited his rights to almost everything, including property. And that is how the estate has come to me."

Holmes nodded. "Thank you, your grace. I am sorry if I have caused you any pain by asking you to relate these particulars to me. Of course your grace would prefer that his constituents not know of his familial connection to one of London's greatest modern criminals. I can assure you that they will never learn it from me--or from Dr. Watson. Good day to you, and I thank you most heartily for your candour."

Outside it had begun to rain again. The street glistened a dark gray, and water dripped from the awnings onto our hats. Holmes did not say a word. It was not until we had reached the main street and begun the search for a cab that the question inside me finally burst into the open.

"Holmes," I said, unable to keep the emotion out of my voice. "I can see now that Colonel Moran might easily have abstracted the herbs from among Roylott's things, and that he may well also have found a copy of the dosage instructions. But why on earth should Colonel Moran want to kill Mary?"

Holmes stepped off the kerb into the middle of the deserted street. He snatched his hat off his head and turned and his back was to me.

"Holmes!" I cried. "Tell me what you know, and do it quickly, because I am in agony!"

Holmes swung around. I could not read the expression on his face but I knew it was dangerous. I took a step back.

"Moran did not want to kill Mary, Watson!" Holmes shouted, his hands slashing the air in anger. "He wanted to kill me!"

I felt my mouth hanging open in alarm.

"But Holmes--I don't underst--"

"Why do you think I came back to London, Watson?" Holmes went on, almost not noticing my interruption. "Because of that wretched little locked-room mystery surrounding the death of the noble yet phenomenally stupid Ronald Adair?"

"I always thought--well--you had told me--"

"I know what I told you," Holmes went on, still furious with I knew not what. "I would think that at least now you would know better than that, even if you didn't then."

He finally took in the stricken look on my face, and calmed himself somewhat.

"I came back because of Mary, Watson," he said, heavily.

Before I could form words to respond to this revelation, he hurried on.

"I don't want you to think I came back because I thought that with her gone I could finally have--all of this," he said, waving an arm at nothing. "I hope you will believe it when I tell you that I came back only because I read that death notice, and all I could think of afterward was how wretched you must have been through the illness and how miserable and lonely you must be without her. I did not even hear about Adair's death until I arrived in England. I was glad it gave me the opportunity to finally return to my old life. But I did not come back to do that, Watson. I came back...I came back for you."

I could not speak. I was afraid of what would happen if I did.

"Now that you have published your stories my enemies know me better than my own family ever did," Holmes said, the rain now running in gray streams over his distressed face. "Moran wanted to lure me back so that he could finish me once and for all. He knew that killing Mary would do it. And so he found a way to penetrate your household--probably he had one of his accomplices placed as a servant--and do his foul work with that poison."

I knew he was right. And I was struggling with so many different conflicting sensations that I could not do anything but watch him keep talking. Hatred of Moran, guilt for the part I had unwittingly played in her death, a crying and unreasonable grief for Mary, and what I knew was an increasing love for Holmes, who now stood before me as utterly miserable as I had ever known him to be.

"I killed Mary, Watson," Holmes choked out. "As surely as if I had administered the poison myself. I cannot even find the words to tell you how sorry I am for the trouble I have caused you, and how ardently I wish that fate had simply let you live out the happy life you could have had if you had never had the misfortune to meet me."

He turned away from me and began walking up the street, taking no care at all about where he was going or what might be coming in the other direction.

"Holmes!" I shouted, from where I was. "Listen to me!"

He turned around. We ran toward each other. I grasped him by the collar of his overcoat and pulled his head close to mine.

"You will not blame yourself for this," I said, surprised at how forceful my voice could sound. "There is only one man who is responsible for Mary's death. That man is Colonel Moran. And you will not have to deal with him inside or outside of the law, Holmes, because I will deal with him myself if we or the authorities ever find him."

Holmes looked back at me, his face as gray as the rain.

"If I had never met you, I would assuredly never have met her. I could never separate her from you, even while you were both alive, everything is always--so--tangled--"

I broke off for a moment. A cab swerved around us, spattering us both with muddy water. We moved to the kerb.

"We do not know how these things are ordained or by who or why. It is foolish for us to complain or protest or drown in remorse. I am lucky to have loved Mary while I had her. I am lucky that I have you still to love. Come home with me out of his wet and let us hope that Mary is glad to know that we are both alive to remember her."

The rain was letting up. A few cautious strollers had begun to emerge from the doorways in which they had taken shelter. I let go of Holmes. He reached out and touched my face, once, his fingers blurring the tracks of the raindrops.

"All right, Watson," he said. "Let us go home."

I put my arm through his. We began the long walk back to Baker Street.

---

"Thank you for coming, Holmes," I said, looking down at the yellow blossoms that stood out vividly against the green. The rain had brightened the grass, and the churchyard looked almost gay, except for the gray stone slabs that stuck out of it like crooked teeth.

"Of course," he said, looking at the inscription on Mary's stone. "I would have come before, if I had thought you wanted me."

I sighed. "There is so much I never told you," I answered. "Simply because I did not think you wanted to know it. When you were afraid that it was not your place to ask."

Holmes slipped a hand into the pocket of my coat and found mine.

"Or perhaps," I said, "I never told you because it is still painful to me to know that much as I loved her, she never had my entire heart."

Holmes was silent for a long time.

"I don't know, Watson," he finally said. "Mary had your ring, your name, and your body. You were devoted to her and you loved her in that beautiful old romantic way. She knew you were...attached, to me, in some strange way she could not possibly have understood. But you were a good husband to her, Watson, whatever you may believe," he said. "And you would have been a good father, if you had had the chance."

I felt his hand tighten on mine.

"She was your wife, Watson," he said. "Maybe she never had your whole heart but she certainly had most of it. And maybe that was enough for her, Watson. Maybe it was enough."

I was still not sure. But I was glad to be standing with him at her grave. And I hoped that she could see us there, and that in some way it could make her happy to know that I had finally begun to tell him about her. That she was still with me, the only way that the dead can be. That I could still love both of them, now--as I knew, now, that I always had then.