A little more than a year after Bruno's exit, a case appeared upon our horizon that required the most serious oaths of secrecy that Holmes and I may ever have had cause to swear. That is not to say that we hadn't been occupied with many other escapades in that time. The months had gone by, with things attaining a kind of normalcy at 221 B Baker Street. My friend was less selective about his clientele, but still, we had confronted mysteries that took all of Holmes' ingenuity to solve.
We'd been receiving more government assignments, and while Holmes was right in saying that the state of European politics was worsening, I also saw the hand of Mycroft. Whatever his brother's motivations for taking such an active interest in Sherlock's career, we could both agree that a busy detective was preferable to one who drugged himself to a stupor every so often with his new vice, hashish.
If I am able to write about the case at all, it is only because of the advice of a friend, who suggested how I might keep the story intact while altering the details so that none of the European royal houses should fall as a result.
I can only tell you about a certain royal family, which we will call the house of Varga, although of course the name has been changed, as have all others in this tale. The English noble titles are used for ease of reference. Since there are nearly a dozen monarchies in various levels of ascendancy throughout Europe, you will understand that this event could have happened anywhere from Scandinavia to Iberia and anywhere else across the rest of the European land-mass.
One day I came back from a busy turn at my surgery and found Holmes pacing anxiously in our parlor. "Watson! At last!" he thrust an envelope at me. It was a fine quality paper but when I turned it over the juxtaposition of the state crest and a crablike penmanship took me aback.
"Yes, Mycroft has written in his official capacity. We've been summoned."
"We?" I said, eyeing the sideboard beckoning to me with its cold joint and bread.
"Well, you've been summoned, but I have been told my services are also expected. All the letter said was, 'The services of a doctor are required. Speak to no one until you are called for.'"
The few lines on the page did sound intriguing. I hastily made a sandwich while Holmes told me what didn't appear on the page.
"There will be travel abroad, as this matter does not involve our realm, but Mycroft has his tentacles everywhere. His reputation as a disinterested judge led a very upset foreign power to ask him for advice. It is a matter so sensitive that my name could not even be put to paper."
I grimaced. "You mean I'm choking down my supper to be your alibi?"
He looked at me, genuinely aggrieved. "No, my dear friend. We need a doctor. Absolutely essential to the case."
As he let me finish my rushed repast, he mused, "I would have so liked to have your privileged position in this case, Watson, but medicine is one of those professions that simply can't be faked. Everyone knows what it is like to be looked at by a medical man, touched by a doctor." Holmes shook his head. "You don't need a detective to pick out an imposter sawbones."
"What exactly will they expect of me?" I inquired.
"You merely have to go over the body of a certain princess inch by inch and determine if she is, indeed, a princess."
The bread got stuck in my throat. "Pardon?"
"You'll go over all her male and female relatives the same way, if that will be any more comfortable." My friend gave a malicious half-smile at my discomfort. "You, Doctor, will be working with a scientist eminent for his study of human heritage. Together you are to determine whether there is sufficient evidence that the young woman known as Princess Anna was born to her parents, the King and Queen of a certain foreign land."
"I'd rather I were to be just an alibi," I sputtered. "There can be no more thankless task than to unmask some poor girl as not being what she's always been taught she is. And where will you be in all of this?"
"Do not worry, Watson. I will be listening to all your consultations, but discreetly. The royal family has decided that this matter will be handled respectfully for everyone involved. A great conglomeration of people may not gather to peer at the noble form. I will listen from an adjoining room."
A look of displeasure had crossed his face at the prospect. "Luckily, you and I understand each other very well, and thus, our cooperation will be perfect. What's more, I have even packed for you. Come see, everything you could want to meet this land's royal stock is already in your cases."
As much as I would have preferred to pack for myself, I had to admit: Holmes had foreseen a number of eventualities that I had not regarding weather and decorum. We were considering the insruments and lenses he'd prepared when the bell rang.
"There wouldn't be time for you to assemble your own things, you see," he said when we were in the carriage soon after. "We'll be crossing somewhat later, but there is a stop to make."
Holmes hailed a porter to take our luggage and then I followed him to the train station's dusty back office, which had been taken over by Mycroft.
"Dear brother," he said without inflection to Sherlock with scarcely a glance. Me, I didn't merit such recognition. "I am glad to see that you have been taking more exercise, though I would think an upright sport like fencing would be preferable to your Eastern practices, under the circumstances."
Watching the two brothers greet each other was usually amusing, but today my nerves were on edge. "What is it you're not telling us about this situation, Mycroft? I don't like walking into a land where I know neither the language nor the politics."
Holmes looked totally complacent. "I've told you everything I know, Doctor, and my dear brother either can't or won't tell more. I suspect it's the former, as he is exhibiting signs of unusual tension—Mycroft usually can't be brought to speak aloud anything of my declared affections. He does not usually go so far as to speak of what going a strenuous round at my baritsu club might mean 'under the circumstances.'"
This reference to Holmes' romantic predilections was very unusual coming from the older brother. "You both have your roles to play," Mycroft said in a final tone. "I simply wished to see if you were ready."
He opened the door and was soon lost in the train station crowd.
"Did he think you were mentally unfit?" I asked, trying to understand that unusual exchange.
"I think he rather hoped I was," Holmes smiled. "Come, Watson. This is a most promising case."
We spent the train trip to Dover looking through the couple volumes about heredity that we'd managed to fit in our luggage. There were certain traits that science had determined were likely to be passed down in families: handedness, the shape of the earlobe, eye color, formation of the thumb could at least be measured easily enough. Height could be skewed by any number of factors such as nutrition or childhood illnesses, and beyond that there were a staggering number of characteristics that might help us prove Princess Anna belonged among the royals.
If it were a mere academic question, working with an expert on heredity would be fascinating. "I could never do harm to the princess, or the other young lady, Maria, with a mere theory as justification," I remarked.
Holmes made a calming gesture. "I have also been contracted, Watson, because what science may be unable to prove, a calm and lucid gaze may discern. You will do an immense service by your mere presence, I am sure."
He turned out to be right. The genetic expert was Dr. Petrus Ghjuvan—and if I were to make a list of such experts, his name would surely be at the top. I had never met the man and had heard he was somewhat retiring. It turned out that he had a hunchback, and the man who must surely be in his fifties was also very nearsighted. He wore thick glasses perched atop a large, hooked nose, and these lenses distorted his coarse, craggy features even further. He had an enormous lantern jaw and bristly salt-and-pepper hair with pronounced brows.
The eyes under his brows were penetrating, but with a distinct placidity that appeared not to register to most people at all. I wondered whether he began studying heredity to understand why he had been so cursed by that force in every way. But his dealings with us were very fair, and the scientist took the gracious view that I was there in the examinations to help him where his eyesight would have missed something. He ignored the fact that all the female relations we examined shrank from him as from a fiend.
It was a great relief to find that the expert had prepared his own questionnaires that I was to administer while he sat quietly by my side unless something caught his interest. I would say aloud all the dimensions of the body I measured for his benefit as well as Holmes', who listened to every trait I noted by benefit of a false panel, making notes of any questions and passing them through a small aperture between the rooms.
After the first few examinations, the scientist and I developed that special rapport that happens between two practitioners thrown together. I developed a sense of what might be interesting to him and thus he could stay unobtrusively in a corner until he approached for one quick look with those eyes trapped behind their glass. Even with this vision impairment, he caught me out nearly every time with an unusual rib formation or distinct webbing between the fingers.
And so the long sessions were not as daunting as I had feared they would be. Holmes was right that a sensitive presence helped calm the ladies and, I suspect, some of the men unaccustomed to such scrutiny—which I imagine was an affront to their lineage, rather than their physical privacy.
Of course, my understanding of their language was attained only from a doctor's phrase-book on the train. With the family and staff, who were comfortable in French, our group used that language. Thankfully, Dr. Ghjuvan was somewhat conversant in the land's tongue and could lead the sessions with Maria's family, who had little French.
He took to Holmes instantly as one intellect to another, with no shame possible between them. They were having a lightning-fast conversation in French within five minutes of their introduction. Together, the two gifted men came up with the idea of obtaining photographs of each of the members of the royal family, and using some transfer-process I'd never heard of to make prints upon translucent paper. In such a way they had these thin sheets with a person's nose, or eyes or mouth printed on them. Then, they layered all specimens on top of each other, so that if there was a preponderance of long, thin mouths, say, this would be what came through most strongly on the paper.
Holmes examined the faces in the royal portrait room for more data, and with that astonishing, unused artistic talent of his, made a few fair renderings of the features in the stiff, cracked paintings.
"Sometimes I think you should have been an artist," I joked.
"Sometimes I am," was the terse reply.
This one reference to Sherlock Holmes' other life in the residence he'd shared with Bruno couldn't be commented upon, because he and Ghjuvan were busy creating a composite "House of Vargas" set of eyes, noses and mouths. Then they did the same for the composite we developed for the other girl's family, which we shall call the House of Gunther.
At this point, the possible princess, Maria, was finally brought to us from where she was being kept in seclusion until the veracity of her claim was determined.
The reader may feel I am telling the story all in the wrong order, but I only wish to give an accurate account of how the events unfolded for us. While we labored to prove Princess Anna was indeed the real princess, the Royal Secretary, a man we shall call Mr. Abel, shared the reason for our visit in bits and pieces. It was a queer way to begin a case that brought three men from other lands, but Abel said the royal family wished to see the investigation underway without waiting for burdensome discussions that might prejudice our work.
Through the reticence of the secretary, our only true contact at the palace, I gathered that the royals hoped for physiological proof of the princess' origins, rather than a world-class detective performing a true investigation with free access to their lives. Holmes' impatience with these strictures was well-controlled, at least on the surface, and I knew his keen eye was making ample use of every visit we made to the royal estate.
Luckily, Dr. Ghjuvon was thoroughly enjoying his acquaintance with Mr. Sherlock Holmes and his peculiar methods, and he was an invaluable help in collecting and translating news reports to supplement discreet inquiries he made on Holmes' behalf in the town. What follows is the picture we slowly put together.
The queen had nine living children, with the youngest, Princess Anna, recently married at 20. When Anna was an infant, there was a grand celebration at the castle in honor of the sovereign's 25th year on the throne. The queen herself had been ill, and this event marked her first public appearance in some time. She was scarcely able to do more than greet her subjects from a seated position during the extended festivities, which culminated in a dinner and dance held in the castle's formal gardens for select subjects and foreign dignitaries.
The princess' nursemaid, let us call her Delia, had been in charge of the little girl's care almost since birth. She and the other servants caring for the smallest children of the palace and those of a few guests had been stationed all day in a tent near the feast and the orchestra. After night fell, this coterie of nurses had gone to the edge of the tent and then outside to watch the fireworks display celebrating the monarch who was watching from her chair on a dais some distance away.
Suddenly, a cry went up among the guests in their formal dresses and frock coats. It wasn't unusual for a few of the firecrackers to not attain their full height, pyrotechnics being something less than an exact science. This time, however, the errant incendiary devices scudded very low over the crowd, and a few partially burned embers scattered over the party. As the guests ran for cover, servants scurried to protect the queen, who was unable to walk without help, and the guards rushed to ascertain that this was not an assassination attempt with the noise of gunfire cleverly masked by the fireworks. No one noticed at first that the cloth of the children's pavilion was on fire.
The cheery explosions continued in the carefully planned chain reaction that was to culminate in a blazing likeness of the queen. Several small fires were burning on the grounds, but none blazing faster than the one in the children's tent. Several servants and a few male guests fought their way from the palace through the mad rush of people trying to escape the chaos to ascertain that the cribs were empty, and found that they were still inhabited by children. With the blowing bits of flaming cloth in the air, these brave souls rescued the babies—fortunately with no major injuries.
Princess Anna received a severe burn on the edge of her left ear that could be seen as a ragged gap around the mid-to-upper third of her outer cartilage. Covered with the right hairstyle, one would scarcely notice the defect. Indeed, the asymmetrical or ear-covering hairstyles Anna wore since childhood had given rise to a similar fashion among the ladies of that realm.
For safety reasons, the palace grounds had been quickly emptied and maintained that way for days while the military ascertained that no one was trying to attack their monarch. What everyone at the palace was understandably too preoccupied to notice on that fateful night of the jubilee was that another child received a burn on her left ear. The baby Maria, born only a few weeks after Anna, had been one of the children snatched up by one of the guests at the party and carried away from danger.
The queen might have been physically weak, but she was quite aware that several things had been mishandled during the mishap. The monarch was enraged when she found that the nurse Delia had, at first, obeyed instinct and run away from her charge in the tent. Delia had turned back to rescue baby Anna, but it was already too late to fight against the tide of humanity escaping from the palace grounds.
The nurse was dismissed on the spot. Baby Maria had been quickly claimed by her parents, minor aristocrats who had attained some favor at court.
The two girls had gone on to live their own lives, the princess, among her royal brothers and sisters, and Maria as the only child of her less well-placed family. Neither had reason to think of the other's existence, although chances are they did coincide from time to time in high society. Had they been similarly coiffed and attired, one would certainly have been struck by the remarkable resemblance between the two young women.
A few weeks ago, a little more than 20 years after the fire, Maria Gunther's mother died after a short illness. Greta Gunther had been widowed a few years before, and the mother and daughter were decently provided for by the husband's will.
When Greta asked for pen and paper to make a last bequest, her daughter thought it was merely some small financial matter, and thought little of giving her mother some privacy to settle her affairs.
Young Anna was surprised when a servant entered the room later and said she'd found her mother had expired, but she was utterly astonished by the content of Mrs. Gunther's message.
The page between the dead woman's fingers told a singular tale. It was a deathbed confession to the effect that all these years, she'd suspected that the child rescued from the fire and returned to her was not her own, but the Princess Anna instead.
Greta Gunther claimed she was too selfish to share her presentiments with anyone, because she knew it would mean the child she'd raised as her own would be taken from her and brought to live in the castle as the princess she truly was. Only the qualms of a dying woman led her to advise her daughter of the noble life she merited.
This incredible revelation was backed by the servant herself, Marta, who claimed to have been in attendance as one of the servants at the celebration, and who had gathered some of Greta's concerns through the years.
At first, the royals had taken a dim view of such a preposterous claim, which Miss Maria felt compelled to turn over to the authorities. Both she and Marta, who had first discovered the letter, were taken into the strictest custody in an attempt to control any rumors. And so far, not a mention had appeared in the papers, according to Ghjuvon.
The desire for secrecy was so extreme that our several requests for at least a copy of the letter took a long time to be fulfilled, for not even the police chief had been allowed to retain this message for fear that it would be circulated to enemies of state as evidence of a royalty that was not as royal as it claimed to be. Finally, this copy was placed in our hands:
"My dearest Maria. I am leaving you with less than I would have liked, but I cannot leave you with less than you deserve. I write this only now because I could not bear to give you up, once I realized what the truth would cost me. Please forgive me, my only child, for preferring my own comfort over yours by holding back your origins."
We were not allowed to part with it, but my friend has a magnificent memory, and on the way back to our quarters he repeated the letter, word for word, so that he could muse the dead woman's thoughts and I could commit a version into my notes.
It was hard to believe that so few words threatened the status of one of Europe's oldest houses, and even more so that a handful of foreigners should be among the select few who were aware of it.
Holmes felt quite sure that none of the palace servants understood what was happening or even why we were there, having been told only that we were visiting doctors assuring the royal family of their complete and abiding health.
The circumstances of the fire and all the coincidences between the two women's physiognomies were striking, but not conclusive. Nevertheless, the difficulty in proving the girls' heritage was very worrying to the House of Vargas, as a mote of less purity that had gotten mixed in with the carefully preserved purity of the royal stock would upset any aristocratic line. The princess's husband, and particularly any future issue, would be greatly affected by such a demotion.
We three spent some time familiarizing ourselves with each ear. "Anna's burn is a few centimeters higher than Maria's, and Maria is missing just a fraction less tissue, but one could scarcely cause two injuries on purpose that were as similar," Holmes said. "Dr. Watson, you believe that Maria's mark is not of recent vintage, some ploy to substitute for the princess?"
"No," I said emphatically, confident of my military exposure to all sorts of scars. "These are both very old wounds, well-healed, though of course I couldn't give an exact date to them."
"I agree," said Ghjuvon. "We could say that Greta Gunther knew exactly what Princess Anna's mark looked like, disfigured her daughter in precisely the right way and planned all along to claim her own girl was the true princess, but that seems most unlikely."
"Indeed, Doctor, if someone was of such cold blood to injure her daughter in hopes of gaining a fortune or a higher rank in society, she would hardly have waited to release this news until she was breathing her last breath," Holmes said.
We compiled all our data very carefully, but any assertion about the identity of the queen's youngest daughter would be on very shaky ground.
"Our group has used every clue science might give us, and I may say we have even exceeded what little is known about hereditary traits." Holmes said with a nod to Ghjuvon when we had a meeting with Secretary Abel. "It is impossible to say for certain which girl rightfully belongs in the royal family."
The royal secretary looked crestfallen. "Is there another expert we should call in?"
"Dr. Ghjuvan knows far beyond any trifling academic paper I would have read on the subject," Holmes said with great respect.
"And I cannot say for sure," the scientist completed. Ghjuvon showed the superimposed transfers showing the features of the Vargas and Gunther families. "The Vargas mouth is wider, the Gunther eyes, somewhat closer together. But the two girls both have the wide-set eyes of the royal line."
Then the scientist brought out the statistical tables we'd labored over. "Both families share certain similarities. The spatulate thumb and attached earlobes are exhibited by almost every family member examined from both sides," Dr. Ghjuvan said. "There are traits unusual enough that would have helped me give a certain amount of probability one girl was from a particular lineage—red hair, for instance, left-handedness, or even better, the rare blood condition exhibited by the late Prince Leo."
The queen's next-to-youngest child, Leo, had suffered from hemophilia, a fact that I was aware of before starting the case. The young man had recently expired from a freak accident from which his body could never recover.
"We at the palace call it a vulnerability, Dr. Ghjuvan, rather than a condition," the secretary said coldly.
"Naturally. A thousand pardons." Ghjuvon continued, "These unusual characteristics are easier to track through a family history. But the princess and Maria have none of these. They are both healthy girls of fair hair and skin, both in the medium-dark blonde range, with Anna's more curly, and blue eyes of nearly identical color, Maria is two inches taller. Anna is more athletic, or at least, she had more opportunity to ride here at the royal manor, and thus her muscle development is slightly better. But given a girl with fewer opportunities for sport, Maria is more muscular than most girls of her class and opportunity."
"I believe she likes riding when she has the chance," I contributed from the conversation I'd started with the quasi-prisoner, who was so terrified from her long ordeal she was shaking on the table. "And she is a fair shot with a bow and arrow, I hear. She loved traipsing about the country and trying her hand with birds and small game. Not a very ladylike activity, in her mother's eyes, but when she could get away she would go shooting. I understand that only her fiancé's insistence has made her give up the sport."
"Maria's broad, high cheekbones are very much in line with the Vargas family composite, while the Gunthers' faces tend to be thinner, " Holmes continued, bringing the images forward. "But then, both young ladies possess figures more indicative of the Gunther family, as opposed to the sparser frames of the Vargas line."
"There is nothing that is different about the girls?" the secretary asked in frustration.
"Yes, naturally, they have lived different lives," I said. "Anna has a long scar on her leg, the result of a riding incident that occurred when she was 10 and was witnessed by a dozen people. Maria has a few round, shallow scars on her right arm that happened so long ago she can't remember the cause. But since the confusion would have happened in infancy, later injuries are of little help."
And so the three of us showed Mr. Abel why all of our labor couldn't possibly be conclusive enough to depose a princess and make another girl take her place. Or, conversely, prove young Maria as complicit in a dangerous fraud that would merit a long penal sentence.
"This is very bad," the secretary wrung his hands. "Even if we do nothing, to make princess Anna live her life under a cloud of suspicion among her very family would be a harsh fate. She is a fine girl and a great comfort to her mother. The legality of her marriage might even be questioned, since the banns occurred under her identity as the true princess! Oh, the sorrows that could await!"
"Yes, I hear that she is the queen's favorite out of all the children, but then, Princess Anna was the youngest, so perhaps that is natural," Holmes remarked in a soothing tone. "Leaving the science of heredity with the most able Dr. Ghjuvan for a moment, Dr. Watson accompanied me in a different sort of investigation."
I brought out the photographs we'd asked the royal photographer to take of two girls' defective ears and nothing else. "Out of curiosity, Mr. Secretary, which is the picture of the princess' ear?" my friend asked.
The secretary gave an impatient gesture as we moved the identically posed photographs picturing only the ear closer to him. He studied them for some time and said with no great decisiveness, "It's the one on the right, of course. I've known Anna since she was a tiny child."
"Would you swear to it?" Holmes pressed.
"Well, I am relatively sure," Abel amended. "Is it Maria's instead?"
"You ask me rather than state for certain," the detective said. "Let us leave the answer for a moment. Please consider these photographs from a slightly different angle."
And so we showed the man several more photographs. We had made a small dot of ink in one corner of the images depicting Maria's ear to aid our casual glance—well, my casual glance. Holmes felt that the princess' ear was slightly smaller, and Ghjuvon was remarkably quick at distinguishing the whorls of a person's ear using criteria I had only begun to understand.
"Mr. Secretary, you correctly identified the princess' ear only two out of five tries," Holmes proclaimed. "Please do not feel discouraged. Everyone in the royal household and among Maria's relations had widely varying answers, no doubt complicated by the fact that the ladies did everything to obscure this small disfigurement. In the last pair of pictures, this ear wasn't Anna's or Maria's. It was a photograph of an artist's model made up to look as if she had a tear in her cartilage. And yet you chose this one as Princess Anna."
The man flushed. "Mr. Holmes, it is most irregular to offer up an artist's strumpet to possibly be the princess."
"All this proves, Mr. Abel, is that a slight deformity seen every day is scarcely seen. We can neither depend on the many talents of Dr. Ghjuvan, with whom I would nevertheless like to stay in consultation, nor can we rely on the observations of the people that have known these girls all their lives."
Holmes paused. "I will not molest the queen for her recollections of the first several months of her daughter's life because she was often ill, as I understand."
"Yes, she had childbed fever and then came down with scarlet fever and had a long recovery. The girl had to be segregated from her as a precaution."
The lanky form began to pace as if we were theorizing in our parlor. "Therefore, a baby who was plucked out of harm's way with the other infants while the conflagration was dealt with—she could have been any child, because her mother was not yet recovered from her unfortunate maladies to the point that she had spent much time with Anna. Not many were in a position to know the minute differences from two nearly identical children. I heard you say there was a cap embroidered with the royal crest, that was all, but it,. like many other trappings, were lost in the confusion. There would have been blood upon the princess' gown, and presumably Maria's, and no one had any reason to examine this gown for a monogram before it was discarded."
"Mr. Holmes, you speak as though the young princess was brought up with little attention." Mr. Abel appeared desirous of ending this, the longest interview yet about the past. "The girl's nurse, Delia, lavished attention upon her. Princess Anna had every consideration, just like her brothers and sisters."
"And yet for our purposes, Mr. Secretary, this nurse might as well not have existed because she was summarily dismissed when it was discovered that the baby was left alone during the melee."
"Yes," the secretary agreed. "Delia and several other servants were dismissed because of their lack of composure in an emergency. And we cannot question her about these events because she has since died."
"The next day, a new nurse was contracted, who had no reason to suspect that the child placed in her arms was anything but the royal child. That the two girls were, in fact, switched in infancy is not an improbable set of events, Mr. Secretary," Holmes concluded.
The royal secretary rubbed his face. "The position it would put us in—to accept some stranger from the lowest branches of the nobility into the bosom of the royal family." My friend shot me a significant glance—Mr. Abel was part of a hereditary class of palace servants, and he evidently considered himself nearly a member of the Vargas clan. If only he had been present in the garden on that fateful day, but unfortunately he was assigned to serve in the house and then had then been sent to assist the soldiers in any defensive maneuvers they intended.
We turned our attention back to the man's worries. "Yes, Princess Anna has been the queen's favorite all this time, and then Her Highness would be forced to acknowledge that her dearest child was not even of her blood. Making a bond with her real daughter would be very difficult for her, and for all involved," Holmes acknowledged. "But please trust me, Mr. Abel, when I say that this investigation is just beginning."
"It is?" the secretary gasped. "There is more you can do?"
"I can do as much as I am allowed, sir. It is essential that I be granted an audience with a less hysterical Miss Maria. Dr. Watson has a remedy he thinks may calm her while leaving the lady with all her faculties intact. But first, will it become possible for me to speak to Princess Anna's brothers and sisters? Whilst I am in the same room this time," my friend specified with some tension in his voice. "These will be very short interviews in the location where the princes and princesses feel most comfortable. Dr. Watson will be there, as a familiar face."
"The queen's children spoke very highly of your professional bearing, Dr. Watson," Mr. Abel said with a nod. Poor Dr. Ghjuvon was not thanked. "What will you be asking them, Mr. Holmes, if I might inquire?"
"About that night when the girls could have been switched, of course. The night of the fire."
"But it's been over 20 years," Abel protested. "Some of them were very small children."
"Their memories would hopefully be supplemented by the household records from that time," came the detective's smooth rejoinder. "If I can find out how the event was supplied, who served it, I can get a better sense of how many people were in attendance, what their movements might have been, and thus, the chances of the girls being switched when no one was looking—"
"Yes, I understand," the secretary said, all business. "The effort of assembling whatever old records might still exist would be a small price to pay if we can put this nasty allegation to rest." Mr. Abel rang a bell. "I will ask for permission to open the records and for you to speak to the family, but I should warn you, Mr. Holmes, things take some time to arrange in the palace."
"Many thanks for your cooperation," Holmes replied. "You can leave the two oldest boys, Robert and James, off the list because I understand they were away at school on that night. I recall you said that two of the children's spouses were also at the jubilee, being distant relations. I should like to speak to them, and to any servants who were in attendance, as well."
Once a footman had come to lead us out, we saw the secretary bustle away full of purpose.
"I hope you have comfortable rooms," Dr. Ghjuvan remarked when the palace gates had closed behind us. "From what I hear, this queen's bureaucracy is notoriously convoluted."
He recommended several sights to see in the town, and the next day I accompanied him gladly, knowing that it would be easier to move about with someone who could get by in the language.
Holmes met us for dinner after a day at his own pursuits. Afterwards he confided to me that he was merely walking through the exclusive suburban area where Maria had spent part of her life, trying to understand what might set apart a girl from less elegant, although still affluent, surroundings.