That March was a blurry nightmare, when I look back all I remember clearly was piles of magazines, samples and invites. I had proposed on the 29th of February, just after the pregnancy was confirmed, but I was regretting agreeing to a quickie wedding. My Fiancée had taken every free moment to plan, and had called upon hitherto unknown girlfriends to provide what I feared was going to be the most expensive wedding on record.
It was three years since Sherlock Holmes had died, and although I thought I would never really get over the pain and loss, I was getting on with my life. Before our run through Europe I had been planning on starting up practice as a private consultant of general surgery. The NHS budgets had been cut to such a level that even after I'd finished my first years Consultancy CPD, it was clear my skills were better suited to private practice. I had an arrangement with The London Bridge private hospital and had turned the front drawing room of the Kensington House into a Study and private consulting room. Although I'd initially used Baker Street, the ghosts of the past had become stifling and I thought with my expanding family working at least partly from home would have it's advantages.
Despite everything that was already going on in my life in the spring of 2020, I like the rest of London was fascinated with the case of the honorable Ronald Adair. The public has already learned those particulars of the crime, which came out in the police investigation; but a good deal was suppressed upon that occasion, since the case for the prosecution was so overwhelmingly strong that it was not necessary to bring forward all the facts. Only now, at the end of nearly ten years, am I allowed to supply those missing links, which make up the whole of that remarkable chain. The crime was of interest in itself, but that interest was as nothing to me compared to the inconceivable sequel, which afforded me the greatest shock and surprise of any event in my adventurous life. Even now, after this long interval, I find myself thrilling as I think of it and feeling once more that sudden flood of joy, amazement, horror, and incredulity, which utterly submerged my mind.
My work with Sherlock Holmes had interested me deeply in crime, and that after his death I never failed to read with care the latest crime which gripped the nation, and I even attempted more than once for my own private satisfaction to employ his methods in their solution. I had remained close to Scotland Yard and especially DCI Lestrade and his team, and was often the silent member of the team, an outside eye or sounding board when they were stuck. The tragedy of Ronald Adair was one such case, when Lestrade came and sought me out.
As I read the evidence from the autopsy, I realized more clearly than I had ever done the loss, which the community had sustained by the death of Sherlock Holmes. There were points about this strange business, which would, I was sure, have specially appealed to him, and the efforts of the police would have been supplemented, or more probably anticipated, by the trained observation and the alert mind of the first criminal agent in Europe. At the risk of telling a twice-told tale I will recapitulate the facts, as the public at the conclusion of the autopsy knew them.
Ronald Adair was the second son of the Earl of Maynooth, the late US Ambassador. Adair's mother had returned from her native America to undergo the operation for cataracts, and she, her son Ronald, and her daughter Hermione were living together at 427, Park Lane. The youth moved in the best society, had, so far as was known, no enemies, and no particular vices. He had been engaged to Miss Erica Woodley, of Carstairs, but the engagement had been broken off by mutual consent some months before, and there was no sign that it had left any very profound feeling behind it. For the rest the man's life moved in a narrow and conventional circle, for his habits were quiet and his nature unemotional. Yet it was upon this easy-going young toff that death came in most strange and unexpected form between the hours of ten and eleven-twenty on the night of March 13th, 2020.
Ronald Adair was fond of gambling; playing continually, but never for such stakes as would hurt him financially. He was a member of the Online Poker, , and the Foxy . It was shown that after dinner on the day of his death he had played 4 lines at the latter site. He had also played in the afternoon at The Gunshot Club in central London. The evidence of those who had played with him - Mr. Murray, Sir John Hardy, and Colonel Sebastian Moran - showed that the game was whist, and that there was a fairly equal fall of the cards. Adair might have lost fifty pounds, but not more and such a loss could not in any way affect him. He had played nearly every day at one club or other, but he was a cautious player, and usually rose a winner. It came out in evidence that in partnership with Colonel Moran he had actually won as much as four thousand two-hundred pounds in a sitting some weeks before from Godfrey Milner and Lord Balmoral.
On the evening of the crime he logged of his computer at exactly ten. His mother and sister were out spending the evening with a relation. The Swedish Housekeeper deposed that she heard him enter the front room on the second floor, generally used as his sitting room, and open the window to smoke. No sound was heard from the room until eleven-twenty, the hour of the return of Lady Maynooth and her daughter. Desiring to say goodnight, she had attempted to enter her son's room. The door was locked on the inside, and no answer could be got to their cries and knocking. Help was obtained and the door forced. The unfortunate young man was found lying near the table. An expanding revolver bullet had horribly mutilated his head, but no weapon of any sort was to be found in the room. On the table lay two bank notes for fifty pounds each and seventeen pounds ten in small coins, the money arranged in little piles of varying amount. There were some figures also upon a sheet of paper with the names of some club friends opposite to them, from which it was conjectured that before his death he was endeavoring to make out his losses or winnings at cards.
A minute examination of the circumstances served only to make the case more complex. In the first place, no reason could be given why the young man should have fastened the door upon the inside. There was the possibility that the murderer had done this and had afterwards escaped by the window. The drop was at least twenty feet, however, and a bed of crocuses in full bloom lay beneath. Neither the flowers nor the earth showed any sign of having been disturbed, nor were there any marks upon the narrow strip of grass, which separated the house from the road. Apparently, therefore, it was the young man himself who had fastened the door. But how did he come by his death?
No one could have climbed up to the window without leaving traces. Suppose a man had fired through the window, it would indeed be a remarkable shot that could with a revolver inflict so deadly a wound. Again, Park Lane one of the busiest streets in London, and there is a taxi rank within a hundred yards of the house. Yet nobody had heard a shot. And yet there was the dead man, and they're the revolver bullets, which had mushroomed out, as soft-nosed bullets will, and so inflicted a wound, which must have caused instantaneous death. Such were the circumstances of the Park Lane Mystery, which were further complicated by entire absence of motive, since, as I have said, young Adair was not known to have any enemy, and no attempt had been made to remove the money or valuables in the room.
I turned these facts over in my mind, endeavoring to hit upon some theory which could reconcile them all, and to find that line of least resistance which my poor friend had declared to be the starting-point of every investigation. Lestrade had come to the house to discuss the case with me, and was uncomfortably placed amongst piles of bridal magazines. I confess that we made little progress, and in the end my Fiancée had joined us and our path of conversation had turned to our impending nuptials.
"You will come won't you Greg?" My Fiancée pressed him.
"Your definitely sure? There won't be any problems with the paperwork or anything?" he asked.
"No," I assured him "I spoke to our friend in intelligence he guaranteed it."
"In which case I will keep the date free, and be glad to come"
"Good, you're the best man."