It was around half past eight the next morning and I was finishing my breakfast when I received one of Holmes terse little notes, that appeared to have been written in a state of considerable excitement and that caused me some alarm. 'Come at once, the young lady's life may depend on it - SH.' When I had rushed through the rest of my breakfast and called to my wife that I would be out for some time, I arrived at Baker Street. I was somewhat disconcerted to find him looking surprisingly cheerful, in complete contrast with the expression of the note, standing fully dressed beside a table on which there appeared to be a most remarkable experiment, all test-tubes and steam. 'I have it,' said he.

'What is it that you have discovered?' said I.

Ignoring my question he began to swiftly move around the room, throwing all manner of strange things into a black Gladstone bag, including a watertight glass of some transparent liquid, a small strip of copper and some strips of paper, addressing me all the while, 'Becoming ill once is unexceptional, becoming ill twice is unfortunate but becoming ill with the very same infection, begins to look like carelessness. And now Watson, we have an appointment to keep.'

When we knocked on the door of the Wilding house, there came no answer, but a noise of a window opening came from above caught our attention. When we both looked up, it was the face of Miss Alexandra Wilding that met us as she looked down from a first floor window. She disappeared from the window and the next moment, a small metal projectile landed at our feet. 'Watson!' cried Holmes, 'she has thrown us the key.' He picked it up and unlocked the door and as we entered the living room we beheld Miss Wilding standing at the top of the stairs, smiling in a way that revealed her happiness and contentment to see us. She seemed remarkably agile for a woman suffering from such a serious complaint as that we had observed the previous afternoon as she came down the stairs and greeted us which I remarked upon, 'Are you feeling better, Miss Wilding?'

'Oh yes,' said she, 'I feel much better once I am out of my room.'

'That is rather odd, do you not think?' said Holmes. 'That you, who were so ill yesterday when prone, should seem almost recovered when active.'

'Perhaps it is exercise that will cure me.'

'Perhaps, but it not is the activity of exercise that you have been pursuing whilst your family and servants have been absent, is it?'

Miss Wilding showed some surprise and laid her hand upon her breast in shock. 'Whatever do you mean Mr Holmes,' she asked.

'I admit,' said he conspiratorially, 'that you have covered the scent remarkably well, but I, partly as I am a fellow smoker, can still detect the unmistakeable scent of smoke upon your person, Miss Wilding. You have been smoking.' He leaned forward and drew in a deep breath. 'Joy's Cigarettes I'll wager.'

I was surprised as such a sudden accusation and was about to protest when Miss Wilding replied in a defeated tone,' Very well, Mr Holmes, you are quite correct. I have found that smoking is, since mother's remarriage, my only pleasure.'

'What could drive you to partake in smoking as a recreation?' said I but before she could answer, Holmes broke in.

'I do not judge you for using tobacco, Miss Wilding, I only ask that you give me a box of the cigarettes that you have been using for me to examine. A careful analysis of all materials that come into contact with yourself may yet prove useful in solving this mystery.'

'Very well,' said the young lady, taking a brightly decorated box of Joy's Cigarettes out of a pocket of her purple dressing gown and handing it to him. 'Now then,' said Holmes, 'would you be so kind as to tell me if you have eaten recently?'

Miss Wilding seemed rather taken aback at Holmes' question. 'Actually, no. I find that during spells of this illness, I am little disposed to eat. But alas, that does not stop the entire household offering me food; I have a bowl of turtle soup upstairs that was forced upon me by my mother that is as yet untouched and shall remain so.'

'I had hoped so. Would it trouble you to show us upstairs in that case.' Miss Wilding responded in the affirmative and led us upstairs, where sure enough upon the bedside table there sat a little bowl, prettily decorated with a design of a pack of wolves chasing a horse drawn sleigh around the edge, that contained soup that had about a half hour ago been quite an appetizing meal but had by now degraded into a cold green slimy liquid. Holmes took no notice of the ruined soup and proceeded to set up the equipment he had brought with him from Baker Street on the young lady's dressing table, sweeping aside many of the small gifts that lay there, without a single word of protest from the young lady, who clearly valued little the gifts from her stepfather. We both watched with great curiosity as Holmes bustled about setting up his apparent experiment. Finally, after much preparation, he took a spoonful of the former soup and dropped it into the glass of transparent liquid which from which he had unscrewed the to and sat down on the armchair beside the dressing table, watching the glass intently, until the slimy green colour of the soup had vanished, at which point dropped in the strip of copper. After a few minutes had passed he carefully with a pair of tweezers, his hands protected by his black leather gloves, extracted the copper from the jar and carefully dropped it onto the paper which he had laid beside the jar and quickly secured the lid on the jar. It was clear, to both me and Miss Wilding that Holmes, from the shrug of his shoulder and deep sigh he emitted on observing his result, was disappointed, though neither of us could understand what the cause of his disappointment was, nor what work of science we had just witnessed.

When he had completed his experiments, and been sat down in Miss Alexandra's room, his head resting upon his breast, clearly in deep thought, with the expression of a man who knows what he is looking for but cannot find it or understand why he cannot, I happened to glance at the clock. 'Holmes!' I exclaimed, 'I a due to make a professional call within an half hour..'

'But Watson,' said Miss Wilding, looking up sharply, 'it's a Sunday. Surely even the most demanding of patients cannot expect you to see them on a Sunday?'

'Some, very few, of my patients,' said I, 'are too busy during the week to see their doctor. Therefore I sometimes I allow for very few of my patients to make appointments for me to call upon them during the weekend.'

Holmes looked up and frowned. 'You attend your patients Watson; I think I shall be able to complete my last inquiries without your assistance.' When he saw I that I was about to protest, he raised his hand and assured me that he would be long gone before any member of the Wilding household returned. With this assurance, I departed, secure that he would keep his word, and left him to his own devices in the Wilding home.

When Watson had left, Holmes returned to the drawing room to find that Miss Wilding was not there. Having a thought that she might have resorted back to the habit in which she was partaking before his and Dr Watson's arrival he went downstairs to the garden of the house and sure enough, there she was, standing in the June heat, barefoot and wrapped in her purple silk dressing gown, smoking. Holmes walked up and stood beside her and for a while they both stood there in perfect silence, Holmes inwardly wondering at why the revelation that this young lady smoked as frequently and doggedly as himself charmed him as much as it did. 'Why did you and your sister take your stepfather's name?' he asked, when he thought the silence had gone on long enough.

'It was at our mother's insistence,' she replied, 'she loved him so very much, and in such a consuming way, that she wanted to forget her first husband altogether and believe that Victoria and I were his children, not the children of our original father.'

'Who was he? Your real father?'

'His name was Dr William Hines. He was a great campaigner against the use of dangerous chemicals in household products. I regret that I did not know him very well; he died when I was only seven years old.'

'Do you get on well with your stepfather?' Holmes asked.

'You have so many questions, Mr Holmes,' she remarked, smiling rather sadly.

'Will you not tell me?'

'I could not, even if I wanted to. There consequences would be too great.'

'Very well.' Replied Holmes, which a note of regret and sympathy in his usually so reserved voice. 'If you shall not tell me, I shall tell you, based on what I have deduced. When Joseph Wilding first came into the sphere of your family, he, by his manners, handsome looks and excessive charm, attached himself to your mother, Ksenia, with such an effect that she disregarded all other areas of her life unless they related to him. She is more than simply in love with him, she breathes for him, she is obsessed with him. But her mature and possessive passion was not reciprocated. Rather, he was in the pursuit of another; that is, he was pursuing you, Miss Alexandra Wilding.' Her lovely dark head whipped round to face me and her ashen face showed the depth of her shock at Holmes revelations, until the realisation that he had really discovered the truth and was not bluffing struck her and she looked away, her face expressing the greatest shame. Holmes continued, 'After the marriage, he showed his true intentions and turned out to be a most persistent and determined lover to you, lavishing you with gifts and attention above all others, including your mother, even though I am certain that you yourself made it quite clear that his attentions were in vain.'

'Oh, but I did.' the young lady said softly. 'But soon it became clear that I would never be able to turn him away from me. I was in such a quandary. He always told me that there was no one, absolutely no one, who I could confide by trouble to. Who would take my word, that of a sheltered sixteen year old girl against that of a respected member of society, not to mention the financial community? Mother would never hear a single word against him, and Victoria would never have taken my word for it either.'

She began to move away, back towards the door, cigarette still in hand but she rapidly turned round, as if she was reluctant to leave, and faced Holmes and said in a honeyed breathy but pained tone. 'You must have a very low opinion of me, Mr Holmes.'

'It is rarely my place to consign judgement upon the actions of others, especially not someone such as yourself, who was in such an impossible position that any course of action would seem reasonable,' replied Holmes as moved towards her. In an unfamiliar gesture, but that lost none of its charm through that, she removed the cigarette from between her lips and reached up, the smouldering cigarette in hand, her endlessly deep dark eyes never leaving those of Holmes and placed it between his own lips. He took a long drag and felt the reassuring smoke fill his lungs and breathed it out again, slowly. She drew her hand back again and for a moment it seemed like Sherlock and Alexandra were the only two people on Earth.

'Did Mrs Wilding ever discover the true nature of her husband's affection for you?' asked Holmes quietly, breaking the moment.

Alexandra looked thoughtful. 'There was a while ago, I think it was the end of last year, an occasion when I thought she had. My stepfather had commissioned a bracelet to be made for me; it had my name engraved on it so it was clearly meant for me. Anyway, he used the usual jeweller who naturally assumed it was a present for my mother and so delivered it to her. Well, obviously she saw that it was for me and just came up to my room and gave it to me, saying that I obviously had made a friend of my stepfather and never said another word about it. I thought it was most extraordinary as in every other instance, mother had been most jealous of any drop of affection that my stepfather showed to any other woman than herself and so I naturally assumed that we were discovered and mother would proceed to lose her temper beyond all control or try and strangle me or some other act of desperate anger and jealousy.'

'May I question you upon another point?' Holmes asked.

'Ask me whatever you wish,' said she.

'When was the last time you left the house to attend an occasion such as a party or the opera, before the very first time you fell ill.'

'I think it was when I went to the opera at Convent Garden to see Pelleas et Melisande with Victoria and her husband, well he was her fiancé then, Alfred Stoker. Well, I was supposed to, but when I arrived at the opera house, only Alfred himself was there. He told me that Victoria was unable to attend but he suggested that we stay and enjoy the opera, with just the two of us in attendance. I remember I had a most splendid evening. The only strange thing was later, when I mentioned my excursion to Victoria; she said that Alfred had mentioned nothing to her about going to the opera at all.'

Holmes frowned, 'I see. Did your mother find out about the little trip?'

'Yes, she was waiting for me when I got back. When I explained to her that Victoria had not been there, she had the strangest expression on her face for a moment and then sent me off to bed. It was not long after that, that mother insisted I change bedrooms.'

'She required you to change rooms, to the one you have now?'

'Yes, she said the room I was in then was too damp. She had already decorated it with that rather loud green wallpaper.

'It was she who decorate the room, with yourself having no say in it?'

'No. I had no idea that I ought to take an interest as I had no idea that I would soon be residing within it.'

'Thank you, Miss Wilding, I think I ought to leave as your family shall be returning from church at any moment now.'

And with that Holmes left the house, a small smile, typical of that produced when he had made progress in case, and a similar smile on the young lady whose eyes followed him, aware that she had also made progress albeit in a slightly different direction.