Part 4

Oscar walked back to the bookshelf and stood in front of the gap where The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes should have been.

“Where are you, Holmes?”

Silence.

“What would you do in my shoes?”

Silence.

“Go downstairs, you say? See if there are any more coherent clues around the ladder? I thought as much, but we both know that’s not the key to this problem.”

“Ah, Oscar?”

He spun around to find Sandra grinning at him, two mugs of steaming coffee once again at the ready.

“Just chatting with Holmes,” he explained.

“So, I see.”

“Is it your ladder against the wall?”

“What ladder?”

He nodded toward the window, and she made her way over.

“Oh, I didn’t look outside,” she said. “Yes, that’s mine.”

“Where do you usually keep it?”

“I use it a lot, so it’s generally lying around the garden somewhere.”

“You never lock it away?”

She shook her head.

“I’ll go down and take a look. Can you give me a minute?”

“Take all the time you need. I suppose you’ll want to talk to the others at some stage?”

“Yes, I will, but not just yet. I need to get a couple of points straight in my head. No need to go disturbing their beauty sleep.”

Oscar started to leave but stopped in his tracks. “Talking about sleep, where did you put the library key before going to bed?”

She gave him a quizzical look. “I keep all my keys on my nightstand. What does that matter? The door was locked when I got here. The burglar got in through the window.”

“So it would appear,” Oscar said and went outside before she could protest about accusing her guests again.

The bottom of the ladder stood on the gravel path, so it was impossible to find footprints. There were none to be found in the flowerbed around the climbing roses either. He climbed the ladder, all the way to the top, and peered through the broken window. From here, he saw the library in an entirely different light. After all, he was now looking up into it instead of down at the floor. To his right, he could see Sandra sitting on the sofa with her back to him, sipping her coffee. In front of him was the pool table, and on the wall beyond it hung five large photographs of the lady of the house and her children. None of her ex-husband. There was Sandra winning a local gardening prize for her splendid roses, victoriously holding a shield with other women – mostly English, presumably – after a cricket match, picking grapes with her grown children, riding a horse through the forest, and walking her dogs along the banks of the Loire. In a way, these pictures illustrated everything that mattered to Sandra; everything, that is, except her passion for Sherlock Holmes.

Oscar climbed back down the ladder, but stopped three or four rungs from the bottom when he felt a rose thorn tugging at his trousers. He carefully pulled it free and continued his descent.

It was when his right foot crunched against the gravel that a few of the pieces of the puzzle fell into place, as though the crisp sound had snapped him out of a spell.

“I wonder,” he whispered. “It must be so. That’s the only explanation that fits, even if it doesn’t seem to make sense.”

He took a rose gently between index finger and thumb and stared into the white swirl. The pieces were most definitely falling into place, but he needed physical proof to remove the nagging doubt. He had to find a clue that would confirm he was on the right track, and he knew what that clue was.

“Where is it?” he asked himself, releasing the rose. Then it dawned on him, and like a thief, he dashed quickly and quietly back into the manor.