Fantastic Metropolis

Macklesworth shuddered. “I am very glad I found you, Mr Holmes. If I had not, by coincidence, chosen rooms in Dorset Street, I would even now be conspiring to further that villain’s ends!”

“As, it seems, did Sir Geoffrey. For years he trusted Fromental. He appears to have doted on him, indeed. He was blind to the fact that his estate was being stripped of its remaining assetts. He put everything down to his own bad judgement and thanked Fromental for helping him! Fromental had no difficulty, of course, in murdering Sir Geoffrey when the time came. It must have been hideously simple. That suicide note was the only forgery, as such, in the case, gentlemen. Unless, of course, you count the murderer himself.”

John Macklesworth leapt to his feet. He strode forward with all the natural grace of the frontier gentleman and shook hands warmly with Sherlock Holmes. “I will be eternally grateful to you, Mr Holmes. You have not only confirmed your reputation, but my common sense and good judgement! That is the best we can do for one another in this world, I believe. I can now spend a little time in your fine country and get to see all those romantic places I’ve only read about.”

“I will be glad to recommend an itinerary!” I said, delighted and relieved by the turn of events. “And, indeed, if you enjoy fly fishing, it might be possible, dependant on a patient’s condition, for me to show you a few little-known streams.”

“Meanwhile,” said Sherlock Holmes from his chair, “I must summon all my energy and ingenuity to find a good reason why Mrs Hudson should not send me to recuperate at her sister’s in Hove.”

With a melancholy smile he asked me to pass him his cocaine and his syringe.

THE END

POSTSCRIPT

And that was the end of the Dorset Street affair. The Fellini Silver was taken by the Victoria and Albert Museum who, for some years, kept it in the special ‘Macklesworth’ Wing before it was transferred, by agreement, to Sir John Soane’s Museum. There the Macklesworth name lives on. John Macklesworth returned to America a poorer and wiser man. Fromental died in hospital, without revealing the whereabouts of his stolen fortune, but happily a bank book was found at Willesden and the money was distributed amongst Sir Geoffrey’s creditors, so that the house did not have to be sold. It is now in the possession of a genuine Macklesworth cousin. Life soon settled back to normal and it was with some regret that we eventually left Dorset Street to take up residence again at 22lb. I have occasion, even today, to pass that pleasant house and recall with a certain nostalgia the few days when it had been the focus of an extraordinary adventure and the scene of a thwarted crime.