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when it is about to go unchecked, is a crucial and solemn undertaking. But it was not until my experience of such cases as the Roger Parker murder that it came home to me just how much it means to people - and not only those directly concerned, but the public at large - to be cleansed of such encroaching wickedness. As a result, I became more determined than ever not to be diverted by the more superficial priorities of London life. And I began to understand, perhaps, something of what had made it possible for my parents to take the stand they had. In any case, the likes of Sarah Hemmings did not much impinge on my thoughts during that time, and it is even possible I would have forgotten of her existence altogether had I not run into Joseph Turner that day in Kensington Gardens.
    I was at that time investigating a case in Norfolk and had returned to London for a few days with the intention of studying the extensive notes I had made. It was while I was strolling around Kensington Gardens one grey morning, pondering the many curious details surrounding the victim’s disappearance, that I was hailed from afar by a figure I quickly recognised to be Turner, a man I had come to know vaguely from my social rounds. He came hurrying up to me, and after asking why I was so rarely ‘seen about the place these days’, invited me to a dinner he and a friend were giving in a restaurant that evening.
    When I politely declined on the grounds that my present case was demanding all my time and attention, he said: ‘Shame. Sarah Hemmings is coming along, and she’s so wanting to have a good chat with you.’
    ‘Miss Hemmings?’
    ‘Remember her, don’t you? She certainly remembers you.
    Said you got to know each other a bit a few years ago. She’s always complaining how you’re no longer to be found.’
    Resisting the urge to make some comment, I said simply: ‘Well, please do give her my good wishes.’
    I left Turner fairly promptly after that, but on returning to my desk I confess I found myself somewhat distracted by this report of Miss Hemmings’s wishing to see me. In the end, I told myself that in all likelihood Turner had made some mistake; or at the least, was exaggerating his point in an effort to entice me to his dinner. But then over the following months a number of similar reports reached my ears. Sarah Hemmings had been heard expressing annoyance at how, despite our once having been friends, I had now become impossible for her to find. I heard from several sources, moreover, how she was threatening to ‘ferret me out’. Then finally, last week, while I was staying in the village of Shackton, in Oxfordshire, to investigate the Studley Grange business, Miss Hemmings turned up in person, presumably with the intention of doing just that.
    I had found the walled garden - containing the pond where Charles Emery’s body had been discovered - in the lower grounds of the house. Four stone steps had brought me down into a rectangular space so perversely sheltered from the sun that even on that bright morning everything around me was in shadow. The walls themselves were covered with ivy, but somehow one could not avoid the impression of having stepped into a roofless prison cell.
    The pond dominated this enclosure. Though several people had told me it contained goldfish, I could see no sign of life; in fact, it was hard to imagine how anything could thrive in such dank water - a fitting place indeed to discover a corpse. Surrounding the pond was a circle of square mossy slabs embedded into the mud. I would suppose I had been examining this area for about twenty minutes -1 was on my front, scrutinising with my magnifying glass one of the slabs that projected over the water - when I became conscious of someone observing me.
    At first I assumed this to be some family member wishing yet again to pester me with questions. Since earlier I had insisted on uninterrupted time, I decided, at the cost of appearing rude, to pretend not to