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ANTHONY HOROWITZ
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    First published in Great Britain in 2014
    by Orion Books,
    an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
    Orion House, 5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
    London wc2h 9ea
    An Hachette Livre UK Company
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    Copyright © Anthony Horowitz 2014
    The moral right of Anthony Horowitz to be identified as the
    author of this work has been asserted in accordance with
    the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
    reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
    in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
    photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
    permission of both the copyright owner and the
    above publisher of this book.
    All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any
    resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
    is purely coincidental.
    A CIP catalogue record for this book is
    available from the British Library.
    isbn (Hardback) 978 1 4091 0947 1
    isbn (Export Trade Paperback) 978 1 4091 0948 8
    isbn (Ebook) 978 1 4091 0949 5
    Typeset at The Spartan Press Ltd,
    Lymington, Hants
    Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd,
    St Ives plc
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    www.orionbooks.co.uk
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    From The Times of London
    24th April 1891
    HIGHGATE BODY FOUND
    Police have no explanation for a peculiarly brutal murder
    that has come to light close by Merton Lane in the normally
    pleasant and quiet vicinity of Highgate. The deceased, a man
    in his twenties, had been shot in the head but of particular
    interest to the police was the fact that his hands had been tied
    prior to the killing. Inspector G. Lestrade, who is in charge
    of the enquiry, inclines to the belief that this dreadful act
    took the form of an execution and may be related to recent
    unrest in the streets of London. He has identified the victim
    as Jonathan Pilgrim, an American who had been staying at
    a private club in Mayfair and who may have been visiting
    the metropolis for reasons of business. Scotland Yard has
    been in contact with the American legation but so far no
    address has been found for the dead man and it may be some
    weeks before any relatives come forward. The investigation
    continues.
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    ONE
    The Reichenbach Falls
    Does anyone really believe what happened at the Reichenbach
    Fal s? A great many accounts have been written but it seems to
    me that all of them have left something to be desired – which
    is to say, the truth. Take the Journal de Genève and Reuters, for example. I read them from start to finish, not an easy
    task for they’re both written in that painfully dry manner of
    most European publications, as if they’re reporting the news
    because they have to, not because it’s something they want you
    to know. And what exactly did they tell me? That Sherlock
    Holmes and his foremost adversary, Professor James Moriarty,
    of whose existence the public were only now learning, had
    met and that both of them died. Wel , it might as wel have
    been an automobile accident for all the excitement those two
    author ities managed to put into their prose. Even the headlines
    were dull.
    But what really puzzles me is the narrative of Dr John
    Watson. He describes the entire affair in Strand Magazine ,
    starting with the knock on the door of his consulting room
    on the evening of April 24th 1891 and continuing with his
    journey to Switzerland. I yield to no one in my admiration for
    the chronicler of the adventures, exploits, memoirs, casebooks
    and so on of the great detective. As I sit at my Remington
    Number Two improved model typewriter (an