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considerably less sleek than those I currently wore. I laced them on by touch, then pushed the good pair inside with the kit for emergency repairs: replacement silk stockings, sponge bag with damp cloth, nail-scissors, hair-brush, and pins. I did up the buttons on my overcoat, to preserve the more vulnerable clothing beneath from snags and grime, and dropped the long strap of the valise over my head.
    “Ready,” I said.
    There was just enough moon to give definition to the land around us. We appeared to be on a bridle path—less pitted and filled with ordure than a farm track—leading through trees, up a low hill, and finally opening onto pasture land. A trickling sound ahead of us gave evidence of a small stream; beyond that, a dark shape took form, soon resolving into the roof-line of a considerable building.
    Holmes took my elbow, guiding me over a narrow foot-bridge that crossed the stream, then let me go to lead the way up what felt underfoot like close-mowed lawn. As the silhouette of the building became more precise, he grew alert, then stopped.
    “What is it?” I whispered.
    “Lights,” he breathed back. “Around the front of the house.”
    “Is that unusual?”
    “A bit. My…as a boy, I only saw them lit when we had guests.”
    “Oh, dear.”
    “Shouldn’t matter. If anything, guests will keep the family occupied.”
    I supposed a house-party was unlikely to migrate towards a chapel, unless his cousin was particularly religious or intending a Black Mass; still, this evidence of the rightful owners—rather, the residents—brought back the day’s clammy nerves.
    “Come,” he said, and we continued.
    The path grew narrow, between shrubs of some kind. I followed a thin white line—Holmes’ shirt-collar—with my arms folded across my chest, feeling the pluck of branches at my sleeves. The white line grew less and less conspicuous, until I was forced to give a little
hsst
through my teeth: my eyes were poor at night, but I hadn’t thought his were
that
much better.
    A white shape hovered into view: his shirt-front, rather than back. “How can you see where you’re going, Holmes?”
    “My feet learned these paths as a boy,” he replied, and set off again, leaving me to consider Sherlock Holmes as a bare-kneed lad.
    The next time I caught him up was beside a stone wall where the air smelt of horses. He lowered his head to speak into my ear. “This next bit is complicated. You wait here while I go through to unlatch the door. I’ll be two minutes.”
    I tugged my coat lapels together against the cold, and felt more than heard him move off.
    Now that I was still, I could hear the night: the faintest of breezes through the leaves; the cry of a vixen in the woods; from a window over my head, the snort of a horse reacting to a stranger’s scent. No dogs yet, thank God. Then I tensed: voices.
    They were far off, possibly near the front of the house where the glow was coming from. I could not make out the words, although I thought there were two men. Still, they came no closer, and soon faded away, leaving me with the fox, a far-off owl, and the tiny shift of pebbles beneath my shoes.
    A scraping noise came, and a creak, followed by footsteps, hurrying down a stone stairway as if by daylight. Then Holmes was again touching my elbow, leading me up a flight of deeply worn stone steps in the direction of a dim rectangle.
    The warm odour of honey told me where we were before I stepped through the doorway: a tall, fragrant beeswax candle hung over the altar, filling the world with sweetness.
    The chapel was small: forty celebrants would have been a crowd, with a small gallery over the back for a choir of at most half a dozen. It was old: those windows might have come from the thirteenth century, and the vaulted ceiling not much later. And it was simple: hand-hewn stone, time-smoothed floors, three tapestries whose colours had faded into abstract patterns, carved wooden pews in need of polish—none of the