Chapter 18: Lestrade's Superior and the Weight of Evidence

The telegram arrived on a Friday, which Watson noted without knowing why it mattered.

He had spent the morning at his desk with Adelaide's decoded financial summary spread beneath Holmes's notebook, the two documents laid side by side as though in conversation — Adelaide's columns of figures and flow-designations against Holmes's cramped, urgent annotations, each illuminating the other with the particular cooperation of minds that had never met. The work was meticulous and, for stretches, quietly absorbing: the kind of problem that asked for patience rather than inspiration, for the slow accumulation of certainty rather than any sudden light. Watson had always been better at the former than he was willing to admit, even to himself.

The telegram came at half past ten. He read it standing at the window, the paper still warm from Perkins's hand — the boy had taken to intercepting the morning post before Watson descended, a habit that had begun as efficiency and was becoming something more proprietary.