Chapter 5: Pemberton Steps Off the Thestral-Drawn Carriage

The Ministry carriage arrived at half past ten, which Holmes considered a suspicious hour.

Not suspicious in itself — half past ten was a perfectly ordinary hour for administrative travel, which was precisely why it unsettled him. A genuine emergency response did not arrive at half past ten. It arrived at inconvenient hours, with mud on its wheels and something harassed about the face of the man who stepped down. A response calculated to appear appropriate arrived at half past ten, freshly pressed, with a leather document case that had been organised in advance.

Holmes was standing at the entrance hall window — the one that gave a lateral view of the front approach rather than the direct one, a detail he had noted and exploited approximately four minutes after the rumour of a Ministry carriage reached the corridor outside his borrowed rooms — and he watched the arrival with his pipe between his teeth and the expression of a man cataloguing invertebrates.