“‘After you went to bed?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘When did you go to bed?’

“‘About eleven.’

“‘So your son was gone at least two hours?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Possibly four or five?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘What was he doing during that time?’

“‘I do not know,’ she answered, turning white to her very lips.

“Of course after that there was nothing more to be done. I found out where Lieutenant Charpentier was, took two officers with me, and arrested him. When I touched him on the shoulder and warned him to come quietly with us, he answered us as bold as brass, ‘I suppose you are arresting me for being concerned in the death of that scoundrel Drebber,’ he said. We had said nothing to him about it, so that his alluding to it had a most suspicious aspect.”

“Very,” said Holmes.

“He still carried the heavy stick which the mother described him as having with him when he followed Drebber. It was a stout oak cudgel.”

“What is your theory, then?”

“Well, my theory is that he followed Drebber as far as the Brixton Road. When there, a fresh altercation arose between them, in the course of which Drebber received a blow from the stick, in the pit of the stomach perhaps, which killed him without leaving any mark. The night was so wet that no one was about, so Charpentier dragged dragged the body of his victim into the empty house. As to the candle, and the blood, and the writing on the wall, and the ring, they may all be so many tricks to throw the police on to the wrong scent.”

“Well done!” said Holmes in an encouraging voice. “Really, Gregson, you are getting along. We shall make something of you yet.”

“I flatter myself that I have managed it rather neatly,” the detective answered, proudly. “The young man volunteered a statement, in which he said that after following Drebber some time, the latter perceived him, and took a cab in order to get away from him. On his way home he met an old shipmate, and took a long walk with him. On being asked where this old shipmate lived, he was unable to give any satisfactory reply. I think the whole case fits together uncommonly well. What amuses me is to think of Lestrade, who had started off upon the wrong scent. I am afraid he won’t make much of it. Why, by Jove, here’s the very man himself!”

It was indeed Lestrade, who had ascended the stairs while we were talking, and who now entered the room. The assurance and jauntiness which generally marked his demeanour and dress were, however, wanting. His face was disturbed and troubled, while his clothes were disarranged and untidy. He had evidently come with the intention of consulting with Sherlock Holmes, for on perceiving his colleague he appeared to be embarrassed and put out. He stood in the centre of the room, fumbling nervously with his hat and uncertain what to do. “This is a most extraordinary case,” he said at last — “a most incomprehensible affair.”

Punctually at eleven o’clock, the carriages began to arrive. There was a stir in the crowd at the gate, a concentration as a carriage drove up, wedding guests were mounting up the steps and passing along the red carpet to the church. They were all gay and excited because the sun was shining.

Gudrun watched them closely, with objective curiosity. She saw each one as a complete figure, like a character in a book, or a subject in a picture, or a marionette in a theatre, a finished creation. She loved to recognise their various characteristics, to place them in their true light, give them their own surroundings, settle them for ever as they passed before her along the path to the church. She knew them, they were finished, sealed and stamped and finished with, for her. There was none that had anything unknown, unresolved, until the Criches themselves began to appear. Then her interest was piqued. Here was something not quite so preconcluded.

There came the mother, Mrs Crich, with her eldest son Gerald. She was a queer unkempt figure, in spite of the attempts that had obviously been made to bring her into line for the day. Her face was pale, yellowish, with a clear, transparent skin, she leaned forward rather, her features were strongly marked, handsome, with a tense, unseeing, predative look. Her colourless hair was untidy, wisps floating down on to her sac coat of dark blue silk, from under her blue silk hat. She looked like a woman with a monomania, furtive almost, but heavily proud.

Her son was of a fair, sun–tanned type, rather above middle height, well–made, and almost exaggeratedly well–dressed. But about him also was the strange, guarded look, the unconscious glisten, as if he did not belong to the same creation as the people about him. Gudrun lighted on him at once. There was something northern about him that magnetised her. In his clear northern flesh and his fair hair was a glisten like sunshine refracted through crystals of ice. And he looked so new, unbroached, pure as an arctic thing. Perhaps he was thirty years old, perhaps more. His gleaming beauty, maleness, like a young, good–humoured, smiling wolf, did not blind her to the significant, sinister stillness in his bearing, the lurking danger of his unsubdued temper. ‘His totem is the wolf,’ she repeated to herself. ‘His mother is an old, unbroken wolf.’ And then she experienced a keen paroxyism, a transport, as if she had made some incredible discovery, known to nobody else on earth. A strange transport took possession of her, all her veins were in a paroxysm of violent sensation. ‘Good God!’ she exclaimed to herself, ‘what is this?’ And then, a moment after, she was saying assuredly, ‘I shall know more of that man.’ She was tortured with desire to see him again, a nostalgia, a necessity to see him again, to make sure it was not all a mistake, that she was not deluding herself, that she really felt this strange and overwhelming sensation on his account, this knowledge of him in her essence, this powerful apprehension of him. ‘Am I REALLY singled out for him in some way, is there really some pale gold, arctic light that envelopes only us two?’ she asked herself. And she could not believe it, she remained in a muse, scarcely conscious of what was going on around.