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great pleasure it is to see you again, Dr Watson. The house isn’t the same without you.’
    I waited for Mrs Hudson to leave before turning to my friend. ‘You will forgive me, Holmes,’ I said. ‘But I cannot see how you could have drawn such a conclusion from a plate of scones and a seed cake.’
    â€˜Neither of them told me anything,’ Holmes replied. ‘It was in fact the parsley that Mrs Hudson has placed on top of the butter.’
    â€˜The parsley?’
    â€˜It has been placed there only a minute ago. But the butter has been out of the pantry and in the sun. You will see that it has melted in this warm weather.’
    I looked down. It was indeed the case.
    â€˜The parsley has not sunk into the butter, which suggests an interval of time during which Mrs Hudson was interrupted in her duties. Apart from the arrival of my two visitors, the only distraction has been the music and the applause of the crowd outside.’
    â€˜Astonishing!’ Jones exclaimed.
    â€˜Elementary,’ Holmes returned. ‘The greater part of my work is founded upon just such observations as these. But we have more serious business at hand. You must tell us, Inspector, what it is that brings you here. And meanwhile, Watson, might I inveigle upon you to pour the tea?’
    I was happy to oblige and, while I set about my work, Athelney Jones began his narrative, which I set down as follows.
    â€˜Early this morning, I was called out to a house in Hamworth Hill, in North London. The business that had brought me there was a death by misadventure, not a murder – that had been made clear to me from the start. The house was owned by an elderly couple, a Mr and Mrs Abernetty, who lived there alone, for they had never had children. They had been woken up at night by the sound of breaking wood and had come downstairs to discover a young man, darkly dressed, rifling through their possessions. The man was a burglar. There can be no doubt of that for, as I would soon discover, he had broken into two other houses in the same terrace. Seeing Harold Abernetty standing at the doorway in his dressing gown, the intruder rushed at him and might well have done him serious harm. But as it happened, Abernetty had brought down with him a revolver, which he always kept close by, fearing just this eventuality. He fired a single shot, killing this young man at once.
    â€˜All this I learned from Mr Abernetty. He struck me as an elderly, completely harmless fellow. His wife, a few years his junior, sat in an armchair and sobbed almost the entire time I was there. I learned that they had inherited the house from its former owner, a Mrs Matilda Briggs. She had given it to them, quite freely, to thank them for their long service. They had lived there for the past six years, quietly and without incident. They were retired and devout members of the local church and it would be hard to imagine a more respectable couple.
    â€˜So much for the owners. Let me now describe to you the victim. He was, I would have said, about thirty years of age, pale of complexion and hollow-eyed. He was wearing a suit and a pair of leather shoes which were spattered with mud. These were of particular interest to me as it had rained two nights before the break-in and, venturing into the Abernettys’ garden – they had a small square of land behind the house – I had quickly found footprints made by the dead man. He had evidently come round the side and broken in through the back door. I also discovered the jemmy he had used. It was in the bag which he had brought with him and which also contained the proceeds of the robbery.’
    â€˜And what was it that this young man had stolen from the elderly and harmless Abernettys?’ Holmes asked.
    â€˜Mr Holmes, you hit the mark! It is exactly the reason I am here.’
    Jones had brought with him a portmanteau bag which, I assumed, had belonged to the dead man. He opened it and,