The Case of the Saint's Day Ransom

0:00 A Raw Sunday Evening and Mrs Hudson's Bill

0:04 Watson: Holmes's long fingers were running down a typed bill, line by line, the way he might pick at a forged will. This was London, a raw Sunday evening at the fag end of winter, nineteen seventy-four, and the miners' strike had half the city's lamps turned low. Mrs Hudson had gone to her sister's in Margate until Monday, leaving behind her account for the hearthrug Holmes had burnt with acid before Christmas. I sat at the desk, chequebook open, and kept my opinions to myself.

0:34 Holmes: "Replacement carpet, Axminster." It was a Wilton, Watson. She's promoting it.

0:42 Watson: She beat it on the line long enough to know. Holmes: "Removal of fumes." Fumes need no removing. They leave of their own accord.

0:51 Watson: Through my bedroom, mostly. Holmes: A trifling detour. And this: "general inconvenience." Is inconvenience now a—

0:59 Watson: In this house it's the staple diet. Sit down and let me sign. Holmes: You mean to pay the lot? Without a murmur?

1:07 Watson: Every line of it. Cheaper than finding new lodgings. Holmes: Very well. Under protest, entered in the minutes.

1:16 Watson: Some idiot double-parked. Holmes: No idiot keeps time like that. Threes, evenly spaced. Someone wants this window.

1:25 Watson: Oh, nonsense. Thane: Mr Holmes? Nobody answers your door, and I won't go away.

1:32 Holmes: The landlady's away, madam. And you are? Thane: My name is Thane. I'm the curator at Aldermoor House, on the Heath.

1:41 Watson: Good heavens. Lord Calder's old place. Thane: Aldermoor House was robbed of its Van Brandt last night, and unless it comes home I shall lose my post.

1:51 Holmes: A day-old scene the Yard has trodden flat, and a lady whose job wants saving. Watson: She's standing out there in the cold. Holmes: I'm a detective, Watson, not an—

2:01 Watson: Then be a detective. Every dealer alive would know a Van Brandt on sight. Holmes: Naturally. What of it?

2:08 Watson: So it can never be sold. Then why would anyone steal it? Holmes: That is an extremely annoying question. Miss Thane, stay with your motor. We're coming down.

2:20 Thane: Thank you. I'll keep the engine running. Watson: There. Mrs Hudson is paid in full, protest or no protest.

2:28 Holmes: Your hat, Watson. Watson: What, now? We left the cheque on the mantelpiece and went down into the dark.

2:40 Nine O'Clock in the Picture Room

2:45 Watson: Miss Thane put us up at Aldermoor that night, and by nine we stood with her in the picture room, where a cleaner was dusting round an empty brass hook. Thane: Mrs Navarro, please. There's nothing left there to dust.

2:59 Navarro: Seven every morning, señorita, I dust her frame first. If I stop, then she's truly... Thane: She's a girl of sixteen, Mr Holmes, smiling at someone just out of the frame. Three hundred years she's smiled at him.

3:17 Holmes: And every dealer alive would know that smile. Watson: Which brings us back to my annoying question. Holmes: This house answers it. He walked past a Van Haren to reach her. A man who wants money takes the Van Haren.

3:31 Thane: Then what does he want? Holmes: A hostage. A face the newspapers will weep over. Expect terms.

3:39 Thane: They've come. Inspector Lestrade rang at eight. A letter reached The Courier this morning.

3:45 Watson: Already? What does the fellow ask? Thane: Something no Government will give. If it isn't given, she burns on Saint Patrick's Day.

3:55 Navarro: Burns? A painting of a child? Thane: And the Council will want a head. The woman with the keys will do nicely.

4:04 Holmes: You're very sure of their verdict. Thane: I know the Council. If she burns, Mr Holmes, I'm finished there.

4:13 Boards Nailed Over a Broken Window

4:17 Watson: Down the corridor, boards had been nailed over a broken window, and beneath them Inspector Lestrade waited with a young night guard in a borrowed overcoat. Lestrade: Mind the glass, Doctor. Mr Holmes. Miss Thane's private help, I'm told.

4:33 Holmes: Her guest, unpaid. Lestrade: Pity. Then I can't stop your wages, like Ackerley's here.

4:40 Ackerley: The Council stopped them, Inspector, not you. When can I go back— Lestrade: When I say, son.

4:46 Holmes: Glass inside, on the boards. Bars bent inward and wrenched from the stone. A sledgehammer, swung three or four times.

4:53 Watson: Enough row to wake half Hampstead. Holmes: He didn't care. A man that noisy knows he won't be interrupted.

5:00 Lestrade: Or knows somebody inside will see to it he isn't. Ackerley: Now hang on, I never — Lestrade: I said somebody. Here's my bind, Mr Holmes. The Garvin sisters are starving themselves in Brixton, and the Home Office won't send them home to Carrowmore. Not for a painting.

5:18 Watson: Force-fed twice a day. Two men I trained with refused to do it. Lestrade: And Fleet Street wants to know why the Yard can't find one girl with a lute.

5:27 Ackerley: I'm paid Fridays, Inspector. If Friday comes and there's nothing — Lestrade: Then you'd best hope I find her quick. Saint Patrick's Day won't wait, and neither will the Yard.

5:39 An Office Gone Cold for Want of Power

5:43 Watson: Upstairs, in an office gone cold for want of power, Miss Thane opened a ledger bound in green cloth before us. Thane: The night logbook. The men sign it on every round, on the hour.

5:56 Holmes: Read it to me, Miss Thane. Thane: "Two o'clock. All doors secure. Lucy well." "Three o'clock. Lucy well." "Four. Lucy well."

6:08 Watson: Who on earth is Lucy? Thane: She is. The Lute Player. It's on every page, back to the first.

6:17 Watson: Good Lord. Holmes: Two words, three hands. One alone for three years, then two turn about since January. The name came with the keys.

6:27 Thane: There have only ever been those three. Before them the house had no night man at all. Watson: Night men name things. On the wards we called the boiler Agnes.

6:39 Thane: I'd never heard it until I opened this book at four yesterday morning. That name never left the night shift. Holmes: You sound almost jealous of it.

6:49 Thane: Jealous? Eleven years I've kept her. And all night, every hour, somebody came and — and looked in on her —

6:58 Thane: "Twenty-third. One o'clock. Lucy well." And then nothing. Not another word...

7:08 Watson: Sit down a moment, Miss Thane. Here. Thane: I'm sorry. It's only a name in a book.

7:15 Thane: It stays in that drawer. The newspapers aren't having it. Holmes: And the men who wrote it, Miss Thane?

7:22 Thane: The Inspector has sent for every guard, past and present.

7:27 Lodgings Over a Tobacconist's

7:31 Watson: Hobday lodged over a tobacconist in Highgate village; next afternoon he let Lestrade and us in, The Courier still in his hand. Lestrade: Hobday. Three years you walked Aldermoor alone, nights. Then in January Miss Thane sacked you.

7:47 Hobday: Asleep in a chair at four in the morning. She found me. She was within her rights, Inspector.

7:53 Lestrade: And they put two men on in your place. Hobday: Took two to replace me. I'll have that on my headstone.

8:00 Watson: Ha! Holmes: You're hunting work. The paper's folded at Situations Vacant, three ringed in pencil.

8:07 Hobday: Four. One's on the back. Car park attendant, Golders Green. Nights again, mind, which—

8:12 Lestrade: Saturday night. Where were you? Hobday: Nights are my own since January, Inspector. Nobody to answer to...

8:20 Lestrade: Meaning nobody to vouch for you. Hobday: Not a soul. Watson: Three years of nights. You can't have slept a wink since.

8:29 Hobday: Like a baby, Doctor. That was always my trouble. Here's what I can't fathom. The letter says Carrowmore. Not money, not freedom. Just move the Garvin girls home.

8:43 Holmes: A modest price, for a man holding eight hundred thousand pounds. Hobday: Isn't it? You'd think he'd ask for the moon.

8:51 Lestrade: Ackerley. Welsh, I'd have sworn. Born... Belfast. Raised in Merthyr.

8:58 Watson: Fooled me too. Lestrade: Belfast-born. Is he, now.

9:04 The Whitewashed Guardroom at Dusk

9:08 Watson: Lestrade had us back at Aldermoor by dusk, in the whitewashed guardroom behind the kitchens, with Ackerley standing by the wall telephone. Lestrade: Once more, Ackerley. Where were you when the window went?

9:20 Ackerley: Out on my round, Inspector. East wing, by the— by the library. Holmes: The library's two stone walls from that window, and yet you heard the hammer.

9:29 Ackerley: That house carries sound at night, Mr Holmes. Like a chapel. Lestrade: And your mate?

9:35 Ackerley: In here, brewing up. He'll tell you, once his fever— Lestrade: Not this week, son. Fever hospital says he can't string two words.

9:42 Ackerley: Oh. Watson: So you ran back here to ring the police? Ackerley: What for? That line was dead before the glass broke. I ran for the call box on Orchard Lane.

9:52 Lestrade: Was it, now. Ackerley: I — I tried it after. Same thing, isn't it? Dead's dead.

10:00 Lestrade: Wait in the corridor. Don't wander. Watson: He's frightened, Holmes, that's all. It doesn't make him guilty.

10:07 Holmes: Agreed. But he didn't only say the line was dead. He said when.

10:13 Lestrade: Before the hammer. While he was round by the library. Holmes: Yes, Inspector. So how did a man out on his round know it?

10:23 Next Morning in Miss Thane's Office

10:27 Watson: Next morning Holmes and I were with Miss Thane in her office when Lestrade marched Ackerley in, a sheaf of Post Office tickets in his fist. Lestrade: Your line's barred from dialling trunk, Miss Thane. Every long call goes through the operator, and she writes a ticket.

10:42 Thane: The Council barred it, after one bad quarter. Lestrade: Then the Council's been paying for a call to Belfast every night, since the middle of January. Thane: Every night? On this house's line?

10:55 Holmes: And each one booked a few minutes after one o'clock, just after the round is signed. That's a man keeping an appointment, Ackerley. Ackerley: Folk ring— folk ring at all hours.

11:06 Lestrade: Not to Belfast they don't. You were born there, son, and the letter says Carrowmore. Ackerley: I've lived in Merthyr since I was in nappies — Lestrade: You knew the line was dead, you knew where she hung, and you told your friend when to swing his—

11:19 Ackerley: What friend? I've no friends in Belfast. Not one.

11:23 Thane: Then somebody answers every night, on the Council's money. And it's my name they'll blame... Holmes: One question, Ackerley, and the right answer may clear you. Whom do you ring in Belfast?

11:36 Watson: Answer him, man. It's your neck. Ackerley: That's— that's mine, Mr Holmes. I'll not say. Not to you, not to anybody.

11:47 A Sunday Suit in the Front Hall

11:51 Watson: Two days later Hobday came up the drive in a Sunday suit and caught Miss Thane, Holmes and me in the front hall. Hobday: A week in hand and my holiday pay, Miss Thane. That's all I'm after.

12:04 Thane: The Council pays wages, Mr Hobday, not I. Hobday: And the Council says ask Miss Thane. Round and round, like the rounds.

12:15 Lestrade: The Courier has had its bit of canvas looked at. Read it, Doctor. My glasses are at the Yard.

12:21 Watson: The restorers have had it under the glass. Genuine canvas off the painting itself, four inches long, narrow and pale. Thane: Off her? They're certain?

12:32 Watson: Thread for thread, they say. Thane: They had her in their hands, and nobody even let me look. Holmes: Then he hasn't sold her on. A man who could cut a piece from her within a day keeps her close.

12:45 Thane: Thank heaven. Lestrade: Close to Ackerley's friends. Hampstead have had him in the cells this past hour.

12:53 Hobday: That's quick work, Inspector. Thane: Locked up? On a telephone bill? That's—

12:58 Lestrade: On a dead line he'd no business knowing about, and calls he won't explain. Mr Holmes? Holmes: I can't fault the sum, Miss Thane. One answer from him might. He won't give it.

13:10 Lestrade: Ackerley's charged. The Yard has its man before Saint Patrick's Day. Thane: Has it, indeed.

13:18 Cold Tea and Floor Polish at Scotland Yard

13:22 Watson: The interview room at Scotland Yard smelt of cold tea and floor polish, and Ackerley sat cuffed across the table from Lestrade, with Holmes and me by the wall. Ackerley: One call, Inspector. Belfast. Five minutes, and I'll pay for it myself.

13:38 Lestrade: The Council's paid for plenty already. Ackerley: Please. It's not what you think, it's—

13:43 Lestrade: Then tell me what it is. Ackerley: I can't. Just let me ring. Holmes: He doesn't ask for a solicitor, Inspector. He asks for Belfast. Whoever's at that end matters more to him than his own neck.

13:56 Lestrade: Then they can read about him in the papers. Your mate's statement came in late last night. Watson: From the fever ward. I rang the sister: pneumonia on top of it. He'll have given that between coughs.

14:09 Lestrade: Kettle on, he says, and the two of you side by side in the guardroom when the glass went. Not by the library. Ackerley: He's— he's poorly, he doesn't know what he's—

14:20 Lestrade: He knows where you stood. So the hammer man had the house to himself, and somebody told him he would. Watson: Then why say the library, man?

14:28 Ackerley: Because I — Let me ring Belfast. Then ask me anything. Lestrade: Side by side or not, he's still the inside man. He stays locked up.

14:39 The Night the Thief Had Named

14:43 Watson: On the night the thief had named, Holmes and I kept the Aldermoor guardroom ourselves, a pot of tea between us and the telephone on the wall above. Half past eleven. He'll ring here before the day's out. A man who names a day keeps it.

14:57 Holmes: Or burns her in silence and lets the newspapers do his— Watson: No. He'll want to hear us squirm. Holmes: Look at this room, Watson. Two men at that table, the kettle on, while a hammer works at a window down the corridor.

15:12 Watson: And every night, a little after one, somebody at that telephone talking to Belfast for a quarter of an hour. Holmes: Leaving his mark on a Post Office ticket each time. An odd habit for a conspirator.

15:25 Watson: Or a careless one. Holmes: Careless men don't keep appointments to the minute. Watson: Then which is he?

15:33 Holmes: I don't know yet. Watson: Midnight. That's Saint Patrick's Day gone.

15:39 Holmes: And the telephone never rang.

15:42 At Miss Thane's Desk With the Day's Paper

15:46 Watson: Spring came with no word of her, until one afternoon in May Miss Thane sat Holmes and me down at her desk with the day's paper. Thane: Costaverde now. Eight hundred thousand dollars of— of food, for Costaverde, or she burns. Three weeks, and nobody has answered him.

16:06 Watson: Carrowmore last time. Hardly a man of fixed principle. Holmes: He takes his causes from the front page. A true believer doesn't change his cause when the headlines change.

16:17 Thane: Meanwhile Mr Ackerley's still locked up. The Inspector rang at two: he has the other night man at the Yard all afternoon, over his statement again. Watson: Poor devil, barely out of his sickbed.

16:30 Thane: I catch myself calling her Lucy now. A word I only know from a book in a locked drawer...

16:43 Thane: Aldermoor House. The curator speaking. Voice: Miss Thane. Your Council's gone quiet. Nobody wants to pay for her, do they?

16:53 Thane: Who is this? Where's she? Voice: Saint Aldhelm's, by Smithfield. Lucy's in the churchyard, done up in old newspapers. Let them all print who lost her.

17:09 Holmes: I had my ear beside yours, Miss Thane. A call box: the pips, then the coins. And cloth over the mouthpiece, to flatten his voice.

17:17 Watson: I'll ring the Yard. Miss Thane? You've gone white as paper.

17:21 Thane: Mr Holmes, he didn't say the painting. He didn't say the Van Brandt. He—

17:26 Watson: Sit down. Breathe. Thane: He called her Lucy.

17:31 Holmes: Yes. He did.

17:34 Among the Pictures, Unslept

17:38 Watson: By seven next morning no word had come from the churchyard, and Mrs Navarro came in with her pail to find the three of us among the pictures, unslept. Navarro: You stayed all night? Nobody has slept?

17:52 Thane: We're waiting for news, Mrs Navarro. The police go into the churchyard at first light. Holmes: This hook by the door is bent down hard, and the gilt's scraped beneath it. Somebody hauled that frame off. By force.

18:07 Watson: The gentleman in red? He looks sound enough to me. Navarro: Now, yes. The morning after she was taken, I found him on the floor under the lute girl's old wall, on his face, his wire snapped.

18:22 Thane: Her old wall? She left that hook in November, when we moved her to the light. Navarro: And he took her place, señorita. And somebody pulled him down.

18:32 Holmes: At seven o'clock, with the house full of police? Navarro: One young policeman, downstairs with the glass. Nobody up here. The rest came later. So I do what I do every morning, I make the room right. I rehung it before the police came. Nobody ever asked me.

18:51 Thane: Oh, dear...

18:54 Lestrade at Noon With Rain on His Hat

18:58 Watson: Lestrade walked in at noon with rain on his hat. Miss Thane had not left the bare hook all morning, and neither had Holmes or I. Lestrade: She's found. My lads had her at eight, behind a table tomb by the churchyard gate.

19:12 Thane: Whole? Is she whole? Where is—

19:14 Lestrade: At the Yard, still in her newspapers. Nobody unwraps her till the restorers say. Thane: So I wait again. Outside the door, like a visitor...

19:25 Holmes: By the gate, not tucked in some corner. He wanted her found. Lestrade: He wanted shot of her. And the Yard's had his inside man since before Saint Patrick's Day.

19:36 Holmes: That's the thing I must take back, Inspector. I backed your charge against Ackerley. I was wrong.

19:43 Lestrade: Were you, now. Holmes: Miss Thane, tell him about the hook. Thane: The morning after, Mrs Navarro found the gentleman in red torn down from that hook by the door. Lucy hung there till November.

19:56 Lestrade: Torn down? Nobody told me that. Thane: Nobody asked her.

20:02 Lestrade: Hmph. Holmes: Our thief went first to the lute girl's old wall. Ackerley came in January. He has only ever seen her by the window.

20:10 Watson: So if he drew his friend a map, the map says window. Lestrade: Unless the friend got muddled in the— Holmes: Muddled? Towards a hook Ackerley never once saw her on? Whoever guided that hand knew this room before November.

20:23 Lestrade: So does every tripper with a guidebook. Thane: The old guidebook still puts her by the door. We've crates of them unsold.

20:33 Lestrade: There, you see. Holmes: Then it could be anybody but Ackerley. Your own witness has him side by side in the guardroom while the hammer swung.

20:42 Lestrade: Side by side, then why did Ackerley lie about his round?

20:47 The Gaoler's Desk Below the Yard

20:51 Watson: Below the Yard, a constable brought Ackerley from his cell in handcuffs to the gaoler's desk, where Lestrade waited beside a black telephone and Holmes and I stood back. Lestrade: Sit. Mr Holmes has a question. I'd answer it this time, son.

21:07 Holmes: A few minutes past one, every night. A quarter of an hour, never longer. That isn't a plotter's hour, Ackerley.

21:15 Ackerley: Don't— please, Mr Holmes. Don't. Holmes: It's the hour of someone who can't sleep. Someone in pain, with a kind nurse.

21:24 Ackerley: My mam. Watson: In hospital? In Belfast?

21:29 Ackerley: Saint Aubin's. She went home when my dad died. And now it's — it's everywhere, Doctor. Weeks, they say. Maybe not weeks.

21:40 Watson: And a night sister wheels the telephone to her bed? Ackerley: She does, bless her. A call to Belfast every night, and that's all it ever was. My voice, so she isn't lying there alone in the dark...

21:53 Lestrade: And the line going dead? Ackerley: She was telling me about the woman in the next bed. Then nothing. No click, nothing. I'm saying "Mam? Mam?" into a dead receiver—

22:04 Holmes: And then the hammer. Ackerley: That's how I knew it was dead before the glass broke. Her voice in my ear one second, gone the next.

22:13 Lestrade: Then why the library, son? Why not say so? Ackerley: Because of— of Mr Hobday. Everybody knew. Eyes shut five minutes and he was out on the street.

22:24 Lestrade: He was asleep, son. You were on the telephone. Ackerley: Ringing Belfast on the Council's money? I'd have been finished by Friday. And she'd — she'd have had nobody ringing at all...

22:37 Watson: Give me the ward, Ackerley. I'll speak to the sister myself. Lestrade: You'll do that, Doctor. Hands, Ackerley.

22:45 Lestrade: Go on, then. Before I think better of it. Ackerley: Thank you, sir.

22:58 Ackerley: Operator? Belfast, please. The Saint Aubin's Hospital. I'll pay for this one myself.

23:06 Aldermoor Dark, and a Notebook Under the Lamp

23:10 Watson: Aldermoor stood dark that night, its staff long gone home; Holmes sat in the curator's office beside her silent telephone, and I read my notebook to him under the lamp. Miss Thane, the first morning, in this room: the name belonged to the night men. Nobody else ever used it.

23:30 Holmes: And? Watson: The voice on that telephone. Lucy, it said, in a churchyard by Smithfield, wrapped in newspaper.

23:38 Holmes: And the newspapers themselves? Watson: I've been through every cutting she kept. "The Van Brandt." "The Lute Player." "The girl with the lute." Not one paper has ever printed Lucy.

23:50 Holmes: Then he heard it, Watson. He never read it. Watson: The night men. Three hands in the book, and no others, ever. The first walked three winters on his own and was gone in January. The new pair came in January.

24:04 Holmes: And the painting moved? Watson: November. Then that fellow in red, dragged off her old hook.

24:11 Holmes: And the afternoon of the call? Watson: Ackerley in the cells. His mate at the Yard with Lestrade, all afternoon.

24:18 Holmes: Both new men, then, under lock or under the Inspector's eye. Watson: So neither of them rang. Holmes: Then who, Watson, called her Lucy?

24:29 Lestrade's Office and the Filing Cabinets

24:33 Watson: Hobday came to Lestrade's office of his own accord and sat, hat on his knee, across the desk from Miss Thane; Holmes leant against the filing cabinets beside me. Hobday: Help put a name to a voice, your sergeant said. Glad to, Inspector, if I can.

24:50 Lestrade: Miss Thane took a call. Muffled. It told her where the painting lay.

24:55 Hobday: Muffled. Well, he'd hardly sing out his name, would he? Thane: I couldn't place the voice. I could place one word.

25:03 Hobday: Which word's that, Miss Thane? Thane: He said, "Lucy's in the churchyard." Not the Van Brandt. Not the painting. Lucy.

25:14 Hobday: Lucy. Lord, I've not heard that in— in months. Then it's a night man. Ackerley.

25:21 Lestrade: In my cells when that call came. Hobday: His mate, then. Lestrade: In that chair you're sat in, with me, all afternoon.

25:29 Hobday: Ah. Somebody they told, then. They— men talk. Over a pint.

25:35 Holmes: Anyone they'd told would make for the window, where she hung that night. Whoever came for her tore down the gentleman by the door first. She left that hook in November.

25:46 Watson: Before either new man had a key. Hobday: Visitors, then. It's all in the—

25:50 Thane: The guidebook never called her Lucy. I told Mr Holmes that name never left the night shift, and the logbook has been locked in my desk ever since. Lestrade: And no paper ever printed it. The Doctor's been through the lot.

26:04 Thane: There were only ever three of you, Mr Hobday. Before you, no night man at all. Lestrade: Three names in that logbook, and only one of them walked Aldermoor before November.

26:17 Hobday: Two months I walked past her by the window, Mr Holmes. Two whole— Holmes: Two months against three years. Every hour your torch found her on the peg beside the doorway. In the dark, with glass underfoot, a hand goes where it's always gone.

26:31 Hobday: You've— you've a muffled voice and a pet name. That's all you've got. Lestrade: It'll do to be going on with. Hobday, I'm arresting you for the theft of the Van Brandt from Aldermoor House.

26:44 Hobday: Arresting me? I came here to— Lestrade: You're not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but what you say may be put into writing and given in evidence.

26:54 Hobday: Just tell me one thing, Inspector. Is Lucy unhurt?

26:59 Mrs Hudson's New Carpet at Last

27:03 Watson: The last entry from my journal on the case was made in Baker Street, where Mrs Hudson, her new carpet down at last, showed Miss Thane up to the sitting room. Mrs Hudson: Miss Thane, Mr Holmes. And mind the carpet, both of you. It's new.

27:19 Holmes: Axminster, I'm told. Mrs Hudson: Axminster, and paid for to the penny. By the Doctor.

27:27 Thane: I've come straight from Aldermoor. The Yard let her go this morning. I unwrapped her with my own hands.

27:35 Watson: And Ackerley? Thane: Back on nights, with his wages. His telephone calls come out of my pocket now, not the Council's.

27:43 Watson: Holmes, one thing. Carrowmore, then Costaverde. Why ask for either, if he—

27:49 Holmes: You heard him change causes with the front page, in Miss Thane's office. The cause was never the point. One name in every newspaper was the point.

27:59 Thane: Mine. And the Council very nearly obliged him. Watson: Then tell me honestly. Would he have burned her?

28:08 Thane: That strip he sent The Courier came from the bare edge, folded under the frame. Where no paint ever went. Not one brushstroke lost.

28:18 Watson: Narrow and pale, I read out in your front hall, and I never once asked why pale. Holmes: Nor did I, and it was the whole man. He wanted everyone frightened for her except himself.

28:31 Thane: He couldn't hurt her. Three years of "Lucy well"... Holmes: Hobday's charged, Lucy's rehung. Never an arsonist, Watson, merely a framer.