Case Note

Watson,

I am, as you may have suspected from the cable I sent before leaving Calais, in Paris on the matter the French call the affair of the diadem and which I, having now spent two days at the Hôtel Britannique on a chair that does not deserve the name, prefer to call the affair of an empty case.

The diadem in question, mounted by Bapst & Frères in the late Empire, set with thirty-eight brilliants of indifferent water and a single rose-cut stone of some interest, is, of course, gone. But what it sat on (a velvet bed, lately swept clean of fluff and of one small thing that may yet tell us the rest of the story) is more instructive than the bed of the duchesse who slept above it. The duchesse, on inquiry, slept very well.

I am not yet ready to commit my conclusions to running script. Several of our cables in the last fortnight have ended in the wrong dossier, a matter on which I shall write at length when our affairs allow it, and so I send this note in the hand we agreed upon at Riding Thorpe Manor. I owe the alphabet to the kindness of Mrs. Hilton Cubitt's marriage and to the unkindness of her husband's death; the figures are her husband's, not mine, and you will recognise them at once.

For brevity, the legend below contains only the figures I require to direct you. Read the dancers in the panel beneath it, strictly left to right, and you have the venue of our next correspondence. The address is one you write to me at every week. The man with the flag, as ever, marks the end of the matter; you will see him keep his own counsel, and so should you.

I have not yet seen our French friend in person; he leaves only his work and his letters, both of which are admirable. Inspector Ganimard has called twice and explained, in two different ways, why he is not here. The duchesse insists I attend her at five; the duty is hers and the boredom mine.

Burn this on reading., S.H.