The House Of Silk

tonight, Mr Holmes, although I’m sure we’ll find that he was a frequent visitor. But come this way. I’ll show you what we’ve found and see if you can make sense of it.’
    We walked along the corridor where we had encountered Harriman. The doors were now open, revealing bedrooms, all of which were luxuriously appointed. I had no wish to enter any of them – my very skin recoiled – but I went in after Holmes and Lestrade and found myself in a room draped in blue silk with a cast-iron bed, a low sofa and a door leading into a bathroom with piped water. The opposite wall was taken up by a low cabinet on which stood a glass tank containing a number of rocks and dried flowers arranged in what amounted to a miniature landscape, the possession of a naturalist, perhaps, or a collector.
    ‘This room was not in use when we entered it,’ Lestrade explained. ‘My men continued along the corridor to the next room, which is nothing more than a storage cupboard, and they only opened it quite by chance. Now, look over here. This is what we found.’
    He drew our attention to the tank and at first I could not see why we were examining it. But then I realised that there was a small aperture cut into the wall behind it, perfectly concealed by the glass so that it was virtually invisible.
    ‘A window!’ I exclaimed. And then I grasped its significance. ‘Anything that happened in this room could be observed.’
    ‘Not just observed,’ Lestrade muttered, grimly.
    He took us back out into the corridor, then threw open the door of the cupboard. It was empty inside but for a table on which stood a mahogany box. At first, I was not sure what I was seeing but then Lestrade unfastened the box which opened like a concertina and I realised that it was in fact a camera and that its lens, at the end of a sliding tube, was pressed against the other side of the window that we had just seen.
    ‘A quarter plate Le Merveilleux, manufactured by J. Lancaster and Son of Birmingham, if I am not mistaken,’ Holmes remarked.
    ‘Is this part of their depravity?’ Lestrade demanded. ‘That they had to keep a record of what took place?’
    ‘I think not,’ Holmes replied. ‘But I now understand why my brother, Mycroft, was given such a hostile reception when he began his enquiries and why he was unable to come to my aid. You say you have Fitzsimmons downstairs?’
    ‘And his wife.’
    ‘Then I think it is time we had our reckoning.’
    The fire was still burning in the drawing room and the room was warm and close. The Reverend Charles Fitzsimmons was sitting on the sofa with his wife and I was glad to see that he had exchanged his clerical garb for a black tie and dinner jacket. I do not think I could have borne any more of his pretence that he was part of the church. Mrs Fitzsimmons sat rigid and withdrawn and refused to meet our eyes. She did not utter a word throughout the interview that followed. Holmes sat down. I stood with my back to the fire. Lestrade remained by the door.
    ‘Mr Holmes!’ Fitzsimmons sounded pleasantly surprised to see him. ‘I suppose I must congratulate you, sir. You certainly have proven yourself to be every bit as formidable as I was led to believe. You managed to escape from the first trap that we set you. Your disappearance from Holloway was extraordinary. And as neither Henderson nor Bratby have returned to this establishment, I will assume that you got the better of them at Jackdaw Lane and they are both under arrest?’
    ‘They are dead,’ Holmes said.
    ‘They would have ended up being hanged anyway, so I suppose it makes no great difference.’
    ‘Are you prepared to answer my questions?’
    ‘Of course. I see absolutely no reason why not. I am not ashamed of what we have been doing here at Chorley Grange. Some of the policemen have treated us very roughly and …’ Here he called out to Lestrade at the door. ‘… I can assure you I will be making an official complaint. But the truth is that we have only been providing what certain men have been requesting for centuries. I am sure you have studied the ancient civilisations of the Greeks, the Romans and the Persians? The cult of Ganymede was an honourable one, sir. Are you repulsed by the work of Michelangelo or even by the sonnets of William Shakespeare? Well, I’m sure you have no wish to discuss the semantics of the matter. You have the upper hand, Mr Holmes. What do you wish to know?’
    ‘Was the House of Silk your idea?’
    ‘It