The Lady Of Calcutta

[nemesis]

Mr S Holmes
221B Baker Street
London
NW1 6XE

23rd February 1882

Dear Mr Holmes

I'm afraid you don't know me so I hope you will forgive my impertinence in writing to you and further in introducing myself.

I am a friend of Lady White whom you assisted some years ago. Well, what to say about myself. I am married to Baronet FitzHerbert and we have two sons and a daughter. It is our eldest, Edmund, about whom I write.

Edmund is a quiet gentleman of medium height and slight build. He has light fair hair and pale grey eyes. He has been missing since Thursday last. Edmund was in our London townhouse at 4 Adam Street, The Strand. He had gone down to London to meet friends from his Cambridge days.

He wrote to us on the Wednsday to say that the meeting had gone fabulously and a botanical expedition to the East was to be funded by Lord Westgate and that there was terrific excitement amongst the three Cambridge botanists. He went on to say the others had departed and he was to come back to Dorset shortly.

Now this is where it gets strange. An Arab man came to the servant's entrance of our London house at 11PM on the Wednsday saying that he would see their master. The butler, Tamworth, bade him wait a while in the pantry and have a mug of cocoa while he enquired within. To cut the story short the Arab man, by garb a sailer, stayed some hour or so in the study with my son before departing. The servants thought this passing strange and, some point in the early hours of the morning a side door, locked before bed by the butler, was found open and my son was gone.

The only clue is a piece of yellowing card lying in the centre of Edmund's cotherwise clear desk. It merely says "The Lady of Calcutta". Please Mr Holmes, find my son, I fear he is mixed up in the strange politics and fraternities he was upon the fringe of during his Cambridge days. My Edmund was always the quiet hesitant sort and I fear in his quest for acceptance amongst his peer group he was drawn into the fringe of things he never understood.

Mr Holmes I entreat you, I worry for my son, please assist me.

Yours in true hope and fidelity.

Lady Amelia Laureline FitzHerbert

Parnham Court
Beaminster
Dorset