Chapter 1: An Official Visitor

My clients are sometimes reticent about their identity during our initial consultations. This is hardly surprising. The need for assistance in present or planned marital relationships is not a conversational topic that comes easily to many men. As a result, during my years in business, I have developed a small skill in being able to read the likely trade of my clients from the moment of their arrival at my consulting rooms. (My readers should understand that it is not only the one-time occupant of 221B Baker Street that has developed such skills. I will admit, however, that the accounts of his experiences, provided by the good Doctor Watson, did furnish me with the inspiration to explore his methods.) The posture, the clothes, the turn of phrase; these all conspire to betray a man's nature and his chosen path in life. It is a skill that has smoothed many discussions. The merchant, the entrepreneurial engineer, the ambitious politician; I have recognised all of these as they have crossed my threshold and I have been able to ease the discussions with my eventual clients as a result.

My most recent caller, though, was something of a puzzle. He had made his appointment – according to my maid with whom he had left his card – with a clipped military precision that had led me to expect a member of the Marines, perhaps, but while she had said that his manner was efficient, he had been vague in the extreme when it came to the matters that he wished to discuss, saying only that his project would be of great interest to me.

I was engaged in recording the details of the trials that had been needed to bring the Tusker sisters to the behaviours required of them. I record my observations of my pupils as their learning progresses but collate and analyse the results of my observations once they have completed their studies. It helps me to develop my methods for, while the human psyche is no doubt constant, my own understanding of it is constantly evolving.

The sound of a steam cab in the road outside, a knock on the door and the sound of my maid scurrying to answer it, forced me to put my work aside. I found myself in two minds over his arrival; intrigued as to the nature of his business and more than a little resentful at the fact that he had felt it necessary to be so oblique in our earlier discussion.

My caller's arrival presented me with additional puzzles. He appeared initially to be a man more of intellect rather than action. In his early middle years, he was dressed soberly but in well-cut tailoring and soundly shod with sturdy English brogues. He was, I supposed, well established in whatever field he had undertaken in his professional life but certainly not of the first rank. I would have taken him for a junior bureaucrat perhaps or for some official in a hall of banking. I was discouraged. Worthy though these positions are, neither of them would allow him an income sufficient to engage my services.

I studied him closely as he removed his bowler hat and greatcoat and handed them, together with his rolled umbrella, to my housemaid. For all his pale complexion and studious looks, his stance and physique spoke of a life beyond the shadowy libraries of one of our universities or the columned halls of a banking house. He seemed calm and self-contained as he took in his surroundings. I ceased trying to guess his origins. No doubt our discussions would tell me more.

"Doctor Julian Castwich," my caller announced, "Major, RAMC, retired."