The dead man lay upon his back, clad only in a pink dressing gown. Lying across his chest was a most curious weapon: a shot-gun with the barrel sawn Offa foot in front of the triggers.

A ciphered message that Holmes had read as easily as the apocrypha of an agony column had warned — too late—that the life of John Douglas was in danger. Now Holmes and Dr Watson had a double mystery to unravel.

For the message had betrayed the hand of Sherlock Holmes's most formidable enemy. What role had the infamous Professor Moriarty played in the tragic happenings at Birlstone Manor?

The solution to this particular riddle lay far from the disturbed calm of an English country house or the chaos of Holmes's cramped lodgings at 221B Baker Street. The answer lay in the past —in a place that Douglas had known as The Valley of Fear .