EXCERPT:  The countryside had taken on a rather ghastly beauty.  The litmus sky, stained by the sun, was fading from pink to purple.  The brooding pines, huddled like mourners at a grave, foreshortened my stature to that of a child.  "Turn your cloaks," they whispered, "for fairy folk are in old oaks."  I felt foolish as I lifted my bag and struggled up the path, an aging boy stumping his toes on tree roots in the dark.  

My first clear view of the house filled me with a fearful glee.  It was more than I had hoped.  Here I had an edifice worthy of Dickens or Poe.  In the half-light, Billingsgate was a gingerbread monstrosity.  The green tiled roof, gables and spires looked down, aghast, at the mist of twilight lapping at their feet, their respectability routed by neglect, their ornamental woodwork embraced by vegetation at once delicate and decayed.  Along the drive were traces of Marplot's own design: malevolent, subhuman faces, monkeys and mythical beasts of stone, white and startlingly alive against the lichened walls.

Then I thought of my old friend, retired in comfort at the Sussex Downs.  If I should survive the night at Billingsgate, I would carry  details to the shuttered practice of Sherlock Holmes.