It has often been my experience, in the long and varied chronicle of my association with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, that a case will present itself at Baker Street with the lightest of knocks, yet prove to conceal the darkest of motives. Such was certainly true of the curious case of the Tontine. The very word, I confess, was unfamiliar to me until that strange autumn morning when our visitor from Gray’s Inn first crossed the threshold. It was in late August, in the year 1897, that I found myself once more in residence with my old friend at 221B Baker Street. My practice in Kensington was, at that time, passing through one of those seasonal lulls not unknown to the medical profession with many of my patients still abroad. My remaining cases were taken up by my locum. Holmes who had lately concluded his masterly exposure of the Wainwright forgeries, had suggested that I spend a fortnight with him. The weather was of that peculiarly cheerless variety which our capital reserves for the first hints of autumn: the streets wet underfoot from a steady drizzle, the air thick with coal smoke and damp. Holmes was in his armchair, long legs extended, fingertips pressed together, eyes half closed in a fashion which to the uninitiated might suggest repose, but which I had long recognised as the posture of concentrated thought. The morning papers lay scattered on the rug, the Times, Daily Telegraph, and the previous evening’s Pall Mall Gazette all bearing the mark of his characteristic annotations and marginalia in that neat, small script of his, in which he would correct a journalist’s misapprehension or underline a date for future reference. I had taken my place opposite him with a copy of the British Medical Journal, when Mrs. Hudson entered with a card. Holmes glanced at it, raised one eyebrow, and handed it to me. Mr. Lionel Fairbrother Fairbrother, Keene & Markham, Solicitors Gray’s Inn, W.C. “A legal mind,” remarked Holmes. “And, unless I am mistaken, a man of middle age, careful habits, and a strong sense of his own rectitude. Pray admit him, Mrs. Hudson.” “You deduced all that from the card?” I asked. “The card tells me the name and the profession; the condition of the card, the precision of the script, and the very choice of typeface tell me the rest,” Holmes replied, but before I could press him further our visitor had entered. Mr. Lionel Fairbrother was a spare, neat man of perhaps fifty years old, dressed in a sober morning coat and carrying a rolled umbrella which he appeared reluctant to relinquish. His thin features wore an expression of mingled concern and professional propriety. Having bowed to us both, he seated himself on the edge of the chair Holmes indicated. “You will excuse this intrusion, Mr. Holmes,” he began in a precise, rather dry voice, “but my business is of an urgency and delicacy which admits no delay.” “Please proceed, Mr Fairbrother,” said Holmes. “You will find Dr. Watson here an entirely discreet and trustworthy listener.” The solicitor inclined his head in my direction. “The matter,” he said, “concerns a peculiar financial arrangement made some thirty seven years ago by eight gentlemen, all of them at that time undergraduates at Merton College, Oxford. The arrangement was that, you will forgive the technical term tontine.” I confess I looked at him blankly, and Holmes’s lip curved in the faintest of smiles. “You are unacquainted with the term, Watson? A tontine is a kind of investment scheme, devised by an Italian banker of the seventeenth century. Each member contributes an equal sum to a common fund, the interest of which is paid out to the survivors as their number diminishes, until the last survivor receives the entire capital.” “Precisely so,” said Fairbrother. “In this instance, the eight students each contributed one thousand pounds; a considerable sum in 1860, as you will agree. The money was invested by the father of one of their number, Sir James Poynter, and has been carefully administered ever since. The interest amounting now to several hundred pounds a year has been divided among the surviving participants. When the last of them dies, the capital passes to his heirs.” Holmes steepled his fingers. “And the current state of the tontine?” “Four of the original members remain alive,” Fairbrother replied. “Sir Reginald Poynter, baronet; Major Henry Blackwood, late of the Indian Army; Mr. Frederick Allardice, a wine merchant of St James’s; and Mr Cecil Harrowgate, a bachelor residing in Bayswater; Of the others, two brave Officers, Harris and Mason, died together fighting in the Battle of Isandlwana, But…” He hesitated, and his careful façade seemed to tremble for a moment. “…It is the manner of the last two deaths which has brought me here.” He paused, firstly looking at me and then Holmes. Holmes leaned forward. “Pray, continue your most interesting narrative..” “Eighteen months ago, Mr. Oliver Denstone, the fifth survivor, was drowned and washed ashore while yachting just off the coast of Cornwall. He was an excellent sailor, Mr. Holmes, and the sea was calm that day. The inquest returned a verdict of accidental death, though there were whispers in Penzance to the contrary. Then, barely six months later, Mr. Charles Winthrop was found dead in his library at his home in Kent, with a gunshot wound to the chest. His manservant testified that Mr. Winthrop had been cleaning his revolver when it discharged. Once again, the coroner returned a verdict of accidental death.”