The Final Confession of Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes kept street children to watch London for him. This is the story of the one he never noticed. They call him Matchstick. He sells used matches, sleeps behind a chimney stack two buildings from Baker Street, and follows Holmes everywhere. When flower girls and pickpockets start to vanish and nobody looks for them, he keeps the count in chalk on the bricks. It gets him thrown out of the Irregulars and offered a place by Moriarty’s man, and it takes him to the Reichenbach Falls, where he is the only witness to what Holmes really did. A lifetime later his confession arrives in a parcel on the desk of a London journalist named Hadley, with a burned match and a sealed envelope that concerns her own family. A novella, about 8,800 words: a prologue, nineteen short chapters and an epilogue. The Prologue and Chapter One are free to read.

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