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was time for a convenient retreat. Leaving me to handle the novice writer, he rejected the fire in the hearth and retired to his bedroom.
    Accompanied by a defiant Beethoven violin-sonata issuing from behind Holmes’ closed door, I unrolled the pages of foolscap, squared them up on the cherry-wood table, took a deep breath and began. I pointed first to the start of the tale and then, riffling through the pages, I pointed to the finish. “Notice,” I told the boy, “how a story reportedly about the skill and wisdom of Sherlock Holmes begins and ends with the appearance of Billy the page. While I do appreciate your full-circle intent, your ability to come back to where you started, if you feel that you yourself must play so prominent a role in the story, you might consider a first-person narrator - a fictional detective, for example, if crime writing becomes your métier .”
    â€œNo offence, Doctor Watson,” he said, “but I don’t trust first-person narrators. They’re never completely honest.”
    Rather than accepting the suggestion, I realized, he preferred the parry. “Better a forthright first-person narrator than a dissembling third,” I countered.
    Billy groaned, presumably understanding the lesson I was trying to teach. Criticising someone’s writing is never easy, for the writer always hopes for the best. When the first critical strike hits, the result often evokes an inelegant but all-revealing sigh of deflation.
    I persevered, nonetheless. “Look here,” I said, pointing to another early paragraph. “Although you never mention them by name, see how you have boldly brought into the action Mr. Balfour - the Prime Minister himself - not to mention the Home Secretary, Mr. Akas-Douglas. Since I assume that Holmes would have informed me of any actual visit to Baker Street by such august personages, I can only infer that you have inserted them into your account as a way of giving it greater importance.”
    â€Agreed,” Billy said, “But sometimes reality needs help. You must know what I mean. Who could be fooled by that set-up of yours in ‘The Red Headed League,’ all those ginger-haired chaps engaged to trick just one?”
    â€œIt fooled Jabez Wilson,” I replied, annoyed by his impertinence but inwardly pleased that he was so familiar with my stories. “After all, fooling Jabez Wilson was what happened in reality.”
    â€œMaybe so, but - ”
    â€œYour manuscript reads like a play,” I said, cutting him off before he could digress from his own work even further. “To be sure, the action did occur in only one location - here - but you could have opened up the setting to include so much more. The single scene is too claustrophobic. There’s no exit and much-too-much dialogue unaccompanied by narrative description.”
    The crackling fire might easily have been heating up his ire as well as the room.
    â€œBut it bloody well did happen here!” he cried. “There’s not much else to describe. It’s all too simple; you yourself said to dress up the ruddy action.”
    Ignoring his crudities, I arched the fingers of my right hand on the foolscap. “Of course, you must engage your reader, my dear boy. But not at the expense of truth. Truth!” I waved my arms at the four walls around us as I spoke the holy word. “Truth! Where is the waiting room that you described in your story? And how did a door so magically appear beside the window alcove when in reality there is none?”
    â€œI needed a way of getting Holmes and his effigy in and out of the bow,” he proclaimed, holding his head high.
    â€œBut in actuality there was no effigy.”
    â€œThere was in your bloody story, ‘The Empty House.’”
    I winced at his language, but he stood his ground. No apologies here, I noted as he ran his fingers through his sleek black hair.
    â€œYes, Billy,” I