Spring 1887. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson find a cuckoo in their comfortable nest at 221B Baker Street when, after a chance encounter in Hyde Park, twelve-year-old Winston Spencer-Churchill is dumped on them by his far from doting mother, Lady Randolph. Winston blossoms under the affectionate, if occasionally jealous care of Watson. His developing detective skills and connections in Society are combined with a capacity for creating mayhem. Add in pack of Indians from Buffalo Bill's Wild West show and a homicidal pork butcher with an axe, and as Holmes says of this first in a series of adventures "I dare say these experiences have done him a power of good. He will be much better prepared for daily life at his public school".