An aged, retired Sherlock Holmes deals with dementia, as he tries to remember his final case, and a mysterious woman, whose memory haunts him. He also befriends a fan, the young son of his housekeeper, who wants him to work again.

The story is set in 1947, following a long-retired Holmes living in a Sussex village with his housekeeper and her young son. But then he finds himself haunted by a thirty-year old case. Holmes memory isn't what it used to be, so he only remembers fragments of the case: a confrontation with an angry husband, and a secret bond with his beautiful, but unstable wife.

At the end of his life, Holmes finally learns the primacy of love in solving three mysteries involving his last case, his bonds with a young boy and his mother, and a stranger whose life he affected years earlier in a thoughtless recommendation he finally reconciles.—jackiestjoan

In 1947, the long-retired Sherlock Holmes, aged ninety-three, lives in a remote Sussex farmhouse with his widowed housekeeper Mrs. Munro and her young son Roger. Having just returned from a trip to Hiroshima, Holmes starts to use jelly made from the prickly ash plant he acquired there to try to improve his failing memory. Unhappy about Watson's fictionalization of his last case, The Adventure of the Dove Grey Glove, he hopes to write his own account, but has trouble recalling the events. As Holmes spends time with Roger, showing him how to take care of the bees in the farmhouse's apiary, he comes to appreciate Roger's curiosity and intelligence and develops a paternal liking for him.