The Autobiography of Sherlock Holmes by Sherlock Holmes, Don Libey Page B

the Count of Foix. It was a tradition of the Andorran nobility to marry with the French nobility, thus maintaining the long Catalan and French stability and control.
    During dinner, the Bishop of Urgell gave Cardinal Tosca an ornate casket containing a relic of Saint Meritxell, five bones of her right foot, the foot that when set upon a trailside rock of the Les Bons Valley between the villages of Encamp and Meritxell caused the snow to melt instantly across the entire valley and rose bushes to simultaneously burst into bloom, one of her several miracles of seven-hundred years earlier. The casket and its sacred bones were a gift to be conveyed by Cardinal Tosca to the Pope in Rome from whom Urgell hoped to obtain favour and receive the Papal imprimatur for Andorran cigars which was held, at that time, by Havana. The sizable appetite for premium cigars within the Vatican would measurably improve the lives of all Andorrans and earn Urgell a modest but permanent commission for his intercession with the Holy See.
    The next morning before breakfast, Cardinal Tosca, who was a guest of the Bishop of Urgell at the Andorran palace, rushed to the Bishop’s chapel where he was in early morning prayer. The Cardinal related the startling news that, overnight, the saint’s foot has disappeared from the casket. Upon retiring the previous evening, Tosca has carried the casket with him to his suite and had opened it and looked upon the revered foot before locking it into a chest in his room. Upon awakening, he found a wild red rose upon the chest. Immediately, he unlocked the wood chest, withdrew the casket, opened it, and found that the sacred foot of Saint Meritxell had disappeared.
    The Bishop of Urgell, horrified by the loss and alternately hopeful that another miracle had occurred, launched a full investigation but to no avail. Cardinal Tosca returned to Rome, empty-handed but with suspicion regarding Epare Fernét, Count of Foix, whom the Cardinal believed to be an enemy of the church. After several weeks, an envoy of the Pope, a simple Irish priest, was sent to London to request that I quietly look into the disappearance of the sacred relic. Apparently, the loss of the sainted foot was either too great or its potential use after recovery even greater for even the Pope to ignore.
    Over the next fortnight, stemming from information provided me by my Irish priest envoy from Rome, my investigations extended to the official and unofficial church accounts of missing Catholic relics in other European countries. In none of these instances was any connection to the Count of Foix found, nor was there any connection with Cardinal Tosca, the Bishop of Urgell, the Viscount of Castellbo, or his daughter. The foot of Saint Meritxell was but one of fifteen holy relics to be missing in the last two years. Not only was the Pope’s concern justified, but he suspected that an organized plot was afoot to steal the most sacred and revered relics of the church.
    I visited Paris the following week and called upon the Count of Foix and his wife. While loyal to the church, they suggested that I look into rumoured recent losses in the accounts of the Vatican treasury, headed by Cardinal Tosca, information that had surfaced from bankers involved with the Count’s family holdings. They both suggested that the Cardinal was not to be trusted and that he had begun to discredit the Count and Countess at the highest levels of the Holy See in order to discredit their speaking out against him.
    The Irish priest, having direct access to the Pope, secretly began an examination of the church treasury where he discovered fourteen incidents of unexplained shortages that were subsequently covered with unexplained deposits. The Papal diary which has entries of all the movements of all Cardinals and envoys showed me that, during the week of each shortage being recorded in the accounts, Cardinal Tosca was within a half-day’s travel to the location of a sacred relic when it