In 1893 the aristocratic Alfred Monson was charged with the murder of Cecil Hambrough, a young army officer, on the Ardlamont estate in Scotland. The case captivated popular imagination, but few realized that the two expert witnesses, Joseph Bell and Henry Littlejohn, had been solving crimes together for 20 years. This book charts their adventures – exploits which inspired Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes – and probes the mystery that would challenge even their genius for detection.