What this book needs is a fact-checking Brit-picker
My confidence in the editors of Holmes pastiche is not strengthened when I find Holmes and Watson taking 'a transom' to reach their destination, not once but several times. The author shouldn't have written that, but the editors-- to say nothing of the named betas-- should certainly have caught it.
Which goes double for Holmes' account of a peer of the Welsh marches murdered in 1687 by his wife and daughters. "...the local population didn't regard Rupert Grimsley's murder as particularly evil; the villagers impeded the Metropolitan police in the pursuit of their duties to such effect that the three murderesses got completely away." The Metropolitan police, founded in 1829 and responsible for the city of London, would not have been active on the borders of Wales in the 17th century; and Barbara Hambly, who wrote that story, ought to have known as much.
Which goes double for Holmes' account of a peer of the Welsh marches murdered in 1687 by his wife and daughters. "...the local population didn't regard Rupert Grimsley's murder as particularly evil; the villagers impeded the Metropolitan police in the pursuit of their duties to such effect that the three murderesses got completely away." The Metropolitan police, founded in 1829 and responsible for the city of London, would not have been active on the borders of Wales in the 17th century; and Barbara Hambly, who wrote that story, ought to have known as much.