In 1868, teenaged Sherlock Holmes faces danger in a train station for the dead, a museum of curiousities, and downtown Moscow as he helps his brother, Mycroft, who has been framed for murder.

As the widowed master of an elegant house in Victorian-era London slips slowly into madness and his tyrannical housekeeper takes on more power, a ghostly presence distracts a teenaged maidservant with clues to a deadly secret.

Describes daily life in the countryside of England during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), from the poor, to the middle classes, to the upper classes.