It is 1894 & Sherlock Holmes is called to a Covent Garden art gallery where dozens of patrons lie dead before a painting of the Undying Man Holmes & Watson are soon on the trail of a mysterious figure in black whose astounding speed & agility make capture impossible The same suspect is then implicated in another murder when the servant of a visiting Russian grand duke is found terribly mutilated in a notorious slum But what links the two crimes & do they have anything to do with the suicide of an unpopular schoolteacher at a remote boarding school? So begins a case that will reveal the dark shadows that past misdeeds can cast & test the companions to their limits