The Adventure of Black Peter - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story (The Return of Sherlock Holmes, #6)

How about this for an opening?

Dr. Watson narrates: "I have never known my friend to be in better form, both mental and physical, than in the year '95. His increasing fame had brought with it an immense practice, and I should be guilty of an indiscretion if I were even to hint at the identity of some of the illustrious clients who crossed our humble threshold in Baker Street. Holmes, however, like all great artists, lived for his art's sake, and, save in the case of the Duke of Holdernesse, I have seldom known him claim any large reward for his inestimable services. So unworldly was he-or so capricious-that he frequently refused his help to the powerful and wealthy where the problem made no appeal to his sympathies, while he would devote weeks of most intense application to the affairs of some humble client whose case presented those strange and dramatic qualities which appealed to his imagination and challenged his ingenuity."

And then Watson comes to the "very obscure circumstances which surrounded the death of Captain Peter Carey" - a man who abused and terrified his wife and family, and a man well deserving of the nickname, 'Black Peter.'