Death on a Pale Horse

12





Our return to England was delayed by an inquiry at Ostend into the loss of the Comtesse de Flandre, held on the instructions of the Belgian government. Holmes and I found ourselves back at the Hotel de la Plage.

At the risk of seeming chauvinistic, such an inquiry would never have passed muster in London. It opened on Tuesday, four days after the collision, and following a single day of evidence it closed on Thursday. Its guiding principle seemed to be that the less said, the better. Sherlock Holmes always maintained that the authorities had a very good idea of the nature of the drama that had taken place, but were determined the world should never know it. This tribunal announced that the “valet” Theodore Cabell had died of exposure. The poor young man’s funeral was over and done with even before the inquiry began. A final search of the ship was undertaken before the last lifeboat pulled away. It revealed the body of an unidentified man in the overcoat of an army officer, “horribly mutilated” but of whom no more was heard.

How had the collision happened? The captain of the Princesse Henriette swore that a trawler, moving at speed aslant the sea lane, had cut across his bow in darkness and fog without sounding its horn or displaying a light. It had forced him into the path of the Comtesse de Flandre. Another witness believed the guilty vessel was a French customs launch heading for Dunkirk. As for the moment of the collision, the two steamers had hit one another at a combined speed of some ten knots. The distance at which they saw each other was determined to be no more than sixty yards, according to the ships’ officers. The time between sighting and impact was put at little more than ten or twelve seconds, giving no hope of avoiding disaster. The mischief with the port riding-light of the Comtesse de Flandre was known only to Holmes and me. Because no port riding-light was showing, the larger ship had been directed into the hull of the smaller one rather than down its far side, which might have carried it clear.

Two pieces of evidence embarrassed the inquiry and were quickly dealt with. An innocent witness had seen a fishing smack pick up three men and their baggage from the stricken wreck. It did not transfer them to the Princesse Henriette but sailed away. The witness was not invited to enlarge upon this.

A further witness attributed his survival to a large parcel-post basket, which was floating in the water by the Comtesse de Flandre’s paddle-box. It bore him up until he could be pulled to safety in one of the lifeboats. But a postal basket from the mailroom could not be floating in the water unless the steel grille of that mailroom had been unlocked by the fleeing guards and left open.

No one, it seemed, had noticed the stoker who was not a stoker. However, Captain Legrand of the Comtesse de Flandre gave evidence that the helmsman at the wheel before the collision was not a regular member of the crew. The usual helmsman had asked a friend to go in his place as it was the regular helmsman’s night out. Captain Legrand agreed to the substitution. The newcomer, said to be an experienced seaman, took his turn at the wheel from time to time during the crossing. He was thought to be one of those crew members missing after the collision and it was proposed to hold an inquest on him, albeit without a body.

The inquiry was concluded, though not without mumblings as to questions left unasked. Its commissioners replied that it had made a very exhaustive investigation of the circumstances under which the disaster took place. The commission promised that the results would be put into the form of a judicial report and forwarded to the state maritime authorities in Brussels.

At the first opportunity, Holmes and I took our leave of this charade and made our crossing to Dover. As we passed the Ruytingen light-ship, graced by a faint sun through morning mist, a small fleet of fishing smacks was still gathering items of baggage and wreckage that floated in the calm water. We heard that the second lifeboat from the Comtesse de Flandre had been sighted, but it was a floating wreck and had never been used.

Our arrival in London was something less than a Roman triumph. Sir Mycroft Holmes gave us a wide berth.

“Until we are of use to him again,” said Sherlock Holmes laconically.

It was Inspector Lestrade who made us welcome, to the extent that he called upon us soon afterwards. He was persuaded by my friend that stolen property might be found in the apartments of Colonel Rawdon Moran, whose unaccountable disappearance from the London demi-monde had begun to be noticed.

“Conduit Street, I believe,” said Lestrade, anxious not to be outdone.

Holmes drew the pipe from his lips. “Regent’s Circus,” he said coolly, “private rooms behind the Bagatelle Club. A gentleman of his stamp generally boasts more than one address.”

Small wonder that he did! Late on the following evening, a four-wheeled growler set us down at the colonnades of Regent’s Circus, in company with Lestrade and two other Scotland Yard officers, Sergeant Tregaron and Constable Blount, in regulation tweeds. These plain-clothes men pushed ahead through the crowd of loungers of both sexes who occupy the arcades after dark. A bright gasolier burnt in the fanlight above the door of the house ahead of us—the so-called Bagatelle Club. Our two officers stood back and waited for the clatter of the chain to allow an exit to several flashily dressed men, sporting a profusion of cheap “Birmingham” jewellery. Then the plain-clothes men pushed past the keeper of the door, allowing him no time to raise the alarm, and led us up the stairs to the brightness and babble of the floor above.

The houses in the four quadrants of Regent Circus are habitually home to the Seven Deadly Sins with all their friends and relations. This one boasted a gaming “hell” in which smartly dressed “bonnets” were employed by the management to entice the hopeful punters into play by their own apparent good fortune. The long room was brilliantly lit. To one side stood a buffet covered with wines and liquors. In the middle was the rouge et noir table. On each side sat a croupier, with a rake in his hand and a green shade over his eyes. Before him was an ornamental tin box containing the bank, with piles of counters or markers on either side.

As to Colonel Moran’s apartment, the presiding genius of this casino could not have been more grateful—and helpful—on being told by Lestrade that the present interest of the police was not in the gaming parlour. A door which separated the apartments from the noise of the gamblers was sufficiently padded to impose a complete silence. The master of the premises almost fell over himself, as the saying is, to unlock Colonel Moran’s rooms with his pass-key and put up the gas inside.

The large and rather vulgarly furnished drawing-room was just what I would have expected of Rawdon Moran. Windows and alcoves were draped with red velvet curtains, their lengths drawn back in heavy swags by gold-tasselled cord. Crystal pendants hung at every light. Each alcove contained a painting or statuette. One canvas typified them all. It was Giacomo Grosso’s Last Reunion, which had created a small stir when exhibited at the Venice Biennale. An elderly man lay on his deathbed at the point of expiring, phantoms of his five mistresses from varying periods of his life standing naked round him. The focus of the collection, with the main window behind it, was a marble of Diana on a pedestal, a young female savage exhausted by the hunt, resting on a palm trunk whose upper branches shed mirrored light to illuminate her unclothed charms.

Holmes ignored these questionable treasures. A good deal of the room’s ornamentation was oriental. A six-foot-tall four-square Chinese wedding chest drew his attention, its large bronze medallion surrounded by a bridal frieze of princes, princesses, temples, and bridges. It was not an item to which a man would entrust his fortune and was not difficult to unlock. No doubt, however, it had been well guarded by loyal subordinates in Moran’s absence.

My friend rummaged busily, and then I heard an exclamation of satisfaction. At first I could not see what he had found. To judge from his posture, it was something large and long. There was a sound of metal. He turned and presented to me a white pith helmet marked by the gold insignia of a British field officer. Then Lestrade and his two men stood by in silence as Holmes lifted out something else and held it in both hands for me to see. He had drawn it from its immaculate scabbard, but I stared speechless at the gold guard of the sabre and the long polished blade.

“The sword of the Prince Imperial!”

He shook his head. “More than that, Watson. Also the sword which was worn by his great-uncle, the most renowned soldier of all time, Napoleon Bonaparte, at the glorious victory of Austerlitz on 2 December 1805!”

There was only one other thing to be done, and we were obliged to do it under the patronage of Mycroft Holmes. So far, Prince Napoleon-Jerome had shown no wish to see us again, either to congratulate or reproach us. Now the case had changed. We were summoned to the principal reception room at Lancaster Gate, its windows looking out across the Bayswater Road to the trees and shrubs of Kensington Gardens with their first greening of spring. When the interview was almost over, Plon Plon, in his own ceremonial uniform, inquired, “There is possibly some small token you would accept, Mr. Holmes, on your own behalf and that of your colleague?”

Sherlock Holmes’s dislike of such flummery had no doubt been reported to him, and the prince had no intention of being rebuffed over a tiepin or a pair of cuff-links.

“Yes!” said Holmes firmly. Plon Plon looked as surprised as I felt.

“Something that is small?”

“I should like an assurance that the story of the sword and the helmet found by the Blood River shall remain a confidence between us. Is that small?”

Plon Plon almost smiled with pleasure, for he was no great admirer of his late rival, the Prince Imperial.

“But of course. That is the only small thing?”

“No. Five thousand pounds. It is a small amount for a prince to give.”

“You wish me to give you five thousand pounds?”

“Certainly not! I wish it to be paid into a bank account in Johannesburg, to the credit of Miss Seraphina Heyden, lately released under a free pardon from Praetoria State Prison, having been declared innocent of the murder of Andreis Reuter. It is to go to her and to her child.”

I had the impression that Plon Plon cared less about the money than the thought of paying it to a jailbird.

“And that is all?”

“No, sir.”

Mycroft Holmes, who had arrayed himself for the occasion as Knight Commander of the British Empire, complete with sword and sash, tried to glare his sibling into silence.

“What then?”

“I should like a cheque for one thousand pounds to be paid to the Army Temperance Society for the service they have rendered you. Your property was conveyed safely to you by being packed in four boxes bearing their name and the address of the Military Chaplaincy at Aldershot Garrison.”

Had the prince any idea that the contents of his war-chest had been conveyed to this society while his own royal coffer contained only evangelical tracts? I think perhaps not. Beyond doubt, however, he was relieved to have come to the end of Sherlock Holmes’s demands.

Alas for Plon Plon’s imperial ambitions, they are public knowledge. General Georges Boulanger’s time as a political maverick and champion of the house of Bonaparte was passing. The fickle electorate of republican France drifted away from their allegiance. Boulanger might well have clung on until the tide of opinion changed once more. But his beloved mistress, Marguerite, Comtesse de Bonnemains, fell mortally ill with consumption. Politics and power meant nothing to him then. A few weeks after her death, the general drew up his final testament and shot himself beside her grave in Brussels. In the same year, the ageing Plon Plon also died, and with him the hopes of imperial France.

It was an awkward time in the partnership I had formed with Sherlock Holmes. I had undertaken to consider the purchase of old Mr. Farquhar’s medical practice in Paddington. From time to time, I spent a week or two there as his locum. If I followed this up by purchasing a practice, my work as a physician would surely take up the greater part of my time. Of course I assured Sherlock Holmes that Paddington is hardly more than ten minutes’ walk from Baker Street. I could not promise that I should always be available. As it was, I was merely committed to a further stint of a few weeks as Mr. Farquhar’s locum tenens. Yet I was uneasy. Idle hands may do the devil’s work. I thought of Sherlock Holmes without an investigation to absorb him after the adventure we had just been through—and that infernal cocaine syringe in its morocco case.

How often had I heard those words? “My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems! Give me work! Give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis and I am in my own proper atmosphere.” The alternative I knew only too well. The jacket removed and the shirt-sleeve unbuttoned. The sinewy forearm and wrist dotted with the puncture-marks of the needle.

Such were my thoughts as I made a pretence of reading The Times while drinking my coffee. I had noticed that there was a letter for him this morning, and now he was reading it. He looked up from reading it and chuckled.

“What a small world we live in, Watson!”

Without another word, he handed me a cutting from the Journal for Psychical Research, volume six, pages 116-117. It reprinted a letter forwarded to the editor:

British Institute, 26 Rue de Vienne, Brussels

In the morning of 29 March, after being wakened at the usual hour, I went to sleep again and dreamt the following.

I was staying with a friend by the seaside. The house overlooked the sea. It was a bright clear day. I was close to the wall watching two vessels on the sea. Neither vessel as they neared each other seemed to make room for the other. To my horror, one dashed into the other, cutting her in half. I saw the boiler of the injured vessel burst, throwing up fragments and thick black smoke. I saw passengers hurled into the water, making frantic attempts to save themselves. I noticed hats and other things floating on the water. Suddenly two bodies were washed up at my feet. I woke and it was exactly 8.30 a.m. I could not shake off the feeling of horror I experienced. The same afternoon, news came from Ostend of a terrible catastrophe in the Channel, the Princess Henriette and the Comtesse de Flandre had come into collision that same morning. One had cut the other in half just as I had seen it in my dream. I knew no one on board—but the lady with whom I was staying in my dream had three relatives on board. One was drowned and the other two saved.

Isabella Young.

There was a note enclosed with this.

I beg to confirm that Miss I. G. Young related her dream to me about the collision before we had heard anything of it. The news came that afternoon.

Meliora G. Jenkins, Superintendent,

British Institute, Brussels.

I looked at Sherlock Holmes, uncertain whether or not the whole thing was a joke to him. He beamed at me.

“We have a client! Such a client! Here is a matter far more to my taste than any criminal brotherhood or the baubles of Plon Plon. Here is a challenge to the ingenuity of the scientific mind! I shall write back after breakfast, offering this most intriguing mystery my immediate attention and soliciting the favour of an interview.”

Truth is stranger than any fiction. So the spectre of the narcotic syringe faded. The earth turned on its axis once more. With any luck, there was more than enough intrigue in this case to occupy him until my return from a month as locum tenens in Paddington.