Death on a Pale Horse

6





Next afternoon, we played host to our clerical correspondent. Long before Mr. Dordona’s arrival, Sherlock Holmes had made good use of Palmer’s Index to the Times and annual volumes of the Army List. These held details of Captain Carey’s career and death. The manner of that death might seem tragic, but nothing so far suggested that it was sinister.

Thanks to Holmes’s archives, we compiled a fuller account of Brenton Carey’s last days. Long after the battle at Maiwand, the Amir of Afghanistan continued to play us false. More British regiments were brought up to the North-West Frontier towns of the Punjab. According to the Army and Navy Gazette, the 98th Foot had been ordered to the forward reserves. Its troops began to move camp from Hyderabad to Quetta, the first stage of a journey to the Frontier and the Khyber Pass.

Brenton Carey and a junior captain had been left in Hyderabad to supervise two fatigue details in dismantling an encampment of bell tents. It was a laborious but commonplace duty. As I knew from my own experience, a bell tent usually provides sleeping quarters for one officer or for two or three other ranks. Officers’ tents have a flooring which consists of two wooden semi-circles jointed together.

The London press had been full of the military inquest on Brenton Carey, held at Hyderabad Camp in the week following his death. According to the evidence, the jointed wooden flooring of one of the tents had collapsed as the fatigue party was hauling it aboard a waiting wagon. It had not been adequately secured beforehand. It was also said that one of the two men lifting it had stumbled on slippery ground. A pair of dray horses was standing between the shafts.

From that point, there was some confusion in the evidence. The two horses were startled by the crash and by the sudden vibration as the wooden semi-circles fell against the wagon. They backed and kicked out in brute panic. No one saw precisely what followed because Captain Carey was standing alone on the far side of the vehicle. Somehow, he was caught up in this sudden movement of the beasts and the jolting of the vehicle. He lost his footing and was trampled before he could roll clear. Having some acquaintance with Army transport in Afghanistan, I could see all too easily how such a tragedy might occur.

It is a terrible fate to go under horses’ hooves. A cavalry mount is trained so that it will not trample a fallen rider, but these were beasts of burden. Worst of all, from the medical view, Carey was dreadfully injured by blows in the abdomen from their hooves. Unlike a broken arm or leg, abdominal or intestinal injuries are exceedingly difficult to treat. As a rule, one can only hope the intestine is not ruptured and will repair itself.

According to the inquest reports, Captain Carey lay senseless from the blows. He regained consciousness after a stretcher-party had carried him back to his bungalow in the camp lines. There was never any great hope for him. Following alternate periods of lucidity and semi-consciousness, he died late on the following day. His wife, Annie, and the regimental surgeon were by his side much of the time. For all his adventures and notoriety, the poor fellow was still only thirty-six years old.

It had been a cruel accident. Yet, through carelessness or bad luck, such things happen all too often in these fatigue duties. Indeed, any mishap in handling a team of wagon horses is an invitation to injury. But I still could not see why the Army and Navy Gazette should think this accident was mysterious. Its causes seemed all too obvious: inadequate packing and the ill-chance of a man slipping on wet ground. That was as far as we had got by two o’clock on the afternoon of the 27th of March. As I was standing with Holmes at our sitting-room window, he said casually: “Tell me, Watson, would you not say that Mr. Dordona looks the very pattern of an impoverished evangelical gentleman?”

He was not looking down at the street below us, where a cab would usually pull in, but northwards to the trees of the Regent’s Park. A tall, plainly dressed man in a black coat and hat was walking briskly away from a hansom that had drawn up fifty or sixty yards distant. He looked upright but certainly impoverished. His black umbrella, which he used as a walking-stick, was not neatly rolled but untidily open. It flapped at every step. Yet he was taller and more confident than I had imagined. But I think I had expected the stage caricature of an unmarried, unkempt, unworldly clergyman, probably of a humble denomination whose superintendents could afford to pay him only a pittance.

The cabbie, who ought by now to have whipped up his horse and driven off to collect another fare, drew a clay pipe from his overcoat pocket and lodged it between his lips. He pulled a blanket over his knees in the cool March day, folded his arms, and allowed his chin to repose on the breast of his brown overcoat. He was preparing for a long and patient wait.

“If the gentleman in black is our client,” said Holmes gently, “I believe he is here on a very anxious mission. He seems in fear of some kind. He can hardly be afraid of us or he would not have come. Who, then?”

I was still watching the progress of this down-at-heel cleric.

“He gives no sign of anxiety, let alone fear.”

“You think not? His clothes mark him out as a worthy but impecunious saver of souls. Interesting, then, that he has indulged in the luxury of paying a trusted cabman to wait an hour or more until his business is done. You have known what it is to be on half-pay, Watson. Carlyle Mansions is the address our client gives us. One among many mansion blocks of apartments in the Victoria district. As you also know full well, a twopenny bus from Victoria to Camden Town passes down this street every twenty minutes or so. In our client’s situation, would you not have taken the bus and saved your money?”

“He might have come from somewhere else that required a cab.”

Holmes smiled, and I guessed that I had stepped into a trap.

“So he might, doctor. But he would surely pay off the cab and hire another when he leaves us. There is a rank five minutes away at the Regent’s Park, another outside the Metropolitan Railway station. Much cheaper, for a man with little more than the clothes he stands up in.”

“Then perhaps he does not intend a long visit.”

“No, old fellow, that will not do. His letter makes plain that he has a tale to tell. But he needs the same cab and a driver to take him home. Why? Because he does not know who the driver of the next cab may be. In his present plight, whatever that is, he wonders who may be lying in wait for him. Our man has also taken care to be set down at a distance. It gives him a better chance to detect if he is being followed. Now, who does he suppose will follow a loyal but dull minister of religion—and why?”

The bell of the street door ended this speculation. During a customary pause, Mrs. Hudson’s maid took the arrival’s dilapidated hat and coat. It was the housekeeper herself who tapped at our door.

“The Reverend Mr. Dordona, sir, to see Dr. Watson.”

This was the first visitor who had come to consult me rather than Holmes. I shook his bony hand, introduced him to my colleague, and motioned him to a chair. I needed no convincing that Samuel Dordona was all he claimed to be. The worthiness of the Evangelical Overseas Medical Mission was, as they say, written all over him.

Seen face to face, he was more than average height. A little more stooped than I had first thought, but he held himself well. His narrow, lean, perpendicular frame put me in mind of a grandfather clock case. In appearance, he bore the sallow tan of a fair skin that has passed ten years or more in the tropics. His dark, threadbare suit was brushed and neatly darned. The black hair was punctiliously plastered at the sides into two stiff, obstinate-looking curls, by the aid of a little macassar oil. Above his forehead, it formed what is called by hair-stylists a “feather” but is more apt to look like a ridge-tile. The pale face, shaved clean of whiskers, made the dark hair-line on his upper lip a distinguishing mark.

Natural caution gave his conversation a sharp and abrupt turn. Samuel Dordona did not waste his words. Once installed in an easy-chair, he did not lounge, as Sherlock Holmes was in the habit of doing. He sat forward, erect and solemn and as steady on the edge of his seat as if he had been nailed to it. There was a businesslike air. He was ready now, and impatient for conversation.

We exchanged a few preliminaries. He had been eleven years in India, for the most part near Hyderabad. He was not a medical man, but he repeated that he had enrolled at the London Mission School to study for their assistant’s medical diploma in “First Aid” during his furlough in England. As for his evangelism, his work had been among common soldiers with an enthusiastic cast of faith, and very often among the less fortunate in the Provost Marshal’s cells.

It did not surprise me that, in the relatively small English population of Hyderabad, Mr. Dordona should have encountered Captain Carey. A few minutes that morning with Crockford’s Clerical Directory informed us that the captain’s late father had been a minister of the Church of England with a taste for evangelism. The parents were determined that only a strong Old Testament name would do for their son. Young Jahleel was destined for a childhood of moral discipline and the career of a Christian soldier.

During Mr. Dordona’s account, Holmes sat with brows drawn down as if not a word must be missed. When there was a pause, he looked up.

“Very good, Mr. Dordona. But I still do not understand what you expect of my colleague Dr. Watson—or of me—that you could not get elsewhere. Why would Scotland Yard not believe a man of your openness and honesty? Do they think you have come to England to kill somebody?”

The movement of Holmes’s mouth was both humorous and scornful. I could not tell whether Holmes intended a joke in poor taste or had aimed one of those terrifyingly accurate insights by which he penetrated to the inner mind and secret thoughts of his witness. As they stared at each other, neither he nor Mr. Dordona batted an eyelid. It was a joke, surely.

Our visitor wore an uncomfortably wide white collar, so starched and shiny that it looked like gloss-painted enamel. He eased his chin forward over this rather aggressively, like a man determined not to be put off.

“Mr. Holmes, I want nothing for myself. I bear a message from the late Captain Brenton Carey to anyone who will listen. Scotland Yard would not do so; the War Office will certainly not.”

“Dr. Watson and I will, however?”

“You shall judge, sir. I was with Captain Carey when he died. On the previous Sunday, I had come from Lahore to address a prayer-meeting in the garrison chapel at Hyderabad. These were soldiers about to leave for Quetta and the battlefield. I had not yet returned to my duties in Lahore.”

Samuel Dordona paused just long enough to let Holmes understand that he would not be pushed, as they say. When he told his story, it was as if he had rehearsed it in his mind many times on the voyage home, fearful of forgetting any detail.

“Captain Carey and I had known one another for some time. I had a high regard for him. On the Tuesday afternoon, I received a note from his wife asking me to come at once to the bungalow, which they occupied in the camp. You will know from the press that his fatigue party had been striking bell tents vacated by ‘B’ Company the day before.”

“We have read the press reports of the inquest.”

“It was said in evidence that as the floor of a bell-tent was being lifted, one man in the fatigue party lost his grip because his foot slipped on the muddy ground. Did they have that detail in the gazette?”

“Not that it was muddy, I think.”

“I walked on the same ground the next evening. It was bone-dry, sir. We had had no rain for more than a month by then. There was no mud. Nothing that would cause a man to slip that evening or the previous day.”

“Rain, Mr. Dordona, is not the earth’s sole lubricant. But pray continue.”

I intervened on my client’s behalf.

“You know a good deal about soldiering in that area,” I said to Mr. Dordona. “Had you ever known such an accident happen before?”

He looked at me and shook his head. “Never before, sir. However, when working with a heavy wagon-team, the first rule, of course, is that nothing must startle them.”

“But you were not an eye-witness?” Holmes suggested. “That is to say, you were not at hand when Captain Carey fell into their path?”

“Mr. Holmes, I spoke to two men who had been witnesses. They could only tell me what you already know. By the time I arrived at the bungalow, the regimental surgeon had attended my friend. Even as a medical man, he could only give me his best conjecture. Everything depended on the damage to the intestines. He hoped and believed that there was no rupture.”

“If it is not too much trouble,” said Holmes casually, “would you please write down the surgeon’s name? Indeed, would you write down all the witnesses? I think we had better have a list of the dramatis personae.”

I was alarmed at my friend’s tone, which seemed part scepticism and part downright churlishness.

“Their names? I do not think …” Our visitor was plainly upset at this novel suggestion that he should be the one to take a copy of the evidence he was giving.

“If you please!” Holmes insisted, as if about to sigh with weariness.

“I will do it,” I said, taking out pencil and notebook and wondering what the devil my colleague was up to. “Leave Mr. Dordona to tell his story.”

Samuel Dordona followed my pencil.

“The surgeon was Major Callaghan. Mrs. Carey you already know.”

“The surgeon remained with Captain Carey?” I asked.

“At first, Major Callaghan remained, but he had other duties. Annie Carey or I watched by her husband that night. The captain slipped in and out of consciousness; but when he was awake, his words were never rambling. It was only the inquest which suggested they were—and that was wrong. Once he had woken, he had complete and lucid command of his faculties. He knew what he was saying as clearly as you and I do at this moment.”

There was a silence and then Holmes spoke, still rather coldly:

“You, sir, are the minister of an overseas medical mission. You do not yet claim, I take it, to be a medical man? Or do you?”

I flinched again at his tone. Mr. Dordona sat like stone on the edge of his chair, upright in threadbare clerical suit, hands clasped, dark eyes intently on Holmes, black hair absurdly sculpted in its ridge-tile peak.

“Sir, I have used my furlough to study for the First Aid Diploma. I hope to be of some extra use to my people when I return to India. That is all.”

“You were not called by the court of inquiry into the accident?” I asked.

Mr. Dordona glanced at each of us in turn, as if wondering whom to trust.

“That court of inquiry was held quite some time after the inquest. I was on the high seas by then, returning to England. I should not have been called anyway. I had no conclusive evidence to offer. I was not, as you say, an eye-witness. What Captain Carey said to me during that last night could not be corroborated and was perhaps best not repeated in public just then. Unfortunately, the regimental surgeon had already assured the inquest that the injured man was never more than semiconscious after the accident. In other words, rambling. That word again! I carried no credit against that, gentlemen, and so I have kept my evidence for you.”

“Tell us about the prognosis after the accident,” I asked him. “Do you think Captain Carey knew that he was going to die—or was likely to die? As a matter of law, that might make a real difference to the validity of his uncorroborated words as evidence.”

“Not at first, I think. To begin with, Major Callaghan thought he would pull through and indeed said so. He said that as long as the intestine was not ruptured, there was hope. He instructed the orderly to use hot fomentations to relieve the abdominal pain. But nothing more.”

“As I should have done,” I said approvingly.

“His wife, Annie, however, was very distressed by his condition. Poor soul, she asked if a mild dose of laudanum could be given to ease the unhappy man’s ordeal. The surgeon advised against laudanum. It would relieve the pain, he told her, but it would also mask any further symptoms.”

“That was correct again,” I said, “so long as there was still hope for him.”

“The rest of that first day, it still seemed there was no rupture. The doctor’s exact words were that it would be looking on the black side to think there was such serious damage. That night we were advised to keep applying hot fomentations and to administer sips of hot water. But poor Carey looked dreadful by this time, eyes sunk and cheeks drawn in. I believe there was what is known as the facies Hippocratica, so the inquest called it, a sure sign of the worst. I saw that for myself. Next morning, his condition had not improved. However, they administered turpentine internally.”

I shook my head. “That would do no good. It would be too late. Did his temperature sink?”

Samuel Dordona nodded. “It continued to sink after that. Of course, the diagnosis now changed. His intestine had been ruptured after all. The surgeon acknowledged that it was peritonitis, for which nothing could be done. He explained to me in confidence that in an hour or two Captain Carey would lose consciousness and by that evening he would probably be dead. So it was.”

There was a moment of silence before Holmes inquired more gently, “And in the meantime you had become his confessor?”

“I simply happened to be with him for the greater part of the night, Mr. Holmes. Poor Brenton Carey would have talked to anyone. His wife, Annie, was exhausted by then, and I persuaded her to go and get some sleep.”

How often have I, as a physician, known such situations! However poor and shabby he might appear, Samuel Dordona had been a good friend to the dying man and his wife in these misfortunes.

“During that night,” he went on, “Captain Carey talked to me. He was in pain. From time to time he dozed fitfully. But I swear that he spoke of what he knew. The only thing he could not tell me was how exactly he came to sustain the accident that killed him. It had come upon him like a thunderbolt from the blue and knocked the senses out of him. Those were his words. He came round to find himself in the bungalow. The shock of the incident—and the morphine he was at length given—fogged his memory.”

“But he spoke of the Prince Imperial?” my friend prompted him.

“He did, Mr. Holmes. I wrote down the exact words he used, immediately afterwards. I committed them first to memory as best I could, and then to the flames. I have a good memory, you know. It comes as a matter of habit. It would never do for a minister to read out a sermon, let alone a prayer, that he could not otherwise remember. In those hours, Captain Carey told me a story that he swore he had told to no one before. Not even to his own wife, for fear that the knowledge might put her in danger. But knowing he was likely to die, he was determined that the truth of murder must not die with him.”

Holmes brightened up. He opened his cigarette case and leant forward to offer it to our guest. “Murder, Mr. Dordona? Indeed? Pray continue your most interesting account.”

“Captain Carey’s patrol had ridden out on that day, when the prince met his death. So much had been done to protect this young man that the idea of his being killed went round the Blood River camp like a joke. A few days earlier, he and Captain Carey came into the camp just as General Sir Evelyn Wood was mounting. The general called out to him ‘Well, sir, you’ve not been assegaied yet?’ The prince laughed and called back, ‘No, sir! Not yet!’ You see what I mean?”

“Who rode with him on that last day?” I asked.

Mr. Dordona now intoned his account, rather like a child who has learnt his lesson and must repeat it.

“Captain Carey had a patrol of troopers from Bettington’s Light Horse and another six Basuto riders. They rode out over grassland at first, the Prince Imperial and Major Grenfell at their head. Major Grenfell kept them company until the point where he turned off to another destination. They had also brought a native guide who could translate for them if it became necessary. They were following a ridge with an open landscape below them. They would have seen any tribesman a long way off.”

“The tribes had no horses?”

Samuel Dordona shook his head. “No, doctor. The warriors go on foot. They could never have caught up with a mounted patrol. When Major Grenfell went off on his own business, he made another joke to the prince, something about not getting shot. The prince laughed again and said something like ‘I know Brenton Carey will take very good care of me.’”

“Afterwards they stopped for lunch?”

“Before that, they took a wide sweep of the surrounding countryside through field-glasses. They were on the top of a hill, at the end of the ridge they had been following. The landscape was still deserted. Even a distant sound would have carried well in such a quiet place. They made sketches, mapping the land around them for an hour or so, until it was time for lunch. Just below them was a deserted village of five native huts. The escort searched the huts but found only three native dogs running wild. No one had been there recently. The troopers fetched water from the river and made a fire. Then they brewed coffee and ate their rations.”

“How long were they there?”

“By all accounts, about three hours. Though Captain Carey was uneasy at remaining so long, the prince was in no hurry to go. Carey was the senior officer in command, but it was not easy for him to overrule the Prince Imperial. That was at the root of the tragedy. The prince treated this survey as a picnic rather than a patrol. Just then, the native guide reappeared and said that he thought he had seen a single tribesman coming over the far hill.”

Mr. Dordona lowered his eyes, as if to prepare us for what lay in store.

“Even this was no cause for alarm at such a distance. All the same, Captain Carey insisted that they should gather their horses. They did so and began to mount. The prince himself called out ‘Prepare to mount.’ Just as if he had put himself in command. Each man had his foot in the stirrup and one hand gripping the saddle. At that moment there was a crash of rifle-fire, though the shots went wide. The tribesmen lack experience of firearms and are poor marksmen. However, several of the horses were startled and tried to bolt. Then thirty or forty Zulus burst towards the patrol from the tall grass just short of the village.”

“Thirty or forty tribesmen who could not possibly have been there?” I asked.

“I cannot see how they could have got there—so many of them. Nor could poor Carey. The place had been searched for a possible ambush.”

“Indeed,” said Holmes quietly, in the tone of one who needs no more evidence. But Samuel Dordona was not to be denied a hearing.

“The first casualty was Rogers, one of the troopers. He lost hold of his horse when the animal bolted at the explosion of the rifles. All the rest managed to restrain their mounts in one way or another. Of course, Rogers was helpless on foot. It seems he must have run back into the cover of the huts and fired his carbine before one of tribesmen pierced him with a spear. A few of the Zulus were carrying Martini-Henrys captured at Isandhlwana, but they fought mostly with their spears to which they were accustomed. One of them then hit Trooper Abel in the back with an assegai and brought him down from his horse. He was probably dead by the time he hit the ground.”

“And the Prince Imperial?” Holmes inquired thoughtfully: “Where was he in all this confusion?”

“The prince caught his horse before it could bolt, Mr. Holmes, and he was a first-rate rider. He made as if to vault straight into the saddle. He had done it hundreds of times and it should have been child’s-play to him. When Captain Carey saw this, he never doubted that the prince must have mounted. So Brenton Carey turned and led what he believed to be his entire patrol to safety at a gallop—excepting Rogers and Abel. He swore to me again on his last night alive that he had been sure the prince must be with them. Looking back presently, he saw Rogers and Abel lying dead but no one else.”

“And the prince?” I asked.

Mr. Dordona came unwillingly to the truth.

“There was a native hut between the patrol and the tribesmen. It hid the details of what had happened. But then Captain Carey saw the prince’s horse, Percy, cantering out of the kraal without a rider. He guessed that the prince must have fallen as he was mounting. The young man was helpless, but he fired the last shots from his revolver at the attackers. Thirty or forty of them. In a few seconds, he was overwhelmed and killed. A matter of seconds, gentlemen. Whatever a court might say, Captain Carey protested to me that there was nothing he could have done to save him, even if he had given his own life. Nothing. Carey was a brave man, and he spoke the truth.”

“Nothing to be done except to have foreseen such an ambush,” Holmes said as he turned his brooding deep-set eyes upon our visitor.

“Mr. Holmes! By all the laws of military logic, those tribesmen could not have been there. Do you not see that?”

“I find that an interesting assumption, Mr. Dordona. I see at least half a dozen ways in which an assassin might have put them there—supposing, of course, that there had been an assassin, of whatever tribe, or race, or nationality. However, I believe, as you say, that Captain Brenton Carey had done all one could expect of him in safeguarding the prince. Will that do for you?”

I watched Samuel Dordona closely. I will not say that he smiled with relief, but a great burden seemed to drop from him.

“At last, Mr. Holmes!” he said gratefully. “You are the first person since Captain Carey himself to suppose anything of the kind.”

“Then so far,” Holmes said carefully, “we have lost two troopers, Rogers and Abel, and the prince. Correct?”

Mr. Dordona nodded. “Correct, sir. There was nothing that could have been done to save any of them. And after this sudden attack, it seems that the Zulu tribesmen fled at once. No doubt they were in fear of being caught by armed horsemen. Captain Carey led his survivors back to the camp at the Upoko River. They met first of all Colonel Redvers Buller and General Evelyn Wood. To my own knowledge, both are brave men and winners of the Victoria Cross. Buller simply told Brenton Carey that he deserved to be shot. Others refused to believe the story. One of the subalterns from the 98th went into the mess-tent for dinner that evening and told the dreadful news. The rest thought he must be joking—because there had been so many jokes on the subject. The subalterns laughed at him and pelted him with pellets of bread.”

“Forgive me,” said Holmes coolly. “A good deal of this story was given to the court of inquiry and the court-martial, as I recall. Wherein lies the mystery now?”

But the tension had eased, and Samuel Dordona was not quite so upright on the edge of his chair. He sat back a little. His words became slower and quieter.

“No one at those courts spoke of the horseman, Mr. Holmes. A horseman on the hill above, seen by one of the patrol while all this was going on below. A horseman from whose appearance poor Carey seemed to seek relief by talking to me on that last night of his life.”

He paused, as if marshalling every detail in his mind before giving us his account of the murder.

“Mr. Holmes, the hill above the abandoned kraal was the same one from which the patrol had mapped the surrounding countryside that morning, just before lunch. It is the only vantage point for miles around. A horseman sitting up there could not have failed to see the Zulu ambush gathering below—and he would surely have warned his comrades down there. No warning was received. Instead, gentlemen, was not this rider in a position to ensure that the Zulu attack took place—and to verify that it had done so? That was poor Carey’s question in his last hours. Do you not see what I mean?”

“Perfectly,” said Holmes quietly. “And who saw this horseman?”

“Trooper Pierre Le Brun, a Channel Islander. He was one of those who spoke French, and for that reason he was often detailed to attend the Prince Imperial. This rider on the hill, whoever he was, never dismounted. He wore something that might have been the uniform of the Natal Volunteers, though such items of headgear and clothing are common enough in that country. The horse was light-coloured, perhaps dappled. Trooper Le Brun was the last man in the flight from the kraal, and he would have had a view of that hilltop after the others had gone under it, riding closer to the foot of the slope.”

“And where is Trooper Le Brun now?”

Mr. Dordona shook his head. “Captain Carey could not tell me that. No one knows, sir. It appears that he went absent before the court-martial; but his story remained one of many legends of the war. For some time before he disappeared, Le Brun had talked of throwing in his lot with the Boer pioneers of the Transvaal. So did many other soldiers. Gold and diamonds were thought to be lying in the streets there for the taking. Rumours thrive in the aftermath of any battle, Mr. Holmes, and the truth is not easily found. Visions are reported in the sky at moments of such intensity—angels, horsemen, burning swords.”

“And this one?” I inquired.

“This one may simply be a copycat rumour for a story that went the rounds after Isandhlwana a few months earlier. In the last minutes of that fight, Lieutenant Melvill took the regimental colours of the 24th Foot from Colonel Pulleine to carry them to safety. As they stood together, the colonel thought he saw the first outrider of Lord Chelmsford’s column mounted on the col above the camp. Melvill’s servant, who escaped with his life when his master died at the Buffalo River, was standing by and heard this curiosity pointed out. A single rider sitting astride a dappled horse, as if watching the last act of the tragedy from above. Sitting at the salute. That was all.”

“All this came from Captain Carey and nobody else?”

“It did.”

“Captain Carey, who is now conveniently dead. I am bound to say that we are singularly unfortunate in our witnesses, Mr. Dordona. How they desert us! Lieutenant Melvill. Trooper Le Brun. Captain Carey. It is so often the way with ghost stories, is it not? Everyone knows someone who has seen the elusive spectre, but what man can vouch for it from the evidence of his own eyes?”

For a moment, Samuel Dordona looked as if we had deliberately encouraged him, only to dismiss his account.

“I tell you the story as it was told to me, Mr. Holmes. I am no more a believer in spectres than you are. Perhaps because he was dying, Carey’s last words to me were about the phantom, if a phantom it was, above Isandhlwana. Goodness knows where the tale of this apparition came from. Officers never believed it, only the few survivors from those lower ranks who had died in their hundreds that morning. Those survivors had heard of this ghostly sighting on the col.”

“I am relieved to hear it, sir. All the available evidence, then, points to a horseman being within sight on each occasion of a disaster. Is that so remarkable? There were enough horsemen around, in all conscience. Perhaps he was an outrider thanking his lucky stars that he was not part of the encounter, and keeping clear. Or perhaps he was a sensible fellow who felt that this was not a fight of his making. What good might he do, when everyone else was running away? Captain Carey would have been very foolish to rely upon such a man riding into a skirmish and offering himself to be butchered when he could so very easily save his skin.”

“Do you tell me, Mr. Holmes, that you do not believe me?”

The tone of my friend’s voice changed at once. “You misjudge me, Mr. Dordona. I do not believe readily. I confess that I was sceptical in the matter before your arrival—and until I heard your complete story. Who would not be? Almost all the doubts that I have now are on your side. I cannot vouch for Isandhlwana, of course. Such catastrophes may happen for the most ordinary reasons. The death of the Prince Imperial is another matter. Let us stick to that.”

Mr. Dordona waited, still as a sphinx on the edge of his chair, to hear judgment passed. Sherlock Holmes spoke quietly.

“Let us have done with apparitions, sir, and stick to the art of war. A score or more of men with rifles and spears cannot remain concealed while advancing over such flat and open terrain unless they are assisted. A man on a hill, as you describe it, is no spectre. Hidden from Captain Carey’s patrol by the ridge of that hill, he alone has the whole landscape in sight. How easily he may communicate directions to the assailants and those who command them.”

Samuel Dordona continued to watch him closely as Holmes concluded.

“But how convenient afterwards to be dismissed as some phantom of the veldt or a figure of common soldiers’ folklore! The litmus-paper test, sir, if I may borrow a chemical term, is simple. Surely if there was such a rider who was innocent in this matter of the prince’s death, he would have reported what he had seen immediately on his return to whatever camp he had come from. At the very least, he would have told the story to some friend or other. Why should he not—if he was innocent? The court-martial, for all its faults, seems to have been scrupulous in tendering evidence. I think we may be certain that no such report was ever made. Whether he was a spectre or flesh and blood, your horseman was no friend to Captain Carey. Again, would he not have tendered information to defend an innocent man’s honour at his trial?”

For the first time, Samuel Dordona smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Holmes. Thank you, sir.”

My friend silenced him by a raised hand. “And let us not forget Trooper Le Brun. From all you have told us, I cannot see what the man had to gain by inventing such an apparition. Therefore, if our mysterious horseman is not a phantom, it seems to follow that he can only be a villain.”

Mr. Dordona had been waiting for something. Now he took the plunge.

“Will you come to Carlyle Mansions, Mr. Holmes? Will you and Dr. Watson come and see for yourselves a proof which will surely persuade you of the truth? The truth of a horseman on the ridge and on the col? The figure whom survivors of Isandhlwana call Death on a Pale Horse! I cannot say more at this moment, but I believe I shall convince you that Captain Brenton Carey knew the truth of something monstrous.”

“My dear sir! I will come this minute, if you are prepared to convince me!”

Our visitor held back.

“The evidence is not there yet, Mr. Holmes. Have no fear, it will be. It is in safe-keeping. Will you come tomorrow? Shall we say at three o’clock in the afternoon? I shall prove to you that murder was done on that patrol at the Blood River. And once the facts are in your possession as well as mine, the truth will be beyond the power of our enemies to destroy. But so long as those facts belong to me alone, I am in peril, and so is that truth.”

I was about to accept this invitation, but the gaunt missionary in his threadbare black had not quite finished.

“Captain Carey persuaded me that the Zulus no more committed murder on the Prince Imperial than the gunsmith whose trigger is pulled becomes the assassin of an emperor on the streets of Moscow or Paris. And is there not something far stranger than even poor Carey hinted at? Does it not strike you?”

“Indeed,” said Holmes in the soothing tone of a keeper humouring a lunatic.

“Mr. Holmes! Isandhlwana! The Prince Imperial! The disaster to come at Laings Nek! The worse catastrophe at Majuba Hill! The dismal surrender at Kimberley of such large tracts of our empire and the treasure they contain. All in so brief a space, like an orchestrated campaign.”

It was an eerie echo to hear this quiet, unworldly man listing the omens that had troubled my own mind in the past twelve months.

Samuel Dordona stood up and looked at each of us in turn.

“I shall expect you tomorrow, gentlemen. I do not think you will be disappointed.”

Sherlock Holmes remained seated.

“The police will not believe you, the Army will not believe you. But precisely what was it, Mr. Dordona, that persuaded you to honour us with your patronage? I do not recall that you have yet told us. Most unusual.”

It was put in a tone more penetrating than any attempt to bar the visitor’s way to the door, yet it did so. Samuel Dordona paused.

“I am here on the recommendation of the only other person in whom I have confided any part of the truth as I know it.”

Holmes relaxed but did not quite smile his reassurance.

“Very good,” he said. “And was that when this other person told you what became of that missing member of the fatigue party at Hyderabad Camp? I refer to the soldier whose foot slipped in the imaginary mud? The man who lost his grip of the wooden tent-flooring and precipitated the so-called fatal accident which mortally injured Captain Carey?”

I have said that Samuel Dordona’s years of Indian service had bronzed his skin a little. That tan now changed to a faint blush. Holmes had trapped him. But the way out of the trap was the truth; and he was, I believed so far, a truthful man by nature.

“It was then that he told me. Why do you ask?”

“Because, Mr. Dordona, in your whole chain of evidence, the soldier who precipitated the accident is the one link you have omitted. What became of him, if I may ask? Why did neither the inquest nor the court of inquiry hear anything from such an important witness?”

“He was Private Arnold Levens, Mr. Holmes. The fellow disappeared that same afternoon of the accident with one other man. I believe they both feared facing a court to account for Captain Carey’s death. And of course it is not hard to disappear in India. We are not talking about the Aldershot Garrison or the Horse Guards. The courts could not find either of the pair.”

“How convenient!”

Samuel Dordona gave him what I should call a reproachful smile.

“Mr. Holmes, men who are detailed for fatigue parties have generally done something to deserve it. They are not saints. As I say, Private Levens and Private Moss were reported absent from duty without leave that very same day. It was at the evening roll-call, I believe.”

“I am sorry to repeat myself, but what became of them?”

“Private Moss was never seen again. He may still be alive; he may be dead. A few months after the inquest on Captain Carey, the body of Private Arnold Levens was found in the new drainage canal just north of Calcutta. It was reported in the local press. The body had been there some time, and the cause of death could not be determined. He was identified by the contents of his pockets. It is a common enough story when a poor fellow is on the run, at the end of his tether, befuddled with drink perhaps.”

“He destroys himself?”

“Sometimes deliberately, Mr. Holmes, more often it happens accidentally. Something as simple as a fall into a canal while reeling drunk.”

“And occasionally, no doubt, he is assisted. Thank you so much, Mr. Dordona,” Holmes said with brisk courtesy. “Until tomorrow afternoon, then.”

From the window, veiled by its net curtain, we watched Samuel Dordona walk slowly back to the waiting cab and begin his return to the mansion blocks of Victoria.

“He seems straight enough,” I said, clearing papers from the table for Mrs. Hudson’s maid-of-all-work to set down the tea things.

Sherlock Holmes still watched the street from the window. He spoke as though he had not heard me.

“I suggest Mr. Dordona no more wrote that letter than I did, Watson. It was written for him. Who can tell whether a colleague then posted it, leaving him no alternative but to keep an appointment with us?”

“How can you possibly say that, Holmes?”

“With every confidence, my dear fellow. Did you not notice his reluctance to commit his pen to paper in our presence?”

“That was nothing!”

“Was it? It is not just a matter of handwriting. Read his letter again. Then tell me whether the Mr. Dordona whom you have brought here could possibly have written it in his own person! Like his clothes, it is the letter of a clergyman from a stage comedy, not the resourceful client we have just met. There are two people in this. Who the other is I cannot yet say. But I have every intention of finding out before we go further.”

“You think Samuel Dordona is a criminal? Surely not!”

“You misunderstand, Watson. I should call Mr. Dordona decent and honourable, a good friend to Captain Carey. A credit to his calling. Paradoxical that he should also be such a calculating deceiver. An honourable but deliberate liar. A charming combination, is it not? Worthy of Robert Browning’s honest thief or tender murderer.”

I stared at him as he turned away from the curtains, but knew that he would say no more just then. I said simply, “We shall see for ourselves at Carlyle Mansions at three o’clock tomorrow.”

He looked at me in astonishment. “I have no intention, Watson, of going to Carlyle Mansions at three o’clock tomorrow.”

“I don’t follow that, Holmes. You have already agreed to be there.”

“You do not follow? Very well, I do not propose to be ambushed at Carlyle Mansions by Mr. Dordona or anyone else. Before three o’clock, I intend to know all there is to know about that establishment. If there is any ambushing, Watson, rest assured that I shall be the one to do it.”

A light tap at the door and the entry of Molly with the tea and muffins on a tray put a stop to this conversation for the time being.

As Holmes had previously remarked, we were not overburdened with clients just then. Much might depend on our success in the present investigation—possibly the entire future of our detective agency. During the rest of that afternoon, however, it seemed as if the assassination of the Prince Imperial and the death of Captain Carey had ceased to be worth further consideration. Holmes diverted himself for the next hour by taking his violin from its case and coaxing from it a newly discovered set of variations by the eighteenth-century Italian master Arcangelo Corelli.

Only when I knew my friend better did I understand an important truth of his character. If the “Scotland Yarders” whom he mocked were so far behind him, it was because they practised as a profession what Sherlock Holmes regarded as an art. It was precisely when his whole being seemed to drift into the sublime abstraction of the music of the spheres that there came to him those intellectual inspirations which led him into some of his greatest practical insights.

A little later, he announced that he might take a solitary stroll in the Regent’s Park. From the tone of his voice, I knew better than to suggest that I should join him. When I looked down from the window, however, I could not help noticing that he was walking briskly towards the Baker Street station of the Metropolitan Railway.