Sherlock Holmes and The Case of The Bulgarian Codex

Chapter III ON HER MAJESTY’S SERVICE

I PULLED Rupert of Hentzau from my shelf of unread books. Given the lawlessness of eighteenth-century Scotland, when armed smugglers operated along the coast and thieves frequented the country roads, I decided to accompany it with a Walter Scott, Guy Mannering.

A goodbye to Mrs. Hudson and we were on our way. After a rainy night a fog had descended. The comfortable brougham edged us towards our destination via W.E. Hills of New Bond Street to drop off Holmes’s fiddle for restringing. My comrade’s careless scraping provided the proprietor with a regular client. From there we whirled around Trafalgar Square and down a cluttered Whitehall to Downing Street. A servant led us along a maze of corridors and up and down narrow uncarpeted stairways to a small chamber deep in the interior. Mycroft, portly as his brother was thin, rang for tea, welcoming us with the words, ‘Gentlemen, the Prime Minister himself asked me to invite you here.’

‘And why precisely has Salisbury taken this sudden interest in our humble lives?’ Holmes asked.

Mycroft was solemn.

‘He wishes me to tell you that Bulgaria looms high on his list of concerns. The disappearance of the Codex and your invitation to recover it are at the very least serendipitous. He begs you not to take this commission lightly.’

‘Why has Bulgaria toppled the Back-Veldt Boers in your list of preoccupations?’ I pursued.

‘Europe is an armed camp, Bulgaria the powder-magazine. The Tsar of Russia yearns to wrest the throne of Bulgaria from the Catholic Prince and replace him with an Orthodox ruler. The Tsar’s armies lie gleaming and glittering at the Bulgarian border. If just two of Ferdinand’s towns on the Danube declare for Russia, the Tsar will order his forces to attack.’

He waved us to our seats and went on, ‘In response, this will trigger an immediate attack on Russia by the Austria-Hungarian Emperor. Then the French would mobilise. They have a secret reinsurance Treaty with Russia and would immediately join in on St. Petersburg’s side. In turn, the Germans would come in against them. Meanwhile the Russians could wipe out the Turkish and Bulgarian Black Sea fleets in a single engagement. We would see the Tsar’s warships steaming through the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, threatening Her Britannic Majesty’s routes to India. The balance of power we have striven to maintain since Bonaparte would be overthrown, the threat to our Empire significant.’

Mycroft pointed to a wall-map. ‘The moment your boots touch the soil of Bulgaria you will be in topsy-turvy land. Balkan geography is complicated, the history intricate, the politics inexplicable. Certainty becomes uncertainty, the unexpected the prosaic. Nothing you take for granted in England will offer you a blueprint for your stay. Bulgaria is a land of danger, plague, treason and sudden death. You will feel you are forever on the edge of something unexpected. The Prince rules a Balkan state which has just awoken from a quincentennial sleep. The Capital Sofia is little more than a Turkish provincial town, some thousands of people crammed into ramshackle one-storeyed wooden houses, every saloon bar and lodgings infested like Agadir with the secret agents of the Great Powers. It is the odiferous monument to half a millennium of Ottoman civil maladministration, the squalor relieved solely by its fine setting on the slopes of Mount Vitosh.’

‘Mycroft, what more do you know about our client?’ I asked.

‘Only that he is not to be taken lightly, addicted as he might be to table-rapping, palmistry, and crystal-gazing,’ came the reply. ‘The owner of a face dominated by a Bourbon nose and huge ears may have the look of the Maharaja of Mysore’s legendary white elephant but his wily nature suggests the quality of the fox. The Foreign Office believes he may have something rather larger in mind for the Codex than the ceremony he mentioned.’

‘Namely?’ I pursued.

‘The struggle of the Cross against the Crescent. He has aspirations to throw off the Ottoman yoke and resume the ancient Bulgarian title of Tsar.’

Mycroft stood up. ‘But before I forget - ’ He took hold of a fine ebony-handled sword stick, withdrawing a thin triangular-section blade about three feet in length. The silver ferrule bore a lozenge-shaped hallmark indicating a French origin. He returned it to its cane sheath and passed it to Holmes.

‘We would be grateful if you would present this to Prince Ferdinand. It was a personal gift to the Prime Minister from the President of France but the Knyaz - as he is addressed in Bulgaria - may be more in need of it in Sofia than the Marquess here in London.’

He looked hard at his brother. ‘Sherlock, I ask you not to adopt your customary sneering approach to Royalty and the Aristocracy. This opera buffa principality may be in the hands of a minor Coburg but he surrounds himself in an icy hinterland of horror. Like Henry VIII he sleeps on eight mattresses rolled upon daily by his bed-makers to be sure assassins haven’t stuffed them with poisoned daggers. He survives through absolutism tempered by assassination. In some parts of the Balkans suspected enemies are denounced and dragged off, convicted within the hour of treasonable conspiracy on the flimsiest evidence, and sentenced to indefinite imprisonment in the dungeons of a distant fortress. Rulers like Ferdinand have learnt the quieter ways to rid themselves of their enemies - a carriage accident with a runaway horse, a shot fired at night in a deserted street.’

He continued, ‘It is rumoured Ferdinand dabbles in unusual ‘-ism’s, such as occultism, cabalism, and spiritualism. Persons suspiciously like Black Magicians flit around and inside the Palace at various times. People swear that each day in the Palace grounds Ferdinand buries the gloves and ties he wore that day, intoning strange sentences with a mysterious air. In reality the menace to his world comes not from malign spirits but from a pocketful of far graver ‘-isms’: militarism, imperialism, and nationalism.’

Mycroft walked around us to the door and turned to face us.

‘I am instructing the British Legate in Sofia to meet you at the earliest possible opportunity. His name is Sir Penderel Moon. He will give you a complete briefing on the Prince. There is someone else I should mention - Colonel Kalchoff, the War Minister, a dangerous man. We intercept his telegrams. He leans strongly towards Berlin. If war threatens between England and Germany, he could convince Prince Ferdinand to take the Kaiser’s side.’

His face took on a lighter expression. ‘Gentlemen, I’m sorry your tea failed to arrive. No. 10 Downing Street is littered with the skeletons of bonnes who starved to death trying to find this cubby-hole. Dr. Watson, I hope you have packed your Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, with a cloth cap for your head in the Balkan sun. The fishing is remarkably good, and wild-duck shooting is as excellent as in the fens, You might bag a capercailzie. The Prince is keen on blasting away. At the Imperial shoot at Spala last October the Times’ correspondent rated him the worst seat on a horse but the second-best grouse-bagger among the whole of European royalty. Only our own Prince of Wales is a better shot.’

He opened the door. ‘I envy you both. A few days in the Prince’s private carriages on the Orient Express, an hour or so aboard the ferry crossing the Danube - no enteric fever in the Balkans at present.’

A member of the Downing Street staff led us away. Mycroft called after us, ‘Sherlock, I have a personal request. Ferdinand adores generals’ uniforms, of which he has a great many. Do bring one back for your brother from your grateful client. It would go down wonderfully well at the Diogenes Club.’