Sherlock Holmes and the Dead Boer at Scotney Castle

Addendum

So great was Holmes’ humiliation he abandoned his plan to compile a text-book on crime detection for fear it would invite mockery from reviewers. The years passed. I caught sight of my former comrade only once in all that time. I was taking an evening walk in St James’s Gardens. He was entering Buckingham Palace perched in a shabby one-horse shay. I was with him on a previous visit to the Palace when Queen Victoria conferred an emerald tie-pin on him for services above and beyond the call. I discovered later that despite our estrangement this second visit was to ask King Edward if the knighthood His Majesty had offered to confer on him for services to Justice (an honour Holmes refused) could be transferred to me, a request the King rejected out of hand. Was that passing glimpse at the gates of the Palace to be the last time I was destined to see my dear friend, I wondered. I pined for our long lost days as comrades-in-arms.

More years passed. The King died. George V was crowned. Holmes and I may never again have been shoulder to shoulder until death (I had long since gained his word of honour for a grave next to his among the Italian bees) except for a most remarkable and unexpected event seven long, lonely years later.

It was 1912. I stood in the early-morning sunshine outside the front-door of my medical practice. The badge of my profession, the stethoscope, hung from my neck. It was my custom to observe patients before they came limping through my door. Many are the times I have made my diagnosis before they enter my premises or utter a word.

My thoughts turned to my dear dead wife, a striking-looking woman with a beautiful olive complexion, large, dark, Italian eyes, and a wealth of richly-tinted deep black hair. Holmes once opined she was a little short and thick for symmetry, to my mind a quite impertinent remark. With her passing I felt doubly lonely. Of all ghosts, those of our loves are the ones we most want to wend their way back and wave to us.

It was while deep in such thoughts that I had an unexpected interruption. One of the cheaper horse-drawn cabs pulled up in front of me from which our former landlady alighted, the good Mrs. Hudson, clutching her favourite lace-edged parasol. These days I saw her only on an annual basis when I went round to pay for the storage of my tin trunks in her attic and indulge in a few moments of nostalgia over a first infusion of her best tea. She brought with her a most curious and unexpected summons.

‘Dr. Watson,’ she cried in great agitation, waving the parasol, ‘a telegram from Lewes. I must assume it’s from Mr. Holmes. I know he never remembers your address. I hope he’s all right. Why would he send a telegram when the letter post is so much cheaper!’

Holding out my hand to her with a reassurance I did not feel, I cried, ‘Why, my dear Mrs. Hudson, I am sure there is nothing amiss. Holmes never writes when he can telegraph!’

She received my hand in hers, looking up at me with moist eyes. ‘I know you’ve had your differences of late but I wouldn’t waste an hour in going to see him, sir, or you may not see him alive.’

To judge by her words and her precipitate arrival, Mrs. Hudson feared (and at the thought my heart beat even harder) his tempestuous life might be coming to its end. A world without Holmes, even a disaffected Holmes? And two years my junior? No. Unthinkable.

For the past few years my former friend had spent much time at his isolated farm-house on the Sussex Downs, occupied with his hives and building a library. A mutual acquaintance came to tell me Holmes prowled about the purlieus of his farm like the Bengal tiger ‘Bert’ at the Regent’s Park Zoo, as restless, brilliant and dissatisfied as ever. This acquaintance took the chance to tell me that my name never came up.

I slit open the envelope. The message read, ‘Early today a cutting from the Rheinische Merkur was pushed under my door. Grave events afoot. Come, if convenient - if inconvenient come all the same. S.H.’

I read out the words to Mrs. Hudson. Without waiting for her encouragement (which was soon forthcoming), I resolved to obey my old comrade’s ringing command, though the request made it unlikely he was, as I had immediately feared, lying on his bed near death. Nor was there in this summons any hint of malice or retribution.

There was a post-script to the telegram. I should arrive by a circuitous route. This, I was instructed, would be by fast train to Hindhead, in Surrey, where he had arranged for the Station Master to put me on a char-à-banc or electric brougham to Lewes. At Lewes, given the state of the ground after a period of heavy rain, I would find a horse-drawn four-wheeler to take me on the final stage of my journey to the farm near King’s Standing. I was without fail to bring the latest Continental Gazetteer. The telegram ended, ‘The tsunami has struck,’ followed by a mysterious command, ‘Spend an hour in intensive study of the Kiel Canal.’

My heart sang at his customary presumption though I was alarmed by the phrase ‘The tsunami has struck’ and by the order to take a circuitous route. ‘What on Earth does all this mean?’ I said aloud, after I had twice read over the summons. Should I purchase a carpet-bag and fill it with a jemmy, a dark lantern and my best field-glasses? Or at the very least load two chambers of my Eley’s No. 2 with soft-nosed bullets and slip it in a hip-pocket? As to the Kiel Canal, I revolved in my head how to carry out so strange an order in such a short time and decided it was not possible.

I threw myself briskly into country-wear wondering why I should ‘without fail’ bring the Continental gazetteer. My practice could get along very well for a day or two without me since it was the slackest time in the year. I pinned a note to the patients’ entrance asking them to make do with the locum summoned from the St. Pancras Hospital. I promised Mrs. Hudson a supply of black hothouse grapes from Solomon’s in Piccadilly on my return and left helter-skelter for the railway station. Soon I was taking lunch on the train to Hindhead.

Shortly after five o’ clock that day, with a medical bag and the small portmanteau containing the Continental gazetteer, I was aboard the four-wheeler travelling through the mud and quiet of the Ashdown Forest. Just past Chelwood Vachery I glimpsed Holmes’ lonely, low-lying black-and-white building with its stone courtyard and crimson ramblers. From a nearby height Holmes could command a view of the English Channel, close enough as the seagull flies to blast his farm with winter gales. It was clear his respect for Nature had grown with age and familiarity. For many a year it took a little diplomacy to wrest him from London. On several occasions during our days at Baker Street I urged him to go to the countryside for a rest, not least because he could obtain a wondrous view of the heavens. He replied with some asperity, ‘Watson, the proper study for my species is my species, not blades of grass or insects and the stars! I shall sooth myself with Nature in my later days. For the moment, it is to the Quadrant of Regent Street and Charing Cross I turn to for recreation and inspiration, amid the sounds and sights of hansom-cabs, omnibuses and dog-carts, wing collars, and the flickering of gas-light, watching the ever-changing kaleidoscope of life as it ebbs and flows through Fleet Street and the Strand.’

As I journeyed closer to Holmes’ country retreat, my hearing grew attuned to the clip of the horses’ hoofs striking the road’s metalled surface. This switched to the crunching sound of the carriage-wheels turning from the highroad into the gravelled drive. The air wafting through the carriage window was suffused with the scent of dried grass. Heralding my arrival at this once-familiar place, we passed the small stand of Holm oaks and a fine 100-foot Lebanon cedar with a small engraved plate pinned to the bark stating ‘From a seed sourced in the Forest of the Cedars of God, planted to celebrate the defeat of Napoleon 1815’.

To my relief (given my still-bubbling worry for his health), as the horses pulled the carriage along the final stretch, I saw Holmes pacing up and down. He looked well enough for a man now into his sixties. I observed nothing formidable in his symptoms, except for an increase in lumbago in the lower spine, no doubt worsened by damp air seeping from the nearby woods. His demeanour reflected the tenor of the telegram. While I fumbled for money to pay the cabman, Holmes drummed his fingers on the carriage side. The payment made, with a touch of the driver’s whip the horses wheeled and turned away. I could give Holmes my fullest attention.

My host reached a hand across to my shoulder and in the tone of old said approvingly, ‘Well done, Watson, prompt as ever in answering a telegraphic summons. I see you have brought the Continental gazetteer.’

‘I have, yes,’ I responded, suffused with warmth, ‘but are you well?’

‘My ever-faithful friend, I am. You shall meet Mrs. Keppell once more, she is still with me. Her billeting and victualing are still carried out like army manoeuvres.’

Mrs. Keppell had remarried. Her new husband was the village wheel-wright and coffin-maker, though she kept to her former name when at Holmes’ farm. With her came Tallulah, a lively Norwich terrier. Refused entry in-doors by the master of the house, Tallulah spent the two hours as on daily duty, patrolling the courtyard, yapping with unabated excitement whenever Mrs. Keppell waved from an open window.

Now summer was almost upon us, petunias and snap-dragons set the farm ablaze with colour. Wall-flowers protruded from crevices, a favourite flower of mine from a nostalgic childhood holiday spent in Dorset with my mother, taking long walks around Thomas Hardy’s birthplace at Higher Bockhampton.

With the carriage gone and my introduction to Tallulah complete, Holmes raised a hand dramatically. Grasped between finger and thumb fluttered a piece of newsprint perhaps five inches square, displaying angular heavy characters. I heard his dry, crisp, emphatic utterance as, with a grim expression, he plunged into the matter without further preamble. ‘The tsunami, Watson, the proof of crime - and worse it is than we could ever have imagined.’

‘What crime?’ I demanded.

‘What crime?’ Holmes expostulated, striding towards the house. ‘The greatest crime of our life together!’

At the veranda, he stopped to allow me to catch up. ‘Those Sungazer devils, Watson. I should have realised it would not end at the slam of a Lanchester’s door. I fear they mock us yet. In the night this piece of newsprint was pushed beneath this very door by person or persons unknown, though I can guess from where the commission came.’

‘Were there no clues as to the sender?’

‘None, Watson. Would you expect a seal of red wax stamped with a crouching lion? No. You will observe the cutting is pasted to ordinary cream-laid paper without watermark.’

I followed him into the house, Holmes continuing to hold the cutting high, like a tour guide waving a coloured umbrella at the British Museum. Despite the warmth of the air outside, the fire was already burning up, crackling merrily, and sending spurts of blue, pungent smoke into the room, overcoming the perfume from the vases of sweet peas and roses Mrs. Keppell had placed everywhere. Within two hours of leaving London it was as though we were once more back in our old rooms in Baker Street.

‘Watson, this clipping torn from the Rheinische Merkur contains the answer to the riddle at Scotney Castle. It is turning out to be a greater riddle than either you or I thought. You will shortly agree nothing in our long career as allies in the fight against crime has had such implications.’

Holmes could on occasion resort to exaggeration though never with me, or at least not in private, even in the terrifying case of the Parsee Solicitor. Once inside the low-beamed room, I placed my coat upon a peg. As of old, while I waited for Holmes to settle, I shuffled through the pile of correspondence threatening to tumble from the overmantle. One piece, several months old, began ‘Rumour abounds in Titel that Albert Einstein ordered the mercy-killing of his daughter Lieserl...’

I put aside a handsome mahogany Seneca view camera and took its place on a rickety chair. Over the years of regular occupation, white-painted shelves of deal had sprung up on every wall, purchased from a late fellow at Oriel College. One shelf was loaded with modern text-books, another with works of reference, including the much-thumbed Dictionary of London by Charles Dickens’ eponymous son, with its guide to Ah Sing’s opium den and much other information required of a Consulting Detective. Old friends lined the upper shelves, transported from our rooms in Baker Street. In addition to a two-year-old Baedeker, I spied British Birds, the Dictionary of National Biography, the Origin Of Tree Worship, Poe’s The Mystery of Marie Roget, Catullus, Winwood Reade’s Martyrdom of Man, several of my favourite sea stories by Clark Russell, The Holy War and, less to the fore, The Physiognomical System of Drs. Gall & Spurzheim with its instruction on reading the faces of Chinamen. A few of the works had accompanied him from far-away University days - Hafiz and Horace, Flaubert and Goethe, Twelfth Night, a copy of E. Cobham Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, and the pocket Petrarch.

More volumes lay open on the bear-skin hearthrug, signs of wide contacts among authors, printers and publishers. A French admirer had presented him with a stuffed icterine warbler in a small glass cage. In another glass cage was a human skull the size of a coconut, with an iron-stained mandible. An inscription stated, ‘To My Partner In Crime, Sherlock Holmes, the culmination of my work. Chas. Dawson F.S.A’.

One wall was bullet-pocked with the patriotic monogram V.R., the old Queen’s initials. My former companion had continued his habit of pistol-practice in the sitting-room, his formidable marksmanship learned from many visits early in life to a range on the sand-dunes in the neighbourhood of Calais, a whole day’s shooting for one pièce de cent sous. Though he had undergone no military training as far as I ever ascertained, he was at least my equal with a pistol though less so with something heavier.

‘Watson, my dear friend,’ came Holmes’ voice, interrupting my inspection. ‘For just a moment I shall keep you in suspense over this newspaper clipping. Please, first take up the Continental gazetteer and read me the entry for Carl von Hofmeyer. Then we shall indulge ourselves in a cup of Mrs. Keppell’s tea.’

He threw himself into his old arm-chair, drawing up his knees until his fingers clasped round his long, thin shins. With a gesture at a box on a low table, he said, ‘Try one of Lord Cantlemere’s cigars. He dropped them off on his way to the Continent the other day. They are less poisonous than one would expect.’

‘Ulrich von Hofmeyer,’ I repeated to be certain I had caught the name. ‘Who might that be?’

‘We shall discover that together if you do as I ask, Watson,’ Holmes responded, the old sarcasm evident in the words softened by a slight smile.

I turned the pages to ‘H’ and came to von Hofmeyer.

Holmes broke in, impatiently, ‘The Informal, Watson, the informal!’

He was puffing on a familiar old pipe, the smoke curling up more thickly to emphasise each curious element in the Gazetteer’s tale.

I moved my finger down the page.

I stopped reading to comment, ‘Nasty piece of work, Holmes!’

‘Who became a rising statesman at the Kaiser’s Court. Read on, Watson, then we’ll talk.’

I continued:

I looked up. ‘That’s all,’ I said. ‘But tell me, Holmes, why the interest in this unpleasant fellow?’

‘’Of all the conquistadores in the Scramble for Africa’...’ He turned to me and repeated, ‘‘Of all the conquistadores in the Scramble for Africa.’ Watson, what do you make of that?’

‘I make nothing of it, Holmes. What should I be making of this murdering ... this...’ I looked back at the page. ‘...flag-waving buccaneering freebooter’?’

Holmes put away the pipe. He pulled a silver cigarette-case from a pocket and pointed with it to the pile of books scattered across the floor.

‘As you can see, I am expanding my knowledge as you so often urged. It now strikes me had I not been a consulting detective - or a Naturalist ...’ his eyes gave a momentary twinkle, ‘I might have become an historian. There are many similarities in our quest for answers.’

He extracted an Alexandrian cigarette and after lighting it resumed. ‘I doubt if your gazetteer yet contains the name of another Prussian, Bernhard Dernburg?’

‘It does not,’ I affirmed after a search.

‘No matter.’

Holmes reached for a strip of paper at his side and threw it across to me.

I read. ‘Confidential. From Mark Sykes, British Embassy Berlin, 31/V/1912. For the attention of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Near Lewes, Sussex, England.

The ‘Hottentot’ Election of 1907. ‘Parties of Order’ gained a solid majority. Arrival in the Reichstag of hardliners such as Count Bernhard von Bülow. Bülow picked a new kind of Hercules to sweep out the Augean Stables (the German Colonial Department), ‘a plump young banker with a light brown beard and smiling eyes’, as one German newspaper described him, named as Bernhard Dernburg. His message is visionary - economic imperialism is the answer. Germany’s African colonies could become jewels in the Kaiser’s crown through which the Reich could exploit cheap and secure sources of those raw materials most needed for a strong Defence of the Fatherland - oil, cotton and the rubber, vital to its ‘destiny’ as the world’s second greatest steel power.’

‘By strong Defence we must take it Sykes means war,’ Holmes remarked.

My companion then moved to a mysterious matter alluded to in his telegram earlier in the day: ‘Watson, are you à la page with the Kiel Canal?’

I replied I was not. At his quizzical look I added I had come across reports from correspondents in the Morning Chronicle and the London Times but such matters remained at the far margins of my interest.

Holmes nodded. ‘I see. My dear Watson, I am about to enlighten you about an unexpected turn of events. As you are seated, if precariously - I must get Mrs. Keppell’s husband to deal with that chair - let us examine this newspaper cutting pushed beneath my door. You may not know it from the photograph but the cutting refers to the man I first asked to you to look up in the Gazetteer.’

‘The conquistadore in the scramble for Africa?’

He passed me the original cutting. ‘Count von Hofmeyer, yes. I have had it translated.’

I looked at the cutting from the Rheinische Merkur. It showed a police-type photograph of an unsmiling man wearing dark glasses. Printed by it were several lines in a Teutonic type.

Holmes began to read out the translation.

‘‘Graf von Hofmeyer Declared Legally Dead’’, he began. ‘‘No Solution To The Mystery. It is seven years since Ulrich von Hofmeyer disappeared after departing the French coast at Dieppe by packet-boat for Newhaven on the coast of Sussex on the 24th of May 1904. Nothing has been heard from him since. At the request of his wife the Authorities have declared him legally dead. A figure widely identifiable in Eastern Africa because of his attachment to dark glasses and uncompromising approach to the natives, von Hofmeyer had only recently taken up new, undisclosed diplomatic duties in Berlin after disposing of extensive personal assets in Tanganyika, including three tanzanite mines at Arusha.’’

At his words I burst out in a strangulated voice, ‘the Boer at Scotney Castle...’

‘Precisely, Watson, the dead Boer...’

‘... was a Boche!’

‘You have it,’ Holmes replied, observing me quietly.

A grey mist swirled before my eyes. Everything which had seemed real threatened to tumble around my buzzing head. I felt I would swoon for only the second time in a life not absent of desperate surprises. The first occasion was when Holmes unveiled himself after years during which I thought him dead, though it was a close-run thing during my early weeks in India when a brother officer at my side in the Mess-tent, seemingly at the end of his tether, drew a khukuri and stabbed himself thrice just above the knee with the utmost savagery, screaming the while like a Banshee spirit. After some seconds of this curious display, when no artery was severed and no spurt of blood forthcoming, I realised he had a wooden leg. On both occasions it took me a while to recover.

After several moments I spoke.

‘Holmes, the article is so close to an obituary, like you I am certain the corpse was von Hofmeyer’s. He may have come intent on discussions on a matter of some moment, but still I say, to be murdered and stripped naked... surely that goes too far?’

‘Do you recall how the Sultan Saif Al-Din Qutuz and his generals treated the four emissaries of the Mongol prince Hulegu Khan when they brought a letter demanding instant capitulation?’ Holmes asked.

‘Why, no, I do not recall,’ I responded.

‘At Qutuz’ command the ambassadors were cut in half at the waist, decapitated and their heads placed on Cairo’s great Zuwila Gate.’

‘So killing the Boche and stripping off his clothing...’

‘Would it not make a considerable point, if short of being halved?’

‘It would, Holmes,’ I agreed, ‘but if he was murdered - and under the circumstance I am obliged to accept it was not suicide or death from accidental drowning - why has no effort been made, as far as we can see, by our Foreign Office or the Imperial German Embassy in London to put two and two together? We know the finding of the corpse was reported in the Standard. Particular mention was made of the presence of dark shiny spectacles - they are so much the dead man’s signature the Rheinische Merkur refers to them in this clipping.’

‘I telephoned Brother Mycroft this morning. It transpires His Majesty’s Government was fully aware of the Count’s journey to Sussex from the moment he left Berlin. Furthermore, von Hofmeyer sent a letter from Crick’s End to the Chancellery on the morning of his death using the German Naval code. His letter was intercepted at the Burrish Post-Office. It took Mycroft a mere six hours to decipher.’

‘And it said...?’

‘’Proposals well received. Anticipate arrival of eminent personages from Downing Street within hours’.’

‘Why did your brother not let you know of this at the time?’

‘The Official Secrets Act 1889 Section 2, ‘Breach of Official Trust’, that’s why. I had no idea Mycroft could be so pedantic. He insisted on reading the entire wretched Act over the telephone like the Sermon on the Mount.’

Holmes threw me a serious look. ‘Watson, I had my suspicions even then that the murder was - if not officially sanctioned - at the very least condoned by a bellicose faction inside the Government. Once von Hofmeyer left Dieppe for Crick’s End, followed all the while, he had one chance on life to a hundred chances on death.’

‘A bellicose faction inside the Government?’ I exclaimed. ‘Led by whom?’

‘Why, the Blenheim spaniel, Winston Churchill, who else? Mycroft has informed me your friend Marsh was forbidden to tell you on pain of his knighthood.’

‘But even Winston Churchill could hardly command events at Downing Street,’ I protested. ‘Ambitious he may be to a fault, but he is not yet Prime Minister. He is not even Foreign Secretary.’

‘My dear Watson,’ Holmes replied, chuckling. ‘Surely you remember our one visit to Downing Street? The labyrinthine layout, the innumerable baroque state rooms, the poky passageways, the hidden courtyards, the secluded offices. It is a wonder we ever found our way out. It only lacks a few suits of armour, oriental robes, curved swords, Ottoman miniatures, Islamic calligraphic manuscripts, murals and a ghost or two for it to be mistaken for the Topkapi Palace. Those are not the corridors of power but mediaeval courts run from broom cupboards, one of which is reserved for Mycroft Holmes but another must bear the label ‘Winston Churchill’.’

So it was that for the next fifteen minutes, swiftly by degrees, Holmes took me on a most unexpected tour d’horizon. He launched into his narrative, as strange a story as he had ever laid before me.

‘I have given this great thought while awaiting your arrival,’ Holmes continued. ‘I believe - as would the sender of this newspaper cutting - we are now far too late if we hope to prevent the catastrophe that lies not far beyond the horizon. The Kipling League achieved a triumphant finis to their record in England. Van Beers and Sir Julius are safely abroad. Weit, as you must know, is dead. I can only make sense of this by assuming Count von Hofmeyer came to a conclusion Africa was a blind canyon. His great hope and natural ally, the Boers, suffered a rout and mostly inhabit the bush beyond the Orange River. The boundaries of the Continent, so carelessly drawn, are a shaming legacy of the Scramble for Africa, the mere by-product of some European explorer’s wanderings or statesman’s puffed-up pride. Take a particular absurdity, the Caprivi panhandle named after the German foreign minister from his mad idea of building a railway from South-West Africa to Portuguese Mozambique - without ever having learned the terrain is most unsuitable. No, Watson. Opportunity for a man as ambitious as the Count no longer lay in Africa.’

‘What of this man Dernburg?’ I asked. ‘What of his concern with Africa?’

‘A deliberate diversion, contrived by von Hofmeyer to put England off the track. Dernburg was groomed to replace him, a device to convince us Africa rested at the epicentre of the German Chancellery’s ambitions. In that way it would take our eye off the widening of the Kiel Canal while encouraging our War Department to prepare as they always do for the wrong kind of war, a third engagement against the unrequited Boer in Southern Africa.’

‘If this contrivance freed von Hofmeyer from Africa, to what aim....?’

‘Weltpolitik, my friend! Do you not see, he returns to Berlin, the Capital of the most powerful kingdom of Middle Europe, in time for the widening of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal at Kiel? I would not have asked you to bone up on the Canal if it was not of the utmost importance to our present discussion. In the past year they have widened it at the cost of 242 million marks, wide enough to take the greatest German battleships. The Canal crosses the Cimbrian Peninsular and connects the Baltic with the North Sea. Prussians would not spend that sum for pleasure yachts on their way to Cowes or Cannes. It saves a ship - a Dreadnought perhaps - 250 miles through the dangerous waters of the Skagerrak.’

Incredulous that this should be a principal topic of conversation, I demanded, ‘Holmes, is it simply to inform me of these statistics you send me a telegram which nearly gives Mrs. Hudson a heart-attack with worry, in which you order me to leap aboard a train with more than all due speed - and by a circuitous route - just short of telling me to bring my service revolver and a dozen soft-nosed bullets?’

‘Soon the tumblers will fall in place, I assure you, Watson. Von Hofmeyer could see the strategic possibilities for a mighty German Navy. The immense ship canal is the rival of the Suez. The Germans are now free to move from safe and secret Baltic bases to the whole of the world’s seas - except for what, Watson...?’

My mind returned to a conversation with Edward Marsh at The Athenaeum where I had repaired one evening for a good cigar and intriguing gossip.

‘...that the Royal Navy lies in the way?’ I hazarded.

‘Indeed.’

In his detached and entertaining way Marsh had related how Britain’s First Sea Lord and First Lord of the Admiralty grew panic-stricken as Germany’s naval challenge proceeded. Major British forces were withdrawn from far-distant routes to India. Fleets were reorganised based on Malta, Gibraltar and the home ports. Planning began for a new all-big-gun battleship together with the Invincible class of battle-cruiser. The new fleet was to give Great Britain such an intimidating lead Germany would give up all competitive activity from cost alone, let alone a failure of ambition. Instead, Holmes was informing me, far from containment or intimidation, the race for sovereignty of the seas had become sterner.

Holmes continued, ‘Count von Hofmeyer knew of Van Beers and Siviter from his years in Africa. He knew they would have the Prime Minister’s ear. They in turn would be well aware of his blood-thirsty history.’

‘So he was sent to Crick’s End to oblige a humiliating submission? You suggest by murdering this Hun, leaving him stripped of clothing in the wagon pond, the Kipling League sent a signal of the utmost defiance to Berlin?’ I paused. ‘If that is so, shall we agree what they did in killing this fellow would not be so damnable - there might be honour in the matter?’

‘That is the message Siviter would have conveyed to Fusey - and Pevensey - and to the staff at Crick’s End and Scotney Castle, several of whom were needed in the running of events, especially the woodman and Dudeney and his motor.’

I stared at my companion.

‘You say ‘the message Siviter would have conveyed,’ Holmes. How otherwise could it be?’

He sat in silence, brow furrowed, without responding to my question.

I went on, ‘The Holmes, I beg you at least to put an end to my curiosity on one singular point which has engaged my mind throughout my journey here today and well before...’

‘Ask on, Watson,’ my companion assented in a most amiable way. ‘Up to today I have been entirely unwilling to engage with you on any aspect of this matter but I am the more ready to do so now. Which singular point do you...?’

‘I have often stood at your side at the start of the chase but never where you came so swiftly to your conclusion or stayed with it to such a bitter end. When Dudeney returned us to Etchingham Railway Station, you heard the newspaper vendor calling out. I recall to this day the speed with which you concluded something grave was afoot. Your exact words were...’

‘‘...the very second I adopted the hypothesis everything seems to fit - or at least nothing seems to contradict it’?’ he interrupted.

‘Indeed,’ I replied. ‘I have read and reread that report in the newspaper a dozen times. I have it framed on a wall. What was it which brought you so swiftly to such a conclusion?’

‘The first ‘scumbling’ to catch my eye was the local constable’s determination to report the corpse as the former temple of a passing tramp. What could possibly have brought the village bobby to that conclusion?’

‘May I let you answer that?’ I returned.

‘Because Lord Fusey indicated it was so, how else? The evidence itself, right in front of the constable’s own eyes, pointed in quite another direction.’

‘So why did Fusey offer this opinion?’

‘Because it removed all concern for murder - tramps are valued even less than hobos in the countryside.’

‘You said it could not be the body of a tramp because the evidence pointed in quite another direction - what in particular, Holmes?’

‘Were you not struck forcibly by the appearance of the corpse? Remember, it had been stripped of clothing.’

‘Which opened to view the scorching of the skin by a Tropical sun... what else was there of interest?’

‘The fearful bruising of the body.’

I looked at Holmes sharply.

‘The bruising?’ I exclaimed. ‘Who said there was bruising? Holmes, there were no bruises reported in the Standard. It simply said the victim’s skin was seared in a particular pattern.’

‘Then what of the broken bones?’

I stared at him aghast.

‘Holmes, you know full well there was no mention of broken bones.’

‘But what of the terrible cut across the nape as from a cutlass, a violent slash which so nearly beheaded him?’ Holmes asked, smiling.

‘Holmes, you know perfectly well such a wound would have been...’

I stopped abruptly, casting him a rueful smile. This was not an example of Holmes’ Socratic method. He was up to his old and familiar trick, scrambling my brain like Mrs. Hudson’s Sunday eggs.

‘Precisely, Watson!’ Holmes continued. ‘No cuts, no bruises, no broken bones? How can it be? Why not a brutal slash across the throat to divide the carotid artery?’

I waited in impatient silence while he exchanged the cigarette case in turn for a favourite pipe. He resumed, ‘What then, I ask again, what of our cadaver at Scotney Castle? There was no report of any such disfigurement. Did that not arouse your suspicion? Siviter and his cohorts made a serious blunder in prompting Fusey to declare it was a vagabond who killed himself or took a bath in the wagon pond and drowned. That it was a suicide or a chance drowning was not impossible. It was impossible it was the suicide or chance drowning of a tramp.’

He looked at me, the grey eyes narrowing. ‘What should that have told you, Watson?’

‘I confess I have no answer to your question, Holmes.’

‘It proves the act of murder was not long in the soak. Where a crime is coolly planned, then the means of covering it up are coolly premeditated too. Rather than passing it off as a suicide or accidental drowning, they would have thrown me off the scent if they had made it clear it was murder. Siviter should have employed that cut-throat Venucci from Saffron Hill or a murder-gang, or a Smithfields garrotter - or even after the heart ceased beating a bludgeonman with a vigorous arm to crush in the face with three heavy blows of a sand-bag. The Boche should have been deposited in the wagon pond ill-kempt, a half-quartern of gin neat in his pocket, his body covered with contusions or the head horribly mutilated - have I made my point? - why, I might not have given the report a second glance, even with the dark glasses held up from the water like Excalibur.’

‘So their scheme was endangered because...’

‘They were too fastidious? Perhaps.’

‘Or?’

‘Or they had reached the limit of their ingenuity.’

He paused. ‘Then there was the peculiar matter of Dudeney’s response.’

‘The peculiar matter of Dudeney’s response!’ I parroted. ‘What of Dudeney? His response to what?’

‘Cast your mind back to our journey to Crick’s End in the Lanchester. Do you recall informing him you had read Siviter’s cat-and-rat fable?’

‘I did tell him that, what of it?’

‘Just when we came through Etchingham and entered the Straight Mile?’

‘It was about then I spoke those words, yes.’

‘And that you looked forward to viewing Crick’s End’s electricity at work?’

‘That was what I told him, yes.’

‘And he responded with?’

‘He said the mill-pond was low, too low to generate sufficient electricity until replenished by the leat.’ I stared across at Holmes with a perplexed smile. ‘You considered that to be important?’

‘Exceedingly so,’ he replied. ‘The very fact he informed you of this - did you not find that of curious interest, my considerable friend?’

‘Telling me of the level of the water in the mill-pond? Not especially, no. Surely that was entirely inconsequential?’

‘Possibly - if he had left it at that.’

‘By which you mean...?’

‘This conversation struck me as odd. Why did he feel obliged to offer such detail? Even so, my interest and curiosity were subsiding until some minutes later he aroused them once again.’

‘By?’

‘Did he not tell you the reason the water-level was so low?’

‘As I recall, he did,’ I replied. ‘And?’

‘Which was?’ Holmes pursued.

‘Village children at play had emptied it - by opening the sluice.’

‘Yes, Watson, those were indeed his words. And you made nothing of them?’

‘Nothing. Neither then nor now. Why should I?’

‘If you remember, he proffered this explanation after returning from the cart which shed its load of hay... which was where?

‘At the other end of the Straight Mile. So?’

‘Some five minutes later. Why did he not give this explanation at once?’

‘You have lost me, Holmes,’ I replied. ‘What bearing does the mill-pond at Crick’s End have on the discovery of a corpse at Scotney Castle? What does it matter if the mill-pond was low or if a chauffeur should wish to bring the reason for this to our attention - or when he did so?’

‘Not so much the pond was low but the reason Dudeney gave for it being so - village children had opened up the sluice. Why then, hardly one hour later, did our host offer a completely different reason? Twice Siviter told us this same pond was low through the extra demand of visitors. Why did his explanation so oppose the one Dudeney had on offer - unless both were hasty inventions?’

‘Then I ask again, Holmes, what of it if the pond was low - or the reason for it?’

‘Because, my considerable friend, a case can be put together from such tiny inconsistencies. Where there is a want of consistency we must suspect deception. I repeat, why were we were offered two distinct and contradictory reasons? It can only be each was deliberate, each intended to mislead us, what else? It was indeed surprising the mill-pond was so drained despite the recent rains and the open leat. Lack of electric lighting left Crick’s End deprived of much evening comfort. Yet if we suppose neither children at play nor the extra needs of guests caused this condition, what other explanation might there be? Why was the mill-pond so empty?’

‘If neither Siviter’s nor Dudeney’s explanation was true... I am sorry, Holmes, I must leave it to you.’

‘I believe the method was connected to Siviter’s great love, that turbine-generator. I suggest its infernal mechanics were rigged to let the water flow at excessive speed, more gallons a minute than we can ever guess, far above the norm. It spun the wheel so fast the current passing through the victim’s head or chest was raised to deadly heights. The local constable judged it suicide or accidental death by drowning. I would wager my whole fee from the case of the Third French Republic there was not a drop of wagon pond water in the Boche’s lungs. Water killed him, but not by filling up his lungs. The fellow died from electrocution.’

Once more the Holmes I knew of old unfurled his wares before me.

‘Watson,’ he went on, ‘you suggest it was no bad thing they murdered him, a Prussian emissary issuing violent threats of war, daring to board a packet-boat to Newhaven to beard the British lion in his very den. Was that the true purpose of his mission? I confess I am undermined by doubts gnawing at me like lionesses disembowelling a buck. Why kill him? An assassination involves grave risk. I ask myself again, for what profit did the Sungazers go to such lengths, at such danger to their far-flung enterprise?’

‘That is indeed a point of curious interest,’ I interjected. ‘Knowing you held it to be murder I too have pondered on it many times.’

‘To which conclusion, may I ask?’ Holmes enquired in a friendly tone, eyes twinkling.

‘Alas, none, Holmes. It has proved quite beyond my ability. Such an assassination was without doubt a risky throw even for such a high and mighty League. How do you explain it?’

‘An act of desperation, given the stakes for failure. Planned as the clock struck midnight, judging by the late commission of the second painting.’

He stopped, then recommenced. ‘Yes, Watson, it remains the most puzzling question of them all - why murder? Why not a clip across the ear and send him on his way?’

‘I await your answer, Holmes. I have no solution to that most baffling question.’

‘Unless...’

He paused.

‘Unless?’ I prompted.

‘What if...’ he repeated slowly.

‘Holmes,’ I laughed. ‘What if what! I demand you cease this teasing!’

‘I can assure you, teasing is far from my intent. Watson, consider this. Until this very moment we have taken it for granted Count von Hofmeyer arrived at Crick’s End with threats in mind.’

Again, to my frustration, Holmes fell silent.

‘What do you think now?’ I urged.

‘Surely if what we hold to be von Hofmeyer’s reason for visiting Crick’s End is true, murdering him would go counter to the interests of the League, yet these are men of the most extraordinary intelligence and experience.’

‘So why...?’ I commenced.

‘The clipping from the Rheinische Merkur,’ he replied. ‘I am certain the Kipling League ordered its delivery to my door, but why so? Why these seven years on? Do we take it they mock us still? What would be the point?’

Once more I turned these facts over in my mind. As I did so, I became aware of a change taking place in my comrade’s demeanour. He pulled himself to his feet and strode past me to a window, staring out as though he could see Crick’s End on the horizon, like the sinister Spectre of the Brocken we watched in awe during a trip to the Harz Mountains many years ago. A minute passed before he tore his gaze away from the landscape.

‘Watson!’ he demanded, ‘what has taken place out there during our seven years of separation? Quick, tell me!’

Taken by surprise by his intensity, I stammered, ‘Why, I have been mostly engaged in my medical practice...’

‘Not in your world, Watson! You are a doctor, for heaven’s sake. You dispense potions. I mean in the outside world! What of the imminence of war with Germany? The newspapers are filled with it.’

His expressive face had now taken on the agonised look of a man whose heart was collapsing. I was half-way to my feet to retrieve my medical bag from the veranda when he waved me back with an impatient gesture.

‘Of course! That was their intention! Watson - once again you have worked a miracle as my sounding-board. This clipping from the Rheinische Merkur, I ask you again, what was its purpose?’

‘Because they wish to torment us, Holmes?’

‘No, I no longer hold to that assumption. That cannot be the League’s intention. They have placed the riddle of the sands before us. It is as though Siviter seeks to justify their crime. These Sungazers had this clipping delivered precisely because it provides the answer.’

He stabbed a thin finger towards the sounds of Mrs. Keppell and Tallulah engaging in chit-chat with each other through a back window. ‘Come, Watson, let us continue talking in the front-yard.’

At times like this Holmes’ finely-cut face glowed with something more than human. He led me out, pausing to pull from the pile of books the newly-published edition of The History of Nineteenth Century Britain. Galvanised by his excitement, I sprang to my feet, the unstable chair tumbling to one side.

‘What is the answer?’ I called after him as he strode on without a backward glance, like Orpheus leading Eurydice from the Underworld. With all his old verve recovered he crossed the veranda at speed to an open space beyond.

‘Holmes,’ I called out again from several yards behind. ‘What have the Sungazers offered us with this piece from the Merkur?’

‘The very answer we have been seeking!’ came his reply. ‘We have been more stupid than we have ever been! What has become of any brains God gave us? I shall never forgive myself, never! Count von Hofmeyer could not have come with menaces in his pocket. Nations have other ways to display their keenness to fight - grandiose military parades, dreadnoughts at Cowes and other huff and puff. Had he arrived with threats of war he would be alive today.’

‘If this Hun did not come with threats of war,’ I cried, ‘why did they kill him and throw him in a wagon pond?’

‘My dear friend, I shall not keep you in suspense much longer.’

He opened the tome he was carrying at a well-thumbed page.

‘...listen to these words of Viscount Van Beers on his role in the eruption of the late South African War. These, I repeat, are Van Beers’ own words.’

I stood listening at Holmes’ side as he read aloud. ‘‘Convinced of the Justice and Necessity of the struggle, I precipitated the Anglo-Boer War, which was inevitable, before it was too late...before the forces ranged against England grew too strong. It is not a very agreeable, and in many minds, not a very creditable piece of business to be largely instrumental in bringing about a big war. In my defence it should be recalled Protestantism in England took root only when Thomas Cromwell had the head of More struck off.’

We walked on past high Rhododendron bushes. Beyond them, at the courtyard edge, well away from the house, we arrived at Mrs. Keppell’s miniature herb garden filled with candytuft and lavender. Here Holmes commenced smoking hard, brows drawn down over his keen eyes, head thrust forward in the eager way so characteristic of the man I remembered with such affection from our years together as partners against crime.

‘Holmes,’ I interjected, baffled. ‘What has this to do with murder?’

‘Let us look at the facts from a different angle, Watson. We now know von Hofmeyer came on a particular mission to Crick’s End, what else? It could hardly be a social visit. We can assume he was murdered and we know the murder was a savage riposte to the Chancellery in Berlin. But what if von Hofmeyer did not come to Crick’s End with bellicose intent? What then?’

‘Holmes, you have lost me. Why otherwise would the Sungazers kill him?’

‘We are assuming the Count was a harbinger of war, a Prussian emissary in search of humiliating concessions... but what if...?’

‘...if not to menace England, why else would he come with such stealth?’

‘What if he brought an offer of a peaceful resolution to our differences?’

‘Holmes,’ I responded, laughing incredulously. ‘A secret offer of peace! If so, why should he be murdered for his pains? What on Earth would make you jump to such a conclusion?’

‘Von Hofmeyer was aware that England’s hostility to Germany was growing by the day but he knew the German Kriegsmarine was not ready to take on the greatest Naval Power in history. Ships alone, regardless of their 12-inch guns or speed, are not enough. You must train the men. More time was needed. Remember, this was 1904. An offer of an amicable settlement of differences might appeal to an English public averse to war after expenditure of a thousand millions and such loss of men in South Africa. Who better to bring that offer than the poacher adopting a gamekeeper’s mask? Yet think how the Sungazers - Van Beers in particular - would respond. With the utmost horror! Such a proposition could slow a build-up of our forces...’

He broke off, encouraging me to supply the ending to his sentence.

‘...until it was too late?’ I hazarded.

‘Quite so. That would be the Sungazers’ thinking.’

After a long pause digesting this, I said, ‘And that is why they murdered him... not to forestall an outbreak of enmity between Germany and Great Britain but to prevent an outbreak of amity between our two great countries.’

‘They kept von Hofmeyer within those high hedges at Crick’s End on whichever pretext they invented, lulling him into thinking his mission of peace was being hotly debated in Downing Street and would succeed, while all the while they were devising which way to murder him. That is the only deduction which fits all the facts. They had to make their response indelible. Van Beers and both Gold Bugs were brought up as Germans. They may rightly feel they have special insight into the blood and iron of the Prussian soul. In Van Beer’s opinion as a military expert, a war with Germany was and remains unavoidable. Therefore the sooner the better before Germany completes her armaments and hones her gunnery skills. If the Kaiser’s emissary had huffed and puffed on Berlin’s behalf, if he had arrived with a pocketful of menaces - halt our Dreadnought programme, hand over half our African colonies, internationalise the Suez Canal, stay silent and quiescent over Germany’s expansion into the Balkans, or else! - Van Beers would have sent him packing on the instant. The Count would be alive to-day. When he came with an offer of a settlement of differences, he was doomed. The coterie at Crick’s End saw it as a ruse to gain time. Already Germany produces a hundred million tons of steel a year to our sixty, second only to America. To the Sungazers, acceptance would mean disaster.’

By now, Holmes’ fox was running at full pelt though there was no sign of exultation or satisfaction upon his face.

‘It was a serious blunder by Berlin to approach the Kipling League. Other eminent Englishmen would have been far more amenable. It was not the Kaiser’s bullying or an open threat of war the Sungazers dreaded. It was the offer of peace. Therefore the emissary must die. In the Kaiser’s Germany no cohort of men could act this way without a nod from the highest authority. Think of it, von Hofmeyer done to death, his corpse left to soak naked in a wagon pond. Not even the Imperial Russian Secret Police could kill a foreigner without the Winter Palace’s assent. The clear message to Berlin would be Downing Street wanted no entente or ‘equitable solution’. Thus Germany redoubled her efforts to build up the Kriegsmarine and train a hundred crews. Thus in response we amplified many-fold our own construction of armoured cruisers.’

‘With the result...’

‘War is on the horizon, early rather than late. Precisely what Van Beers and the Sungazers wanted.’

Holmes continued, ‘Now I see they wanted the discovery of the corpse to catch the German Ambassador’s eye. They knew an unclad body would push into the press. As to their success in misleading me... do you recall with what approval they listened when I told them how I deduced you were recently returned from Afghanistan? ‘Just returned from some time in the Tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair.’ They must have hoped we would note - and be misled by - the pattern in the corpse’s skin if by chance we entered the case.’

‘Into thinking he was a Boer...’

‘Yes.’

‘And the Boche’s shiny dark glasses, Holmes, as you surmised, a part of the semaphore?’

‘It was a signal to the Imperial German Embassy. The Ambassador would inform Berlin their Africa brute turned diplomat was dead - yet the very same clue compounded my assumption the man was resident in the Tropics.’

I ventured, ‘The hat with its lizard-skin band...’

‘Sheer genius. Again, it fed in to my deduction the crime was some dangerous residue of the South African war while it served a separate purpose. It ensured the Germans understood this was no suicide or accidental drowning. They would realise von Hofmeyer’s fedora had been exchanged for someone else’s hat. A quick trawl through photographs of the Kipling League would tell them it belonged to Sir Julius.’

‘Holmes, now that you have explained it, I confess that I am as amazed as before.’

My friend nodded. ‘They are a formidable lot.’

We turned away from the rhododendrons and seated ourselves on a shaded marble bench.

‘Suffice to say the skies are black with the clouds of war,’ Holmes went on. ‘The Sungazers have put us on the path perhaps five years earlier than might have been, though they would argue just in the nick of time. Already the German fleet has gained a complete ascendancy over that of Britain’s on the sea-routes to The Argentine.’

He sat beside me discomfited, shoulders bowed.

I asked, ‘Have you any thoughts on the offer von Hofmeyer might have brought?’

‘I have no doubt free rein for Cecil Rhodes’ dream of Africa - British from Cape to Cairo. Perhaps an alliance to wrest the Congo with its germanium and rubber from the Belgians to share between us.’

Holmes turned his head away.

‘My naivety in world affairs. We should have seen we were in March Hare and Mad Hatter Land. They were more cunning than the water-fox. Think on it - the suspicious absence of your most popular chronicles in Siviter’s study. That was not by chance. They were purposely removed. I am certain Siviter possessed The Adventure of the Speckled Band. It is a study of murder known to every Anglo-Indian. It was Siviter who ordered Sir Julius to switch his hat with von Hofmeyer’s and leave it a-top the pile of clothes.’ Again my companion shook his head with a rueful look in my direction. ‘It was wonderfully done. That speckled band sent me scurrying in quite the wrong direction. I wager they already knew The Hound of the Baskervilles - no-one shuddered. But there was a lacuna in their knowledge of your chronicles, Watson.’

‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze...’

‘Yes. Once I discussed it, Siviter and his co-conspirators must have sat there wondering was there a dog which didn’t bark in their master plan for murder? I wonder which among them re-examined the painting of the moat and saw von Hofmeyer’s shadow and reflection lying there still, without a figure? It alone would prove their first plan was to have the body discovered in the moat that evening, and not the wagon pond at 3.’

Holmes sprang up from the marble bench and paced about in uncontrollable agitation, a flush appearing upon his sallow cheeks. ‘To have forever on my mind I could have grasped their deception... Look what other clues I had to hand. I noted Sir Julius had worn a hat too small. The hat marks on his forehead were there for all to see. Were it not for the rain that day he might well have cast it in the Rother or the Dudwell. No well-dressed man resident less than half a mile from Lincoln & Bennett’s would bring a hat to Sussex half a size too small. Further, Watson, I saw at once it was German, probably purchased from the hatter Möckel, though brought into wider fashion by the old Prince of Wales. The moment I read the Standard I should have deduced far faster the hat Sir Julius brought back to Crick’s End had previously perched atop the corpse’s head while his was the one cast with such guile a-top the pile of clothes.’

With reluctant admiration he continued, ‘These Sungazers are not creatures of thin air. They have taught me a lesson I shall not relinquish, Watson. To think I mocked them on our journey to Crick’s End. I called them Late Victorians, relics of a bygone age, purblind Empire Crusaders.’

Holmes looked at me almost accusingly.

‘Just as Moriarty used so many petty criminals to do his dirty work, I am now inclined to believe the young blighter selling papers was in the Sungazers’ pay, a tiny storm petrel of crime. Dudeney could have given him his instructions. I am equally certain Sir Julius and Siviter arranged the Anatolian dish not simply for your delectation but with a purpose, to effect an hour’s delay. How otherwise can you - a greater gourmet than I - explain precisely why our stomachs were invited to digest both medlar jelly and Imam Bayildi? Quite contrary to my first assumption, they wanted us to be met by the late edition of the paper into which their corpse had pushed its way. By then it had become an open challenge - they dared to bat against me at my own game.’

A pause followed.

‘Damnation, Watson, the horror, the utter horror of it all. Those...unspeakable...those...wretched boulevard assassins. They are the skins cast off by vipers. May they be buried at cross-roads with a stake in their heart ... ‘

Then, morosely, ‘It is lucky I have my bees for consolation.’

A further pause. ‘Hanging is too good for them!’ And, ‘Nevertheless, it is worth analysis. Men of their ilk will not go away.’ And, enigmatically, ‘We must bow before the oligarchic laws of Nature.’

He continued in a sombre voice. ‘I have carried with me one memory from our encounter with the Kipling League which may stalk me for ever, like a doppelgänger sprung at me from the very depths of Hell.’

‘Which is?’ I enquired keenly.

‘The dark glasses,’ my comrade responded.

‘The dark glasses?’ I repeated with some incredulity.

Holmes nodded. ‘Even now a shudder runs through my veins.’

’Not your veins, Holmes, surely,’ I demurred. ‘A shudder is more likely to be a muscular reaction.’

He looked at me sternly. ‘I realise your wit must on most occasions have passed me by. Shall we say a shudder runs through my musculature even now when I recall the moment I came to the dark glasses in the newspaper account.’

‘I’m sorry, Holmes,’ I returned, starting a scornful laugh. ‘If I recall the words they were ‘A pair of shiny dark glasses was discovered between finger and thumb’. Hardly anything to shudder at, surely? What of Moriarty’s ruthless lieutenant Colonel Sebastian Moran? Consider how near we were to a dreadful fate at his hands. Now that is something to shudder at. A pair of dark glasses must rest a long way down the list of horrors we have encountered in our long journey together?’

‘It was the cold inhumanity with which they staged the corpse, an arm left jutting above the water so they could pinch the dead thumb and finger around his trade-mark dark glasses, like a Harrods’ window-dresser with a mannequin. Your friend Beerbohm Tree could not have staged it better at the Theatre Royal. They turned the Boche into a speechless, sightless, lifeless signpost. It is the grotesque image which stays with me, not the manner of his death itself. I doubt if von Hofmeyer did the St. Vitus Dance ten minutes before the current killed him, a current lethal but less than would burn the skin.’

Silence fell between us. After a while Holmes added, ‘Sir Julius chose that hatband well. When threatened, the majestic spiny lizard wedges between the rocks and puffs itself up. It becomes impossible to remove.’

Minutes came and went in unbroken silence. The mystery of the dead Boer had reached its conclusion.

Tremulously I took my chance. ‘Holmes, there is one last matter of great concern to me....’

Holmes threw me a disquieted look. ‘My dear friend, please go on.’

‘Is it possible my... my craven fear of the Kipling League, my unwillingness to offer my knowledge of rigor mortis until you put the matter to me directly...’

‘...your reluctance to follow my argument so swiftly assembled at Etchingham railway station?’

‘Yes, Holmes. Exactly that. By that did I...?’

‘...by your obstructive behaviour did you impede a timely resolution of the affair?’

‘That is what I fear greatly, Holmes, yes.’

‘And because of that we face a fearful war against the Hun more surely and much earlier than expected?’

‘Yes, Holmes.’

‘Which may bring about the end of the British Empire?’ Holmes pursued.

‘Holmes,’ I cried despairingly, ‘I fear it may be all my fault!’

‘Watson, be at rest, my old and faithful friend,’ my old comrade chided me. ‘They beat us. Like lizards feasting on a wax worm they swallowed me whole. It was I who provided them with the instructions they needed to defeat me. It was I who taught them how to look for dogs which failed to bark. You have nothing whatsoever to answer to the Court of History, though indeed I do’

I waited a while. Then I said, ‘Thank you, Holmes, but I am not yet done. There is something further I should tell you.’

‘Concerning?’

‘The wagon pond painting.’

‘Do go on, Watson. You have my ear, I can assure you,’ Holmes responded companionably.

‘At the time, as you will certainly remember, I was unwilling to add fuel to your assumptions. I was certain you were determined on the path to professional extinction. I was desperate to save you from yourself. I shall regret one deliberate omission of mine for the rest of my days.’

‘Which omission precisely, may I enquire, Watson?’ Holmes asked, a twinkle in his eye.

‘Perhaps the final clue you needed to make a charge of murder stick,’ I responded.

Holmes raised his eyebrows. He gave me his full attention. ‘Please go on, Watson, this is of especial interest! Do you claim you were privy to a clue which entirely escaped me - and furthermore you kept it hidden? Is this history in the making?’ Mischievously he added, ‘I said at the time you had joined their camp!’

Ignoring these friendly barbs, I continued. ‘You recall the moment Pevensey made his exit from the mill-attic?’

‘Indeed I do.’

‘And how we both approached the canvas on the easel...’

‘I do, most certainly. Go on!’

‘And that I asked Siviter why a human figure had been painted standing by the wagon pond instead of the dog in the Constable?’

‘I remember as if it were this morning. Do continue.’

‘So you will recall his explanation?’

‘Watson, well done! You have picked up at last on my method of interrogation. Why, let me think, I must surely remember... let me see. Ah, yes! Siviter said ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t feel he is at his best painting animals’.’

‘Those were his exact words, Holmes,’ I responded in admiration.

‘What of it, Watson? Why do you wear such an unhappy look? Many painters make cats look like bull-terriers.’

‘There is a painting at the Tate which from the day the Gallery opened I and all those interested in medicine repeatedly visit and revere.’

‘Which is?’

‘It is known by the title ‘A Visit to Vediovis’. Venus is consulting the Roman god of healing about a thorn lodged in her foot.’

‘And?’ Holmes queried, looking puzzled.

‘The artist has painted a bowl of luscious fruit at the side of Vediovis...’

‘What of it?’

‘And by this bowl, painted in minute detail with the finest red sable brush, a wondrously life-like dog lies on the floor.’

‘And the painter of this masterly work?’

‘Pevensey.’

‘Damnation!’ Holmes exclaimed, his face darkening. ‘Why did you not confront Siviter with this at the time?’

‘As you said, Holmes,’ I responded, smiling broadly. ‘We were still his guests - nor had we been commissioned to investigate the murder of a Hun.’

‘Touché, Watson, well done!’ Holmes chuckled with excellent grace. The cooler evening air blew from the South-West as we left the courtyard and went inside where Holmes knocked a blaze out of the logs in the grate.

Some twenty minutes later, the sound of bicycle tyres on gravel came through the open window from the courtyard, followed by a sharp pull at the bell. Soon afterwards we heard a creaking which could only come from the hinges of the front door. We listened while Tallulah first, then her mistress, welcomed the rider in their different ways.

As in our former days together, Holmes threw me a look of anticipation. ‘A telegram, Watson? What have we? Other than you, only the Foreign Office and the Eastern Department - or Siviter and the Kipling League - know I am here.’

Greatly curious, we rose and went out to the veranda to be met by an excited Mrs. Keppell. Reminiscent of our dear former landlady, she hurried towards Holmes and pushed the telegram at him with a polite bend of the knee. This time, rather than throwing it to me, Holmes pounced forward, taking it swiftly from Mrs. Keppell’s outstretched hand. He withdrew the slip of paper from its envelope and began reading it to himself.

He cast the first of a succession of serious looks in my direction. ‘Watson, it is a private telegram forwarded by our Foreign Office from a foreign potentate, the Sultan Mehmed V Reshad. You will of course know him as the son of Sultan Abdülmecid.’

‘Indeed. What then?’ I responded, looking back and forth from Mrs. Keppell to Holmes, trying to contain a smile at this conspiracy.

‘The Sword of Osman has been stolen!’

‘The Sword of Osman, Holmes?’ I responded, biting a lip.

‘Tut! What is that?’

‘The sword of state used during the coronation ceremony of every sultan,’ he replied, throwing me another serious glance. ‘The sword is named after Osman the First, founder of the Ottoman Dynasty many centuries ago.’

He read further. Another glance was thrown in my direction. ‘Watson, this theft could endanger the Sultanate itself. Clearly it is designed to bring about the collapse of their Empire. Sultan Mehmed V Reshad is the very person we need to woo the Ottomans away from Berlin.’

He looked back at the telegram but continued offering asides gained from his readings on the Ottomans. ‘The girding of the sword of Osman is a vital ceremony which must take place within two weeks of a Sultan’s accession to the throne. The practice started when Osman was girt with the sword of Islam by his mentor and father-in-law Sheik Edebali.’

I listened in growing admiration at my friend’s knowledge and ingenuity as he continued. ‘The fact the emblem by which a Sultan is enthroned consists of a sword is highly symbolic. It shows the office with which he is invested is first and foremost that of a warrior.’

‘My Heavens, Holmes,’ I retorted in insincere amazement. Was this the purest Oscar Wilde or the topsy-turvy world of Gilbert and Sullivan? ‘This is a very serious matter. When does the son of Sultan Abdülmecid wish us to start hunting for the dastardly criminals who have nabbed this sword?’

‘At once, Watson, at once. He invites us to catch the first ship to Constantinople.’

He paused briefly. ‘The Asturias should leave Southampton in one week’s time. She can take us to Smyrna via Civita Vecchia, Malta and Alexandria. From Smyrna we can take a line direct to Constantinople.’

I listened in wonderment at how far his imagination had stretched in putting together so bizarre a tale to console and entertain his guest. When would that stern and eager face break into confessional laughter?

‘And does the Sultan offer us a reward?’ I managed.

He looked back at the telegram. ‘He does. Should we succeed in regaining the Sword our reward will be a belt of diamonds and gold. After our arrival at Karaköy we are ordered to take the carriage to the Topkapi and go immediately to meet a bimbashi waiting for us at the Chamber of Petitions, known by the locals as the Arz Odası, behind the Gate of Felicity. Watson, are you with me on this venture?’

‘Holmes,’ I nodded vigorously, offering a fine smile. ‘I am at your shoulder. A belt of diamonds and gold, you say? I trust for such an occasion you will choose again the Poshteen Long Coat and wear your Order of Saint Stanislaus - and your gold watch? For my part, I shall bring my glossy topper with a new side-feather and collect my service revolver and fifty rounds from Mrs. Hudson’s. You can never be too heavily armed for Ottomans. I shall meet you aboard the Asturias in Southampton Water in six days’ time. Can Mrs. Keppell let the Sultan know we shall require First Class cabins?’

At this we turned and re-entered the farmhouse living-room to partake of Mrs. Keppell’s tea. Through that early-Summer night Holmes and I sat together, once more in perfect amity, and doubly strengthened. He pulled at more than one of his favourite pipes. At one point, in a meditative tone, Holmes said, ‘You know I feel quite sorry for the Prussian in the coming war - there has never been a race of conquerors and killers more savage and resourceful than you English.’

He spoke as though in sympathy and tradition he held England at arm’s length, as if his Celtic origins trumped upbringing and country of birth.

He continued, ‘And you, Watson, in particular, when roused by the fiery speech of some Army colonel or at my behest or that of friends, you are the apotheosis of an Englishman, redolent of all his virtues, vices, inconsistencies and compassion. When I watch you gaze across this Weald I know you would give your life to defend it.’

I flushed up with pleasure at my companion’s words.

That midnight, after a lengthy walk with torches in his woods and fields, we returned to the house where I struck a match on my boot and put it to the fire laid earlier by Mrs. Keppell to ward off the country damp. We watched the ancient hearth blaze up as heartily as in our days in Baker Street, though from the abundant oak, the Weed of Sussex, rather than sea-coal. Together we put together these words as an Addendum to accompany at no extra cost each copy of what a publisher should still call Sherlock Holmes and The Dead Boer at Scotney Castle. In that quiet, low-beamed room in deepest Sussex, I jotted down copious notes which somewhat later, after smoothing and modelling and paring-away, would surely become a chronicle selling in the many hundreds of copies in dozens of countries.

Over time, Holmes would publish his learned bibliography titled The Polyphonic Motets of Lassus and a collection of bee-farming manuals, including two small blue volumes, the alliterative The Hibernation Habits of the Hive and the Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen and the best-seller, Bees Foraging on Distant Landscapes, illustrated in his own hand. In it he deduces how the genus Apis communicates sources of forage to each other, indicating by a prancing figure of eight the compass bearing and distance, an opus which has gained widespread respect among bee-farmers in New Hebrides and China.

Our friendship restored and the addendum completed, on the next evening I sat with him in the little summer house he himself had built in an open space on his farm, partially shaded by the branches of a Symonds apple-tree sent to him nine years before by an admirer in New Zealand. We perched on two corn-chests with Tallulah stretched between us, while Mrs. Keppell, specially commissioned for the occasion, served us a repast, filling while not extravagant. She surprised me by laying before us two bowls, one containing very shiny black tea and the other scented green, bought from a newly-established shop in Lewes. It was a rare Holmes who drank tea, yet we each imbibed the contents of two cups of the black.

On the morrow, a quick hansom drawn by a dapple-grey cob took me to Lewes. The carriage rocked and swayed as I laughed uncontrollably at Holmes’ kindly effort to cheer me up - like Sindbad we would go on a wondrous voyage, to Constantinople to meet the bimbashi awaiting us at the Chamber of Petitions, tasked with the recovery of the stolen Sword of Osman indeed!

As it was, two weeks later, a powerful windstorm in the Bay of Biscay behind us, Holmes and I sat with the worried Sultan and his advisers in his palace by the wide and beautiful Bosphorus Strait, once more before a table laden with plates of Imam Bayildi followed by Ottoman sweets. A visit to Seraglio Point ensued. From its heights we had a most excellent view to the shores of Scutari, the Sea of Marmara and the Isles of Princes. From where we stood with shining eyes the minarets of the fabled city mingled with sea and shore, light and shade, the softness and the Eastern charm was unequalled anywhere else in the whole world.

We stood transfixed at this Oriental vista. Not far away lay Bulgaria where the knyaz Ferdinand had just declared himself Tsar. That too is a story I itch to publish. There never was nor ever will be a Royal Highness as complex and cunning as Ferdinand Maximilian Karl Leopold Maria of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha-Koháry.