Sherlock Holmes and the Dead Boer at Scotney Castle

Foreword

Sherlock Holmes and the Dead Boer at Scotney Castle is Dr John H. Watson’s account of the extraordinary happenings which took place in Sussex and Kent on a spacious early Edwardian summer day. Never before had Holmes and Watson come up against a brotherhood like the Kipling League. Dedicated to their Patron Rudyard Kipling, the Poet of Empire, the League’s sole allegiance was to England’s civilising mission. Its members would allow nothing to get in their way. It is the only chronicle Sherlock Holmes prevented his faithful amanuensis from publishing on the instant. His refusal to allow the Dead Boer to see the light of day is understandable. Never had he suffered such humiliation as the Kipling League inflicted upon him, the coterie Holmes referred to (when he could bring himself to refer to them ever again) as the Sungazer Gang.

Despite Holmes’ opposition, Watson submitted the manuscript to the Editor of The Strand for reasons he explains. It was returned without comment. Was it because Holmes accuses such rich and powerful men of murder - four leading members of the Kipling League? Or had Holmes frightened off every outlet Watson was likely to approach?

Watson’s persistent attempts to bring this adventure to his public shook his friendship with Holmes to its core. Even before the Dead Boer was completed, Watson came across a desk-diary with ‘Notes on the Watson Problem’ scrawled on the cover in his fellow-lodger’s precise hand, tucked away with a box of Dutch East Indian cigars in the coal-scuttle. The diary contained just two comments, the first a quote from The Case of The Six Napoleons - ‘Watson, while limited, is exceedingly pertinacious’ - and more ominously and with no apparent sense of irony, ‘Watson’s reports are most incriminating documents. Despite my opposition he continues to compile his narratives to afflict his long-suffering public’.

Within minutes of this discovery Watson hurried to the tin storage-box safeguarding his notes. He emptied the contents into a Russian-leather Gladstone bag stamped on the side with ‘John H. Watson, M.D., Late Indian Army’ in elegant gold lettering. He took the valise to the vaults of Cox’s Bank in Craig’s Court. A century and more later the Gladstone reappeared in a makeshift hut in the Weald of Sussex, wrapped in a piece of brown paper and tied round with tarred twine. It contained an archive of many treasures, the paralipomena of Watson’s writings - envelopes bearing stamps with the head of Victoria, others that of Edward V11, a copy in Watson’s hand of a letter in his name in the Edinburgh Evening Dispatch dated September 24 1900, a parchment carrying the signature of a British Ambassador’s wife in Peking commencing ‘Yuan Shih Kai is the Chinaman of the future’, a leather-bound tome embossed with the Karolinska Institute’s emblem in gold, a text on the aperient property of Tamarix gallica, and two small Moroccan red-leather boxes illuminated with fiery dragons, filled with a mix of powdered jade, cinnabar and hematite, inscribed ‘Elixir of Life’ in Chinese pictogrammes on the lids.

The Gladstone also contained an Addendum compiled in 1912 in Watson’s scribbled hand, headed ‘further notes referring to the Scotney Castle matter’, now in its rightful place below. In an engaging marginal note Watson writes, ‘no collection of my trifling achievements would be complete without an account of this very singular business.’ He adds, ‘I hope my readers enjoy taking the journey with me as much as its end.’

As do I.

Park Farm Oast

Burwash

East Sussex

March 2012