Sherlock Holmes and the Dead Boer at Scotney Castle

Preface

A most unusual circumstance has obliged me to write this preface, namely my great friend Sherlock Holmes’ refusal to permit the publication of the affair I have titled Sherlock Holmes and the Dead Boer at Scotney Castle. Holmes’ eyes narrowed when he told me our friendship would be gravely imperilled if I placed these events before my readers. He even ordered me to destroy such notes as I had managed to scribble during that extraordinary day. I refused to agree to any such undertaking.

The Dead Boer is in my estimation the most unforgettable adventure of our many years together, an extraordinary encounter with the rich and powerful Kipling League in Kent and Sussex in the early summer of 1904. If we accept Holmes’ own description of these events, no other case or crime was more swiftly but intricately devised, of greater complexity in timing and conduct, or carried through with such ingenuity and aplomb.

From the moment I refused to obey his command, Holmes became much less communicative. Weeks passed without a direct word from him. He began to spend more and more time at the isolated farmhouse purchased two years before near King’s Standing, in the county of Sussex, busying himself constructing dew ponds and purchasing Italian bees.

For some months I attempted to keep our friendship alive. I continued to visit him on the farm where in secret I constructed a scriptorium by a cheerful brook (or gill in the local dialect) near to a hatch of Old World Swallowtail butterflies, as far away as possible from the hives of Apis mellifera ligustica assembled in his meadows. These hives with their odd, sloping edifices had the appearance of long-departed Roman ‘tortoises’ or the Square formation of the Brigade of Foot Guards in battle.

I call it a scriptorium because that was its purpose. In reality it hardly deserved to be called a hen-cree. Here I began to turn my notes for the Dead Boer into a manifesto if only for posterity. To explain my half-day absences, I carried a gun wherever I strolled, informing Holmes I was shooting for the pot, though the Sussex rabbit seemed tame after the wild goat of the Khyber Pass.

The Dead Boer is more of a chronique intime than many of the earlier stories. I most often call it ‘The Perplexing Matter’ rather than ‘Case’ because no formal enquiry was ever conducted after Holmes and I fled in disarray from the débâcle. If I appear inordinately proud of the scientific research which informed the Watson Codex I beg indulgence for a former army doctor’s vanity.

To sustain me while ensconced in my hutch, Mrs. Keppell, the same tidy widow who brought Holmes his food, dressed me something filling (and, in winter, warming) - great hunches of bread and cheese and a bottle of cordial confection. She was a daughter of rich soil, a mulier fortis, of ample white hair and a grandly-modelled face, much given to explosions of laughter. With the passage of the seasons (and my shooting) the menu grew more extensive. Venison. Partridge. Over-ripe pheasant. Jugged Hare. For an occasional special treat, Rother Rabbit with broccoli was followed by Lady Pettus’ biscakes.

When winter set in, I decided against a grate, terrified that fire would reduce my notes and documents to ash. I made cups of coffee at a spirit-lamp and endured many long cold afternoons, feet inside a pair of cardboard boxes. When completed, I placed the work in my portfolio which I returned to its hiding-place at 221b Baker Street under our landlady’s care, alongside the Beaumont-Adams revolver.

When rumours spread that I was attempting to publish the Dead Boer against Holmes’ wishes, some members of the public wrote to me questioning my integrity, taking his side against me. Why, they wanted to know, did I try to ‘spring into print’ with the Dead Boer like an eager Globe reporter, against the combined wishes of Holmes and the Editor of The Strand and even the editors of McClure’s and Collier’s Weekly? They asked what triggered this disloyalty? A correspondent from Trincomalee inquired with Buddhist concern, what caused this change in my character? I informed them that they could find the answer to their enquiry in Peter Lely’s painting of Oliver Cromwell in the Tate Gallery.

On Holmes’ departure for Northern Italy to inspect a dozen hives of a sub-species of the Western Honey bee, I resumed my early interest in paintings and Chinese pottery, attending excellent lunchtime lectures at the Tate. I find from my notebook this was in August 1904. In the course of a lecture, our guide brought us to the portrait of General Cromwell. ‘Despite the fashion of the time,’ she told us, ‘unlike the portraits of Charles the First, Cromwell demanded to be portrayed as he really was, ‘warts and all’.’ The guide’s well-practiced and casual statement jolted me like a shock from the Electrophorus electricus, the South American apex predator. I stared hard at the Great Protector. The warts were there for all to see. In that instant I determined my obligation too was to paint Holmes ‘warts and all’. I had a mission of trust to my public. It was not my role to be a chanticleer or hagiolater but a Boswell. I would publish Holmes’ defeats and imperfections alongside his successes and be damned.

At this fateful decision I left the Tate. Back at my lodgings, I withdrew my portfolio and settled down to examine its contents. I laid aside the notes of those cases I could never publish including the ‘Foxy’ Ferdinand affair. This account of Balkan intrigue would rock the shaky edifice of European monarchy if it were to come to the world’s attention. As I leafed through my portfolio, the title I sought leapt from the ‘suspended’ folder and re-engaged my attention.

I was the more encouraged to ready the Dead Boer for publication after my friend Lomax, sublibrarian at the London Library in St James’ Square, told me my chronicles were becoming the most popular of the works they held. At one point The Hound of the Baskervilles was nearly the equal in bookshop sales to Conrad’s Typhoon. One man wrote to me during the Anglo-Boer War, ‘The stories are greatly appreciated in the midst of mud and rain and shells, and all that could make life out here in South Africa depressing’. The Editor of the London Mercury told me I was outselling all other publications in Kazakhstan and the Falkland Islands. When Lomax added that my chronicles had become the ‘birthright of all Britons’, my face flushed with pride.

Here follows the unabridged adventure I have titled Sherlock Holmes and the Dead Boer at Scotney Castle.