Sherlock Holmes and the Dead Boer at Scotney Castle

We Journey To Crick’s End

As I dressed, I observed through the window how the first leaves were flourishing on the solitary plane tree gracing the yard behind our house. Standing in the small dressing-room preparing for our journey, I could not have guessed even in a second life-time what we were about to encounter.

Holmes’ head appeared around the door.

‘Watson, make haste. Now we are on our feet, let us catch the eleven-fifty express. It takes us to Tunbridge Wells. From there we can catch the local train to Etchingham. I would suggest Park Lane and the Mall rather than the Regent’s Street and Piccadilly Circus at this time of day.’

At this his head disappeared.

‘But Holmes,’ I called out after him, ‘we can hardly arrive on their doorstep three hours early - surely we must inform them?’

The head reappeared.

‘If we are to catch the eleven-fifty we cannot afford to divert to the West Strand Telegraph-office. We shall arrive at Tunbridge Wells quite soon after one o’ clock. There we can send a telegram to invite Mr. Dudeney and his motorised barouche to meet us at Etchingham railway station. That will give our host at least a half-hour’s warning of our arrival.’

The head disappeared, only to reappear a moment later. ‘And instruct our cabby not to take a main road if a parallel side street will serve our turn.’

The head disappeared, yet again to return. ‘And have the cabman face his transport the other way as though we have an assignation on Hampstead Heath or intend to take an hour or two at leisure in the Regent’s Park.’

Hurriedly I reached for a pair of Balmorals.

I am a prompt and ready traveller. Hard schooling in the colonial life of Australia augmented by rough-and-tumble Army camps in Afghanistan readied me for the most sudden of trips. In less than the quarter hour I was dressed. The sharp sound of horses’ hoofs and carriage wheels grating against the kerb announced the arrival of our transport. In place of the well-appointed brougham Holmes had wished for, the demand for carriages under threat of rain had left us ‘beggars choosers’. I descended the stairs to greet the cabman at the threshold where, with trusty leather valise in hand, I awaited Holmes amid the smell of Brasso and Monkey Brand soap and perspiration. On my exit from our lodgings, our amber-eyed observer withdrew sharply a yard or two, like a land-crab at bay. He stood staring intently in my direction. On instruction the cabman turned his horses to face north. I hoisted one shoe to the footboard from which vantage point I could engage him in light conversation on the gossip from Westminster and the density of traffic.

Holmes came down the stairs. He glanced in the long looking-glass in the hall, checking collar and cuff and, with a touch of vanity, the lie of his silver-brown hair. He emerged seconds later, after an inquisitive glance at the Family Herald lying upon the hall-table (the love romances, photographs of pretty horse-breakers and the cookery pages were Mrs. Hudson’s favourite reading).

We were lucky to arrive at the station in time. Holmes’ train-catching is an anxiety to his travelling companions. It was a signal achievement on the cabman’s part, propelling us like the sun god Apollo driving his chariot to light the sky. Down magnificent Park Lane and along the Mall we rattled, ever onward. Our final drive to the departures area terminated in a triumphant flurry of foaming beasts as though preceded by fife and drum and reined in by post-boys in the boot.

The great train pulled away from Platform 6 with a sharp exhalation of steam. Aboard with my travelling companion at such propinquity I could examine Holmes’ choice of outer clothing in some detail. He had selected the rare Poshteen Long Coat. The bulky piece with its many flaps and pockets and promise of distant, icy mountain ranges contrasted oddly with the ear-flapped travelling cap clapped on his head where for myself I had chosen a glossy topper. With the Poshteen Long Coat now open, I noted that he wearing his accurate gold watch for only the second time in our long relationship, the watch-key and a gold sovereign attached to a massive Double Albert chain. The watch and chain together with two or three tie-pins and a snuffbox of old gold adorned with a great amethyst at the centre of the lid were as far as I could tell the only heirlooms Holmes possessed, apart from a battered escritoire.

I leant towards him ready to enquire whether he was wearing the Order of the Legion of Honour which would indicate to me his estimation of the occasion but before I could commence my enquiry my old friend took out a pair of black night-spectacles from a pocket sewed inside the cavernous coat. He popped them on his nose, loosened his cravat, and lay as dead for the next ten minutes.

The silence enabled me to contemplate the unexpected and well-remunerated invitation of the day.

‘So,’ Holmes spoke up suddenly, like a corpse in Shakespeare, quickening and dying and quickening. ‘At last we wander in the footsteps of Dickens.’

At London Bridge he removed the night-spectacles.

‘I see you have brought Roth’s gazetteer,’ he remarked with a nod of satisfaction, divining it was the reason I had brought a Gladstone alongside the medical bag containing my armamentarium. He replaced the night-spectacles and fell asleep again.

He awoke as the train arrived at Chislehurst. I remarked how much I looked forward to sight of Siviter’s Art collection, especially ‘The Mill’ by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. In a most off-handed manner Holmes responded, ‘I am sure the master of the house will oblige.’

I frowned. ‘Are you not in the least interested in pictorial Art?’

‘Watson,’ Holmes replied amiably, ‘no and yes. I am not, yet I am. Art is so much part of the human firmament I would be failing my profession to overlook it.’

With such conversation as I imagine Boswell undertook with Dr. Johnson on their tour of the Scottish Highlands we wound our way into Kent.

Not long past Chislehurst a railway guard went by. ‘Sevenoaks next,’ he called out. ‘Sevenoaks, Sevenoaks. Private visitors for Mr. Whitehead of Down House alight here. Down House. Alight here for Down House.’

‘Isn’t that where...?’ I exclaimed.

‘Yes, Darwin’s old abode,’ Holmes responded.

At the mention of Down House, Holmes was spurred to ruminate, looking out at the Kentish landscape.

‘I shall confess to you something I have not confessed before,’ my companion began, in conspiratorial fashion. ‘Had Darwin not preceded me, had I not, when very young, devoured The Origin of Species, I believe I would have become a Naturalist myself. It was Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection which led me to develop identical techniques in my own profession. They say Shakespeare killed off a thousand unborn playwrights. It is not too much to declare that had Darwin become a Consulting Detective and not a Naturalist, such was his skill at observation, absorption and induction, I would have been doomed at best to second place in the annals of crime - but then I would have become a Naturalist!’

My companion halted his remarkable epiphany on Darwin. ‘Come, Watson,’ he said jovially. ‘Let us have a brief account of our audience’s history and pursuits. Let us attack the gazetteer.’

I reached for the Gladstone and drew from it the large volume, placing it opened at random on my lap.

‘First,’ he commanded, ‘our host.’

‘That’s the official part,’ I informed Holmes. ‘The second part is culled from a variety of opinions for which, in no uncertain terms, the gazetteer states it is not responsible but reports solely for our prurient interest.’ I paused, raising my eyebrows. ‘I must presume this would be of no concern to you, Holmes?’

‘Read on, my good friend,’ Holmes responded, with an airy wave. ‘It is ever the malicious and ill-natured which by habit and profession we so naturally find more captivating than mere age, height, weight and office.’

I continued, ‘Heroes: Van Beers, Roosevelt.

Allies in the Press, Gwynne (Standard), Blumenfeld (Express), Maxse (National Review).

Uncertain relations with the Germans, Irish and Quakers.

Contributed patriotic material to Daily Mail during South African War, i.e. ‘The Absent-Minded Beggar’.

Leading scourge of Liberalism and democracy.

Lost Sterling £2,000 in the crash of the Oriental Banking Corporation.

Quoted in Daily Mail in piece titled The New Jeremiah that England is ‘slipping down the broad, easy decline which will lead to our extinction as a Great Power with an influence to exert on the side of the angels, with a civilising tradition to plant all the world over’.’

‘That,’ I said in conclusion, ’is Siviter.

Holmes dug into a cavernous pocket and took out a tin of Egyptian tobacco, Abdulla’s Mix at an aristocratic tenpence the ounce. He preferred Abdulla’s even over fine-cut Virginia Leaf or Grosvenor mixture at eight pence an ounce. Holmes had, I reflected warmly, subscribed fully to the Kipling League’s promise of fee and all expenses.

He pointed at the open gazetteer.

‘Now to Van Beers, if you please.’

‘S...T...U...’ I muttered, turning the large pages to ‘V’. ‘Here we are, Stanley Van Beers:

Bachelor. Born 1854. German extraction.

Oxford University.

1880, Published abstract on Julius Caesar’s military campaigns, largely the battles of Thapsus, Pharsalus, Zela and Munda.

1892, Published Briton or Hun in Egypt?, arguing for greater English involvement in Egypt’s affairs.

1897, appointed high commissioner for South Africa and Governor-General of Cape Colony. His efforts to gain political rights for British settlers in Boer territories heightened a growing tension between the rival groups and helped precipitate (1899) the South African War.

Developing a doctrine of federalism designed to revitalise the concept of Empire.

1902, Created Viscount. Honorary colonel in the Kaffarian Rifles.

Clubs, White’s, Army & Navy etc.

‘And the informal?’ Holmes enquired.

‘Passion for order and efficiency. Love of cut-and-dried solutions. Contempt for British Party politics. Respect for authoritarianism.

Member of The Kipling League.

Heroes: Bismarck, Frederick the Great, Sir Hiram Maxim.

Described by close female acquaintance as ‘one moment passionately loving and the next aloof and unapproachable, the most remarkable character of cunning, caution, sophistry and nobility one could imagine.’

Allies in the Press: proprietors of the Daily Mail, Morning Post, The Speaker, Pall Mall Gazette. The Johannesburg Star (Geoffrey Dawson).

‘Imperialist with a missionary purpose.’

To the Daily Telegraph his refusal to bend to liberal whim was taken to display ‘an original force of character which rejects all moulding by force of circumstance’.

Detractors: Daily News, Manchester Guardian.’

After I related this, Holmes asked, ‘And does this book of reference have an entry on that little-known personage Sherlock Holmes?’

‘Fourteen pages,’ I replied with satisfaction, ‘full of your awards and sub-titles including Honorary Fellowship in the Royal Society of Chemistry. It even précis your monograph on the hands of slaters, sailors, cork-cutters, compositors, weavers and diamond-polishers.’

He nodded at the valise. ‘Did you also bring the Cassell’s Concise Cyclopaedia?’

‘I did, Holmes,’ I affirmed, reaching into the Gladstone for the tome. ‘And heavy it is.’

‘What does it say about the Kipling League?’

I turned to the ‘Ks’.

Holmes stared thoughtfully out of the carriage window. ‘Such men exist to do harm to their enemies,’ he commented. ‘It would be hard to throw light into the shadowed corners of such a league.’

He held up a hand, deep-set eyes upward, as though enquiring of the Deity. ‘Does this invitation arise from more than damp weather, I ask?’

‘Holmes,’ I said, amused. ‘Can you not accept we are but a diversion from the tedium of the countryside on a rainy day, what more? You underestimate your fame.’

‘Watson, neither Siviter nor Van Beers are idle or uncomplicated men. As to my public speaking,’ Holmes continued, looking across at me ruefully, ‘you have thrown me to the lions by your insistence.’

‘Our Mrs. Hudson, who regularly visits the vaudeville, has given me an invaluable tip, Holmes,’ I assured him.

‘Which is?’

‘Don’t turn your back on the audience.’

‘Why not?’ Holmes asked, mystified.

‘That’s when they spatter you with rotten eggs.’

Our train entered a lengthy tunnel, damping down the sound of our laughter. Holmes sprang to the window to shut out the smoke and steam. We emerged and immediately pulled to a halt alongside a platform at Tunbridge Wells. A station attendant took the form and two half-crowns and set off for the nearby telegraph office. We crossed a foot-bridge to the local train on a nearby platform. Less than thirty minutes later, announcing itself with a shrill blast of steam, our train arrived at Etchingham.

The small country railway station stood at the bottom of a long, twisting, steep road down the valley side from the village of Hurst Green. Not far from where we alighted rose a sturdy manorial fourteenth-century church topped by a copper vane. Rabbits hopped among the crumbling tombstones. Above us, a kestrel hung in the air, hunting for voles and mice secreted among the thistles and long grass of the river-bank some 30 yards away. Yellow Coltsfoots decked the rusty lines. In the field adjacent to the station, grazing almost to the platform edge, roamed black-faced sheep and dark red cattle. My immediate impression just two hours from the bustle, noise, dust, smell and flurry of Baker Street was of quietness and beauty, a countryside forged with craft and care by the millennial hand of Man. Soon the brantgeese would be arriving from their Arctic home.

We remained for a moment on the platform in front of a large enamelled advertisement exhorting us to purchase Abdulla Superb Cigarettes (Turkish, Egyptian, Virginia). The train left us with a minatory scream.

I looked across the tracks to the village side, reached by a pedestrian bridge. Commercial wagons were assembled in a small public space. A smart private coach-and-pair awaited its master, the coachman perched high on its box. At its side stood a dray drawn by two dappled horses, their tails tied up with ribbons. Tucked among the disciplined group of horse-drawn wagons like a monster visitor from an alien world stood a large green motor-car, the driver at the wheel. He wore a coat made of dreadnought against the warm light rain. Assuming, rightly, this was Dudeney, we waved to indicate our arrival and began to cross the railway tracks.