Death on a Pale Horse (15 page)

Our visitor wore an uncomfortably wide white collar, so starched and shiny that it looked like gloss-painted enamel. He eased his chin forward over this rather aggressively, like a man determined not to be put off.

“Mr. Holmes, I want nothing for myself. I bear a message from the late Captain Brenton Carey to anyone who will listen. Scotland Yard would not do so; the War Office will certainly not.”

“Dr. Watson and I will, however?
”

“You shall judge, sir. I was with Captain Carey when he died. On the previous Sunday, I had come from Lahore to address a prayer-meeting in the garrison chapel at Hyderabad. These were soldiers about to leave for Quetta and the battlefield. I had not yet returned to my duties in Lahore.”

Samuel Dordona paused just long enough to let Holmes understand that he would not be pushed, as they say. When he told his story, it was as if he had rehearsed it in his mind many times on the voyage home, fearful of forgetting any detail.

“Captain Carey and I had known one another for some time. I had a high regard for him. On the Tuesday afternoon, I received a note from his wife asking me to come at once to the bungalow, which they occupied in the camp. You will know from the press that his fatigue party had been striking bell tents vacated by ‘B' Company the day before.”

“We have read the press reports of the inquest.”

“It was said in evidence that as the floor of a bell-tent was being lifted, one man in the fatigue party lost his grip because his foot slipped on the muddy ground. Did they have that detail in the gazette?”

“Not that it was muddy, I think.”

“I walked on the same ground the next evening. It was bone-dry, sir. We had had no rain for more than a month by then. There was no mud. Nothing that would cause a man to slip that evening or the previous day.”

“Rain, Mr. Dordona, is not the earth's sole lubricant. But pray continue.”

I intervened on my client's behalf.

“You know a good deal about soldiering in that area,” I said to Mr. Dordona. “Had you ever known such an accident happen before?”

He looked at me and shook his head. “Never before, sir. However, when working with a heavy wagon-team, the first rule, of course, is that nothing must startle them.”

“But you were not an eye-witness?” Holmes suggested. “That is to say, you were not at hand when Captain Carey fell into their path?”

“Mr. Holmes, I spoke to two men who had been witnesses. They could only tell me what you already know. By the time I arrived at the bungalow, the regimental surgeon had attended my friend. Even as a medical man, he could only give me his best conjecture. Everything depended on the damage to the intestines. He hoped and believed that there was no rupture.”

“If it is not too much trouble,” said Holmes casually, “would you please write down the surgeon's name? Indeed, would you write down all the witnesses? I think we had better have a list of the
dramatis personae
.”

I was alarmed at my friend's tone, which seemed part scepticism and part downright churlishness.

“Their names? I do not think …” Our visitor was plainly upset at this novel suggestion that he should be the one to take a copy of the evidence he was giving.

“If you please!” Holmes insisted, as if about to sigh with weariness.

“I will do it,” I said, taking out pencil and notebook and wondering what the devil my colleague was up to. “Leave Mr. Dordona to tell his story.”

Samuel Dordona followed my pencil.

“The surgeon was Major Callaghan. Mrs. Carey you already know.”

“The surgeon remained with Captain Carey?” I asked.

“At first, Major Callaghan remained, but he had other duties. Annie Carey or I watched by her husband that night. The captain slipped in and out of consciousness; but when he was awake, his words were never rambling. It was only the inquest which suggested they were—and that was wrong. Once he had woken, he had complete and lucid command of his faculties. He knew what he was saying as clearly as you and I do at this moment.”

There was a silence and then Holmes spoke, still rather coldly:

“You, sir, are the minister of an overseas medical mission. You do not yet claim, I take it, to be a medical man? Or do you?”

I flinched again at his tone. Mr. Dordona sat like stone on the edge of his chair, upright in threadbare clerical suit, hands clasped, dark eyes intently on Holmes, black hair absurdly sculpted in its ridge-tile peak.

“Sir, I have used my furlough to study for the First Aid Diploma. I hope to be of some extra use to my people when I return to India. That is all.”

“You were not called by the court of inquiry into the accident?” I asked.

Mr. Dordona glanced at each of us in turn, as if wondering whom to trust.

“That court of inquiry was held quite some time after the inquest. I was on the high seas by then, returning to England. I should not have been called anyway. I had no conclusive evidence to offer. I was not, as you say, an eye-witness. What Captain Carey said to me during that last night could not be corroborated and was perhaps best not repeated in public just then. Unfortunately, the regimental surgeon had already assured the inquest that the injured man was never more than semiconscious after the accident. In other words, rambling. That word again! I carried no credit against that, gentlemen, and so I have kept my evidence for you.”

“Tell us about the prognosis after the accident,” I asked him. “Do you think Captain Carey knew that he was going to die—or was likely to die? As a matter of law, that might make a real difference to the validity of his uncorroborated words as evidence.”

“Not at first, I think. To begin with, Major Callaghan thought he would pull through and indeed said so. He said that as long as the intestine was not ruptured, there was hope. He instructed the orderly to use hot fomentations to relieve the abdominal pain. But nothing more.”

“As I should have done,” I said approvingly.

“His wife, Annie, however, was very distressed by his condition. Poor soul, she asked if a mild dose of laudanum could be given to ease the unhappy man's ordeal. The surgeon advised against laudanum. It would relieve the pain, he told her, but it would also mask any further symptoms.”

“That was correct again,” I said, “so long as there was still hope for him.”

“The rest of that first day, it still seemed there was no rupture. The doctor's exact words were that it would be looking on the black side to think there was such serious damage. That night we were advised to keep applying hot fomentations and to administer sips of hot water. But poor Carey looked dreadful by this time, eyes sunk and cheeks drawn in. I believe there was what is known as the
facies Hippocratica
, so the inquest called it, a sure sign of the worst. I saw that for myself. Next morning, his condition had not improved. However, they administered turpentine internally.”

I shook my head. “That would do no good. It would be too late. Did his temperature sink?”

Samuel Dordona nodded. “It continued to sink after that. Of course, the diagnosis now changed. His intestine had been ruptured after all. The surgeon acknowledged that it was peritonitis, for which nothing could be done. He explained to me in confidence that in an hour or two Captain Carey would lose consciousness and by that evening he would probably be dead. So it was.”

There was a moment of silence before Holmes inquired more gently, “And in the meantime you had become his confessor?”

“I simply happened to be with him for the greater part of the night, Mr. Holmes. Poor Brenton Carey would have talked to anyone. His wife, Annie, was exhausted by then, and I persuaded her to go and get some sleep.”

How often have I, as a physician, known such situations! However poor and shabby he might appear, Samuel Dordona had been a good friend to the dying man and his wife in these misfortunes.

“During that night,” he went on, “Captain Carey talked to me. He was in pain. From time to time he dozed fitfully. But I swear that he spoke of what he knew. The only thing he could not tell me was how exactly he came to sustain the accident that killed him. It had come upon him like a thunderbolt from the blue and knocked the senses out of him. Those were his words. He came round to find himself in the bungalow. The shock of the incident—and the morphine he was at length given—fogged his memory.”

“But he spoke of the Prince Imperial?” my friend prompted him.

“He did, Mr. Holmes. I wrote down the exact words he used, immediately afterwards. I committed them first to memory as best I could, and then to the flames. I have a good memory, you know. It comes as a matter of habit. It would never do for a minister to read out a sermon, let alone a prayer, that he could not otherwise remember. In those hours, Captain Carey told me a story that he swore he had told to no one before. Not even to his own wife, for fear that the knowledge might put her in danger. But knowing he was likely to die, he was determined that the truth of murder must not die with him.”

Holmes brightened up. He opened his cigarette case and leant forward to offer it to our guest. “Murder, Mr. Dordona? Indeed? Pray continue your most interesting account.”

“Captain Carey's patrol had ridden out on that day, when the prince met his death. So much had been done to protect this young man that the idea of his being killed went round the Blood River camp like a joke. A few days earlier, he and Captain Carey came into the camp just as General Sir Evelyn Wood was mounting. The general called out to him ‘Well, sir, you've not been assegaied yet?' The prince laughed and called back, ‘No, sir! Not yet!' You see what I mean?”

“Who rode with him on that last day?” I asked.

Mr. Dordona now intoned his account, rather like a child who has learnt his lesson and must repeat it.

“Captain Carey had a patrol of troopers from Bettington's Light Horse and another six Basuto riders. They rode out over grassland at first, the Prince Imperial and Major Grenfell at their head. Major Grenfell kept them company until the point where he turned off to another destination. They had also brought a native guide who could translate for them if it became necessary. They were following a ridge with an open landscape below them. They would have seen any tribesman a long way off.”

“The tribes had no horses?”

Samuel Dordona shook his head. “No, doctor. The warriors go on foot. They could never have caught up with a mounted patrol. When Major Grenfell went off on his own business, he made another joke to the prince, something about not getting shot. The prince laughed again and said something like ‘I know Brenton Carey will take very good care of me.'”

“Afterwards they stopped for lunch?”

“Before that, they took a wide sweep of the surrounding countryside through field-glasses. They were on the top of a hill, at the end of the ridge they had been following. The landscape was still deserted. Even a distant sound would have carried well in such a quiet place. They made sketches, mapping the land around them for an hour or so, until it was time for lunch. Just below them was a deserted village of five native huts. The escort searched the huts but found only three native dogs running wild. No one had been there recently. The troopers fetched water from the river and made a fire. Then they brewed coffee and ate their rations.”

“How long were they there?”

“By all accounts, about three hours. Though Captain Carey was uneasy at remaining so long, the prince was in no hurry to go. Carey was the senior officer in command, but it was not easy for him to overrule the Prince Imperial. That was at the root of the tragedy. The prince treated this survey as a picnic rather than a patrol. Just then, the native guide reappeared and said that he thought he had seen a single tribesman coming over the far hill.”

Mr. Dordona lowered his eyes, as if to prepare us for what lay in store.

“Even this was no cause for alarm at such a distance. All the same, Captain Carey insisted that they should gather their horses. They did so and began to mount. The prince himself called out ‘Prepare to mount.' Just as if he had put himself in command. Each man had his foot in the stirrup and one hand gripping the saddle. At that moment there was a crash of rifle-fire, though the shots went wide. The tribesmen lack experience of firearms and are poor marksmen. However, several of the horses were startled and tried to bolt. Then thirty or forty Zulus burst towards the patrol from the tall grass just short of the village.”

“Thirty or forty tribesmen who could not possibly have been there?” I asked.

“I cannot see how they could have got there—so many of them. Nor could poor Carey. The place had been searched for a possible ambush.”

“Indeed,” said Holmes quietly, in the tone of one who needs no more evidence. But Samuel Dordona was not to be denied a hearing.

“The first casualty was Rogers, one of the troopers. He lost hold of his horse when the animal bolted at the explosion of the rifles. All the rest managed to restrain their mounts in one way or another. Of course, Rogers was helpless on foot. It seems he must have run back into the cover of the huts and fired his carbine before one of tribesmen pierced him with a spear. A few of the Zulus were carrying Martini-Henrys captured at Isandhlwana, but they fought mostly with their spears to which they were accustomed. One of them then hit Trooper Abel in the back with an assegai and brought him down from his horse. He was probably dead by the time he hit the ground.”

“And the Prince Imperial?” Holmes inquired thoughtfully: “Where was he in all this confusion?”

“The prince caught his horse before it could bolt, Mr. Holmes, and he was a first-rate rider. He made as if to vault straight into the saddle. He had done it hundreds of times and it should have been child's-play to him. When Captain Carey saw this, he never doubted that the prince must have mounted. So Brenton Carey turned and led what he believed to be his entire patrol to safety at a gallop—excepting Rogers and Abel. He swore to me again on his last night alive that he had been sure the prince must be with them. Looking back presently, he saw Rogers and Abel lying dead but no one else.”