Death on a Pale Horse (23 page)

“And the red ribbon?” I asked.

“That, my dear Watson, is the medal ribbon of a crimson sash. Nowadays I believe the sash itself is worn over the right shoulder. Customs have varied. At all events, it is the cordon of the Grand Cross of the Légion d'Honneur. It is, perhaps, the most celebrated chivalric order in the modern world, instituted by the Prince Imperial's immortal great-uncle in 1802. The missing medal belonging to this ribbon has a silver star of five double points surrounding the head of the first Emperor Napoleon. In this case, its silver star now lies somewhere in the African dust.”

There was a silence in the cubby-hole office. Then Sherlock Holmes resumed.

“It was no ordinary death. To all his supporters, perhaps to the majority of the French people by now, this young man was Emperor of France, Louis Napoleon, and therefore Grand Master of the Order. As a mere soldier, however, it seems that the poor fellow was as good as dead the moment he rode out on his last morning.”

I shook my head. “Cutting the harness could not ensure that the prince would fall to his death. No murderer would trust to such a chance device as that. It might have held for a few seconds longer.”

To my surprise, it was Albert Gibbons who replied. The handsomely whiskered face still regarded me sadly, as if I might have been a persistent member of the defaulters' squad on a barrack square.

“No one trusted to that, sir. You will observe that several of the tribesmen carried rifles captured at Isandhlwana. The aim mattered nothing. The shooting was necessary only to bring about the disorder which followed and to scatter the horses.”

For me, this was far too simple an explanation. “If the prince mounted safely, as almost all the others did, what chance had these untrained tribesmen of bringing him down?”

The sad eyes now regarded me with a little more sympathy for my brave effort.

“You may be sure, sir, if shots proved necessary to kill him in the saddle, they would easily be fired by a concealed marksman who could bring a rider down with a single bullet at twice that range. A hunter. The credit for the killing would still go to the tribes. The identity of the actual assassin would be perfectly covered by the presence of these tribesmen firing in all directions. As it happened, not a single bullet from a marksman was needed. The strap broke.”

My mind went back to our visitor on the previous afternoon. “A marksman? Concealed with his weapon on a hill-top overlooking the skirmish?”

So much for the stories of a lone horseman in his saddle, on the ridge above the kraal. Several further pieces of the puzzle fell into their proper places.

Albert Gibbons nodded. “If the prince was brought down from his saddle by a bullet, sir, it would surely be called a lucky shot by one of the tribesmen. For who else was there to shoot him but the tribes, according to the courtroom evidence? They had thought of everything.”

I was about to ask who “they” might have been, but Holmes answered him first.

“Someone had thought of it, Mr. Gibbons. Someone who could shoot the heart out of the ace of spades with five successive shots at forty paces. But, as it happens, the very thing they planned for took place. The leather stitching broke and the hero fell among his assailants.”

I looked at the broken strap and the dried blood on the scarlet ribbon of the Légion d'Honneur. “But surely the conspirators would destroy the evidence of their crime, rather than preserve it?”

Holmes shook his head.

“I think not, Watson. Not these conspirators. These are hunters of big game. Such items are hunters' trophies. Some time ago you were kind enough to entertain me with the story of a subaltern's court-martial. That tale had been told to you by a pair of jackanapes on a train from Bombay to Lahore. I recall your account of the trial of a certain captain—the self-styled Colonel Rawdon Moran. After he had been branded with the Mark of the Beast on the orders of a man whose wife he had destroyed, Moran's last words to his former comrades were, ‘I'll be revenged upon the whole pack of you.' Correct me if I have got that wrong.”

“You are entirely correct, Holmes, as the stories of revenge have been told. First at Isandhlwana; second at the death of the Prince Imperial; third in the Transvaal and the murder of Andreis Reuter.”

My friend gave a humourless chuckle.

“Then let us take the scoundrel at his word. However, those who truly relish revenge cannot enjoy its delicacy unless the world knows that they have taken it. The most evil vengeance is often delayed for that reason. As the Italian proverb has it, revenge is a dish which persons of refinement prefer to taste cold. The most exquisite satisfaction of cruelty lies in knowing that those who suffer should know exactly why they are made to suffer—and by whom. They should also know that they are helpless to remedy their agonies of mind—and that those agonies will taunt them and plague them for the rest of their lives. Those who injure them must possess their minds for ever. You understand? Such triumphs are conclusive to the satisfaction of the psychopathic mind. Such are the murderers who taunt the police to ‘catch me if you can.' You will find them in every nation and in each layer of civilisation.”

“And that is the evidence we have before us?”

Again he gave a short laugh.

“What you in your wholesome way call evidence, Watson, is something else to them. These trophies of hatred belong in the world of mania. They are to be displayed, not concealed. They must be flourished in the face of defeated enemies, exhibited like the booty of war or its helpless prisoners before they are put to death at the conqueror's feast. The vanquished heroes in this case will be made to wish they had died a hundred deaths before they ever took up arms against Rawdon Moran and his kind. You understand now?”

We both turned to Albert Gibbons. The sergeant brushed a hand across his whiskers. His pale blue eyes still watered a little. He had listened patiently to every word of my friend's denouncement. He now spoke quietly but firmly.

“Whatever I know, gentlemen, you shall hear. That is all that I can now do for Captain Joshua Sellon. Until I was pensioned last year, I served in the Provost Marshal's corps at Portsmouth. To this day I remain at the disposal of those who choose to put their confidence in me. Sometimes I run little errands and sometimes I listen for information. Most of the time I am only the commissionaire of Landor Mansions. It is better that way. The Crown estates being the landlord here, I like to think that I still owe my employment to Her Majesty.”

Then came the rest of the story.

“Captain Sellon was one of my gentlemen for the last few months. I entered apartment 49 in Carlyle Mansions last night before he had yet arrived from his post at Aldershot Garrison. I had kept my eyes open upon these buildings, seeing who came and who went. I felt, though I could not prove it, that our enemies were closing on us. Not much was ever kept in that room, but I had every reason to believe that the broken strap and the French medal ribbon were there.”

“Why?” Holmes inquired.

“They were being kept for the major so that you might see them today. Acting as sentry, I took it upon myself to take them into custody during the small hours of this morning. No one else was in the apartment at the time. Captain Sellon arrived a little before seven. I was to report to him. I did not go across at once. The less we were seen together the better. My duty now is to turn these so-called trophies into evidence against the men who contrived so many deaths. I believe I did right.”

“To be sure, you did,” said Holmes reassuringly.

“So many deaths, sir. Mrs. Major Putney-Wilson's, Colonel Pulleine's, the Prince Imperial's, Captain Brenton Carey's among them. And now Captain Sellon's.”

“How were you and Captain Sellon found out?” I asked.

Sergeant Gibbons shrugged.

“Given the time, it would not have been impossible for our enemies to discover who occupied those mansion rooms and for what purpose. A good many leases in quieter parts like this are known to be Army tenancies. Men like Captain Sellon do not rest. They move on, always a little ahead. This time he did not move quickly enough.”

He glanced down at his hand and then looked up.

“I fear that the captain was killed this morning because he could not surrender these souvenirs to a man who stood over him with a gun—and he would not have surrendered them even if he could. I am to blame for that.”

“But where did Captain Sellon get these gruesome souvenirs from?” I asked.

“From Mrs. Captain Brenton Carey. They waited for her in a postal packet on her return to England. There was no letter, just the assurance that neither the death of her husband nor that of the Prince Imperial was a stroke of misfortune. To make her live in the knowledge that she had been terribly wronged and there was nothing she could do about it, to the delight of her persecutor. To put her on his trail, to occupy her thoughts and dreams until he was nearer to her than the husband she had lost.”

“And they had not counted on the poor lady taking these treasures to the Provost Marshal as evidence in a criminal conspiracy,” I said hopefully.

But Provost Sergeant of Marines Albert Gibbons, as I still think of him, demurred at this.

“They had not counted upon the friendship and loyalty which had existed between the families of Carey and Putney-Wilson. They had not counted upon the good lady using a friend who had also suffered, using him as an ally to seek the assistance of yourself and Mr. Sherlock Holmes. That was a miscalculation I hope they will come to regret.”

“The medal ribbon and the holster strap,” I asked: “What is to become of them now that you have them?”

Albert Gibbons smiled gently at me.

“As to that, sir, I have instructions to follow. Mr. Lestrade knew nothing of them before he came over here with you this afternoon. With the greatest respect, sir, Mr. Lestrade is a civilian and the matter in hand is one for soldiers. By tonight, that strap and the ribbon will be put away carefully. Put away where it would take the Brigade of Guards to get them out again. It is sufficient to our plans that you have seen them.”

And that, as Sherlock Holmes remarked when we stood outside the mansion block again, was exactly as it should be.

PART III

Death on a Pale Horse

1

I
pride myself that my medical education and military training have made me more observant than most men in the face of a threat. I had scanned Baker Street when “Samuel Dordona” from the Evangelical Overseas Medical Mission arrived. I had watched him as he left. So indeed did Sherlock Holmes. Of course Major Putney-Wilson was absurd in his amateur theatrical disguise. It made him conspicuous rather than unobtrusive. Yet I saw no one who might have been his shadow or who paid him the least attention.

At Carlyle Mansions, Holmes would have been the first man to notice if we had been followed. Of course, it now proved that we and the entire street were under observation by Albert Gibbons, but this in itself should have been a protection against spies. Civilian and military police have what are technically known as “private clothes” personnel who wear no regimental uniform. I needed no persuasion that Gibbons in his commissionaire's livery was as much a sergeant of the Provost Marshal's Corps as he had ever been.

Sherlock Holmes certainly behaved as if there was no present danger from Moran or his associates. My misfortune was to assume that danger is something which all men and women instinctively avoid. But there are also those to whom danger is the breath of life and who deliberately tempt their foe to combat. They will fight a duel when they might as easily avoid it. Holmes fell precisely into this category.

No doubt Colonel Rawdon Moran had become our enemy. Yet he could not have murdered Captain Sellon if he had been on the passenger list of a homeward-bound liner which had docked at Funchal in Madeira less than five days before the captain's death. Holmes had easily confirmed from the shipping line clerk who knew the man: three days at sea and two more on the Transcontinental Express from Lisbon would still leave him on the wrong side of the English Channel at the time that Joshua Sellon died.

“Hence Ramon,” said Holmes sardonically.

“I beg your pardon?”

We were sitting over our glasses of whisky and warm water two evenings later as the sitting-room fire burnt down to a final glow.

“Hence Ramon. The foreign gentleman who booked the apartment opposite Carlyle Mansions, from which Lestrade insists the bullet was fired. The man who booked it but never arrived to occupy it. You noticed, of course, that the name Ramon is a childishly obvious anagram for Moran?”

It had not occurred to me until that moment because my mind had been occupied by other things, but I thought it best to say, “Of course.”

“It cannot have been Moran who murdered Joshua Sellon if he was not even in England. That is why he taunts us with his anagram. I doubt whether he any longer commits his own murders, except on special occasions. To use such a foolish pseudonym as Ramon is once again the old game of ‘Catch me if you can.' We are not allowed to forget that he is the puppet-master of murder. He pulls the strings, and we are his marionettes who dance to his commands.”