Death on a Pale Horse (27 page)

“That much was in every newspaper,” Sherlock Holmes said sardonically.

“Then you had better attend to what was not in the newspapers but in the survivor's evidence. As Melville stood with Pulleine, just before they parted, the colonel looked up for an instant and thought he saw the first outrider of Lord Chelmsford's column, mounted on the col above the beleaguered camp. You know that much, I believe? Melville's servant heard this figure spoken of as a last hope. Of course, there was nothing in it. The column was several hours away. Yet the tale persisted among survivors, the story of this solitary rider, sitting astride a dappled horse on the col. He seemed to be watching the last act of the tragedy from above but taking no part in it. That was all.”

“Indeed,” said Sherlock Holmes sceptically, “And you think Sellon was killed for hearing such a tale? That would not silence the others who heard it.”

Mycroft shook his head. “Among the debris of the guard tent was a scrap of paper found by the first burial party and taken charge of by the Provost's men under Sellon's command. It was written at the last moment by Colonel Pulleine and hidden in the top of his boot. He knew that the tribesmen never bother to strip the boots from the dead because the tribes go barefoot. The hiding place was safe.”

“And Sellon was killed for reading it?”

Mycroft shook his head again. “Not just for reading that.”

Mycroft Holmes slid his hand into the inner pocket of his grey flannel jacket. He drew out a slim notecase of soft tawny Florentine leather. From this he took, with tweezers, a small folder of plain card. I saw a paper lying inside it. For our benefit, it was the original of the last message written by the commander of the doomed column in the final moments of defeat.

“In anticipation of your visit, I had this brought over from Whitehall by messenger,” Mycroft said quietly.

CAMP ISANDHLWANA, 22 JANUARY 1879, 1.35 pm WE ARE BETRAYED … FOR GOD'S SAKE LOOK AFTER OUR PEOPLE … GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.…

Lt. Col. Henry Burmester Pulleine

Officer Commanding Her Majesty's 24th Regiment of Foot

“Do not touch it!” Mycroft added hastily. “Just read it. It is not to be touched!”

After we had stared at it for a full minute, he stood up and turned to the window with its view of Horse Guards Parade and an immaculate surface of sand-coloured grit.

“Look after our people?” I inquired.

“Our families, in other words,” said Mycroft impatiently. “Not the entire British nation, which can well look after itself. There must have been a good few military dependents pauperised by so many deaths that day. It was a natural enough request by their commander.”

“Then let us hope that King Cetewayo does better for his gallant people than we have done for ours,” said Sherlock Holmes bleakly.

Mycroft glared at his fractious sibling.

“And you believe that Captain Sellon was killed for reading this final appeal?” I persisted.

“No, doctor, not even that. I have brought something more for your consideration.”

In his hand was a short-bladed object in waxed paper. I recognised it as a turn-screw, of the sort that I had seen at Kandahar. It resembled nothing so much as a powerful corkscrew mounted in a metal frame. In truth, it was used by regimental quartermasters to open the crates of Boxer Mark III cartridge packets. Its condition suggested that it had lain exposed to sun, wind, and rain during the weeks between the battle and the burials at Isandhlwana. Such implements had been commonplace at Maiwand. As a medical officer I had never handled one, but I knew at once what it was. Its purpose was to open tightly screwed War Department crates of cartridge packets, used to re-supply the infantry pouches in battle.

“Surely,” I said, “there must have been any number of these lying about the wagon-park.”

“Indeed there were, doctor. A good number.”

“Is there something remarkable about this one?”

“Just one thing. These screw-drivers and the broken remains of the very few ammunition boxes that had been forcibly opened were examined by three artificers at Woolwich Arsenal under Captain Sellon's supervision. The men who undertook the examination were sworn to secrecy. In any case, they were not told why they were doing it. The whole business was so sensitive that each man was required to sign a draft of the proposed official secrecy legislation, binding him to silence on pain of fourteen years' imprisonment.”

“And the result?” Sherlock Holmes inquired laconically.

“When the blades of the discarded turn-screws were microscopically examined, they naturally bore signs of rust and encrustation from exposure for a few months. Yet most had never been used. They had been thrown down as useless at a time when the riflemen on the perimeter were crying out for ammunition. There was not the smallest abrasion on many of these blades consistent with having locked into the screws of the crates. Why were the quartermasters not pouring out a constant stream of cartridge packets to supply the ammunition runners? Why were a few of the crates laboriously forced open by bayonets and even smashed open by rocks? Others were left screwed down and abandoned. You see?”

“The wrong turn-screws?”

Mycroft nodded his large head mournfully.

“Can you wonder that the message in Colonel Pulleine's last note is one of treachery? Nor was that all. The two great faults with Boxer cartridges for these rifles was a tendency to absorb damp easily or for the bullet to fall out of its case before loading, in either event jamming the weapon. The Intelligence Branch of the Quartermaster-General's Department has inquired into this. So has Colonel Redvers Buller, VC. The handfuls of abandoned bullets that Joshua Sellon gathered in from the battlefield had been rendered useless. The answer to the riddle of defeat was in his possession. Someone decided he must pay for that information with his life. Will that do?”

This seemed too much to me.

“The ammunition train was tampered with?”

“That is your choice of language, doctor. I might have doubted, until Sellon was found with a bullet in his brain. His silence was ensured at so high a price.”

We stared at one another while a detachment of the Life Guards crossed the Parade, helmets bright in the sun, to take up duty on Palace Guard.

“I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you,” I said presently.

“I beg your pardon, doctor?”

“It is probably nothing, Sir Mycroft. Merely a form of vengeance that someone known to Joshua Sellon once promised to take upon the world.”

But Mycroft Holmes had caught my every word, and it showed in his face. He gave a heavy sigh.

“Since you know so much, you had both of you better come with me,” he said, pushing himself up from his chair. “Come and look at the evidence. This may get worse. Much worse. I suppose I must either trust you both entirely or not at all. I hope, dear Brother, I shall not regret it in your case. And bring that abomination in the hatbox with you. The Welshmen will want their hero back.”

4

C
eremonial grit crunched under our feet as we kept step with Mycroft Holmes across the open ground of the Horse Guards Parade. Tall windows at the rear of Whitehall faced the billowing trees of St. James's Park. Their candy-striped sun-blinds were drawn out in the fine spring weather to shade the servants of the Crown. It was for all the world as though we were approaching a grand hotel.

Brother Mycroft always walked as though his ungainly bulk was battling against a strong headwind. Scowling ahead of him, he kept his eyes fixed on some distant point between Birdcage Walk and the towers of Westminster Abbey. From time to time he glanced sideways at a passer-by who in his opinion had no business to be there. As Sherlock Holmes once remarked, his brother had a gift of conveying to the rest of the human race that he wished it were anywhere at that moment except in his presence.

Of course, Sherlock Holmes himself cared nothing for public life, let alone for ceremony or public men. The large and reassuring buildings of government and administration left him cold. Early in our friendship, he had promised me that a nation was better led by a rogue than a reformer.

We turned into Downing Street and went up a broad flight of granite steps to another pair of glass doors. Mycroft paused at the top and jerked his thumb towards the prime-ministerial residence at No. 10.

“You may care to know, Brother, that a crossing-sweeper is still employed to clear a path across this street once every afternoon at 3
P
.
M.
It is in order that Sir Robert Peel's boots shall be kept clean when the Prime Minister approaches his official residence. The fellow receives a lifetime pension to carry out his work—protecting the boots of a Prime Minister who has been in his grave these thirty years.”

“You don't say?”

“Tradition dies hard, does it not? And a good thing too!”

A uniformed porter pulled open a glass door with his left hand and saluted Mycroft with his right. Within the domed lobby of the great building rose a double circular staircase, deeply carpeted in red to deaden our footsteps. I thought that their Lordships of the Treasury certainly did themselves pretty well.

A second porter was positioned on the landing, outside an entrance of white-painted panels, for fear that Mycroft Holmes should be tempted to over-exert himself by opening his own office doors.

As we stepped inside, I could see why my friend's brother was content to pass his life in these surroundings. His office was a long and elegant Georgian study with a white barrel-vaulted ceiling. Handsome bookshelves rose from floor to ceiling. Beyond its oriel window, there was a fine view of the park towards Buckingham Palace with the Royal Standard at its flagstaff rippling in a light breeze. The distance from the office door to his wide desk with its green-leather inlay seemed almost the length of a cricket pitch. And if this Permanent Under-Secretary should feel the need of a breath of fresh air, a private balustraded balcony in white Purbeck stone extended outside his window.

The porter carried away our overcoats and hats. Mycroft summoned his three secretaries. One was sent to fetch tea. The second was to inform the Attorney General that, most regrettably, the Prime Minister had found it necessary to postpone their discussion of the Government of India Bill until the next day. The third was to tell the Prime Minister that the Attorney General was unavoidably detained by a deputation of lawyers in the House of Commons on proposed amendments to the Supreme Court of Judicature Act. In two minutes the business of the nation was deftly set aside and Mycroft's official appointments had been abolished.

When tea had been poured, our host faced us and came at once to the point.

“We have recorded four relevant events in the murders of Captain Jahleel Brenton Carey and the Prince Imperial. If you do not mind, dear Brother, we will take them in reverse order. That is the sequence by which we were alerted to this conspiracy.”

I noticed that this was the first time the elder brother had used the word “conspiracy.” He did not yet say precisely what the aim of such a plot might be. Sherlock Holmes shrugged and Mycroft relaxed.

“First of all there was the discovery of the body of a so-called Private Arnold Levens in the Calcutta Drainage Canal, several hundred miles from where he had last been heard of in Hyderabad. Private Levens was one of the four men in a fatigue party commanded by Captain Brenton Carey at the striking of tents in the 98th Regiment's depot at Hyderabad.”

“And what took Levens to Calcutta?” I inquired.

“Concealment, doctor. He was signed for as one of three privates and a corporal, unaccountably presenting themselves from a pioneer corps, when Captain Brenton Carey was mortally injured. The only men with a clear view of what happened on that side of the wagon were Levens and another private by the name of Moss. After the tragedy, Levens's name was taken as a witness. Thereupon, he and Moss absconded. It sometimes happens that private soldiers will desert rather than face a court of inquiry. They fear it may pin some blame on them.”

“And a further curiosity?” Sherlock Holmes inquired.

“There was no Private Arnold Levens—no Levens of any kind—not on the regimental roll of the 98th Foot nor on that of the Hyderabad pioneer corps. But why would any other man choose to be there? You may be sure that money had changed hands. Men do not join a fatigue detail for the pleasure of the thing. Nothing further was known of Moss nor of this man Levens until the corpse was pulled from a drainage ditch in Bengal. Then his name was checked and discovered on the roll of Army deserters. His pay-book was found near the spot, though he had drawn no pay. Someone else had provided for him. By then he had been on the run for over a year; but that same person had protected him for their own purposes. Of course, whether this decomposing body was truly the Private Arnold Levens of Hyderabad we shall probably never know. We are told, however, that the man was probably dead before he went into the canal. A petty criminal gone to glory with the assistance of his friends.”

The sun declining across the park glinted on Mycroft's gold-rimmed pince-nez.

“The trail then leads back to the death of Captain Carey, in consequence of the so-called accident at Hyderabad Camp.”

He counted this second item on his index finger.

“The only two possible eye-witnesses had fled. Without them, it could never be established just how Carey's abdominal injury was inflicted by the lashing-out of a horse's hoof. Surgeon-Major Callaghan, the regimental physician, heard that the startled beasts had stampeded when the floor of a bell tent fell into the wagon. He attended Captain Carey and saw that death was unquestionably the result of blows to the abdomen which ruptured the intestine. Unfamiliar with animal behaviour, it did not seem to occur to Callaghan that this would require the wagon horse, most unusually, to kick forward rather than backward at the noise behind it. But the injuries had undoubtedly occurred. The blows from hooves were the only reason suggested. Therefore, as a medical man, he deduced that death must have been caused in that way. Captain Carey himself had no memory of being injured. Would that trouble you, doctor?”