The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (14 page)

Holmes had no sooner disembarked at Dover than he made his way to the village of Aldersley, where Hodgson had lived since his return to England. He stayed the first night at the local inn, and in the morning made the necessary inquiries. Hodgson was indeed still alive, according to several villagers, and lived on a large estate about two miles from the centre of the village. Holmes sent word by a young village boy that he had just returned from Nepal and that he brought word of that country and greetings from some of his surviving friends. He had an almost immediate and positive reply from the old man. He was very anxious to talk to anyone who came from that part of the world.

“That afternoon, I climbed into a cab and went to visit him. His estate began down a path that lay to the south of the village. The road to the main dwelling was lined with old oaks, and the house itself, when I saw it, was a most imposing but unpleasant structure. Part of it may have dated back to Norman times, for it was made of stone, with small windows in turrets. I realised as we approached it, however, that it was vacant.”

The cabby turned and informed me that “the old gentleman” lived in a cottage farther down the road. Holmes could see the house, a simple English country cottage, surrounded by flower gardens. It was not unlike the Residence in Katmandu, and as he approached, the door opened and Hodgson himself came out to greet him. Holmes was taken aback at his appearance, for there before him again was the apparition that had appeared in the garden in Katmandu: a very tall, thin figure, slightly hunched, dressed in black, with a long white beard. The hallucinatory Hodgson had been a deft and expert creation, indeed. Holmes alighted from his cab and greeted him: “I bring you tidings from Nepal, from the Maharaja Bir Shamsher.”

Hodgson smiled, grabbed Holmes’s hand more vigorously than he would have imagined, and led him to his study. It was here that the great scholar Hodgson continued to work, still cataloguing the research that he had originally begun decades before. They talked for the rest of the afternoon.

“As we conversed, I was thoroughly aware that he was the oldest human being I had ever known. He was wrinkled, arthritic, and obviously very frail. Yet, as soon as he began to speak, his years disappeared, and I was faced with a vigorous mind and a long interrogation. He was filled with questions about his beloved Nepal, and I tried in so far as I was able to acquaint him with the latest political developments. But he had many detailed questions, about the Residence as well, about the bazaar, about the effects of the Mutiny, and the whereabouts of Nana Sahib and his retinue, about the Ranas and their rule. I described all that I knew to him, even down to changes in the Residence staff. He had not been there in fifty years, and yet his memory was wondrously detailed. He had forgotten nothing of that country, or of his years there.”

It was towards the end of his questions that Holmes felt confident enough to pose his own. Since they were of a personal nature, Holmes began by asking him permission to probe in areas that he might not like to talk about, and that if he chose not to, he would understand.

“‘In order to clarify some of the events that transpired during my visit there, I should like to ask some questions that will enable me to bring to an end certain puzzlements that have eluded solution until now. They concern your marriage to a native woman and your offspring from that relation.”

Without indicating whether or not he was disturbed by the question, Hodgson rose, went over to the door, and closed it.

“‘Unlike many of my countrymen abroad, I have made no secret of my early relationship. It is taken up, though not in detail, by my biographer, Mr. Hunter. It is, however, still a very painful subject for my present wife, and therefore if we are to discuss it in detail, I should like to do so behind closed doors. And in confidence, of course.”

Holmes explained to him that he had no desire to cause him or his wife pain, and that his interest had nothing to do with his personal life, but with only the light that his answers might shed on the mysterious events that still had not been resolved. He explained to him that because of the nature of those events, he preferred to remain silent, for disclosing them to him could serve no useful purpose and might add to the pain of his last years.

“As with so many things in life, Mr. Holmes,” said Hodgson, “there is a great deal to tell and very little at the same time. You wish to know of my early involvement with a Mahometan woman. I cannot imagine what significance to you such events of almost fifty years ago might have, but since I have nothing to fear and am not really curious about your reasons, I shall tell you all. Briefly, in my last years as Resident, I came to know a Mahometan family that lived not far from the small mosque that served the small community of Moslem merchants who lived in the city. From Kashmir originally, the family had gone first to Lhasa and then settled in Katmandu. So many generations back, however, was their Kashmiri origin that the family had little recollection of it, and considered themselves to be Nepalese in every way. The family was small, consisting of Salim, a merchant who dealt in saffron, his wife, and their daughter. I frequented their household often, for I often found social intercourse with the Mahometans far easier than with the Hindoos, who often were subject to difficult restrictions of commensality and pollution where I was concerned. With my Mahometan friend, I could act entirely naturally and felt often far more at home than I did elsewhere. It was not long, however, before I became aware that my friend and his wife were victims of consumption, a respiratory affliction that is pervasive in Katmandu. They died after a few months, within days of each other, leaving their daughter an orphan. For reasons that were not clear to me, both her near relatives and friends within the Moslem community refused to support her. Unmarriageable without parents, she had no prospects, and I decided to have her live at the Residence. She was literate, trained by her father in Arabic and Persian, and I set her upon the study of some manuscripts that her father had shown me, in particular accounts of the Lhasa bazaar that her great-grandfather had written while living in Tibet. It was not long before our relationship began to change, however. From a rather distant one at the beginning, I found myself seeking her company, until I realised that I was becoming very attached to her. Our friendship and intimacy grew in the privacy of the Residence. She was very beautiful, and it was not long before I asked her to live with me as my wife. She was nineteen at the time, and I thirty-seven. We both knew that I could not marry her officially, since the rules of the Company disallowed such relationships, but so happy was I that I vowed that once I had completed my service, we would marry legally and would spend the rest of our lives together. That indeed was my intention, to which she acquiesced at once.”

The old man paused for a moment. It was obvious to Holmes that he was approaching the painful part of his tale.

“The irregularity of such a relationship bothered few in Nepal,” he continued. “They regarded it as an inevitable consequence of my presence, and found it appropriate that I had picked a Mahometan woman. The choice muted any criticism that the choice of a woman of Hindoo birth might have given rise to, where many who considered themselves part of Hindoo orthodoxy regarded my presence as an affront to the sacred purity of the land.

They lived happily, he said, and in time she gave birth to two sons, two years apart, who were the joy of their years. Their time together, however, was cut short, for the disease that had taken her parents suddenly reappeared in his wife, who, pregnant again, died in childbirth at the young age of twenty-five, exhausted by the racking consumption that had also taken her parents. The infant, a girl, died with her. Hodgson buried them together in the small graveyard in the Residence compound. She left him broken-hearted, with two young boys, aged six and four.

“The boys were badly affected by their mother’s sudden death. I had been much absent because of my work, which took me often to Calcutta, and their dependence on her was almost total. Without her, what had been two joyful young children became silent and sullen. They barely recognised me and spent almost all their time with a family of servants, tribals from the Tarai, who lived in a small hut in the back of the Residence. There they played with the children in the family, learned their tongue, and almost began to forget English.”

Holmes interrupt his narration with a further question: “Might I ask what language the boys spoke with this family?”

Hodgson thought for a moment. Then he replied: “It is curious that you should ask the question. The family were from a remote area southwest of Katmandu. They came to me as beggars one day, and because of their peculiar dress I asked them to stay so that I could investigate them. At first I though they were of the tribe known as the Tharus, but it became clear to me that their language was very strange and seemed to be related to almost nothing else. Indeed, I later published the results of these efforts. They called themselves Kusunda, and their language the same. They were among the last of this tribe. My sons picked up their tongue rather quickly and spoke it rather well.”

It was at this point, said the old man, that he determined that his sons had best leave Nepal, to be raised and educated in Europe, so that they could have the benefits of our civilisation. His sister, Ellen, who was married to a Dutchman and lived in Amsterdam, agreed to raise them, and arranged for their schooling there. Just short of a year after their mother’s death, then, his sons and he travelled to Calcutta, where he placed them on a ship bound for Holland. They travelled in the company of an English trader, one Joseph Michaelson, who agreed to deliver them to his sister.

“That was the last time I saw them, for they never arrived. An enormous storm near the Isles of Scilly at the entrance to the Channel forced the ship’s captain to divert northwards to St. George’s Channel. In vain did the captain try to keep the ship in peaceful waters, however, for the storm’s fury damaged it severely, washing many on board into the sea. Mr. Michaelson, seeing that the ship was about to sink, climbed into a small boat with the boys and four other passengers. The boat made it safely to the Irish coast with three of its passengers, but Michaelson and the boys were washed overboard with one other—lost, and never to be recovered. This news I obtained in Katmandu about six months after their departure in a letter from my sister, who had received word from one of the survivors by way of the ship’s company. With my heart heavy, I went to my wife’s grave and knelt there. It was a long time before the grief was lifted from me.”

Hodgson rose slowly from his chair and went over to a large almirah near his desk. He took from it an album which he handed to me, saying: “You may wish to take a look at some of these drawings and photographs. There are herein the only pictures of my late wife and my two sons.”

As Holmes looked through the album, the old man returned to his chair opposite, a look of great sadness on his face. Holmes became engrossed in the old volume, for these were perhaps the original photographs of the Residence, its staff, and other personages of Nepal, including a massive photograph of General Bhimsen Thapa, autographed for Hodgson.

“The history was of no interest to me, however. I turned until I found what I had been looking for: photographs taken in Calcutta just before Hodgson put his sons on the ill-fated ship that carried them towards Europe. Among them were large portraits taken of the two boys, Joseph and James, separately, at the ages of seven and five. Despite their young age, there was no doubt as to who they were. The high foreheads, the piercing eyes, and the cruel mouths, were unmistakably the same as those of my greatest enemies. The loss of a doting and loving mother, their abandonment to strangers by their father, and the deep scars left by the storm at sea, had so cruelly disturbed them that their intelligences became misdirected. They had survived somehow the great storm. Taken into some poor and miserable household on the Irish coast, they were raised in bleak and stony poverty. Reaching early manhood, they left the stern and cruel circumstances of their childhood that had all but made their future criminal careers a certainty, and entered the larger world of London and Amsterdam. Or so I surmised, for we shall never know this part of the story.

“I must have been engrossed in the photographs for a good long time, for when I looked up, the old man was sound asleep in his chair, his long white beard now touching his knees. I placed the album on a nearby table, and rather than trouble or embarrass him, I tiptoed out, closing the door behind me. That evening I returned to London.”

With these words, Holmes brought to a close the long narrative of his sojourn in Katmandu. We sat for a moment, looking at the empty square before us, each absorbed in his own thoughts. Then we walked slowly home in the darkness.

THE CASE OF ANTON FURER

I
T WAS IN THE SPRING OF 1884 THAT
S
HERLOCK
H
OLMES
first mentioned the name of Anton Furer.

“Remember it well, Watson,” he said grimly. “This man has a brilliant future in crime unless he is apprehended soon. I myself have been on his trail several times in the last few years, but he has always eluded my grasp. Someday, however, I shall rein him in.”

I felt the same iron determination in his words that I noticed only when he was after an opponent he deemed worthy. It was well over a decade later, however, that the matter was finally resolved. In going over my notes for this episode, I found that, early on, Holmes had given me a short sketch of the beginnings of Furer’s career.

Furer, as his name would indicate, was of German extraction. His father had been born near Hamburg, where he had been a petty dealer in antiquities. Some years after the failed revolution of 1848, the family emigrated to England where they settled in London. Anton was born soon after their arrival. The father, Julius, opened a shop in Finsbury, but it was a failure. Unskilled in English and impatient with his life, the elder Furer borrowed heavily, and rapidly found himself in debt. Unable to discharge his obligations through honest means, he embarked upon a career of burglary and theft. Here his luck was better than it had been in honest business. He began by stealing antiquities from other shops, then moved on to housebreaking, stealing from large mansions in the city as well as in the countryside. He formed a small gang who continued the dirty work of thievery for him, while he himself became the chief purveyor of these goods to collectors in America.