Watson's Last Case

by Ian Alfred Charnock

  As became clear, tea at four was something of a ritual for the Royal Family and the four Grand Duchesses would dress for it in white dresses. Although normally a family affair only, they requested my presence on that first day.

  How they enlivened the atmosphere of gloom, although it was clear to even the most unobservant eye that they shared their parents’ concern for the Tsarevich’s health.

  Now no longer girls, but young women, they were formally introduced to me by the old count. Olga, the eldest, had a wide clear face and the gravity that many older children have whereas Anastasia the youngest was obviously the mischievous one, her darting eyes and quick movements a constant reminder of her effervescence in marked contrast to the shy, placid nature of Olga. The two other sisters, Tatiana and Marie were contrasts in beauty. The one tall, decisive, self-assured, elegant, auburn-haired and grey-eyed; the other merry, outgoing, wholesome, and with eyes so large that they were called ‘Marie’s saucers’; their contrast was a delight. Yet the four were so devoted that they often signed themselves with the four initials of their names — OTMA.

  It was the Tsar himself who helped us over the inevitable stiffness of the initial conversation.

  ‘Which is your favourite case of Mr Sherlock Holmes, Anastasia?’ he asked.

  ‘The Speckled Band,’ she replied instantly. ‘It was so exciting. How did you manage to keep your nerve as you waited in the dark all that time, Dr Watson?’

  The Empress remained aloof but she exchanged glances with her husband that revealed mixed emotions — hope, and the fear of daring to entertain such a thought.

  Grand Duchess Tatiana asked perceptive questions about Holmes’s methods, Grand Duchess Olga wished that the hound in the Baskerville case could have been taken alive, and Grand Duchess Marie wondered if she could have been as brave as Mrs Neville St Clair if her husband were to disappear in mysterious circumstances. Her sisters laughed and said that she spent too much time thinking of husbands and babies. However, the Empress brought an end to the levity when she observed, ‘How I wish dear Alexis was here to share in our joy.’

  The resulting silence was more awkward than the initial one that prefixed our reunion. Grand Duchess Olga held me in her steady gaze. ‘You will save our brother, Dr Watson?’

  The eyes of the entire family were on me. Perhaps I was intoxicated by the moment but I found myself replying, ‘The Tsarevich will be walking in seven days, Grand Duchess Olga.’

  The Empress was as humourless as a monolith. She would be counting every minute of those seven days and watching my every move, of that I was certain.

  M Gilliard, the Swiss tutor, spoke warmly of the entire Royal Family. Of those whom I met he had recognized the humanity of them all despite the exalted nature of their position and the restrictions of their existence. He had also witnessed the Tsarevich develop from baby to adolescent and was more aware of the continuing tragedy of the Romanoffs than anybody else, although incredibly he did not know the exact nature of the disease.

  I told him of Mycroft’s views. He shrugged his shoulders and threw up his hands. ‘I don’t know about politics or revolutions like your friend, Dr Watson. Russia is a land of whispers where a thought becomes a headline in hours — who knows what is the truth of it? But I do know that the Tsar and his family love Russia and her many peoples more than any revolutionary. I know that they have pledged their personal incomes to the war effort. Despite the wealth that surrounds them they are all penniless.’

  Money was not a subject that a Swiss took lightly, so despite myself I was inclined to believe him. He was obviously devoted to the Royal Family and such devotion can be contagious but I had one unpleasant question to ask him.

  ‘M Galliard, is the Tsarevich in any way mentally deficient?’

  It was as though he had been struck a sharp blow. At first he was stunned but when he found his tongue the answer was emphatic. ‘Mais non,’ he stated. ‘He speaks four languages, he is interested in all that goes on around him. Why, one day I found him in tears looking at the sky — he said it was too beautiful for words. If anything he is too intelligent to become a Tsar. He follows his father in more ways than one.’

  Such fulsome praise was touching but it is always better to make up one’s own mind.

  The five doctors and surgeons gave me details of the treatment that they had been giving. All hated the Dissolute One as they called him. None of them knew Rasputin’s secret but they agreed that he seemed to have brought about some remarkable results in the case of the Tsarevich. Dr Botkin bemoaned the fact that the Tsar and the Empress would not allow them to use morphine to alleviate the Tsarevich’s pain because they were afraid of the possibility of addiction. Whilst I could certainly sympathize with his attitude I could see such an instruction must have frustrated the doctors, but it did not explain Rasputin’s success. He obviously had the fullest confidence of the Empress which was very important. As far as I could ascertain it was his eyes and his folk stories that held the key to the problem. Could it be that he had hypnotized the Empress and her sick child? His eyes were certainly powerful and it was possible that the Royal Family in their simple faith and desire for help had been deceived by a cunning manipulator of hopes. If this was so Father Gregory was certainly the despicable Rasputin of whom I had heard so much during the last few months. Could I compete with his eyes?

  As to the folk stories, they seemed to lose something in translation when they were explained to me and I felt that the same would be true of British stories rendered into Russian. It was Grand Duchess Tatiana who came to my assistance. She advised me to tell her brother about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. ‘Although I would counsel you not to excite him too much — he might not be able to take the story of the Andaman Islander and his lethal blow pipe. At least not just yet.’ The Grand Duchess Marie encouraged me with her kind smile. How she reminded me of my own dear wife at rest in a southern shire so far away from me now.

  That evening the Tsarevich’s agonies increased. His mother was at his side throughout, dabbing his forehead and kissing his glistening brow, but as each fresh spasm of pain overtook him he groaned ever more despairingly. Each sob threatened to destroy his mother’s composure, but despite her obvious concern the Empress retained her aloofness towards myself. However, I detected a note of pleading when she enjoined me to help the Tsarevich. The Grand Duchess Marie slipped ahead of me and kissed her brother, whispering to him as she did so. The reaction was immediate. He looked up and his eyes widened like a child not in pain but as one who believes he has heard a sound in the chimney on the 24th of December.

  ‘Dr Watson, Dr Watson,’ he cried in a piping voice. ‘Can you deduce what is wrong with me?’

  I smiled. ‘I have already, sir. You will be up in a week.’

  At first he looked bemused and tried to lean forward. The effort proved too much and he slumped back onto his pillows, the perspiration standing out on his forehead in great sobbing droplets. The Empress gave me a withering look as she rushed towards her stricken child. It was then that I noticed standing in the shadows a look of triumphant cunning plastered on his face, the Dissolute One. I needed a miracle to save my position. It emanated from the deep pillows. ‘Was the Lord Bellinger whom you describe in The Adventure of the Second Stain really Lord Gladstone?’ The voice was a whisper but it was clear and controlled.

  The Empress’s countenance contorted in disbelief and the Grand Duchess Marie almost clapped with joy. As to Rasputin his eyes became as cold and as vile as a swamp adder’s. I dismissed this vision of evil from my mind and sat next to the Tsarevich laying my hand on his forehead.

  ‘There are many who would like to know the answer to that question, sir,’ I confided.

  ‘It is just that Lady Hilda reminded me of . . .’ I raised my finger to my lips.

  ‘Allow us our diplomatic secrets, sir.’

  For the first time in many weeks there was laughter in the Alexander Palace at Tsarkoe Selo. The Empress turned to the
starets. ‘We have the adventures of Mr Sherlock Holmes and your prayers to thank for this miracle, Father Gregory.’ He bowed to his patroness, his face now a mixture of humility and simpering obsequiousness. The leopard had changed his spots but as our eyes met, despite their apparent openness, I felt that I was a prey being sized up for the kill.

  For five days and nights I remained at the bedside of my charge with the Empress never far away. I felt the tension and lack of faith in my abilities fill the room like a cold vapour but when the atmosphere changed I knew that ‘our friend’ was not far away. Sometimes he would be lurking in the shadows, and at other times he would step forward and raise his hand in blessing over the child and murmur something in his deep voice.

  These were not ideal conditions for my work but fortunately the rest of the family sympathized with me and the Tsar urged his wife to rest in the room next door. When she rested one of the Grand Duchesses would take over the vigil and the atmosphere became more relaxed and the Tsarevich more rested.

  The pain that he was in was immense. His leg had been bent and held in a brace to accommodate the never ending seepage of blood. The joints suffered the most and any movement increased his pain but he bore it manfully. He even asked after my health and whether the Jezail bullet was causing me any discomfort. Such questions took his mind from his own distress, but it was the stories of Sherlock Holmes which took him farthest from his troubles.

  On the fourth day I was roused from my fitful slumber on a sofa by the Grand Duchess Olga. I feared the worst and rushed over to my patient. He was lying stock still, his breathing not erratic as before but somehow excited. Something was not quite right. By his head lay a piece of paper folded in half. It had my name on it. The Grand Duchess handed it to me and I opened it to reveal a row of matchstick men. I was nonplussed but then I heard a snigger and saw the Tsarevich smile. ‘I so enjoyed your story of The Dancing Men that I thought I would send you a message by them.’ ‘The tide has turned,’ it read. And so it had.

  By the end of the week the Tsarevich took a faltering step from his bed. The swellings at his joints had lost their anger and he was able to straighten his leg, and flex his toes. Sherlock Holmes had brought comfort to a frightened soul even though he was several thousand miles away. The starets led the family in prayers of thanksgiving. His continuing influence was all too clear.

  At four o’clock that afternoon I was summoned to share tea and biscuits with the Royal Family, the Tsarevich sitting up in a divan. The atmosphere was in a complete contrast to that of six days earlier. The Tsar somehow seemed to divine my thoughts and observed, ‘And on the seventh day will you rest, Dr Watson?’ He was obviously a very perceptive man, a quality which I was about to rely on. As the family gathering drew to a close and M Galliard appeared to resume the children’s lessons, I asked for an audience. The family was a little bemused by my sudden formality but I assured the children that they should be more concerned with their lessons than the words that I was about to address to their parents.

  When I was alone with the Tsar and Tsaritsa I begged leave to speak frankly to them. A request which the Tsar granted willingly although his wife sensed a vague hostility.

  ‘As I am sure that you are aware, Your Highnesses,’ I began, ‘I am in Russia not only as a doctor but as an agent for my government.’

  ‘Your government, Dr Watson?’ enquired the Tsar. ‘Surely as an agent for Mr Mycroft Holmes.’

  Once again his grasp of affairs astonished me.

  ‘I would point out, Your Highness, that there are occasions when he is the British Government,’ I replied somewhat pompously.

  ‘I see, Dr Watson,’ interjected the Tsaritsa. ‘What is it you wish to say to us?’

  ‘My mission was to find out the nature of your son’s illness. Some speculation suggested lunacy, other injury in an anarchist attack. None knew of your son’s true illness.’

  ‘And so we want it to remain, Dr Watson,’ the Tsaritsa pointed out. ‘Not even M Gilliard knows exactly what the disease is, and of the doctors in Russia the five you met earlier know but are sworn to secrecy.’

  ‘Only one person had an idea,’ I replied, ‘although he did not know.’

  ‘Mycroft Holmes?’ enquired the Tsar.

  ‘Quite so, Your Highness,’ I returned.

  ‘And so one person guessed correctly, Dr Watson. What of it?’ asked the Tsaritsa growing more uneasy.

  ‘Mr Mycroft Holmes is the more brilliant brother of a truly remarkable man and everything he says is worthy of serious consideration. He fears that the more you retain the air of mystery around your son’s condition the more danger there is of foolish speculation and even revolution.’

  ‘Why should that concern you in England?’ asked the now none too friendly lady.

  ‘A revolution in Russia would be disastrous in our war with the Central Powers. I also know that your relatives in England fear for your safety and that of your family.’

  ‘Thus you wish us to tell the world of the curse that lies in our House — brought by me, the German woman?’ the Empress hissed. ‘Do you think that would stop a revolution? It would be an invitation to every anarchist, revolutionary, and crack-pot to try to kill my son. No, I will not allow it!’

  ‘If not that, then at least dispense with the services of Father Gregory,’ I suggested. ‘I have shown that your son’s recovery does not depend on him alone and he brings disrepute on your House.’

  For the first time since I had met her the Empress’s face coloured. ‘That is unthinkable, Dr Watson.’

  ‘Forgive me, Your Highness, but would it not be better to give details of your son’s condition and remove the cause of ill-informed intrigue and gossip? Once the people know of the Tsarevich’s complaint you will have sympathy from your people, not hostility,’ I entreated.

  ‘You have been given the reasons for our decision,’ the Empress said in cold, clear tones that brooked no shading.

  The Tsar sat by her, his eyes sad but his jaw set.

  My mission had failed.

  The British Embassy did not prove a happy haven of return. The news from the Front went from bad to worse. The mud of the Somme seemed to be obscenely swallowing the life blood of a generation in cruel mockery of the once great victory of Agincourt fought five hundred years before on the same ground.

  My reports made, there was only one thing to do — return to London. It was then that a new turn of events ensured that I had not seen the last of Mother Russia.

  The day after my return to the British Embassy in Petrograd as I should call St Petersburg, I received a note as I sat down for breakfast. It read ‘From one enthusiast to another’. Obeying Sir George’s summons I went outside and there before me was a gleaming Rolls-Royce. ‘From the Tsar if I am not mistaken, Dr Watson,’ Sir George said as we went to inspect my gift. ‘See the Romanoff eagle on the steering boss.’

  Obviously my exertions of the previous seven days and the chill from driving in the crisp Baltic air had proved too much for me. I fell ill with a fever that would have become double pneumonia but for Dr Cambeuil’s ministrations. It was two months before I was able to take an interest in the world outside, but what news there was. Tsar Nicholas had returned to the Front and the Empress had been ruling in his stead, aided by Father Gregory. Every layer of society was now open in its criticism of the Romanoff regime. Mycroft’s predictions were becoming truer every day.

  My first encounter with a mirror shocked me. I was drawn and haggard and my beard had grown. ‘I should keep that if I were you,’ observed Cambeuil. ‘That is if you intend to keep driving that car of yours, not that you’ll ever see me in one. Infernal combustion engine is what it is.’

  The advice proved sapient, the prediction oblique.

  Several weeks later my health was sufficiently regained for me to attend the ballet. A box was provided by Duchess Prushnikov to watch Mathulde Kschessinka, the prima ballerina assoluta of the Imperial Ballet, dance the ‘Pharaoh’s Daughter’
. The Season was in full swing and it looked as though there was no war anywhere. The fact that over one million Russians had died in the summer offensive was a matter of complete indifference to Society.

  At supper that evening the reason for my invitation became clear. As we reclined on opulent tapestry couches drinking chilled vodka, steaming tea, or bubbling hot chocolate, the Duchess Prushnikov asked me bluntly, ‘Do you believe that there is going to be a revolution in Russia, doctor?’

  My response was equally candid, ‘If certain things are not righted — yes, Duchess.’

  ‘Good. Then you will join us in getting rid of Nicky and replacing him with Alexei.’

  Sir George and I made our excuses and left.

  ‘We must warn them,’ I urged on entering the embassy.

  ‘By all means, but they probably know already. The police are effective sentinels and the Duchess is hardly discreet,’ he replied.

  ‘But surely . . .’

  ‘Have no fear, Dr Watson,’ he suavely assured me, ‘the Tsar will be kept informed and will note that another volatile reagent has just let off steam. Rather that than the silent ones who store up hatreds. It is the Slavic way.’

  Despite the absolute confidence of Sir George’s words I wired the Royal Family offering them my services. There was no reply. The Tsar was in Kiev and the Empress was alone, advised by Rasputin.

  At the beginning of December I was to see Rasputin and Slavic steam release again in one evil cocktail.

  I had arranged to meet James Cambeuil and Arthur Rowbotham at the Yar restaurant. It was a popular spot and consequently very crowded. The Yar was a large building with a music hall, balconies, private chambers, and public rooms. It was always very merry, and shrieks and whistles often rent the air but on this occasion it was the cry of a wild animal, a bull in temper that filled the air and silenced the multitude. As everyone stood as still as a photograph, the unmistakable figure of Rasputin smashed out of one of the private booths. Women screamed, glass shattered spraying crystal colours and astragals, furniture was thrown aside. Even those in the upper balconies fell silent and lent over to witness the spectacle. He was obviously very drunk. Spittle ran from his lips and mingled with debris already caught up in his matted beard. His clothes, now silks not peasant homespun, were torn and his steps unsteady.