Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Dying Emperor

by Thomas A. Turley

  Eventually, we arrived at a grand staircase, where the Count suggested to Hovell that he rejoin the Emperor and Sir Morell Mackenzie (“I believe they are expecting you”) while he showed us to our rooms. The young surgeon bowed and departed, promising to see us the next morning. As we ascended, our guide resumed his monologue.

  “I am sorry that the great English doctor could not welcome you, but tonight His Imperial Majesty is investing him with the Cross and Star of the Hohenzollern Order. Herr Hovell is to receive a somewhat lesser medal. It is our custom here in Germany to decorate the surgeons who have done so excellent a job of murdering our Kaiser! You, Herr Doktor Watson, may hope for a bauble in your turn.

  “Later tonight,” he warned us as we crossed a landing, “I suspect that you will meet the Kaiserin. She, too, gentlemen, has played her part. Having swallowed every lie the English doctor told her, for thirteen months she pretended to all that dear Fritz was only slightly ailing, that he would soon be well! All through the past autumn, she climbed in the Alps, tête-à-tête with her ‘English Sportsman’, or toured art galleries in Venice, keeping our German surgeons always at bay. Then, when the Crown Prince’s true condition became known at last, we were told that no operation would take place! Even after the tracheotomy in February, Her Highness assured me that her husband was to be completely cured, for Sir Morell was now quite certain that it was only perichondritis, which is not in any way malignant!”

  In response to my friend’s raised eyebrows, I quietly mouthed, “A severe form of inflammation, Holmes.” Meanwhile, I was inwardly fuming at this blackguard’s slander of the Empress, but Radolinski rattled on obliviously. When we finally turned into a long and richly panelled corridor, with great chandeliers illuminating works of heraldry upon its walls, he turned to face us with an expression of dismay.

  “But now-having dragged her poor invalid from death’s door to the throne - she will surely make an end of him over this Battenberg marriage! A week ago, after the Chancellor had finally talked the Kaiser out of it, Her Majesty intercepted the telegram telling Prince Alexander not to come. Back she stormed to her sick husband and - in front of witnesses-accused him of breaking his sworn promise and their poor daughter’s heart! So humiliated was the Kaiser that he lost patience, banged his fists upon the table, tore the bandage from his throat and tried to speak (only the words ‘Leave me alone!’ were clearly heard[32]), and finally stamped his foot and pointed to the door. The Kaiserin, for once, was worsted; she retired white as a sheet!”[33]

  Taken aback when neither Holmes nor I responded to this lurid tale, the Count concluded rather lamely, “And here, gentlemen, are your rooms.” Although less opulent than the public areas downstairs, our small chambers looked comfortable enough, and two of the palace servants were already unpacking our belongings. We bowed our thanks.

  “You have been an entertaining host, Count Radolinski,” my friend told him. “As you seem resolved to consider us adversaries, may I say that it will be an honour to cross swords with such a one.”

  “Friendly adveraries, I hope, Herr Holmes!” cried Radolinski. He lowered his voice as the servants made their obeisance and departed. “Do not, I beg you, be deceived into doubting that your valets understand the English language, though they may show no sign of doing so. These walls,” he added conspiratorially, have ears!”

  “Well, Holmes,” I said crossly, when, after a last exaggerated heel-click, the Count had finally left us, “at least we know there is one scoundrel in Charlottenburg!” We were lounging in armchairs before the fireplace in my room, sipping the fine whiskey my untrustworthy valet had left upon the sideboard. Assuming the decanter was not poisoned, we might almost have been at home in Baker Street.

  “Did you think so?” Holmes airily replied, puffing the old briar pipe he used when travelling. “The Hof-Marschall impressed me as an honest rogue, quite transparent in his knavery. Recall your Shakespeare, Watson! It is the villain who ‘smiles and smiles’ we must beware.”

  “Who,” I wondered, “is this ‘English Sportsman?’ Radolinski had the impudence to hint at some impropriety between him and the Empress.”

  “Would that be so surprising?” As ever, my friend was willing to think poorly of the fair sex. “Her Majesty is a relatively young and handsome woman, whose husband has been too ill for months to share her bed. Count Seckendorff - for that is the gentleman’s name - is said to possess both physical attractions and seductive charm. He is from an old Franconian family, but served with our army in India and Egypt, which accounts for his nom de guerre. According to my Whitehall correspondent, there were indeed rumours of a liaison between them in the Italian Alps last year. One wag even called Seckendorff ‘the Crown Princess’s right hand - and something more besides!’”[34]

  “Holmes! You are speaking of the daughter of our Queen!”

  “I would fain speak ill of neither Queen nor Empress, Doctor, but have all the queens of history been paragons of virtue?”

  “All the same-” I countered, when I was interrupted by a knock upon my door.

  “Herr Holmes?”

  The two of us exchanged a weary look, for it was nearly ten o’clock at the end of a long and tiring day. Then I recalled Radolinski saying that an audience with the Empress might keep us from our beds. With a sigh, I rose and admitted our unwelcome visitor.

  The man who entered was strongly built and handsome, his russet beard agreeably tinged with grey. He seemed oddly familiar, and I searched my memory on the chance that we had met somewhere in India. Later, I realised that he bore a passing resemblance to John Brown, the Queen’s Scots servant. His clothes and bearing, however, were undoubtedly a gentleman’s.

  “I am Count Seckendorff,” he told us, quite unnecessarily. “Her Imperial Majesty apologises for the lateness of this summons, but she wonders if you could meet with her for a brief time before retiring.” He gazed on us benignly, with no indication that he had heard himself discussed, still less of “seductive charm.”

  “We are always at Her Majesty’s service,” answered Sherlock Holmes. After taking a moment to tidy our apparel, we followed Seckendorff along the corridor, down another gilded staircase, through more splendid rooms, and up the servants’ stair into a narrow hallway, which ended at a whitewashed door. When our escort opened it, we entered a small and plainly furnished ante-room, where the Empress Victoria awaited. Her chamberlain retired into a corner, where he did his best to look invisible.

  The consort of Frederick III was then in her late forties. Like her mother, she was short and statuesque, with dark hair and an unlined, rounded face that allowed her to look younger than her years. Her smile was gracious yet somehow insincere, as though smiling had become a tiresome duty that no longer reflected her emotions.

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” she said, “for coming at so late an hour. As Sir Henry has telegraphed that you are unofficial visitors - his wife Mary is my dearest friend - I thought it best to see you when our meeting would arouse the least attention. I believe that you have not spoken with Sir Morell Mackenzie?”

  “Not as yet, Your Majesty,” Holmes admitted. “We expect to meet that gentleman tomorrow morning.”

  “We owe so much to him,” the Empress sighed. “The bleeding from my husband’s awful tracheotomy has been much better since Sir Morell changed the tube! And I am very thankful that Professor Virchow’s reports are as good as they have been. The Emperor is anxious to be cured and to recover!

  “Of course,” she added, when Holmes and I remained uncomfortably silent, “you will hear that this Professor Waldeger has found undoubted evidence of cancer - an immense quantity of nest-cells in Fritz’s sputum.[35] This quite convinces Professor von Bergmann and the other German doctors. Yet, Sir Morell tells me that Virchow is the great pathologist, and he does not consider mere nest-cells as undoubted proof!”

  “Perhaps, Your Majesty,” I ca
refully replied, “we can clarify that difference of opinion with Sir Morell tomorrow.”

  “Please do, Dr. Watson.” Her Majesty offered me a grateful look before her voice turned scornful. “Did you know that von Bergmann has told Willy that his Papa has six months to live?” She exchanged a glance, I saw, with Seckendorff; and Sherlock Holmes suppressed a smile.

  “I confess to you, gentlemen, my boundless disappointment in my eldest son.” The Empress began moving restlessly about the room, no longer regarding us directly. “Naturally, it has never been easy for me here. When I married Fritz and first came to Berlin, we hoped that dear Papa’s dream of a liberal, united Germany could still be realised.[36] But from the first, the Prussian court saw me only as ‘the English woman’ - suspected of free-thinking tendencies, of cosmopolitan and humanitarian sentiments - all abominations in the eyes of those who are all-powerful now! For all of Willy’s life, Fritz and I have worked tirelessly to educate him in the constitutional tradition so dear to my own parents, so that he would one day become the liberal, enlightened ruler they wished for him to be.”

  Turning from the window, she raised her hands in a gesture of baffled resignation. “But it seems evident, gentlemen, that we have failed! The conservatives, the court, the military, the government people - in short, the Bismarck clique! - all have rallied now to William! They criticise; they slander us; they intrigue behind our backs. They treat our son as though he was already emperor! And all this adulation has quite gone to his head. Not a word of sympathy or affection does Willy offer us, and it distresses me to see what airs he gives himself.”

  “Possibly, ma’am,” my friend suggested gently, “it would have been wiser to accept that in the end, your son will become a German Emperor, not a King of England.”

  “Well, Mr. Holmes,” the Empress huffily replied, “it is easy to be wise in hindsight. But even today, I know that the whole nation-the true people of Germany - are behind my husband in his liberal aims. I still believe that Fritz and I may do some good, for” - here her voice faltered - “however long he reigns. Oh, if I could only think we had a year before us!” She looked away again, but not before I saw the glint of tears.

  “But it is a hard thing, gentlemen, to see our son, the heir to a great empire, surround himself with the most reactionary representatives of Junkerdom! Count Waldersee, who is soon to head the General Staff, will start a war unless Fritz can have him transferred to the provinces. There is also Herr Puttkamer, a politician so corrupt that even Prince Bismarck-his own brother-in-law - cannot abide him![37] You have already, I am told, met that odious man Stoecker, whom Willy calls ‘a second Luther!’”

  “We had that pleasure earlier this evening,” Holmes said drily, “but were rescued in a timely manner by the palace guard.”

  Her Majesty surprised us with a girlish laugh. “We thought you might have trouble from that quarter! The Emperor sent an order to alert the Gardes du Corps. We are not, you see, altogether without allies!”

  “What of the Chancellor?” asked Sherlock Holmes. “It is no secret that he and your husband do not see eye-to-eye. Has His Majesty found Bismarck possible to manage?”

  “Their relations are better than before Fritz ascended to the throne,” the Empress conceded. “One must respect the man’s accomplishments. But you cannot expect from him that which modern Germany thirsts for: peace among its classes, friendly relations with its neighbours, liberty and the respect for right instead of force, and the protection of the whole against the strong. None of those blessings will ever come from our ‘Iron Chancellor.’ Despotism is the essence of his being!

  “Take this crisis over poor Moretta’s marriage,” she went on, resuming her agitated pacing. “Prince Bismarck has orchestrated it merely to place me in the wrong! My own dear Mama tells me that the Tsar no longer cares a straw whom Sandro marries! There is no prospect whatever of his returning to Bulgaria, although I had hoped to place him there, with Moretta at his side, to give Germany and England a secure presence in the Balkans. Yet, the Chancellor casts me as an hysterical mother, ready to risk war with Russia merely to ensure her daughter’s happiness! It is all a plan to ingratiate himself again with Willy-who hates Sandro - after the two fell out last November. Naturally, it is Bismarck’s version that everyone believes! Even my husband complains that I ‘give him no peace’ about the matter.”

  “Yes, we heard something of the sort tonight.”

  Her Majesty regarded my friend with mild distaste. “No doubt from our loyal Hof-Marschall! As you may not be aware, the Chancellor seldom goes out now or mixes in the world. He is thoroughly dependent on the tales carried to him by his satellites, which he always implicitly believes.[38] So Fritz and I are quite used to being spied upon!

  “But when he does come here,” she added, “Prince Bismarck treats us with cold courtesy. At least he is able - unlike William - not to look at Fritz as though calculating how much longer he may live! Civility is easy for him now. He knows that despite his age, he is nearly certain to outlast us. What worries the old man, Mr. Holmes, is what comes after. Because, you see, the great ‘Iron Chancellor’ is even more frightened of my son than I am!”

  Wry amusement fading from her eyes, the Empress extended a hand to us in parting. “Gentlemen, I have kept you far too long tonight. Forgive my un-imperial outspokenness, which dear Mama would surely disapprove! But since Mary Ponsonby went home, there are so few people here to whom I can speak openly. I mean, you understand, people who are English!”

  We bowed our own way out the door and to the landing, for Her Majesty had asked her chamberlain to remain behind before he took us to our rooms. Once we were alone, I could not forbear to comment on the audience.

  “What a remarkable woman, Holmes! I was relieved to find her more realistic about her husband’s dire prognosis than at first she seemed.”

  “No thanks, it appears, to Sir Morell Mackenzie!” my companion snapped. “Indeed, Doctor, the Empress seems to combine her father’s intellect with her mother’s strength of character. Had Frederick come to the throne a healthy man, she would have been the de facto ruler of the empire. Instead, thirty years of waiting have all come to naught. It must break her heart to know that Prince Albert’s dream of a liberal Germany will not now be fulfilled. Certainly, it will never happen under William II!”

  Our talk ended abruptly when Seckendorff emerged. On arriving at the bottom of the stairs, we glimpsed Count Radolinski as he slipped around a corner.

  “Please excuse me, gentlemen,” our guide said grimly. He was already in pursuit of his rival before adding, “I trust that you can find your own way back.”

  “Well, Watson,” grumbled Sherlock Holmes, “we will leave Counts Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to practice their duello.[39] I for one am ready for my bed.”

  Precisely on cue, our valets emerged from behind the servants’ stairway. Bowing wordlessly, they politely gestured in the direction of our rooms. As we followed them through the darkened, empty halls of Schloss Charlottenburg, the only sound I heard was my friend’s laughter.

  22 Without the Internet, the handbooks published by the German firm of Karl Baedeker (1801–1859) must have been indispensable for European travel in Holmes’ day. For this journey, Watson would have used the 9th English edition of Northern Germany (London, Dulau and Co., 1886), available online, through Emory University Libraries, at: https://archive.org/stream/northerngermany08firgoog. Descriptions of Holmes and Watson’s route through Magdeburg and Brandenburg, and of the town and palace of Charlottenburg, are found between pages 72 and 103. Evidently, this edition was revised after its initial publication, because it noted that the coffin of Emperor William I (d. 1888) lay within the Charlottenburg Palace mausoleum.

  23 Dr. John Eric Erichsen (1818–1896) was born in Copenhagen to a banking family. He began his medical studies at University College, London and in 18
87 became president of the university council. Besides the honors Watson mentions, he was a Fellow of the Royal Society, president of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, and (in 1895) a baronet. His personality was described as “honourable and candid.” See Wikipedia at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Eric_Erichsen.

  24 Prince William’s chronic ear infections - which remained with him throughout his life - are discussed at several points in Röhl’s Young Wilhelm. Dr. Erichsen shared his conclusions on then-Crown Prince William’s physical and mental health with Lord Salisbury’s private secretary, Captain (later Sir) Schomberg Kerr McDonnell, in March, 1888. McDonnell reported the conversation to King George V in 1914. Although the Kaiser never went mad, whenever he would commit some egregious indiscretion, Lord Salisbury could be heard to mutter “Erichsen.” See pp. 317–319.

  25 The imperial line’s fourth generation was assured by the birth of a son to the future William II in 1882. Known to history as Crown Prince Wilhelm, he commanded the German assault upon Verdun in 1916. Once World War I was lost, the Crown Prince followed his father into exile but returned to Germany in 1923. Having hoped in vain for a Hohenzollern restoration under Hitler, he died in 1951 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_German_Crown_Prince).

  26 Dr. Felix Semon was born in Danzig (1849) to a wealthy German-Jewish family. He studied medicine in Heidelberg and Berlin before moving to London in 1875. Although Morell Mackenzie put him on the staff of his own hospital, Semon soon left and also became a leading laryngologist, eventually improving laryngofissure into a safer operation. During Frederick’s illness, Semon supported the German doctors against his former mentor. In return, Mackenzie’s biographer severely criticized both Semon’s character and his claim, in his autobiography, that he would have cured the Emperor (e.g., Stevenson, pp. 7–8, 87). For examples of Semon’s letters to Herbert Bismarck during 1887–1888, see Röhl, pp. 656–658, 697, and 780–781. He was later physician to King Edward VII and was knighted in 1901. During World War I, Semon remained loyal to Great Britain and was thereafter ostracized by the German medical community. He died in 1921.