The Mystery of Briony Lodge

by David Bagchi

  It was indeed a sad tale to hear, for Henry was a good officer and an even better man, and I could not help but offer a silent prayer of thanksgiving for the many blessings of my own life.

  Then the conversation turned to me, and I explained as best I could (and as discreetly, given our public venue) the nature of my mission. Spoken out loud, the fact that I was canoeing down the Thames in pursuit of a man dressed as a lame beggar with an otter, sounded so fantastical that for a moment I feared that Henry might think me to have gone off my head. Instead, a look of extreme concentration descended upon his features. He had seen a communiqué from the Oxfordshire force on Friday about this very matter. He had given it no more thought at the time, being as it was a routine notification to a neighbouring force of a matter of common interest. But now he knew that his old battalion medic was involved, he promised to mobilize every last man in the Berkshire Constabulary, if need be, to assist.

  I was delighted to hear this. The arrival of White-hair and his equally hefty accomplice upon the scene had weighted the die firmly against me. Not only was I heavily out-gunned if it came to violence, but my enemies now had the option of laying two false trails. I was no longer sure that Jan, in his elaborate disguise, was not himself now a decoy, though my instincts told me that I was still, for the time being, on the right track. Henry mentioned a new unit he had set up which seemed perfect for this situation. It was a squad of specially-trained plain-clothes constables under a sergeant, all mounted on fast bicycles—the ‘flying squad’, he called it—and which could outrun any moving object except a train. He promised to assign them to the case immediately he returned home, using the special electrical telephone which had been installed in his house and which connected directly to the principal divisional headquarters.

  As Henry spoke, the old spark I remembered as his most distinctive characteristic returned to his eyes. He was a man who flourished on work, without which he was bound to dwell too much upon his misfortunes. So I was glad to have been the bringer of this challenge. But as we were leaving, he said a remarkable thing to me. Shaking my hand, he asked after my old injury, then suggested light-heartedly that if I got bored I could always go to Maidenhead on Friday and join the other wounded old soldiers.

  Wounded old soldiers! I instantly grasped the full import of this news. Jan’s new disguise was not that of any old tramp but specifically that of an old soldier down on his luck. Far from being overly-theatrical, as I had thought, such a disguise would be of the greatest utility, for at that moment a brigade of wounded ex-servicemen was converging upon Maidenhead. There Jan could be sure of throwing off any pursuers in the general melee. My admiration of the cleverness of our enemy rose to new heights.

  Luckily, I was able to secure at the Dog and Duck a room that overlooked the Oxford Road, and Jan hove into view just ten minutes after the time I had estimated for his arrival. I readied myself to follow him in order to ascertain his overnight billet, wondering if he would dare enter a regular hotel wearing such garb and with an animal, when I was stopped in my tracks. Jan was making straight for the Dog and Duck! I tiptoed out onto the landing which overlooked the hallway below in order to overhear the conversation, and half expected to hear the porter summoned to throw poor Jan and his otter out on their ears. But I had underestimated the patriotism of the Goring hotelier. Arrangements were made to house the otter in the proprietor’s daughter’s rabbit cage (no mention of what alternative arrangements the rabbit would have to make), and the sham old soldier himself was given a room on the ground floor. I withdrew silently, and decided to make a start of writing up the extraordinary events of this day.

  ‌

  ‌Chapter Twelve

  A discussion between friends—Harris’s strange metamorphosis—A riverside disquisition upon continental chocolate—The tale of a false affliction and a true otter

  Thursday 13 June

  ‘It was your bally fault, Harris. What are friends for if not to back you up?’

  ‘No, J. It was your bally fault. You should never have attacked that old man. If you’d read that poster like me, instead of slurping your ale like a pig in a trough…’

  ‘Slurping? Slurping! I’ll have you know that I hardly moistened my lips on that pint—and it cost me twenty quid! Moreover, I’ll have you know that…’

  ‘Oh, look, J., there’s an injured old soldier ahead of us. What do you reckon—bring him down with a rugby tackle or simply cosh him over the back of his head? I’m sure you brought a life-preserver with you—you seem to have brought most of Baker Street along for this overnight trip. If you can’t find the life-preserver, I’m sure we could do just as good a job with the umbrella stand or the kitchen-sink. I’ve seen them both in your luggage somewhere.’

  Had anyone overheard our amiable conversation as we took an early evening walk along the river at Maidenhead, they might conceivably have mistaken it for something more heated. In fact, it was the sort of conversation only true friends can have. I feel rather sorry for those who cannot have them.

  Some yards ahead of us, as Harris had correctly observed, strolled another evening promenader, an old soldier with a crutch and an otter on a lead. He was possibly the same man that Harris had heard about in the post office at Goring. But, on the matter of injured ex-servicemen, I was understandably reluctant to leap to any conclusions. My recollection of the proceedings in the pub garden that afternoon were too fresh and too painful. Especially as concerns the twenty pounds. Much further behind us was a gaggle of bicyclists whose object appeared to be to ride as slowly as possible without actually falling over or wobbling off into the river. I was about to suggest to Harris that we tarry to watch them, just to cheer ourselves up by attending to other people’s misfortunes, when he stopped in his tracks and stared dead ahead.

  In order to comprehend the remarkable, and indeed tragic, sequence of events that was about to unfold, the reader needs to grasp the import of one fact above all: Harris’s allergy to litter. Seeing litter about the street causes Harris to metamorphose from a mostly likeable fellow into a very fiend from Hell. But seeing someone purposely drop litter—especially if they do it openly and nonchalantly rather than surreptitiously and guiltily like any civilized man—conjures up all his most sadistic and murderous tendencies. Torquemada suffered in much the same way, I understand, except that in his case it was heresy that brought the old problem on. Still, it takes all sorts to make a world, as my old aunt used to say, and who are we to judge?

  ‘Did you see what that otter-fellow just did, J.?’ Harris hissed. ‘He threw that wrapper onto the riverbank. He must be some kind of animal!’

  ‘Perhaps it was the otter that did it. He really is an animal,’ I replied, trying vainly to suppress the eruption to come. But it was no more use than expecting a pretty girl not to sneeze just because you have offered her your best handkerchief.

  As we drew level with the discarded red wrapper, Harris stopped to pick it up. I knew from experience what he intended to do, but this time there was a twist. He read the wrapper.

  ‘“Die Hamburgerischeschokoladevereinsgesellschaft”,’ he announced. ‘“Schokolade.” So British chocolate is not good enough for our ottery friend. So we are above British chocolate, are we? Is that not perhaps because we are not British? Tell me, J., what sort of a man deliberately eats Hun chocolate? Belgian chocolate, French chocolate, Swiss chocolate: those are international chocolates, accepted the world over. Anyone may eat of such chocolate regardless of nationality, without attracting undue attention. But only a German could possibly enjoy German chocolate. There is your villain, J.; there the tormentor-in-chief of the fair Briony. Your duty is clear. Do it. If not, I shall.’

  My pacific friend, who had carelessly read a poster while my life and limb were being threatened by louts, had disappeared. In his place was a fire-born dragon from the very bowels of Hades. I do wish people would consider the consequences before they discard their rubbish in a public place.

  ‘Steady on,
old chap. You can’t possibly know that. Just because of a chocolate wrapper.’

  Harris had quickened his pace and I had hurried after, and we were now just a few steps behind our man. The otter was the first to notice our approach, and cast a worried backward glance at us, before scurrying for safety through his master’s legs. The man himself, lost in his own thoughts, heard not our approach. In view of what was to happen, I take some comfort in the knowledge that he had, in his no doubt troubled life, found some serenity at last in this quiet summer evening’s promenade along the river. For all I know, he had made his peace with his Maker, and his conscience was clear and his soul ready for whatever fate had in store for him. We can hope no more than the same for ourselves, when our time comes.

  ‘Very well, then, J.,’ said Harris. ‘You may shirk your patriotic duty, but let not the same be said of me. Guten Abend, mein Herr!’ he called out. The man in front, still many miles away in blissful day-dreams, half-turned, smiled, and returned the ‘guten Abend’. Then he froze as he realized his mistake.

  ‘Kennen Sie vielleicht Briony Lodge, mein Herr?’

  At these words of Harris’s, our adversary turned fully upon us, took his heavy crutch and flung it at our legs. We got considerably tangled up in it, and he saw his opportunity to escape us on his two perfectly good feet. He might have got away, too, but for a peculiarity of that stretch of the river. We were level with the lip of the first in a series of weirs, which shelved gently enough to begin with but soon degenerated into falls of a most un-Berkshire-like violence. Out of the corner of his eye, the otter must have seen an enormous trout in the shallow water of the lip—the sort you never see when you go looking for them, but which swim to the bank in great fishy flocks when you have no rod in your hand, and ask you for biscuits. At this, the otter’s training deserted him (assuming that he had ever been certificated for riverside promenading in the first place, which in retrospect I rather doubt). He straightaway dived into the river after his supper. Unfortunately, the effect of his earlier scurryings back and forth had been to wrap the lead around his master’s legs. Where the otter went, the man was obliged to follow. And so the two of them leapt into the river, the second far less gracefully than the first.

  I heard later that the otter, whom I have every reason to believe was a patriotic but deeply misled fellow, was found unharmed a mile downstream. He was sitting on a rock by the riverbank, minus lead but still wearing his collar, preening himself and looking considerably glossier and fatter. Of the trout, only a few of the larger bones remained, scattered about the rock. The German had been concussed by his fall and had drowned. He was found floating peacefully on his back, all the troubles and betrayals and villainies of his life now quite soothed away by the kindly, cold hand of Death.

  ‌

  ‌Chapter Thirteen

  FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNAL

  OF DR JOHN H. WATSON, THE SAME DAY

  Thursday 13 June

  This day has been a bitter-sweet one for me. Sweet, because my mission is at an end and I will soon be reunited with my beloved Mary. Bitter, because the man I have been following since Oxford is no more.

  In just the same way that one can learn much about the character of a fellow chess-player from a couple of games, without ever exchanging a word, I feel that I came to know Jan by observing him and attempting to anticipate his next move. Although he was a conspirator and, I do not doubt, a blackguard, I came–I admit it—to like the fellow! His determination and devotion, however misguided his cause, endeared him to me. But now his body lies on a mortuary slab in Maidenhead, and my signature on the certificate gives his cause of death as ‘Otter’. The creature whose entrance upon the scene was, in my view, a step too far down the road of legitimate disguise in the direction of amateur theatrics, caused Jan to lose his own step, fall into the river, and drown.

  Holmes, for all his marvellous gifts, cannot see his opponents, or even those he agrees to help, as real people in this way. To him, they are merely values and factors in a mathematical equation that needs solving. If, like Jan, they are subtracted or cancelled out, that just simplifies the equation. He knows of love and jealousy and hatred and greed, and can manipulate them to his advantage: indeed, how many are the maidservants of great houses that he has made love to for the information they could provide him, and who still daily expect him to return to claim them? But he himself has never felt the pang of such passions, and so considers himself above the generality which does. To be sure, he knows boredom, and adopts measures against it which I find reprehensible; but of other human emotions he is as personally ignorant as he is of the rotation of the earth about the sun. I could almost wish that one day he might suffer a reverse, a failure, and learn more of normal human feelings in that one instant than through all the penny-dreadfuls and lurid police reports he has ever read. I would not wish him to fail on any great matter of state, of course, or in the pursuit of any murderer or other vicious felon, but in some token but memorable way. And if it could be at the hands of someone he ordinarily despises—a woman, perhaps—so much the better. Perhaps Miss Irene Adler herself might prove his equal. But I daydream, and of course I wish Holmes no harm or lack of success. I just wish he could be more human.

  But let me bring some order to my account, if I cannot yet bring it to my conflicting emotions, by starting at the beginning. That Jan’s destination was to be Maidenhead, there was no disputing. His latest disguise clearly marked him out as one intending to lose himself in the crowd of invalids converging on the annual national convention of war-wounded. Once there, he no doubt intended to adopt a third disguise and slip away discreetly, continuing his mission against the King of Bohemia.

  My old friend Henry Haversham, now Chief Constable of Berkshire, had promised me the services of his plain-clothed bicycle-mounted division based at Reading. They were able not only to monitor Jan’s progress as he neared Maidenhead, but to report back at regular intervals by relay, and then by means of telephonic communication, so that I was kept constantly informed in a most impressive manner. When Jan was reported to be in Maidenhead, I was invited to join the ranks of Henry’s ‘flying squad’, which I was happy to do.

  The officer in charge of the mounted division, Sergeant Gruffudd, was all for arresting our quarry there and then. He reasoned that once Jan melted into the crowds of invalid ex-servicemen, he would be very difficult to spot again. I had to accept the wisdom of his view, but Holmes’s own strict instructions had been to follow and observe, not to interfere. That approach had, it was true, brought to light the existence of the two accomplices, and it might yield more fruit yet. Yet the sergeant’s cautious approach had obvious merit, and whatever the nature of Jan’s intentions towards Miss Adler and the King of Bohemia, he was now a good deal nearer his destination, and there was no guarantee that we could pick up his scent again in time. But on what grounds could he be detained? I was not sure that Jan had committed any crime so far. Sergeant Gruffudd assured me that he could think of a dozen charges, ranging from intention to defraud to several offences relating to the keeping of wild animals. The Reading police are certainly thorough.

  Even as we were debating such matters, events were already moving rapidly to their tragic conclusion. We saw up ahead that Jan had stopped to speak to two young gentlemen we had seen strolling behind him. Then he seemed to take fright, and threw his walking-crutch at them, scattering them like nine-pins. As one man, we began to pedal furiously, but before we had reached the scene Jan—still imbalanced by the throwing of the crutch and now pulled off his feet by the escaping otter, fell into the river.

  The body was carried down river fast, and there was no question of leaping in after him. Instead, I joined a section of the cyclists who raced after the body. But I could see Jan’s body drifting unprotesting downstream, and already I knew in my heart that my mission was over. The majority of the squad—whose ranks were now swelled by Thames Conservancy and other officials, to insure that jurisdictional boundaries were
not crossed—stopped to detain and question the young men: they were not responsible for what had happened, but they had clearly said something to Jan which caused him to react violently.

  His body came to rest against an old tree trunk jammed against the further bank. Strange to relate, when we found him the otter, who was most to blame for the incident, but who was hardly criminally culpable, was sitting on the opposite bank alongside its former master. Whether he meant to mourn his master’s corpse or to eat it I could not tell. He is now free to roam the Thames, and will no doubt make himself as unpopular amongst anglers as he already is amongst the trout.

  So that is the end of the story, but for a singular postscript. I had noticed and recognized the two young gentlemen who had incurred Jan’s wrath as none other than Holmes’s upstairs neighbours from Baker Street! Once the medical formalities had been completed and Jan’s body carried off to the mortuary, I returned to Sergeant Gruffudd and informed him of this. I suggested that he look for a third man, George Wingrave, who was Harris’s and Jerome’s constant companion. The local hotels were all checked, without success, but Sergeant Gruffudd had the excellent idea of checking at the post office for any poste restante mail. He asked me to come with him, and I soon discovered his reason for asking. It is a relatively minor offence for a member of the public to open a letter intended for someone else. But if it became known that a policeman had done the same, even in the process of investigating a crime, it would be likely to bring about the complete collapse of public faith in the police throughout the Kingdom. I was at first reluctant to participate in this subterfuge, but was relieved to see that the contents of the letter completely exonerated the three of any complicity in the plot. They had somehow become involved in it, but fortunately were far too ignorant to understand it.