by Tim Symonds
Mycroft walked around us to the door and turned to face us.
‘I am instructing the British Legate in Sofia to meet you at the earliest possible opportunity. His name is Sir Penderel Moon. He will give you a complete briefing on the Prince. There is someone else I should mention - Colonel Kalchoff, the War Minister, a dangerous man. We intercept his telegrams. He leans strongly towards Berlin. If war threatens between England and Germany, he could convince Prince Ferdinand to take the Kaiser’s side.’
His face took on a lighter expression. ‘Gentlemen, I’m sorry your tea failed to arrive. No. 10 Downing Street is littered with the skeletons of bonnes who starved to death trying to find this cubby-hole. Dr. Watson, I hope you have packed your Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, with a cloth cap for your head in the Balkan sun. The fishing is remarkably good, and wild-duck shooting is as excellent as in the fens, You might bag a capercailzie. The Prince is keen on blasting away. At the Imperial shoot at Spala last October the Times’ correspondent rated him the worst seat on a horse but the second-best grouse-bagger among the whole of European royalty. Only our own Prince of Wales is a better shot.’
He opened the door. ‘I envy you both. A few days in the Prince’s private carriages on the Orient Express, an hour or so aboard the ferry crossing the Danube - no enteric fever in the Balkans at present.’
A member of the Downing Street staff led us away. Mycroft called after us, ‘Sherlock, I have a personal request. Ferdinand adores generals’ uniforms, of which he has a great many. Do bring one back for your brother from your grateful client. It would go down wonderfully well at the Diogenes Club.’
Chapter IV
IN WHICH WE SET OFF FOR BULGARIA
WE quit Downing Street and boarded our train for Dover and beyond in good spirits. Holmes pulled on his striking Poshteen Long Coat with its many flaps and pockets and mesmeric promise of distant mountain ranges. The Capital’s murk had deepened. Half-obscured Hawksmoor spires, the indissoluble chaos of grey wheel traffic confounded in nebulous London fogs, and a perpetual ring of tram-horse hoofs fell away behind us. Soon we lost sight of the Thames and the river’s long reaches which I shall ever associate with our pursuit of the Andaman Islander in the earlier days of our career.
Half an hour or so down the line we halted to allow an oncoming train first use of a narrow tunnel. Below us, flowers on the sunny embankments slowed their rush the other way and allowed full examination. Comfrey with its bell-shaped, creamy yellow flowers stood guard over Common violets. Golden celandines with foliage as rich as liquorice grew side by side with figworts and patches of pink, blue and Tyrian purple milkwort.
I reflected on the bag of gold and banknotes tucked safely in our strong-box. Fees of this order underwrite Holmes’s generosity. Despite the vexations of tax collectors he turns away commercial offers of a most tempting kind. Recently a German pipe manufacturer offered attractive royalties for permission to produce a Meerschaum in the shape of Holmes’s head (‘emphasising your fine aquiline nose’). Royal Tunbridge Wells offered a fine payment ‘if you would let the Town Fathers raise a bronze statue to you next to one of Daniel Defoe’, portraying Holmes drinking the Spa’s ferrugious waters, over a brass plate affirming the springs ‘are favoured by Mr. Sherlock Holmes for the maintenance and improvement of his deductive skills’, and that the water would ‘cure the colic, the melancholy, and the vapours; make the lean fat, the fat lean; kill flat worms in the belly, loosen the clammy humours of the body, dry the over-moist brain’. A small film studio offered to make him ‘famous in every part of the world, from darkest Africa to the empty quarters of Mesopotamia’, if he would also cover the cost of making ‘Sherlock Holmes, the World’s Paramount Consultant Detective’.
At Dover we caught the SS Victoria, a graceful steam-boat constructed to order by the Abdela & Mitchell yards on the Manchester Ship Canal (‘Constructors of ships for the Nile, the Niger and Peruvian Amazon’). Our fellow passengers were mostly foreigners returning to Continental homes, and a scattering of English. The water was choppy in the aftermath of the storm. The heaving and yawing made me feel nauseous. I turned for distraction to the sheaf of papers pressed upon us as we quit Downing Street. In the margin Mycroft had scrawled: ‘We watch events unfolding in the region with trepidation. Bulgaria is pivotal. On three sides empires are disintegrating like great suns which have reached their end. We hope for the best, that these old empires will die peacefully in their sleep, but fear the worst. Even though Bulgaria may occupy a mere paragraph in an English history hundreds of pages long, among those ageing empires she bulks very large. Nevertheless, England holds the scales. If required, and despite a hullabaloo from Little Englanders, the British Empire must show its teeth. If it must, it will bite.’
To my relief the ferry, delayed by the residue of the storm, at last reached the calm waters of the French port. We boarded the train to Paris. By evening we were at the Gare de Strasbourg where the Orient Express was on the point of departing. A porter hurried us from our landau to Prince Ferdinand’s private carriages. Known in diplomatic circles as the Bulgarian foreign office on wheels, the compartments were an elegant marvel, the equal to the Pennsylvania Limited as the very quintessence of luxury, ‘un vrai bijou d’intimité voyageuse’. A brass plate indicated the London & North-west Railway company constructed the carriages, the same yards which provide carriages for our Queen-Empress’s journeys to Balmoral. The door handles of the toilets bore the Prince’s coat of arms. The furnishings had been purchased in Vienna as a job lot at a sale of a bankrupt lady singer, giving the whole a raffish Biedermeier femininity. Within minutes the maître d’hôtel handed us the evening’s menu, a choice of oysters, soup with Italian pasta, turbot with green sauce, chicken à la chasseur, fillet of beef with château potatoes, chaud-froid of game animals, lettuce, chocolate pudding, buffet of desserts. In such unparalleled luxury, Holmes and I sat through the first evening in thoughtful mood and silent companionship.
It was rare to be on a case with my comrade-in-arms in foreign parts. Several of Holmes’s greatest successes had been overseas without me or my service revolver at his side, among them the case of the Trepoff murder in Odessa, and his famous investigation of the sudden death of Cardinal Tosca (an inquiry carried out at the express desire of His Holiness the Pope). Neither had I been with him in Narbonne and Nimes in the well-paid service of the French Republic, nor during the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee. There was, however, one never-to-be-forgotten journey when we travelled together to the Englischer Hof at Meiringen in search of ex-Professor Moriarty. Faithful readers will know of the shattering events which took place at the nearby Reichenbach Falls, events culminating in the death of the Napoleon of crime and the commencement of Holmes’s Great Hiatus.
An uneasy feeling overtook me as I recollected Mycroft’s words of warning: ‘Remember, Bulgaria is the only place in the world where you can go out in the morning any day of the year and get blown up by a bomb intended for someone else.’
Spurred on by uneasy memories of Moriarty and thoughts of assassination, I caught my friend’s eye.
‘Holmes,’ I began, breaking in to his reverie, ‘I should like to extract a promise.’
My comrade sat up at attention, his pipe halfway to his lips.
‘A promise, my dear chap?’
‘That when I pass on to the Silent Land my earthly remains may be buried next to yours.’
Holmes eyed me inquisitively. ‘A curious topic, Watson, my dear friend, though I perfectly accept it is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognise danger when it may be close upon us. Even the cat runs out of lives eventually.’
I went on, ‘If by then you have purchased your bee-farm in the Sussex Downs - ’
‘I assume you wish to be suitably distant from the hives of Italian bees?’
‘At least the quarter mile.’
‘And if you predecease me do you promise on your own dear mother’s grave not to rise up and haunt me?’
I held out my hand. ‘A deal, Holmes.’
‘Not yet, Watson. We have further negotiations to navigate before we shake on it. Can we agree a villager’s chain between us? I am a light sleeper in life, I shall expect to be so in the sleep of death. To bear your snores has been a singular penance in my present incarnation. For eternity it would be quite intolerable.’
‘At least the chain then,’ I agreed promptly.
‘And how would you like to be laid to your rest - in tropical sun-helmet, khaki uniform and puttees?’
‘That will do nicely, Holmes, yes.’
‘And what inscription on your stone?’
‘I prefer to leave that to you, my dear fellow, but a reference to the Watson Codex and my medical duties in Afghanistan would not come amiss. I also remind you that you are my junior only by a year or two.’
‘I think ‘Steel True’ would do.’
With unexpected sentimentality he added, ‘When you go to your grave, all the high-collared young men from the West End will go to their offices with crape bands tied around their top-hats. They will hold your death a horrible thing.’
Thus in perfect jollity and good fellowship the placement of my grave if not the wording on my stone was settled.
Chapter V
WE CONTINUE OUR JOURNEY ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS
ON the morrow I rose early from a comfortable sleep, lulled by the sonorous puffing of the train at speed. Morning had broken bright and cloudless. Enchanted lands with their differing languages and scripts came and went, slipping behind us in quick succession as the express thundered on. I made my way to the Dining-car where I found Holmes studying a pile of papers.
He looked up at my entrance. ‘Watson, I have been reading up on our client’s genealogy. It seems the Prince claims blood with every legendary figure of Europe’s past. Do order breakfast. I recommend the omelette stuffed with shallots and chives, or I am sure they will provide you with a passable copy of Mrs. Hudson’s grilled kidneys and devilled chicken, even a plate of cold ham and galantine.’
‘And what of his wife? He made no mention of her that I recall.’
‘He was in a marriage of convenience, to Princess Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma, the daughter of Roberto I of Parma and Princess Maria Pia, of the Bourbon Two Sicilies. She gave him four children, Boris, Kyril, Eudoxia and Nadezhda.’
‘And?’
‘She died soon after the birth of Nadezhda.’
‘So he is at present a widower?’
‘Heavens, how well you must have slept! In addition to being a widower, of which we may hear more, Ferdinand possesses remarkable gifts for the natural sciences. He is a renowned botanist and entomologist, and a host of other ‘-ists’: linguist, alchemist, philatelist, and a very considerable amateur artist. In short, he will not deny himself his own opinions on every subject under the sun - politics, music, architecture, Darwinism, spiritualism perhaps, matters of the kitchen.’
A uniformed attendant brought us a set of newspapers. Among the considerable pile lay the Journal de Genève, the newspaper which, a day ahead of the Reuters despatch, had published the first report of the death of Holmes and ex-Professor Moriarty on that fateful day nine years earlier.
The Adevarul de Cluj was the only paper which came with an English translation. ‘Holmes,’ I said with a chuckle, ‘listen to this: ‘Some Strange Happenings In Eastern Bohemia’.’
The article began, ‘A man’s skeleton discovered during excavations for a deep well in the village of Mikulovice may indicate the presence of a vampire coven. Fearing the deceased might return from the grave, he was sent on his final journey weighed down with a huge stone on his chest and another one on his head. “Only the bodies of people believed to be vampires were given such treatment,” reports a local priest.’
The story continued, ‘The site may be the world’s first burial place for the Undead, people who are believed to rise from the grave, walk once more on the Earth to prey on the living. All the skeletons showed tell-tale signs of anti-vampire rituals. Some were weighted down, others had a nail driven through their temple, or variously debilitated and their heads cut off and faced downward so they should not find their way back to the world of the living. These funerary rituals indicate the bodies were the remains of revenants in the eyes of the villagers.’
This was followed by the most chilling fact of all: ‘Some of the whole bodies were buried facing down in the hope that when the time came for the vampire to rise it would dig with claws on its hands and feet ever-deeper downward into the earth.’
The article went on to report a very recent case in the Romanian village of Marotinul-de-Sus. When a woman fell ill for no apparent cause, the inhabitants smelt the presence of a moroi (vampire). Around midnight, several relatives of a recently-deceased man dug up his corpse, fearing he had become the vampire. They split open the ribcage, and removed his heart. This was burned, and the ashes given to the sick woman to drink in water to escape the vampire.
‘Holmes, what do you think of such goings-on?’ I asked with a further chuckle.
My companion failed to answer. Instead, he stared out at the landscape rushing by.
Chapter VI
THE MEETING AT THE IRON GATES
BY the second evening our train had entered mountainous territories. Hills, rocks and mountains piled one upon the other. The great fir forests stretched downwards to the very verges of cultivated fields in the lower valleys. We breathed the keen air and the balsamic odour of the pine trees. Green softened into sfumato. High peaks towered above us, etched by deep, fast-flowing rivers and avalanche-threatened passes that seemed uncrossable even as we wended our way through them. At one point ice-melt roared over a curving precipice into a vast cauldron, recalling the infamous Reichenbach Falls from whose black depths endless clouds of vapour rise. We looked out on the dainty green of the fresh spring spreading through the mountain meadows, and for contrast to the virgin white of the lingering winter above, the peaks now turning red with the light of a sun long dipped on us in our gorge below. The Continental spring had warmed the granite beneath the thin soil. Patches of colour were springing into being, like exotic quilts laid between moss-covered rocks - corn speedwell, rusty-red columbine, hart’s tongue, wild primula, violets, Lady’s Smock. A further profusion of white clover clothed the banks of glittering streams.
Another night went by. With a jolting of carriages we arrived at the river port of Orşova. The Orient Express leg of our journey was at an end.
Our boxes waited on board while the railway staff unloaded a live Cossack bear and several enormous panels of St. Petersburg. The station master approached us enquiring if we were ‘Milords anglais’. He handed over a message from Sir Penderel Moon. The British Legate was in the vicinity and wondered if we might find time to meet him within the hour. He would await us at nearby cataracts on the River Danube known as the Iron Gates. I went in search of a fly while Holmes ordered porters to transport our luggage to the harbour offices of the Austrian Danube steamship company.
Some thirty minutes later, the carriage deposited us at the fabled Iron Gates, as formidable a creation of Nature as the Reichenbach Falls. The waters rush through the narrow granite defile in sheets of glass-like transparency, the sound coming to us like a distant piano playing a repetitive but pleasant melody in the key of G. Spray rolled up like the smoke from a burning house. Incongruous in the forbidding setting, a small picnic party of men, elegant in Eton jackets, panama hats and pearl-grey gloves leapt across the spray-damp rocks like the wild goats of the Khyber Pass. Two or three of them carried telescopes. Their voices came to us on the slight breeze, unsettling cries of the profoundly deaf.
An isolated figure sat on a promontory staring down at the gleam of the boiling
waters. He caught sight of us and clambered across the boulders towards us with the uncertain leaps of a male in middle age.
‘Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson, I presume,’ he said with a pleasing smile.
‘Your Excellency the British Legate, we presume?’ I replied on our behalf.
He held out his hand. ‘Yes. I apologise for interrupting your journey. I wanted to meet you before you travel on to Sofia. I understand you are undertaking a commission at the request of Prince Ferdinand.’
His voice dropped. ‘In the hope of recovering a certain missing treasure, I believe?’
I inclined my head with considerable misgiving. It would not help our investigation if the detail was already seeping through the Diplomatic Corps.
The Legate threw me an enquiring glance. ‘May I ask if you have brought your famous service pistol, Dr. Watson?’
‘I have, Sir Penderel,’ I responded, ‘but, as you appear to have heard, we are here to recover the Codex Zographensis, not to engage in shoot-outs.’
‘You might well assume that searching for an ancient manuscript is hardly a death-defying act, but you are entering the Balkans,’ the Legate replied. ‘The weaponry used by assassins in the Balkans may be highly valued among archaeologists and the British Museum but it can inflict savage wounds or death. Just over there,’ he pointed across the river to the Bulgarian frontier, ‘a deadly game is being played out. The Prince is at all times exposed to injury or death at the hands of a well-known Russian-backed assassin. You will be travelling at his side into the most remote plains and mountains of the whole of Europe.’
‘The Prince did tell us that - ’ I began.
‘And you took it as a little joke?’ Sir Penderel enquired gravely. ‘I beg you not to. The peril is a very real one. Assassinations are in fashion right across Europe - here a Russian Tsar, there a French President. Why not a Bulgarian Knyaz?’