Doctor Watson's Casebook

by Patrick Mercer

  "I was, Sir. I was the Doctor's orderly; with 'im all the way back to Kandahar when 'e got shot, I was," but Bowler's plucky retort cut no ice with the Captain who, now in breeches and well-polished field boots below a tweed jacket and silk tie, continued to peer down his nose.

  "Indeed….Kandahar," Smethwick replied, pronouncing the word like a rash rather than the rout it was, but before he could be any nastier we all heard a woman's voice outside the room and then the doors swung gently open.

  "Ah…my dear!" Smethwick almost gushed, pelting over to kiss a carefully powdered cheek that was presented to him. "May I present Doctor Watson and Mister…er…Bowler, both colleagues of Mister Sherlock Holmes?"

  "Gentlemen, enchantée," and there stood the Countess. She was a beauty alright, perhaps a faded beauty, but you could see in the lustre of her hair, the softness of her skin, her splendidly polished nails and the subtlety of her make-up that she took her appearance very seriously indeed. There was something feline about her – it wasn't just her blazing eyes, it was the whole way she moved, the way she extended her hand to me to be kissed – she was…well…sensuous. Now, I don't wish to be ungallant, but I couldn't imagine that a woman who was no longer in the first flush of youth could have kept her figure, but I had no way of knowing because of her extraordinary togs.

  "Oh, do excuse me, gentlemen…" she'd allowed Bowler to kiss her hand, too, almost licking her with all the grace of a thirsty drayman. "Cherie, would you help me?"

  Well, I've never seen the like. Below she wore what I guessed were a pair of her late husband's cherry overalls tucked into charming little patent boots, whilst her upper half was encased in a polished cuirass which looked damned odd but far from un-fetching. But it was the way that she got Smethwick to unbuckle her that made me goggle. You may have seen professional girls strip for action just like I have – women who know how to shed a bit of silk or linen in a way that promises much but often delivers little. A wisp of abandoned chiffon can be most effective, but I swear that the Countess slipped out of several pounds of shot-proof steel all set about with pipe-clayed leather in a way that would have done credit to the most accomplished harlot.

  "Bloody 'ell, Doctor…" Bowler whispered, nudged and jerked my attention away from de Horsey to the Captain. I had eyes only for her, but Smethwick was a picture. He was in a positive lather, like some great animal in a state of suspended rut as he did just whatever the Countess wanted, unbuckling first one strap, then another before gently placing the carapace down on the carpet and summoning a footman to get it.

  "Oh, my champion, my knight who takes me out of my shining armour," she giggled at Smethwick to his obvious delight. "Why, gentlemen, I owe you an explanation, do I not? You see, I have quite taken to my latest bicycle but it's not like a horse. A horse has four legs and cannot topple over – yet it's wilful, needs to be fed, groomed and fussed over. My iron steed, on the other hand, needs no more care than a firm hand can give it – and I've a firm hand, haven’t I James, mon cherie?" But before he could answer, she continued, "But it can buck me so. It's for that reason that I wear my Lord's tin belly and well…these overalls…," she shot a trim little leg and foot well forward, "…now they're just for remembrance." She toyed with a slight rip in the thigh, "See, that's where a Russian lance nearly took him from us at Balaklava. You were there, weren't you, my darling?"

  "I was, my dear, I saw that damn spear almost gore His Lordship, why…"

  "Yes, my gallant blade," she cut Smethwick off, though he didn't seem to mind. "Let me tell these two, clever gentlemen why I asked them here."

  Suddenly, she was business like. The high, slightly French accent receded and with it the air of playfulness to be replaced by a practicality which, I'm bound to say, still kept the spur to my flank. The Countess cantered over the past decade and a half, explaining her relationship with Cardigan, making light of the fellow's peccadilloes and talking of a love match that was the envy of society. And envied no more keenly, it seemed than by an importuning novelist and politician of, she implied, dubious breeding – one Benjamin Disraeli.

  I don't know what you thought of the chap, to me he was a hero for all his irregularities and eccentricities; for he held the Empire together along with the Queen against that shocking man Gladstone. However, if you told me that he was a prize stag I would have laughed you to scorn. They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but Dizzy looked more like a powder puff than a lady's man. But, there were all those rumours about him as a younger man with Henrietta Sykes, her beau and all sorts of convoluted talk about troilism and such like. Whatever the truth, I could quite see why the Countess might have caught his fancy and I did not like to think any more ill of the man: after all, he had not been dead for more a than a few months.

  "Yes, we'd first met back in 1865 when the strange little fellow was arguing so publicly with Lord Derby. There was a soiree in Gerald Road to which Lord Cardigan and I were invited – you know those houses there, up and down but wonderful drawing rooms – with a little orchestra of children who were quite charming. I found myself sitting next to the chimney piece and standing close was Disraeli who, as the champagne did round after round, stood far too close, at one stage he draped a hand over my shoulder – I was wearing one of those low cut dresses which one could get away with at that age – and although he was being quite amusing, it all began to get a bit de trop. His wife, that Lewis woman, looked old enough to be his mother and appeared to be not one whit concerned about her husband's behaviour, but that was more than I can say for His Lordship. Now you can probably imagine the scene and how the newspapers might have expected him to behave – explosive temper, oaths and general rancour, but you know the press were too unkind to him. He was a lamb most of the time and when he saw how uncomfortable I was becoming, he merely reached across, took Disraeli's cuff and moved the man's hand away. I'm sure he didn't want to create difficulties, not with all those delightful little cherubs sawing away at fiddles and the like, but as soon as the music had stopped and the clapping subsided, back came the hand as Disraeli leaned low over me and whispered something quite improper in my ear. I cannot say that dear Cardigan boiled over at this, but his displeasure was obvious as he pushed the importuning hand away with some force.

  "'Get your damn maulers off my wife, you blackguard!' I can hear him say it now, but not a yell, more a hiss for he really did not want to upset a very suitable mix of people. But his restraint was not returned. 'Ha…’ boomed Disraeli, ‘you're damn brave on a drawing room floor with unarmed civilians, My Lord, it seems. A bit braver than you were at Balaklava, methinks…'"

  "Wretched little windbag," muttered Smethwick, drinking up every word the Countess uttered.

  "And this, of course, came at the height of the Balaklava debate with Lord Lucan being caddish and every common fellow out to drag the name of Brudenell through the mire. I thought there would be a detonation – I knew only too well my Lord's fondness for pistol and blade and how his earlier duel had got him into such difficulties. Why, I thought for a moment that society would expect, nay, demand some grand gesture from a man who had been under sustained assault from the gentlemen of the press. But instead my Lord replied, 'I did not see you before the Russian guns that day, Mister Disraeli.' He then swept me up, had our carriage called and we were away with no more fuss, leaving a very crestfallen little proser and his washer-woman behind."

  Coffee was called for as Smethwick stamped up and down in as righteous an ill humour as if it were he who had been slighted. A maid appeared with a tray in no time at all and once tiny thimbles of Turco had been poured I tried to draw the Countess further.

  "Well, ma'am, a nasty situation for sure, but is not a bit of a leap of faith to think that such a spat would lead to Lord Cardigan's murder?"

  "No, Doctor Watson, there's much more. For the next two years I received the occasional letter from Disraeli. Every other month or so a neat little package would arrive which, I have to say, was beautifully writt
en and full of the doings of the day and some matters of state which I quite enjoyed. Cardigan knew all about it and didn't like it after the incident I have just described, but tolerated it as he knew that I was intrigued by Disraeli's growing influence in Westminster. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer in March 1868 when my husband met his end, Doctor Watson, and for about a year before that the letters had become quite different. Now they arrived every week, they were…how shall I put it?…full of passions that I most certainly would not have wanted Lord Cardigan to see. But I was at a loss to know how to stop him without causing a scandal in a Party that I held dear. He proposed marriage, he even spoke of his wife's wasting disease and how this, 'might soon free him' all, I might add, without any encouragement from me – for I never replied to his notes. Then the dreadful accident occurred and it was as if a dam had burst. Flowers arrived, sketches, his novels, more letters that left nothing to the imagination and what really made me certain was when he arrived at Deene Park unannounced just three weeks after we buried my husband. Now…"

  "No, ma'am, forgive me," I interrupted, "tell me first about the circumstances of Lord Cardigan's death."

  "I am not sure that I can. I wasn't in the saddle when it happened, but the memory still pains me so. Damn…" somehow, the curse didn't come amiss from this lady's lips, "…the world lost such a man that day and with no-one to inherit all this loveliness," she said as she swept her arm about her. "No, when I am gone there will be no-one to take up his Lordship's mantle – at least, no-one of the Brudenell line," and here she stopped abruptly and stared quite deliberately at Captain Smethwick who at first beamed, then cleared his throat and looked away as if to cover his embarrassment.

  "James, dear heart, would you tell the gentlemen all you know?" De Horsey's brow was furrowed; just for a moment she looked her age, her face wracked with remembered pain.

  "Of course, my dear, I'll be pleased to, even if the memory is hideous." Smethwick then rattled on for an age about how Cardigan had fallen some five years before his death during a particularly energetic hunt – and expressed the rumours that had persisted of bouts of giddiness and even mild seizures. In the weeks before he died, he had to leave the field when out with the Pytchley complaining of a headache, but he'd finally returned and ridden most successfully in April and early March. Smethwick had come back permanently to Deene about then and he talked about the foxes they missed and the ones they'd broken up, about the mounts and the riders' varying skill – all the stuff you would expect a professional horseman to consider and whilst none of it was the least bit germane to my work, I let him talk for two reasons. First, for the Countess's reaction and second, for Bowler's.

  Smethwick was a bore – there was no doubt of that. And, despite all the indications of love from de Horsey, it was clear she thought so too. She had been curt with the man earlier on, but now she was a picture, fidgeting, constantly changing her position and clearly dying to say, “just tell these men what they need to know” – but she didn't, she just let him maunder on. It was as if it were a well-rehearsed act.

  Bowler, by contrast, was gripped. I had treated the man badly after we'd both left the Army. He tried to show his friendship and loyalty to me when I'd come back from the desert unfit for human consumption, utterly obsessed with my own frailties and interested in nothing but the wraiths that kept me awake at night. I had shunned him. But he'd shown such persistence and such perspicacity during the Ezekial Shaw case that I'd learnt to value his insight tremendously. Oft times that insight could be brutish, but now I realised that he wasn't so much spellbound by Smethwick's verbosity, but by the man himself. In short, Bowler was doing just what I damned well told him – he was running a ruler over this gentleman and probably concluding much more than I would do.

  "I have deliberately not mentioned Stagg to you so far, Doctor." Smethwick hadn't, and de Horsey grimaced at the man's name. "Stagg was His Lordship's trumpeter out east. He was a Lancashire farmer's lad, fine horseman and the best man on trumpet or bugle that I've ever heard when blowing in the saddle. It's easy enough, as you'll both know, to make glorious noises when on foot or at the halt, but to make the notes fly, to get them clear and loud when you're bucketing about at the canter or just as you're trying to break into the charge itself is a devil of a job. Well, Stagg could do this better than anyone and so our chief appointed him to be by his elbow whenever he needed him. I do not say this out of disloyalty, but Lord Cardigan could be a tartar – it's well known – and Stagg was a strong character. He especially hated the way that he was made to serve at table on His Lordship's yacht down in Balaklava harbour, not that he didn't like the perks, but he took the mockery of the other lads very hard indeed. And there was always friction between the two of them – as much friction as there can be between a private and a general. In Turkey Stagg was given a dozen lashes for smoking a pipe without permission and the whole of the 11th thought that unjust; it seemed to be more a way of reminding Stagg of his station in life rather than fair punishment."

  "Stagg fell sick after Balaklava, was sent off to Scutari and was swallowed up by the medical system and I never saw him again until I came to Deene Park in February sixty-eight to start my new work. I was astounded to see the fellow. To all intents and purposes he'd gone back to his old post, not quite blowing a trumpet, but at Lord Cardigan's beck and call as his personal groom – I even saw him help the butler when we were short of staff at one shindig or another and he seemed to do it with a good grace. Then came the fateful morning. On March twenty-sixth Lord Cardigan had gone to see the body of one of the under-keepers who'd been killed in an inexplicable shooting accident…"

  An inexplicable shooting accident, I thought to myself. There seemed to be one deuce of a lot of inexplicable things about the Deene estate in that early spring.

  "I saw Stagg and His Lordship riding towards the cottage – I'd just come from there myself to pay my condolences to the poor man's widow, not that I knew her. It was a damp morning and at first I did not know who the riders were because of their mackintoshes with their collars pulled high, but I slowed as I recognised my chief. We passed a few pleasantries and he told me that he was in a hurry to see both the remains and the widow but that I must seek him out later that morning in order to reacquaint ourselves.

  "I’d had only two chances to speak to Stagg at any length since my return and whilst we had always been on good terms in the Regiment, he was distinctly cautious, distant with me in the few weeks before the accident. I rode on, but paused by a stand of chestnuts not half a league – ha…there's a phrase someone's used before – from where I'd passed the pair to have a good look at them and check them for disease. Anyway, as I tarried there, his Lordship's mount came skittering up to me with an empty saddle and loose reins, clearly unsettled. I caught her and sensing that something was wrong, set off as hard as I could back towards the tied cottages. Only a little way from where I'd seen them before was Stagg's nag tied to a willow whilst the man himself was crouched over something on the edge of the wide drain that runs beside the road just there. I could immediately see that it was Cardigan and that he was bleeding profusely from a head injury and, as I've already told you, I dismounted and held the brave fellow in my arms as he died."

  "What of Stagg?" asked Bowler as I was still trying to imagine the scene.

  "What indeed? Neither he nor I were strangers to such wounds and he said to me, pretty matter-of-fact, 'His Lordship went to jump that beck, Sir. I thought it was too wide but didn't dare try to say him nay, Sir, and the mare pecked as she crossed, threw him and kicked him right hard, Sir.' And that was all, for I sent him to fetch Doctor Brookes and a dray to get the gallant fellow, though I knew it was far too late. The rest you know."

  "Well no, Smethwick, the rest I do not know." I thought it a little odd that the stream of verbiage had so suddenly been turned off. "Was there no inquiry? What was the Coroner's verdict? Were the constabulary involved? What was Stagg's fuller version of events? There are a hund
red things I do not know."

  "The whole thing was tied up with remarkable alacrity, actually. The Coroner did submit his report recording 'death by misadventure', but I think the shock of it was so great, the attention of the press so overwhelming and the family's desire so strong to see the funeral done properly that no-one really chose to challenge what went on."

  "Really?" I asked. "The violent, even if accidental, death of so prominent a nobleman in such circumstances and no-one asked any questions?"

  "No, Doctor. With respect you'd be far too young to remember the full hubbub of his funeral. It pains me to say it, but both his enemies and his friends were looking forward to this great affair, I believe. He'd not been in good health, his scandals – if I may term them thus…" Smethwick turned an apologetic eye towards de Horsey, "…had passed their most newsworthy and the next big event at which he was going to be the star attraction was his funeral. And we let neither the family nor the Regiment down – t'was a glorious business."

  "And Stagg?" Bowler asked again.

  "Yes, Mister Bowler," de Horsey purred, "you ask exactly the right questions. From the moment that His Lordship's body reached the house that afternoon, nobody saw Stagg again. He was a single man who scarcely mixed with the other servants for he was constantly at His Lordship's whim. In the excitement of the funeral preparations and the fact that Stagg's duties had ceased to exist, no-one missed him for several days. It was only when the head groom went in search of the fellow that we found his room untouched except that he and his personal effects had vanished into the mist. I hardly knew Stagg; His Lordship had taken him on about a year before his death, only saying to me that he'd taken pity on one of his old corps who'd sounded calls for him in the Crimea and who was now looking for work. I made light of it, twitting Cardigan that he'd have to curb his new man from blowing 'mount' every time he wanted his oats and thinking little more about it until I asked Stagg where he'd been working before and he said, 'High Wycombe.' I made nothing of that, nothing at all, even when Mr Disraeli descended on us whilst I was still head to toe dressed in black. I made no connection with Disraeli's house Hughenden – I had no idea that it was near High Wycombe nor, frankly, did I care. As I've explained, I was quite entertained by Disraeli, I don't mind admitting that I found Lord Cardigan's jealousy quite diverting until I was subject to the man camped on my doorstep paying court to me in a way that was frankly embarrassing. If my dear Captain Smethwick had been to hand all those years ago then the man who was to be Prime Minister would have been given 'fours about' in very short order, but I had no-one."