*
"'Ere, 'ere it is, that's where Kelly pointed." Finally, after much more agony of coffee, whiskey and Holmes's further dilations, I'd managed to prize both of us free from the guests and no sooner were we outside the drawing room than Bowler was bundling me from the house. Pretty well sober by now, he'd hurried us round to the rear door, through a small wood and up a muddy track where, my nose told me, we were soon to find the kennels.
"And who is Kelly?" I asked, for I’d learnt to trust Bowler's instincts – though not his resistance to the bottle.
"Damn me, Doctor," he hiccoughed and carried on, "'e was the first person I met when I went below stairs with that shirt of yours. Just as you said, some dhobi wallah took it away whilst Kelly introduced himself as the head kennel bloke an' started slinging' a bit of bat. Well, once I 'eard all the old Hindustani coming out it was obvious that he was one of us and it turns out that 'e was with the 'Orse Gunners as a farrier down around Kabul few years back. 'E was time expired just before me an' you got out there, but that didn’t stop him from gettin' a couple of bottles of porter…"
"A couple, Bowler? You were in a desperate state when you got back to the room."
"Well, mebbe a few more than that – they live well these blokes, you know – an' I've got no 'ead for grog no more, Doctor, but I 'ad to go along with him. Anyway, Kelly knew all about Stagg, Doctor. Told me what the servants reckon he did after the murder, why no-one will use the room where 'e slept – they say Lord Cardigan's ghost haunts the place with 'is head all bashed in – where Stagg's kit is an' what a barnshoot Smethwick is."
"And how did Kelly know all this, he can only have come to Deene fairly recently, no?"
"Aye, Doctor. It seems that he was trying to find some more room in a store near the kennels, was rummaging around amongst bags and whatnot, found summat with Stagg's name on it, that rang a bell an' he dragged it out…"
"What was it, exactly?" I asked.
"His old regimental valise, like the ones we 'ad, you know, black canvas with 'is moniker an' particulars painted on. Seems that he had just pulled it into the daylight when up comes the bold Cap'n Smethwick and tears Kelly a second arsehole, telling him to put it back where he found it, by blazes, to get a hasp and lock fitted an' to let 'im have the key."
"Did he?"
"Well yes…at least, he let 'im have two keys but he kept the third one to himself, though he never had the nerve to go and have a gander when Smethwick wasn't around. Seems they're all terrified of the bastard. Kelly said that when an under-footman shut the Captain's foot in a carriage door by mistake and scuffed his toe-cap, Smethwick leathered the bloke there and then. Knocked him down right in the drive, gave him a shiner and would have got stuck in with 'is boot had Her Ladyship not called 'im off. They all love 'er as much as the hate 'im. Kelly says the rows between the two of 'em have got to be 'eard to be believed. The old hands who can remember the Earl reckon that he and de Horsey had some pretty good set-to's, but nothin’ compared with what Smethwick and her does. He reckons he saw the Captain take a swipe at her during one row, only she was too fast, dodged 'im and caught him a right belter across the cheek. Kelly says there'd have been murder done if the pair of 'em hadn't seen the servants lookin' on."
"So, where's Kelly's third key?"
"Just 'ere, Doctor." Bowler held out a stout iron job. "That's why I 'ad to have a couple of swallys with the man, just to get 'is confidence."
"Bowler, you know, you're a drunken wretch, but sometimes you're a bloody marvel, no wonder you kept trying to get me away from the ghastly dinner."
He grinned a happy grin that I could see by the light of the moon, but before we could say anything more a hound yapped not very far away to be followed by a cacophony of others whose yowling carried most horribly down the still night air.
"Bloody 'ell, Doctor, they'll raise the dead, they will! Any bugger who didn't know we were here will know now. Still, I told Kelly – he sleeps up near 'ere somewhere, not to be bothered if we came back." I could barely hear him above the noise. “He's lashed anyway. Never could 'old their drink them Gunners."
Following Bowler's directions, we found ourselves in a portico in a single storey building right next to the kennels that was barred by a substantial, painted timber door. I groped for the lock as the din from the hounds began to die down a little while they got used to our scent and my escort lit a Lucifer. Sure enough, the key worked and we soon found ourselves in a well ordered store room with racks upon which stood all sorts of cases, bags and boxes which, as far as I could tell by the guttering light of the match, were every sort of travelling and campaign gear named to various Brudenells – but also servants' trunks and gear which, I guessed, had been stored here to save space in their rooms. We looked and buried deep at the rear of all this stuff was one of the old style Army valises and a wooden box about 12 inches across and 9 high with a brass padlock on it. Both were marked, '467, Trmp Stagg P, 11H'.
"Bowler, you're a splendid fellow, you know," I enthused as I emptied out the valise onto the floor.
"Yer didn't think that when you realised I was slashing in that vase sitting next to the Bishop, did you?" Now he'd found and lit a taper, I could see him leering at me.
"Well, no, but I wonder who the footman or whoever finds it will think did it, Bowler?"
"Don't worry about that, Doctor, I pushed it under your chair!"
"Damn you, Bowler…ha!" I laughed. I should have been annoyed, but the pomposity of the dinner had irritated me. Besides, I was now much more interested in our search. "Hmm, nothing much here." I sorted through various bits of riding gear, socks, comforters, shirts and all the few items of kit that a man of his background might be expected to have acquired.
"Oh, an' Kelly says that the servants reckon that Stagg and ‘im knew each other in the 11th…"
"Well, yes, we know that, don't we?"
"We do, except it's not what we all thought," Bowler's still not totally sober voice was rising with frustration at my lack of insight. "They was muckers, both private soldiers together on Cardigan's personal staff. Smethwick was new draft, attached to the older Stagg to learn all about trumpeting. But the servants say that the old Earl never stopped tellin' everyone how Smethwick sabred all these Russkies when he was still a lad. Stagg went sick an' never reappeared on campaign, then he came to work for His Lordship back in the 60's – but Kelly doesn't know where he was employed before that. Smethwick did well, though. Got a commission not in a native mob but in the 6th Dragoon Guards as riding master. I know what you're thinking, Doctor – the 6th DG…"
"Indeed, the 6th Dragoon Guards, The Carabineers…" but before we could reflect upon this fact, something metallic fell from the folds of a shirt that I was examining.
"Bloody 'ell!" my companion remarked as he stooped, picked it up then held it into the light. "A spur. An iron spur, a single, iron spur just like the one…"
"That you cleverly found in the beck when we were last here," I interrupted.
"Seems like he must have lost one in the scrum when Cardigan died and stripped t'other off before he scarpered."
"Yes, indeed. All we know is that he took a few things with him don't we? Can you get the lock off that box, Bowler?"
"I can," and using the tine of a garden fork that was lying with some other tools, the little chest was soon opened. Again, there wasn't much to be seen except a handful of letters that seemed to be from a young lady written to Stagg whilst he was both in Hounslow and on campaign, a Russian percussion pistol carefully wrapped in oiled cloth, a lock of his dead mother's hair – judging by the note to which it was attached – and a little leather wallet with his initials carefully inked on the outside.
"You know what's in there, Doctor, don't you?"
"I do indeed, Bowler." Like him, I had seen such slim wallets on sale in regimental shops in various sizes and as I opened it, the two very things I'd been expecting fell out.
"His gongs, Doctor. That's nice, in't it?
" Bowler held the Crimea medal in his hand with four ornate bars that looked for all the world like labels on a port decanter, "better than that plain old thing wot they gave to us, but I don't like this 'un," he was looking at the Turkish medal that was given to our troops, a very tawdry thing. I turned the first to look at the rim and there, sure enough, was the inscription, '467 Trmp Peter Stagg 11H', neatly etched.
"But these are precious things, Bowler. Would you leave a lock of your dead mother's hair and your medals behind even when you were on the run?"
"I bloody wouldn't, Doctor. I could pawn the medals if needs be an' I’d take that pistol if I thought the law was after me."
"Hmm, but didn't Smethwick say he took just a few things? He'd have taken these…." but I didn't have time to finish my thoughts before I heard a metallic click, so much more terrifying then the noise of the falling spur. I couldn't see a thing, but I felt the hammer of a pistol being thumbed back just inches behind my neck.
"Don't move a muscle, either of you," came a familiar voice. But not the cultured tones of the officers' mess, there was a rougher timbre in the words, something that we'd all heard before.
"Get your hands behind your backs, sharp now." We both obliged, for neither of us wanted a ball from Smethwick's pistol in our sculls. "Bind 'em if you'd be so kind, Colonel," and I suddenly had my hands wrapped in some sort of twine, knotted and pulled needlessly hard. Clearly, with my face away from my antagonist, I could not see him, but his smell, his very body warmth was familiar and I knew that he was taking a sadistic delight in what he was doing.
Chapter 9.
The cart was well sprung and our journey through the darkness was comfortable. Well, as comfortable as being tied wrist and ankle, dumped in the bed of the thing with a ten stone Bowler slung on top and the boot of our unknown gaoler on my neck could make it. Smethwick was driving and he took us at a right old lick first along tracks, then along smooth meadows until the going got too difficult and we were hauled off and made to hop and crawl a few yards into a pitch black stand of trees with the Captain snarling at us and the other character half booting, half dragging us along with him. Finally, bruised and confused, we were allowed to stop near a rough piece of ground.
"Get that stench, gentlemen? That's pure Reynard, that is." I have to say, I had never smelt anything like this from my friend back in the hall in Baker Street. "You're standing on one of the oldest and least known earths on the Deene Estate, gentlemen. Very few people know it's here, the odd kennel man, the odd gamekeeper – I daresay my old pal Pete Stagg knew about it, but not many others."
"What in the name of all that's holy are you going to do with us?" I was losing the feeling in my hands: if I was left like this too much longer, the circulation would cease in my extremities with awful consequences.
"Stop yer bloody skrikin', first: Colonel, if you please." Rough hands forced a leather stop into my mouth and then tied it in place behind my head.
"Now stake 'em," Smethwick said again before we were had a wooden stave thumped into the soft ground that left Bowler and me sitting back to back, pinned by the post through the bonds that already held us.
"And now for the final touch." I just saw the Captain's silent accomplice lift a sealed bucket from the cart, remove its top and then sluice us in something thick, repellent and – as a little of it splashed over my lips – instantly recognisable.
"There, my friends. A few pints of foxes' blood drawn from a couple of vixens that we killed last week and allowed to season for a while." Both men laughed in the darkness. "But never let it be said that I'm a cruel man, for this will be the first covert to be drawn tomorrow morning and my guess is that you'll be broken up within a few seconds of the Brudenell Pack and my companion's hounds falling upon you. Wouldn't you say, Colonel?"
"The lads that I unloaded from the train tonight, Smethwick, will be hungry and in no mood to tarry by first light tomorrow. I think I can promise you a fast if not particularly artistic death, gentlemen. A few moments of anxiety, perhaps, as you hear them approaching and they cast round to find you, but it could be worse!" I couldn't conceive of anything worse, yet I knew the voice.
"And have no fear, gentlemen, if there's even the vestiges of a pulse the angel of mercy here…" he lit a match and by its light showed us what seemed to be a short stick. It was too dark to see what it was made out of, but welded or nailed to the end was a common horse-shoe, about the size – I guessed – of one that would be used by a large hunter, "…will finish the job, just like it did for that black-hearted clod the Earl of Cardigan. And before you ask, I beat Peter Stagg to his evil gaol. He neither killed the Earl nor did he disappear: he's lying about two foot under the loam just yonder…" he pointed through the brush, "…with his napper opened up almost like His Lordship. But I was dismayed to hear you say you'd found his other spur, that was clumsy of me. But it don't matter a damn, because in a few hours' time you'll be joining Stagg and no-one will find you anymore than they've found him. There'll be a hue and cry, for sure, they'll maybe get Mr Sherlock Holmes in to investigate, but odd things happen here like the death of that keeper just before the Earl had his… accident: they'll soon get bored of looking. Besides, there's goin' to be another accident tomorrow that'll put your misfortunes in the shade…ha, forgive the pun!"
The two men turned to go but had taken no more than a few steps before Smethwick turned back.
"Oh, forgive me, gentlemen, I'm quite forgetting my manners. You will be a-sitting there all gagged and bound like Christmas turkeys but not, I warrant, so concerned about your impending passage to the next Kingdom, as about why I'm doing all this. You are, after all, professional detectives, aren't you and this sort of conundrum must be very unsettling, going to your graves not knowing all the whys and wherefores. So I'll tell you – we're in no hurry, are we Colonel?"
"No hurry at all my dear Smethwick. If it suits you to put these men out of their intellectual misery, then I'll just light myself a pipe, sit myself down and listen. I daresay it'll be most instructive." I knew the gravelly voice but still couldn't place it.
"Yes, indeed, light a pipe. That's what got Peter Stagg ten lashes of the cat in Turkey, but he was a full grown man, experienced, hardened to the Army. I was only 16 and got twenty of the deepest cuts the Trumpet-Major could give me for smelling of drink one morning in Varna. I'd had a swat of brandy for my breakfast – that's all it was just a swat – reported at dawn to His Lordship, came to give him a message from his headquarters and all I got was, 'You stink, Boy Smethwick! You're drunk, by God and not for the first time! Make him a prisoner, Orderly-Sarn't!' I wasn't drunk at all, but that didn't stop the bastard giving me twenty and it didn't stop Stagg an' me from hating the sod even worse. The joke was, I cut down those Russkies at Balaklava as much to save my own skin as owt else but Cardigan, being the selfish dolt he was couldn't think that anyone from the lower orders would do anything except try to prolong his noble bloody life. Ha! I could do no wrong from then on, but Stagg knew he'd never make anything of himself whilst the Noble Yachtsman was around an' worked his ticket, pretending to have been shot up so bad in the Valley that morning that his nerves were in rags. Took his discharge, went quiet for a year or two an' then re-enlisted under a different name in the 6th DG. Small world, ain't it? After Mutineers, Maoiris an' all sorts of other heathens, I find myself with a shiny star on me collar in the Curragh with a trumpet-sarn't who looks awfully like a trumpeter I used to know in the old 11th. Now you two will understand the life of a regiment, how it's easy for rankers and ex-rankers to find time for old friendships."
I did know – and I suspect that Bowler knew as well, but I couldn't have cared a fig. My numb hands were of far greater concern – and there was also the thought of the ravenous pack…
"But I didn't want that. I was an officer and a gentleman now and over the months I found Peter Stagg – or Trumpet Sergent Silas Cobb – to be a little too familiar. The difficulty was, every time I tried to distance myself from
him, he'd remind me just how difficult he could make it for me with the other officers and their ladies if my real background came properly to light. You see, I was moving in different circles now, London, Brighton, Dublin with the Regiment and… well, making my way. But he could be a right hard bastard could Stagg. One day he came looking for me after lights out – we were in Canterbury at the time and I had a set of rooms to myself near the ménage – and easy to find. He wanted my help with the Adjutant to get his discharge and take up a post with the Buckinghamshire Hussars – a yeomanry crew down south somewhere. I fixed it and was damn glad to see the back of him, expecting never to clap eyes on the rogue again. How wrong I was. I'd just come back from New Zealand in sixty-five and been greeted like a son by Cardigan – any 'old Crimean' that he could get his hands on was meat and drink to him by then, especially one who'd saved the gracious blockhead's life – and the papers were full of it. I got an invitation to Deene as one of His Lordship's brother officers, mark you, not his former whipping-boy and had a splendid few days here, the high-water mark being the moment I bent the Countess over a saddle horse in the tack room…"
"You're a dog, ha ha, a dog you know, Smethwick," chuckled his companion as if they were in their London club together rather than hatching murder.
"Trouble was, Stagg got to hear about it from another old 11th bloke amongst the servants and before you could say Jack Robinson, the wretch had turned up at my office in Horse Guards demanding that I fix a job for him at Deene as the Yeomanry was getting too much for him. That was easily done, Cardigan fell over backwards for one of his own – even one he'd flogged half to death – but you can see what's coming. I was called for a great deal over the next couple of years, more to put a smile on the Countess's face than for any other reason, but every time I visited, Stagg made sure he tipped his hat to me and that was bloody irritating. But not as irritating as the most memorable of our meetings. I'd been invited to Deene for dinner one Friday and then to stay for the next day's shooting. However, I was kept busy by my chief in London and was too late for the last train. So, I caught the first one north before dawn the next day with a view to sneaking into the Countess's bedchamber for a little bit of whilst she was still half-asleep. But, I reckon the juices were flowing the night before and with me absent from my place of duty, she called for a galloper. As I was stealing up the staircase that led from the back door, who should I meet coming down but my old comrade in arms, Stagg. He laughed when he saw me, threw his arm about my shoulder just as he would have done when I first joined the Regiment and bundled me away to the tack room to, as he put it, clear the air…"
Doctor Watson's Casebook Page 18