Death on a Pale Horse

by Donald Thomas

  Rawdon Moran was reputed to have a nerve of iron. The tale of how he and his younger brother, Sebastian, crawled down a culvert after a wounded man-eating tiger became a legend in the brotherhood of big-game hunters. Its truth is vouched for by five independent witnesses.

  Certain other of his attainments are beyond doubt. This soi-disant colonel, for he still used that title as though he owed it to Her Majesty rather than to a local nabob, was the best heavy-game shot that our Eastern Empire has ever produced.

  So much may stand to his credit. He was also endowed with a perverted ingenuity and a warped moral instinct. Like his father, he was an aberrant growth from an honourable ancestral tree. Discreditable stories were told in Bengal. They asserted that Rawdon Moran was a cheat at the gaming-table and an evil demon in the lives of several women. I believe, from the facts before me, that the unexplained self-destruction of Mrs. Stewart of Lauder after a matrimonial scandal fifteen years ago also stands to his account.

  Though a cheat at cards and in financial matters generally, he was fierce and indomitable. To challenge him to a duel with pistols would have been madness. He had proved his skill on regimental mess nights by putting five successive pistol shots through the centre of an ace of spades at a range of thirty-seven paces. These bullets, from a .22 target pistol, were so closely placed that they entered one on top of the other, leaving a single hole. A man would therefore accept his losses rather than confront such an antagonist on a charge of dishonesty.

  It was his conduct with women that ended his Indian career. You will no doubt recall the tragic case of the young military wife, Mrs. Emmeline Putney-Wilson. She it was who attempted to poison her infants and then hanged herself after the scorn and humiliation to which he exposed her. A clandestine “subalterns’ court-martial” of the 109th Foot convicted him of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. A permanent injury was inflicted upon him by the officers of this “court,” rather worse than being drummed out of the regiment to the accompaniment of the “Rogues’ March.” His departure in this manner made India too hot to hold him.

  Returning to England, via the Zulu and South African Wars, he nursed a passion for revenge against the world and those to whom he owed his injury. London did not yet know the worst of him. He posed there as the gallant Indian officer he had once been. Indeed, he boosted his reputation by two books of reminiscences written by a journalist on behalf of himself and his brother. Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas appeared in 1881 and Three Months in the Jungle a few years later. He lived in the West End, with some extravagance, just off Bond Street. The clubs knew no positive ill of him. Until his death he remained a member of the Anglo-Indian, the Tankerville, and the Bagatelle Card-Club.

  About the year 1884 he was sought out by the late Professor James Moriarty. Two or three years earlier, this luminary of crime had been dismissed with ignominy from his post in mathematics at one of our ancient universities. His offences were such as the college authorities could not get themselves to describe. The Professor got wind of the Indian scandals but also read of Colonel Moran’s courage and enterprise.

  These two scoundrels struck inspiration from one another. Professor Moriarty seldom exposed himself to danger but used Rawdon Moran as his brilliant aide-decamp. Their network of infamy embraced the Transvaal diamond swindles of the 1880s and the so-called Pall Mall “white slave” conspiracies of 1885–6. In the course of his South African activities in the sphere of Illicit Diamond Buying, Moran left a foolish but innocent young woman to face the gallows on his behalf for the death of her master, Andreis Reuter. At my prompting, my brother Sir William Mycroft Holmes, Permanent Secretary for Cabinet Office Affairs, intervened successfully with the Transvaal government to save her life.

  Your predecessors have been sceptical of my belief in a criminal brotherhood organised for war against society. I remain convinced of its existence, upon positive evidence, and could name most of its leaders. Some of those names belong to men high in society and public life. The great prosper. As in the world of angling, it is the smaller fry who are generally caught.

  Long before my own encounter with the Professor at the Falls of Reichenbach, I knew that James Moriarty could not be working alone. In the 1880s, I had also encountered Rawdon Moran. For my own safety, it became necessary that I should either leave England or that I should draw this most intrepid and resourceful of hunters into a trap of his own devising.

  It was never easy to lay a snare for him. Despite his vicious conduct and repellent views, Rawdon Moran had shown himself a man of few weaknesses. He was, however, an habitual gambler at cards, notably at the Bagatelle Club. It was in his nature to cheat. He accomplished this less by sleight of hand than by judging the characters of those with whom he played.

  It was characteristic of Moran that, when he had no need of money, it was his instinct to play false for the love and excitement of the thing. In cheating at baccarat, as in staking his life in a big-game hunt or a criminal venture, the thrill of the risk was more than half the reward.

  The details of his career and “disappearance” have never been made public. You may now gather the story of this from Dr. John Watson’s narrative. Its first chapter leads back to a time shortly before Dr. Watson and I were first acquainted. Even before that acquaintanceship, a common link was provided by the criminal activities of our adversary. These at least have been put an end to. You may rest assured, however, that, as nature abhors a vacuum, Rawdon Moran will have been replaced by now.

  Should there be any further point upon which I may assist you, my talents such as they are remain at your disposal.

  I have the honour to be, sir,

  Your humble servant,

  William Sherlock Scott Holmes.

  PART II

  The Narrative of John H. Watson, M.D.

  1

  My reader will readily understand that the foregoing documents have never previously been published for the world to read. The account of Isandhlwana remained classified in the criminal records of the State Papers under the name of Rawdon Moran. Other papers lie in a confidential War Office series detailing the activities of the Provost Marshal’s corps, as our military police are known. Strict procedure under the Official Secrets Act of 1889 allows every Home Secretary to judge whether such papers shall be closed to the public for fifty years, or a hundred years—or for ever.

  I am grateful to our late Prime Minister, Mr. David Lloyd George, who decided that after forty years had passed, the disclosure of reports from the field of Isandhlwana would no longer constitute a threat to national security nor embarrass the government of the day.

  Sherlock Holmes had of course shown me his letter to Sir Melville Macnaghten at the time that he wrote it. However, I did not actually meet Holmes for almost two years after the catastrophe at Isandhlwana and my own arrival in India. I had qualified as a medical man at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in June 1878. Next month, I joined the Army Medical Department and undertook the customary short course in military training for medical officers, at Netley, near the Aldershot Garrison. I trusted that this additional qualification might one day transform me into a full regimental surgeon-major.

  At the end of that year I was still a humble assistant with orders to join the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers, then stationed in India. All eyes were on India just then, for she was regarded as the jewel in our imperial crown. The voyage to the East had been shortened by the opening of the Suez Canal. Southern Africa remained important principally for the newly discovered riches of gold and diamonds, rather than as the principal route to Bombay.

  If India was vital to our interests, Afghanistan was scarcely less so, at the time I left Netley for my military service. Under the leadership of Lord Beaconsfield, our rulers were convinced that Afghanistan was once again in peril from its Russian neighbour to the north. A British embassy had been refused entry to Kabul. However, a Russian mission was soon after received with honour. The Viceroy of India, Lord Lytton, warned the gover
nment at home that he would take independent military action if necessary, as the constitution entitled him to do. If he did not, we should wake up to find the Russian Bear on the North-West Frontier of India.

  Before the year’s end, I was among five hundred reinforcements of all ranks, marching through the streets of Portsmouth from the railway station to the docks. How popular we were! A regimental band was playing The British Grenadiers and The Girl I Left Behind Me. Crowds at either side were so dense that you might almost have walked over the heads of the people. As for patriotic shouts, it was all “Remember Old England depends on you!… Give them plenty of cold steel!… Keep your pecker up, old boy, and never say die!… We’ll not forget you!”

  As yet, there had been no fighting. What they thought we were going out there for, I do not know. We marched into the dockyard and, as the gates closed behind us, a thousand voices shouted “Farewell! God bless you!”

  There was no speedy passage for us through the Suez Canal. We carried an infantry regiment to reinforce Lord Chelmsford at the Cape. The troopship Clyde, a decommissioned P & O liner which had seen better days, was our transport as far as Cape Town. Belowdecks, men slept in hammocks slung from the beams. Some preferred to huddle in blankets on the deck. Everywhere we breathed coal dust and hot oil, while the paddles beat their rhythm alongside the hull. The heart of the ship was the deep well of the engine-room. There was little to do but stare mesmerised at the massive and polished hammer-heads of three pistons driving forward and back, mile after mile, day after day, night after night.

  We spent Christmas Day near the equator. Early in January we dropped anchor with white buildings and the mountain behind Cape Town on our port beam. There was not much talk ashore of Afghanistan, which was still an ocean away from us. A number of regiments, including my own Northumberland Fusiliers, were rumoured to have advanced from India through the mountain passes into Afghan territory—but whether that was true, who could say? At the Cape, all the talk was of an invasion of Natal by the Zulu tribes to the north of us, under their King Cetewayo.

  The drums were beating for war on both sides in Natal, and the newspapers were full of it. Cetewayo had told Sir Henry Bowler, “While wishing to be friends with the English, I do not agree to have my people governed by their laws.” It was a delicate balance. If there was war with the Zulus, what would prevent the Dutch settlers of the prosperous Transvaal stabbing us in the back by declaring independence from British rule? With one war on our hands, our resources would not permit us to fight on a second front.

  My greatest fear was that I might get conscripted for this war in southern Africa and never see the wonders of India or the regiment I had been assigned to. It was not the life I had joined the Army for.

  Under this gathering cloud, I met a young Army captain whose acquaintance I had made on board ship. He was now attached to Lord Chelmsford’s infantry column of some four thousand men which was about to confront Cetewayo.

  “Hello, doc!” this young spark greeted me cheerily. “You coming to the picnic in Zululand with us?”

  “Not if I know it!”

  How fortunate I was. A few weeks later the bones of this poor young fellow and more than a thousand others were picked clean by vultures from the skies above Natal. I should almost certainly have been cut to pieces with Colonel Pulleine and the 24th Foot. As it was, I boarded the trooper Londonderry and reached Bombay before I heard of Isandhlwana.

  On a hot and dusty morning, I reported to brigade headquarters in Bombay. There was utter confusion in the Movements Office as to what was going on in Afghanistan. I asked a transport officer how I might best catch up with the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers. I understood that they might already be garrisoned in Kandahar, on the far side of the Khyber Pass. This chair-bound Irish major looked at me irritably. He spoke as though the pandemonium in his office was all my fault.

  “Has no one told you, mister? Your travel order should make it clear. The Northumberlands no longer require an assistant surgeon. It is the Berkshires who are in need. Assistant Surgeon Mackintosh has been invalided back to the depot at Peshawar with dysentery. You will exchange into the Berkshires at your earliest convenience. Draw travel warrants and your pay draft here. The railway does not run as far as Peshawar. Requisition a seat as far as Lahore on tomorrow’s Delhi train. Make arrangements when you get there. Now, who’s the next man?”

  Such was my welcome to active service. I set out the following morning on the first stage of my journey in a saloon coach of the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway. This was one of several coaches reserved for British officers. With wide windows, easy chairs, and clubroom tables, it was the type of train which, in England, carries young swells with their picnic hampers and servants to a fashionable race meeting.

  From the pages of the newspaper behind which I retired, I gathered that the situation in Afghanistan had deteriorated since the last news reached England. The rebel leader Ayub Khan had gained the upper hand, and our expeditionary force had been obliged to move forward with speed. A good many officers from all over India now filled the carriages of every train destined for the nearest junctions to the North-West Frontier. In those days, the line stopped short of the Khyber Pass. I should have to join a mounted column for the journey beyond Lahore. My imagination was full of the high snow-covered peaks of the pass and the white-walled city of my destination. Not so long ago, Kandahar had been the capital of Afghanistan.

  As we travelled north, there was a curious interlude. I could not see that it concerned me at the time—so much the worse for me. At every stage of this northward journey, I was increasingly preoccupied by the petty discomforts which anyone who has travelled by military train in India will recognise. Black horsehair is used as upholstery in these saloon carriages because it is easily cleaned and hygienic. Unfortunately, in that heat, it becomes a refined torture after a very little while. The firm stuffing gradually feels more like compressed bramble thorns, and its effects upon the body grow more acute with every passing mile.

  I was not alone in my restless discomfort. The train to Lahore was far too crowded with our troops for anyone to have a carriage to himself. I found myself sharing with a captain and two lieutenants from a regiment I shall not for the moment name. The lieutenants answered to the names of “Jock” and “Frank.” Both had come aboard in mufti. Their regimental blazers and white flannels equipped them better for a picnic on the banks of the Thames than an encounter with Ayub Khan’s murderous Jezails. I should guess that they were no more than twenty-one years old: they could not have more than a couple of years service between them.

  After my seven years spent walking the wards of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, the gap in our age and experience made them seem frivolous and vexatious. They were like excited schoolboys on a holiday. The uniformed captain, whom they called by his surname, Sellon, was a little older and far more sober. He glanced at me from time to time, as though suspicious of who I might be and what I had come for.

  Sleep helps to pass the time but I was soon glad of conversation to take my mind off the horsehair padding. The lieutenants and I exchanged small talk. From the first, it was evident that I was not their type but they regarded me with friendly curiosity. They were going no further than Peshawar but knew a good deal about the regiments there. When they asked me the name of my unit, I said that I thought it would be the Berkshires.

  “Jock” and “Frank” made grimaces and sounds of approval. Jock went so far as to shake me by the hand. The Berkshires, he assured me, were as fine bunch of fellows as ever lived. It would be “rather a lark” fighting alongside them.

  “I came out here straight from Cambridge,” Jock added with an ingratiating grin. “I was only up for a year. I can’t say I did much work there and it seemed rather a waste of time. My father thought so as well—after all, the bills come pretty steep at Kings and he was footing them, poor old fellow. So here I am, as the poet says.”

  Captain Sellon stared at these two witho
ut comment. They looked the sort of expensively educated young mutts whom Holmes once said could talk and could think but unfortunately could not do both at the same time. I thought it would do no harm to toss them a scrap of biography.

  “I was posted out to the 109th Albion Fusiliers originally, then the Northumberlands, but it seems both are already suited.”

  There was an exchange of looks between them, just as if I had made a bad joke. What on earth had I said? I waited for them to tell me. Jock and Sellon merely stared at me; but Frank, a rather slight youth with dark curly hair, smiled.

  “Then I daresay you won’t mind a change to the Berkshires. What? I should think anybody would. Eh?”

  They spoke as if we were all sharing a secret. I had better know the truth of it.

  “I’m sure the Berkshires will prove a fine regiment.”

  “Rather,” said fair-haired Jock. Captain Sellon now turned and stared out through the window as if to avoid discussing the matter. But his two lieutenants had not an ounce of discretion between them. They were plainly itching to impart some scandal to see how I would take it.

  “Whereas the 109th …” I began.

  Sellon turned from the window.

  “What do you know about the 109th? The Albion Fusiliers?”