Death on a Pale Horse

by Donald Thomas

  “The wrong turn-screws?”

  Mycroft nodded his large head mournfully.

  “Can you wonder that the message in Colonel Pulleine’s last note is one of treachery? Nor was that all. The two great faults with Boxer cartridges for these rifles was a tendency to absorb damp easily or for the bullet to fall out of its case before loading, in either event jamming the weapon. The Intelligence Branch of the Quartermaster-General’s Department has inquired into this. So has Colonel Redvers Buller, VC. The handfuls of abandoned bullets that Joshua Sellon gathered in from the battlefield had been rendered useless. The answer to the riddle of defeat was in his possession. Someone decided he must pay for that information with his life. Will that do?”

  This seemed too much to me.

  “The ammunition train was tampered with?”

  “That is your choice of language, doctor. I might have doubted, until Sellon was found with a bullet in his brain. His silence was ensured at so high a price.”

  We stared at one another while a detachment of the Life Guards crossed the Parade, helmets bright in the sun, to take up duty on Palace Guard.

  “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you,” I said presently.

  “I beg your pardon, doctor?”

  “It is probably nothing, Sir Mycroft. Merely a form of vengeance that someone known to Joshua Sellon once promised to take upon the world.”

  But Mycroft Holmes had caught my every word, and it showed in his face. He gave a heavy sigh.

  “Since you know so much, you had both of you better come with me,” he said, pushing himself up from his chair. “Come and look at the evidence. This may get worse. Much worse. I suppose I must either trust you both entirely or not at all. I hope, dear Brother, I shall not regret it in your case. And bring that abomination in the hatbox with you. The Welshmen will want their hero back.”

  4

  Ceremonial grit crunched under our feet as we kept step with Mycroft Holmes across the open ground of the Horse Guards Parade. Tall windows at the rear of Whitehall faced the billowing trees of St. James’s Park. Their candy-striped sun-blinds were drawn out in the fine spring weather to shade the servants of the Crown. It was for all the world as though we were approaching a grand hotel.

  Brother Mycroft always walked as though his ungainly bulk was battling against a strong headwind. Scowling ahead of him, he kept his eyes fixed on some distant point between Birdcage Walk and the towers of Westminster Abbey. From time to time he glanced sideways at a passer-by who in his opinion had no business to be there. As Sherlock Holmes once remarked, his brother had a gift of conveying to the rest of the human race that he wished it were anywhere at that moment except in his presence.

  Of course, Sherlock Holmes himself cared nothing for public life, let alone for ceremony or public men. The large and reassuring buildings of government and administration left him cold. Early in our friendship, he had promised me that a nation was better led by a rogue than a reformer.

  We turned into Downing Street and went up a broad flight of granite steps to another pair of glass doors. Mycroft paused at the top and jerked his thumb towards the prime-ministerial residence at No. 10.

  “You may care to know, Brother, that a crossing-sweeper is still employed to clear a path across this street once every afternoon at 3 P.M. It is in order that Sir Robert Peel’s boots shall be kept clean when the Prime Minister approaches his official residence. The fellow receives a lifetime pension to carry out his work—protecting the boots of a Prime Minister who has been in his grave these thirty years.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “Tradition dies hard, does it not? And a good thing too!”

  A uniformed porter pulled open a glass door with his left hand and saluted Mycroft with his right. Within the domed lobby of the great building rose a double circular staircase, deeply carpeted in red to deaden our footsteps. I thought that their Lordships of the Treasury certainly did themselves pretty well.

  A second porter was positioned on the landing, outside an entrance of white-painted panels, for fear that Mycroft Holmes should be tempted to over-exert himself by opening his own office doors.

  As we stepped inside, I could see why my friend’s brother was content to pass his life in these surroundings. His office was a long and elegant Georgian study with a white barrel-vaulted ceiling. Handsome bookshelves rose from floor to ceiling. Beyond its oriel window, there was a fine view of the park towards Buckingham Palace with the Royal Standard at its flagstaff rippling in a light breeze. The distance from the office door to his wide desk with its green-leather inlay seemed almost the length of a cricket pitch. And if this Permanent Under-Secretary should feel the need of a breath of fresh air, a private balustraded balcony in white Purbeck stone extended outside his window.

  The porter carried away our overcoats and hats. Mycroft summoned his three secretaries. One was sent to fetch tea. The second was to inform the Attorney General that, most regrettably, the Prime Minister had found it necessary to postpone their discussion of the Government of India Bill until the next day. The third was to tell the Prime Minister that the Attorney General was unavoidably detained by a deputation of lawyers in the House of Commons on proposed amendments to the Supreme Court of Judicature Act. In two minutes the business of the nation was deftly set aside and Mycroft’s official appointments had been abolished.

  When tea had been poured, our host faced us and came at once to the point.

  “We have recorded four relevant events in the murders of Captain Jahleel Brenton Carey and the Prince Imperial. If you do not mind, dear Brother, we will take them in reverse order. That is the sequence by which we were alerted to this conspiracy.”

  I noticed that this was the first time the elder brother had used the word “conspiracy.” He did not yet say precisely what the aim of such a plot might be. Sherlock Holmes shrugged and Mycroft relaxed.

  “First of all there was the discovery of the body of a so-called Private Arnold Levens in the Calcutta Drainage Canal, several hundred miles from where he had last been heard of in Hyderabad. Private Levens was one of the four men in a fatigue party commanded by Captain Brenton Carey at the striking of tents in the 98th Regiment’s depot at Hyderabad.”

  “And what took Levens to Calcutta?” I inquired.

  “Concealment, doctor. He was signed for as one of three privates and a corporal, unaccountably presenting themselves from a pioneer corps, when Captain Brenton Carey was mortally injured. The only men with a clear view of what happened on that side of the wagon were Levens and another private by the name of Moss. After the tragedy, Levens’s name was taken as a witness. Thereupon, he and Moss absconded. It sometimes happens that private soldiers will desert rather than face a court of inquiry. They fear it may pin some blame on them.”

  “And a further curiosity?” Sherlock Holmes inquired.

  “There was no Private Arnold Levens—no Levens of any kind—not on the regimental roll of the 98th Foot nor on that of the Hyderabad pioneer corps. But why would any other man choose to be there? You may be sure that money had changed hands. Men do not join a fatigue detail for the pleasure of the thing. Nothing further was known of Moss nor of this man Levens until the corpse was pulled from a drainage ditch in Bengal. Then his name was checked and discovered on the roll of Army deserters. His pay-book was found near the spot, though he had drawn no pay. Someone else had provided for him. By then he had been on the run for over a year; but that same person had protected him for their own purposes. Of course, whether this decomposing body was truly the Private Arnold Levens of Hyderabad we shall probably never know. We are told, however, that the man was probably dead before he went into the canal. A petty criminal gone to glory with the assistance of his friends.”

  The sun declining across the park glinted on Mycroft’s gold-rimmed pince-nez.

  “The trail then leads back to the death of Captain Carey, in consequence of the so-called accident at Hyderabad Camp.”

  He count
ed this second item on his index finger.

  “The only two possible eye-witnesses had fled. Without them, it could never be established just how Carey’s abdominal injury was inflicted by the lashing-out of a horse’s hoof. Surgeon-Major Callaghan, the regimental physician, heard that the startled beasts had stampeded when the floor of a bell tent fell into the wagon. He attended Captain Carey and saw that death was unquestionably the result of blows to the abdomen which ruptured the intestine. Unfamiliar with animal behaviour, it did not seem to occur to Callaghan that this would require the wagon horse, most unusually, to kick forward rather than backward at the noise behind it. But the injuries had undoubtedly occurred. The blows from hooves were the only reason suggested. Therefore, as a medical man, he deduced that death must have been caused in that way. Captain Carey himself had no memory of being injured. Would that trouble you, doctor?”

  I had not been expecting the question but the answer seemed plain.

  “He may have been struck down by a blow he could not see coming. He may have been unconscious before the final damage was done. In any case, the shock of injuries severe enough to leave him unconscious might also wipe recollection of the incident from the brain when consciousness was regained.”

  “A horse’s hoof or a blunt instrument would be all the same in its effect?”

  “If the implement was chosen for that purpose, it probably would be.”

  Mycroft Holmes nodded and counted again on his forefinger.

  “Number three. The trail then leads back to Carey’s troubled murmurings on the last night of his life, his story of royal assassination at the Blood River in Zululand.”

  “The Prince Imperial,” said Sherlock Holmes languidly. “We have read the newspapers, dear Brother. We know that Captain Carey himself was at first held responsible for allowing the tragedy to occur. We also know that while he was dying, he revealed to Mr. Dordona those secrets that might otherwise die with him.”

  Mycroft paused and managed a rare smile. He was pleased with himself and did not care who knew it. He shook his head. “I am aware that you have entertained to tea the Reverend Samuel Dordona.”

  “Are you indeed?”

  “Come, Brother Sherlock! We may not be as clever as you, but we are not complete simpletons! Samuel Dordona, indeed! In other words, a well-meaning over-acting impersonator, Major Henry Putney-Wilson. Until the tragic death of his wife, Emmeline, the major was not too pious to take part in respectable theatricals at Lahore. It seems to have stood him in good stead. He once played the ruined hero, in Bulwer-Lytton’s moral drama Money. It was performed at Simla as a compliment to the author’s son, Lord Lytton, who had just come out from England as Viceroy. You did not know all this, dear Brother, did you?”

  This was intended to irk his sibling, as they say. I glanced quickly at Sherlock Holmes. But not a nerve nor a muscle in his profile moved. Mycroft resumed.

  “Of course, Brenton Carey can never have intended Putney-Wilson to keep the story of the Prince Imperial to himself. On the contrary, the major surely swore an oath to his dying friend that he would pass the story on to their mutual comrade in arms, Joshua Sellon of the Special Investigation Branch. That is perhaps the only item of the story which Putney-Wilson withheld when he told it to you in his absurd charade.”

  Mycroft sighed and pushed his tea cup away.

  “I do not know how Rawdon Moran heard of any this. Yet I fear Brenton Carey unwittingly signed Joshua Sellon’s death warrant by implicating him. We must now assume that Moran knows everything.”

  “Who else might know?” I asked.

  Mycroft Holmes shook his head. “Perhaps Annie Brenton Carey. After the prince’s death, Captain Carey retained his commission. As a servant of the Queen, he was forbidden from telling story-book tales of a man on a white horse. That was left to other ranks. There may or may not have been a figure on a pale horse above Isandhlwana, but it was a flesh-and-blood murderer who directed the tribesmen in their attack on Louis Napoleon.”

  He took a small key from his waistcoat pocket and stepped across to a cupboard set in the wall by his desk.

  “What of the sabotaged holster-leather?” Sherlock Holmes asked coldly.

  “You know of that, do you? I deduce it was substituted for the original while the horses were grazing and their riders were lunching. Substituted by someone who can handle a horse without disturbing it. It was certainly not the strap that had been tightened in place and inspected that morning.”

  The cupboard door was now wide open and Mycroft was struggling a little with what looked like an elongated cricket bat, wrapped in oilskin and tied with a cord. He continued his account.

  “Even if the prince had escaped being thrown to the ground and speared, a marksman with a Martini-Henry on that ridge above the kraal could have brought him down from the saddle easily with a single bullet. The tribesmen with their captured rifles would most certainly have got the credit of killing him with a lucky shot from one of their guns.”

  A little breathlessly, he deposited his wrapped treasure on the desk-top.

  “How many men thought they saw a figure on the ridge as they rode away?” I asked.

  “One. Trooper Le Brun.”

  Sherlock Holmes intervened. “Le Brun was the last man to come alive out of the kraal. Therefore he was able to see the top of the ridge which those ahead of him were hidden from as they went under the hill. How unfortunate that, once again, there was no corroboration of his story.”

  Mycroft was picking at the cord that bound the oil-cloth. “Le Brun, if that was ever his name, was last heard of among ruffians and scallywags in the Transvaal gold fields. He is probably as dead now as Arnold Levens—and I daresay by the same hands.”

  He had loosened the knot and drawn the wrapping free. On his desk lay a rifle, its brown wooden stock polished as if it had been new. Its barrel was a breech-loader, shorter than the infantry weapons of ten years ago but common enough now. A neat steel plate on one side of the breech bore the imprint of the British crown and the letters “V. R.” for Victoria Regina. Beneath that was the manufacturer’s trade-mark, “Enfield 1870.”

  Mycroft patted the stock. “After the prince fell dead, Carey’s party rode for their lives and never stopped until they reached the Blood River camp. A search party was not sent out until next day to look for the bodies of the prince and the two troopers. This weapon was also recovered on the ridge above the deserted kraal. Martini-Henry, .450 bore, British Army issue. According to Woolwich Arsenal, it had never been fired. It was no doubt loaded, but the round was ejected when the marksman saw that a bullet was not needed. The spears had done their work. A most efficient weapon, in its action. See here. The firing pin is cocked automatically as a round goes in over the breech. In the hands of a game-shot, the time between loading and detonation is very short. The gun is also extremely accurate. A short lock means that the marksman will almost invariably hit whatever he sees between the sights.”

  “Yet it was abandoned?”

  “Abandoned, doctor? Yes. By someone who disappeared even more quickly than Captain Carey’s patrol! Someone who was well aware that there might be other British Army riders in the area, who could be drawn to the scene by the sound of the tribesmen’s gunfire. Our mysterious horseman would hardly care to explain to them how he, as a civilian, had come into possession of an Army rifle in pristine condition. Far better drop it on the ground and let the tribesmen take the credit for throwing it away as they ran.”

  Mycroft paused and then counted on his fingers for the fourth time.

  “Last of all, Isandhlwana, the beginning of the tale. A similar figure to that reported on the ridge above the scene of the assassination had perhaps been seen or imagined above the battle. Mounted on a grey, he watched from the col. But the case is different. It needs no phantom on a hillside, gentlemen, to explain how Isandhlwana was lost. The mis-matched turn-screws and the sabotaged cartridges will do that.”

  He wrapped the rifle in its
oilcloth again and tied the knots in the cord.

  “Henry Pulleine acted with great gallantry. He knew he was condemned to die, but first he would write one brief note and conceal it where it might not be discovered by his killers before his body was found. He wrote of betrayal. And that was not all. A blade of metal no thicker than your middle finger was found on the ground by his body. There was no purpose for it in that tent except as a message. His fingers seem to have lost their grip of it in the moment of his death. Useless turn-screws of the same calibre lay among the grass of the wagon-park. Turn-screws that would never open those crates of cartridge packets to replenish the pouches of the infantry lines. Never in a month of Sundays.”

  There was silence in the sunlit room. The image of that last dreadful scene, men fighting the enemy back-to-back with their bayonets until the end, played like a lantern-slide in our imaginations.

  “And Joshua Sellon?” I asked: “How did he come to Isandhlwana?”

  Mycroft tested a last knot in the cord round the oilskin. He looked up and raised his eyebrows, as though surprised I had not guessed.

  “Do you not recall, doctor, that you first met him in a saloon carriage of the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway?”

  “Indeed I do.”

  “Captain Sellon was in the habit of noting the names of those he met and what they talked about. It was his profession as an intelligence officer—his second nature. Your name and conversation were entered in the notebook. You were proceeding from Bombay to Peshawar and the North-West Frontier, were you not? You talked of court-martials, he says, subalterns’ court-martials.”