Sherlock Holmes and the Dead Boer at Scotney Castle

by Tim Symonds

  He added, looking directly at Holmes, ‘You may not be a man of Empire but you cannot deny where-ever the English arrive, we find primitive tribal societies. As the President of our League puts it so well, it is England’s special duty to fight ‘The savage wars of peace /Fill full the mouth of Famine/And bid the sickness cease’. When the time comes for us to depart, we shall leave behind roads, railways, telephone and telegraph systems, farms, factories, fisheries, mines, trained police, and a civil service.’

  Subsequently the imperial figure of Willcocks, Siviter told us, ‘wandered through Babylon and Baghdad’, building dams on the Tigris and Euphrates.

  He continued, ‘To drive the generator, Willcocks de-clutched the corn-grinding mechanism and installed this turbine. The current is carried by 250 yards of deep-sea cable to batteries in an outhouse. We get four hours of light from ten 60-watt bulbs each evening.’

  I saw Holmes begin to look abstracted. To avoid breaking into a roar of laughter which would surely have hurt Siviter’s feelings, I burst out, ‘Ah, and I assume it takes a fair amount of water?’

  ‘2000 gallons an hour,’ replied Siviter triumphantly. ‘Through a 14-inch pipe. I would offer a demonstration but as you see, the pond is exceptionally low. We have used it up in supplying extra current for my guests.’

  He pointed to the upper floor of the Mill.

  ‘We cleared the mill-attic as a workshop for the artist - you will know of him from his recent appointment as President of the Royal Academy. I commissioned him to paint an oil or two on the Fuseys’ estate at Scotney Castle across the Kent border, some twelve miles from here as the crow flies. Lord and Lady Fusey are great friends of mine. Pevensey should be back here shortly to hang the canvases up to dry.’

  Our host turned us back the way we came Led by the dogs we retraced our steps through the gardens. As we picked our way across the Wild Garden Siviter entertained us with an amusing story of baboons chasing him on Table Mountain. This was followed by a more curious happening three years before, at Crick’s End, early on the second day of his residence. His wife and children were still in the former home at Roehampton. After a night of recurring fever (‘from my days in India’, Siviter reminded us) he rose before sun-up to make a cup of herbal tea, no servants having yet been engaged. Outside, a thick mist which rolled in during the night had yet to dissipate. He entered the breakfast-room to find himself staring at a sinister group of grey-beards, wizened monks as at a séance, attired in the black habit of the Dominican Order, immune to a battalion of cockroaches so thick on the stone floor they almost touched each other. To Siviter, not yet recovered from the fever, the monks had the look of uneasy spirits just risen from their graves. One wore a heavy habit enclosing his body like a bell, with a pilgrim’s staff and sack, a breviary on his lap. So clearly was such an assembly a ghostly inheritance passed on with the building or the hallucination of his still-disordered imagination and upset sensibility that ‘hoping the strange visitors were not too briskly summoning me away in the dim world that lies beyond the grave’, Siviter strode on towards the kitchen stove, expecting to walk right through them, but they were solid. He had a difficult apology to make. As they were there for alms he gave them the half a leg of mutton delivered the previous day, some capers, a generous monetary donation, a half-full brown stone jar of overproof West Indian rum, and several bottles of Kops Ale discovered in an armoire secrète. Damp had warped the cupboard’s doors and hampered the lock which had to be broken. ‘It was from that experience that I wrote the verses of The Portuguese Monk of the Barefooted Carmelites.’

  It was nearing time for us to sup before we sang, or, rather, to take tea on a velvet lawn near the mulberry tree, at a long table covered by embroidered linen. Our repast would be informal, in the style anglais - standing under umbrellas in the drizzling rain. The meal comprised thin slices of bread and butter and a jelly compounded from the half-rotted small brown fruit of the medlar tree. It brought back my memories of Johnston’s Fluid Beef.

  Siviter and I held a brief, rather conspiratorial chat on our methods of writing before reaching amiable agreement that our styles were Continents apart.

  While closing in on the tea and medlar jelly, our host took us on a diversion through the house. On a tiger-skin rug in Siviter’s study stood a long, shallow fruit basket of insubstantial wicker-work, filled with a litter of curiosities - ancient broken pottery, delicate papyri, assorted bronze ornaments of Far East origins, a planchette, and such fandangles as a tiger’s tooth attached to a bell. Beyond lay a collection of green jade dishes and badly-cracked Imperial yellow rice bowls retrieved from an excavated tomb. Siviter explained Chinese Court etiquette prescribes that when a Sovereign dies, every rice or other bowl adorned with the royal cypher must be smashed, with fresh ones manufactured for the new Emperor. After he interviewed Tung Fu-Hsiang, leader of the Boxer rebellion, for the London Times he purchased this collection in the Native City, just outside the Chien-Men gate of Peking.

  From such collection of almost unimpeachable authenticity and utmost rarity Siviter had built a European reputation in at least one branch of research, Asiatica, where his power of purse from sales of Eastern tales (nearly the equal of Kipling’s) gave him great advantage in the race for fame.

  We Debut As Public Speakers

  Our brief encounter with tea and medlar jelly came to its end. For a moment Holmes engaged Siviter in talk about the richly-woven Persian and Kashmiri rugs spread across the floor of the Grand Hall. My friend’s knowledge was gained in Lower Egypt and Persia during the Great Hiatus of 1891-94 when he was thought dead. We ascended the adzed twisted double staircase, through age visibly out of true. Thus we came to the place of trial, our first public speaking engagement.

  We entered an entirely different and icier world. By deliberate and extraordinary contrast to the Grand Hall, the parlour exuded an air of mediaeval England. To judge by the smell of many tobaccos, it doubled as a smoking-room. The stiff furniture, chosen for compatibility with the house’s age, looked - and proved to be - uncomfortable. In the precise centre, adorned with two mauve antimacassars and positioned like a Princely gadi was a fine copy of a Knole sofa, inspired by the 17th Century original at the great Kent country house of the Sackvilles twenty-five miles to the north. The room was a cabinet of remarkable talismans. Everything was worthy of inspection.

  Two chairs were being pulled nearer the fire-place from where first Siviter, then I, then Holmes would speak. Siviter and Van Beers (with whom we had exchanged the briefest of introductions) were talking on the other side of the fire-place in low, confidential tones. Van Beers sat sideways on a chauffeuse, the padded back and seat covered in black material with floral and chinoiserie decoration. In this remote room, on their territory, deep in England’s countryside, an air of hauteur had descended. I felt we were discounted, two competition wallahs or subalterns who took soup for luncheon.

  I looked discreetly at Van Beers. There was a crispness in his clothes despite over-nighting in the tent in the gardens. His dark blue jacket was made of barathea with silk linings, the handkerchief poked from a sleeve rather than pocket, a characteristic I had only noted among the Imperial Yeomanry. Together with a slight cavalry stoop, he had a cold, bright eye for unhurriedly sizing up an enemy. This same cold, bright eye travelled over my face as though studying a reconnaissance map. There was little extraordinary or peculiar about him, save a pair of fine light cavalry whiskers and a slight stiffness in one leg, caused, he volunteered on first conversation, by a riding-strain; yet what a book it was this man’s power to make, whenever so disposed.

  It was agreed Siviter would open the proceedings and I was then to introduce Holmes. A maid removed the flurry of Aberdeen terriers with affection and some difficulty. After a glance at his watch and a few further now almost conspiratorial words with Van Beers, Siviter turned about and gave a brief clap. Hands clasped in front of him, he offered a
slight and near-formal bow and began his address.

  ‘Gentlemen, we are pleased and honoured to have you with us.’ He pointed at the china on the beaufet. ‘On the two sides of that pot, in crockery-literature, is written the Chinese precept ‘Ask no questions of a guest’ but perhaps we can make an exception to-day. Our principal speaker’s fame travels years and Continents before him and needs no reinforcement, but such introduction as he may care to allow will be performed by Dr. Watson.’

  He nodded towards Van Beers. ‘I need not spend time in further introduction. Our other guest is well-known. We expect two more. They send their apologies for being delayed.’

  Siviter turned and addressed me directly.

  ‘Dr. Watson, we know your chronicles are like exquisite and fragile vases, perfectly graceful and conscientious works of art.’

  At these few but courtly words he sat down.

  I rose to confront my demons. ‘Gentlemen, it is my privilege to present to you both myself and my comrade-in-arms. My raison d’etre is to record the singular gifts by which Sherlock Holmes is distinguished. I document for posterity the quick, subtle methods by which Holmes disentangles the most inextricable mysteries. He often says that while he remembers the action he forgets the actors. My humble role is to restore them to life by my chronicles. Dare I claim that without my notes the detail of events would slip away.’

  Siviter murmured a polite ‘Hear Hear’.

  I glanced at the notes in my shaking hand and continued: ‘My life and manifestos have become a useful row of pegs on which to hang the remarkable insights in detection Sherlock Holmes achieves. If I might add to our host’s kind accolade, the personality of Holmes has gained such universal hold upon hearts and minds, and retained that hold so tenaciously over more than twenty years, that his life, his habits and his characteristics have become an object of greater interest even above the adventures he and I have shared. There is a scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and Sherlock Holmes’ duty is to unravel and isolate it. No other profession has as supporters a more devoted clientèle, nor as antagonists more irreconcilable opponents. Before I met Holmes, I had no idea such individuals existed outside stories. The unofficial Consulting Detective is a quite separate category from an Inspector of the Yard. It is not the ordinary case which comes to our attention. Whatever is conceived and executed by the duller criminal feeds the mere groundlings of detection. They fall greedily on crocodile left-overs, not the fare of eagles. Holmes is called in by the Yard or Sûreté when all else has failed. The Law Society includes his cases in their curriculum of legal studies. He is the last Court of Appeal in doubtful cases, the elemental force in the Ultima Thule of crime. Many were the times we grappled with the emperor of crime, ex-Professor Moriarty of evil memory, a man of powerful intellect polluted by a wayward temperament, so endlessly bent on upsetting the tranquillity of the public mind. He was defeated in the end only by Holmes’ knowledge of baritsu.’

  I darted a quick look at Holmes for signs of approval. He was studying the floor.

  ‘Holmes’ entry into obstinate cases is sought by Scotland Yard precisely as desperate farmers in the parched Sonora Desert call upon Pueblo Indians to dance for rain. He confronts problems nigh insoluble, of such intricacy as earlier detectives, however assiduous, never dreamt of, but when he started on his life’s work there was no work in print on such a system of deduction. Even Sir Isaac Newton declared ‘If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants,’ including Descartes and Copernicus, or as Nietsche wrote, ‘each giant calling to his brother through the desolate intervals of time’. A Swedish church, thinking he possesses second sight, implored him to discover Swedenborg’s missing skull. Such is his fame that in his absence in Tibet and the Sudan, a hundred bogus Sherlock Holmes of varying degrees of build, height, personation and ingenuity sprang into action. None having met him in the flesh, all tried to fit to their own shoulders the keen face and prescient smile of the Sherlock Holmes they pictured from my chronicles. Three tried to bribe me to vouch for their authenticity. One aspiring Holmes from Stepney Green came to my door sporting a monocle. Another wore on his chest a facsimile of Holmes’ award from the Nayeb-Saltaneh of Persia, the green ribbon of the Order of the Lion and the Sun. Each shrank away and made their exit when I said they must prove themselves a Holmes by taking on the nobblers, palmers, smashers, abbesses, rapacious ivory-traders, and dragsmen in the welter of filth which is Stepney and Whitechapel. Christian missionaries prefer to proselytise in Darkest Africa or innermost Tibet than these Stygian wastes closer to home.’

  Onward I sped.

  ‘As you know, he works from 221b Baker Street, which I may immodestly call - by dint of Holmes’ fame - one of the three best known addresses in London, after His Majesty’s and the Duke of Wellington’s.’

  I may have hoped for a second encouraging ‘hear hear’ but my audience sat discomfittingly quiet.

  ‘Holmes is a Renaissance Man, a commander of many an ‘-ology’. As author of the monograph Upon Tattoo Marks, his identification is unique outside the Tahitian islands - Berbers of Tamazgha, Māori of New Zealand, Hausa people of Northern Nigeria, the Atayal of Taiwan. He knows the methods of the Black Dragons in Brazil, Peru and America, the practice of Sapo Chino in Bolivia. He can imitate the call or song of almost every bird. He is expert on atonal theory. To my and guests’ delight, he replicated in our Baker Street home a whole evening of Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin at the Wigmore Hall, the musical equivalent of Picasso - formidable sounds, sharp hisses, explosions, claps of thunder. How well I know the Barcarolle from Offenbach’s Contes d’Hoffmann which Holmes strums so admirably on a solo violin. Some call it a dreary tune but it is one which, over time, I assure you I have grown to enjoy. Certainly it is popular on the dancing-floor. And how often he regales me with his disquisitions on Antonio Stradivari or the Arabian Kite...’

  At last, to my relief, even Van Beers, a person of rigid calm and impassivity, broke into a guffaw.

  ‘and four ways to varnish Cremona fiddles!’

  Louder, almost raucous guffaws followed. Holmes sat completely still, a slight puzzlement on his brow.

  I ploughed on. ‘I quote my comrade-in-arms, ‘I make a point of never having any prejudices and of following docilely wherever fact may lead me’. Those familiar with our chronicles may recall I described my friend at work in A Study In Scarlet, published nine years ago, where Holmes whipped out his fine linen tape measure and his magnifying glass, trotted noiselessly about the room, sometimes stopping, occasionally kneeling, and even lying flat upon his stomach. It is often said of Charles Darwin he is different in degree from every other Naturalist. I suggest my great friend Sherlock Holmes is equally different in degree and kind from any other fathomer. The impression left is ineffaceable. The spotted sleuth-hound is as nothing to him. Sherlock Holmes has an unrivalled power of disguise. With nose wax, twisted lips, padded cheeks, the artful use of eye-shadow, within the hour he is the Norwegian explorer Sigerson, or an out-of-work groom - or an old crone. Grease paint is as familiar to him as eggs for breakfast. At will he alters his expression, his gestures, his walk, his manner, his very breathing, his soul. I shall not forget him as a simple-minded Nonconformist clergyman in a broad black hat and baggy trousers, the expression of peering and benevolent curiosity on his mien, or as a decrepit Italian priest when we tried to shake the vile ex-Professor James Moriarty off our tracks in Florence. Famed actors from the Apollo and the Duke of York’s Theatre come to Baker Street, pleading with Holmes to teach them skills of an order far beyond the green-rooms of their trade.’

  By now I was in full gallop like a well-backed race-horse on the stretch.

  ‘I should add, as my good friend Holmes may not, that on innumerable occasions we have faced frightful danger. For this he has become a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour. Many have been t
he times that had he been an officer in the British Army he would have won the Victoria Cross. On more than one of those occasions - I think particularly of The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge - I would have rather been up The Grim on the North-West Frontier with the Berkshires, or even at the fatal battle of Maiwand where the heavy bullet of a Jezzail musket fired by a murderous Ghazi grazed my subclavian artery and shattered the bone.’

  With long, white, nervous fingers, Holmes began to drum a tattoo on his knees.

  I rushed on. ‘Holmes is the application of scientific method. His deductive powers are so startling the uninitiated run away in fright. They declare him an elemental spirit on a different psychic plane, or at the very least a necromancer. Enemies swear he communicates with the fearsome voodoo spirit of fertility and war. On exit from the flat on Baker Street I have watched dark-skinned gutter children whisper ‘Colonel Samedi!’ and take to urgent flight. When closely questioned they aver he is a man who never lived but will never die.’

  At this, like a ventriloquist, Holmes whispered from the side of his mouth, still staring at the floor, ‘Cut to the chase, Watson! Cut to the chase!’

  ‘To quote the artist confronted by the work of a great master,’ I hurried on, ’he is an eagle; I am only a skylark tossing off little songs into the glowering clouds’. Holmes has been called the Master of Disguises, and with every reason. Even I have been fooled. Many a time he has affected disguises from his extensive collection of hats, particularly those with significant brims. And then there are the coats. Take, for example, in Holmes’ cupboard, the shiny, seedy coat he wore when solving the matter of The Illustrious Client. He possesses two Jaeger Coats, an old Ulster, a Great Coat, a long Covert Coat, a Chesterfield Coat, a fur coat which unfortunately moths have attacked in our attic, a Chinese fur coat which has so far escaped the moths, and a waterproof coat... though his preference is for the long grey travelling-cloak in concert with a close-fitting cloth cap. But, to-day, in recognition of this most gracious invitation, whereas I came in my glossy topper and Ulster ...’