by Tim Symonds
‘Holmes,’ I broke in, ‘if death was not by drowning, what then?’
‘As yet that too I cannot tell you. Certainly death was not by poison à l’anglais. The muscular contortions strychnine causes would leap out even to a local bobby’s untutored eye.’
Holmes fell silent. I stared at him most dismally. After a pause I ventured, ‘Why naked, Holmes? Can you explain that to my satisfaction? Was this perverted and insulting act solely to expose the weathering of the skin, and if so, why?’
‘The matter of disrobing is extremely clever. Without doubt one aim was to open up the body to reveal the sun-scorched skin. While possibly it was to insult - we shall return to that - I do not believe it was with a perverted intent.’
‘You say ‘one aim’ was to open up the body, Holmes. And what of another?’
‘If I am right in my deduction, it was a signal.’
‘A signal?’ I exclaimed.
‘A signal,’ Holmes confirmed. ‘Through the fact a sun so violent is clearly indicative of a Tropical clime.’
‘And at whom is this signal aimed, I pray?’
‘At whom, indeed. It behoves us to discover.’
Holmes paused again.
‘Then, the perfect crime in their grasp, the assassins’ luck ran out,’ Holmes went on, his words jerking with the jolting of the carriage, ‘by sheer chance - an uncalculated delay resulting from your intense satisfaction in consuming Imam Bayildi - we were caught by the clamour of the newspaper boy. A half-hour sooner we might have concluded our journey to London by the earlier train. We would never have heard him singing his song ‘Late Extra! Dead body at Scotney Castle’.’
‘Holmes,’ I expostulated. ‘You try to insult and divert me all at once but I see why. I know we share a love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of everyday life but are facts not of some importance if this is a case of murder as you assert? As yet I cannot see anything save vague indications.’ I added cuttingly, ‘So far you are able to deduce neither opportunity nor motive! It seems quite feasible the victim died sometime this afternoon when we were in camera with Siviter and his companions, a matter you refuse to address despite my persistent questioning. You assert the body was thrown in the moat. How you come to that conclusion mystifies me completely. The corpse was discovered in the wagon pond. As to its nakedness, that was, you say, a semaphore, but you have not the faintest idea at whom the signal is directed.’ I added, smiling grimly, ‘Otherwise, Holmes, you are as right as you have ever been. We have most truly got these murderous Sungazers on the run. As it is so critical to your case against the Kipling League, I repeat, what of the timing? Were they seated in front of us at Crick End at three o’ clock or not? You impute contrivance and precision to these events. It is incumbent on you to enlighten me. Otherwise, turn this carriage around and let us emulate the Grand Old Duke Of York and beat a path back down the hill to Etchingham and let the Pullman car carry us home to Baker Street.’
To my intense frustration, rather than answer my query, he continued as though speaking to himself. ‘Yet what am I to make of...?’, though to which point he was referring he did not elaborate.
He continued to stare out through the cab window, repeating over and over, ‘It makes no sense.’
Unwisely, I determined to force my opinion on him. I took a firm grip on his arm, as with an errant schoolchild’s ear. He wrenched his arm away. In a savage voice shouted, ‘Watson! You fidget me beyond endurance. I beg you, cease all questioning - and at this instant! I must ask you to remain completely silent. Keep your concerns to yourself. Do not inflict them on me any longer or we are utterly lost.’
Astonished by his ferocity I did as I was bid. He slumped back with a disconsolate look.
‘Watson, this Kipling League has set me an equation of the utmost complexity. There are no clues hidden in a tobacco jar. Each one seems to slip through my fingers. Except the matter is beyond humanity - which like Siviter’s tale of his ghostly monks I do not believe it to be - there should be no combination of events for which the wit of man cannot conceive the explanation, yet I admit I am stretched beyond anything we have so far confronted. If I cannot solve it, they will defeat us.’
He reflected gloomily for a while, then, ‘Watson, remind me of the words carved on the Hung League’s north temple gate. I believe you committed them to memory at the time?’
‘At the sign of Yin-kui the water is deep and difficult to cross, but in Yun-nan and Sze-Chuen there is a road by which you can travel’.’
After a short pause my companion continued in a sombre voice, ‘We must find the road to Yun-nan and Sze-Chuen. If this Kipling League defeats us, such would be my humiliation I assure you I would have no choice but to consider immediate retirement to farm my bees. In short, your chronicles will draw to an end.’
So alarmed was I by this threatening proclamation I ceased all speaking. Moments passed. My comrade-in-arms turned his head towards me with a most quizzical look.
‘Watson, I admit we build on quicksand. When I hear you put the pieces together - and with such a dubious expression - they point to the constable’s conclusion, a suicide or an accidental drowning in a wagon pond, perhaps of a tramp who stole a gentleman’s clothing and unwisely retained the pair of shiny dark glasses.’
He followed this with a shake of his head. ‘No, Watson, my every bone and instinct tells me it is foul play. When I listen to your objections, they do not hang together. If you will believe me, these Sungazers... I am certain they have committed a heinous crime yet I cannot give an answer to the two most puzzling riddles they have set us.’
‘Why the corpse lay in the wagon pond and not the moat?’
‘That is the one,’ Holmes nodded.
And why the pair of paintings?’
‘I see at least you follow, Watson, despite your trepidation, well done.’
He lapsed into a deep silence.
‘Holmes,’ I began, keenly aware the distance between us and Crick’s End was narrowing like the shadow of a great Himalayan mountain rushing towards us at the setting of the sun behind it, ‘you must follow your famed dictum, ‘no matter what....’.’
As if he had no inkling I had spoken, my companion continued juggling with an equation, his words low and troubled. ‘Surely the moat is where a drowning purporting to be a suicide or an accident would best take place...? This was followed by, ‘A second canvas so recently ordered... why? Why would Siviter gild the lily?’
Perhaps it was a trick of the light but I was sure I discerned a shade of anxiety starting in my companion’s heavy-lidded eyes which was spreading out to his expressive face. His head had dropped, like a bull’s awaiting the torero’s estocada.
Finally Holmes spoke. ‘Watson, you may be right. Perhaps I have leapt to the wrong conclusion. Nevertheless we must risk bearding them in their den, and soon, while the traces of crime might still be there.’
We had covered the length of the Straight Mile. Scarcely fifteen minutes remained before we would reach our destination. My companion’s fingers drummed on his knees.
He spoke again. ‘If I am right and the corpse was first dropped in the moat, why did Sir Julius and Weit hurry back to Scotney Castle to haul it from such deep water and place it in a pond not more than eighteen inches deep? What triggered this urgent and inexplicable act? It cannot be beyond the limits of human ingenuity to furnish an explanation.’
‘Sir Julius and Weit?’ I gasped in the greatest disbelief. ‘Holmes, I beg of you most sincerely, furnish such an explanation in the next few minutes. We shall soon be at their portico.’
More moments passed. He turned back to me. ‘Watson, you recall the lesson from A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four. We were compelled to reason backward from effects to causes. We must start with the unequivocal, such matters which even you in y
our disputatious mood cannot challenge. At three o’ clock exactly Sir Julius and Weit made their hasty entrance to the parlour...’
I interrupted, frowning. ‘Holmes, why do you impute haste in the pair’s arrival? They seemed quite calm and orderly. Weit even asked me...’
‘...about his health? Yes, he did, and you promised him the span, but how do you explain their shoes and spats splattered with chalk and clay? It would have taken a mere moment to get the servants to wipe them clean. And why would Sir Julius arrive among us in a parlour still clutching a hat? He must have pushed into the house before your Botticelli house-maid could meet him at the door to wrest it from him. No, Watson. They had an urgent need to be seated before us at three this afternoon precisely.’
His fingers continued drumming.
Suddenly he asked, ‘How far did Siviter say it was to Scotney Castle?’
‘Some twelve miles - as the crow flies,’ I responded.
‘By Dudeney’s conveyance, what time would it take to get there by road, do you suppose?’
‘Not more than half an hour each way.’
‘Then to fish up the corpse from the moat and take it with its pile of clothing to the wagon pond...’ Holmes mused. ‘They would want to hurry such an assignment. Ten minutes at most ...’
He darted a look at me. ‘Watson, the telegram we sent from Tunbridge Wells to announce our arrival, at what o’ clock did you hand it to the station porter?’
‘Your gold watch showed 1.15.’
‘And the telegram would have reached its destination at Crick’s End when, do you suppose?’
‘I would say some twenty minutes later.’
‘Hum! Let’s say not much after half past the hour...’
Again his voice fell to a murmur. ‘But if Dudeney was at the Etchingham Railway Station to meet us... I am certain when we arrived at Crick’s End both Weit and Sir Julius were there, but hidden. Transport by motor-car would be the only method. Only so could they have reached Scotney Castle and returned to Crick’s End by three. But why....’
His eyebrows lifted in triumph. ‘Watson, I have it!’
‘Namely?’
‘The unexpected arrival of our telegram, what else? The moment they heard we would be at Crick’s End three hours earlier than expected, a rush ensued to remove the body from the moat and take it to the wagon pond.’
His face took on a most perplexed look. ‘But, Watson, why?’ And again, ‘It makes no sense!’
Holmes gestured at the newspaper jutting from my coat.
‘Watson, please take the newspaper and pass it to me.’
He reached forward and took the Standard from my outstretched hand, flattening it out upon his knee.
‘‘A body lying mostly submerged ...’ Watson, ‘Mostly submerged’, what would that mean?’
‘That it would be largely under the water, surely, Holmes?’
‘Indeed it would mean that exactly, Watson. And therefore...?’
‘Mostly wet?’ I answered, bewildered.
‘Mostly wet, yes, Watson, you improve all the time - and as a consequence, what of its temperature?’
‘Why, the part above the surface would be affected by the temperature of the air, and similarly...’
‘... the greater part of the body, lying mostly submerged,’ Holmes broke in, ‘would be affected by the temperature of the pond. Precisely, Watson, well deduced - as befits a medical man.’
As from nowhere my companion asked with a slight smile, ‘Watson, I am struggling to remember... for some reason it has sprung to mind. If my memory still serves me, are you not the author of the Watson Codex? A monograph upon obscure nervous lesions - the pathology of catalepsy, I believe?’
I frowned. ‘I am, Holmes, the author of the Watson Codex, but as to nervous lesions you believe wrongly. That is Dr. Percy Trevelyan.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Holmes replied unapologetically. ‘Then, my dear fellow, what?’
Before I could elucidate, his grey eyes turned to slits. Unaccountably a scowl began to cross his face. ‘No! Now I do recall. Your Codex is an acclaimed work on stiffening of the limbs upon death, is it not? From the great expertise you gained by examining many a corpse in the cholera epidemics of the 1870s?’
‘I am the author of such a report, Holmes, yes,’ I plumed, though uncertain why such medical experience should merit his accusatory tone. As a young and impoverished medical student I had fought hard to obtain fresh corpses against the larger pockets of the Burkers and their dissector clients. ‘I began my examinations in the cholera epidemics you describe, and brought my Codex to a conclusion in Afghanistan and the Forgone Valley. Those regions possess a treacherous clime, full of fever, and a population of hostile... ’
In addition to almost daily random deaths from disease and general hardship, I had added to my store of knowledge of rigor mortis from certain military events. After my release in 1880 from attachment as Assistant Surgeon to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers on account of wounds to leg and shoulder, I spent seven weeks recuperating in the Russian Hospital for Officers, near London’s Grosvenor Square. It was here I was recruited for secondment to a Russian regiment fighting Sufi rebels. I took the opportunity to conduct measured tests in the field on how quickly muscle lengthens or shortens after death. From such reports I later published my work Estimation Of The Time Of Death By Examination of Rigor Mortis In Subjects In The Forgone Valley.
Holmes’ expression had turned ugly as though his rediscovery of my expertise in rigor mortis was inflicting on him some significant harm. This was confirmed when, to my astonishment, he said, ‘So, Watson, you will be my Nemesis, not theirs.’
At this caustic rejoinder he thrust the newspaper back at me and fell into an icy silence. I stared back at him reproachfully. A furlong passed while Holmes continued to consider me without uttering a word. Seldom had my fellow lodger examined me for more than five seconds and even fewer the occasions accompanied by such a discomfiting look.
‘How do you mean, Holmes?’ I spluttered.
‘It is you the Sungazers will call to the witness stand on their behalf. The Watson Codex will be the principal weapon in their armoury. It is you who shall defeat me.’
Before I could protest my undying loyalty, he went on, ‘Remind me, what was the question which most vexed you - the fatal flaw in my supposition, I believe you called it?
‘The time of the death, Holmes. If it took place around three o’ clock today, between Lord Fusey’s sighting - corroborated by Pevensey’s painting - and the woodman finding the corpse one hour later, all four Sungazers...’
‘... were seated in rapt attention before us?’
‘Quite so,’ I responded.
He continued with his injured expression. ‘And you are prepared to state that in open Court as evidence in their favour?’
‘Under oath?’ I enquired.
‘Under oath,’ Holmes confirmed, eying me keenly.
‘I would have to.’
‘Even if it destroys our case against them?’
‘Even if, Holmes, though I wish...’
‘Do you not see it as the blackest treachery?’
‘Holmes,’ I cried, ‘I am a member of the medical profession!’
‘As you say, Watson,’ Holmes retorted with a further sullen glance, ‘I understand completely. You must do so. You might save them from the gallows on that fact alone. You shall be their hero.’
He went on, ‘Remind me, Watson, what was it your Codex contributed to the study of rigor mortis?’
‘The precise effect of the prevailing conditions on the body when death occurs.’
‘In brief?’
‘That rigor mortis does not set in at a standard rate...’
‘But varies according to...?’
‘The
ambient temperature.’
Holmes threw me a puzzled look. ‘Watson, it comes back to me. I now recall your Codex won the Order of Merit for Comparative Pathology from the Karolinska Institute and a thousand kroner. Why would so unexceptional a conclusion gain you so prestigious an award? Surely you state the obvious? Even with little knowledge of the stiffening process, would not everyone anticipate a variation in onset according to the heat or cold?’
‘It would be so expected,’ I responded calmly, ‘but clearly you did not subject the tables containing my conclusions to a detailed examination.’
‘These conclusions being... ?’
It was not often I could lecture Holmes with my greater knowledge of a subject.
‘Even in the dead one might suppose the colder the surroundings the quicker muscle contraction would occur, as when we shiver....’
‘One might indeed so suppose, Watson - indeed I myself so suppose.’ A keen look had now appeared on my companion’s face. The ugly expression was dissipating with each passing second. ‘Watson, I repeat, indeed one would, whereas...?’
‘My findings showed results quite contrary to intuition.’
‘Which are?’
The opposite is true. Cold slows the onset of rigor mortis...’
‘And therefore warmth...?’
‘... causes the body to stiffen faster.’
The very instant he absorbed these words, my companion’s sullen mood was lifted.
With a loud cry he shouted, ‘Worshipper of Minerva! Watson, I rank you among the demi-gods of medicine! Of course! That’s it!’ He clapped his hand in delight. ‘That’s why they fished him from the moat and plopped him in the wagon pond!’
He leaned back with a series of loud ejaculations of interest and excitement. It was as if a set of clues was falling into place like the wafers of a Bramah lock. I started to enquire what all this meant but he clapped his hands together and exclaimed in an excited tone, ‘Watson, you have done it!’ This was followed by ‘By Jove we have them in the dock!’