by Tim Symonds
At this unfamiliar show of defiance, my comrade opened his mouth to start his response. I held up a peremptory finger. ‘Holmes, I will not offer subjection to your commands, however righteous. Do you not recall on our way to the Brixton Road during A Study In Scarlet you convinced me it is a capital mistake to theorise before all the evidence is in, because it biases the judgment? I have a vivid recollection of that instance. Bitterly hard as I find it, I must therefore alter my long-held habit of withholding my opinion for fear of needless interruption of your thought. Here, and now, I say there is such a need.’
I ceased speaking and waited with extreme disquiet for his reply. In the stillness I heard little but the thumping of my heart.
My companion cocked a puckered eye at me from a near distance with great curiosity, as though in need of a monocle. It was clear my words had failed to assuage him. When he took his turn to speak, he showed every sign of acute impatience. Umbrage permeated every word.
‘Watson, it has been your custom to express incredulity with your eyebrows - now I see you have switched to your tongue! This is a brilliant departure! Am I to understand you have deserted my faction and crossed to the enemy line?’ His voice sharpened. ‘Are you the Sorcerer’s Apprentice - having memorised what to do and say, you wish to do your own witching? Do we have the elements of a Promethean tale the equal of Mary Shelley’s? Or like the Pankhursts, are you going to march behind me with a banner demanding the right to vote?’
He stopped. His face more purple than I had ever noted. In a visible effort to regain my cooperation he asked, ‘Which part of my reasoning strikes you as faulty? I tell you, Watson, and I beg you to listen, this is no pretty puzzle of the police-court. Large issues will prove to be at stake, I am certain of it. I fear it is a serious international complication, a diplomatic coup d’état.’
His thin fingers twitched. He continued, ‘My dear friend, if in the detail you reject my supposition, do you not consider the cumulative effects of what I say to be considerable? Do you not recall my words in The Book of Life - from an observation of a drop of water, a logician could infer the possibility of a Niagara or the Pacific Ocean? I speculate this may not merely be the murder of a Boer but - and I repeat - the promise of an international incident or worse.’
At this my companion ceased speaking, awaiting my reaction to his words, a singular expression of interest on his hawkish features. I felt unwilling to respond. At my silence, he resumed his old manner and demanded sardonically. ‘Or is it possible that without my knowing, you are in hot pursuit of the real assassin, a hirsute man wearing Russian Army boots, both left-footed? Someone whose presence in our shadow I have completely failed to spot?’
The sneer in his voice obliged me to retort. ‘Holmes, I am not in hot pursuit of a hirsute man wearing two left-footed Russian Army boots. I realise you regard me simply as a minor confederate, one to whom each development comes as a perpetual surprise, but in this instance if you believe I follow you willingly back to their portico, you labour under a grave misapprehension. As to a logician inferring the Niagara Falls from a single drop of water, may I refer you to the tale of the six blind men clustered around an elephant, each asked to guess the whole beast from touching just a single part - trunk, ear, side, tusk, leg, tail. I say we are two of those blind men. I repeat, despite your every effort to brow-beat me into submission, from the insubstantial wares you have laid out at our table you have not for a moment convinced me there is a case of murder to be made, and certainly no case to prove the members of the Kipling League perpetrated a hideous crime.’
‘Confound it, Holmes,’ I hastened on. ‘Surely the game is hardly worth the candle? My trust in your intuition has gone as far as it will. Leave well alone. Nothing about the description of the body seems alarming. It might well be just a drowning and a corpse like any other, except for being seared by a sun fiercer than one we are accustomed to in an English spring. Do you not see that we are plunging at a furious pace to professional extinction? I have long feared that at some point a horrible misfortune would come suddenly to blast your career. Has that time come, I ask? You put forward an unsubstantiated hypothesis, you speak of wagon ponds and moats, spiny lizards, Tropical hats - and Randlords and Gold Bugs howling out like wolves of war. Until now I have been quite unacquainted with your gift for improvisation, other than when you play the Stradivarius. I swear you totter on the very edge of self-deception.’
I held up a hand to prevent him retorting while I gasped in a breath. ‘Holmes,’ I resumed, words leaving my mouth in short bursts, like a Maxim gun gone berserk, ‘your love of the complex and the unusual combined with our recent period of boredom has led you to depend prodigiously on the power of bluff. Let me return a favourite phrase of yours - I beg you to consider the problem in the light of pure reason. Consider too the effect on others of the evidence you have placed before me - a raised eyebrow or a guffaw or chortle from Inspector Lestrade at Scotland Yard is the least of our concerns. And please remember, this comes from your closest ally, not a deadly foe.’
I had shot my musket-ball. Tremulously I added, ‘Did you not once say that if it should ever strike me you grow too-confident in your powers, I should whisper ‘Norbury’ in your ear and you shall be infinitely obliged?’
So entranced was he by this sudden and despairing reference to Norbury, my companion’s mouth, at the ready to respond in a most heated and scornful way, snapped shut. He stood looking at me without a word. Seconds passed. I looked away across the fields. From the corner of an eye I saw Holmes biting at a nail, now staring towards Crick’s End, now turning to stare at me once more. Finally, he bent on me a wonderfully penetrating and questioning look. ‘Watson, you are quite white with passionate earnestness. You impress me with your frantic look.’
He paused, continuing to consider me carefully. ‘Your words have a stinging and salutary effect upon me, like mustard in a bath of water. I had quite put Norbury out of my thoughts. By this reference you oblige me to reconsider my ideas.’
A short pause followed, then, ‘It is quite a three pipe problem. I beg that you won’t speak to me for a good while yet.’
A lengthy silence ensued. Swiftly and methodically he was turning over the facts as though turning over the contents of drawer after drawer and cupboard after cupboard, but as yet I could see no gleam of success brightening his austere face.
At last, in a questing voice he resumed. ‘Has my ability to follow the scent faded so quickly?’ Turning his back to our carriage as though fearing the cabman could read his lips, he continued, ‘I admit our difficulties still lie before us. Like the Sussex hills which surround us, every fresh advance reveals a fresh ridge beyond. It is true that in my deep interest in the criminal mind I might conflate cause and coincidence, though that is usually self-correcting. Blind alleys soon lead to dead-ends and we hurry back to our earlier tracks. Watson, perhaps you have scored a palpable touch, the second in our long career together. I beg of you, do not imagine that I depend on bluff for my though bluff is a powerful ingredient in our panoply of tricks. I must admit the key to jiggling the tumblers into place to force Siviter and a Randlord and his Gold Bug allies into an admission has not yet come to light.’
He waggled a finger at me.
‘Watson, I shall accede to your earnestness and listen to what you have to say.’ Glancing in the waiting coachman’s direction, he added, ‘Your reproof is no less formidable for being so temperate in expression. Do proceed.’
Thus encouraged and despite the possibility I was being lured into waters awash with barracuda (there was no end to Holmes’ Celtic cunning) I launched myself at him.
‘Holmes, you have given me a plenitude of quite extraordinary speculation, more entertaining than any I recall. What you propose is sufficient to speed the most sluggish pulse. The grasp you displayed of pictorial art befits your descent from a French grand-uncle artist. Where I would ha
ve sworn on oath there would be a lacuna, your understanding of the chemistry of artists’ paint, is new to me and beyond compare. I am sincerely flattered you place such importance on the Watson Codex. As to your great knowledge of Reptilia, that is known to all. However, despite the presence of a disrobed corpse, male, age around fifty, which might of late have worn a pair of breeches under a Tropical sun, possibly in the Transvaal, a crimson hat like a bowler out of a Mexican sombrero bearing a strip of snake or lizard probably obtained from the Zoo in Regent’s Park, and a wagon pond rather than a moat - and paintings of both wagon pond and moat by Pevensey - precisely what do we have?’
I moved in headlong for the kill.
‘Absolutely nothing, Holmes, but the misguided and dangerous conflation you fear!’
The dregs of my courage draining, I determined it was now time to maintain a stout and challenging quietude. Holmes gazed at me as though expecting me to continue. At my persistent silence he took up the exchange.
‘My dear friend Watson, let me commence with a digression. How often do I tell you and your fine friends like Edward Marsh (though I believe the latter knows), that knowledge is the peacock’s tail, one element in an armoury designed mostly to impress. It is linen strung in sequence on a line, as simple to unpeg or drop as pigwash or a golden crown. I warrant overnight I could study and absorb the greater part of Euclid’s Elements - and remove them from my brain’s lumber-room one hour later if I chose. By my disquisition on painting I prove only that mastering information is the easiest of the black arts and much over-rated. You speak of my understanding of the chemistry of paint. Knowing we would make the acquaintance of the President of the Royal Academy, I prepared by learning all I ever want or need to know from the Picture Encyclopaedia of Art while you assumed I was searching the attic for the Poshteen Long Coat and my gold watch. The Poshteen Long Coat awaited me in Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen, drying at her stove. It was damp from my visit to the Rotherhithe docks this morning while you slept. I was reading from the Picture Encyclopaedia in our attic even as I clattered and crumbled before an Everest of your paraphernalia from the Afghan wars, those battered tin-trunks - do move them to your Bank - bullet-pocked pith-helmets - sell them to the Alhambra - studded wardrobe-trunks, shoe-boxes, and a whole assembly of travelling-cushions - surely destined for Mrs. Hudson - plus the greatcoat of green camlet lined with fox-skin fur sold to you at an exorbitant price on the unlikely grounds it was purchased by James Boswell during his Grand Tour. Tell me, Watson, where did you get the lavender-grey frock coat and white top-hat? Was it a loan from the Grand Duke Dmitri for lunch at Skindles after Ascot? Or donated to you together with a bronze medal by an ex-serviceman’s charity for long and meritorious service? ’
Wounded by these rapier-thrusts I broke back in. My sustained effrontery obliged me to gulp great balloons of air like the giant cat-fish of the desiccating Pusta-i-Telpun swamp. I burst out, ‘Holmes, am I to assume this capricious tone is serious? Though seldom have we ever had a difference in thought or word or deed, this time I am not prepared to let you off so lightly. You know full well the lavender-grey frock coat and white top hat are yours, not mine, awarded to you by the Grand Duke Dmitri - though whether for lunch at Skindles after Ascot I am not privy. Your humour over the acquisition of pigwash knowledge aims to disarm. It is a new and clever weapon in your armoury, much to be encouraged. I have been totting up as you speak and to be frank - and please take this as well-intended - nothing you have presented to me as proof of murder is a call to arms, certainly not - if I may split an infinitive - to boldly hammer on the doors of sublimely rich and influential men. Far from a dénouement, it would be a rout! You pant to throw them in the clink and see them hang. You cast all reserve to the winds - and for why? Surely not because for their sins and appetite they control the fate of millions! Did you not tell them this very afternoon you make a point of never harbouring any prejudices and of following docilely wherever fact may lead you? Are you not forever instructing me it is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to distinguish from a number of facts those which are vital from the ones which are incidental? Yet here you mix them like salt and pepper. I repeat, none of the facts you present as evidence tot up to anything more than a hill of beans.’
At my words he looked away. His expression changed from one of humouring a child-like companion to stern and pensive. He stared at the river flowing dark-grey below us. White of face he exclaimed harshly, ‘Damnation! Perhaps through your superb normality you have come up with a valid point. Do I drown in an excess of ingenuity?’
He paused so long that had he been seated I would, under other circumstances, assumed his narcolepsy had struck him into a momentary asleep. With a sudden determined shake of his head, like a bull staggering under the blood-letting of a picador’s darts, he turned back to view me.
‘Watson, these many years in my profession have given me a nose for a crime as keen as a vintner’s for a fine claret. Were Moriarty not definitively dead, I would say he is alive and well among these Sussex hills. Certainly he must be mocking our disunity from his watery grave in Hell.’
He continued in a low, disturbed voice, ‘I assure you, Watson, something vast and evil is taking place around us, though right now it lies a yard or more beyond my outstretched hand.’
He stared once more along the long straight stretch of the River Dudwell to the distant outline of Crick’s End. In the crepuscular light, it appeared a sombre edifice, saved only by the jaunty set of the Tudor chimneys etched against the still-lit westerly horizon. To my troubled eye, though at first picturesque in the happier time of our arrival earlier in the day, Holmes’ accusations now caused it to take on the grim and menacing visage of the sinister Crooksbury Hall, we encountered in The Adventure Of The Solitary Cyclist.
My companion resumed. ‘I can see you are not yet at my shoulder. We shall discuss the matter further before we resume our journey to their lair.’
Although impressed and disconcerted by his serious tone, his words calmed me. I was relieved at the prospect of a hiatus before we clamoured at their door.
‘Where do we start?’ I asked.
Holmes leaned on the bridge rail, looking down at the river.
‘As you point out, the evidence I have offered you is slight - not one witness for the prosecution or a scribbled note - yet we know from our other cases small pickings are to deduction as wick to candle.’
He threw me a swift glance.
‘Think on these things once more, try to view them as from afar. The watchman keeping an eye on our Baker Street door. The urgent nature of the invitation. The arrival of Weit and Sir Julius to hear my talk at three o’ clock precisely - delayed by what? The indent of a hat too small on Sir Julius’ brow. A disrobed body in a shallow wagon pond exposing the effects of a burning sun. A Tropical hat with a band sourced in the Transvaal lying a-top the victim’s clothes. The dark glasses clutched between finger and thumb on a jutting arm. Why hold up dark glasses as you sink beneath the surface of a wagon pond - to save them from drowning? The empty pockets. Not far away a moat eight feet deep or more. Pevensey at work on two canvases on the same Estate, the second painting commissioned only two or three days ago. The use of boiled linseed oil for the figure of the stranger replacing Constable’s dog.... do you say there is no fusion in all this?’
‘Holmes...’ I started, trying to break in.
He stilled me with the wave of an imperious hand. ‘Let me continue, Watson. I believe you have given me the gist of your argument. I need your ear more than your tongue. Let us cast the net wider to see if further clues cry out for our attention. Siviter’s study would be the poison gland of the nettle, the engine through which this plot was hatched. Does an important clue lie there? I recall only an old photograph of his mother wearing black patches on her face to enhance the delicacy of her complexion.’
My recollection of the st
udy was of a well-lit room, an outsize desk sparsely adorned with the silver-framed photograph of Siviter’s mother, two fine inkwells, a little silver comfit box, a delicate Ming dynasty saucer of the most beautiful deep-blue colour, an unusual emerald snake ring presented to Siviter by the Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein, a dish of oranges beside a carafe of water, and a Berliner Gram-o-phone. To each side was a papier mâché mother-of-pearl chair surrounded by a litter of dog-baskets filled with the eager attractive faces of the Aberdeen terriers. One basket was formerly a nursery-bath, with the lid still on it.
‘And some 2000 books around the walls,’ I ventured.
‘Among which ..?’
‘Many for the eyes of sailors: Superstitions of the Sea, Knots and Splices, Typee, Know Your Own Ship, South Pacific Directory, Castaway on the Auckland Islands, Stevens’ Stowage. Oh, yes, and Nimrod’s Conditioning Of Hunters. And books on bees.’
‘I too observed his fine collection on bee-farming, twenty-one in all. He has some good in him. But was there anything ... absent?’
Among all Siviter’s literary treasures on the layers of shelves in his study, there was not so much as a copy of The Strand to catch my attention, not even the best-known of our cases - The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Speckled Band, A Study In Scarlet, or The Empty House. Instead, on a shelf set aside for three-decker novels and other light reading sat works by J. M. Barrie, Conrad, Olive Schreiner, James Fenimore Cooper, Galsworthy, an Emily and a Charlotte Brontë and a half dozen works of Rudyard Kipling.