by Tim Symonds
‘Not one of your chronicles, Watson? Surely not... Not one, you say?’
‘Not one.’
Holmes’ amour de soi had been stung.
‘Aquila non captat muscas,’ he said dryly. ‘The Eagle does not catch flies.’
We fell silent. Although the sun had yet to set behind the wooded hills, the air above the stream was beginning to dampen and cool.
Still staring along the Dudwell towards Crick’s End, brow furrowed, Holmes resumed. ‘Something I cannot identify disturbs me, something in the paintings, a clue as important to the prosecution of this case as the tip-toe marks at the Baskerville Estate. We must pass through these oils by Pevensey and step out the other side, or like a palimpsest rub hard at them with oat bran and milk. I say the reason he used boiled linseed oil was to cover up their tracks. Up to then, neither canvas showed any signs of hurry. Its use serves Pevensey well. It speaks loud in his defence. It proves to me he knew nothing of the murder until after lunch today. A President of the Royal Academy does not live in a Daguerreotype world, summoned hither-and-thither to paint an oil in fifty seconds. Yet today, haste there was. It turned the Constable from a work of promise into mere quantities of pigment awaiting a frame. It is that which first drew my attention.’
‘Enlighten me, Holmes, if you will. Why precisely did he need that figure to dry at such a pace? A few hours more or less...’
‘... could turn their alibis against them. They had to calculate the possibility something about the death would raise the Peeler’s suspicion. This where the figure in the Constable is central. If the figure stayed wet until tomorrow it could throw into doubt the claim a passing stranger - the so-called tramp - was painted in this afternoon and not some hours later. By drying at an exceptional rate, the figure would provide convincing evidence the stranger was alive at three o’ clock.’
He paused. ‘Nevertheless, I fear I am missing something of immediate importance... something critical to the case.’
I remained quiet, happy to be back to my role as sounding-board while Holmes continued in intense cogitation, his eyes narrowed to slits. ‘Was there something in the setting?’ he murmured several times, ‘the dim-lit mill-attic? A shaft of sunlight through the window playing on the easel...’
As if I were no longer at his side, Holmes continued, ‘All that bended knee to history. The meadow where Jack Cade was slaughtered... so much on Cade’s death and his severed head on London Bridge I felt I was at a vivisection. In the telegram, Siviter threw in Pevensey as bait, such was the urgent wish to bring us here. He knew we would want to meet the famous artist and view his work, yet consider our host’s pains to prevent us from being tête-à-tête. Why so? You saw Pevensey’s uneasy stance upon our entry? How soon he took his leave? The glance he gave us on his departure. He may be incidental to the crime - I doubt he would garrotte a tube of Chrome Yellow - but Pevensey’s paintings are vital to their alibi. As to taking an earlier train than ours, more likely he wished to avoid a Pullman car containing Holmes and Watson than worry over Third Class compartments filled with colporteurs and market-women with babies!’
‘Holmes,’ I interrupted, ‘if the use of boiled linseed and the sheen so greatly aroused your interest, why did you not bring the matter to Siviter’s attention after Pevensey left the attic? Would it not have been of interest to hear what the patron had to say?’
‘We were not yet acquainted with the report in the Standard. I was not in the market for seeking clues. After Pevensey spent a week or more on such a mundane commission - jobbing works in imitation of a Constable or paintings of ruins by moats will not enhance his reputation - he may have decided to complete the work in the quickest time. It would hardly be out of character.’
‘Holmes,’ I said mildly. ‘Isn’t that a plausible explanation for his use of boiled linseed oil?’
Holmes’ thin lips compressed. His brows drew down, lost in profound thought. He turned in my direction and looked at me with a reluctant expression, as though the investigation had reached its end.
‘Watson, it is possible you have been right all along. Perhaps I am simply spinning conjurors’ plates. A fifth-rate Counsel might tear my suppositions to rags. As we stand here at this bridge there is insufficient evidence to bring an accusation to their porch or even gain the ear of Scotland Yard. Our ferret-like friend Lestrade would react exactly as you suggest - he would listen in apparent seriousness and snigger the moment our back was turned. While I maintain there is truth in my conclusion, that this is an assassination - and by the Kipling League - I can see they have you firmly on their side and would gain the sympathy and respect of a jury too.’
While sympathetic to my companion’s gloom, my heart grew lighter at these despondent words. I gestured towards the carriage. The watchful cabman picked up the reins at the ready. The horses’ brass accoutrements jangled. The greys, still grazing the lane verges, pulled forward for a last mouthful of vegetation, dislodging a rabbit from its shelter. With amazing celerity it dashed across the lane, leaping into the nearby field. Successive bounds merged into a long and shallow glide like a porpoise accompanying a Cunard ocean liner. Despite the ever-dimming evening light, the tufted white of the tail was remarkably easy to follow.
With the fear draining from my being, I twitched Holmes’ sleeve.
‘What would Darwin say about the whiteness of that creature’s tail?’ I asked gaily. ‘It cannot be a warning like the cobra hissing - it has no weapons in its armoury but flight. Surely such a ball of cotton commands the fox to chase it rather than dissuades it? Does this not contradict the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection?’
‘It is a paradox,’ Holmes agreed.
‘And why does the white tuft flash only when its owner is retreating?’
‘At the very least it is a warning to its brethren.’
‘But what of its own safety as it rushes to its burrow?’ I asked, looking expectantly at my companion, keen to engage longer on the subject whilst edging ever-closer to our carriage.
‘Then, Watson... as it approaches its burrow what happens?’ Holmes responded.
I replied, ‘Why, with luck it scurries into the very deeps of Mother Earth.’
‘With luck, you say? But can it be just through luck? No species survives over brutish time at the whim of Mistress Luck, not a creature with such a lodestar of a tail.’
‘Yet prosper it has. Look at the numbers in this field alone.’
‘Indubitably so.’
‘So what of Darwin’s Theory?’ I insisted. ‘Surely the rabbit is too successful for the tuft to be mere evolutionary baggage?’
‘Darwin could only argue the creature prospers because of - not despite - the whiteness of its tail. Natural Selection permits no other conclusion.’
‘By which you mean...?’
‘If it raises only when the creature senses danger, it must aid, not endanger its own escape.’
‘Holmes,’ I pursued, ‘I may lack quickness of perception, but how could that be? Have we not this very moment observed what a marker the white tail makes, even in the dusk? Even from this distance our eye tracked it to its lair some forty yards away.’
‘Indeed,’ Holmes assented. ‘Again I ask, what then?’
‘Why, as I said, with luck it scurries into its burrow.’
‘And I repeat, Watson, we and all things living are lost if Nature depends so heavily on the momentary chance.’
‘Then I give up,’ I replied, perplexed, shaking my head dolefully at my ignorance, deeply pleased my stratagem was working. With a smile Holmes said, ‘Watson, you have aroused my curiosity and led me off from my own pursuit, well done. It is good you keep me flat-footed. We shall take this matter of the rabbit to a logical conclusion. What of the tail’s location?’
‘Why, Holmes,’ I laughed, ‘where tails are always located!’
‘Meaning?’
‘At the very back.’
‘Thus when the fox pursues it?’
‘In the fox’s very eye?’ I ventured.
‘How would you describe the action of that tail?’
‘That it bobs up and down?’
‘Watson, bravo! Once more today you have solved a vexing puzzle.’
Perplexed, I stared at my companion. ‘Holmes, would you kindly explain how I have solved this mystery?’
‘Why, as you suggest, it lies less in the tail than the bobbing.’
‘What of the bobbing?’
‘At the very least the speed of bobbing would allow a predator to calculate if the creature’s agility makes it impossible to catch - but let us assume our fox is in full cry. Whenever life is taken, there is always a decisive moment. Think when that would be for the rabbit.’
‘Just as the fox closes in, jaws gaping...’
‘... at which point the very whiteness of that tail even in the gloom would now be jigging before the fox’s eye... up, down, up, down...’
Dramatically I threw my arms into the air. ‘...creating mesmeric turmoil in the fox’s brain! Of course! Holmes, well done!’
At the very instant I uttered my congratulations it was as though an electric stroke passed through my companion. With an iron grip he took my sleeve, pulling me swiftly from the carriage step. I heard him crying, ‘Watson, you have done well! Let us reconsider Pevensey’s paintings in the light of the rabbit’s tail. Answer me without demur, at the last minute what replaced the dog in the painting of the wagon pond?’
‘The passing stranger, Holmes. Surely that could be simple poetic licence? Clearly Siviter wanted a shepherd or woodman in the landscape... why not?’
‘No Watson, the figure at the wagon pond, that was the rabbit’s tail! That’s why Siviter wanted it to replace the dog - it was not only to establish the victim was alive and present at three o’ clock, it was to concentrate our attention on it when we viewed the painting in the Mill. But why?’
Never had I seen Holmes rise so fast to such a pitch, save but once, in The Illustrious Client.
Suddenly he shouted, ‘Daubigny! Landscape With A Sunlit Stream! The other painting! Watson, we must return at once to the Mill-attic!’
Bewildered I demanded, ‘What of the other painting?
‘It is the other painting - the one they threw aside - which requires our immediate attention. The proof of murder lies in it. Watson, from a most casual look I recall it contains a serious blunder, one which will oblige Inspector Gregory to bring a charge of assassination against the Kipling League! Rather than confront Siviter openly at his door we must return with the utmost secrecy to the mill. We must at all cost gain hold of the canvas on the floor, the painting of the castle ruin and the moat!’
I stared at Holmes in stupefaction. A ruined castle in the early-evening light, a sprinkling of azaleas and a moat? How would such a painting help his cause?
By now Holmes was at the sociable, turning to beckon me with an urgent gesture. His voice rang with joy.
‘Watson, come with the greatest speed! We’ve got ‘em, by Heaven, we’ve got ‘em! Your rabbit’s tail - it has given us the key. Come, Watson, come!’ he shouted. ‘With the help of the god of justice I will give you a case which will make all England stand agog.’
Holmes flung himself aboard the carriage. At his command, the cabman flicked the reins and the greys were away, clip-clopping past an isolated farmhouse signed ‘Naboth’s Vineyard’. It was the last habitation before Crick’s End. Holmes rubbed his hands and chuckled like a connoisseur sipping a comet vintage. My spirits sank to depths never before plumbed.
We Burn Down The Mill
With the clatter of the horses’ hoofs reducing the likelihood the driver could hear our words, Holmes darted an artful glance at me and repeated in a gleeful sing-song, ‘We’ve got ‘em. I believe we’ve got ‘em!’
I peered at him reproachfully in the near-dark of the cab’s interior.
‘Holmes,’ I pleaded despairingly, ‘please inform me...’
‘The canvas on the floor, Watson. Tell me, you mentioned how artists staff such canvases with shepherds and peasants - to create the idyllic? Then what about the stranger in that painting too?’
‘Which stranger, Holmes?’ I enquired. ‘I have no recollection of any figure.’
‘Why, at the moat’s edge, where else!’
Once more my hopes rose. ‘Holmes, I recall no stranger by the moat!’
‘No stranger? Then perhaps a shepherd employed by Fusey?’
‘Holmes, there was no shepherd in the painting.’
‘Then woodman or peasant?’
‘Holmes,’ I yelled in exasperation, regardless of our driver. ‘There was no peasant nor woodman nor hunter nor pig-sticker nor mediaeval knight nor any other figure standing by the moat. I can assure you unequivocally - do you hear me? - unequivocally there was no such figure. If you now expect to base your entire case on...’
‘Was there not?’ Holmes enquired, grinning over at me in the gloom. His unnatural persistence was irritating me beyond compare. ‘You looked at it more closely than I. Surely you observed someone in the painting? Just across the moat from where Pevensey must have placed his easel, perhaps?’
‘Holmes!’ I repeated, in the tone of voice I would normally reserve for the dangerously insane, ‘let me spell it out. There - was - no - figure - by - the - moat - I - am - certain - of - it.’ I followed this in a normal voice. ‘I assure you, if there had been such a figure, it would have come to my attention.’
To my intense irritation, my companion continued, ‘You are completely certain? Surely there was a figure wearing a Tropical hat?’
‘There was not, Holmes. Yet again I must inform you, such a figure would without doubt have caught my eye.’
‘Especially with such a hat?’
‘Especially,’ I affirmed.
‘As did the figure in the painting on the easel?’
‘Precisely as did the figure in the Constable.’
If I had hoped (as I very much did) that at my adamant responses my companion would turn his face to the cabby and order him to return the carriage to Etchingham with us inside, I was disabused immediately. Far from dissuading him from proceeding to Crick’s End and professional extinction, Holmes began to sing a ditty in a jog-trot, in time with the clopping of the horses’ hoofs, ‘The dog that didn’t...’, with open delight at whatever it was which had struck him so forcibly.
‘Holmes,’ I began, ‘I beg you, you really must explain...’
It was no use. Back came ‘The dog that didn’t...’ in a high falsetto. His voice was quite unlike his usual tones. It was the most eerie trill I had ever heard, as though a Mongolian throat-singer had sprung unbidden from the dusk of the Dudwell Valley and taken over my companion’s larynx. I looked back and forth from him to the world outside. The carriage wheels drummed like tumbrels in my ear. While Holmes carolled away like a lark I meditated upon the many-sidedness of the human mind.
Suddenly the grotesque trill stopped and my companion spoke as normal. ‘Watson, motive must take a back seat for the present. We must pursue this regardless of their motive - if we can prove opportunity and planning, if we can show an irrefutable connection between moat and corpse and wagon pond, that will suffice for a jury to convict. The President of the Royal Academy is their weakest link. When we threaten him with an appearance in the dock as accessory to murder, the chainmail will unravel like an old wool cardigan. Confront him at the Royal Academy and I guarantee he will buckle. I shall provide you with the evidence of the vital role he played the moment we reach the mill-attic. After that we can, I assure you, put up the shutters on the day and pull a pint of beer. Tobias Gregson will arrest Pevensey in his studio with
his customary quiet and business-like bearing. We will let Gregson and Lestrade have a report before tomorrow is out.’
By now very close, the sociable took on an ever-more-cautious pace, reducing the noise of clopping of the horses’ hoofs. My companion fell silent. He sat as I recall him at the start of every chase, arms folded, soft grey deer-stalker (though now the ear-flapped travelling cap) pulled down over his admirable forehead, chin sunk on his chest. Although almost paralytic with dread I felt proud to know him. Attired as he was, and with such a pensive mood upon his angular face, he presented a sight that will forever be pictured in the imagination of all those faithful to the memory of the nation’s greatest detective, his face so subtle in its play of expression.
The lane straightened as we approached Crick’s End head on. The high yew hedges loomed. We came ever-nearer to the wrought-iron gates. Questionable and forbidding though it appeared, it looked at most the setting for a plot of Empire rather than callous murder. To our right lay Donkey Field, stretching up at a steep incline to the village on the ridge. From it, low above the coachman’s head, the thick branches of the great oak stretched across the lane, planted when Crick’s End was in its youth. Lit by the gibbous moon, Constable clouds bubbled up from the north-west, sinuous wisps like tentacles drifting across the face of the moon. It was a place and hour you might well expect to see Kipling’s phantom rickshaw.
The carriage halted. Holmes leaped out, up for the chase. Without a backward look he swept a hand behind him.
‘Watson, ask our coachman to return to this precise spot in half an hour. And tell him at all cost not to be seen.’
I passed Holmes’ words to the coachman. Without so much as a look in our direction he raised the whip to his hat and turned the greys full circle. The sound of the rattling wheels died away along the narrow lane. We crouched in the dense black shadow of the yew hedges which separated the grounds from the track. Immediately to our left a small sign proclaimed ‘Park Farm No Through Road’ along an uneven pock-marked stretch of track. Twenty paces along, shielded from Crick’s End by the high hedge, we saw a six-bar gate.