by Tim Symonds
‘Exceedingly so,’ he replied. ‘The very fact he informed you of this - did you not find that of curious interest, my considerable friend?’
‘Telling me of the level of the water in the mill-pond? Not especially, no. Surely that was entirely inconsequential?’
‘Possibly - if he had left it at that.’
‘By which you mean...?’
‘This conversation struck me as odd. Why did he feel obliged to offer such detail? Even so, my interest and curiosity were subsiding until some minutes later he aroused them once again.’
‘By?’
‘Did he not tell you the reason the water-level was so low?’
‘As I recall, he did,’ I replied. ‘And?’
‘Which was?’ Holmes pursued.
‘Village children at play had emptied it - by opening the sluice.’
‘Yes, Watson, those were indeed his words. And you made nothing of them?’
‘Nothing. Neither then nor now. Why should I?’
‘If you remember, he proffered this explanation after returning from the cart which shed its load of hay... which was where?
‘At the other end of the Straight Mile. So?’
‘Some five minutes later. Why did he not give this explanation at once?’
‘You have lost me, Holmes,’ I replied. ‘What bearing does the mill-pond at Crick’s End have on the discovery of a corpse at Scotney Castle? What does it matter if the mill-pond was low or if a chauffeur should wish to bring the reason for this to our attention - or when he did so?’
‘Not so much the pond was low but the reason Dudeney gave for it being so - village children had opened up the sluice. Why then, hardly one hour later, did our host offer a completely different reason? Twice Siviter told us this same pond was low through the extra demand of visitors. Why did his explanation so oppose the one Dudeney had on offer - unless both were hasty inventions?’
‘Then I ask again, Holmes, what of it if the pond was low - or the reason for it?’
‘Because, my considerable friend, a case can be put together from such tiny inconsistencies. Where there is a want of consistency we must suspect deception. I repeat, why were we were offered two distinct and contradictory reasons? It can only be each was deliberate, each intended to mislead us, what else? It was indeed surprising the mill-pond was so drained despite the recent rains and the open leat. Lack of electric lighting left Crick’s End deprived of much evening comfort. Yet if we suppose neither children at play nor the extra needs of guests caused this condition, what other explanation might there be? Why was the mill-pond so empty?’
‘If neither Siviter’s nor Dudeney’s explanation was true... I am sorry, Holmes, I must leave it to you.’
‘I believe the method was connected to Siviter’s great love, that turbine-generator. I suggest its infernal mechanics were rigged to let the water flow at excessive speed, more gallons a minute than we can ever guess, far above the norm. It spun the wheel so fast the current passing through the victim’s head or chest was raised to deadly heights. The local constable judged it suicide or accidental death by drowning. I would wager my whole fee from the case of the Third French Republic there was not a drop of wagon pond water in the Boche’s lungs. Water killed him, but not by filling up his lungs. The fellow died from electrocution.’
Once more the Holmes I knew of old unfurled his wares before me.
‘Watson,’ he went on, ‘you suggest it was no bad thing they murdered him, a Prussian emissary issuing violent threats of war, daring to board a packet-boat to Newhaven to beard the British lion in his very den. Was that the true purpose of his mission? I confess I am undermined by doubts gnawing at me like lionesses disembowelling a buck. Why kill him? An assassination involves grave risk. I ask myself again, for what profit did the Sungazers go to such lengths, at such danger to their far-flung enterprise?’
‘That is indeed a point of curious interest,’ I interjected. ‘Knowing you held it to be murder I too have pondered on it many times.’
‘To which conclusion, may I ask?’ Holmes enquired in a friendly tone, eyes twinkling.
‘Alas, none, Holmes. It has proved quite beyond my ability. Such an assassination was without doubt a risky throw even for such a high and mighty League. How do you explain it?’
‘An act of desperation, given the stakes for failure. Planned as the clock struck midnight, judging by the late commission of the second painting.’
He stopped, then recommenced. ‘Yes, Watson, it remains the most puzzling question of them all - why murder? Why not a clip across the ear and send him on his way?’
‘I await your answer, Holmes. I have no solution to that most baffling question.’
‘Unless...’
He paused.
‘Unless?’ I prompted.
‘What if...’ he repeated slowly.
‘Holmes,’ I laughed. ‘What if what! I demand you cease this teasing!’
‘I can assure you, teasing is far from my intent. Watson, consider this. Until this very moment we have taken it for granted Count von Hofmeyer arrived at Crick’s End with threats in mind.’
Again, to my frustration, Holmes fell silent.
‘What do you think now?’ I urged.
‘Surely if what we hold to be von Hofmeyer’s reason for visiting Crick’s End is true, murdering him would go counter to the interests of the League, yet these are men of the most extraordinary intelligence and experience.’
‘So why...?’ I commenced.
‘The clipping from the Rheinische Merkur,’ he replied. ‘I am certain the Kipling League ordered its delivery to my door, but why so? Why these seven years on? Do we take it they mock us still? What would be the point?’
Once more I turned these facts over in my mind. As I did so, I became aware of a change taking place in my comrade’s demeanour. He pulled himself to his feet and strode past me to a window, staring out as though he could see Crick’s End on the horizon, like the sinister Spectre of the Brocken we watched in awe during a trip to the Harz Mountains many years ago. A minute passed before he tore his gaze away from the landscape.
‘Watson!’ he demanded, ‘what has taken place out there during our seven years of separation? Quick, tell me!’
Taken by surprise by his intensity, I stammered, ‘Why, I have been mostly engaged in my medical practice...’
‘Not in your world, Watson! You are a doctor, for heaven’s sake. You dispense potions. I mean in the outside world! What of the imminence of war with Germany? The newspapers are filled with it.’
His expressive face had now taken on the agonised look of a man whose heart was collapsing. I was half-way to my feet to retrieve my medical bag from the veranda when he waved me back with an impatient gesture.
‘Of course! That was their intention! Watson - once again you have worked a miracle as my sounding-board. This clipping from the Rheinische Merkur, I ask you again, what was its purpose?’
‘Because they wish to torment us, Holmes?’
‘No, I no longer hold to that assumption. That cannot be the League’s intention. They have placed the riddle of the sands before us. It is as though Siviter seeks to justify their crime. These Sungazers had this clipping delivered precisely because it provides the answer.’
He stabbed a thin finger towards the sounds of Mrs. Keppell and Tallulah engaging in chit-chat with each other through a back window. ‘Come, Watson, let us continue talking in the front-yard.’
At times like this Holmes’ finely-cut face glowed with something more than human. He led me out, pausing to pull from the pile of books the newly-published edition of The History of Nineteenth Century Britain. Galvanised by his excitement, I sprang to my feet, the unstable chair tumbling to one side.
‘What is the answer?’ I called after him as he st
rode on without a backward glance, like Orpheus leading Eurydice from the Underworld. With all his old verve recovered he crossed the veranda at speed to an open space beyond.
‘Holmes,’ I called out again from several yards behind. ‘What have the Sungazers offered us with this piece from the Merkur?’
‘The very answer we have been seeking!’ came his reply. ‘We have been more stupid than we have ever been! What has become of any brains God gave us? I shall never forgive myself, never! Count von Hofmeyer could not have come with menaces in his pocket. Nations have other ways to display their keenness to fight - grandiose military parades, dreadnoughts at Cowes and other huff and puff. Had he arrived with threats of war he would be alive today.’
‘If this Hun did not come with threats of war,’ I cried, ‘why did they kill him and throw him in a wagon pond?’
‘My dear friend, I shall not keep you in suspense much longer.’
He opened the tome he was carrying at a well-thumbed page.
‘...listen to these words of Viscount Van Beers on his role in the eruption of the late South African War. These, I repeat, are Van Beers’ own words.’
I stood listening at Holmes’ side as he read aloud. ‘‘Convinced of the Justice and Necessity of the struggle, I precipitated the Anglo-Boer War, which was inevitable, before it was too late...before the forces ranged against England grew too strong. It is not a very agreeable, and in many minds, not a very creditable piece of business to be largely instrumental in bringing about a big war. In my defence it should be recalled Protestantism in England took root only when Thomas Cromwell had the head of More struck off.’
We walked on past high Rhododendron bushes. Beyond them, at the courtyard edge, well away from the house, we arrived at Mrs. Keppell’s miniature herb garden filled with candytuft and lavender. Here Holmes commenced smoking hard, brows drawn down over his keen eyes, head thrust forward in the eager way so characteristic of the man I remembered with such affection from our years together as partners against crime.
‘Holmes,’ I interjected, baffled. ‘What has this to do with murder?’
‘Let us look at the facts from a different angle, Watson. We now know von Hofmeyer came on a particular mission to Crick’s End, what else? It could hardly be a social visit. We can assume he was murdered and we know the murder was a savage riposte to the Chancellery in Berlin. But what if von Hofmeyer did not come to Crick’s End with bellicose intent? What then?’
‘Holmes, you have lost me. Why otherwise would the Sungazers kill him?’
‘We are assuming the Count was a harbinger of war, a Prussian emissary in search of humiliating concessions... but what if...?’
‘...if not to menace England, why else would he come with such stealth?’
‘What if he brought an offer of a peaceful resolution to our differences?’
‘Holmes,’ I responded, laughing incredulously. ‘A secret offer of peace! If so, why should he be murdered for his pains? What on Earth would make you jump to such a conclusion?’
‘Von Hofmeyer was aware that England’s hostility to Germany was growing by the day but he knew the German Kriegsmarine was not ready to take on the greatest Naval Power in history. Ships alone, regardless of their 12-inch guns or speed, are not enough. You must train the men. More time was needed. Remember, this was 1904. An offer of an amicable settlement of differences might appeal to an English public averse to war after expenditure of a thousand millions and such loss of men in South Africa. Who better to bring that offer than the poacher adopting a gamekeeper’s mask? Yet think how the Sungazers - Van Beers in particular - would respond. With the utmost horror! Such a proposition could slow a build-up of our forces...’
He broke off, encouraging me to supply the ending to his sentence.
‘...until it was too late?’ I hazarded.
‘Quite so. That would be the Sungazers’ thinking.’
After a long pause digesting this, I said, ‘And that is why they murdered him... not to forestall an outbreak of enmity between Germany and Great Britain but to prevent an outbreak of amity between our two great countries.’
‘They kept von Hofmeyer within those high hedges at Crick’s End on whichever pretext they invented, lulling him into thinking his mission of peace was being hotly debated in Downing Street and would succeed, while all the while they were devising which way to murder him. That is the only deduction which fits all the facts. They had to make their response indelible. Van Beers and both Gold Bugs were brought up as Germans. They may rightly feel they have special insight into the blood and iron of the Prussian soul. In Van Beer’s opinion as a military expert, a war with Germany was and remains unavoidable. Therefore the sooner the better before Germany completes her armaments and hones her gunnery skills. If the Kaiser’s emissary had huffed and puffed on Berlin’s behalf, if he had arrived with a pocketful of menaces - halt our Dreadnought programme, hand over half our African colonies, internationalise the Suez Canal, stay silent and quiescent over Germany’s expansion into the Balkans, or else! - Van Beers would have sent him packing on the instant. The Count would be alive to-day. When he came with an offer of a settlement of differences, he was doomed. The coterie at Crick’s End saw it as a ruse to gain time. Already Germany produces a hundred million tons of steel a year to our sixty, second only to America. To the Sungazers, acceptance would mean disaster.’
By now, Holmes’ fox was running at full pelt though there was no sign of exultation or satisfaction upon his face.
‘It was a serious blunder by Berlin to approach the Kipling League. Other eminent Englishmen would have been far more amenable. It was not the Kaiser’s bullying or an open threat of war the Sungazers dreaded. It was the offer of peace. Therefore the emissary must die. In the Kaiser’s Germany no cohort of men could act this way without a nod from the highest authority. Think of it, von Hofmeyer done to death, his corpse left to soak naked in a wagon pond. Not even the Imperial Russian Secret Police could kill a foreigner without the Winter Palace’s assent. The clear message to Berlin would be Downing Street wanted no entente or ‘equitable solution’. Thus Germany redoubled her efforts to build up the Kriegsmarine and train a hundred crews. Thus in response we amplified many-fold our own construction of armoured cruisers.’
‘With the result...’
‘War is on the horizon, early rather than late. Precisely what Van Beers and the Sungazers wanted.’
Holmes continued, ‘Now I see they wanted the discovery of the corpse to catch the German Ambassador’s eye. They knew an unclad body would push into the press. As to their success in misleading me... do you recall with what approval they listened when I told them how I deduced you were recently returned from Afghanistan? ‘Just returned from some time in the Tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair.’ They must have hoped we would note - and be misled by - the pattern in the corpse’s skin if by chance we entered the case.’
‘Into thinking he was a Boer...’
‘Yes.’
‘And the Boche’s shiny dark glasses, Holmes, as you surmised, a part of the semaphore?’
‘It was a signal to the Imperial German Embassy. The Ambassador would inform Berlin their Africa brute turned diplomat was dead - yet the very same clue compounded my assumption the man was resident in the Tropics.’
I ventured, ‘The hat with its lizard-skin band...’
‘Sheer genius. Again, it fed in to my deduction the crime was some dangerous residue of the South African war while it served a separate purpose. It ensured the Germans understood this was no suicide or accidental drowning. They would realise von Hofmeyer’s fedora had been exchanged for someone else’s hat. A quick trawl through photographs of the Kipling League would tell them it belonged to Sir Julius.’
‘Holmes, now that you have explained it, I confess that I a
m as amazed as before.’
My friend nodded. ‘They are a formidable lot.’
We turned away from the rhododendrons and seated ourselves on a shaded marble bench.
‘Suffice to say the skies are black with the clouds of war,’ Holmes went on. ‘The Sungazers have put us on the path perhaps five years earlier than might have been, though they would argue just in the nick of time. Already the German fleet has gained a complete ascendancy over that of Britain’s on the sea-routes to The Argentine.’
He sat beside me discomfited, shoulders bowed.
I asked, ‘Have you any thoughts on the offer von Hofmeyer might have brought?’
‘I have no doubt free rein for Cecil Rhodes’ dream of Africa - British from Cape to Cairo. Perhaps an alliance to wrest the Congo with its germanium and rubber from the Belgians to share between us.’
Holmes turned his head away.
‘My naivety in world affairs. We should have seen we were in March Hare and Mad Hatter Land. They were more cunning than the water-fox. Think on it - the suspicious absence of your most popular chronicles in Siviter’s study. That was not by chance. They were purposely removed. I am certain Siviter possessed The Adventure of the Speckled Band. It is a study of murder known to every Anglo-Indian. It was Siviter who ordered Sir Julius to switch his hat with von Hofmeyer’s and leave it a-top the pile of clothes.’ Again my companion shook his head with a rueful look in my direction. ‘It was wonderfully done. That speckled band sent me scurrying in quite the wrong direction. I wager they already knew The Hound of the Baskervilles - no-one shuddered. But there was a lacuna in their knowledge of your chronicles, Watson.’
‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze...’
‘Yes. Once I discussed it, Siviter and his co-conspirators must have sat there wondering was there a dog which didn’t bark in their master plan for murder? I wonder which among them re-examined the painting of the moat and saw von Hofmeyer’s shadow and reflection lying there still, without a figure? It alone would prove their first plan was to have the body discovered in the moat that evening, and not the wagon pond at 3.’