He’d always had a knack for numbers and when he had arrived, finally, in London he had put this talent to good use.
He had prospered and discovered that once you were on that royal highway, money would gather to you. Not always ethically, especially since the war had started. There were one or two businessmen staying at the Grand with whom he’d done business who would probably qualify as profiteers.
He didn’t think of himself in that light.
The treasure perplexed him. He imagined it still in its iron chest but, of course, to live the life Dr Watson was living he must have converted it into money. The gems and jewels probably were no more. Then again, perhaps the sale of the Great Mogul alone would suffice to pitch the doctor into the lap of luxury.
One way or the other Adlam wanted the treasure he’d dreamed of for so many years.
He’d never met his grandfather but his own father had. Jonathan Small’s bastard son had read Dr Watson’s account when it was serialised and recognised the man who had abandoned his mother. He had wanted to attend the trial but he was still a Worcester man, miles from the capital, and couldn’t get the time off work.
Eventually, though, he was able to visit Jonathan Small in Bedlam. He’d told his son, George, he’d gone with no clear idea of why he wanted to see the father who had never lifted a finger for him nor, probably, had given any thought to his existence.
He was expecting Jonathan Small to be howling-at-the-moon mad, like the loonies gathered around him. At first he was crazy-eyed. But when he knew who he was speaking to something else came into his expression.
“I can’t make up for the lost years,” he said soberly, tapping his outstretched wooden leg lightly on the brick floor. “I ask forgiveness for the way I treated your mother. I was but a lad and that responsibility weighed too heavily on me. If I had my time again, happen I’d have done things differently.”
A look of cunning came into his eye. He leaned forward and beckoned his son to do the same. He spoke directly into his ear, his mouth so close the breath gave Adlam’s father a queer sensation. He tried to draw back but Small gripped his shoulder and held him.
“There’s only one way to make amends and that’s to tell you a secret none but three or mebbe four know. You’re here you say because you’ve read of me in The Sign of the Four by that scoundrel Dr Watson. Aye, scoundrel, I say, for all he presents himself as this bluff and good-hearted Englishman.”
“I don’t understand,” Small’s son said.
“The treasure is not lost,” Small said, so close into his son’s ear it entered his brain as a barb that stuck forever.
Small moved his head back and looked fiercely into his son’s eyes, nodding hard.
“Aye that’s right,” he said and his son got a waft of foul, asylum breath. Dead man’s breath and he knew then his father had not long to go.
“How?” he croaked.
“How do ye think? Dr Watson. Read the account closely – as I have done this many times – and you’ll see how the truth sits in the gaps between the lines.”
“Why did you go along with it?”
“Threats and promises. The threat of the hangman’s noose – he claimed he and Sherlock Holmes could make it so. The promise of a cushy number, not digging ditches in Dartmoor.”
He gestured round his cell, the walls weeping damp.
“This is what he meant by that. And I was happy to settle for it because, aside from being surrounded by loonies and having my sleep disturbed nightly by the wailing and gnashing of teeth, my cell is fine enough. I’m left to myself and I do get a regular income so that I can treat myself to a few luxuries when I’ve a mind.”
“And Dr Watson has the treasure.”
“His wife. It went to Miss Marston but he was quick enough to marry her for it. But now I know I’ve kith and kin, why then your right to it is stronger than hers and his.”
That was the gist of the story George Adlam’s father told him. Small died soon after and his illegitimate son pondered how best to approach Dr Watson. Then he too died during threshing. Nobody quite knew how.
And George Adlam had this story that he didn’t know what to do with. Until now.
He was aware of leisurely footsteps somewhere on the promenade behind him. Another gentleman taking the air.
Adlam knew he had a lot of hate in him. Resentment. Anger that success didn’t assuage. He hated his grandfather for abandoning his grandmother when he’d made her pregnant. Hated his grandfather’s respectable, chapel-going family of small farmers for washing their hands of his grandmother. Hated her for being so stupid. Hated his own father for accepting his pathetic lot.
The footsteps had stopped. Adlam started to turn and as he did so a stick caught him across the side of the face. He went reeling, staggering against the railings of the promenade. He saw the stick raised again and realised he’d avoided the heavy knob on the end braining him only by chance. He fell backwards and, by instinct, kicked out, catching the man above him on the knee.
The man cried out and fell to his other knee, releasing his stick as he put out his hand to break his fall. Adlam started to rise but his assailant was quicker. He scrambled to his feet and, despite the injury to his knee, hobbled off down the street at considerable speed. Adlam stood and started in pursuit but a wave of dizziness stopped him in his tracks. He gripped the railings with both hands waiting for his head to clear. By the time he had recovered his assailant was long gone. But his abandoned stick lay at Adlam’s feet.
Chapter Nineteen
The Howling Boys
Sherlock Holmes looked out of his cottage window and marvelled at how the sun was already beating down. The day crisp and clear. Bees wafting through the air, sluggish in the heat. He looked at the two fields he owned that he did nothing with. Perhaps he’d offer one to the continental detective to grow marrows – he’d heard that was his hobby. Or was that the other fellow?
He had dismantled his hives yesterday, frame by frame. A great mass of bees, the size of a human head. A few were angry and swarmed around him, stinging the exposed parts of his body. He couldn’t find the queen bee. He pondered this. So much for the Howling Boys.
Sherlock Holmes first met the Howling Boys years earlier when they came to protect his bees from the evil spirits. They gathered outside his cottage after dark, clothed in sheets and women’s dresses, heads hooded, crude slits in sacking for eyes and mouth. They carried cows’ horns, drums and rattles. They whooped and hollered, passing a jug of cider between them.
They were local farm boys and shepherds, some of whom he recognised through their disguises. Sherlock Holmes had prepared Lamb’s Wool – strong ale with pulped apples, raw brown sugar, grated nutmeg, ginger. He gave them that before and after they poured their cider into the earth around the hives, pitch torches flickering illumination. They sang rowdily and made raucous music to ensure his bees made good honey and pollinated the apple trees for the next fruiting.
After that they came back every year until, when the war started, all the young men left the Downs. Now it was the older locals who carried on the tradition. Perhaps that was what made the difference now.
Then again, perhaps someone else had hives nearby and the queen had decamped there. He would have to get more eggs and hope the bees would feed up one of their number and turn her into a queen.
He was thinking about such primitive traditions on the Downs – going back centuries, he had no doubt – and about the public cremation he had seen just a couple of miles from his cottage. Such an unexpected sight within view of that most English of things, the Clayton windmill, its long blades turning slowly against the brilliant blue sky.
Sherlock Holmes knew his Cervantes. He had once, indeed, taken a case at the university in the town of Alacala de Henares, the birthplace of the Spanish master. He knew all about tilting at windmills. Whenever he walked along the path past the Clayton windmill on his way to the railway station at Hassocks he wondered if on occasion he was seen a
s a Don Quixote, with Dr Watson his Sancho Panza.
He loved these hump-backed Downs. He had done a little digging in some of the barrows scattered across them with a couple of archaeologists from the antiquities society based in Lewes. Funeral rites of various sorts had taken place here for millennia so why not public burnings now?
He wanted his breakfast. He missed Mrs Hudson and was bored with his daily repast of bread and honey, especially as butter was still unavailable. As Poiret had pointed out, the ersatz alternative was unappetising. But, as Mrs Hudson would have been quick to note: he could not afford butter even if there were any. He wondered how to get hold of some money and about the great wealth Poiret claimed Watson possessed.
There was a heavy knock on his front door. He glanced at the old grandfather clock. Early for visitors. He leaned his stick against the wall beside the door as he opened it. He reached for it as he saw, standing on his doorstep, three tall, broad-shouldered Indian soldiers, looking taller in their white turbans, thick black beards flowing down almost to their cummerbunds.
Each one came to attention and saluted and he withdrew his hand from his cane. He ducked under the door lintel and into the sunshine. The three men stepped back smartly to give him space. He noticed their boots were well-polished under their puttees.
“Sahib Sherlock Holmes, we seek your advice. We came once before but you were occupied. We are Sepoys Akbar, Dost and Singh.”
“Indeed.” He looked from one to the other. “Which one of you attempted to strangle my good friend Dr Watson?”
The men looked puzzled.
“None of us, sahib,’ Sepoy Akbar said.
Sherlock Holmes looked at his fierce face and those of his companions. The man to his left, Sepoy Singh, looked equally proud and wild. The man to his right, Sepoy Khan, lowered his eyes.
“If I’m to advise you, there’s to be no more of that.” The detective indicated chairs over by his well. “Let us be seated.”
The three Sepoys sat erect on their seats. Sherlock Holmes pointed at the battered tin cup dangling by a chain beside the well.
“Good water there if you want it. Help yourselves.”
The three men murmured thanks but none made a move for the cup.
“I never knew your grandfathers of the Sign of the Four but I knew of them.”
“It is the same with us.”
“And you have been at the Front since September 1914?”
The men nodded.
“Not a kind of warfare you are familiar with, I imagine.”
“It is not war,” said Khan. “It is the end of the world.”
“You must excuse Sepoy Khan,” Sepoy Singh said. “He has suffered much and now his courage is failing. He is like a man who, once burnt, is afraid of a glow-worm.”
“I will find courage when it is needed,” Khan protested. He turned to Sherlock Holmes. “We have rested once only – in early 1915, we were taken out of the line. But quickly we were put back to fight at Neuve Chapelle and the second battle of Ypres and, last September, the battle of Loos.”
“If machine-gun fire and high explosives do not get our brothers,” Sepoy Akbar said, ‘then the never-ending rain and the fearful cold gives them frostbite, trench foot and gangrene.”
“You have suffered I know. But what do you want with Dr Watson?”
“If you know who we are then you know,” Sepoy Singh said.
“You can have no grudge against Dr Watson.”
“He has the treasure that rightfully belongs to our families.”
Sherlock Holmes looked from one to the other of them.
“It is said that the Indian army is a mercenary force and that is why it will fight so many miles from home.”
“That is a lie!” Sepoy Akbar said. “Yes we enlisted to help our families – though eleven rupees a month is hardly the pay of a maharajah. But it is also our duty to bring honour to our castes by fighting bravely on the battlefield.”
“We are warriors,” Sepoy Singh said. “It is impossible that I will return alive to my family but I would not wish them to grieve for I will die arms in hand, in warrior’s clothes. This is the most happy death anyone can die. There is much talk of king and country. We do not fight for our country, India. We fight for honour and for the King-Emperor George V.”
Sherlock Holmes looked at Sepoy Khan.
“You are of the same mind?”
Khan shifted in his seat.
“The Hindu believes that death in battle in service of the King-Emperor will end the cycle of death and reincarnation – the soldier will go straight to Paradise. The Sikh looks for martyrdom on the field of battle for that is holy. The Muslim too believes that forty virgins await him in Paradise when he dies arms in hand.”
Sherlock Holmes nodded slowly.
“You all expect to die. What use is this treasure to you then?”
“For our families, of course,” Khan said defiantly and the detective saw that, ground down as he was, the brave Sepoy did indeed have the fighting spirit within him.
“I can see that your grandfathers had the best claim on this treasure – better even than Jonathan Small. But you must be aware that Jonathan Small threw it into a deep river and it was lost.”
“That is a story,” Akbar said. “A fabrication.”
“How can you know that?” Sherlock Holmes looked genuinely puzzled. “You live thousands of miles away -- how can you know of the life of Dr Watson or indeed myself?”
“It is true we live far away. True too that we are illiterate, as are most of our fellows from country villages. Scribes write for us and read out replies. They read other things too. We know of your adventures.”
Sherlock Holmes inclined his head.
“It is perhaps too late for us to learn to read but I have sent back instructions for my daughters to be taught,” Singh said. “I see the education of the women in this country and it impresses me.”
“Ah!” Akbar said, fierce again. “The women here are shameless – they mingle so freely with men.” He pointed at Khan. “His courage fails because he is in love with an Englishwoman. He is going to marry her.”
“Won’t that dismay your family?” Sherlock Holmes said.
Khan smiled an embarrassed smile.
“I will tell them I marry the woman only because the king has personally ordered me to do so.”
Holmes laughed; Khan and Singh joined in. Akbar remained stern.
“Gentlemen, you seem like fine fellows. I cannot really believe you mean Dr Watson harm.”
Their faces darkened.
“He has stolen from us,” Singh said. “He has betrayed his word.”
“How so?”
Khan said: “We think perhaps your friend has lied to you too.”
“About what?”
“About what really happened at the battle of Maiwand.”
Chapter Twenty
The Sign of the Three
“The battle of Maiwand? The Second Afghan War? What of it?”
“We are aware of his brief mention of it in The Study in Scarlet. How he was wounded and put on a pack horse by a man called Murray.”
“He has not long since given me a much fuller and clearer account of it,” Sherlock Holmes said.
“Did Murray still feature as his rescuer?” Khan asked.
“He still featured to a degree,” Sherlock Holmes said carefully.
“It is a lie,” Khan said.
“I repeat – what do you know of it?”
Khan looked at his companions.
“Our fathers were at the battle of Maiwand. One fighting for the British, two – my father and that of Akbar – against them. They were Muslims – as are we – and it was their duty to fight for their Muslim brethren, inspired by Malalai Anaa.”
“What is that?”
“It is the name of a celebrated woman. There is a famous Pashtun poem about her. The Afghans were fighting blade against bullet, flintlock against Gatling gun. As the Afghans faltered befo
re the British rifles she waved her veil above her head like a standard and declared: ‘Young love, if you do not fall in the battle of Maiwand, by God someone is saving you as a token of shame’. She was fearless. She declared: ‘With a drop of sweetheart’s blood, shed in defence of the Motherland, will I put a beauty spot on my forehead, such as would put to shame the rose in the garden.’”
“She sounds a remarkable woman,” Sherlock Holmes said.
“She turned the tide of the battle,” Khan said.
“And Dr Watson?”
“Our fathers found him after the battle hiding under a bed in an abandoned farmhouse. My father and Akbar’s, who had fought on the side of the Afghani, were for butchering him as they had butchered so many other infidels. The other persuaded them otherwise.”
“As a loyal subject of the crown?”
“I fear our fathers were mercenaries and had the same ruthlessness our grandfathers exhibited,” said Sepoy Singh.
“Your friend was in a dreadful condition,” said Sepoy Akbar.
“Wounded?” Sherlock Holmes said.
“That I do not know. But thirsty and starving, his nerves in shreds. He babbled he would do anything if they would spare his life. Our fathers calmed him, gave him water and food and led him safely back to the fort.”
“What did he promise them?” Sherlock Holmes said.
“They told him a story of a great treasure hidden somewhere in old Agra fort. They told him of the Sign of the Four. They told him of their fathers imprisoned with Jonathan Small in Black Water – you know it as the Andaman Islands –“
“A moment, gentlemen, please,” Sherlock Holmes cried, springing to his feet as best age would permit. “How could they possibly know such things? The story only became known once Dr Watson had published his account some years later.”
“We do not lie,” Akbar said, also rising. Singh put a hand on his arm and drew him down again.
“Our fathers were aware of the trial their fathers had undergone. Their fathers were conscious of the disgrace brought upon the families. The one way the still imprisoned members of the Sign of the Four could see to make things right was for their sons one day to get the treasure from its hiding place. They wrote of the treasure and its whereabouts, swearing the scribe to secrecy. Later they wrote explaining about Sholto and Captain Morstan and Jonathan Small.”
The Belgian and The Beekeeper Page 9