Death on a Pale Horse: Sherlock Holmes on Her Majesty's Secret Service

by Donald Thomas

  “That, I cannot yet tell you at this moment. However, the Reverend Samuel Dordona interests me. He knows far more than he has told us—of that you may be sure. I believe it is of some importance that we should probe his story at our earliest convenience. I cannot speak for you, of course, but two o’clock tomorrow afternoon would suit me admirably.”

  He refilled his pipe, struck a match, and crossed to the net-curtained window of our sitting-room. There he stood, staring down into the street, watching the passers-by in the silence of his thoughts for a full half hour.

  6

  Next afternoon, we played host to our clerical correspondent. Long before Mr. Dordona’s arrival, Sherlock Holmes had made good use of Palmer’s Index to the Times and annual volumes of the Army List. These held details of Captain Carey’s career and death. The manner of that death might seem tragic, but nothing so far suggested that it was sinister.

  Thanks to Holmes’s archives, we compiled a fuller account of Brenton Carey’s last days. Long after the battle at Maiwand, the Amir of Afghanistan continued to play us false. More British regiments were brought up to the North-West Frontier towns of the Punjab. According to the Army and Navy Gazette, the 98th Foot had been ordered to the forward reserves. Its troops began to move camp from Hyderabad to Quetta, the first stage of a journey to the Frontier and the Khyber Pass.

  Brenton Carey and a junior captain had been left in Hyderabad to supervise two fatigue details in dismantling an encampment of bell tents. It was a laborious but commonplace duty. As I knew from my own experience, a bell tent usually provides sleeping quarters for one officer or for two or three other ranks. Officers’ tents have a flooring which consists of two wooden semi-circles jointed together.

  The London press had been full of the military inquest on Brenton Carey, held at Hyderabad Camp in the week following his death. According to the evidence, the jointed wooden flooring of one of the tents had collapsed as the fatigue party was hauling it aboard a waiting wagon. It had not been adequately secured beforehand. It was also said that one of the two men lifting it had stumbled on slippery ground. A pair of dray horses was standing between the shafts.

  From that point, there was some confusion in the evidence. The two horses were startled by the crash and by the sudden vibration as the wooden semi-circles fell against the wagon. They backed and kicked out in brute panic. No one saw precisely what followed because Captain Carey was standing alone on the far side of the vehicle. Somehow, he was caught up in this sudden movement of the beasts and the jolting of the vehicle. He lost his footing and was trampled before he could roll clear. Having some acquaintance with Army transport in Afghanistan, I could see all too easily how such a tragedy might occur.

  It is a terrible fate to go under horses’ hooves. A cavalry mount is trained so that it will not trample a fallen rider, but these were beasts of burden. Worst of all, from the medical view, Carey was dreadfully injured by blows in the abdomen from their hooves. Unlike a broken arm or leg, abdominal or intestinal injuries are exceedingly difficult to treat. As a rule, one can only hope the intestine is not ruptured and will repair itself.

  According to the inquest reports, Captain Carey lay senseless from the blows. He regained consciousness after a stretcher-party had carried him back to his bungalow in the camp lines. There was never any great hope for him. Following alternate periods of lucidity and semi-consciousness, he died late on the following day. His wife, Annie, and the regimental surgeon were by his side much of the time. For all his adventures and notoriety, the poor fellow was still only thirty-six years old.

  It had been a cruel accident. Yet, through carelessness or bad luck, such things happen all too often in these fatigue duties. Indeed, any mishap in handling a team of wagon horses is an invitation to injury. But I still could not see why the Army and Navy Gazette should think this accident was mysterious. Its causes seemed all too obvious: inadequate packing and the ill-chance of a man slipping on wet ground. That was as far as we had got by two o’clock on the afternoon of the 27th of March. As I was standing with Holmes at our sitting-room window, he said casually: “Tell me, Watson, would you not say that Mr. Dordona looks the very pattern of an impoverished evangelical gentleman?”

  He was not looking down at the street below us, where a cab would usually pull in, but northwards to the trees of the Regent’s Park. A tall, plainly dressed man in a black coat and hat was walking briskly away from a hansom that had drawn up fifty or sixty yards distant. He looked upright but certainly impoverished. His black umbrella, which he used as a walking-stick, was not neatly rolled but untidily open. It flapped at every step. Yet he was taller and more confident than I had imagined. But I think I had expected the stage caricature of an unmarried, unkempt, unworldly clergyman, probably of a humble denomination whose superintendents could afford to pay him only a pittance.

  The cabbie, who ought by now to have whipped up his horse and driven off to collect another fare, drew a clay pipe from his overcoat pocket and lodged it between his lips. He pulled a blanket over his knees in the cool March day, folded his arms, and allowed his chin to repose on the breast of his brown overcoat. He was preparing for a long and patient wait.

  “If the gentleman in black is our client,” said Holmes gently, “I believe he is here on a very anxious mission. He seems in fear of some kind. He can hardly be afraid of us or he would not have come. Who, then?”

  I was still watching the progress of this down-at-heel cleric.

  “He gives no sign of anxiety, let alone fear.”

  “You think not? His clothes mark him out as a worthy but impecunious saver of souls. Interesting, then, that he has indulged in the luxury of paying a trusted cabman to wait an hour or more until his business is done. You have known what it is to be on half-pay, Watson. Carlyle Mansions is the address our client gives us. One among many mansion blocks of apartments in the Victoria district. As you also know full well, a twopenny bus from Victoria to Camden Town passes down this street every twenty minutes or so. In our client’s situation, would you not have taken the bus and saved your money?”

  “He might have come from somewhere else that required a cab.”

  Holmes smiled, and I guessed that I had stepped into a trap.

  “So he might, doctor. But he would surely pay off the cab and hire another when he leaves us. There is a rank five minutes away at the Regent’s Park, another outside the Metropolitan Railway station. Much cheaper, for a man with little more than the clothes he stands up in.”

  “Then perhaps he does not intend a long visit.”

  “No, old fellow, that will not do. His letter makes plain that he has a tale to tell. But he needs the same cab and a driver to take him home. Why? Because he does not know who the driver of the next cab may be. In his present plight, whatever that is, he wonders who may be lying in wait for him. Our man has also taken care to be set down at a distance. It gives him a better chance to detect if he is being followed. Now, who does he suppose will follow a loyal but dull minister of religion—and why?”

  The bell of the street door ended this speculation. During a customary pause, Mrs. Hudson’s maid took the arrival’s dilapidated hat and coat. It was the housekeeper herself who tapped at our door.

  “The Reverend Mr. Dordona, sir, to see Dr. Watson.”

  This was the first visitor who had come to consult me rather than Holmes. I shook his bony hand, introduced him to my colleague, and motioned him to a chair. I needed no convincing that Samuel Dordona was all he claimed to be. The worthiness of the Evangelical Overseas Medical Mission was, as they say, written all over him.

  Seen face to face, he was more than average height. A little more stooped than I had first thought, but he held himself well. His narrow, lean, perpendicular frame put me in mind of a grandfather clock case. In appearance, he bore the sallow tan of a fair skin that has passed ten years or more in the tropics. His dark, threadbare suit was brushed and neatly darned. The black hair was punctiliously plastered at the
sides into two stiff, obstinate-looking curls, by the aid of a little macassar oil. Above his forehead, it formed what is called by hair-stylists a “feather” but is more apt to look like a ridge-tile. The pale face, shaved clean of whiskers, made the dark hair-line on his upper lip a distinguishing mark.

  Natural caution gave his conversation a sharp and abrupt turn. Samuel Dordona did not waste his words. Once installed in an easy-chair, he did not lounge, as Sherlock Holmes was in the habit of doing. He sat forward, erect and solemn and as steady on the edge of his seat as if he had been nailed to it. There was a businesslike air. He was ready now, and impatient for conversation.

  We exchanged a few preliminaries. He had been eleven years in India, for the most part near Hyderabad. He was not a medical man, but he repeated that he had enrolled at the London Mission School to study for their assistant’s medical diploma in “First Aid” during his furlough in England. As for his evangelism, his work had been among common soldiers with an enthusiastic cast of faith, and very often among the less fortunate in the Provost Marshal’s cells.

  It did not surprise me that, in the relatively small English population of Hyderabad, Mr. Dordona should have encountered Captain Carey. A few minutes that morning with Crockford’s Clerical Directory informed us that the captain’s late father had been a minister of the Church of England with a taste for evangelism. The parents were determined that only a strong Old Testament name would do for their son. Young Jahleel was destined for a childhood of moral discipline and the career of a Christian soldier.

  During Mr. Dordona’s account, Holmes sat with brows drawn down as if not a word must be missed. When there was a pause, he looked up.

  “Very good, Mr. Dordona. But I still do not understand what you expect of my colleague Dr. Watson—or of me—that you could not get elsewhere. Why would Scotland Yard not believe a man of your openness and honesty? Do they think you have come to England to kill somebody?”

  The movement of Holmes’s mouth was both humorous and scornful. I could not tell whether Holmes intended a joke in poor taste or had aimed one of those terrifyingly accurate insights by which he penetrated to the inner mind and secret thoughts of his witness. As they stared at each other, neither he nor Mr. Dordona batted an eyelid. It was a joke, surely.

  Our visitor wore an uncomfortably wide white collar, so starched and shiny that it looked like gloss-painted enamel. He eased his chin forward over this rather aggressively, like a man determined not to be put off.

  “Mr. Holmes, I want nothing for myself. I bear a message from the late Captain Brenton Carey to anyone who will listen. Scotland Yard would not do so; the War Office will certainly not.”

  “Dr. Watson and I will, however?”

  “You shall judge, sir. I was with Captain Carey when he died. On the previous Sunday, I had come from Lahore to address a prayer-meeting in the garrison chapel at Hyderabad. These were soldiers about to leave for Quetta and the battlefield. I had not yet returned to my duties in Lahore.”

  Samuel Dordona paused just long enough to let Holmes understand that he would not be pushed, as they say. When he told his story, it was as if he had rehearsed it in his mind many times on the voyage home, fearful of forgetting any detail.

  “Captain Carey and I had known one another for some time. I had a high regard for him. On the Tuesday afternoon, I received a note from his wife asking me to come at once to the bungalow, which they occupied in the camp. You will know from the press that his fatigue party had been striking bell tents vacated by ‘B’ Company the day before.”

  “We have read the press reports of the inquest.”

  “It was said in evidence that as the floor of a bell-tent was being lifted, one man in the fatigue party lost his grip because his foot slipped on the muddy ground. Did they have that detail in the gazette?”

  “Not that it was muddy, I think.”

  “I walked on the same ground the next evening. It was bone-dry, sir. We had had no rain for more than a month by then. There was no mud. Nothing that would cause a man to slip that evening or the previous day.”

  “Rain, Mr. Dordona, is not the earth’s sole lubricant. But pray continue.”

  I intervened on my client’s behalf.

  “You know a good deal about soldiering in that area,” I said to Mr. Dordona. “Had you ever known such an accident happen before?”

  He looked at me and shook his head. “Never before, sir. However, when working with a heavy wagon-team, the first rule, of course, is that nothing must startle them.”

  “But you were not an eye-witness?” Holmes suggested. “That is to say, you were not at hand when Captain Carey fell into their path?”

  “Mr. Holmes, I spoke to two men who had been witnesses. They could only tell me what you already know. By the time I arrived at the bungalow, the regimental surgeon had attended my friend. Even as a medical man, he could only give me his best conjecture. Everything depended on the damage to the intestines. He hoped and believed that there was no rupture.”

  “If it is not too much trouble,” said Holmes casually, “would you please write down the surgeon’s name? Indeed, would you write down all the witnesses? I think we had better have a list of the dramatis personae.”

  I was alarmed at my friend’s tone, which seemed part scepticism and part downright churlishness.

  “Their names? I do not think …” Our visitor was plainly upset at this novel suggestion that he should be the one to take a copy of the evidence he was giving.

  “If you please!” Holmes insisted, as if about to sigh with weariness.

  “I will do it,” I said, taking out pencil and notebook and wondering what the devil my colleague was up to. “Leave Mr. Dordona to tell his story.”

  Samuel Dordona followed my pencil.

  “The surgeon was Major Callaghan. Mrs. Carey you already know.”

  “The surgeon remained with Captain Carey?” I asked.

  “At first, Major Callaghan remained, but he had other duties. Annie Carey or I watched by her husband that night. The captain slipped in and out of consciousness; but when he was awake, his words were never rambling. It was only the inquest which suggested they were—and that was wrong. Once he had woken, he had complete and lucid command of his faculties. He knew what he was saying as clearly as you and I do at this moment.”

  There was a silence and then Holmes spoke, still rather coldly:

  “You, sir, are the minister of an overseas medical mission. You do not yet claim, I take it, to be a medical man? Or do you?”

  I flinched again at his tone. Mr. Dordona sat like stone on the edge of his chair, upright in threadbare clerical suit, hands clasped, dark eyes intently on Holmes, black hair absurdly sculpted in its ridge-tile peak.

  “Sir, I have used my furlough to study for the First Aid Diploma. I hope to be of some extra use to my people when I return to India. That is all.”

  “You were not called by the court of inquiry into the accident?” I asked.

  Mr. Dordona glanced at each of us in turn, as if wondering whom to trust.

  “That court of inquiry was held quite some time after the inquest. I was on the high seas by then, returning to England. I should not have been called anyway. I had no conclusive evidence to offer. I was not, as you say, an eye-witness. What Captain Carey said to me during that last night could not be corroborated and was perhaps best not repeated in public just then. Unfortunately, the regimental surgeon had already assured the inquest that the injured man was never more than semiconscious after the accident. In other words, rambling. That word again! I carried no credit against that, gentlemen, and so I have kept my evidence for you.”

  “Tell us about the prognosis after the accident,” I asked him. “Do you think Captain Carey knew that he was going to die—or was likely to die? As a matter of law, that might make a real difference to the validity of his uncorroborated words as evidence.”

  “Not at first, I think. To begin with, Major Callaghan thought he would pu
ll through and indeed said so. He said that as long as the intestine was not ruptured, there was hope. He instructed the orderly to use hot fomentations to relieve the abdominal pain. But nothing more.”

  “As I should have done,” I said approvingly.

  “His wife, Annie, however, was very distressed by his condition. Poor soul, she asked if a mild dose of laudanum could be given to ease the unhappy man’s ordeal. The surgeon advised against laudanum. It would relieve the pain, he told her, but it would also mask any further symptoms.”

  “That was correct again,” I said, “so long as there was still hope for him.”

  “The rest of that first day, it still seemed there was no rupture. The doctor’s exact words were that it would be looking on the black side to think there was such serious damage. That night we were advised to keep applying hot fomentations and to administer sips of hot water. But poor Carey looked dreadful by this time, eyes sunk and cheeks drawn in. I believe there was what is known as the facies Hippocratica, so the inquest called it, a sure sign of the worst. I saw that for myself. Next morning, his condition had not improved. However, they administered turpentine internally.”

  I shook my head. “That would do no good. It would be too late. Did his temperature sink?”

  Samuel Dordona nodded. “It continued to sink after that. Of course, the diagnosis now changed. His intestine had been ruptured after all. The surgeon acknowledged that it was peritonitis, for which nothing could be done. He explained to me in confidence that in an hour or two Captain Carey would lose consciousness and by that evening he would probably be dead. So it was.”

  There was a moment of silence before Holmes inquired more gently, “And in the meantime you had become his confessor?”

  “I simply happened to be with him for the greater part of the night, Mr. Holmes. Poor Brenton Carey would have talked to anyone. His wife, Annie, was exhausted by then, and I persuaded her to go and get some sleep.”