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

by Donald Thomas

  I watched Holmes as he studied the strength of the porter’s resolute, prognathous jaw, the high-bridged nose, and the cropped greying hair. His firm voice mingled the accents of the little streets in Lambeth or Clapham with an occasional archaic pronunciation, no doubt imitated from the officer class of his naval service.

  “I understand your version of events, Mr. Gibbons,” Holmes interposed quietly. “But please let us hear a little more about the rooms in this building. Have you seen inside the top-floor suite in the past few days?”

  “And don’t tell us you haven’t when you have!” was Lestrade’s ill-judged interjection.

  Gibbons turned to Holmes, ignoring the inspector.

  “I have not, sir. Nor has Mrs. Standish, the housekeeper. No key has been requested for those rooms. No services required.”

  “Is that not unusual?” I asked.

  “No, sir. Not in this case, sir. The suite of rooms up the top was booked for a week by a foreign gentleman, Mr. Ramon. Spain was where he was coming from, I recall, so of course I never actually met him. Before he could get here and make himself known, there came another message from Spain saying that the rooms would not be wanted after all. Mr. Ramon was no longer coming over here. Gentleman taken poorly, I believe.”

  “Would the key never have been in his hands?” Lestrade asked sharply.

  Albert Gibbons shook his large, impressive head.

  “Hardly, sir. Not if he hadn’t come here. Because we never let it out of our hands before that. But then a criminal wouldn’t need the key himself, would he? His contact man—or contact woman—need only rent the apartment independently for a week or two beforehand. It might be the week before or the year before, come to that. With the key in their possession, they might take an impression of it in cobbler’s wax while it’s upstairs and then have a copy cut. From that moment on, never mind who had rented the premises, the criminals might come and go as they pleased. Being a police officer, sir, of course you’d know all that, wouldn’t you?”

  Lestrade gave him something uncomfortably close to a sneer.

  “For a so-called innocent man, mister, you have a remarkable acquaintance with false keys and forced entrances. A bit too well informed, some might think!”

  Albert Gibbons pulled a melancholy face at him and shook his head sadly. “And what sort of a Provost Sergeant should I have made, sir, in twenty years of service at Portsmouth Dockyard, supposing I had no knowledge of criminals and their ways? I can save you the trouble of checking my character, Mr. Lestrade, for you will surely look up my record when you get back to Whitehall. Ask the Admiralty. They’ll tell you. Twenty years, sir, helping to preserve law and order in Her Majesty’s fleet. And when it comes to preserving the peace, I think you’ll find we can hold our own, even with Scotland Yard.”

  Holmes sat back in his chair and chuckled.

  “Well said, my good Gibbons! We shall make a consulting detective of you yet! What do you say now, Lestrade?”

  The inspector said nothing, but the affability that Gibbons had shown subsided a little and he shook his head.

  “No sir, not me, sir,” he said quietly. “Consulting and detecting wouldn’t do at all, not if I was expected to hold a candle to you, Mr. Holmes, and what I’ve heard of you. But as for this week, no one’s come to that room, no one’s gone from it, no one’s there now. Your plain-clothes man saw that for himself.”

  It was soon evident even to Lestrade that he was wasting his time. By any standard of judgment, Albert Gibbons was honest and reliable. Better still, he was capable and efficient. He was disturbed at present only by the death that had occurred directly opposite in Carlyle Mansions. No one could appear more anxious to bring the criminal to justice. Yet he took this tragedy philosophically, like the news of a brave commander fallen in battle.

  Lestrade’s final response was to let him know that he was still under investigation. Our Scotland Yard man scowled as he got to his feet. That scowl, like his words, was directed at the former sergeant of Marines.

  “You will say nothing of this to anyone, Gibbons. No chattering, no loose talk in taverns or saloon bars. You will not leave your present address nor your present employment without notifying us. That is an order, not a request. We have not finished with you by a long chalk, my man. I shall certainly want to speak to you again.”

  Gibbons turned upon him that same mournful look of watery blue eyes and fine mutton-chop whiskers.

  “Thank you, Mr. Lestrade. As to loose talk in taverns and bars, it may assist you to know that I have no use for strong drink. I was born a Wesleyan Methodist and hope to die as one. You will find me in taverns and saloon bars only in the search for lost souls. If one day I find you there, sir, I shall hold out my hand to you.”

  We now went through a foolish charade in which the three of us got up and left the sergeant at his desk in the lobby of Landor Mansions. Inspector Lestrade turned towards Victoria Street and the Criminal Investigation Division of Scotland Yard. As soon as he was out of sight, Holmes swung round towards the apartment block we had just left.

  “Quickly, Watson, before our only dependable witness disappears! Sergeant Gibbons is a man to be trusted, you may depend upon that. We must speak to him now without our friend Lestrade in attendance.”

  Presently we were back in the room behind the commissionaire’s desk, occupying the same chairs from which we had risen a few minutes earlier.

  “I promise you that you have nothing whatever to fear from us,” Sherlock Holmes said reassuringly to Albert Gibbons. “The record of your military service speaks for itself.”

  Despite this assurance, the sergeant was far more nervous now than he had ever been under Lestrade’s questioning.

  “Sir?”

  “Do you know in which room of Carlyle Mansions the body of Captain Sellon was found?”

  “Yes, sir, the sitting-room of number 49. Slumped over the desk. Sergeant Haskins told me that much this morning. Very sorry I was to hear about it, sir.”

  There was a long pause before Holmes added,

  “You are familiar with that room.”

  “Sir?”

  “My words were a statement to you, Gibbons, not a question. At what time was it that you entered apartment 49 of the opposite block, perhaps using a copy of the key, possibly duplicated in the manner you described to Inspector Lestrade just now? Was it before the shooting this morning? or was the captain already lying dead by the time that you made your intrusion?”

  “Sir? Who says I was ever in any room over there—or in that building at all?”

  “I do,” said Holmes firmly. “Captain Sellon was a serving officer of the Special Investigation Branch, Provost Marshal’s Corps. As I am sure you know. You, unless I am much mistaken, were in his confidence. Mr. Dordona is in ours. Indeed, he is our client. We are, if you will excuse the cliché, all in this together. So we will now have the truth, if you please. You have my word again that whatever truth you tell me will not hurt you, but that a falsehood will destroy you.”

  Sergeant Gibbons looked from one to other of us, but Sherlock Holmes allowed him no respite.

  “Please remember that Inspector Lestrade is looking for a neck to fit a noose. Very well. Did you enter that room before Captain Joshua Sellon was killed—before he arrived there, indeed? Or was he already lying dead when you let yourself in this morning with a key that had been copied for that purpose?”

  “I was.…”

  “One moment, if you please. You have told us, just now in the presence of Mr. Lestrade, that you are familiar with the methods used to copy such a key. But you did not copy a key to that room, did you, because you had already been given one? Almost certainly by Captain Sellon. Is that not so? Capital. Tell me whether you were in time to exchange any words with Captain Sellon before he was shot dead.”

  This questioning about Sellon and the key was one of those occasions when my heart missed a beat because I could not see how Holmes could know so much. From time to time
in such exchanges he would take what seemed to be a gambler’s chance with shots at random. But if luck was on his side, it was because during every phrase he uttered, he watched his victim’s response like a hawk or a cobra. Then he would add one thrust to another as he saw his adversary’s self-assurance falter.

  Albert Gibbons said, “You are Mr. Sherlock Holmes, sir. I know that.”

  “Of course you do. Kindly answer the questions.”

  “And then you, sir, are Dr. John Watson?”

  “Indeed. You and I met some months ago, when you brought my colleague a note from Inspector Gregson.”

  Instead of replying to any of the questions, Sergeant Gibbons got up and went to a small bureau in his commissionaire’s office. He opened the lid and lowered it on to its supports. His hand slid into an empty cubby-hole that might have held papers or envelopes. There was a slight jerk as a spring gave way. Then he drew his hand back and moved out a section of hollow wood which had seemed to be part of the bureau’s frame. It now appeared as a deep box-like drawer, a concealed compartment. From within it he drew a plain package.

  When this brown-paper bundle was unwrapped, it revealed two items. The first was a strip of brown polished leather which gave off an aura of stables and wax polish. The second was a scarlet medal-ribbon. The scarlet of the ribbon was defaced at one end by a patch of rusted liquid. A medical man would know at a glance that the stain could only be blood. What was the connection between the two?

  “This evidence was kept by Captain Sellon, never by anyone else,” he said quietly. “Things hadn’t gone well across the road. That was when the Reverend Mr. Dordona—if we may call him so—came and persuaded the captain to let you see these items. Mr. Sellon didn’t agree at first, only in the end. He can’t show it to you now, poor gentleman, so I shall do it for him.”

  Holmes leant forward a little, hands on knees. “Major Putney-Wilson is known to you. Let the name go no further.”

  Sergeant Gibbons drew a long breath.

  “I supposed you’d probably twig that, Mr. Holmes. Is there anything you don’t know?”

  “Very little.”

  “What’s to be done with these items now?, I ask myself. This is the evidence of murder, gentlemen. Assassination, if you prefer.”

  At a casual glance, the length of polished leather was a harness strap, a couple of inches wide. It was ordinary enough, except that at one end it seemed to have been torn or unstitched. I am no connoisseur of “horse furniture,” but even to me it was plain that it resembled part of an officer’s pistol holster, worn forward of the saddle. Yet this one was remarkable for two things.

  First was the manner in which the end of the saddle-strap had been unstitched or torn away. A blade of some kind had been used and had marked the polished leather with a single deep cut. The stitching was not simply torn apart, but had been partially and skilfully cut through. The aim of these mutilations, if I may call them so, was that when the harness took the rider’s weight, as he mounted his horse, the holster-strap would part company with the saddle girth, throwing him back on to the ground.

  The second curiosity was less sinister but more striking. Embossed in gold upon the leather of the holster-strap were a Maltese cross and a crown. In other words, it bore the emblems of the exiled Emperor of France and his family.

  In my mind, I heard again those conversations at the time of the death of the young Louis Napoleon, the Prince Imperial. As the tribesmen appeared from the bush, his horse Percy had bolted at the sound of rifle shots, as did most of the other mounts. He had run after the animal, clinging desperately to the harness and the stirrup leather. According to one account, he made repeated attempts to vault into the saddle as the horse galloped faster. Then the girth of the harness gave way and he was thrown down at the feet of his killers.

  In another report, he had clung to the near-side holster and the stirrup until the weight of his swaying body caused the stitching between them to tear apart. Or did the leather simply tear in his hands? At that moment, he was hidden from Captain Carey and the others by intervening bushes and one of the native huts. No one saw exactly what had happened. In any case, whatever the explanation, the end was the same. What did the details matter?

  Holmes spoke quietly to Sergeant Gibbons as these thoughts passed through my mind.

  “The Maltese cross represents the royal house of France, Mr. Gibbons. As evidence, the condition of the holster strap can speak only of the crime of sabotage. The Prince mounted safely enough that morning when they left camp. When can the damage have been done except while Captain Carey’s patrol rested after lunch, out of sight of their tethered horses? One man could have done it easily enough. Unfortunately, we have only this piece of the harness. Who will ever know what harm was done to the rest to make the tragedy certain?”

  “And the red ribbon?” I asked.

  “That, my dear Watson, is the medal ribbon of a crimson sash. Nowadays I believe the sash itself is worn over the right shoulder. Customs have varied. At all events, it is the cordon of the Grand Cross of the Légion d’Honneur. It is, perhaps, the most celebrated chivalric order in the modern world, instituted by the Prince Imperial’s immortal great-uncle in 1802. The missing medal belonging to this ribbon has a silver star of five double points surrounding the head of the first Emperor Napoleon. In this case, its silver star now lies somewhere in the African dust.”

  There was a silence in the cubby-hole office. Then Sherlock Holmes resumed.

  “It was no ordinary death. To all his supporters, perhaps to the majority of the French people by now, this young man was Emperor of France, Louis Napoleon, and therefore Grand Master of the Order. As a mere soldier, however, it seems that the poor fellow was as good as dead the moment he rode out on his last morning.”

  I shook my head. “Cutting the harness could not ensure that the prince would fall to his death. No murderer would trust to such a chance device as that. It might have held for a few seconds longer.”

  To my surprise, it was Albert Gibbons who replied. The handsomely whiskered face still regarded me sadly, as if I might have been a persistent member of the defaulters’ squad on a barrack square.

  “No one trusted to that, sir. You will observe that several of the tribesmen carried rifles captured at Isandhlwana. The aim mattered nothing. The shooting was necessary only to bring about the disorder which followed and to scatter the horses.”

  For me, this was far too simple an explanation. “If the prince mounted safely, as almost all the others did, what chance had these untrained tribesmen of bringing him down?”

  The sad eyes now regarded me with a little more sympathy for my brave effort.

  “You may be sure, sir, if shots proved necessary to kill him in the saddle, they would easily be fired by a concealed marksman who could bring a rider down with a single bullet at twice that range. A hunter. The credit for the killing would still go to the tribes. The identity of the actual assassin would be perfectly covered by the presence of these tribesmen firing in all directions. As it happened, not a single bullet from a marksman was needed. The strap broke.”

  My mind went back to our visitor on the previous afternoon. “A marksman? Concealed with his weapon on a hill-top overlooking the skirmish?”

  So much for the stories of a lone horseman in his saddle, on the ridge above the kraal. Several further pieces of the puzzle fell into their proper places.

  Albert Gibbons nodded. “If the prince was brought down from his saddle by a bullet, sir, it would surely be called a lucky shot by one of the tribesmen. For who else was there to shoot him but the tribes, according to the courtroom evidence? They had thought of everything.”

  I was about to ask who “they” might have been, but Holmes answered him first.

  “Someone had thought of it, Mr. Gibbons. Someone who could shoot the heart out of the ace of spades with five successive shots at forty paces. But, as it happens, the very thing they planned for took place. The leather stitching broke and
the hero fell among his assailants.”

  I looked at the broken strap and the dried blood on the scarlet ribbon of the Légion d’Honneur. “But surely the conspirators would destroy the evidence of their crime, rather than preserve it?”

  Holmes shook his head.

  “I think not, Watson. Not these conspirators. These are hunters of big game. Such items are hunters’ trophies. Some time ago you were kind enough to entertain me with the story of a subaltern’s court-martial. That tale had been told to you by a pair of jackanapes on a train from Bombay to Lahore. I recall your account of the trial of a certain captain—the self-styled Colonel Rawdon Moran. After he had been branded with the Mark of the Beast on the orders of a man whose wife he had destroyed, Moran’s last words to his former comrades were, ‘I’ll be revenged upon the whole pack of you.’ Correct me if I have got that wrong.”

  “You are entirely correct, Holmes, as the stories of revenge have been told. First at Isandhlwana; second at the death of the Prince Imperial; third in the Transvaal and the murder of Andreis Reuter.”

  My friend gave a humourless chuckle.

  “Then let us take the scoundrel at his word. However, those who truly relish revenge cannot enjoy its delicacy unless the world knows that they have taken it. The most evil vengeance is often delayed for that reason. As the Italian proverb has it, revenge is a dish which persons of refinement prefer to taste cold. The most exquisite satisfaction of cruelty lies in knowing that those who suffer should know exactly why they are made to suffer—and by whom. They should also know that they are helpless to remedy their agonies of mind—and that those agonies will taunt them and plague them for the rest of their lives. Those who injure them must possess their minds for ever. You understand? Such triumphs are conclusive to the satisfaction of the psychopathic mind. Such are the murderers who taunt the police to ‘catch me if you can.’ You will find them in every nation and in each layer of civilisation.”