Death on a Pale Horse

3





The Diogenes Club is a secret society. Yet it stands at the heart of the British Empire. Its windows look out on to the fashionable pillared buildings, the gentlemen’s clubs, and the carriages of Pall Mall. But you would more easily penetrate the secret rituals of the remotest tribes than the proceedings of its members. It is scarcely two minutes’ walk from the dark-brick façade of St. James’s Palace, the gilded clock, and the scarlet sentries. Yet the first rule of the Diogenes is that no member shall discuss its business with an outsider nor reveal its precise location. I shall say only that it stands somewhere between the intellectual elegance of the Athenaeum and the literary journalism of the Reform Club.

Mycroft Holmes was one of the six founder-members of this eccentric society. It had been whimsically named after that stoical philosopher of the ancient world who lived and died in a tub. Like him, the club professed an indifference to humankind and all its follies. When Alexander the Great came to ask Diogenes what favour he might bestow upon him, the ancient sage merely requested the Conqueror of the World to stand aside a little so that he no longer blocked the warmth of the sunlight. Holmes chuckled as he recalled this tale from Plutarch. He assured me that his elder brother would probably have made much the same reply.

As for Mycroft Holmes, I have no doubt that he will outlive us all, serving his Sovereign to the end of his days. As Her Majesty’s Permanent Secretary for Inter-Departmental Affairs, he regulates the formalities of the Prime Minister’s cabinet. He maintains the machinery of state in Whitehall and Westminster. From day to day, he advises the leaders of our government on every topic from Antarctica to the Zambesi. Indeed, as his younger brother Sherlock once remarked, he not only advises the British government, in many a crisis “he is the British government.” In other words, governments may come and go, but Sir Mycroft goes on for ever.

Within his weighty intelligence, the policies of cabinets and the decisions of great leaders are filed and memorised. Cornered once by departmental inquisitors who required to inspect and approve the records and methods of his office, Mycroft replied innocently:

“Gentlemen, I will be frank with you: I do not find it necessary to keep records, for I have an exceptionally retentive memory. At this moment, your names, your faces, and your presumptuous intrusion upon my valuable time have been noted there. That note shall be at the disposal of the Prime Minister and Her Majesty’s private advisers in deciding upon your future careers—in the event that you should still have future careers. To them alone I am answerable. Good morning to you, gentlemen.”

Behind Mr. Gladstone, or the Earl of Beaconsfield, or Lord Salisbury stands this majestic eminence grise. Sir William Mycroft Holmes, Knight of the Order of the British Empire, is there as surely and securely as Cardinal Richelieu or Father Joseph were behind King Louis XIII of France two centuries earlier. Yet you would search the newspapers of the day or the volumes of Who’s Who? in vain for a single mention of my friend’s elder brother. When his time comes, an unobtrusive obituary in The Times will remember him only as a fugitive and wayward intellect. The eulogist will tell us merely that he enriched the study of ancient Greek particles by his note on “The resolution of Enclytic δε” in the Classical Quarterly and revolutionised Algebraic Philosophy by six pages on “The Methodology of Pascal’s Wager” in the Journal of Higher Mathematics. Not a word will hint at the secrecy and power which he commanded at the heart of government.

Despite the value of his time, Mycroft knew that his younger brother would not have telegraphed him that morning without good reason. Within an hour, a reply came to Baker Street. Sherlock Holmes tore open the flimsy blue envelope, read the single line of the message, and looked up.

“Lunch at the Diogenes. One-fifteen precisely. In that case, Watson, it will be a private room. Under the second rule of the club, all conversation is forbidden in the public rooms. No one, not even a member, is permitted to address another except by invitation. You had better remember that.”

It was a curious prospect. As our cab carried us and the leather hatbox towards Westminster, I wondered why men who preferred to avoid contact with the rest of the human race should ever have formed a club. Its inspiration had been the late Sir Cloudsley Clutterbuck, wealthy master of Cloudsley Hall, set in rolling fields between Oxford and Blenheim. He so arranged his life that he rarely saw, let alone spoke to, his footmen or the workers on his estate. Food was delivered to him from the kitchens by a revolving compartment in his dining-room wall. An ingenious system of bells indicated to the servants his precise wants, reducing the need for spoken commands.

The grounds of his park had been surrounded by a wall, six feet high. Village rumours spoke of secret orgies or the rituals of the black mass. But Sir Cloudesley merely wanted walls high enough to keep out huntsmen and riders, for fear that they might kill the wild animals on his estate. These were the only creatures to whom he talked freely and affectionately. In his will, he stipulated that he was to be buried in the grandeur of the family vault, not in a gold-handled coffin but in a plain “Diogenes tub.”

Sir Cloudesley’s Pall Mall club-house was a Grecian-style creation of the 1830s with half a dozen broad steps leading up to plain glass doors. In the high marble-tiled vestibule, Sherlock Holmes carried on a whispered exchange with the attendant porter, to whom he now entrusted the ancient brown leather hatbox, which had accompanied us on our cab ride from Baker Street.

We were led quietly up a further flight beneath a fine glass dome. To one side at the top I glimpsed the dining-room, its dark-red walls lined by oil portraits, no doubt commemorating famous men of silence. The seating consisted of individual tables each with a single chair whose back was to the wall. To avoid so much as an uninvited glance from other diners, every one of these chairs was sheltered within a hood, as though two porters might lift the occupant on poles and carry him off. Every table was also equipped with a reading-stand at its edge, so that throughout the meal the occupant might look across his plate and enjoy in peace the volume or newspaper of his choice. I noticed that the dining-room steward and his assistants glided soundlessly across the marble floor in ornamental felt slippers.

At the end of a first-floor corridor Mycroft Holmes sat alone in a traditional private room. Lunch was laid for three and sunlit windows opened on to the expanse of Horse Guards Parade. Mycroft’s bulk was a challenge no tailor had come to terms with. The crumpled grey flannel of his suit encased him like a bag. Yet the massive head spoke of what Sherlock Holmes described as “Mathematics at Trinity, Cambridge; Classics at Balliol, Oxford; a laudatory first-class degree in both. Dining rights at All Souls. There’s no knowledge but he knows it.”

To all this was added the power of a supreme mandarin with a key to every government secret worth knowing. It was something of an anti-climax when he greeted us with his fork already in the air.

“I trust you will excuse me, dear Brother. Time presses for an afternoon conference with the Attorney-General on the Government of India Bill. I have chosen the stuffed vine-leaves and ordered them on your behalf. Dig in as soon as they come. In what way, gentlemen, did you suppose that I might be of some service to you?”

What an extraordinary pair the two of them were! Had I a brother—alas, I no longer had—surely I would have passed the time of day with him when meeting after several years apart? There was no family greeting whatever here. Mycroft paused just long enough to slide one hand under the table and press a discreet electric bell. In answer to his brother’s inquiry, Sherlock Holmes leant forward and spoke confidentially.

“You might care to tell us something of Captain Joshua Sellon, dear Brother. That would be service enough.”

Mycroft cut vigorously at the tight green roll of a rice-filled leaf.

“Ah, yes. I rather supposed he might be the subject of your visit. A bad business. Josh Sellon, eh? You have discovered, I am sure, that he was a Provost Marshal’s man? He was first employed between our embassies as Queen’s Messenger. As an official courier, he escorted the diplomatic bag between Whitehall and the four corners of the earth. More recently, he coordinated the Special Investigation Branch of the Provost’s Corps in Delhi. What did you think he was?”

“Precisely that,” said Sherlock Holmes sharply, “and please do not tell us that Albert Gibbons was nothing more than a Sergeant of Marines!”

Mycroft shook his head, cleared his mouth, and murmured: “Several years ago, the Provost began to recruit a military police. Non-commissioned officers who had served their time and had then enlisted in police forces. Some rejoined the colours. Most became uniformed military police officers in garrison towns or Admiralty dockyards. A few were chosen as special-investigation men in civilian clothes. Gibbons was one, not a high-flyer but a most reliable fellow in a tight corner. He was a City of Dublin policeman before his recall, which is presumably why your friend Lestrade never suspected him—or had ever seen him.”

“So during his official retirement, he presides over Landor Mansions in Carlyle Street?”

“Over the whole of Carlyle Street, dear Brother. It will not surprise you that quite a number of our people are accommodated discreetly in these places when business brings them to London. Let us leave it at that.”

The door behind me opened and two more plates of vine leaves were laid at our places. The menu at the Diogenes Club was de rigeur, as Holmes described it. In other words, it was Spartan and there were no choices. The man who had brought the hors d’oeuvres withdrew.

Mycroft Holmes pushed his plate back.

“To speak quite frankly, my dear Sherlock, I could wish that you had not blundered into this affair.”

“Could you?” asked Sherlock Holmes indifferently. “Perhaps you would not mind pressing that most efficient bell again. There is something you had better see for yourself.”

His elder brother obliged him, and the servant reappeared.

“Have the goodness,” said Sherlock Holmes curtly, “to go down to the desk by the front door and retrieve a hatbox for me, which I lodged there just now. The duty porter is aware that I shall need it. Bring it to me here.”

If Mycroft felt the least interest in this, he certainly did not show it. Instead, he mulled over the death of Captain Sellon. At last, he concluded, “You were, of course, correct, dear Brother. The bullet that killed our man Sellon was fired by a compressed-air weapon in the very room where his body was found. I concluded as much myself from the surrounding circumstances long before Dr. Littlejohn sent me his findings last night. The renting of a room in the opposite mansions was all part of somebody’s disguise. Even so, Sellon’s death was a shock. We pride ourselves that by offering a public service in renting out these apartment blocks to all and sundry, apparently as a bona fide agency, we can also conceal some of our own people there, among the rest. It seems that with Sellon, we fell into a trap of our own making.”

“What was your man Sellon doing at Carlyle Mansions in the first place?” I asked. “And what, indeed, is the Evangelical Overseas Medical Mission?”

Mycroft Holmes spread a hand out sheepishly, as if he hoped the answer might materialise from thin air like a conjurer’s hard-boiled egg.

“It is a useful form of words,” he said at last. “Will that do?”

Sherlock Holmes’s mouth tightened. “I think not, Brother. Men do not shoot one another so cleverly without good reason. What was Sellon’s connection with the soi-disant Colonel Rawdon Moran? What had Moran himself to do with the disaster at Isandhlwana? Moreover, what had he to do with the death of the Prince Imperial? Not to mention those of Captain Jahleel Brenton Carey and a certain Trooper Levens who was in Carey’s fatigue party? There are wild rumours and mighty few facts.”

I quite thought Mycroft Holmes might be overwhelmed by this torrent of questions. But he seemed not the least put out.

“Whatever you think of Randy Moran, you may be sure he did not himself kill Josh Sellon. Yesterday he was still on the high seas, between Funchal and Antwerp. Do you know so little of the case, dear Brother?”

“I am confident that I know as much as you,” said Sherlock Holmes, in the petulant tone of a nursery rival. “I suggest that you have it in your power to save me a good deal of time by confirming the details.”

Mycroft was saved just then by the entry of two servants. The first carried a tray with three plates covered by pommes de terre à la duchesse and an unappetising form of boiled halibut. The second man bore our leather hatbox. When the two waiters had closed the door behind them, Mycroft sat back.

“Several officers of the Provost Marshal’s Corps,” he said, “have been working on a series of incidents with a common connection, such as you suggest. Captain Sellon had come too close to the truth for our adversaries to tolerate his presence any longer.”

“And Owain Glyndwr?” Sherlock Holmes inquired.

“May one inquire, dear Brother, precisely what you know about Owain Glyndwr and how you know it?”

My friend got up and crossed to the side-table where the leather hatbox stood. Mycroft stared at it like an expectant child at a birthday treat. His brother unbuckled the top, lifted it back, and displayed the monstrosity to which I had woken on the previous night. By the light of day, this severed head appeared an inoffensive specimen. To my surprise, however, Mycroft helped himself to another forkful of halibut and mashed potato before greeting the floating relic with affectionate recognition.

“Oh, yes!” he murmured gently; “oh, yes, indeed! So this is the trophy of which your telegram spoke? He who came by dark? We know him, dear Brother! We know him, doctor! We know him very well indeed! He has been sadly missed by all his friends.”

Mycroft Holmes was not much given to displays of humour, but he gave a plump chuckle at his own pleasantry.

I suppose I should not have been surprised to find that a severed head pickled in formaldehyde was not the least disagreeable to either brother on the table in the middle of lunch. But how Mycroft should recognise it was beyond me.

“He was in Abyssinia at the taking of Magdala in 1868,” said Mycroft soothingly, as if he were consoling the cloven head for all its misfortunes. “The poor fellow fell to a swift sword-cut from one of our galloping hussars. I believe an officer of the 3rd Dragoons gathered him in when the burial parties were at work after the battle. The surgeon-major then performed his task of dissection and preservation. Our friend came to rest in the trophy case of the 24th Regiment of Foot. That seems to be his entire story until now.”

“He was at Isandhlwana? At the battle?” I asked carefully.

In my own ears, I sounded as though I could not believe it. Mycroft turned to me, and whatever amusement I thought I had heard in his voice had vanished from his face.

“No, doctor. Not at the battle. That is the whole point, is it not? Despite the catastrophe, there were a handful of survivors. They are our witnesses. Several of them told the Provost Marshal’s inquiry what was said and done in the camp on the day of the battle before the tribes attacked. Sergeant-Major Tindal was one of a small party of the 24th who escaped in a fighting retreat. He swore that he had reported an incident to Colonel Pulleine early that morning. During the previous night, an intruder had entered the mess tent of the 24th Foot. This delightful object in its glass jar had been removed from the trophy case. Owain Glyndwr had not been on general view, you understand. Indeed, he had always been treated with the respect due to a fallen warrior.”

There was a moment of silence.

“And then?” Sherlock Holmes prompted him.

A look of deep self-satisfaction lay in Mycroft’s grey eyes.

“I believe,” he said, “I do believe they have made their first mistake.”

“Who are they?”

“Owain Glyndwr,” Mycroft ignored the question and gave the mediaeval name its full Welsh inflection: “in truth, an Abyssinian warrior. But the 24th Foot, being a Welsh regiment, gave him the name of their national hero. He belongs by right to the regimental depot at Brecon. They will be glad to see him back, when the time comes.”

I was still out of my depth.

“But what has an Abyssinian to do with Isandhlwana? Who would want such a trophy? Not Cetewayo’s tribes!”

Mycroft Holmes remained quiet and thoughtful. Then he nodded.

“Not the tribes, doctor. As you have discovered, we have a far more dangerous enemy, closer to home. We believe we know who some of them are, but we cannot tell precisely where they may be. It seems that they have thrown down this head as if it were a gauntlet. They are prepared for combat. These are resolute enemies, gentlemen, ready for victory or death. They are prepared to wager that, in a little while, either you or they will be dead. They propose that it shall be you.”

“I still do not understand why,” I said.

Mycroft scratched his large head, as if uncertain how to begin. “Do you not, doctor? After your meeting with Captain Sellon in India, he and several other intelligence officers were sent to the Cape to oversee the inquiry that followed our defeat at Isandhlwana. Evidence was collected by the Provost’s Special Investigation Branch. Among witnesses, Lieutenant Teignmouth Melville’s servant survived the escape in which his master perished. In the last minutes of the battle, he saw Lieutenant Melville take the regimental colours from Colonel Pulleine to carry them to safety. Poor young Melville was hacked to death even before he could cross the Buffalo River. The colours were found some weeks later in branches by the river bank.”

“That much was in every newspaper,” Sherlock Holmes said sardonically.

“Then you had better attend to what was not in the newspapers but in the survivor’s evidence. As Melville stood with Pulleine, just before they parted, the colonel looked up for an instant and thought he saw the first outrider of Lord Chelmsford’s column, mounted on the col above the beleaguered camp. You know that much, I believe? Melville’s servant heard this figure spoken of as a last hope. Of course, there was nothing in it. The column was several hours away. Yet the tale persisted among survivors, the story of this solitary rider, sitting astride a dappled horse on the col. He seemed to be watching the last act of the tragedy from above but taking no part in it. That was all.”

“Indeed,” said Sherlock Holmes sceptically, “And you think Sellon was killed for hearing such a tale? That would not silence the others who heard it.”

Mycroft shook his head. “Among the debris of the guard tent was a scrap of paper found by the first burial party and taken charge of by the Provost’s men under Sellon’s command. It was written at the last moment by Colonel Pulleine and hidden in the top of his boot. He knew that the tribesmen never bother to strip the boots from the dead because the tribes go barefoot. The hiding place was safe.”

“And Sellon was killed for reading it?”

Mycroft shook his head again. “Not just for reading that.”

Mycroft Holmes slid his hand into the inner pocket of his grey flannel jacket. He drew out a slim notecase of soft tawny Florentine leather. From this he took, with tweezers, a small folder of plain card. I saw a paper lying inside it. For our benefit, it was the original of the last message written by the commander of the doomed column in the final moments of defeat.

“In anticipation of your visit, I had this brought over from Whitehall by messenger,” Mycroft said quietly.

CAMP ISANDHLWANA, 22 JANUARY 1879, 1.35 pm WE ARE BETRAYED … FOR GOD’S SAKE LOOK AFTER OUR PEOPLE … GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.…

Lt. Col. Henry Burmester Pulleine

Officer Commanding Her Majesty’s 24th Regiment of Foot

“Do not touch it!” Mycroft added hastily. “Just read it. It is not to be touched!”

After we had stared at it for a full minute, he stood up and turned to the window with its view of Horse Guards Parade and an immaculate surface of sand-coloured grit.

“Look after our people?” I inquired.

“Our families, in other words,” said Mycroft impatiently. “Not the entire British nation, which can well look after itself. There must have been a good few military dependents pauperised by so many deaths that day. It was a natural enough request by their commander.”

“Then let us hope that King Cetewayo does better for his gallant people than we have done for ours,” said Sherlock Holmes bleakly.

Mycroft glared at his fractious sibling.

“And you believe that Captain Sellon was killed for reading this final appeal?” I persisted.

“No, doctor, not even that. I have brought something more for your consideration.”

In his hand was a short-bladed object in waxed paper. I recognised it as a turn-screw, of the sort that I had seen at Kandahar. It resembled nothing so much as a powerful corkscrew mounted in a metal frame. In truth, it was used by regimental quartermasters to open the crates of Boxer Mark III cartridge packets. Its condition suggested that it had lain exposed to sun, wind, and rain during the weeks between the battle and the burials at Isandhlwana. Such implements had been commonplace at Maiwand. As a medical officer I had never handled one, but I knew at once what it was. Its purpose was to open tightly screwed War Department crates of cartridge packets, used to re-supply the infantry pouches in battle.

“Surely,” I said, “there must have been any number of these lying about the wagon-park.”

“Indeed there were, doctor. A good number.”

“Is there something remarkable about this one?”

“Just one thing. These screw-drivers and the broken remains of the very few ammunition boxes that had been forcibly opened were examined by three artificers at Woolwich Arsenal under Captain Sellon’s supervision. The men who undertook the examination were sworn to secrecy. In any case, they were not told why they were doing it. The whole business was so sensitive that each man was required to sign a draft of the proposed official secrecy legislation, binding him to silence on pain of fourteen years’ imprisonment.”

“And the result?” Sherlock Holmes inquired laconically.

“When the blades of the discarded turn-screws were microscopically examined, they naturally bore signs of rust and encrustation from exposure for a few months. Yet most had never been used. They had been thrown down as useless at a time when the riflemen on the perimeter were crying out for ammunition. There was not the smallest abrasion on many of these blades consistent with having locked into the screws of the crates. Why were the quartermasters not pouring out a constant stream of cartridge packets to supply the ammunition runners? Why were a few of the crates laboriously forced open by bayonets and even smashed open by rocks? Others were left screwed down and abandoned. You see?”

“The wrong turn-screws?”

Mycroft nodded his large head mournfully.

“Can you wonder that the message in Colonel Pulleine’s last note is one of treachery? Nor was that all. The two great faults with Boxer cartridges for these rifles was a tendency to absorb damp easily or for the bullet to fall out of its case before loading, in either event jamming the weapon. The Intelligence Branch of the Quartermaster-General’s Department has inquired into this. So has Colonel Redvers Buller, VC. The handfuls of abandoned bullets that Joshua Sellon gathered in from the battlefield had been rendered useless. The answer to the riddle of defeat was in his possession. Someone decided he must pay for that information with his life. Will that do?”

This seemed too much to me.

“The ammunition train was tampered with?”

“That is your choice of language, doctor. I might have doubted, until Sellon was found with a bullet in his brain. His silence was ensured at so high a price.”

We stared at one another while a detachment of the Life Guards crossed the Parade, helmets bright in the sun, to take up duty on Palace Guard.

“I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you,” I said presently.

“I beg your pardon, doctor?”

“It is probably nothing, Sir Mycroft. Merely a form of vengeance that someone known to Joshua Sellon once promised to take upon the world.”

But Mycroft Holmes had caught my every word, and it showed in his face. He gave a heavy sigh.

“Since you know so much, you had both of you better come with me,” he said, pushing himself up from his chair. “Come and look at the evidence. This may get worse. Much worse. I suppose I must either trust you both entirely or not at all. I hope, dear Brother, I shall not regret it in your case. And bring that abomination in the hatbox with you. The Welshmen will want their hero back.”