Death on a Pale Horse
SHERLOCK HOLMES ON
HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE
DONALD THOMAS
PEGASUS CRIME
NEW YORK LONDON
For Tony Horner
CONTENTS
The Narrative of John H. Watson, M.D.
HISTORICAL NOTE
22 January 1879:
Annihilation of British Armoured and Infantry Column by Zulu Tribesmen, Isandhlwana, South-East Africa.
1 June 1879:
Assassination of Louis Napoleon, Prince Imperial and claimant to the French throne, at the Blood River, Natal, South Africa.
12 June 1879:
Captain Jahleel Brenton Carey, commander of the Prince Imperial's bodyguard, tried and convicted by General Court-Martial at Blood River Camp, for “Misbehaviour in the face of the enemy.”
16 August 1879:
Court-martial verdict quashed.
28 January 1881:
Transvaal Boers first defeat of the British Army in South Africa.
27 February 1881:
Decisive victory of Boers at Majuba Hill.
5 April 1881:
Great Britain concedes independence to the Transvaal.
22 February 1883:
Death of Captain Jahleel Brenton Carey in India “under mysterious circumstances.”
31 December 1887:
Reichsanzeiger
revelations of criminal attempts to provoke a European war, Germany and Austria against Russia and France. Despatches forged in the names of Count Bismarck, Prince Reuss (German ambassador in Vienna), Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria, and his sister the Comtesse de Flandre, also sister-in-law to Leopold II of Belgium.
29 March 1889:
Floating wreck of the paddle-steamer
Comtesse de Flandre
sinks in deep water off Ostend.
PART I
The Documents in the Case
MEMORANDUM
From: Permanent Secretary for Cabinet Affairs
To: Provost Marshal General
Date and Source: Cabinet Office, 20 August 1894
Subject:
The Narrative of Colonel Rawdon Moran
, a paper dated February 1879
My Lord,
By dispensation of Her Majesty's Privy Council, I enclose for your confidential information a copy of a report compiled for his criminal paymasters by Colonel Rawdon Moran.
Your records will confirm that this officer was never brought before any recognised civilian or military court. Yet he remains the one agent identified in a criminal conspiracy which to this day endeavours to undermine the British position in Southern Africa. The wealth of newly discovered gold fields and diamond mines in the Transvaal was to be his particular prize. An illegal arms traffic via the Congo Free State was to be the means to that end.
In his departure from the British Army, Colonel Moran had suffered a terrible injury at the hands of fellow officers. Who shall say that it was not deserved? He swore at the time that he would be revenged upon them and their comrades many times over. And who shall say that he was not?
The attached manuscript describes certain remarkable events in Zululand, South-East Africa, on 22 January 1879. It is a curious document, for he adopts a literary style. As a young man, Moran was a hunter of big game whose bag of Bengal tigers has never been exceeded. He was the author of his own tales of adventure. Such titles as
Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas
enjoyed a steady sale on his return to London. Yet he must have feared the consequences, if this account of treachery at Isandhlwana ever fell into the wrong hands. Therefore he writes his account as a detached observer or story-teller, rather than as one who was present and participating at the scene. In truth, Colonel Moran alone was the Hunter, the observer and the mysterious horseman of his own narration.
This report, made to his criminal associates, was found among the effects of one of them. Professor James Moriarty, a mathematical scholar and a suspect in several crimes, died in an unusual accident at the Reichenbach Falls some months ago. But for that accident, Moran's account would be known only to those who presumably employed his services.
My disclosure of this document to yourself was sanctioned yesterday at a meeting of the Privy Council. As I am sure your lordship will be aware, only the Sovereign and one other member need be present for a meeting of the Council and for its decisions to be valid under the constitution. Her Majesty is insistent that the fewer people who know of this matter at present, the better.
Accordingly, Lord Rosebery, as Prime Minister, and I waited upon the Queen at Osborne House, Isle of Wight, yesterday evening.
Colonel Moran's case may now be regarded as closed. However, in the interest of military intelligence, Council deemed it advisable that you should have sight of this narrative before it is filed for indefinite retention among the confidential State Papers. I hardly need add that you have not been authorised to communicate the contents of this document to any other person.
My courier, Sergeant Albert Gibbons of the Royal Marines Despatch Corps, will attend you while you read it, and will convey the paper to me again when you have done so.
I have the honour to remain, sir, your obedient servant,
William Mycroft Holmes, PC, KBE
STATE PAPERS
CRIMINAL RECORDS Moran 1879/3
DOCUMENT NOT TO BE REMOVED FROM THE FILE
The Narrative of Colonel Rawdon Moran
February 1879
A brown minullus hawk rode high and alone above the silence of the arid plain. Its wings drooped in an easy curve against a green flush of African dawn. Below it, the broad lowland marked by a dry river donga lay in shadow, while the early sky gathered reflected light. In the growing day, not a breath of dust stirred the wild grass and mimosa thorn. The bird shifted a little, an alignment of patient grace, as the dismounted horseman watched and listened.
The scene was everything that this hunter had expected. That morning, for the first time, a distant accompaniment to the wakening day rose from a ravine of the eastern hills. The sound drifted across the tall parched grass where the rider lay concealed. Its continuous humming was subdued but undulating, like a swarm of countless bees. Carried higher in the warmer air, it began to take on a human resonance, the prayer of warriors intoned before battle.
At that moment a yellow disc of sun began to break on the high ridges of the eastern plateau and the Malagata range. Seeking warmth, the brown hawk broke away and soared into the clearing sky. It had seen what the hunter in the grass could not. He lay and watched a little longer while new light from the eastern ridge splintered the shadows across a massive rock-face in the west, working down the slope.
The few European travellers who had seen the summit of this pale rock, rearing like a carved head from the neck of its col, had compared it to a silhouette of the Sphinx. But the warriors of Cetewayo knew nothing of sphinxes. It had been named for them by men whose trade was the slaughter of herds. Cow-Belly. Isandhlwana.
The sun had now risen clear of the eastern hills. Its cool light travelled quickly down the western slope of the col until the wide plain came into full view. At the foot of Isandhlwana, protected at the rear by the great rock itself, stretched the silent camp of an invading army. Lines of neat white bell-tents ran as trimly as the streets of a new-built town. Behind them, where the rocky ground sloped up to the col, row upon row of ox-drawn supply-wagons held food and drink for two thousand men. They also carried enough ammunition to kill every man and woman between the Buffalo River and the Cape.
To the left of this camp, four Royal Artillery bombardiers in dark tunics and caps kept watch over a battery of seven-pounder field-guns. Half a mile before them, in the open terrain of grass and thorn, the approach from the northern plateau was guarded by mounted vedettes of the Natal Volunteers in their black tunics, and by red-coated pickets of Her Majesty's 24th Regiment of Foot, from the valleys of Wales.
The camp began to stir as the first white smoke rose from its field kitchens. Through his lenses, the hunter in the grass watched the first bearded infantrymen of the Volunteers forming a queue with their mess-tins for pressed beef, hardtack, and tea. As the sun's warmth began to penetrate the cold air of the plain, a long mounted column was forming up by the main body of the tents. Sound carries far at such an hour and in such stillness. The shifting and snorting of horses, the clink of bridles, drifted through the clear air towards the eastern slopes.
“Walk march!”
The call rang out, repeated down the length of the column. In perfect order, this mounted patrol moved out across the brown pasture, withered by sun and wind, towards the Malagata foothills.
At the scarlet column's head rode several men whose white helmets bore the gilt insignia of the British General Staff. The dismounted horseman in the grass recognised them all. Foremost was Lieutenant-General Lord Chelmsford of the Grenadier Guards, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army at the Cape. He sat tall and slim in the saddle, with the high-bridged nose of a born aristocrat. Chelmsford had led his troops in the Queen's wars from the Crimea and Abyssinia to Bengal and the Punjab. Leaving the rest of his regiments in the safety of the camp, he now rode out at the head of his patrol to scout for an elusive enemy.
Among his subalterns and aides-de-camp, he was immediately followed by a tall languid dandy with a sneering drawl. The patient hunter also recognised this creature. He was one who spent his London furloughs as a gambler in Chelsea's Cremorne pleasure gardens and as whoremaster in the Regent Street night-houses. His features profiled the spoilt beauty of a bankrupt Apollo.
In the small hours of darkness, the hunter had come and gone from his enemy's camp, passing the sentries as easily as a shadow crossing the moon. Now lying hidden from their view at sunrise, he lacked the means to check his own appearance. He imagined it would suggest his last hours in the dying-room of a fever hospital. Despite the new warmth of morning, the sharp rat-like bite of the cold night had gnawed his bones. Sometimes he shivered until his teeth rattled like a zany's. There were spasms in which the hands that held the field-glasses shook too hard to hold them steady and his eyes watered with the chill. In the last hour before dawn, it had seemed that day would never come.