Death on a Pale Horse (14 page)

“I believe that the knowledge I now carry exposes me to danger and indeed the threat of death. My only defence is in sharing it so that my adversaries may be assured that the truth will be published if anything should happen to me. It has been my calling to serve God in India rather than in England, but I have been away too long. I now come back to London almost as a foreigner and am attending the medical ‘First Aid' short course at the London Mission School. After an absence of eleven years, there seems no one else but you in whom I can safely confide.

“I beg, sir, that I may call upon you and your colleague Mr. Sherlock Holmes on Tuesday the 27th of March at 2
P
.
M
. Should this not be convenient, I entreat that you will reply by return. In that case, I would ask you to nominate at once any other hour that might better suit you.

“I remain yours faithfully,

“Samuel Dordona, B. D., Evangelical Overseas Medical Mission

“49 Carlyle Mansions, London SW.”

“The deuce!” said Holmes thoughtfully, as I finished reading. “Our clerical friend has a turn for melodrama worthy of the stage of the Hoxton Britannia, has he not? You have never heard of him before this, I take it?”

I shook my head. “Indeed I have not. Nor have I the faintest idea where he can have heard of me. But this letter is so curious. Why would an overseas medical mission be housed in a block of mansion apartments in Victoria?”

“I daresay it is our client's
pied-a-terre
during the month or two of his meagre furlough in England, before he returns to the Indian climate.”

“He is to be our client, then?”

Holmes's mouth twisted a little with impatience. “To tell you the truth, Watson, we are not overburdened with clients just now.”

“You do not think that the whole story of a mystery in Captain Carey's death might be schoolboy nonsense?”

“The
Army and Navy Gazette
seems not to think so. It talks of a mystery, but I daresay the libel laws prevent it from putting the details into print.”

With that, he turned and stared past me at the curtained window for a moment. Then he said, “Captain Carey was not otherwise mentioned to you during your time in India?”

“My dear Holmes! We had more urgent business! When the Prince Imperial was killed, our brigade was marching to meet Ayub Khan at Maiwand! It was all over before I saw another newspaper from home.”

“Of course,” he said quietly, “you are quite right.”

“I recall there was small talk among the fellows convalescing at Peshawar about how quickly the loss of Isandhlwana was followed by the death of the prince, one disaster coming so soon on top of another. Then, of course, those were followed by reverses in our battles against the Dutch Boers at Laings Nek and Majuba Hill, only a little distance away from the first two. By rights, we should have beaten the Boer farmers hands-down. I call that curious.”

He stared into the fireplace.

“No, Watson. Not curious. Tragic, certainly. Dangerous to our military and imperial reputation indeed. But the word ‘curious' might imply that these improbable disasters have no common connection. On the contrary, I should say that a common connection almost certainly unites them all.”

“Where is your evidence? Where is the connection, at least?”

We had not talked of evidence as yet. He sat upright in his chair and the languid indifference dropped away.

“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

N
ext 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.