Death on a Pale Horse (16 page)

“And the prince?” I asked.

Mr. Dordona came unwillingly to the truth.

“There was a native hut between the patrol and the tribesmen. It hid the details of what had happened. But then Captain Carey saw the prince's horse, Percy, cantering out of the kraal without a rider. He guessed that the prince must have fallen as he was mounting. The young man was helpless, but he fired the last shots from his revolver at the attackers. Thirty or forty of them. In a few seconds, he was overwhelmed and killed. A matter of seconds, gentlemen. Whatever a court might say, Captain Carey protested to me that there was nothing he could have done to save him, even if he had given his own life. Nothing. Carey was a brave man, and he spoke the truth.”

“Nothing to be done except to have foreseen such an ambush,” Holmes said as he turned his brooding deep-set eyes upon our visitor.

“Mr. Holmes! By all the laws of military logic, those tribesmen could not have been there. Do you not see that?”

“I find that an interesting assumption, Mr. Dordona. I see at least half a dozen ways in which an assassin might have put them there—supposing, of course, that there had been an assassin, of whatever tribe, or race, or nationality. However, I believe, as you say, that Captain Brenton Carey had done all one could expect of him in safeguarding the prince. Will that do for you?”

I watched Samuel Dordona closely. I will not say that he smiled with relief, but a great burden seemed to drop from him.

“At last, Mr. Holmes!” he said gratefully. “You are the first person since Captain Carey himself to suppose anything of the kind.”

“Then so far,” Holmes said carefully, “we have lost two troopers, Rogers and Abel, and the prince. Correct?”

Mr. Dordona nodded. “Correct, sir. There was nothing that could have been done to save any of them. And after this sudden attack, it seems that the Zulu tribesmen fled at once. No doubt they were in fear of being caught by armed horsemen. Captain Carey led his survivors back to the camp at the Upoko River. They met first of all Colonel Redvers Buller and General Evelyn Wood. To my own knowledge, both are brave men and winners of the Victoria Cross. Buller simply told Brenton Carey that he deserved to be shot. Others refused to believe the story. One of the subalterns from the 98th went into the mess-tent for dinner that evening and told the dreadful news. The rest thought he must be joking—because there had been so many jokes on the subject. The subalterns laughed at him and pelted him with pellets of bread.”

“Forgive me,” said Holmes coolly. “A good deal of this story was given to the court of inquiry and the court-martial, as I recall. Wherein lies the mystery now?”

But the tension had eased, and Samuel Dordona was not quite so upright on the edge of his chair. He sat back a little. His words became slower and quieter.

“No one at those courts spoke of the horseman, Mr. Holmes. A horseman on the hill above, seen by one of the patrol while all this was going on below. A horseman from whose appearance poor Carey seemed to seek relief by talking to me on that last night of his life.”

He paused, as if marshalling every detail in his mind before giving us his account of the murder.

“Mr. Holmes, the hill above the abandoned kraal was the same one from which the patrol had mapped the surrounding countryside that morning, just before lunch. It is the only vantage point for miles around. A horseman sitting up there could not have failed to see the Zulu ambush gathering below—and he would surely have warned his comrades down there. No warning was received. Instead, gentlemen, was not this rider in a position to ensure that the Zulu attack took place—and to verify that it had done so? That was poor Carey's question in his last hours. Do you not see what I mean?”

“Perfectly,” said Holmes quietly. “And who saw this horseman?”

“Trooper Pierre Le Brun, a Channel Islander. He was one of those who spoke French, and for that reason he was often detailed to attend the Prince Imperial. This rider on the hill, whoever he was, never dismounted. He wore something that might have been the uniform of the Natal Volunteers, though such items of headgear and clothing are common enough in that country. The horse was light-coloured, perhaps dappled. Trooper Le Brun was the last man in the flight from the kraal, and he would have had a view of that hilltop after the others had gone under it, riding closer to the foot of the slope.”

“And where is Trooper Le Brun now?”

Mr. Dordona shook his head. “Captain Carey could not tell me that. No one knows, sir. It appears that he went absent before the court-martial; but his story remained one of many legends of the war. For some time before he disappeared, Le Brun had talked of throwing in his lot with the Boer pioneers of the Transvaal. So did many other soldiers. Gold and diamonds were thought to be lying in the streets there for the taking. Rumours thrive in the aftermath of any battle, Mr. Holmes, and the truth is not easily found. Visions are reported in the sky at moments of such intensity—angels, horsemen, burning swords.”

“And this one?” I inquired.

“This one may simply be a copycat rumour for a story that went the rounds after Isandhlwana a few months earlier. In the last minutes of that fight, Lieutenant Melvill took the regimental colours of the 24th Foot from Colonel Pulleine to carry them to safety. As they stood together, the colonel thought he saw the first outrider of Lord Chelmsford's column mounted on the col above the camp. Melvill's servant, who escaped with his life when his master died at the Buffalo River, was standing by and heard this curiosity pointed out. A single rider sitting astride a dappled horse, as if watching the last act of the tragedy from above. Sitting at the salute. That was all.”

“All this came from Captain Carey and nobody else?”

“It did.”

“Captain Carey, who is now conveniently dead. I am bound to say that we are singularly unfortunate in our witnesses, Mr. Dordona. How they desert us! Lieutenant Melvill. Trooper Le Brun. Captain Carey. It is so often the way with ghost stories, is it not? Everyone knows someone who has seen the elusive spectre, but what man can vouch for it from the evidence of his own eyes?”

For a moment, Samuel Dordona looked as if we had deliberately encouraged him, only to dismiss his account.

“I tell you the story as it was told to me, Mr. Holmes. I am no more a believer in spectres than you are. Perhaps because he was dying, Carey's last words to me were about the phantom, if a phantom it was, above Isandhlwana. Goodness knows where the tale of this apparition came from. Officers never believed it, only the few survivors from those lower ranks who had died in their hundreds that morning. Those survivors had heard of this ghostly sighting on the col.”

“I am relieved to hear it, sir. All the available evidence, then, points to a horseman being within sight on each occasion of a disaster. Is that so remarkable? There were enough horsemen around, in all conscience. Perhaps he was an outrider thanking his lucky stars that he was not part of the encounter, and keeping clear. Or perhaps he was a sensible fellow who felt that this was not a fight of his making. What good might he do, when everyone else was running away? Captain Carey would have been very foolish to rely upon such a man riding into a skirmish and offering himself to be butchered when he could so very easily save his skin.”

“Do you tell me, Mr. Holmes, that you do not believe me?”

The tone of my friend's voice changed at once. “You misjudge me, Mr. Dordona. I do not believe readily. I confess that I was sceptical in the matter before your arrival—and until I heard your complete story. Who would not be? Almost all the doubts that I have now are on your side. I cannot vouch for Isandhlwana, of course. Such catastrophes may happen for the most ordinary reasons. The death of the Prince Imperial is another matter. Let us stick to that.”

Mr. Dordona waited, still as a sphinx on the edge of his chair, to hear judgment passed. Sherlock Holmes spoke quietly.

“Let us have done with apparitions, sir, and stick to the art of war. A score or more of men with rifles and spears cannot remain concealed while advancing over such flat and open terrain unless they are assisted. A man on a hill, as you describe it, is no spectre. Hidden from Captain Carey's patrol by the ridge of that hill, he alone has the whole landscape in sight. How easily he may communicate directions to the assailants and those who command them.”

Samuel Dordona continued to watch him closely as Holmes concluded.

“But how convenient afterwards to be dismissed as some phantom of the veldt or a figure of common soldiers' folklore! The litmus-paper test, sir, if I may borrow a chemical term, is simple. Surely if there was such a rider who was innocent in this matter of the prince's death, he would have reported what he had seen immediately on his return to whatever camp he had come from. At the very least, he would have told the story to some friend or other. Why should he not—if he was innocent? The court-martial, for all its faults, seems to have been scrupulous in tendering evidence. I think we may be certain that no such report was ever made. Whether he was a spectre or flesh and blood, your horseman was no friend to Captain Carey. Again, would he not have tendered information to defend an innocent man's honour at his trial?”

For the first time, Samuel Dordona smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Holmes. Thank you, sir.”

My friend silenced him by a raised hand. “And let us not forget Trooper Le Brun. From all you have told us, I cannot see what the man had to gain by inventing such an apparition. Therefore, if our mysterious horseman is not a phantom, it seems to follow that he can only be a villain.”

Mr. Dordona had been waiting for something. Now he took the plunge.

“Will you come to Carlyle Mansions, Mr. Holmes? Will you and Dr. Watson come and see for yourselves a proof which will surely persuade you of the truth? The truth of a horseman on the ridge and on the col? The figure whom survivors of Isandhlwana call Death on a Pale Horse! I cannot say more at this moment, but I believe I shall convince you that Captain Brenton Carey knew the truth of something monstrous.”

“My dear sir! I will come this minute, if you are prepared to convince me!”

Our visitor held back.

“The evidence is not there yet, Mr. Holmes. Have no fear, it will be. It is in safe-keeping. Will you come tomorrow? Shall we say at three o'clock in the afternoon? I shall prove to you that murder was done on that patrol at the Blood River. And once the facts are in your possession as well as mine, the truth will be beyond the power of our enemies to destroy. But so long as those facts belong to me alone, I am in peril, and so is that truth.”

I was about to accept this invitation, but the gaunt missionary in his threadbare black had not quite finished.

“Captain Carey persuaded me that the Zulus no more committed murder on the Prince Imperial than the gunsmith whose trigger is pulled becomes the assassin of an emperor on the streets of Moscow or Paris. And is there not something far stranger than even poor Carey hinted at? Does it not strike you?”

“Indeed,” said Holmes in the soothing tone of a keeper humouring a lunatic.

“Mr. Holmes! Isandhlwana! The Prince Imperial! The disaster to come at Laings Nek! The worse catastrophe at Majuba Hill! The dismal surrender at Kimberley of such large tracts of our empire and the treasure they contain. All in so brief a space, like an orchestrated campaign.”

It was an eerie echo to hear this quiet, unworldly man listing the omens that had troubled my own mind in the past twelve months.

Samuel Dordona stood up and looked at each of us in turn.

“I shall expect you tomorrow, gentlemen. I do not think you will be disappointed.”

Sherlock Holmes remained seated.

“The police will not believe you, the Army will not believe you. But precisely what was it, Mr. Dordona, that persuaded you to honour us with your patronage? I do not recall that you have yet told us. Most unusual.”

It was put in a tone more penetrating than any attempt to bar the visitor's way to the door, yet it did so. Samuel Dordona paused.

“I am here on the recommendation of the only other person in whom I have confided any part of the truth as I know it.”

Holmes relaxed but did not quite smile his reassurance.

“Very good,” he said. “And was that when this other person told you what became of that missing member of the fatigue party at Hyderabad Camp? I refer to the soldier whose foot slipped in the imaginary mud? The man who lost his grip of the wooden tent-flooring and precipitated the so-called fatal accident which mortally injured Captain Carey?”

I have said that Samuel Dordona's years of Indian service had bronzed his skin a little. That tan now changed to a faint blush. Holmes had trapped him. But the way out of the trap was the truth; and he was, I believed so far, a truthful man by nature.

“It was then that he told me. Why do you ask?”

“Because, Mr. Dordona, in your whole chain of evidence, the soldier who precipitated the accident is the one link you have omitted. What became of him, if I may ask? Why did neither the inquest nor the court of inquiry hear anything from such an important witness?”

“He was Private Arnold Levens, Mr. Holmes. The fellow disappeared that same afternoon of the accident with one other man. I believe they both feared facing a court to account for Captain Carey's death. And of course it is not hard to disappear in India. We are not talking about the Aldershot Garrison or the Horse Guards. The courts could not find either of the pair.”

“How convenient!”

Samuel Dordona gave him what I should call a reproachful smile.

“Mr. Holmes, men who are detailed for fatigue parties have generally done something to deserve it. They are not saints. As I say, Private Levens and Private Moss were reported absent from duty without leave that very same day. It was at the evening roll-call, I believe.”

“I am sorry to repeat myself, but what became of them?”