Sherlock Holmes and The Sword of Osman (9 page)

Hesitantly the Armourer's widow began to talk. An edict had arrived from the Palace. Her husband Mehmed and she were to try for a child. For a boy. Immediately.

‘Why should the Palace order that?' I asked.

‘They wanted Mehmed to have a son,' came the reply. ‘No other Armourer knew his methods. Many times the Palace begged him to pass on the alchemy to another. He always refused, saying he would only pass his secrets to a son, otherwise he would go to his grave with them.'

She threw us a pleading look.

‘Mehmed was thirty years my elder. I was his third wife. We had no children. Only girls.'

‘The edict you received,' I heard Holmes ask, ‘was it from the Sultan himself?'

She hesitated. Holmes assumed his sternest aspect.

‘Tell her we are her best hope,' he commanded.

The woman replied in a low voice.

‘She says she has no hope,' Shelmerdine translated.

Staring towards the fresh grave, the woman cried piteously, ‘They will drown me in the sea. I shall soon join my husband in Jannah - or Jahannam.'

After a long pause she looked back at us.

‘The order came through an emissary.'

‘Male or female?' asked Holmes.

‘A woman. She came to Pera. She said she was acting on orders from the Palace.'

‘Was this woman dressed in a lace-trimmed dress beneath a black çarşaf,' Holmes continued.

She looked at him in stupefaction, nodding.

‘You see, Watson,' Holmes muttered, ‘it was Chiarezza. Her hurry was such she didn't even take time to hide her identity.'

He turned back to the widow.

‘Please continue.'

‘She said His Imperial Highness was concerned that Mehmed was getting old. The emissary said the Chief Astrologer foretold Allah the Dispenser of Events would smile on us that very night if I summoned my husband. The woman gave me a potion to add to Mehmed's evening meal. She said it was specially prepared by the Chief Pharmacist. The potion would make him strong and I would bear him a son.'

‘And you did as you were told?' I asked.

‘Of course. I begged Mehmed to come home. Mostly His Majesty keeps him at the Palace.'

‘How did you secrete the potion in his food?' Holmes asked.

In the desperate hope these two strangers from another world could help her, the widow removed a small object from her clothing and stretched an open hand towards us. In her palm lay a reliquary ring. I gazed at it dumbfounded.

‘Watson,' Holmes said quietly, ‘I believe that's what you went back for at the bazaar, rather than the gold watch, isn't that so?'

I took the ring from the woman and examined it.

‘It's certainly very similar,' I replied.

‘Very similar, yes, but is it identical? Look carefully. We must be certain.'

‘Yes,' I affirmed, ‘it's identical sure enough. See the scratch on the toadstone. It's the very ring the Jewess showed us.'

‘Except,' Holmes went on, ‘for one small but critical fact. It is no longer a reliquary ring. Note the hole freshly bored through the bronze. At someone's instruction it has transmogrified into a poison ring in the great tradition of the Borgias. Watson, if you had informed me this ring was missing when you returned to buy it, we may have prevented the Chief Armourer's death.'

I turned back to the unfortunate woman. In as sympathetic a tone as I could muster, I asked, ‘And how soon did your husband... pass away... after you administered this potion?'

Shelmerdine translated my question into Turkish. She broke into heavy sobs.

‘Hardly had he... I did as I was instructed. I sprinkled it on his favourite dish, okra with cinnamon to deepen the flavours. Then we went to our bed and made love.'

Her shoulders shook with grief.

‘I must have sprinkled too much.'

She stumbled and repeated, ‘Hardly had he...'

She added something in a whisper to Shelmerdine.

He turned back to us.

‘She says just after he carried out his function as a husband things went wrong,' Shelmerdine translated. ‘Mehmed sat up and cried out he was dying. He started to complain of pins and needles. His face and limbs went numb.'

A tearful description of the Chief Armourer's final moments followed. Abdominal pain was followed by dizziness, hyperventilation and sweating. As was the custom among the Palace retinue her husband kept an antidote to poison called Tiryak al-Faruq, prepared with painstaking care by the Chief Physician. However the antidote seemed only to intensify his agony and speed his death. Confusion set in. Mehmed no longer recognised his wife or where he was. He died in her arms.

The widow added something in a firmer voice. Our interpreter looked dubious.

‘She claims he just had time to make the Shahada, the declaration of faith.'

I tapped the ring over my palm. Tiny specks of a powder fell from the box.

‘Monkshood!' Holmes and I proclaimed in unison.

We were familiar with the plant and the poisonous aconite it produced. A considerable part of the attic at our old Baker Street lodgings had been taken over by Holmes's phials of poisons. The array was visited regularly by plain clothes detectives from the Metropolitan Police Criminal Investigation Department, and even the French Sûreté Nationale and America's Pinkerton detectives. Because of the shape of its flowers monkshood is also called Devil's Helmet or Friar's Cap, or more prosaically wolf's bane. It was said Cleopatra used aconite to kill her brother Ptolemy XIV so she could put her son on his throne. The only post-mortem signs are those of asphyxia. The poison's very name in Greek means ‘without struggle'.

‘Holmes, you and the Sultan were correct,' I said. ‘It wasn't a fatal overdose of an aphrodisiac like cantharidin. It was deliberate murder.'

‘Directed by whose hand I wonder?' Holmes mused. ‘Hardly the Sultan's - and certainly not this woman's.'

With our attention on her the widow gestured towards her husband's now-deserted grave. To my surprise she switched to French.

‘Those men, those men who were carrying my husband's body. I have seen some of them before. They were at our house. They came there three nights in a row. I saw their faces, except the man in charge. He always wore a hood over his face.'

She peered up at Shelmerdine.

‘Comme lui,' she said. ‘Like him.'

Abruptly our interpreter interrupted the distraught woman. In rapid French he said, ‘Perhaps Allah will grant you a son from your last coupling with your husband,' adding, ‘that is, if you escape with your head intact.'

Holmes intervened. He had an almost hypnotic power of soothing when he wished. He gestured towards the woman.

‘Shelmerdine, tell her she has our greatest sympathy. We shall do our best to protect her.'

We turned away. While our interpreter went for a cab Holmes said quietly, ‘We must get to work. Otherwise we may be about to let down England's Foreign Secretary, our paymaster, very badly.'

We Engage In Smoke And Mirrors

While the cabbie's tired horses stumbled their way along the precipitous streets from the cemetery down towards the shoreline Holmes said nothing. I contented myself with Shelmerdine's conversation. His knowledge of the great city, its history and the ins and outs of the Sultanate was extraordinary and detailed. Now and then I caught my comrade staring at him in a peculiar pensive way.

The dragoman dropped us at the pier. We watched while the carriage rattled away. Holmes swung round to me.

‘Remind me, Watson, what is the exact order of our cases in your latest publication,
The Return
?'

There was an urgency in his voice.

I responded, ‘First,
The Adventure of the Empty House
.'

‘Next?'

‘
The Adventure of the Norwood Builder
.'

‘Curses!' shouted Holmes. ‘Just what I feared. We must make our way back to Yildiz at first light or all is lost.'

My comrade refused to say anything further except ‘This is more interesting than it promised to be; quite dramatic, in fact'.

‘Yes,' I intervened hopefully, ‘it does strike me as being a little out of the common.'

‘Ah, then you have an idea who lies behind this little plot?'

His voice sounded surprised.

‘Not at all,' I answered. ‘Do you?'

‘I believe I do,' came the reply. ‘I must admit a case which at first seemed simple is rapidly assuming a very different aspect.'

A rating with a message awaited us at the head of the gangplank. Commodore Bacon would welcome us for an apéritif. We were conducted to his cabin. With hardly a greeting Holmes requested, ‘Commodore, can you kindly provide us with a launch at first light - and a box of smoke grenades too, if you don't mind?'

***

The next day the sun was hardly above the horizon when Holmes gave the signal. I tossed the first grenade into the empty Mother-of-Pearl Salon of the Star Chalet Kiosk. The smoke composition ignited. Clouds capable of blanketing a battleship curled through the vast room and poured from the deep windows. I tossed in a second grenade.

‘Yangin!' I yelled.

‘More grenades, Watson,' Holmes ordered.

I tossed the remaining grenades in every direction. We began to shout again and again ‘Yangin! Yangin!'

Crowds of eunuchs, concubines, ostlers and servant maids came running out of wooden buildings and joined in a general shriek of ‘yangin, yangin!' as they ran headlong for open ground downslope. Within thirty seconds the great drums at the top of the watch-towers beat out a warning across the immense palace. Within sixty seconds the rushing figures had gone completely from sight. Not a soul remained. I was on the point of assuming our plan to flush out the culprit had failed when I caught sight of a most extraordinary apparition. A yeti-like figure emerged from the seraglio by some hidden exit. Flames flitted from the creature, magically changing from yellows to oranges. It hastened through rather than away from the gushing smoke. The distinct smell of phosphorescence wafted back to us.

‘Holmes,' I exclaimed, ‘that's no diabolical intrusion into the affairs of men...!'

‘As you say, Watson,' Holmes breathed. ‘If I'm not mistaken it's wearing the rubberised ghillie suit we brought as a gift for the Sultan, painted with zinc sulphide phosphor doped with copper-magnesium. Remain silent and observe or our plan is dished!'

The figure hurried on, not once looking back. We chased after it, hurrying along narrow alleyways separating the quarters, through ancient panelled wooden gates and on past bastinado boards and the Abus guns.

We were led to an unexpected spot.

‘Of course!' my companion exclaimed, then, unable to contain his excitement, again, ‘Of course! The Head Nurse's quarters! Crouch for the moment, Watson!'

With a last furtive backward look, the spectre dashed through the stunted shrubbery of a little garden and into the nursery pavilion. These were the rooms where the bassinets of the Sultan's numerous progeny were put out for an airing. The newborn princesses and the Sehzades - crown princes - would lie swaddled in gemstone-embellished quilts and blankets, their first view of the world a magnificent panorama, the hyacinth blue Bosphorus straight ahead, to the right the sparkling Marmara.

Holmes whispered, ‘On the count of five...'

We plunged into an attractive room with fine wall tiling and painted cupboards. Staring back at us like the Damned getting their first glimpse of Hell the Sultan's thirteenth wife, Saliha Naciye, stood with her figure outlined against the flood of light, the still-flickering hood of the ghillie suit flung back, her beautiful features strained by inexpressible fear. Jutting from her quivering fingers was the carved black stone hilt of the Sword of Osman, the blade swaddled in a gemstone quilt. On the bassinet lay a scabbard studded with emeralds, rubies and garnets, the clasps decorated with Arabesque motifs in raised gold filigree.

Every vestige of colour drained from Saliha Naciye's face. Seldom had I seen a plainer confession of guilt upon a human countenance. With a gasped ‘Do not be my judge, my enemy', she threw the sword back into the cradle and with amazing celerity swooped between us. I started after her. She dashed down a stone staircase leading into the garden below, like a tigress slipping back into its jungle habitat, unseen until it pounces. Seconds later she was no more than a flickering silhouette between the fish ponds and elegant cypress trees.

‘Let her go, Watson,' Holmes called after me. ‘We've laid the Palace ghost once and for all.'

Holmes picked up the blade. Far from being simply ornamental it was a well-made, agile fighting weapon capable of cleaving deep cavities into the body.

‘Unless I am badly mistaken,' he added, ‘the mystery has been solved.'

He held the sword up to the light.

‘Or has it!' he called out sharply. ‘Is one mystery replacing another?'

His tone was urgent.

‘Watson, hand me the dragoman's snapshot of the sword!'

He snatched at the photograph and placed it next to the sword, staring from one to the other through his powerful magnifying glass.

I watched as he turned the blade over. Finally he drew back.

‘Take the lens, Watson. Look closely. Tell me what you see.'

‘It's the Sword of Osman,' I declared triumphantly. ‘Just as in the oil painting. There's no doubt whatso...'

He silenced me with a curt movement of his hand.

‘I shall be careful in consulting you on matters of health, Doctor, or you'll prescribe a cure for otalgia instead of kidney stones. Look again at the blade. What do you see etched into it near the cross-guard?'

‘The gold filigree flower motif?' I enquired. ‘Snarling open-mouthed lions? They are exactly as in the photograph, with rubies for eyes and so on.'

‘What else?' Holmes asked.

‘The grooves are also the same One, two, three...nine thin grooves. Precisely as in the ...'

‘Good, Watson, excellent! We're getting somewhere. But at the end of those nine grooves, what do you see?'

‘The gold cartouche.'

‘Among the gold fronds decorating the cartouche, do you see the names of the first four caliphs?'

‘I can see four separate marks in script but whether...'

‘So far so good,' my companion butted in. ‘They are names to instil sanctity into the blade - Abu Bakh, Umar, Uthman, and Ali. Now look within the cartouche. Come, Watson, we really must hurry! What do you see etched there?'

‘Nothing. There's nothing etched inside the cartouche,' I replied.

‘Nothing? Isn't there an inscription which, if you could read it, would state ‘
Assistance from Allah and the victory is close. Bear the glad tidings to the believers, O Muhammad'
?'

I peered back at the cartouche.

‘Nothing,' I repeated.

‘Neither a second inscription which - again, if you could read the Turkish - says, ‘
There is no braver young man than Ali and there is no sharper sword but Zulfeqhar'
?'

‘Holmes,' I replied, my brow knitting, ‘there's absolutely nothing inscribed within the cartouche.'

‘And again I ask you...'

I yelled, ‘Holmes, how plain must I make myself? Where in the entire universe can ‘n-o-t-h-i-n-g' mean ‘two inscriptions in Turkish'? I assure you there is no inscription of any sort etched inside the cartouche.'

‘Chapeau!' my comrade exclaimed, laughing. ‘With you at my side we shall settle this case, if not in the way I believe you anticipate.'

I stared at him.

‘How can the fact I see
nothing
help settle a case?'

He passed the photograph to me.

‘Watson, my dear friend, take a look. What do you see?'

Incredulously I exclaimed, ‘Why, Holmes, this photograph shows there are inscriptions in the cartouche.'

I looked up.

‘Someone must have removed them,' I continued. ‘But why? Why would Saliha Naciye polish them out? To a Moslem that would be sacrilege. Why would anyone do that?'

‘Dear Watson,' Holmes chortled, ‘as you imply, the answer is, no-one would. No-one on this earth would steal the Sword of Osman simply to desecrate it!'

‘I confess I'm at a loss,' I replied haplessly. ‘What does it all mean?'

‘The scabbard is genuine but the weapon is a forgery. That's why the inscriptions are missing. They haven't been polished away. They were never there.'

‘But Holmes,' I demanded, grappling with this unexpected revelation, ‘why would a forger leave out that particular detail?'

‘For one reason only,' Holmes replied. ‘The plotters had to make their move so fast there was no time for the task to be completed. Something must have triggered panic.'

‘What do you suppose it was?' I asked.

‘Just as the Sultan suggested,' came the sardonic reply. ‘The unexpected arrival of a couple of counterfeit naval botanists, imposters who trip over their swords as they shimmy in and out of a boat.'

‘But if it's just a replica, why was Saliha Naciye so terrified when we trapped her with it?'

‘There's only one conclusion. She thinks it was the genuine Sword of Osman. She's no idea it's a forgery.'

He looked around the room.

‘We're done here, Watson. We too must get out of here before our little ruse is uncovered.'

Smoke still billowed out of the buildings behind us as we hurried out of the monumental main gate along with a hundred other stragglers. Holmes hailed a cab and pointed towards the harbour. At the water's edge I stood nervously watching the tender chugging towards us. Holmes was silent. I could wait no longer. I burst out, ‘If Saliha Naciye thought she had the true sword, surely that must mean she was engaged in a plot against the Sultan.'

‘Correct, Watson,' came the terse reply.

‘For what possible reason could she want to see her husband deposed, worse, assassinated? She has all the...'

‘...For the simplest of reasons,' came the rejoinder. ‘What comes above riches - above every advantage? What are women most denied? Power! The woman craves personal, palpable power!'

‘But through her husband she has...'

‘...influence alone. Even so, for how long? I ask you - as Shelmerdine put to us - would you describe Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid as decisive? Is he a second Alexander? A Julius Caesar? Does he wield authority with resolution?'

‘Well, no...' I began.

‘Is he a ruler who can take a crumbling Empire by the throat and restore it to its former glory?'

‘Perhaps not but...' I faltered.

‘... a Khan who ruthlessly tracks down and deals with the myriad plots which leap up like salmon in his fractured Empire, not just from Damascus or Salonika or Belgrade but Paris and London too?'

‘It's true he dissembles but uneasy lies the head of anyone...'

‘...who bears a crown? Uneasy, yes. That's fair enough. Bibbling, absolutely not. In a despot it's tantamount to suicide. It invites - induces - the very aggression he hopes his evasion will dissipate.'

‘So Saliha Naciye...'

‘She knows only too well the Sultanate is under constant attack yet the indelible mark of her husband is his constant wavering. Two cruisers and a thousand men steaming up the Bosphorus could force the Sultan to flee. See it from her point of view. If any one of the conspiracies succeeds, if the Sultan is assassinated or deposed, Saliha Naciye will lose everything. Her son Crown Prince Mehmed Abid will be suffocated in his bed. She would at best have to flee, forced into living the horrible life of an aristocratic pauper. Every day she hears another plot is in the offing. Every day she takes the news to her husband. She begs him to act. He hears her out. He sits still, not so much a venomous spider immobile though alert to every message travelling along its web but an autarch frozen with fear, a rabbit confronted by a fox, unable to take the plunge, unwilling to order arrests. She decides to pre-empt all future plots by one of her own. She will steal the sword and offer it to whichever conspirators agree to replace her husband with her nine month old son. In one strike she'd become the Sultan Valide, the most powerful woman in the Ottoman Empire.'

An expression of the admiration with which botanists survey a rare and precious bloom spread across Holmes's face.

‘How could a woman a mere twenty-four years of age, born in a village a thousand miles from here, come up with such a plan! One must admire her, Watson, and beyond any woman we've ever encountered. Even so, we must present our evidence to the Sultan and the Imperial Divan.'

‘But they will find her guilty!'

‘No doubt.'

‘Then what? What do you suppose they'll do to her?' I asked.

‘Take your pick. If she's lucky, a garrotte or strangulation at the hands of the Chief Black Eunuch - or pruned by the Head Gardener.'