Sherlock Holmes, The Missing Years, Japan

by Vasudev Murthy

  ‘Meester Holmes, I am Binayak Sen, teacher of music. I teach you some music if you like!’

  Sherlock Holmes bowed courteously. ‘Thank you for the privilege. You will find me a poor student. A few suggestions on the basics of Indian classical music are all I ask, if not inconvenient. And I have here my violin.’

  ‘A violin!’ exclaimed Mr. Bose. ‘Excellent, Mr. Holmes! Physics in action in every possible way, would you not say? May we have the pleasure of hearing you?’

  Holmes removed his violin from the case. ‘Hold on to the music sheets, Watson. They are irreplaceable.’

  He took the violin to his shoulder and applied bow to strings and, after a few minor tuning adjustments, played the instrument with a verve and sensitivity I had rarely heard from him before. He played some Welsh tunes, then the “Devil’s Trill” of Tartini, and then a soulful composition of his own. The atmosphere in the room was transformed; Mr. Bose and Mr. Tagore had closed their eyes and were quite lost, swaying as their bodies kept time. Mr. Sen observed the deft movements of Holmes’ fingers very carefully and nodded vigorously in appreciation.

  We clapped when Holmes concluded and bowed.

  ‘Outstanding, Mr. Holmes! A true application of the beauty of science!’ cried Mr. Bose.

  ‘Very poetic,’ remarked a subdued Mr. Tagore.

  ‘Bhery good, bhery good!’ exclaimed Mr. Sen, rubbing his hands in glee.

  ‘Thank you. I am now at your service.’

  ‘You please sit down on carpet in front of me and we begin the simple Indian music lesson,’ commanded Mr. Sen.

  With great difficulty, Holmes managed to sit cross-legged on the carpet in front of Mr. Sen. Mr. Bose and Mr. Tagore followed. I expressed my inability to sit on the floor owing to my overall lack of flexibility, and a chair was found.

  Mr. Sen placed his fingers on the keys of the harmonium and produced a peculiar, though not unpleasant combination of sounds.

  ‘We first create atmosphere. Raaga is emotion and atmosphere. First we tune your violin, then you follow what I play on harmonium. Is it all right?’

  Holmes followed Mr. Sen’s instructions and tuned his violin carefully. (‘An unusual combination of notes Watson, not native to the violin as we know it,’ he commented later. ‘But appropriate for their music. A clever adaptation. It was quite difficult to avoid making comparisons while playing, but I did my best. The fingering, arpeggios, the bowing—our technical conventions do not find easy applicability here.’)

  Then Mr. Sen began teaching Sherlock Holmes the basics of Indian classical music. The experience was enjoyable for all of us, watching the world-famous investigator struggle to understand the thick accent of Mr. Sen, while extracting unfamiliar notes and cadences.

  Holmes proved to be a quick learner, however, and the cries of joy from Mr. Sen seemed to indicate that he had found a promising student. This went on for a couple of hours, with neither student nor teacher showing any signs of tiring and all kinds of peculiar melodies and language emerging. Raagas, Swar, Vadi, Samvadi, Aarohon, Abarohan. I took notes, of course, and Sherlock Holmes told me later what his interpretation of these words was.

  The class came to a close, and Holmes and Mr. Sen acknowledged each other’s competence with pleasure. A lavish dinner awaited all of us, with several Indian dishes being brought in, one after the other in rapid succession. My fondness for the local sweets had become a talking point in the kitchen and I kept finding new dishes appearing mysteriously in front of me. I consumed them in as inconspicuous a manner as possible, finding myself unable to resist.

  Meanwhile, Holmes was in an animated discussion with Bose on his left and musical discourses with Sen on his right. Mr. Rabindranath Tagore played the perfect host, involving all of us in his conversations and ensuring we were fed well.

  We said our good-byes and departed for our hotel around midnight, very satisfied with our day. Mr. Bose and Holmes promised to be in frequent touch and he wished us well with our plans to engage with the Yakuza, once again advising us to concentrate not on the apparent but on the implied and exaggerated.

  ‘A boastful enemy is your best friend, Sirs, since he is given to overconfidence,’ observed Mr. Bose as we shook hands.

  We were suffused with contentment. Music and science (and Bengali sweets) had enriched this strange journey and we felt refreshed as never before, ready to take on the formidable dangers ahead.

  By mutual agreement, Mr. Sen came to the hotel the following morning and spent all day guiding Holmes in the nuances of Indian music. Holmes told me later that he knew quite well it would be impossible to learn anything of significance of the vast ocean of Indian music in a few hours, but he was satisfied that he had had an excellent introduction. His violin-playing somehow became more emotional and subtle.

  Many years after his formal retirement, when he took up beekeeping in Sussex, he would often invite me to visit and would invariably play charming little tunes that brought back memories of those two remarkable days in Calcutta.

  7I recall that I felt a sense of doom and déjà vu as the existence of one more example from an apparently bottomless pit of monographs written by Holmes on every possible arcane subject became known.

  8My audacious—and perhaps, some may argue, attractive—editor, foisted on me by Messrs Poisoned Pen Press, wanted wholesale cuts claiming that the modern reader sought crime and not botany, missing the point entirely, due to her being immature, and, after all, a woman. The point of this narrative is to chronicle the interesting discussions and experiences Holmes and I had during our adventure. The modern crime-seeking reader, easily bored with scientific enquiry and seeking unwholesome racy entertainment is advised to gift this book to an acquaintance with more finely honed sensibilities, or return this book to the commercial establishment from where it was purchased and apply formally for a refund. The intelligent and mature reader is requested to stay on and read carefully, as he will doubtless benefit.

  Angkor Wat—Saigon—Nagasaki

  It seems only yesterday that we played in the forests of the

  Hakko mountains. The trees smiled when we laughed and

  shouted and hit each other with love. Today, our

  grandchildren do the same. I have already started seeing

  the ghosts of my ancestors in this house.

  We departed without incident that night from Calcutta for

  Singapore on the Isabella as planned, boarding the ship at separate times. Holmes was in the garb of an affluent Bengalee baboo, wearing the local dhoti, while I pretended to be an English planter returning to my rubber estate in Sarawak. Nothing could be ruled out. The game of chess was being played furiously across continents. The past two days had been extremely interesting, what with Holmes’ newfound mania for the classical music of India. Our encounter with Mr. Tagore had been inspiring as well. ‘Mark my words,’ Holmes had said, ‘we will hear more of him soon.’

  But now we had to move rapidly to Tokyo to meet Mr. Oshima. We had equipped ourselves in Calcutta with the clothes and medicine we might need for the residual part of the journey. Holmes was quiet and non-communicative and was not interested in the voyage itself. We moved to our first-class cabin and, in due course, it was filled with the acrid smoke of tobacco mixed with a local narcotic, ganja, derived from cannabis. I busied myself with the accounts and with updating my diary before bed.

  We had been informed that the passage to Singapore would take approximately ten days, with halts at Rangoon, the port of Myeik toward the south of Burma, and George Town in the State of Penang in the Straits Settlement. The journey was uncomfortable for the most part, with the monsoon in full force. We were buffeted by gales and strong waves and the occasional heavy shower. This suited us quite well as we were confined to our rooms and thus avoided contact with fellow passengers.

  But Sherlock Holmes was soon pacing the rolling floor of
our cabin furiously.

  ‘There is no doubt, Watson. Moriarty would have anticipated our every move. He would certainly have the port of Singapore watched. In a day or so, he would have checked the passenger manifest of the Isabella and, becoming suspicious about two men travelling to Singapore, he would have sent a wire there.’

  Holmes took out a map of the area and placed it on a table. ‘Watson, our objective is now twofold. Get to Yokohama and thence to Tokyo as soon as possible and also evade the traps of Professor Moriarty. There is one option, though dangerous, especially since you have only now recovered from malaria. And that is to completely avoid Singapore. We can do this in one of three ways. Get off quietly at Rangoon and travel to Siam, then to Saigon. Or at Myeik, which appears closest to Bangkok. That journey will be the toughest, given the terrain and the mud and slush we can expect. Finally, we can get off at George Town, but we would have given our adversary far too much time to prepare. No, we must take our chances at Rangoon or Myeik.’

  ‘It should be Myeik, Holmes. There appears little option. Those disembarking at Rangoon would also likely be watched. Myeik appears to be a small port.’

  ‘Capital! The matter is settled, then! I see that we are to arrive at Myeik at about six in the morning. Let us feign sickness and get off. The ship will weigh anchor after only fifteen minutes at the port. That is our window!’

  We reached Rangoon but kept to our cabin. A number of passengers disembarked and a handful embarked. I watched from the porthole for any sign that we were being sought. I did see two Englishmen standing at the passenger gate beyond the Customs shed, looking carefully at everyone who exited. There was no way to determine their purpose.

  We were soon on our way to Myeik, a distance of some three hundred nautical miles. The Myeik archipelago is known for its breathtaking beauty, we were told, but we were too preoccupied to take particular note; in any case, Holmes was not a man to consider Nature’s pulchritude even at the best of times. We had no idea how, but we knew we had to shake off our pursuers here. And as the Isabella eased into Myeik’s harbour, we feigned acute sickness and prevailed upon the captain to let us disembark, promising to resume the journey the following day on the next ship.

  Our plan worked. We disembarked at the sleepy little port just before dawn, clutching our stomachs and our luggage, escorted by a concerned captain. Except for a couple of porters and an official, the place was deserted and quiet and not very used to visitors. The Burmese are a friendly people and, as the Isabella weighed anchor and moved away in the direction of Singapore, we recovered our health miraculously and made enquiries as to how we could move swiftly to Bangkok.

  The Burmese official, Mr. U Mya Sein, very courteously offered us breakfast and said that the fastest, if rather arduous, option would be to travel by mule through the mountains which, he informed us, were experiencing heavy rains. The jungles were thick and dangerous but the path was known and he would put us in the hands of a good guide. We agreed and were equipped for the journey in a couple of hours.

  We entered the jungle right outside the port. Our journey went as smoothly as one might expect while going through a tropical forest. Our guide had thoughtfully provided us with a thick oily cream that had a distasteful smell that would deter insects. He also provided us water. But nothing could have prepared us for the sweltering, stifling heat and the intermittent cloudbursts. Holmes was a picture of equanimity as always and discussed various cases from the past to pass the time. He was unusually garrulous and even rather gay.

  ‘Certainly you will recall, my dear Watson, the case of Sir George Hastings and his encounter with the blackmailer Charles Milverton. You know my methods—I tried to put myself in Milverton’s shoes and imagined what options he would consider. He squeezed the last drop from his victims but occasionally miscalculated the limits of tolerance. When that happens, a person enduring blackmail may be perfectly content to endure the consequences of not succumbing. And then when you consider the case of the naval attaché of Sweden and the missing engineering blueprints, you wonder how careless people in positions of responsibility can be—leaving those documents on his table right next to an open window, accessible to any passerby.

  ‘Let it be said, Watson, that a certain class of criminals are extraordinarily creative, deriving energy from the finer things in life—authorities on Anatolian kilims, connoisseurs of Shiraz wines, experts on Ming vases—do you remember that rogue philanderer, Baron Adelbert Gruner? Artists, sculptors, violinists, pianists, poets. It is a matter of profound interest and deserves scientific analysis. Perhaps such men view sophisticated crime as another art form. They go from success to success, pleasantly surprised by the naiveté of men who literally suggest ways in which they could be taken advantage of, until they finally meet their match. Their Achilles heel is their growing arrogance and overconfidence—I referred to that earlier in the case of Colonel Sebastian Moran passing as Colonel James Burrowe, and the manner in which he lied on board the North Star.’

  And in such manner Sherlock Holmes carried on, unperturbed by the strange odours and sounds of the tropical jungle, the jerky rhythmic movement of the mules, the insects that came to enquire, the oppressive humidity and the noisy presence of the monkeys and birds all around us.

  The lush flora of the jungle was a pleasant distraction—colours and shapes that I had not imagined. Holmes advised me not to touch anything. ‘Looks are deceptive, Watson. You certainly recall the case of the Vanishing Horseman, in which so many perfectly intelligent members of a reputable family in Norwich were collectively convinced that horsemen were marching through their house during the day—a striking case of mass hallucination, reminding us of how suggestible our minds are. On investigation, we found that the family was being given doses of Datura stramonium, or devil’s trumpet, by the cook. That plant you see there, Watson, is the culprit. The purple bell-shaped flowers and shoots contain a hallucinogen that could quite easily prove fatal. And there is the lovely castor bean plant, otherwise known as Ricinus communis. The flowers are attractive and fuzzy and the large leaf pleasantly purple. A single bean can cause nausea and disorientation and the accumulated toxin causes a painful and lingering death. But of course, you are a man of medicine, and you may already know this.’

  Holmes collected several leaf and flower specimens along the way, saying—to my exasperation—that he hoped to someday write a scholarly monograph9 for private circulation titled The Flora of the Malay Peninsula. We also had a couple of minor encounters with the snakes of the region and I may be excused for mentioning an incident where I possibly saved Sherlock Holmes’ life.

  As we rested at one location, Holmes sat on a large boulder by the side of the narrow path near a running stream and smoked his pipe. I walked about; it was getting on in the day, we were still about two hours from the village where we were to spend the night, and my limbs were stiff. At Holmes’ feet was a large accumulation of dead leaves. As I walked toward him, I noticed a slight rustling and a movement in the heap, barely two feet from Holmes. I shouted out a warning.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Holmes jumped right up on to the boulder in a single fluid movement. We saw a large brown snake with black triangular markings raise its head in enquiry, look at Holmes disapprovingly, and then move slowly away.

  ‘A Malay pit viper, Watson! Calloselasma rhodostoma, if I am not mistaken. A single bite would have kept me in a state of acute agony for days if untreated. Necrosis and possibly death! My dear fellow, I owe you my life!’

  ‘Holmes, I have lost count of the number of times you saved me from fatal consequences. Think nothing of it. Let us move on.’

  We crossed the mountainous terrain by and by, once side-stepping an enormous sedentary Burmese python along the way, and entered Siam. The journey ended soon after at the outskirts of the large city of Bangkok where we dismissed the guide. Holmes was in no mood whatsoever to break the journey unless absolutely nec
essary. So once again we consulted our map.

  ‘The most judicious course, Watson, is to avoid large cities, where there is every likelihood of a mishap. It would be better to move eastward into areas where the British Empire has minimal influence, though that by itself guarantees nothing, given Professor Moriarty’s reach. Our best course is therefore to travel to the French Protectorate of Cambodia and then into the other French territories of Indochina. From there, we take a sea route to Macau, a Portuguese colony where we shall perhaps find friends, and then onward to Japan.’

  We passed through Bangkok where I visited the post office to send a brief letter to my wife. Holmes went back to his disguise of a Bengalee baboo. I, too, reverted to my rubber planter guise, but we took no chances and avoided being seen together as far as possible. Though the city seemed lush and interesting with many Buddhist pagodas, which I would otherwise have liked to visit, we simply had no time. We hired a coach to take us from the city to Siem Reap, a town of some antiquity in Cambodia. The road was in surprisingly good condition and we passed through pretty terrain. I made note of various sights, while Holmes kept to himself, smoking the local brand of cigarettes, the quality of which he derided quite often.

  After a journey over two or three days, punctuated by frequent changes of horses, and passing through the picturesque towns of Bang Pakong, Sa Kaeo, and Aranyaprathet, we finally reached Siem Reap in the evening, where we decided to rest for a day, given that we had had no break in our journey since we had started from Calcutta. The town was small and pleasant, as were the people, who spoke the Khmer language, distinct from the softer Thai. The Cambodians were darker but more affable and relaxed.