The Deadwood Stage

by Mike Hogan

  He grinned. “Mr Taylor gave me six shells with the palm gun. I have two left, plus the two you tea-leafed, Doctor.”

  Again, I could hardly complain.

  Holmes looked at his watch. “We shall be seven minutes late.”

  “I say, Doctor,” whispered Churchill pulling at my sleeve. “In the pub, Mr Holmes called me Churchill, not Spencer-Churchill.”

  His bright-eyed grin lit up the carriage.

  “This is more like it,” said Wiggins as we stepped from the cab at the World Turned Upside Down in the Old Kent Road. He gazed about him, put his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets and took a deep breath. “Give me south of the River any day.”

  It was dusk, and the bright-coloured windows and fanlight of the pub were most welcoming after our ordeal in the black, foetid courts of Whitechapel. I eyed our young companion.

  “Churchill,” I said, “I am concerned that you are getting too familiar with these sorts of premises. I suggest that you wait in the coffee public house across the road with Wiggins. I do not expect that we will be -”

  I followed my friends into the pub.

  The World Turned Upside Down was a far cleaner and less malodorous establishment than the Ten Bells. The clientele was mixed in gender, and composed of members of the more responsible echelons of the lower class: tradesmen, small shopkeepers and their wives, neat clerks and perhaps a smart artisan or two from one of the respectable trades, watch repairers possibly, or bookbinders.

  Holmes enquired at the bar, and the barman directed us to an upstairs room. There, in a quiet corner booth, sat the attendant from the British Museum that I had seen earlier. He was still in uniform, nursing a pint of ale. Wiggins held out his hand and I paid for pints of beer and a sarsaparilla for Churchill.

  He made the introductions.

  The attendant was Mr Henry Hook from Churcham in Gloucestershire, fifteen miles or so from Ross. I smiled as I heard his West Country burr. He had been married when he joined the Army at the relatively old age of twenty-six. He had joined the twenty-fourth regiment of Foot and served in Africa.

  He had a long oval face with a high brow and brushed back, slightly greying hair. He wore a moustache similar to my own, but his was straggly and unbrushed.

  The drinks came, and I sipped my beer. I saw that Wiggins had given Churchill a pint of beer, despite my clear instructions. I was about to remonstrate with him when I checked myself and looked instead at the pair of medals pinned to the attendant’s chest.

  I coughed and spluttered in my pint glass as I recognised the first medal. It was the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for gallantry in the field of battle.

  Churchill kindly slapped me on the back until I recovered.

  “You are Private Henry Hook,” I said rising from my seat. “Hero of the defence of Rorke’s Drift against the Zulus in ‘79. You received the Victoria Cross from the Queen. May I have the great privilege of shaking you by the hand? Why did you not tell me, Churchill?”

  I shook hands with Hook, and a thrill of emotion caught me off guard. I stiffened my upper lip.

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Doctor,” said Hook. “I received the medal from the hands of Sir Garnet Wolseley at the Drift about seven months after the engagement.”

  I sat in a daze.

  “The young man told me that you were in action, Doctor, in Afghanistan.”

  “I was,” I said, smoothing my moustache.

  He nodded and smiled. “Then you know.”

  Churchill beamed at me, and I nodded shyly.

  “I understand,” said Holmes in a tart tone, “that this gentleman has information for us.”

  Churchill explained that he had noticed Hook’s medals when he had brought the notebooks to Holmes at the British Museum. Hook was the Umbrella Attendant at the Reading Room. He had told Churchill something of his history. He had purchased his discharge from the Army a year or so after the battle and gone home. In Churcham, he found that he had been declared dead, his property had been sold and his wife had remarried.

  He had moved to London and obtained a job as labourer, and then got the job as Inside Duster, then Umbrella Attendant at the British Museum.

  “What has this to do with the missing boy?” asked Holmes testily.

  “Nothing much at all to do with Bobby, Mr Holmes,” Churchill said with a grin.

  Holmes stood, glaring at the boy. “While I appreciate the great service Mr -”

  “Tell us about White and Taylor,” Churchill said to Hook.

  Holmes flopped down in his seat.

  “Them buggers,” said Hook. “I don’t like to think on them.”

  “Another pint, Mr Hook?” said Churchill.

  “Very kind.” He drained his glass.

  “All round, then, Doctor?” said Wiggins with a grin.

  Hook described the layout of the Rorke’s Drift mission station on the late afternoon of 22 January 1879, drawing in beer on the polished wood of the table. I could see that he had done this many times before. He described a lazy day cooking for the patients in the hospital and helping Surgeon Reynolds with various small chores.

  “Not a soul suspected that a dozen miles away the men that we had said ‘Goodbye’ and ‘Good luck’ to the previous day were either dead or standing back to back in a last fierce fight with the Zulus.

  “Two gallopers appeared. They were white officers of the Natal Native Horse. They brought word that a British column had been massacred across the Tugela River at Isandlwana with more than five hundred soldiers and many more native levies killed. Four thousand Zulus were on their way towards us.

  “My officer, Lieutenant Bromhead, ordered preparations for a fighting withdrawal, but Acting Assistant Commissary Dalton, an old campaigner, had a quiet word and persuaded him to stay and fortify our post. Mr Dalton is the reason I am alive and talking to you gentlemen, for if the Zulus had caught us on the march we would have suffered the sad fate of our comrades at Isandlwana.

  “Now, we had about a hundred men of B Company, 24th Foot, plus officers and details, making us a hundred thirty-nine in all. There was a much larger force of native levies, the Natal Mounted Police and the Natal Native Contingent.

  “A strong troop of Natal Native Horse fleeing the battle at Isandlwana swept by our position, but would not join us. That was the signal for our levies to lose heart and scarper. The NNC jumped the barricades and ran off after the riders. I can’t say the lads were much bothered; we never thought much of the native troops. Most of them hadn’t guns, and those that had weren’t properly trained. No, we wasn’t much bothered when they buggered off. We gave them a cheer and a wave.”

  Hook took a long gulp of beer.

  “What got our goat was seeing their white officer, Captain Stephens by name, galloping off with them. Then their white NCOs legged it too. That irritated the boys, and there was a splatter of musketry. Corporal Anderson fell dead; shot in the back. Colour-Sergeant Bourne brought us back to discipline. He was a fine man, though young for the position at twenty-five, and short for a CSM at five-foot nothing and a half. The two other corporals escaped, but I could see that they were wounded.”

  He looked across at me.

  “You know it, sir: it’s being with your own lot that stiffens your backbone. We were Welsh and English, all hugger-mugger, with even a few Scotch to tell the truth, but we were all the Queen’s twenty-fourth regiment of foot, and proud of it. We had a proper gentleman in our officer, Mr Bromhead, and that makes a difference. He would have killed us all by marching us off into the hills if Mr Dalton had not been there, but we would have followed Mr Bromhead to our certain deaths without a murmur. That’s the difference a true gentleman makes, sir.

  “Them NNC corporals were local, see? Half Boer by the sound of them. They weren’t part of the regiment, s
o they had nobody to look out for, and nobody to look out for them. They were Corporal Robert White, and Corporal Max Taylor.”

  Holmes fidgeted while I insisted that Hook tell us of the battle and especially his part in the heroic defence of the hospital.

  “How many men did you lose?” I asked.

  “Seventeen, with eight seriously wounded.”

  I looked at Churchill.

  “Just under a quarter of their force, Doctor.”

  “And the Zulus?” Holmes asked.

  “Hundreds, sir,” said Hook. “I read it was more than five hundred.”

  “One-eighth,” said Churchill on a look from me.

  “Rifle against spear,” said Holmes pursing his lips.

  “No, sir, Mr Holmes,” said Hook. “If I may correct you there, sir. Most wounds I saw on the Zulus were from the bayonet. The Zulu had a lot of respect for the British bayonet.”

  “And the man behind it,” I said.

  He smiled and nodded.

  “I was teetotal before the battle, and during too, but when Colour Sergeant Bourne gave out a tot of rum to each man the next morning, I took mine gladly: ‘Oy’, says he, ‘what’s this?’ as I held out my mug. ‘Well’, says I, ‘I feel I want something after that’. That is how I went on the drink; it has been the ruin of me. Cheers.”

  Holmes stood.

  “Thank you, Mr Hook; it has been a fascinating story. I congratulate you on your experience and your bravery. We must get along now.” He rattled down the wooden staircase to the lower floor.

  I stood and solemnly shook Private Hook’s hand again. It was hard to believe that he was, like me, in his thirties; he looked much older than his years. I looked closely at the decoration he wore on his breast.

  “Would you like to hold it, Doctor?” He slipped off his Victoria Cross and placed it on my palm.

  “Be careful,” he said. “I got a wound in the scalp during the battle, but my worst stab came from Sir Garnet Wolseley with this.” He turned the cross over to reveal two long, sharp prongs.

  “They were to make it easy for Her Majesty to award the Cross from horseback with one hand. Sir Garnet impaled me on my breast. I still have the scar.”

  I passed the medal reluctantly to a wide-eyed Churchill. We shook the gallant soldier’s hand again, and with glistening eyes, I followed Holmes downstairs.

  We said our goodbyes to Wiggins and took a four-wheeler. On the way home, Churchill and I talked over the engagement at Rorke’s Drift. Eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded to the garrison.

  “I once had the privilege of meeting Surgeon James Henry Reynolds, VC,” I said. “He saved many lives at Rorke’s Drift and played a gallant a part in its defence. I have therefore shaken the hand of two members of that distinguished company of heroes, one in Lambeth and one in Eastbourne. Remind me to send a letter of apology to Miss Caspar for missing tea.”

  The next day, we sat down to our luncheon at home in Baker Street with some satisfaction at our progress.

  “Oh, this is from the amiable Doctor Purchase at the mortuary,” I said opening a letter. “He says that he has been in communication with his colleague for Whitechapel and - good Lord, Holmes, it is Aaron. It must be Aaron.”

  “Dead?”

  “He talks of a young Negro man bearing a remarkable resemblance to the body in his keeping found dead in Commercial Street, Whitechapel, early this morning.”

  “An axe wound?”

  I nodded. “Leather Apron.”

  We ate the rest of our luncheon in silence.

  Over coffee, I indicated my intention to visit Doctor Purchase that afternoon to acquaint him with our identification of Joe, Aaron’s brother, and our suspicions regarding the killer. Churchill looked glum.

  “The body will wait,” said Holmes. “This young man wishes to invite us to a certain spectacle. His mother’s friend, Prince Kinski, had offered to get tickets to Ruddigore, the latest Gilbert and Sullivan offering, but he was able to get some harder-to-obtain tickets. Am I right, young sir?”

  “Exactly, Mr Holmes,” Churchill said shyly. “But I don’t know whether it’s quite fitting now, after Aaron -”

  “Life must go on. Aaron made his decision, and it was an unwise one. He was warned. Our duty now is to Bobby. Show the doctor your tickets.”

  Churchill took out an envelope from his jacket pocket and slipped three long tickets onto the table. “It’s Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, Doctor. It is a gala event, with a grand reception afterwards.”

  I examined the luridly-illustrated tickets. “From the posters that I have seen plastered all over the city, I see that the Wild West Show is entirely unrestrained; it is rowdy and uncultured. It says on the ticket that they exhibit herds of wild beasts and gun-toting cow girls - whatever they are. The illustration shows shabbily-dressed riders being chased by a band of feral Indians. Ruddigore, on the other hand, is, by all accounts, pleasingly droll, melodic and -”

  “How did you know about the tickets, Mr Holmes?” asked Churchill.

  “Ha, your vandalism gave you away. As a subtle hint to Prince Kinski that you would prefer Wild West tickets to watching a comic opera, you cut the advertisement for the Buffalo Bill show out of my Times two days ago. I noticed an envelope addressed to His Highness with our outgoing correspondence. I am sure that the cutting was attended by a heart-rending begging letter. Your face when you opened your correspondence this morning told me that you had been successful.”

  Churchill nodded, beaming. “I asked for four tickets, three for us and one for Billy, as he’s dying to go, but Prince Kinski has decided views on my mixing with members of the servant class and he refused my request.” He looked at me.

  “What? My dear boy, you must realise that Wild West tickets are very expensive, particularly compared with tickets for the Savoy Opera.” I turned to Holmes. “Our finances have been seriously depleted recently.”

  “Take it out of Churchill’s salary. Do you agree, young man?”

  “Oh, yes, Mr Holmes, with pleasure.”

  “We will see what we can do,” Holmes said. “Thomas Cooke’s have the agency for the tickets, I believe. Send Peterson from the commissionaire’s stand. Money, Watson.”

  Churchill bounded out the door.

  “Salary, Holmes?” I asked. “What salary?”

  The Boy on the Palomino

  Our cab joined the throng of carriages moving slowly towards the new grounds at Olympia, with a thrilled Billy as one of our party. We had battered our poor pageboy with so many injunctions to behave himself before his betters that he had visibly shrunk an inch or two, and he started like a nervous colt at every noise.

  We could tell that we were nearing the grounds by a strange animal smell that pervaded the air.

  “Buffalo,” said Holmes.

  “Or Red Indians,” I suggested in a jocular vein. My remark went unappreciated by my fellow passengers.

  Prince Kinski’s influence provided us with comfortable seats in a section close to the Royal Box. Application of five-shillings grease to an attendant afforded us an extra seat for Billy, much to the annoyance of an American couple with a fat child who shared the box.

  I saw Holmes nod and wave his stick in his Bohemian fashion to several acquaintances.

  “That is Mr Oscar Wilde,” said Holmes. “I acted for him in an unconventional little matter.”

  I looked across into a neighbouring box where the aesthetical gentleman sat with a lady that, by his attentions to her, was clearly his wife. His hair was ridiculously long, of course, but his dress was far more sober than I would have expected. I had read some of his pieces in The Pall Mall Gazette, and thought them clever and well argued. I had recently seen a notice that he was to take over as editor of The Lady’s Journal. His manners did seem foppish, but - he tur
ned, smiled at me and waved. I was instantly abashed and furious with myself for staring at him. I hid behind my programme until he looked away. I confined my future attentions to the scene before me.

  A vast, circular, open ground lay before the stands. On one side, we could see the tents of the Indian Village with people moving about and smoke rising in curls. On the other, various groups of performers assembled. Small herds of wild animals wandered here and there. I saw a buffalo for the first time, and I realised that Holmes had been right about the source of the stink. There were also deer, antlered elk, and wild horses. A huge backdrop of white-topped mountains and curious rock structures curved behind the ground giving a vivid impression of reality. A band played popular songs. I recognised ‘Yankee Doodle’ and another tune the name of which escaped me.

  I consulted my programme. The ground was a third of a mile in circumference, it claimed, and could hold forty-thousand spectators. Ha, ha, I thought, we are in America now, where everything is bigger and, at least according to its inhabitants, better.

  A sudden flourish of trumpets, and a rider cantered into the arena on a fine chestnut horse. I knew him instantly as Colonel William F Cody, the frontier scout and impresario popularly known as Buffalo Bill. His long black hair spilled over his shoulders, and he wore the same tan jacket, black trousers, long leather boots, and wide sombrero hat that adorned the thousands of colourful lithograph posters that had blanketed London that season. His moustache and beard were even more luxuriant in real life than in the portraits plastered across the city. He received a loud cheer and a burst of applause.

  He bowed to each section of the crowd.

  “Welcome to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show!” he yelled.

  A rider entered the arena at full pelt carrying the largest American flag that I had ever seen. It looked big enough for the topmast of an ironclad. He drew up in a cloud of dust beside Buffalo Bill and waved the flag furiously. The band played the national anthem of the United States and the crowd stood. Men doffed their hats, Holmes and our party included, and officers saluted. The American couple in our box sang the anthem lustily. At the conclusion of the song, they beamed at us, and we bowed. International relations were thus restored to amiability, and we cordially traded slices of Mrs Hudson’s beef loaf for four oranges and a paper bag of butter-popped corn; the latter was tasty, but had to be eaten by hand, a ticklish business if one were loath to have butter dripping from ones chin, or one’s fingers made gummy.