Death on a Pale Horse

by Donald Thomas

  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?”

  “Private Moss was never seen again. He may still be alive; he may be dead. A few months after the inquest on Captain Carey, the body of Private Arnold Levens was found in the new drainage canal just north of Calcutta. It was reported in the local press. The body had been there some time, and the cause of death could not be determined. He was identified by the contents of his pockets. It is a common enough story when a poor fellow is on the run, at the end of his tether, befuddled with drink perhaps.”

  “He destroys himself?”

  “Sometimes deliberately, Mr. Holmes, more often it happens accidentally. Something as simple as a fall into a canal while reeling drunk.”

  “And occasionally, no doubt, he is assisted. Thank you so much, Mr. Dordona,” Holmes said with brisk courtesy. “Until tomorrow afternoon, then.”

  From the window, veiled by its net curtain, we watched Samuel Dordona walk slowly back to the waiting cab and begin his return to the mansion blocks of Victoria.

  “He seems straight enough,” I said, clearing papers from the table for Mrs. Hudson’s maid-of-all-work to set down the tea things.

  Sherlock Holmes still watched the street from the window. He spoke as though he had not heard me.

  “I suggest Mr. Dordona no more wrote that letter than I did, Watson. It was written for him. Who can tell whether a colleague then posted it, leaving him no alternative but to keep an appointment with us?”

  “How can you possibly say that, Holmes?”

  “With every confidence, my dear fellow. Did you not notice his reluctance to commit his pen to paper in our presence?”

  “That was nothing!”

  “Was it? It is not just a matter of handwriting. Read his letter again. Then tell me whether the Mr. Dordona whom you have brought here could possibly have written it in his own person! Like his clothes, it is the letter of a clergyman from a stage comedy, not the resourceful client we have just met. There are two people in this. Who the other is I cannot yet say. But I have every intention of finding out before we go further.”

  “You think Samuel Dordona is a criminal? Surely not!”

  “You misunderstand, Watson. I should call Mr. Dordona decent and honourable, a good friend to Captain Carey. A credit to his calling. Paradoxical that he should also be such a calculating deceiver. An honourable but deliberate liar. A charming combination, is it not? Worthy of Robert Browning’s honest thief or tender murderer.”

  I stared at him as he turned away from the curtains, but knew that he would say no more just then. I said simply, “We shall see for ourselves at Carlyle Mansions at three o’clock tomorrow.”

  He looked at me in astonishment. “I have no intention, Watson, of going to Carlyle Mansions at three o’clock tomorrow.”

  “I don’t follow that, Holmes. You have already agreed to be there.”

  “You do not follow? Very well, I do not propose to be ambushed at Carlyle Mansions by Mr. Dordona or anyone else. Before three o’clock, I intend to know all there is to know about that establishment. If there is any ambushing, Watson, rest assured that I shall be the one to do it.”

  A light tap at the door and the entry of Molly with the tea and muffins on a tray put a stop to this conversation for the time being.

  As Holmes had previously remarked, we were not overburdened with clients just then. Much might depend on our success in the present investigation—possibly the entire future of our detective agency. During the rest of that afternoon, however, it seemed as if the assassination of the Prince Imperial and the death of Captain Carey had ceased to be worth further consideration. Holmes diverted himself for the next hour by taking his violin from its case and coaxing from it a newly discovered set of variations by the eighteenth-century Italian master Arcangelo Corelli.

  Only when I knew my friend better did I understand an important truth of his character. If the “Scotland Yarders” whom he mocked were so far behind him, it was because they practised as a profession what Sherlock Holmes regarded as an art. It was precisely when his whole being seemed to drift into the sublime abstraction of the music of the spheres that there came to him those intellectual inspirations which led him into some of his greatest practical insights.

  A little later, he announced that he might take a solitary stroll in the Regent’s Park. From the tone of his voice, I knew better than to suggest that I should join him. When I looked down from the window, however, I could not help noticing that he was walking briskly towards the Baker Street station of the Metropolitan Railway.

  7

  On the following morning, Holmes was up before his usual time. Shortly after ten o’clock, we walked to the Regent’s Park and called a cab off the rank. Not a word had been spoken as to whom we might “ambush” by our early arrival in Victoria—or who might ambush us if we failed to be there first! I stared from the window of the hansom at the first pink flush of almond blossom brightening the balconies of Park Lane in the cool spring. Our cabbie took the parkside avenue at a brisk clip.

  My companion made a gesture towards Green Park. “A survey of the field of action is never wasted, Watson. It would be a capital error to allow our rivals, if there are such, to establish themselves first. You will find a good many of these so-called mansion flats in Victoria. They tell me that mansions and underground railways are the peculiarities of that unfortunate district.”

  We were just then skirting the classic facades of Hyde Park Corner and passing the porticoes that line Grosvenor Place. Ahead of us rose the sooty residences of Carlyle Street and its neighbours, behind their Continental railway terminus at Victoria.

  “For my part,” I said, “I shall be rather relieved to find that the Reverend Mr. Dordona is alive and well. Whatever you may think, Holmes, I believe that he has put himself in peril for his friend, Captain Carey. And I do not see him as a liar.”

  Holmes gave one of his short grimaces. “An honourable liar,” he said enigmatically. “I was careful to qualify the description.”

  Carlyle Mansions was a place of considerable gloom. Its five floors of darkened industrial brick and baked stucco lay on one side of a street in deep shadow. A similar building faced it, far too close. The narrow streets of the area were lined with modern pastiches of Venetian and romanesque in dark red brick and yellow ornament. Each set of windows looked out on to nothing more cheering than the front or back of the next building.

  Yet the area had its uses. A man who wished to remain anonymous could choose no better locale. Mansion blocks were on the increase everywhere in London at this time. Their owners or landlords were as unidentifiable as their tenants. These buildings were not permanent homes, but lodgin
gs or chambers, hired out for short periods to save the costs of hotels. Solitary officers or civil servants on furlough from India or the Cape would very often take a set of two or three rooms. Yet even these seemed a little expensive for Samuel Dordona.

  There was also a constant supply of young men who came to town from the country to pass examinations for the Bar or the Foreign Office. They needed only a roof overhead and a peg to hang their hat upon. The tenants were bachelors frequently, spinsters rarely, married couples almost never. Here they lodged, attended by the porter at his desk in the lobby and the daily maid who dusted, laundered, and made the beds. A scattering of cheap cafés behind Victoria Street fed them from breakfast to supper for a few shillings a week. The tenants seldom spoke to one another or even knew who their neighbours were, nor did they know what went on in the world around them.

  At this hour of the morning, the lobby doors of Carlyle Mansions were pegged open for ventilation. Standing alone just inside this entrance was a slightly built man of middle years with a sallow complexion and dark eyes. His mournful features seemed contracted by some deep frustration. His expression was worried and dog-like. He looked like a pug that has lost the scent of its master. This individual stood dressed in a brown jacket and cravat, exchanging intermittent conversation with the uniformed keeper of the porter’s desk. There was something impulsive and ferret-like in the manner of the visitor’s inquiries.

  “I do believe,” Holmes murmured, “that we have been ambushed after all. And who was more likely to do it?”

  I had already recognised the figure by the porter’s desk as our Scotland Yard acquaintance Inspector Lestrade. He and Tobias Gregson were the two whom Sherlock Holmes had described to me as the best of a bad lot in the Criminal Investigation Division. The inspector turned to see who had infiltrated the lobby behind his back. His eyebrows lifted as he recognised us.

  “Mr. Holmes? Dr. Watson? You don’t tell me you have some interest in this case, sir? The Carlyle Mansions Murder, as they’re already calling it in the newspaper offices.”

  My heart almost stopped. I wondered with a shock which of our acquaintances might be dead. Surely not Samuel Dordona? Sherlock Holmes smiled.

  “Are they calling it that?” he asked the inspector. “Are they really calling it that? Our interest will depend in the first place, Lestrade, upon the identity of the corpse. It has an identity, I presume?”

  The detective dropped his voice, as if to keep the porter out of the conversation.

  “Not yet, Mr. Holmes. To tell you the truth, we’d give something to know the answer to that, sir. Just at present, unfortunately, the dead man chooses to remain anonymous. From all the evidence upon him, he seems to have come here on his own with his pockets empty. Unless he was robbed down to his last halfpenny and bus ticket. Believe that if you like.”

  “But the case is still murder, is it not? An officer of your repute would not be here for less than that.”

  Lestrade became whimsical at our expense.

  “It’s murder right enough, sir. Unless you fancy he might have shot himself through the head and then hidden the gun to aggravate the Criminal Investigation Department. Unfortunately, our Sir Melville Macnaghten has not arrived yet. The Commissioner has a Home Office Committee this morning in connection with the Irish explosions. Apologies for absence are not acceptable. Most insistent Sir Melville Mac was that the investigation must not start without him. So, Mr. Holmes, nothing has been touched yet except by the police surgeon to examine the body. Who knows whether this unfortunate fellow might not be one of your friends?”

  “A corpse without a name,” said Holmes, deeply sympathetic.

  “Most of ’em start that way, sir.”

  “And yet someone with a name must have hired the rooms that he now occupies.”

  I interrupted them.

  “I have an interest in the Reverend Samuel Dordona,” I said confidently, “as a client.”

  Lestrade’s mouth twisted in a humorous grimace. “So you may have, doctor. But for all I know—or care—no such person as Mr. Dordona exists.”

  “Was he not the tenant of number 49? If not, who was?”

  “Not your Mr. Dordona, doctor.”

  The inspector turned, still talking, and led the way to the stairs.

  “According to the account books and the porter, the tenants are the Evangelical Overseas Medical Mission,” he said cheerfully over his shoulder, “an organisation which according to our best information never came near the place and probably never existed.”

  I followed Holmes as he took the shallow granite stairs of the building easily, two at a time. The dusty light filtered through a glass dome above. We came to the landing of the fourth floor with its shabby patterned carpet, a parched fern in a terra-cotta pot and two upright wicker chairs. A uniformed sergeant, lounging on the post of a doorway painted chocolate brown, pulled himself up smartly as the inspector’s head appeared above floor-level. The brass number on the door confirmed this as 49 Carlyle Mansions. Lestrade tapped smartly on its panel and the door was opened by a plain-clothes constable.

  “Thank you, Constable Nichols, we’ll manage for ourselves now. Keep your eye on the porter and his desk. See he talks to no one about the case. Make a note of anyone who comes or goes.”

  The inspector continued his commentary as he closed the door behind us.

  “The dead man was found this morning, Mr. Holmes, between eight and nine. Before we could get here, that hell’s-gate porter downstairs went out and sold the story straight to the stop press of the Standard for half a sovereign. It’ll be all over the newsboys’ placards before we can get a start. They’ll have it up in print within the hour and on the streets in good time for the afternoon editions. No details, of course, but then it’s the headlines that sell newspapers.”

  He drew back so that we might view the shabby interior of the room.

  “Police surgeon’s gone. We had Dr. Littlejohn as usual in this area. Bullet wound to the head. He won’t know much more until after the autopsy. Everything stays put now until Sir Melville has been to see for himself.”

  He looked about him and sighed.

  “Most of our murders get tidied up by lunchtime. Not this one. This isn’t a straightforward case, gentlemen. No one could say that it was.”

  The sitting-room we had entered seemed all the larger and taller for its meagre furnishing and bare walls. A pair of sash-windows was overshadowed by Landor Mansions, the block on the far side of the street. What must be the bedroom and bathroom opened to one side, and what might be a kitchen on the other. Dusty dark-green paper, peeling a little by the picture rail, covered the walls. Its dado was a motif of faded summer flowers. The floor was covered by plain polished linoleum in bottle-green, with a rug before the stone fireplace and another beyond the desk. The furniture consisted of a round polished table with three dining chairs, placed between the windows. A day-bed in heavy mahogany and badly cracked black leather stood along the far wall. A sour smell of long-dead tobacco lingered in the curtains and fabrics.

  “You might do better living in a dentist’s waiting-room,” said Lestrade helpfully.

  Immediately before us, the knee-hole desk, with the fourth padded dining chair drawn up to it, stood clear of the walls. It was sideways to the nearer window. Petty crime abounds in such districts as this, and I had noticed that each sash window was equipped with an inset bolt. The frame could be lowered only two or three inches at the top unless this bolt was unfastened with something like a screwdriver. Two net curtains gave what privacy there was at present. They stirred a little in the draught as the door was closed behind us.

  The murdered man still sat at his desk, or rather he lay forward upon it, as if he had decided to rest his head quietly upon his crooked arm and take a nap. He was looking away from us. I could see little more than the back of his head and the clothes that he wore. He was dressed in a russet-brown tweed Norfolk jacket with a belt at the waist and a pair of gaiters. It was
the garb of a country gentleman who has arrived in London unprepared and has no clothes suitable for town. He patiently awaited the attention of the Scotland Yard Criminal Commissioner, Sir Melville Macnaghten.

  Lestrade became helpful again.

  “Shot first thing this morning by the look of it. Seven o’clock or so. Dr. Littlejohn knows a thing or two about guns. He did the case of the Fulham Laundry shooting last year. He reckons that this one hadn’t long been dead when found. The wound to the head had hardly stopped bleeding. Have a look at him, doctor, if you’d care to.”

  The inspector stepped back, as if expecting me to confirm the police surgeon’s diagnosis. I touched the dead man. The muscles of the jaw had begun to stiffen and the body to cool, confirming Littlejohn’s finding of the time of death at about half-past seven that morning.

  “That’s right, doctor,” said Lestrade encouragingly, “I tried the jaw. Just beginning to turn. We get to know these little tricks. You can’t always tell, of course. Last year there was a woman down in Hoxton with instantaneous rigor mortis after an alcoholic seizure. She was found standing up, stone-cold dead, leaning against a door with her arms folded. In this case it’s just his identity that’s playing us up.”

  As I stooped over the dead man, shutting out the inspector’s running commentary from my mind, Lestrade continued for Holmes’s benefit.

  “I can tell you how it was done, sir. We have the murderer’s method taped. No shot was heard by anyone. Curious, seeing that the rooms on either side had been occupied from the evening before until after the body was found. No weapon lying around, of course. More to the point, no cartridge case. There was no smell of gunpowder. No sign of burning nor amberite on the skin. The spread of the wound suggests it was made at a range greater than the width of this room.”