by Tim Symonds
To my relief the Emperor gave a slight inclination of the head. In his remarkably adequate English he said, ‘We must not question any of Sir Sherlock’s orders, must we, Dr. Watson. After all, he is Europe’s greatest consulting detective,’ adding with an attempt at a smile, ‘however bizarre his request.’
The Emperor swung his shoulders to allow me to switch the dressing to the other ear. It caused a colourful metallic design woven into the cloak in the middle of the Emperor’s back to become apparent, the red gold, emerald green and peacock-blue sigils glinting in the light. Holmes took an involuntary step forward. He pointed a bony finger.
‘That circle of dragons on Her Majesty’s beizi. If I’m not mistaken they’re composed of the wing cases of the Goliathus cacicus - the jewel-beetle.’
‘You are correct, Sir Sherlock,’ came the reply. ‘The Summer Palace imports such beetles from the same region as the Timneh parrots, Africa’s Gold Coast.’
‘Would you happen to know who stitched them on?’ Holmes asked.
‘I have no doubt it was Her Imperial Majesty herself,’ the Emperor answered. ‘She is famed for her seamstress skills. As a young girl she was called the ‘the goddess of the needle’.’
While this curious exchange was taking place, with great reluctance I switched the bandages. At Holmes’s instructions my patient turned the afflicted ear to the wall. The black powder residue on the side of the face was completely obscured in the shadow.
The Emperor reached up and took me by the wrist.
‘Dr. Watson,’ he whispered. ‘I need to stay alive. If this was an attempt on my life, you and Sir Sherlock from the great country of Ying-ji-li must discover the culprit. There are many who resist my plans to modernise China. They wish me ill. They must hurry. They are my adoptive Mother’s strongest supporters but they sense she does not expect to live much longer.’
I replied, keeping an eye on the door, ‘What would make them think she expects to die soon?’
‘She has already established the title by which she wishes to be canonised. It contains twenty-two characters, six more than she was born with. Of those six - which she herself added - the third and fourth mean ‘Equal of Heaven’ which places her on a footing with Confucius. The fifth and sixth raise her higher than the Sage for they stand for ‘Increase in Sanctity’. Confucius was only ‘Manifestor’. She is therefore prepared to go. When and if she does depart, I can set plans in train once more to modernise my nation...’
He looked fearfully towards the great door ‘...but my followers fear the Obstructionists plan to transform me into ‘a hanged ghost’, the ghost of a person who dies due to suicide or execution. If I die first...’
‘Your Imperial Highness,’ I burst out, ‘I can assure you your life is not endangered in the slightest by a broken eardrum! Your aunt is Regent at best? Can’t you assert yourself? After all, you are the designated Son of Heaven.’
The sound of agitated voices came closer. He motioned towards the door and whispered, ‘My position is desperate. We have a saying, ‘He who is not accustomed to train savage beasts should do nothing to goad them to fury’. I am like a man who rides a tiger, who hesitates whether it’s more dangerous to continue his ride or to jump off.’
He looked up at me with a great sadness in his eyes.
‘Without your and Sir Sherlock’s concern it may be the extinction of my line.’
A tumultuous knocking followed. At Holmes’s signal the eunuch Kou gave way. The Empress Dowager burst through just ahead of General Yuán, shouting ‘He isn’t dead, is he? Not really dead!’
She came to an abrupt stop at the pathetic sight of the Emperor. He looked back at her like a deer in the shadows, a hand held against the bandage covering his good ear, wincing as though that was the orifice causing him torment.
Holmes bowed.
‘Never fear, Your Majesty, His Highness is very much alive. A crow carrying a firecracker. A misfortune. Horseplay. The left eardrum has been damaged, nothing more!’
He pointed at the bandaging over the good ear.
‘As you can see, my colleague Dr. Watson has done all that’s required. His Majesty will be as good as new once the bandages come off.’
I felt General Yuán’s touch on my elbow. He stepped back, motioning me to join him.
‘Doctor,’ he asked in a confidential manner, ‘your medical opinion, please.’
‘The eardrum is quite badly perforated,’ I replied.
‘Is it life-threatening?’
‘Not at all!’ I replied. ‘That I can assure you.’
‘How long will it take to heal?’
‘Altogether a few weeks. It must be kept dry to ensure the tear heals without infection. In time, the hearing should be fully restored.’
‘A crow carrying a firecracker attacks His Imperial Highness,’ the General mused. ‘Does Sir Sherlock believe his own words when he calls it horseplay?’
In a low voice he continued, ‘This may be no game. What if it was not ‘a misfortune’?’
‘By which you imply...?’
‘No-one would use black powder when gelignite is easily available. A true assassin could easily have charged the firecracker with the sort of explosive we use for rock-blasting. That would have sent chunks of the Sacred Head flying across the waters, even sunk the launch.’
‘I haven’t understood what you...’
‘What if it’s a conspiracy dreamt up by the Emperor himself?’
I gave the General an incredulous stare.
I asked, ‘Why in Heaven’s name would the Emperor organize an assassination attempt against his own person...?’
‘Because the Son of Heaven has been simmering since the Old Buddha demoted him to the unhappy lackey you see before you. This is the Middle Kingdom. If this is a plot there may be method in their madness. There are many who look to put China’s long and backward past behind her. It’s not impossible he hopes to regain authority by prompting a violent uprising against the Conservatives. A damaged eardrum might be worth enduring in return for the untrammelled power he once possessed.’
He gave a small jerk of his chin towards the Empress Dowager.
‘If this gets out and hotheads among the Moderates and Progressives interpret it as a premeditated attack on the Emperor’s life, they will become inflamed. They will blame the August Mother. They will say she’s trying to rid China of their figurehead once and for all.’
‘General,’ I countered, raising my voice, ‘you have just heard the opinion of the greatest Consulting Detective in Europe. A cruel past-time gone wrong. Probably some eunuchs at play, nothing more.’
As intended, the Empress Dowager caught my reassuring words. With a curious choking laugh she said, ‘But say this was not a game - say it was an assassination attempt. It failed, but that does not mean they are not among us, here in Peking, ready to try their hand again. They are cunning beyond compare! Tomorrow I shall send out an order to kill every crow across the whole of the Empire, destroy every one of their nests, cut down every tree they nest atop. This new weapon must never be employed in my Empire again.’
She pointed at the beizi.
‘Take it off,’ she commanded the Emperor. ‘I shall have it destroyed. Otherwise I will always associate it with the misfortune you’ve just endured.’
His Majesty glanced quickly at my companion. Holmes gave the smallest of nods. Without exposing the blackened side of his face the Emperor slipped off the cloak and held it out to his aunt.
It was time to leave. We backed away towards the exit. Reaching the door I found myself alone. Holmes had fallen a pace or two behind. He was staring back with rapt attention at my patient. The Emperor was almost obscured behind the bent-over figures of the Empress Dowager and the General. The Son of Heaven’s hand jutted out from between them, clenched except
for the index finger. The finger was moving round and round, tracing a circle in the air.
Seconds later Holmes and I were back outside.
***
It was the Hour of the Dog, after day but before night, when we clambered back into our carriage. The Forbidden City was clearing of traffic. The nightly call came from the Palace of Heavenly Purity at the centre of the Forbidden City - ‘Draw the bolts, lock up, careful with the lanterns’. Vendors of old iron were tying up their stock and humping it away. Barbers clipped the last of the day’s toenails. Itinerant cooks fried the last of the grease-balls. Crows left their daily pickings and flew off to roost. The monotonous chant of the water coolies ceased. As the final drawn-out sounds of the call died away, a thousand doors and windows slammed shut.
In the privacy of the carriage I said pointedly, ‘The Empress-Dowager seemed greatly concerned for the Emperor’s well-being.’
‘She did, didn’t she,’ Holmes agreed cordially.
‘Commendable,’ I pursued.
‘Very,’ came the reply, followed by ‘What did Yuán say when you asserted it was all a prank gone wrong? I heard you...’
‘He agreed it couldn’t have been a serious attempt on the Emperor’s life. Even before I myself said so, he pointed out that no trained assassin would use black powder when gelignite is easily available.’
Holmes threw me a curious glance.
‘That’s what he said? And then?’
‘He came up with a most absurd proposition. He wondered whether the whole thing was set up by the Emperor, aiming to trigger an uprising among the Modernists and restore himself to power!’
‘Ingenious idea, Watson,’ Holmes replied in a thoughtful voice. ‘‘Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam, rexque futurus’. Here lies Arthur, king once, and king to be. According to Sir Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, that was the inscription on King Arthur’s tomb.’
He continued, ‘Such a conspiracy theory would certainly explain the use of black powder rather than a more powerful explosive. You’re positive your friend’s words were ‘no trained assassin would use black powder when gelignite is easily available’?’
‘Precisely those words,’ I assured him.
‘Before that, you say you made no reference to the type of explosive charge?’
‘That’s correct, Holmes,’ I replied.
Holmes reflected before posing another question.
‘That beizi, Watson. The Emperor’s aunt had hardly been there two minutes when she snatched it back. Did that surprise you?’
‘Why should it surprise me? She’s known to be extremely superstitious. What’s so strange about wanting to destroy it after an incident like that?’
As I spoke my eyes strayed to the streets outside our carriage windows. I noticed uniformed men swarming into the streets.
‘Look, Holmes, the guards. Those are troops of the Beiyang Army, under Yuán’s personal command. They’re being quadrupled. He must believe an uprising is at least on the cards.’
My companion glanced out and began to hum a tune. Holmes was musical and much attached to his Stradivarius. I listened carefully. Brahms 2, the lighter third movement.
I said with a smile, ‘It could be improved with a couple of Flugelhorns pitched in B-flat.’
The humming ceased. Holmes frowned.
‘What could?’
‘That piece by Brahms.’
After a further pause Holmes continued, ‘The crow. Why didn’t it fly straight up in the air when it was released, as you would expect? What do you make of it flying straight to the Emperor’s shoulder on the launch?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea why it did so,’ I replied.
A string of questions followed, more as though Holmes was interrogating himself than expecting answers from me.
‘The Palace guards...why do you suppose they failed to wait for the Emperor at the Paifang?’
I shook my head.
‘Or the disappearance of the flat boats carrying portable stoves?’ Holmes continued.
‘Again, not the faintest. Have you?’
‘My dear Watson,’ he said, with a touch of impatience, ‘try a little analysis yourself. The use of black powder in the firework, what do you make of that?’
‘I presume black powder is often used in fireworks.’
‘So we agree with the General - if this were an assassination attempt a much more powerful explosive should have been used?’
‘Certainly,’ I replied.
‘None of these matters strike you as suggestive facts?’
‘No, Holmes. At least not sufficient to raise suspicion of an assassination plot, rather the opposite.’
‘The cloak the Empress Dowager sent the Emperor to wear aboard the Shishaquita–and snatched back. What do you make of that?’
From long and often hurtful experience I knew that any matter Holmes returned to –especially one which appeared insignificant when first mentioned - might prove later to be a clue of exceptional importance. Holmes’s powers of observation and speed of inference had always been a source of undiminished wonder. He perceived relationships between facts which to others remained unconnected and without meaning. As it was, I had no idea why he had returned to something so inconsequential, even trivial, as the beizi.
‘I did wonder at the lack of embroidery,’ I offered hopefully.
‘Well noted, Watson!’ my comrade exclaimed. ‘The scarcity of embroidery is extremely interesting. That one patch, what did you make of it?’
‘The fact the dragons were sewn from the wing-cases of jewel-beetles imported from the Gold Coast? I don’t find that surprising. Rare and costly items flow in to the Forbidden City from all corners of the globe.’
Holmes frowned.
‘I was not so much concerned with the source of the wing-cases so much as the use of the elytra themselves. How much do you know about jewel-beetles?’
In my days in India I had often seen representations of birds and animals stitched from insect wing-cases in ornamental fashion.
‘As it happens, Holmes, I replied, ‘I do know something about them. The forewings of certain beetle species are used in jewellery and embroidery all across the Indian sub-Continent. Why shouldn’t they be used in exactly the same way here?’
‘Then let’s consider another fact about the beizi. Did it surprise you how well it fitted the Emperor? Didn’t this singularity make you look at the mantle more critically?’
Thoughts of dinner were concentrating my mind. I replied, my brow knitting, ‘Holmes, I was far too busy being a doctor to check such extraneous detail as whether the beizi fitted him or not!’
‘Your term ‘extraneous detail’ is most interesting,’ said Holmes with a slight smile. ‘I wonder what else you failed to note? You still say the Benevolent Countenance sending the beizi to safeguard her nephew’s lungs from the damp air was a kindly gesture, nothing more?’
‘I would call it a kindly gesture, yes,’ I replied.
The carriage came to a halt at the entryway to our quarters at the Temple of the Loyal and Virtuous. After the driver had been dismissed I returned to our conversation.
‘Holmes, you ask what else have I failed to observe - let me tell you what I have observed! You continue to deduce from no solid evidence whatsoever that it was a deliberate plot against the Emperor’s life. You string together a hundredweight of assumptions to make a ton of evidence. Even if I agreed with you, which I do not, we can both agree with General Yuán in one conclusion at least. The would-be killers failed. Badly. I repeat, if they exist they must be rated among the most incompetent assassins who ever lived. To use black powder hoping to blow someone’s head off... no wonder it failed! We know from schooldays the Chinese were responsible for four great inventions: the compass, papermaking, print
ing - and gunpowder. Even the most juvenile member of the Brotherhood of Assassins would know a gunpowder firework would damage an eye or ear, blacken the skin - but kill?’
‘You say failed, Watson,’ Holmes returned. ‘I say far from it. I say there is evidence of premeditation and careful planning in this bizarre little event. I shall assume whoever is behind the firecracker attack has achieved exactly what they had in mind. I say there’s a life still threatened, the Emperor’s. Sir Edward Grey called him China’s best hope to avoid collapse into civil wars and outside intervention. We now need to work out what next the assassins plan. We must safeguard the Emperor at all costs.’
I grimaced, wondering if here in this strange land even my old comrade-in-arms could be out of his depth. In England he would make much of codes and ciphers, footprints on the floor, blood-stained weapons. Here in China we had none of these familiar clues. Just the remnants of the unfortunate crow and Holmes’s obsession with the beizi.
‘Come, Holmes - are you really saying all that palaver took place simply to shatter an eardrum?’
‘Not any eardrum, Watson. The Emperor’s. Humour me. For the moment let’s take a working hypothesis that it was merely Act One.’
‘If shattering his ear was the sole aim of the attack,’ I replied, ‘it’s simply inexplicable.’
‘Unless, rather than the brotherhood of incompetents you suggest, we are up against a singular mind, a brain equal in complexity to any we’ve ever encountered.’
‘Including the deceased infamous Professor Moriarty, the greatest enemy we ever encountered?’ I replied, teasing.
‘Perhaps,’ came the unexpected reply.
Questions whirled through my mind. Far from clearing matters up, Holmes’s succession of facts added fresh elements to an ever-deepening mystery. Why was my comrade making so much of how well the beizi fitted the Emperor? Why could it be of the slightest importance that the Empress Dowager snatched the cloak back, saying she would destroy it? And why was it less important the jewel-beetles were sourced at great cost all the way from the Gold Coast than the fact the Empress Dowager herself may have sewed them on?
