by Tim Symonds
I read out, ‘For those who die of poisoning, their orifices open, their face turns greenish black or green, their lips go purplish green, their nails appear dark green, and blood spews out of their mouth, eyes, ears, and nose.’
Frowning, I asked Wang, ‘When was Instructions To Coroners published - recently?’
‘Not so recent, Dr. Watson,’ he replied. ‘About seven centuries ago.’
‘Have a look at the section on the ‘three-laugh death powder’,’ Holmes said. ‘It’s rumoured to be undetectable. There’s just the one symptom - the victim dies after giving an eerie, sardonic grin three times. My other favourite is titled ‘Meets blood and seals throat’. The toxin from the antiaris toxicaria tree is found mostly in the provinces of Yunnan and Hainan. Once you’re infected with the poison you can only take seven steps forward or eight steps back before death.’
Holmes placed a vial on the Bunsen burner.
‘We’ll be in difficulty if we can’t discover which toxin they used. We won’t be able to pin the assassination attempt on a specific person.’
He reached out to a small handful of fragrant, fleshy, pale-pink, tubular flowers.
‘Winter Daphne. I’ve already tested it. None of these other native plants matches the toxin on the cotton plug either.’
With something approaching despair in his voice, he said, ‘Have we at last been defeated, Watson? If so, it will be very hard to bear.’
***
It was late evening. I was again deep into The Mystery of the Ocean Star. Out there, alone in the ocean, lay a mysterious ship, apparently abandoned.
‘She was rolling to the run of the swell, and the swinging of the canvas flung a hurry of shadowing over her... what was to be made of the mystery of a vessel that exhibited the most certain signs imaginable of human life being aboard, and that was yet as tenantless as a newly dug grave? There was the galley fire burning, there had been the saucepan bubbling and the fowl boiling, and the slush-lamp in the forecastle flaming.’
Holmes burst into my rooms. There was a palpable air of excitement about him, a striking contrast with his subdued expression a few hours earlier.
‘Watson,’ he cried, ‘Do you still have the reply from Mycroft - in which the General’s chauffeur detailed the journey between Brighton and the sons’ school - Buckler’s Hard and so on?’
I struggled up.
‘Look Holmes,’ I groused, ‘I read it out to you yesterday, word for word.’
‘Answer my question, please, Watson,’ came the reply.
Reluctantly I pointed to the hat-rack.
‘You’ll find the telegram in the inside pocket of my coat.’
He retrieved the piece of paper and brought it close to the lantern. His body went rigid.
‘Watson,’ he cried. ‘We have him! I believe we have him!’
He held up the piece of paper accusingly.
‘You failed to read out the most important information of all!’
I cudgelled my brains to find some possible fact he was referring to.
I protested, ‘I’m sure I gave you anything which could in any way be relevant to your case.’
In a veritable frenzy of excitement my comrade shook the piece of paper at me.
‘Yuán’s stroll in the New Forest! You didn’t mention Yuán’s stroll in the New Forest! It says, ‘At Buckler’s Hard he went for a quick stroll in the nearby woods’. Really, Watson, if we are to continue working together you must...’
Angrily I interrupted, ‘For Heaven’s sake, Holmes, of course I didn’t bother to read that out. ‘He went for a quick stroll in the nearby woods’ - so what? I thought it could embarrass the General. The New Forest is quite some way from Brighton. There were no lavatories around. I doubt if they carried a jordan in the vehicle. He’s not a young man. I assumed by then he needed to relieve himself.’
‘Well, well, no matter,’ my comrade exulted, ‘things are turning a little in our direction at last. We are almost ready to invite the General to the première of your Aeroscope Productions.’
I scrutinized the dancing figure before me.
‘Holmes, someone deciding to take a stroll in the woods before continuing a lengthy drive to Sherborne hardly merits this bee-dance you’re performing - let alone all this telegraphic traffic between China and England?’
‘Not ‘someone’, Watson. General Yuán. General Yuán took the stroll into the forest. And yes, ‘all this telegraphic traffic’ was worth it - precisely because of his stroll. Now we can spring the trap!’
And with that, with not a word of explanation, he was gone.
I picked up The Ocean Star from the floor but the time to read was past. My thoughts kept straying to the tissue of mysteries and improbabilities the whole of Holmes’s ‘plot’ had become.
***
I was not looking forward to a confrontation. I would do as Holmes counselled and come with the top-breaker pistol after slipping in the safety catch. The .476 calibre bullet could stop a charging boar in its tracks. I retained considerable feelings of warmth towards the General despite the ruthless way he dominated his officers and men. I liked his engaging candour. I felt the camaraderie military men develop for each other. He had treated my report with professional respect. Yet there was the incontrovertible evidence of the Aeroscope, albeit countered by the fact we had as yet failed to identify the liquid soaking through the cotton earplug.
To steady my nerves I opened my wardrobe. I could choose the Morning dress, my last purchase before embarking on my long journey, or if the confrontation was delayed into the evening, the more formal frock-coat. I settled on the single-breasted cheviot Morning coat. My tailor had urged an elegant shade of iron-grey to go with the striped spongebag trousers, the waistcoat slightly lighter in colour. And a grey silk Ascot and tie tack.
***
General Yuán arrived at the suggested time. He came alone. Holmes invited him to take a seat on a tall stool at the Mutoscope. Smiling broadly the General told us he was quite conversant with these machines. He had spent an hour on the Palace Pier at Brighton putting coppers into coin-in-the-slot peep-shows. Especially, he said, eyes twinkling, ‘What The Butler Saw’.
To which Holmes replied, ‘General, I think you will find this show almost as entertaining.’
In jovial mood our guest bent over the device. At the turn of the handle, the flicker-cards began a rapid click. Appreciative noises accompanied the first sequences - the Camel’s-Back Bridge, the Marble Boat with the Empress Dowager waving from the upper deck, holding a then-living Shadza. The clicking of the wheel slowed. Holmes murmured sotto voce, ‘He’s arrived at the orchard scene with the Emperor asleep under the pipa tree.’
As though presenting a Magic Lantern travelogue, Holmes commented aloud, ‘Next, General, you see Chief Eunuch Li coming into view. Note the little jar in his hand. Is that someone coming into view behind him? So it is - it’s Her Imperial Majesty stepping cautiously through the pomegranate trees. And behind her? Why, no-one in the whole of China would have any trouble recognising him - it’s General Yuán.’
Holmes’s voice changed to fake alarm.
‘Now Li is creeping up to the sleeping Emperor. What in Heaven’s name is Li doing? He’s lifting up the bandages. He looks back at Her Imperial Majesty. She beckons him to go ahead. He’s dripping the contents of the jar into the Son of Heaven’s ear. Now Li pats the bandage back in place. He rejoins the General and the Empress Dowager. You congratulate him, General. The Empress Dowager is giving one last backward look at the sleeping Emperor. All three of you make your stealthy exit.’
My comrade ended on a poetic note:
‘Once more the Emperor is alone with his dreams and the birds.’
The clicking of the cards stopped. The stool crashed backwards. Our guest straightened up. His eyes
narrowed. He stared from Holmes to me and back as if at alarming apparitions. The atmosphere had turned ugly.
‘Gentlemen, what’s all this about?’
Holmes responded, ‘General, isn’t it remarkable how similar this sequence is to a scene in a certain William Shakespeare play? The Tragedy of Hamlet. Act 1, scene 5. As the King lay sleeping in an orchard, the murderer poured poison into his ear. Wouldn’t you agree the mastermind of this assassination plot must be conversant with the great Bard’s play?’
Holmes added as though in an aside to me, ‘But how could this be, Watson? No-one in China could be familiar with the plot in Hamlet. Plays showing the murder of a monarch, fictitious or not, are strictly forbidden in the Chinese Empire.’
Yuán stepped away from the Mutoscope, his face twisted into a scowl.
‘Gentlemen,’ he continued, ‘very clever. Very clever indeed! Sir Sherlock, you have lived up to your reputation. I had thought... but that can wait.’
The scowl disappeared to be replaced by a seductive grin.
‘I’m sure we can come to an arrangement!’
I heard Holmes ask, ‘First of all, General, is it too late to save the Kuang-hsü Emperor?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ came the reply. ‘Even as we speak his organs are being destroyed. Two or three days and he will be no more.’
He placed a hand on top of the Mutoscope. A sly look had come into his eyes.
‘Sir Sherlock, you could have passed this to the Reformists in Shanghai. You haven’t done so. Perhaps you and Dr. Watson have something else in mind? If it’s wealth you want, I can make you the richest men in England. Richer than your King. Simply hand me this flicker-book and go home. Forget all about it. Name your price and camel-loads of treasures from the Emperor’s Palace will be yours for the taking - blood-red rubies from Burmah, Indian sapphires, rings and bracelets of Imperial Jade, 3,000-year-old artefacts from Sanxingdui of gold, bronze, ivory...’
‘My dear General,’ Holmes interrupted, ‘we wouldn’t dream of allowing you to loot the Emperor’s treasures. The Emperor might well object.’
‘If so, he won’t object for long!’ came the almost triumphant reply. ‘Her Imperial Majesty is already ordering altars to be set up all across the Empire for people to pray for the Emperor’s health and full recovery but he’s as good as...’
Holmes interrupted, ‘...dead? So you say. But is he?’
‘How do you mean?’ Yuán replied, tapping the Mutoscope. ‘You saw Li pour the poison into his ear! Within minutes it would have seeped through the broken...’
‘General,’ I intervened, ‘cast your mind back. Did Li pour the contents of the jug into the right or the left ear?’
The General replied impatiently, ‘The damaged one, of course.’
‘Which was?’ I asked.
The General laughed.
‘His left ear, of course!’
He pointed at me.
‘You should know! The one covered by your bandages. We didn’t have to be a second Sir Sherlock to...’’
‘My comrade bandaged an ear, certainly,’ Holmes interrupted again, ‘but that’s where your plot unravels. It was perfectly reasonable to take it for granted the firecracker shattered the ear beneath the bandage. In fact it was a little trap of ours. The bandage was placed over the good ear, not the one damaged by the blast. There was no way the poison could trickle into your victim’s gullet and do its work.’
The General was now confronting us like an animal at bay. The veins stood out like whipcord in his sinewy neck. His face glistened with sweaty moisture, as though freshly raised from a water-basin.
‘A trap?’ he snarled. ‘Nevertheless you can’t prove what the jar contained. I was just joking about poison. I can assure you it was a balm to help speed...’
‘Wrong again,’ Holmes broke in.
My comrade reached into a pocket and brought out the glass tube containing the small wad of cotton. He spoke in the quietest and most matter-of-fact tone.
‘This was retrieved from the Emperor’s left ear, the one Li poured your ‘balm’ into. Enough of the liquid soaked into it for investigation. I have made an analysis of its chemistry. The tubers, stems, and leaves of the plant the plotters used contain one of the most deadly toxins ever created by Nature.’
‘Even so,’ snapped the General, stabbing a finger at the cotton wad, ‘unless you can connect that plant to anyone, you have no evidence to prove I had anything...’
Holmes riposted, ‘But my dear General, we can trace it to someone...’
‘...and we have,’ I interposed.
At my words our guest’s face flushed and darkened. I expected him to say ‘Et tu, Brute?’. I reached a hand nervously into my pocket and fiddled with the pistol’s safety-catch.
Yuán blustered, ‘Confirm the regicide behind this fiendish plot, the one who switched the balm for the poison, and I assure you he’ll get the punishment he...’ at which he paused as though testing out his defence before continuing dramatically, ‘Was it Li himself, do you suppose? He has reason to fear the Emperor’s retribution when the Old Buddha dies. Did he switch the balm for a poison and ...’
My comrade broke in.
‘General, let’s see if between us we can discover the brain behind this ingenious plot. First it’s reasonable to deduce it must be someone who took note of the unusual murder technique in a particular Shakespearean play. The culprit must have dreamed up the plot after hearing the bitter words of King Hamlet’s ghost.’
‘Which were, Sir Sherlock?’ came the evasive response.
At which Holmes almost sang out the words:
‘Sleeping within my orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of my ears did pour
The leperous distilment; whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigour doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine.’
For a few moments there was silence. I intervened with, ‘We also deduce the principal assassin had access to two particular pieces of scientific knowledge.’
The General asked, ‘Why do you assume that?’
I replied, ‘The mastermind knew a fact unknown three centuries ago when Shakespeare wrote that play. Poison dripped into an ear can certainly drain down the auditory tube to the throat and into the stomach but with one crucial proviso - the eardrum must be freshly broken. Liquid cannot pass through an intact tympanic membrane.’
‘And the other piece of scientific knowledge?’ the General asked, breathing heavily.
‘Black powder,’ Holmes replied. ‘This Machiavellian mind possessed another distinction vital to the plot - a thorough knowledge of explosives. The sort of knowledge a man with a military background might possess. Act One called for a broken eardrum but not the death of the victim. The firecracker was loaded with black powder, deliberately. It accomplished its purpose admirably.’
The General’s brow darkened. Beads of sweat began to drip from his forehead.
‘Continue with this fiction if you must, Gentlemen,’ he responded, slapping the side of the Mutoscope. ‘Out of interest - so I can pass this amusing tale on to my sons - Sir Sherlock, you say you can trace the poison to an individual? By which means?’
‘We tracked down the source,’ Holmes replied. ‘It was a remarkably clever plan. More than clever, General–it was brilliant. I tested for the most toxic plants indigenous to High Asia.’
‘And
?’
‘Not one of them was the culprit.’
‘So there you have it!’ the General exclaimed, a look of relief crossing his face. Almost beseechingly he turned his gaze on me.
‘Dr. Watson, you see, it could only have been a foreigner who...’
‘I’m afraid not, General,’ Holmes’s retorted. ‘The poison came from a plant commonly known to natives of its region as Fool’s Parsley, described in detail in a well-known book on poisonous plants. The question is, General, where can Fool’s Parsley be found? You shake your head but you know the answer.’
Holmes continued smoothly, ‘The botanical name for the infamous Fool’s Parsley is the Hemlock Water Dropwort. The bulbous roots look like harmless garden turnips or radishes yet one root will kill a cow. In all of Nature, only in two marine creatures is a poison of this potency to be found– the blue-ringed octopus and the puffer fish. It’s the most-likely candidate for the ‘sardonic herb’ used for the ritual killing of elderly people in Phoenician Sardinia.’
‘How would I know that?’ came the General’s retort.
Holmes gestured in my direction.
‘Because Dr. Watson here telegraphed a well-known bookshop in Brighton. I’m sure you are acquainted with the name Blackwell’s? Where you went to purchase a copy of Wisden’s cricketing almanack for your sons, at my friend Watson’s suggestion? Blackwell’s remembers selling a copy of ‘Britain’s Most Poisonous Plants’ to an affable foreigner of Chinese extraction, a remarkably well-dressed man in a striped blazer and fine Panama hat. Their records showed the sale was on the very date you set off for your journey to Sherborne.’
The General’s eyes opened wide in surprise. My breath exhaled slowly. Holmes had taken a huge gamble. I had had no contact whatsoever with the bookshop.
Holmes reached into a pocket and withdrew a slim volume.
‘As it happens I have a copy myself, purchased at that very shop. I go nowhere without it. The plants are beautifully illustrated. Black Bryony. Dog’s Mercury. What is it about Fool’s Parsley that catches the eye, I wonder? Ah, here. ‘Poisoning with this plant results in abdominal pain, excitation, confusion, blurred vision, inflammation of the mouth and throat, duodenal congestion and skeletal paralysis’.’
