by A S Croyle
My feet aching, I sat down across from him and removed my boots. “What do you have there?” I asked.
“We have here a dollop of blood from a mutilated swan,” he said.
“A swan? Another swan like the one you examined for Mycroft after the Lord Mayor’s Show last year?”
“Yes, and like the one we found after this year’s show in November. Now this one has turned up. Just a month has passed, not a whole year. It seems we may have a serial killer of swans on the loose and his rage is escalating. It is quite baffling.”
Serial killer... a term he had applied to the British Museum murders we’d solved the year before. “So, it’s a series of murders like those we solved last year then? Only swans this time. Not people.”
“Yes, precisely. And according to my brother Mycroft, if I do not solve this case forthwith, if I do not find out who is mutilating the Queen’s swans, England shall fall.”
Chapter 2
I glanced at my watch, slipped my boots back on, and rose. I needed to get to my office.
“So I have no theory as yet,” he said. “No working theory as to why someone would wish to harm Her Majesty’s swans.”
Still staring at the slide, he said, “I have no facts from which to draw any conclusions except that which is before me... a sample of blood and the mutilated creature itself.”
“And why did you decide to examine a blood sample?”
He sighed. “Mycroft insisted this time. Her Majesty wants to know if there is any possibility at all that whoever slaughtered the swan, while exhibiting disdain, even hatred for the Queen or the British government, may have had some degree of empathy for the creature.”
“Empathy? But it’s mutilated.”
“Quite. But perhaps that was done after the fact - after the swan was killed, and the mutilation is only to send a message.”
“Sherlock, I don’t understand.”
“There was a note, just as before.”
He had mentioned the notes but had not shared their contents. His interest now had piqued and he was clearly ready to draw me into his investigation.
“Each time a swan is killed, a note is left which says, ‘I showed it more mercy than was shown to me.’ So,” Sherlock continued, “it is Her Majesty’s fervent hope that the killer did not want the swans to suffer unduly before the savagery. She is apparently quite fond of them.”
“This is dreadful. Are you testing it for some poisonous concoction that would bring death on rapidly then? Like the poison used in the mercy killings last year?”
“Something similar to hydrocyanic acid, yes. I made a list of potential agents. Strychnine, for example, would...”
“...Not be commensurate with any sympathy for the creature,” I interjected. “It has been tested on frogs because of their extreme sensibility to the effects, and when immersed in the poison, frogs are seized with violent tetanic convulsions, in which...”
“...In which,” he interrupted, “the extremities become extended and the entire body becomes rigid. Yes, I know. I’ve experimented on frogs fresh from the pond. I observed that agitation hastens the action of even small quantities of the poison and a violent paroxysm can be induced by a sudden noise, like clapping.”
“They would succumb quickly to the poison,” I told him. “Swans, serene though they may look, can be quite violent, especially when someone intrudes upon their territory. They can be very aggressive in defence of their nests. I’ve heard them. They hiss, they whistle and snort, even the cygnets chirp and squawk harshly if they are disturbed. Mute swans often attack people who invade their territory, so the poison would act quickly, yes, but the death would hardly be merciful. And only someone familiar to the swans could get close enough at any rate.”
Again, he lifted an eyebrow. “You know something of swans then, Poppy?”
“Of course. It is not just Her Majesty, the Dyers and the Vintners who lay claim to them.”
“The who?”
“The city companies, the greatest subject swan owners on the river. They go annually to the Thames to mark the swans. But there are other owners throughout England. Did you never notice the swans in the river near Victor’s house when we spent so much time there that summer?”
“I wasn’t paying particular attention to the swans.”
I pondered this statement momentarily. I wondered if he were trying to tell me that his focus had been on me that summer in the Broads when he’d visited Victor Trevor, Sherlock’s one friend at Oxford and the man who had intended to marry me... the man who had left for his family’s tea plantation in India when he discovered that Sherlock and I had feelings for each other. Or had Sherlock been focused on the little sailing vessel we designed when we spent many lazy days on the river bank during his visit?
“In fact, until Mycroft enlisted me in this enterprise,” he said, “I thought of them as nothing more than something upon which to feast. We often had roast swan at Christmas. Our cook prepared it with several pounds of beef that were beaten into a fine mortar and stuffed inside the swan with some gourmand’s onion, a stiff meal-paste laid upon the breast and served with strong beef gravy.”
He smiled as if he’d just had a pleasant childhood memory. I’d come to know that there were few of those in that intrepid brain attic of his.
“In fact, despite the Queen’s affection for the creatures,” he went on, “she allowed her youngest son, Prince Leopold, to send a swan to Dr. Ackland, his tutor at Oxford for Christmas dinner. Do you remember Dr. Ackland?”
“Of course.”
I had attended a rowing race with Victor at Oxford during Eights Week; my bull terrier bit Sherlock and he fell and sprained his ankle. That was how we met. Ackland was the physician who had treated Sherlock that day.
“There’s a lovely old fable that a swan’s life fades away in music,” I said.
“Oh, Poppy. Like the legend of Apollo’s bird singing his own requiem, I suppose. Such legends are as old as Homer’s epics.”
“And alluded to by Aristophanes and other ancient poets.”
“You know that I have no use for poetry. Or poets,” he added, and I knew instantly he was referring to my friend Oscar Wilde.
“In Shakespeare,” I pressed on, “when King Henry is told that his father sang in the frenzy of death, he says, ‘I am the cygnet to this pale, faint swan who chants a doleful hymn to his own death. And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings his soul and body to a lasting rest.’ So Shakespeare may have believed-”
“Shakespeare! Cease!” he cried, laughing. “Perhaps poets and playwrights are unwilling to surrender to the fallacy of this belief, but nature, truth and science must prevail.”
Realizing that poetry and legends meant nothing to Sherlock, I asked, “Where is the swan?”
“Over there on the table beneath the sheet.”
With a sigh, I went over to examine the swan’s mandible. Lifting the sheet, I saw the royal marks. “There are marks. Were there marks on all of the swans’ mandibles?”
He nodded. “I did notice marks, yes,” he said.
“The marks are important, Sherlock. They display ownership.”
“It hadn’t occurred to me that this was how Mycroft knew it was a royal swan. They are all the same to me. Although now that I come to think of it, Mycroft did point out the marks. He mentioned the swan-mark of Eton. He said that it has an armed point and the feathered end of an arrow. He said this is represented by the nail-heads on the door of one of the inner rooms of the college.”
“And you did not make note of that?”
“You know that I attended Harrow - rather because my father insisted on Eton and my brothers went there. So at the mention of Eton, my mind retreats. So then,” he continued, “the royal swans are marked as well?”
“That’s the purpose of th
e swan-upping. Swan-upping is an old, old tradition, Sherlock. It dates back to the twelfth century, I think. And the mute swan was given royal status centuries ago. I think the royal office of Keeper of the Swans dates back to the fourteenth century. Owning swans has long been a status symbol, Sherlock. Anyone stealing eggs or driving swans away at breeding time or slaughtering them is subject to a severe fine. And anyone who is not a swanherd who carries a swan hook by which swans could be taken from the river is liable to a fine... something like thirteen shillings and sixty-some pence.”
“You do know something about these creatures then.”
“Certainly I do.”
“How do you know all of this?” he asked.
“Because I am brilliant,” I quipped. “Sherlock, seriously, we have a whole game of swans bearing our manorial mark at Burleigh Manor, and there are still many owners of swans in Norfolk and Suffolk. These marks - annulets, chevrons, crosses and crescents and such-like - are cut upon the bill with a knife. During the swan-upping, the cygnets, the babies, are given the same marks as their parents. The swans are driven into the bank where a cob and pen have their beaks examined for ownership and the babies are marked with the nicks. It’s a very big festival.”
“Wait, a cob and pen?”
“Cobs are the male swans. Pens are the females. The royal swan-mark remained unchanged from the commencement of the reign of King George III... three horizontal marks and two vertical on either side.” I took up a pen and the notebook next to his microscope and drew the mark. “But the royal swan mark of Queen Victoria consists of five open pointed ovals, two cut lengthways and three cut transversely. Like this,” I said, sketching out her mark. “Two nicks is the mark of the Vintners Company.”
“Well, whatever is damaged on the creatures,” he said, “the mandible remains intact. Even this recent one, which was horribly marred and disfigured... its mandible was not defaced.”
“I believe this is significant, Sherlock. The act of mutilation is not intended as an act of rage against the swans. By choosing specifically royal swans, it is a message of what the killer would like to do to Her Majesty. Just like the last murder case we solved, the killer is sending a message.”
Chapter 3
“Let’s get something to eat, Poppy,” Sherlock said, standing and donning his waistcoat.
“You’re going to eat while you are working?”
“This case is a puzzlement, I’ll admit, but it certainly does not require intense intellectual activity.”
“I really should go, Sherlock. You’ve seen what it’s like out there. People are very ill.”
As he shoved his right arm into the sleeve of his coat, he nodded. “Yes, I’ve been studying that aspect of this damn fog as well. I went to the Botanic Gardens in Regent’s Park this morning and measured the barometer. It was unusually high, 30.54 at nine o’clock. A London fog is a complex phenomenon, isn’t it? So different from its country counterparts. I remember from when we stayed at Holme-Next-the-Sea that a country fog can be somewhat pleasant.”
I flinched momentarily, recalling the fog that swirled through the little village, but mostly remembering our night together there.
“Just a puff of white without smell and not all that disagreeable,” Sherlock added. “It does not thicken after sunrise. It is pure, condensed vapour. But this with which we are faced here in the city is more than wind, temperature and vapour. It increases after the sun rises. A white handkerchief like the one you always carry attracts particles of soot like a magnet. It is a black haze that covers criminal activities, a perfect cover for intractable evil.”
“And it endangers the health of our citizens,” I said.
“Yes, yes. It does do damage to health and property because of the smoke and soot in the air. Winter is the worst, isn’t it? On this holiday everyone is celebrating today - the coal being pushed out of private houses - that is what is primarily responsible for this blanket of darkness.
“Do you realize, Poppy, more than a million chimneys are breathing out smoke and soot and sulphurous acid and carbonic acid gas like fire from a dragon? We are in a crater filled with fumes.
“At least,” he prattled on, “when there is some modicum of a breeze, the smoke removes itself to other parts of the atmosphere and no dark fog forms. But when the earth is not sufficiently warmed by the sun during our winter months, and the air near its surface cannot rise, the lowest atmospheric strata gain little heat and the conditions are perfect to produce such a fog. One filled with flakes of soot, particles of carbon... and these cannot evaporate.”
“It’s so sad, really,” I said. “On a hot, breezy summer Sunday when the factories are not in operation, and fires not so much used for cooking, you can actually see the spires of St. Paul’s or Albert Hall. Now it’s all blurred with smoke.”
“Ah, these are dark and murky days, Poppy. I’ll wager that an easterly breeze blowing from the direction of the East India Docks would bring the smoke of ten miles of houses, and at Holloway, a southerly breeze would be filled with the pollution of seven miles or more. The distance to which coal-smoke travels without reaching the ground seems almost infinite. Richmond is just nine miles from here, but views of it are hidden most of the time by the ugly mist. This grey filth reaches to Belgravia and Mayfair now as well.
“Have you ever watched from shore the smoke of steamers passing through the English Channel on a calm day?” he asked.
I nodded.
“The cloud of smoke left behind lies for hours in the same position, like the long, low hand of the Devil. Today, the quantity of smoke is hundreds, perhaps thousands of times greater. There is no escaping it.”
“It would seem so. But while your scientific analysis is all very interesting, Sherlock, the only thing that matters to me is that people are very ill because of it, dying of it, and I must try to help them. So thank you for the invitation to lunch, but I shall be on my way now.”
“But Poppy, what about the swans?”
My voice shrill, I asked, “What about the swans? Or the bees?” I swallowed hard. “I am sorry, Sherlock. I do love the swans and I know you love your bees. But right now people are a bit more important to me.”
Chapter 4
As I hurried back to my medical office, I pondered Sherlock’s research into the cause of the fog and the illnesses I had been treating all week, but as there was nothing I could do to prevent the fog or eliminate it, the only thing that mattered was how to treat those who came to me for help. The aged, the weak, the infirm suffered most.
A few days before Christmas, my brother Michael had treated three young men, who were out together in the evening. Two immediately fell ill from the effects of the fog and died, and the third had a sharp attack of illness. Deaths from whooping-cough in London were unprecedentedly numerous, almost two hundred. From bronchitis it was far worse. I was no statistician, but the counts at St. Bart’s and St. Thomas were close to seven hundred, and of those, two-thirds were likely due to the character of the fog. It was worse than the casualty count after a great battle. Uncle said that the increase in mortality rates at the hospital were more than fifty percent. I’d read a newspaper article earlier in the week that stated:
It is smoke that makes London fogs so mischievous... The death-rate during a few days of dense fog palpably mounts to an extraordinary degree... It would be idle to doubt that bronchitis and lung-diseases are dangerously heightened by moderately thick smoke-fogs, when the thickest fogs produce so great a mortality from those diseases... we must reckon a large annual loss of life from the perpetual presence in the London atmosphere of smoke and soot... especially those which happen to be in a weak state of health, as those recovering from fever.
Surely, I thought, if someone like Sherlock Holmes attacked this dilemma as he did his criminal cases... if he would investigate it and determine the exact nature of the ‘cri
me,’ he could find a solution. But I highly doubted he had any such inclination.
Much to my surprise, when I arrived at my office near the British Museum, patients stood in a queue that reached down the hallway. I surmised that the range outside the hospital was full, that they had nowhere else to go, and that they had concluded that even a young, female doctor was better than none at all. I did wonder if my brother Michael had sent some of the overflow at the hospital directly to me. I ushered them in and asked them to be seated. Then I set about the business of treating them.
Young and old, male and female, common workers and genteel alike, all presented with symptoms such as I had usually seen only in the chimney sweeps, street sweepers and dustmen. I examined one after another, each complaining of cough and phlegm and dyspnea - difficult or laboured breathing. Upon examination, each one had enlarged airspaces, hyperinflated chests, reduced expiratory breath sounds, and obstructed airways. The causes of bronchitis in those who were not engaged in dusty occupations was clearly the atmospheric and domestic air pollution to which Sherlock referred.
While I could identify the airflow obstruction and inflammation, I was at a loss as to how best to treat it. In medical school, I had read Baillie’s The Morbid Anatomy of Some of the Most Important Parts of the Human Body, which described and illustrated hyperinflated lungs with enlarged airspaces. Often autopsies of those who died revealed that the lungs did not collapse as they usually do when the air is admitted but remained distended, as if they had lost their power of contracting. I had also read Laënnec’s A Treatise on the Diseases of the Chest - Laënnec had coined the term emphysema - and A Treatise on the Diseases of the Chest by William Stokes of Dublin, Ireland, which included a chapter on emphysema in it. I’d also read all the recently published lectures on emphysema by another doctor, Thomas Hodgkin, a morbid anatomist at Guy’s Hospital.
