Sherlock Holmes and the Dead Boer at Scotney Castle

by Tim Symonds

  Title Page

  Sherlock Holmes and The Dead Boer At Scotney Castle

  By

  Tim Symonds

  Publisher Information

  First edition published in 2012 by

  MX Publishing

  335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive, London, N11 3GX

  www.mxpublishing.com

  Digital edition converted and distributed in 2012 by

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  © Copyright 2012 Tim Symonds & Lesley Abdela

  The right of Tim Symonds to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

  All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.

  The characters portrayed in this book are fictional and resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and not of MX Publishing.

  Cover artwork by www.staunch.com

  Author Biog

  Photo Lesley Abdela

  Tim Symonds was born in London and grew up in Somerset, Dorset and Guernsey. After several years in East and Central Africa in his late teens farming and driving bulldozers he moved to California and graduated from UCLA with a degree in Politics. He is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and former member of the Chartered Institute of Journalists.

  He and his partner Lesley live in the High Weald of Sussex where the events recounted in ‘the Dead Boer’ took place.

  Dedication

  To Lesley

  Foreword

  Sherlock Holmes and the Dead Boer at Scotney Castle is Dr John H. Watson’s account of the extraordinary happenings which took place in Sussex and Kent on a spacious early Edwardian summer day. Never before had Holmes and Watson come up against a brotherhood like the Kipling League. Dedicated to their Patron Rudyard Kipling, the Poet of Empire, the League’s sole allegiance was to England’s civilising mission. Its members would allow nothing to get in their way. It is the only chronicle Sherlock Holmes prevented his faithful amanuensis from publishing on the instant. His refusal to allow the Dead Boer to see the light of day is understandable. Never had he suffered such humiliation as the Kipling League inflicted upon him, the coterie Holmes referred to (when he could bring himself to refer to them ever again) as the Sungazer Gang.

  Despite Holmes’ opposition, Watson submitted the manuscript to the Editor of The Strand for reasons he explains. It was returned without comment. Was it because Holmes accuses such rich and powerful men of murder - four leading members of the Kipling League? Or had Holmes frightened off every outlet Watson was likely to approach?

  Watson’s persistent attempts to bring this adventure to his public shook his friendship with Holmes to its core. Even before the Dead Boer was completed, Watson came across a desk-diary with ‘Notes on the Watson Problem’ scrawled on the cover in his fellow-lodger’s precise hand, tucked away with a box of Dutch East Indian cigars in the coal-scuttle. The diary contained just two comments, the first a quote from The Case of The Six Napoleons - ‘Watson, while limited, is exceedingly pertinacious’ - and more ominously and with no apparent sense of irony, ‘Watson’s reports are most incriminating documents. Despite my opposition he continues to compile his narratives to afflict his long-suffering public’.

  Within minutes of this discovery Watson hurried to the tin storage-box safeguarding his notes. He emptied the contents into a Russian-leather Gladstone bag stamped on the side with ‘John H. Watson, M.D., Late Indian Army’ in elegant gold lettering. He took the valise to the vaults of Cox’s Bank in Craig’s Court. A century and more later the Gladstone reappeared in a makeshift hut in the Weald of Sussex, wrapped in a piece of brown paper and tied round with tarred twine. It contained an archive of many treasures, the paralipomena of Watson’s writings - envelopes bearing stamps with the head of Victoria, others that of Edward V11, a copy in Watson’s hand of a letter in his name in the Edinburgh Evening Dispatch dated September 24 1900, a parchment carrying the signature of a British Ambassador’s wife in Peking commencing ‘Yuan Shih Kai is the Chinaman of the future’, a leather-bound tome embossed with the Karolinska Institute’s emblem in gold, a text on the aperient property of Tamarix gallica, and two small Moroccan red-leather boxes illuminated with fiery dragons, filled with a mix of powdered jade, cinnabar and hematite, inscribed ‘Elixir of Life’ in Chinese pictogrammes on the lids.

  The Gladstone also contained an Addendum compiled in 1912 in Watson’s scribbled hand, headed ‘further notes referring to the Scotney Castle matter’, now in its rightful place below. In an engaging marginal note Watson writes, ‘no collection of my trifling achievements would be complete without an account of this very singular business.’ He adds, ‘I hope my readers enjoy taking the journey with me as much as its end.’

  As do I.

  Tim Symonds FRGS

  Park Farm Oast

  Burwash

  East Sussex

  March 2012

  Preface

  By Dr. John Watson

  A most unusual circumstance has obliged me to write this preface, namely my great friend Sherlock Holmes’ refusal to permit the publication of the affair I have titled Sherlock Holmes and the Dead Boer at Scotney Castle. Holmes’ eyes narrowed when he told me our friendship would be gravely imperilled if I placed these events before my readers. He even ordered me to destroy such notes as I had managed to scribble during that extraordinary day. I refused to agree to any such undertaking.

  The Dead Boer is in my estimation the most unforgettable adventure of our many years together, an extraordinary encounter with the rich and powerful Kipling League in Kent and Sussex in the early summer of 1904. If we accept Holmes’ own description of these events, no other case or crime was more swiftly but intricately devised, of greater complexity in timing and conduct, or carried through with such ingenuity and aplomb.

  From the moment I refused to obey his command, Holmes became much less communicative. Weeks passed without a direct word from him. He began to spend more and more time at the isolated farmhouse purchased two years before near King’s Standing, in the county of Sussex, busying himself constructing dew ponds and purchasing Italian bees.

  For some months I attempted to keep our friendship alive. I continued to visit him on the farm where in secret I constructed a scriptorium by a cheerful brook (or gill in the local dialect) near to a hatch of Old World Swallowtail butterflies, as far away as possible from the hives of Apis mellifera ligustica assembled in his meadows. These hives with their odd, sloping edifices had the appearance of long-departed Roman ‘tortoises’ or the Square formation of the Brigade of Foot Guards in battle.

  I call it a scriptorium because that was its purpose. In reality it hardly deserved to be called a hen-cree. Here I began to turn my notes for the Dead Boer into a manifesto if only for posterity. To explain my half-day absences, I carried a gun wherever I strolled, informing Holmes I was shooting for the pot, though the Sussex rabbit seemed tame after the wild goat of the Khyber Pass.

  The Dead Boer is more of a chronique intime t
han many of the earlier stories. I most often call it ‘The Perplexing Matter’ rather than ‘Case’ because no formal enquiry was ever conducted after Holmes and I fled in disarray from the débâcle. If I appear inordinately proud of the scientific research which informed the Watson Codex I beg indulgence for a former army doctor’s vanity.

  To sustain me while ensconced in my hutch, Mrs. Keppell, the same tidy widow who brought Holmes his food, dressed me something filling (and, in winter, warming) - great hunches of bread and cheese and a bottle of cordial confection. She was a daughter of rich soil, a mulier fortis, of ample white hair and a grandly-modelled face, much given to explosions of laughter. With the passage of the seasons (and my shooting) the menu grew more extensive. Venison. Partridge. Over-ripe pheasant. Jugged Hare. For an occasional special treat, Rother Rabbit with broccoli was followed by Lady Pettus’ biscakes.

  When winter set in, I decided against a grate, terrified that fire would reduce my notes and documents to ash. I made cups of coffee at a spirit-lamp and endured many long cold afternoons, feet inside a pair of cardboard boxes. When completed, I placed the work in my portfolio which I returned to its hiding-place at 221b Baker Street under our landlady’s care, alongside the Beaumont-Adams revolver.

  When rumours spread that I was attempting to publish the Dead Boer against Holmes’ wishes, some members of the public wrote to me questioning my integrity, taking his side against me. Why, they wanted to know, did I try to ‘spring into print’ with the Dead Boer like an eager Globe reporter, against the combined wishes of Holmes and the Editor of The Strand and even the editors of McClure’s and Collier’s Weekly? They asked what triggered this disloyalty? A correspondent from Trincomalee inquired with Buddhist concern, what caused this change in my character? I informed them that they could find the answer to their enquiry in Peter Lely’s painting of Oliver Cromwell in the Tate Gallery.

  On Holmes’ departure for Northern Italy to inspect a dozen hives of a sub-species of the Western Honey bee, I resumed my early interest in paintings and Chinese pottery, attending excellent lunchtime lectures at the Tate. I find from my notebook this was in August 1904. In the course of a lecture, our guide brought us to the portrait of General Cromwell. ‘Despite the fashion of the time,’ she told us, ‘unlike the portraits of Charles the First, Cromwell demanded to be portrayed as he really was, ‘warts and all’.’ The guide’s well-practiced and casual statement jolted me like a shock from the Electrophorus electricus, the South American apex predator. I stared hard at the Great Protector. The warts were there for all to see. In that instant I determined my obligation too was to paint Holmes ‘warts and all’. I had a mission of trust to my public. It was not my role to be a chanticleer or hagiolater but a Boswell. I would publish Holmes’ defeats and imperfections alongside his successes and be damned.

  At this fateful decision I left the Tate. Back at my lodgings, I withdrew my portfolio and settled down to examine its contents. I laid aside the notes of those cases I could never publish including the ‘Foxy’ Ferdinand affair. This account of Balkan intrigue would rock the shaky edifice of European monarchy if it were to come to the world’s attention. As I leafed through my portfolio, the title I sought leapt from the ‘suspended’ folder and re-engaged my attention.

  I was the more encouraged to ready the Dead Boer for publication after my friend Lomax, sublibrarian at the London Library in St James’ Square, told me my chronicles were becoming the most popular of the works they held. At one point The Hound of the Baskervilles was nearly the equal in bookshop sales to Conrad’s Typhoon. One man wrote to me during the Anglo-Boer War, ‘The stories are greatly appreciated in the midst of mud and rain and shells, and all that could make life out here in South Africa depressing’. The Editor of the London Mercury told me I was outselling all other publications in Kazakhstan and the Falkland Islands. When Lomax added that my chronicles had become the ‘birthright of all Britons’, my face flushed with pride.

  Here follows the unabridged adventure I have titled Sherlock Holmes and the Dead Boer at Scotney Castle.

  J.H.W.

  A Telegram Arrives

  Holmes often stays in his bed until late in the day. At other times he rises with the first glimmer of dawn even before I have glanced at the clock or looked sleepily through my window at the outside world. On these not-infrequent occasions, he selects a coat from his collection as carefully as he chooses a pipe and trips with agility and anticipation down the stairs from the first-floor flat at 221b Baker Street. Sometimes he is gone all day, leaving behind a book by his chair, the pipe with the mended amber stem, and a sense of his presence. East London is his favourite stamping ground though it is undergoing sudden and savage industrialisation. Slavic agitators fleeing persecution have settled in communities around the River Lea, transforming them into principalities of crime. Few Londoners venture without need beyond the Hawksmoor Church of St. George’s-in-the-East except for those thwarted in love seeking Chinese love-potions concocted from hashish, geraniums, rose petals, lemon leaves, sugar and honey. On other occasions we will visit Narrow Street in Limehouse on matters concerning the Chinese secret society, the Hung League, that strange group of men who will only communicate with each other by pointing first at the sky, then down to the ground, and last to their own heart.

  The area throngs with humanity - cooks from Hainan Island, Petticoat-lane fencers, boatswains from Canton, stewards from Ningpo, men with pointy beards and Homburg hats. Ships of the mercantile marine bring cargo from equatorial climes to London’s deep-water docks.

  Holmes starts his explorations in earnest at Poverty Corner, walking many miles along the Thames, plunging into the vile alleys lurking behind the high wharves lining the north side of the river to the east of London Bridge. If wet weather prevails, as on the day whose events I now relate, he summons a street Arab and a tilbury, and in the instant is gone. He is as acquainted with St Katherine’s, Victoria, South West India, Albert and Tilbury docks as our neighbouring Regent’s Park. Fine ships still load for ‘Frisco or the Antipodes, the surrounds filled with cackling Creole beldames from Sierra Leone and holy men in turbans and gowns with a reputation for healing.

  It was the 27th of May 1904 when the extraordinary and disturbing events of the Dead Boer took place. On referring to my notes I see that though I was living over my surgery at that period, I made one of my not infrequent overnight stays at my familiar old lodgings in Baker Street still filled with most of my clothing and possessions. In the morning I rose by eight o’ clock to find Holmes already returned from his sortie and finishing off a plate of the landlady’s eggs. He gave me a nod as I took my seat.

  Mrs. Hudson’s breakfasts were designed more for my appetite than Holmes’. While he readily ate her eggs, he picked in desultory fashion at grilled kidneys, devilled chicken, cold ham and galantine. The kidneys (and galantine in particular) were marched across the table to my plate.

  ‘Holmes,’ I began, testing whether he was in a communicative humour. ‘What of your day?’

  ‘Watson, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your great interest and concern. I have had a most charming morning.’

  ‘And,’ I pursued, not discouraged by this over-effusive response, ‘what adventures among the slop-shops and gin-shops run by rascally lascars, the dark and deep waters of the docks, or murder-traps in streets mournful beyond expression have pursued you like meteors beckoned into Jupiter’s maw? Did you obey their notices against smoking, fighting, swearing and spitting?’

  I added, ‘Would we had a hundred guineas for every poor devil who has been done to death in those vile dens.’

  ‘Adventures none but my discussions at the Blackwall Basin,’ Holmes responded in self-satisfied mood. He left the table and threw himself down into an armchair. ‘I find much of interest in Dockland, the bowsprits and jib-booms and silken sails of the Australian packets taking the early tide down-river homeward bou
nd. The largesse of the Tropics and the Spanish Main - hogsheads and hillocks of coconuts, indigo, spice, saltpetre and tea. Where better than the Steam Packet beerhouse to purchase the Pipe-fish or the Surinam Toad?

  ‘Where indeed?’ I replied.

  I had once accompanied Holmes to Schewzik’s Russian Vapour Baths, followed by a visit to the aforementioned Steam Packet beerhouse where I obliged the landlord by drinking a mug of tepid brown slop at twopence the pint, beneath a racing calendar punctuated by dead flies. I still recall the smell which comes alone in all the world from long years of herrings cooked on a gas grill.

  ‘Had Darwin spent more time in Rotherhithe or around Tower Hill,’ Holmes continued, ‘instead of years aboard the Beagle, he might have made a purchase of both tortoises and finches from the Galapagos Islands at the London docks and reasoned the mutability of species within the hour, thus saving himself a lengthy voyage and a year or more of mal-de-mer.’

  ‘As you say, Holmes.’

  My companion signalled he was indeed in conversational mood.

  ‘Watson, I shall regret the passing of the barquentine. Each time I am in the upper docks there are fewer of them. They are the most beautiful of ships, possessed of the most aerial and graceful of rigs, the foremast with its transverse spars gives such breadth and balance, steadying the main and mizen poles. Such sheer, like the waist of a lissom woman, finely poised, so sure of herself in profile.’

  I duly jotted down the detail of the barquentine on the note-book beside my plate, adding a small sketch.

  ‘Holmes,’ I said, pointing to The Times left open at the astronomy section, ‘is it not fascinating to know that on August 27, AD 2003, Mars will be at its closest to our planet for 60,000 years? Percival Lowell thinks Man will by then get to our sister planet and shake hands with the builders of the Martian canals.’