“Dr Watson a thief?” Sherlock Holmes said, sitting forward in his seat. “Never have I heard such nonsense. The good doctor represents the best kind of Englishman: dependable, courageous, honest and true.”
“Except where women are concerned.”
“I insist: women are not my province. Explain the accusation of theft, monsieur, or I must terminate this interview.”
Poiret made a placating gesture with the palm of his hand.
“Patience, s’il vous plaît. My problem is that his word cannot always be relied upon. I am sorry but it is true. Consider first your friend’s honesty in his account of himself. He took his degree in 1878 in London then trained as an army surgeon. He went to India, then Afghanistan, where he served as an Assistant Surgeon of the Army Medical Department attached to the 66th Foot – the Berkshires - in Afghanistan. He was wounded at the battle of – I forget where – I have never been interested in imperial adventures.”
“Maiwand. 27 July 1880.”
The Frenchman bowed his head.
“He came back to England as thin as a lath and brown as a nut though he thickened as the years passed – he has a strong neck, does he not?”
“And a small moustache,” Sherlock Holmes said, “though not like yours.”
“There is no other like mine,” Poiret declared, touching his upper lip gingerly. “Or, at least, there wasn’t. But tell me, where was Watson wounded?”
“In Afghanistan, as you have said.”
“Non, non. I mean in which part of his body?”
“We never had those kinds of conversations. We were just two fellows sharing digs. What has this got to do with your accusation of theft?”
“Allow me to tell you. But first his wound. He was discharged because of an injury received during this battle of Maiwand. In A Study in Scarlet he states he was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery.”
“There you are then.”
“Yet in The Sign of the Four he sits nursing his wounded leg. I quote: ‘I had a Jezail bullet through it some time before and though it did not prevent me walking it ached wearily at every change of the weather’. You yourself in the same narrative refer to him having to tramp six miles with an injured Achilles tendon.”
Sherlock Holmes said nothing.
“Did he limp, monsieur?”
Sherlock Holmes considered.
“Sometimes. There was no indication of it when I examined his footprints outside my cave refuge on Dartmoor.”
Poiret nodded.
“In The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor, Watson, perhaps realising that he has given himself away, is more ambiguous about this Jezail bullet. Now, he says, he brought it back ‘in one of my limbs’ as a relic of the Afghan campaign.”
Holmes frowned and put his index finger to his lips.
“So one might wonder,” Poiret continued, “if he went to Afghanistan at all.”
Holmes wagged the same finger lightly at Poiret.
“A step too far, I think, sir. I remember the lithograph of a painting that hung above Watson’s bed in Baker Street. Frank Feller’s rendering of The Last Eleven At Maiwand, men from the Berkshires at their final stand.”
“And that tells you what, exactly, maître?”
Sherlock Holmes didn’t seem to hear.
“I paid attention because my great uncle Horace on my mother’s side painted some fine battle scenes commissioned by the Duc d’Orléans – the future King Louis-Philippe – during the Bourbon Restoration. You know Vernet’s work?”
Poiret shook his head.
“They were accurate but tinged with romance. The Battle of Valmy, The Battle of Jemappes, various Algerian battles – vivid depictions of the French army in the heat of war.”
“As I said, I have no time for imperialism. I merely postulate a theory. According to Watson’s account, when he was wounded he was saved by his orderly, Murray, who threw him on a packhorse and helped ensure his escape.”
“That is my understanding.”
“I have looked for Murray. I can find no record of him. Nor, for that matter, of Dr Watson himself. To be sure, the 66th Regiment did have a Medical Officer and he was indeed injured in the battle of Maiwand. His name, however, was not Watson but Surgeon Major A. F. Preston.”
Sherlock Holmes frowned. Poiret leaned forward, as if to push his advantage, though his paunch made the movement difficult.
“Come now, Mr Holmes. A man who lies about his past – about his military service, indeed – is capable of other villainy, surely?”
“Not Watson. This is preposterous.”
“Is it? He told you he had no kith and kin when he returned to England from Afghanistan.”
“That is so.”
“But perhaps that was so he need never talk about his background.”
“Are you saying he has family?”
“His brother?”
Sherlock Holmes shook his head.
“Dead, alas.”
“Are you sure?”
Holmes smiled.
“Your little grey cells mislead you.”
“I told you – I have no little grey cells.”
“That, my dear Poiret, is becoming obvious. If you have indeed read all Watson’s accounts of my cases then you will recall that very early on I recounted the sad life history of his brother from examination of his fob watch.”
“Indeed. You shocked Watson by your accurate description of his brother’s decline.”
“Yes, even though the watch had been recently cleaned, I deduced that his brother was untidy and careless, threw away his good prospects, lived alternately in poverty and prosperity, took to drink and died.”
“Amazing that you deduced all that from a few marks and scratches on a gold watch,” Poiret murmured.
Sherlock Holmes shrugged.
“I have a genius for minutiae. I appreciate their importance. From a drop of water I could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen one or the other.”
“Indeed, I am the same.” Poiret said. “My brain cultivates trifles and makes them bloom into facts. When I put my superhuman intelligence to work everything is possible.”
“My congratulations.”
“But sometimes it is awkward.”
“How so?”
“Well, now, for instance, I must give you shocking news.”
“By all means.”
“You may have been wrong in your analysis of the watch.”
“No, no. Watson confirmed it.”
“He may have lied. Perhaps to spare your feelings.”
“There was no other possible explanation of the scratches and the pawnbroker marks scratched into the back.”
“There was.”
Sherlock Holmes stared at Poiret. Poiret stared back.
“I’m waiting, monsieur,” Holmes said.
“The scratches were made by Watson’s father. All that you deduced from your close observation was correct except it applied to Dr Watson’s father, not his brother.”
Holmes frowned.
“His older brother is still alive? Then how did Watson inherit?”
“Come, Monsieur Holmes. Your legendary powers?”
“Ah.” Sherlock Holmes put a long finger to his mouth. “He had no brother.” He looked off into the distance. “My goodness,” he finally said.
“Your friend may have lied,” Poiret said gently.
“It is not the lie, it is that I may have made a false deduction. I overlooked a most obvious point.”
Poiret said nothing for a few moments. Sherlock Holmes began to pace the room, his hands clasped behind his back.
“Watson could have wished to spare my feelings because I had got it wrong.”
“Indeed.”
“It need not have sinister implications.”
“Indeed.”
Sherlock Holmes stopped in front of the Frenchman and looked down on him.
“You have proof of
this alternative hypothesis?”
“None at all,” Poiret said cheerily. “I just present it as a possibility.”
Holmes worked his jaw, then threw himself down in his chair again. It creaked alarmingly.
“Have you come across a Finnish detective called Sven Hjerson?” he asked.
“I have not.”
“You will. Unusual fellow – bit after the stripe of this Belgian chap you insist you aren’t.”
Poiret raised his eyes to a patch of fungus growing on the ceiling.
“He’s a vegetarian, this Finn. Surprised he doesn’t starve to death in a country where all they eat is reindeer and herring. He thinks like you. I am more Anglo-Saxon, despite my half-French ancestry. My mantra: never hypothesise before you have ascertained the facts.”
Poiret nodded his head.
“That is why I am here – to ascertain the facts in regard to Dr Watson.”
“I cannot confirm them,” Holmes said quickly. “I am as in the dark as you.”
Poiret tutted.
“Monsieur Holmes – I am not in the dark at all.”
“These accusations come directly from you or from a client?”
“A client. His name is George Adlam. He has asked me to investigate the theft of a large amount of money – a fortune, in fact – that he says is rightly his.”
“And he claims that Dr Watson is the thief.” Sherlock Holmes frowned, his high forehead corrugating. “Who is this George Adlam? Make a long arm would you, Monsieur Poirot –“
“Poiret –“
“As you say. That scrapbook to your left, with A to D inscribed on the spine. If you would pass it to me. Thank you.”
Holmes took the thick volume onto his lap and opened it.
“What have we then? Sweet Fanny Adams. You know the case? Found her head on a pole and her eyes in the River Wey. Baker the notorious solicitor’s clerk was hung for it. Adderton, whose obsession with Queen Victoria – well, the world’s not yet ready for that story of stolen royal bloomers and a sous-chef’s perverse desires. Adler, the crazed flea-circus owner. I shudder to think what misery he would have inflicted on the nation had we not foiled his plan.”
He ran his finger down the page, turned to the next one. He closed the book and looked up at Poiret.
“But no George Adlam.”
“I did not say that you would have come across him.”
“Then how could Watson have stolen from him?”
“That is what I am here to discover.”
“But why here? These questions should be addressed to Watson.”
“And they will be. I came to you to ask if you might care to ask them with me.”
“I’m afraid I rarely leave Sussex these days, Poiret. My bees.”
“You walk into Brighton regularly, do you not?”
Sherlock Holmes started.
“How do you know that? Have you been spying on me?”
“That is no matter. You are happy to go to Brighton.”
“I enjoy the walk but I return the same day. A visit to Watson would be more of a pilgrimage, especially if what you say is true that his mansion is in Surrey.”
Poiret shook his head and raised his hand.
“Dr Watson is in Brighton.”
“What?”
“He is in Brighton for just a short time for a Royal Commission. He is assessing the treatment received by the wounded of the Indian army. As you know, they have come from the Western Front to be cared for in the makeshift hospital in the Royal Pavilion. Will you visit him there with me?”
Chapter Seven
Old Friends Reunited
Sherlock Holmes walked off the Downs into Hassocks the next morning along centuries-old pathways. At the railway station, he stood on the elevated platform peering nosily down on the house of the man who had designed and constructed Brighton’s magnificent West Pier. When he heard the distant clank and rattle of the Brighton train coming from London he turned to watch it puffing plumes of white smoke onto the soft green hills.
Instinctively, he watched each person who got off and assessed them. There a cobbler by his thumb, here a retired journalist by his stoop. A milliner, a maid and a military man by their respective demeanours.
He boarded the train and on arrival in Brighton walked through the back alleys from the bustling railway station to the Metropole, the sea glittering beyond it, the gulls squawking overhead. Poiret, as spruce as before, was waiting in the marble and oak foyer.
The Frenchman gave a small bow and the two men moved off together.
“The lieutenant?” Holmes said.
“Non,” was all Poiret replied.
As Sherlock Holmes had surmised, the French detective walked in small steps, yet they were rapid so it was easy for the Great Detective to adjust his stride accordingly. They swung their walking sticks in concert.
They could hear the crump of far-off guns.
“Your people are safe, Poiret?”
“Yes, Mr Holmes, quite safe. Thank you for asking.”
“This war,” Sherlock Holmes said. “Quite terrible. I heard that Rudyard Kipling – he lives locally – encouraged his almost blind son, Jack, to enlist. Jack was killed and Kipling is overcome with remorse.”
“I believe that the average life expectancy of a junior officer on the western front is six weeks. Few infantrymen that join this year will see the end of the war.”
“A tragedy,” Sherlock Holmes said, doffing his hat to a gaggle of well-dressed women slowly approaching under a canopy of parasols.
When the two men applied at the gate to the Royal Pavilion to see Dr Watson they were told he was on a tour of the hospital. They were invited to sit in the garden and await his return.
The garden was a melee of turbaned and bare-headed Indians, some whole, most injured. Sherlock Holmes observed an Anglo-Indian in a crumpled suit at a card table set up in the shade of a tree. He had dark skin but bright blue eyes. He was taking dictation from a bushy-bearded man who had one leg severed at the knee. Several other men were gathered in a loose queue a few yards away.
“The Sepoys in our Indian army are mostly country folk,” Sherlock Holmes said to Poiret, indicating the group gathered by the card table. “And therefore mostly illiterate.”
Poiret nodded.
“It is strange to think of these fellows in the trenches of the Western Front.”
“Our Indian army was the only one actually ready for the war in August 1914, you know,” Sherlock Holmes said in a low voice. “It was an obvious source of trained men. The Lahore and Meerut infantry divisions were in Marseilles by September.”
Dr Watson appeared from a side entrance to the Pavilion escorted by two men in long white coats. He too was in a medical coat, which did little to conceal his bulk. It bulged at his belly but he was thick-set everywhere. Curiously, for such a warm September day, he was wearing a muffler tight around his neck and high up under his chin.
He glanced across at the two men sitting in folding chairs then gave a second look. He said something to the man next to him and strode across the grass, a broad grin on his face.
“Holmes, my dear fellow!” he exclaimed as Sherlock Holmes and Poiret both rose to meet him.
He and Holmes embraced whilst Monsieur Poiret stood to one side, his hat held neatly before him.
“Watson, let me introduce –“
“Knowing your methods,” Watson interrupted with a chuckle, “allow me to identify this distinctive individual.”
The good doctor turned to the Frenchman.
“Watson –“ Holmes warned.
“Although some might assume you to be French, I believe you to be Belgian with a reputation that soon might equal that of Mr Holmes here - judging by the excellent start you have made untangling the Mysterious Affair at Styles.”
Watson jabbed his finger at his temple.
“Helped not a little by your ‘leetle grey cells’ – eh? Eh?”
“Watson,” Sherlock Holmes sighed.
He glanced at Poiret, whose expression was inscrutable. Poiret said, almost sweetly:
“So my name is…?”
“Well, excuse my French – or rather my Belgian,” Watson said, beaming, “but you are Monsewer Herculees Parrot.”
Sherlock Holmes shook his head.
“Sometimes, Watson, observation and the deductions that follow come up against the wholly unexpected.”
Watson swung round to him, frowning.
“Unexpected? But anything not impossible, however improbable –“
“Yes, I know, Watson, but there are exceptions that prove the rule.”
“But you told me there could be no exceptions or else there could be no rule!”
Sherlock Holmes tapped his stick impatiently on the ground.
“Did I? Well, all I can say is that the likelihood of there being two detectives with almost identical characteristics and almost identical names is so remote that …” Holmes threw up his hands. “But there you are.”
He turned to the Frenchman who thrust out his hand and all but clicked his heels together as he said:
“French not Belgian. Jules not Hercule. Poiret not Poirot – or, indeed Parrot. A votre service.”
Watson looked non-plussed but only for a moment. He shook the outstretched hand vigorously, eliciting a wince from the other man.
“Right, well, pleased to meet you. Whoever you are.”
He looked from one to the other of them.
“But what are you doing here?”
“Looking for a word with you, my dear fellow,” Holmes said.
“I’m just doing the rounds – why don’t you come with me?”
“If you’re sure we wouldn’t be in the way…” Poiret said.
Watson led them back to the waiting doctors and made the introductions, mangling Poiret’s name as he tried to stop himself blundering again. They passed the Anglo-Indian at his card table. He gave Dr Watson a bland look and a small nod.
“Good morning, Black – er, Green,” Watson called. Then, under his breath to Sherlock Holmes and Poiret: “I can never remember that man’s damned name. I know it’s a colour but which one…?”
Sherlock Holmes clapped him on the shoulder.
“I’m glad to see you are putting your skill to good use,” he said as they entered the Pavilion and walked down a long, ornate corridor.
The Belgian and The Beekeeper Page 3
