Sherlock Holmes and the Nefarious Seafarers

by C J Lutton

  “She was forlorn and lonely during Her Jubilee. It had been hoped that a token of esteem from India would lift her spirits. Two men were sent with a gift for HRH. The taller of the two men immediately caught Her eye. His name is Karim Abdul, and he has since become her beloved munshi, a sort of teacher and advisor.”

  “How could this happen?” I asked. I had understood the appeal of John Brown, at least somewhat. Brown had known Prince Albert and served him as his ghillie. Brown was a Scot who loved the out-of-doors as much as the Queen did. Brown’s penchant for fresh air and exercise was exactly what the Queen’s doctors had prescribed for Her. But a man from India? From another country and another culture? This was a sticking point for me.

  Charlie nodded. “I am embarrassed to say that the absence of a masculine figure in Queen Victoria’s life has left Her incredibly vulnerable to any male who can fill this vast emptiness in Her life. Surely, you’ve wondered how Mycroft has managed to keep the Queen on the end of a leash? See? There are those who talk of yin and yang, the two portions of the soul that crave balance. I cannot help but believe that Our Queen fully desires an opposing force to even out Her strong personality. Therefore, it is not surprising that She falls under the spell of strong men who stand up to Her or who offer Her the sort of male attention she craves.”

  “But an Indian man?” asked Berthold. I had forgotten he was there with us at the table. “A brown-skinned creature with no status or breeding?”

  This infuriated me. Berthold was fast becoming the object of my most extreme dislike. I could not contain myself. “Sir, I served in Afghanistan and I can tell you there are many an Afghan whose moral code is higher than some of the Brits I know. As for the color of their skin, as a doctor I can tell you that is only the wrapping on the gift. Once I peel back the outer layer, what is left looks that same no matter whether the epidermis was white or brown or even yellow or red.”

  “Pray go on, Charlie,” said Holmes after sending a glance of irritation towards Berthold.

  “This man Abdul, or Munshi if you will, charmed her endlessly, and while there are those who suggest an unwholesome relationship, I prefer to believe this was a particular conflagration of masculine thinking, foreign intrigue, and wholehearted allegiance to Our Queen that has won Her over so completely. In all fairness, I must also tell you that his loyalty to Our Queen is unparalleled. Indeed, the man has left behind his entire family in India in order to wait on the Queen, hand and foot. At the best of times, Victoria has always been querulous, and at the worst, She can be hardheaded, sarcastic, and shortsighted. Even so, Munshi seems to have tamed Her less desirable aspects, although I know that word ‘tamed’ will sound repugnant to many, it is undoubtedly the correct one in this situation.”

  Holmes often lets people meander in their thinking as he claims unguarded commentary is incredibly revealing. Today was not the time for a lengthy exploration of Charlie’s thoughts. So Holmes broke in and said, “Charlie, why does all of this matter? What does Our Queen’s favoritism have to do with a dead sailor who has a belly full of gold? Isn’t the concern here that the gold isn’t making it to the coffers of the Realm? Is it not true that the gold will pay the troops who will be fighting the Boers?”

  “Yes, of course, it’s true,” Charlie agreed. “But isn’t it clear to you that someone desperately wants the public to know the gold is being diverted? For goodness sake, Sherlock. Someone deliberately told Mycroft about a dead sailor’s body washing up in the Thames. Honestly, is that such an unusual occurrence? No, it is not. Yet someone went to great lengths to make sure that Mycroft Holmes, in his lofty perch at the top of the British government, caught wind of this particular floating corpse. Furthermore, someone not only brought the corpse to Mycroft’s attention, they did so with an aim to entice Mycroft to get his brother involved. Knowing full well that once Sherlock Holmes is on the case, he is like a terrier with an old shoe. He will not let go!”

  Holmes nodded and I leaned closer so that I would not miss a word. At first, I’d considered Charlie as a man whose station in life had encouraged lazy mental habits. Now I was forced to consider him in a new light. Charlie had made an excellent point: if you wanted a problem to go away, you certainly did not bring it to the attention of Sherlock Holmes. But someone had done exactly that.

  “So tell me, old friend,” began Holmes, “is there any scuttlebutt in Court or in society that might shed light on this conundrum? What have you heard or seen that might explain this phenomena? Who would want the world to know that gold bound for our troops is being diverted? And why?”

  “There are indeed, certain unsavoury rumours flying around in society,” Charlie said, in a voice barely above a whisper. “One is accustomed to this, as the Palace is chock-a-block with sycophants jockeying for prime positions. Their rise and fall is as cyclic as the seasons. Yes, Buckingham always has been and always will be a place filled with intrigue, as that is what the idle rich do for entertainment. But this new thread, this new commentary, is different, my friends. Very, very different.”

  “In what way?” Holmes leaned into the conversation and lowered his voice.

  “I fear these particular rumors are the underpinnings of a plot to overthrow the Throne.” Charlie said this so flatly that I almost missed the import. He was not talking in an hysterical tone, nor did he seem to relish this world-shaking theory. No, he was speaking in a matter-of-fact way, brimming with concern. “I think someone wants to make it look as if the Queen is filling the coffers for Her own use – or worse.”

  “Why should that matter?” asked Holmes. “As a point of fact, one might argue that all the money in the coffers is Hers. She is the ruler of Our Country and this Empire.”

  “True, but to divert money needed to supply soldiers with necessities will cause the people to rise up against Victoria, will it not? The towns and villages supply the young men who go to war. They are our Country’s finest crop, and it is the Queen’s responsibility to see that they are armed and clothed and fed. But if there is no money for Her to fulfill Her end of the bargain, if families watch their young men fight against an army in a faraway land, they’ll react with fury if they learn She did not provide those soldiers with the barest of necessities.”

  Holmes frowned ever so slightly. “So you are saying that you think all of this is a complex plot to overthrow the Monarchy? But the people of this country love their Queen. Why would they choose to rid themselves of a woman so universally admired?”

  “Ah,” said Charlie, “that she is. For a moment, conjure up a battleground scene with thousands of young men slaughtered for lack of proper ammunition or sick from dysentery or bleeding to death without proper nursing care. Certainly, citizens of the Realm would turn on the Queen, especially if they learned that the money to supply those lifesaving necessities had gone instead to a lowborn man, a brown-skinned man, from one of our Colonies.”

  Pitching his voice even lower, Charlie added, “And ponder this. Queen Victoria calls Munshi Her son. Imagine how this angers Bertie. Imagine how irrational he can be at the best of times, and then multiply that a hundred times over. Bertie could whip up the crowd and encourage them to turn on his mother. Yes, he well might! His peccadilloes, his profligate manner of spending, his romances with unsuitable women, his whining…need I go on? In one generation, he has managed to squander the goodwill his father built. Imagine if he were to ascend to the throne! The fury of the populace would be immense.”

  “Would he do that?” This came from Berthold and yet, he voiced the question all of us were asking.

  Charlie raised his eyebrows and nodded very slowly. “Indeed, I would personally tick this box as being the one scheme most likely to happen. Bertie seethes with anger whenever his path crosses that of Munshi. He hates the man with an undimmed passion. For John Brown, Bertie felt distaste. For Munshi, Bertie feels disgust. Towards His mother, the Queen, Bertie seethes with anger. Truly, my friends, I would put nothing past Bertie. Nothing. Would he rig a scheme
to steal gold meant for our soldiers? I think he would, if it might convince his mother that She was wrong to speak so affectionately about Munshi. Would he let his future subjects die in distant wars? I believe he would, if his actions would cause people to rise up against his Mother. He is not a deep-thinking man, but he is a man whose passions run hot. If he could strike back at his Mother, if he could convince Her subjects that She cares more about a man from India than about our English native sons, the result could be anarchy.”

  18

  Given the shocking nature of Charlie’s information, it was only a matter of time until we would see a bloodbath such as happened in neighboring France. Of that I had no doubt.

  Charlie’s commentary ended, and the four of us sat silently around a battered table. If what he’d observed was true, we were poised on a precipice. One false move either way could plunge our country into civil unrest. Of course I’d heard rumblings about Bertie. They were impossible to avoid. The man embodied all the worst problems with hereditary rule. Although Victoria and Albert, his mother and late father, were loving parents, they failed to curtail Bertie’s bad habits, his weak points, and his overwhelming sense of entitlement. Worst of all, these negative aspects of the man could not be brushed aside or hidden away. He was flagrant in his sense of style, and he craved attention from the masses. He was morally weak and impulsive in his judgements. He was and had always been a disappointment to his mother on many, many levels.

  Of course, I was getting ahead of myself. It might not be Bertie behind the rumors. It was possible that the Queen Herself was diverting the gold. Or that some other entity was hijacking the gold either to embarrass the Queen or to use for other nefarious purposes. All in all, there were too many possibilities to count. Nor could I see a clear path forwards for narrowing down the number of options.

  So I turned my mind to the matter of the dead seafarer. Was he the husband of Mrs. Morel? I hadn’t bothered to ask Holmes if I could see the photograph. The tattoo was exactly where Mrs. Morel had told us to look. The letters—L.I.V.—were plain to see. Who else could the man be? How many dead men would wash up with similar tattoos? Then, of course there was his uniform. This had not been an ordinary seafarer. Taken as a whole the man in the deadhouse fulfilled all the requirements to fit the part of Mrs. Morel’s missing husband.

  So had he docked and been waylaid on his way home? Had he never made it to port? Had he been kidnapped or press-ganged and tortured and killed and then dumped into the Thames? Mrs. Morel had expected to hear from him at his last port of call. Was he taken before the ship docked there? Or after? If so, how long before or after? And what did that tell us about the manner of his demise? There was much to learn before we could confidently go forwards. Yet it seemed to me that we had to start with the Celestial. We simply had to find out when the paths of Mr. Morel and the Celestial diverged. That was paramount.

  Tomorrow Holmes and I would go to the shipyard and ask around. Perhaps the Celestial had docked and then shipped out again. If we were lucky, and the ship was still there, we might be able to interview sailors and find out whether Jonas Morel had been with them when they arrived in port. If not, what had happened to him? What did they know?

  That night back at our flat, I could not help but break Holmes’ reverie. “Is it possible? Could it be? And how does one go about verifying a tale so wild? So improbable?” I asked. “How credible is your friend, Charlie?”

  Holmes smiled faintly. He had been reading a book on philosophy and now he rested it open on his knee. A pleasant fire warmed our sitting room. Bryony had left me a note that she was nearly done knitting the pair of mittens. This tiny portion of good news cheered me immensely. Imaging Evans with warm hands lifted my spirits and I could not help but reflect how when we do a good deed for others, we are our own beneficiaries.

  But that joy quickly faded. What we’d learned from Charlie had thrown a pall over all of us and the ride back to 221B had seemed endless. Holmes frowned as he responded to me. “Do I trust Charlie? Next to you, I trust him more than anyone on earth. He has no reason to lie and every reason to keep tawdry details to himself. Imagine what would happen to his standing in society if word circulated regarding what he told us today.”

  “About Bertie,” I said. I picked up a poker and aimlessly jabbed a coal. “Could it possibly be true? He is the son of Our Queen and of Prince Albert. Surely he cannot be so selfish as to willingly destroy their legacies? He has to know that he is lighting a match and setting it to a tinderbox. No matter how angry or resentful he feels towards his late father and his Mother, he must have an ingrained sense of loyalty to the Throne and to the Realm!”

  Holmes chuckled quietly. “Watson, you are an incurable romantic. You truly strive to see the best in other people, don’t you? I could watch your face and sense how you were struggling with Charlie’s report on Bertie. You could not believe it! To you, a man who betrays his sovereign is a traitor, pure and simple. The fact that in this case the traitor might be next in line to the Throne is a conundrum, isn’t it? And yet, have we not spoken of ‘cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face’ countless times? I’m sure we have, and this would be a perfect example of such ill-advised behavior, would it not? I daresay that Bertie’s emotions have often overruled his good sense, so this would be yet one more incident of the same.”

  “This is like an octopus with tentacles sprawling out in every direction,” I said. “Where can we start to make sense of this puzzle?”

  “There is but one way to find out. One way and one way only.”

  “You will ask Mycroft. He will know.”

  “No,” replied Holmes with an enigmatic smile. “I am sure that Berthold has already reported back to him. If I go to my brother, he will have had ample time to come up with a reasonable explanation or a way to send us racing in the wrong direction. If this is a palace intrigue, Mycroft will do everything in his power to cover it up. That may or may not include getting to the heart of the matter, as my brother’s motivation is different from mine.”

  I had to agree with that.

  “No,” Holmes repeated. “This case reminds me of a tangled ball of yarn. We do not yet know exactly what we are dealing with or who is behind all this. Someone certainly is going to a lot of trouble. But why? And how did this start?”

  I nodded. He was right about that. We knew ships had disappeared, but we knew nothing of the circumstances. If there was a pattern, we needed to discern it, and we could not discern it without all of the pieces.

  “I shall requisition paperwork from Mycroft’s office,” said Sherlock, as he lit his pipe again and blew a wobbling smoke ring my way. “As you know, my brother never destroys a scrap of paper. Of late, he’s tasked a group of eager young men with the job of sorting and organising Mycroft’s collection of treasure: his extensive documents. I’ve become acquainted with Lewis, the student who oversees the effort. Rather than go through Mycroft and suffer the indignities of convincing him we really do need his help, I shall circumvent my brother. I shall tell Lewis I am conducting a sort of test, in an attempt to ascertain whether the method of cataloging this information is useful.”

  His scheme was elegant in its simplicity. I could not help but be impressed and said as much.

  “Yes,” said Holmes as he chewed on his pipe. “Before you wax enthusiastic, let us avail ourselves of the papers. There might be nothing for us to see or there might be so much dreck that we cannot accurately search for gold.”

  19

  The next morning, Holmes rapped on my door at an early hour. “If you would kindly get dressed, it would be much appreciated. Now, there’s a good fellow. I’ll have Mrs. Hudson send up some food. Hurry, Watson! Oh, and by the way, we’re going to be receiving some cartons. We must read and absorb the materials in them as quickly as possible. Now, off with you.”

  He shut the door and left me alone. Whilst attending to my toilette, I heard Mrs. Hudson’s arrival and departure, as well as the muffled voice of an
unknown visitor.

  When I stepped out into the parlour, I discovered Holmes deeply immersed in some new reading material. He sat cross-legged on the floor with an open carton at his side. More cartons were stacked neatly on the floor. A slate board was propped up next to the unused fireplace. The table had been set for breakfast. A steaming cup of coffee sat waiting for me.

  “Ah, Watson, you’re just in time,” Holmes said, looking up from the papers in his hand.

  “Four hours for what?” I asked, “What’s this all about, Holmes?”

  “Intrigue! Intrigue of the highest—and the most dangerous—sort.” Holmes leaned forwards, resting his elbows on his knees. “Have you ever heard the name Erich Jaeger?”

  “Yes. Isn’t he that bumbling anarchist? The one who attempted the abduction of the Queen? If my memory serves, he was found wandering the halls of the palace with a ransom note in his pocket, yet!”

  “One and the same. Well, he is on the loose again. Somehow, he managed to walk straight out of Bethlehem Hospital.”

  My blood chilled at the mention of Bethlehem, a place so horrific that its nickname “bedlam” had spawned a pejorative for chaos. I was equally surprised to learn that Jaeger was a patient there.