Sherlock Holmes and Young Winston - The Jubilee Plot

by Mike Hogan

  “I am reliably informed that they would never do so,” said Lord Salisbury with a knowing look.

  “I hope that Lord Palmerston did not receive similar advice from the same expert source thirty years ago,” said Holmes with a slight smile.

  “I catch your meaning, Mr Holmes. The ample evidence of mounting unrest in India was, at least at the Foreign Office, discounted. The Indian Mutiny of ‘57 caught us on the hop.”

  Lord Salisbury nodded to himself. “Well, the danger of war with Russia is there. It is evident: it is a smouldering match over a barrel of powder, if I may wax uncharacteristically lyrical. Last year, Maharajah Duleep Singh abandoned his family and his subsidised estate in Norfolk and decamped to Paris with his favourite cocker spaniels and his teenage lover, a chambermaid from Kennington. He intends to re-embrace the Sikhist heresy (may he be damned to eternal torment). He is now in Moscow under the protection of Mr Katkov, the editor of an ultranationalist newspaper. Katkov introduced Maharajah Duleep to Tsar Alexander as the person who could induce the Indians of the North-West Frontier to his side and open the Khyber Pass to Russian troops. Russia would set Northern India aflame and our power would be sensibly reduced.”

  Lord Salisbury smiled a thin smile.

  “Katkov believes that I am the devil incarnate. He is wrong: it is Russia that should go to the devil, together with a long list of other nations beginning with - well, I am perhaps too warm. England is regarded with jealousy and spite because we have won the game of life; we rule a larger portion of the world than the Roman Empire ever aspired to.”

  He leaned forward and tapped his cigar ash into our grate. “I confess that I have been concerned with the matters you enumerate. The North-West Frontier of India is our tender spot. However, we have taken certain measures, and I predict that Maharajah Duleep Singh will return to Paris from Russia with his tail wagging apologetically between his legs.”

  Holmes sat back in his chair and smiled. “The Maharajah has been induced to travel through Europe using the passport of the notorious dynamitard, Michael Donovan.”

  Lord Salisbury chuckled again. “Well, I expected you to tell me what I had for breakfast, or that my valet has a wooden leg. I see that you have knowledge of foreign affairs: of highly secret matters. Yes, Maharaja Duleep was persuaded to travel from Paris to Russia under a false name and passport furnished by agents in our pay. He is deeply, Duleeply as my staff put it, stupid.”

  “And thus the connection with the Queen’s Jubilee,” said Holmes. “Warnings of dynamite outrage are all over the newspapers. Articles accuse Russia of supplying explosives to Irish republican groups. Fenians in America and on the Continent utter direct threats against Her Majesty. A blood brotherhood in Chicago recently vowed to murder the Queen as she travels in procession to Westminster Abbey for the Jubilee thanksgiving on Tuesday. Your Lordship is here to discuss those threats.”

  I struggled to make sense of the tangled web of intrigue the Prime Minister and Holmes had described. The Irish and American threats to the Queen were on the front page of every newspaper, the Russian menace to India was well-known, but that the deposed Maharajah Duleep was travelling in Europe on the passport of an infamous Irish dynamitard seemed to beggar belief.

  I heard shouts and cries from the street outside, and the doorbell rang. A few moments later here was a soft knock at the sitting-room door and Winston Churchill peeped in.

  “Winston,” said Lord Salisbury. “You are looking bonny. How are your people?”

  Churchill slipped inside and smiled shyly at Holmes, at me, and at Lord Salisbury. “Father and Mother are well, thank you, Lord Salisbury. They speak of you often.”

  The Prime Minister seemed to digest that remark and ruminate on it as he regarded young Churchill. The spectacular resignation from the government of the boy’s father several months earlier had strained relations between Lord Randolph Churchill and the Prime Minister almost to breaking point.

  “How old are you now, my boy?” asked Lord Salisbury with an avuncular smile.

  “Twelve, sir, going on thirteen.”

  Lord Salisbury nodded and his face took on a considering look. He seemed to calculate when Lord Randolph’s son might become a hazard to the Ministry. He smiled. The Prime Minister was evidently unaware of the boy’s capability for creating mayhem on the grand scale.

  “What’s all the racket?” Lord Salisbury asked.

  “Inspector Lestrade is on the pavement having a row with his cabman,” said Churchill. “He is intimating that he has been overcharged.”

  “From where?” Holmes asked instantly. I went to the window and looked down. In the street below, Lestrade shook his fist at a hansom driver.

  “From what I can gather from the shouting, Shepherds Bush,” I said.

  “If he came from the Green, the fare is half a crown,” said Holmes. “From the cab stand at the top of the Garden it is one and six. The Green is just outside the four-mile circle from Charing Cross.”

  The Prime Minister gave him an odd look.

  “I have made it my business to know London,” said Holmes with a deprecating smile. “It is essential to my work as a consulting detective.”

  Lestrade appeared at our door looking dusty and disgruntled. “I apologise, particularly to his Lordship, for my tardy arrival. I will not bore you with the iniquity of the cabby. I have his number and he shall rue the day.” He sat at the table with Churchill.

  “Would you care for some refreshment, Inspector?” said Holmes with a significant look. “We have the American ice.”

  “Thank you, no, Mr Holmes,” said Lestrade glancing across at Lord Salisbury. “It is too early for me.”

  Holmes dropped into his chair with a sigh.

  “We are about to reach the nub of the matter,” said Lord Salisbury. “You have had dealings with the Criminal Investigation Division of the police at Scotland Yard, Mr Holmes. I understand that Inspector Lestrade is your go-between when you request their aid.”

  I smothered a cackle of laughter, Churchill looked at his toes, Holmes coughed and Inspector Lestrade had the good grace to blush.

  “I have to inform you of changes in that department,” Lord Salisbury continued unperturbed. “In view of the gravity of the threat against Her Majesty during the Jubilee festivities - she insists on being at the forefront of the procession and other activities - we have activated a special section to deal exclusively with Irish affairs. It is styled the Special (Irish) Branch. Inspector Lestrade is seconded to that unit. He suggested that we should contact you.”

  Lord Salisbury shook his head.

  “The dynamitards plan to set up a republic in Ireland: a Catholic republic, forsooth. In five years, the streets of Belfast and Dublin would be rivers of blood. I can assure you gentlemen that disunion will not occur under my stewardship.”

  He sighed and contemplated the tip of his cigar. “Under ordinary circumstances, Mr Holmes, I would not sanction private investigations into such high affairs of state. We already employ heroic methods against these fiends. Indeed, I may tell you, sir, in the strictest confidence, that we are opening their private mail and reading their telegraph wires!”

  He leaned forward and continued in a sombre tone. “It had been intimated to me that avenues of investigation closed to official channels may be open to you. You will understand that there are limits beyond which the servants of a civilised government cannot go. On advice, on informed and sober advice, I turn to you, sir. I feel sure that the patriotic angels of your nature, as the late Mr Lincoln so eloquently put it, will induce you to do right in this matter.”

  Holmes considered.

  “I shall continue my endeavour to be right,” he said with a tight smile. “I thank your Lordship for deigning to approach my little agency. I will add our puny efforts to those of the official investigators.”

>   Lord Salisbury stood. “Thank you, sir, I expected no less. I must resume my disguise and hurry to a certain location for a meeting with the commander of the new branch of Scotland Yard. He is a canny fellow, Mr Holmes. But, hush, I give too much away.”

  We saw the Prime Minister to his cab and hurried back upstairs.

  Billy was at the door of the sitting room. “First lot melted, sirs, but the second batch is prime. We’re keeping the block in the dark under the stairs wrapped in a pair of Bessie’s old bed sheets as got worn out.”

  We rushed inside and found Churchill mixing three tall glasses of whisky soda. A bowl of ice chunks stood on the sideboard.

  “I say,” I said. “No whisky for you, young man.”

  “This is for the Inspector,” said Churchill with a withering look at me. He handed Lestrade a glass and then dropped pieces of ice with a spoon into each of two whisky glasses and handed them to Holmes and me. The ice crackled and bubbled in an agreeable fashion.

  I met Holmes’ eyes across the rim of my glass.

  “I’m sure Bessie’s sheets were thoroughly laundered,” I said.

  I Did Not Speak His Name

  “A wild goose chase to Shepherds Bush and back,” Lestrade exclaimed.

  He lolled comfortably in his usual place on the sofa and sipped his cooled drink. “Reliable reports from, well, an agent of the boss, said that a pair of Russians had arrived at a boarding house at the Bush with heavy luggage. The agent knew they were Russians because they -”

  “- had snow on their boots,” said Holmes.

  Lestrade sighed and nodded. “They were Scotch ministers, come down for the Jubilee. Would there be any more of the whatnot at all?”

  Churchill refilled our glasses.

  “The Russian connection to the bombers is exploded,” said Lestrade. “We must look to France and America.”

  “An unfortunate choice of words, Lestrade,” said Holmes. “However, I agree with you. The plots hatched in New York, Chicago and France must be our focus. Did Assistant Commissioner James Monro of 21, Whitehall Place, the head of the new Special (Irish) Branch, give you any papers or other evidence that might be useful?”

  Inspector Lestrade jumped up, spilling his drink. “I did not speak his name, sir!”

  “Mr Monro, and his startling rise from an obscure post combating the Wahhabi conspiracy in Bengal to the head of the Special Branch in London, is well known to me through the agency of my brother, Mycroft. We have watched the political infighting at Scotland Yard and the Home Office over the Irish Question with apprehension tinged with disbelief; there has been considerable bungling. The Procession and Thanksgiving Service are on the twenty-first of June, in just five days. I should have been called in much earlier.”

  “I cannot deny it, sir,” said Lestrade, sitting and shaking his head. “No, sir, I cannot. However, with Mr Monro in charge, we expect great things. He invites you to a certain location to view the materials we have on the various cells and splinter factions of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and Clan-na-Gael. He then suggests a meeting to discuss strategy.”

  “Very well,” said Holmes, standing. “Watson, could I ask you to consult our indexes here and see what we have on the Irish factions: the IRB, and let me see, the Triangle, the Fenian Brotherhood and whatever others may come up? You might also look up previous assassination attempts upon Her Majesty. Churchill may second your efforts if he wishes. Lead the way, Inspector.”

  I spent the afternoon combing Holmes’ reference books and scrapbooks for information on Irish assassins and dynamitards, while Churchill hunted for reports of assassination attempts against the Queen.

  The boy sweated furiously in the heat, but he stuck to his task. A month or so earlier, his mother, Lady Randolph Churchill, had requested - required, in fact - my professional opinion on her son’s physical and intellectual development. Her husband was concerned that the obstinate dullness and laziness he perceived in his son’s character, and his poor academic record, might be due to hereditary causes.

  Lord Randolph suffered from a severe debilitating disease, very probably the result of a sexual indiscretion in his youth; he was concerned that his son might have been affected. My service as an Army doctor in Afghanistan had made me familiar with such diseases, and on the recommendation of the family physician, Doctor Roose, Lady Randolph had approached me.

  My observation of young Churchill had confirmed that he was obstinate and lazy, and added untidiness and impertinence to the list of his sins. Yet, he was a bright, charming, and exuberant addition to our little household at 221B, and I had grown fond of him. Even Holmes had admitted that the boy was showing an aptitude for detective work, and his gaudy aristocratic connections had proven useful on occasion.

  I had written to Lady Randolph stating that I saw no signs of nervous disorder and that her son was the picture of rude good health; I received a polite acknowledgement. That Churchill continued to spend much of his holiday (schools were closed for the Jubilee celebrations) with us in Baker Street, while his parents attended Jubilee receptions and balls, suggested that the Spencer-Churchill family was not particularly tight-knit.

  I returned to my own assignment. I added to Holmes’ list of Irish revolutionary extremists the Fenian Council in New York - openly committed to dynamite outrages - and the oddly named ‘US’ faction that aligned with the Irish Parliamentary Party at Westminster. That party, under the leadership of the charismatic Charles Stewart Parnell, MP, outwardly eschewed violence and called for Irish independence by constitutional means. However, British newspapers had run sensational reports linking Parnell to the bombers. The Times had printed copies of incriminating letters proving that Parnell was deeply involved with murders and explosions.

  Waves of outrage had been visited on innocent people in Britain for twenty years or more. A bomb at Clerkenwell in London had demolished a row of tenements, killed more than a dozen people, mutilated many more and sent one young mother to the madhouse. A bloody attack by men armed with surgical knives had killed the Chief Secretary for Ireland and his private secretary in Phoenix Park in Dublin.

  A Republican faction based in Paris claimed responsibility for many atrocities. They were ex-convicts or fugitives from British justice, led by the firebrands Michael ‘Dynamite’ Donovan, his brother Joseph and the dangerously active American generals Morgan and Trent-Hall. The Times’ letters that proved beyond doubt that Mr Parnell was involved with these murderers.

  The British consulate in New York reported that five-hundred Irish blood brothers had formed a society called the Knights of Hassan-ben-Sabbah-el-Homari, named after the founder of the Persian assassins. They had vowed to wipe out the entire Royal Family with French-built ‘air-canes’ that could discharge soft-nosed bullets silently, and to great distances.

  Holmes’ indexes showed that the Russians and Americans were not the only supporters of the Irish revolutionaries. Newspaper reports implicated the rebellious Egyptians, the Mahdi in Sudan, the Boers and (naturally) the French.

  At five, I called a halt. It was tremendously hot and I had had enough of the Fenians. Their bluff and bluster were ludicrous, their weapons cowardly and their aims monstrous. My opinion was that we should let them have their damp little island and have nothing more to do with the ungrateful beggars.

  Mrs Hudson sent up a dish of orange and apple segments cooled with ice. They were delicious, but I was obliged to remind Churchill of the dangers of overindulgence in ice-cooled foods and drinks.

  “Americans rely on ice to a peculiar degree,” I explained. “And they suffer from high rates of dyspepsia, apoplexy and nervous disorders. Over-ingestion of ice accounts, in my professional opinion, for the legendary American shortness of temper, and their eager willingness to feel slighted at the mildest rebuke.”

  Churchill nodded as he took the last segment of orange.
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br />   The doorbell rang. Almost immediately, a fearsome racket broke out in the street. I jumped to the window.

  A closed, private four-wheeler was at the kerb. Two men in black frock coats stood on the pavement below my window as Mrs Hudson guarded the doorway of 221B against them, defiantly brandishing a broom in their faces. The older of the two, balding and heavily bearded, stood impassively before her, smiling gently. The other glanced anxiously up and down the street. He looked up, saw me and reached into his jacket pocket.

  I jerked my head back inside and raced out of the sitting room and upstairs to my bedroom. I opened my desk drawer and seized my service revolver. It was loaded, with the hammer down on an empty chamber.

  I clattered down the stairs and found Billy and Bessie in the hall backing up Mrs Hudson; Billy held a poker, and Bessie a smoothing iron. The waiting room door was open and I saw Churchill standing by the window, looking out through the lace curtains. He glanced at me, white-faced, and turned back to the window.

  I pulled Billy aside. “It’s the Fenians, Doctor,” he whispered. “The dynamite murderers is at the door. They want Mr Holmes.”

  I turned to the open doorway and regarded the two men who stood impassively on the pavement outside.

  “Dynamitards do not usually ring the bell and request an audience, Billy. Who are the gentlemen?”

  He handed me a crumpled visiting card.

  A Fiend in Human Form

  I pocketed my revolver, shooed Mrs Hudson and her cohort away, and showed the two visitors up to the sitting room.

  Churchill slipped in silently behind them, closed the door and stood against the wall by the windows.