Death on a Pale Horse (19 page)

“I daresay it means nothing, my dear Lestrade, but you know better than anyone what a clever barrister might make of such a thing in court. Do borrow my magnifying lens, if you feel it will assist you. The further window, which is shut tight, now yields a deposit of street dust and soot, sufficient to require a constant passage of contaminated air to carry it into this room. It must certainly have been left open at the top for weeks, months, even years, but is now shut.”

Lestrade stared morosely at the evidence on the white cotton as Holmes continued.

“Now consider the nearer sash. It yields only the amount of dust that might come from internal domestic sources. However, it also has several specks of dried white paint. These have surely been deposited since the surface was last dusted.”

“In other words.…”

“In other words, my dear fellow, this nearer one is a window which was ‘painted shut,' as slovenly tradesmen say, when the room was last decorated. It has been crudely and recently prised open. You may also see a little roughening of the white paint on the sash-frame itself. The fragments have parted from the rim of the wood. If you will step across to it, you will also notice that the further sash is painted but dusty. The nearer frame is cleaner but unpainted.”

“And what is that supposed to tell us, Mr. Holmes?”

Holmes stood at the window and stared across the street.

“It has been clear to me since the moment I first entered this room that the shot must have been fired within these walls and not from across the street.”

“Meaning what, again? They forced one window and shut the other?”

“Meaning that it suited the assassin for the police to believe that the shot came from the other building, though the porter has seen nothing out of the ordinary this morning. Let us leave that for a moment. From what I can see, there is also a curious punctiliousness about the arrangement of objects in this room. An exactness such as a busy housemaid in premises like these rarely attains. I believe that these rooms have been meticulously searched and the objects just as meticulously replaced, probably as soon as its occupant was dead.”

I glanced up from my examination of the body and asked, “You think he had a secret to hide?”

Holmes frowned a little.

“The immediate cause of his murder was very probably that he refused to disclose to an intruder the whereabouts of something concealed in this apartment. Something worth killing for. He defied his adversary, believing—as you have believed—that no man would risk rousing the other residents of a fully occupied mansion block with the explosion of a revolver shot. He was wrong. One second.”

He raised a forefinger to silence Lestrade, if only for that second. Then he strode across to the round table with its three dining chairs. He drew them out, one by one, and examined the upholstered seats. By way of placating the inspector, he tossed him another scrap of evidence.

“When you begin the search for your killer, Lestrade, look for a man not less than five feet and ten inches in height.”

“Why?”

“I am rather more than six feet tall. When I did all that was necessary to examine the two windows just now, I found that I had a reach sufficient in length by more than two inches. A man several inches shorter would have needed a step-ladder. There is no step-ladder here. To move a heavy day-bed across would mark polished linoleum. I see nothing else to stand upon in this room but these three chairs. But then I see no signs upon the plush of the seats that they have been used for anything, perhaps even sitting on, since the maid's last visit. The tenant was presumably content with a day-bed and a chair at the desk. A man or woman standing on the other chairs would have left a tell-tale impress, such that there would scarcely have been time to brush the print out so immaculately.”

During this conversation, I had continued my examination of the dead man. Holmes was right. The soft lead bullet had done considerable superficial damage to the victim's temple before burying itself within the softer tissue of his brain. The velocity of the bullet suggested a short range. Indeed, in this case the wound to the temple, supposedly inflicted from across the street, was so accurate that, other things being equal, one might assume the man had shot himself. But other things proved far from equal. As I turned my examination from “profile” to “portrait” of the face, forensic diagnosis was overtaken by a shock of recognition.

I had seen many dead men and women. Their mute faces, often open-eyed as this one was, seem to question the living. They seek to know, in the last moments of conscious life, why they have come to such an unquiet end as this and to understand what lies ahead. In their gaze, it seems, one last question pleads for an answer to the greatest mystery of all. So it was in this case. I had not wanted to interrupt Holmes's duel with Lestrade. Now I must.

“I know this man,” I said quietly with a sense of shock as I spoke. The conversation behind me stopped. “I have solved one of your mysteries, Lestrade. I have seen him before. Only once, but for long enough to be utterly certain. Death has changed him a little, and I concede that our acquaintance was brief. But I swear that I am not mistaken.”

They watched me as I straightened up from my examination of the body.

“His name is Joshua Sellon. In uniform, he was a captain in the Provost Marshal's Corps. In February 1879, we shared a saloon coach between Bombay and Lahore with two young Army lieutenants. According to them, Sellon was—or had been—a Provost Marshal captain. I had no idea he was in England at present, let alone why. When we met, he was knowledgeable about military law and crime. He talked to us about what they call a subalterns' court-martial. So did the two lieutenants. In this connection, the two young men described a man known to Sellon but about whom Sellon himself would not speak. His name was Colonel Rawdon Moran. He was as malevolently wicked as any man can be.”

Sherlock Holmes gazed at the dead captain and sighed. “I believe we have found our second man of whom I was so sure.”

I made no reply but concluded my explanation.

“By the same token, in his own military career, Joshua Sellon was as surely a criminal investigator as any of us in this room. I am certain from the evidence of my own ears that he knew of Rawdon Moran as a moral deviant and a corrupter of younger officers. I believe that his own path crossed with Moran's. Furthermore I suggest that it was in connection with Colonel Moran that Captain Sellon may have come back from India. Perhaps it is in connection with Moran that he has now been killed.”

I could not prove the crime, but I spoke in the certainty of being right. The kaleidoscope of events in the past two days made only one pattern in my mind. For the moment, I would say no more.

Before Sir Melville's arrival, we pacified Lestrade by allowing him to show us the rest of the apartment. “For what use that may be,” as Holmes softly and ungratefully remarked to me afterwards. What could we expect to find? The drawers of the desk were empty. Very likely they had never been used. Of course the dead man's pockets had been turned out. Had it not been for my chance encounter with Joshua Sellon on the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway, Scotland Yard would still be puzzling over whose corpse they had on their hands.

Carlyle Mansions, the office of the Evangelical Overseas Medical Mission, was just as I would imagine anonymous chambers hired by the day for the Provost Marshal's Special Investigation Branch. Nothing was left there, nothing was trusted. If they were Provost quarters, that was of course why Sir Melville himself insisted upon attending the anonymous corpse. There was nothing more personal here than the pots and pans, beds and chairs that go with such temporary accommodation.

“Well, there wouldn't be, would there?” Holmes muttered, as I gave my quiet opinion. “A Shoreditch burglar could search rooms like these and be on his way in five minutes. No one entrusts anything of use or value to such a place.”

I nodded, but my thoughts were elsewhere. I recalled Lieutenant Jock's comment on Sellon during that railway journey to Lahore. I do not believe I had thought of it since. Immediately Sellon left our saloon coach, the young scamp whispered, as if I should have known already, “He's only Provost Marshal's Corps! That's all! Snooping into black-guards!” That phrase—“Snooping into black-guards.” It was an odd one. It struck me at the time that Jock spoke as if it was well-known Army slang and we all secretly knew what it meant. As a novice, it had meant nothing to me. Nor did I hear it again in my short and invalid military career. Was it coincidence that the initial letters of the phrase were SIB? I guessed “The SIB” must be a common abbreviation of the Provost Marshal's Special Investigation Branch. Was that what Jock meant about Captain Sellon? Was that what had brought us all here? And finally, was that the profession for whose honour Joshua Sellon had chosen to die?

8

I
stood between Holmes and Lestrade in the main room of the mansion apartment. The body of Joshua Sellon still lay like a Chamber of Horrors waxwork across the desk. Glancing at Lestrade, I wondered whether he believed a word I had said. Should I say more?

But before I could explain myself further, there was a patient beat of hooves from the street, growing slower and halting below the room in which we listened. The inspector drew out his watch, looked at it, and seemed to pull himself together.

“Twelve o'clock, gentlemen,” he said solemnly. “It sounds as if Sir Melville Mac may have got back early from his explosives conference.”

Until that moment, I had not consciously noticed a white hospital screen folded and propped against the wall by the door. Lestrade now took hold of it, like a man who has been neglecting his duty. He unfolded its panels to hide the desk and the corpse, as if for decency's sake. Satisfied that all was in place, he swung round and opened the door to the stairway.

“Sergeant Haskins!”

“Sir? Yes, sir. Hansom cab pulled up outside, sir. Gentleman at the desk. Not Sir Melville. Some other gentleman asking for number 49.”

“Then make yourselves scarce. Up to the next floor landing. All of you. Eyes skinned and ears open. Let him alone unless he tries to leave the building again!”

He drew back, shutting the door quietly, drew a pass-key from his pocket, and locked it. Turning round to us, he put his finger to his lips and stood back against the wall level with the white screen. The inward opening of the door would hide him from the visitor's immediate field of view. For a moment he waited, pressed against the wall, and listened. I doubted that Lestrade would have asked permission to draw a firearm. Did he even know how to use one? He had had no reason at all to think he would need its protection this morning. But if this was the return of Joshua Sellon's killer, what a fool I had been to leave my Army issue “Webley Mark 1” revolver in a drawer of my Baker Street bedroom. A loaded six-shot with a hinged frame might prove extremely useful in a moment more.

It was a tense and distinctly unpleasant half-minute as a key rattled, the lock turned on the outside, the latch clicked back, and the hinges of the brown door creaked as it was pushed open. Then I exhaled and relaxed, for I had been holding my breath without intending to.

“Good morning,” said Sherlock Holmes in his most courteous tone. “Good morning, Mr. Dordona. We are a little early for our rendezvous, I fear.”

Samuel Dordona looked at the white screen round the desk and then his eyes jumped back to us. So far, he had not seen Lestrade, who was now concealed by the open door. The inspector was at the edge of the screen itself and had only to take a step behind it.

“Who let you in?” Mr. Dordona asked quietly.

Before Holmes could reply, I intervened. By drawing his gaze towards me, I hoped that he would not yet turn and see Lestrade.

“Mr. Dordona, there has been an accident. I fear that a man is dead. I have examined him. I believe his name and rank to be Captain Joshua Sellon and that he is a serving officer of the Provost Marshal's Special Investigation Branch.”

All this hit him at once. As he stared at us, there came upon Samuel Dordona's face a look of stark fright. How can one describe such a spasm adequately? The apprehension in those tense and narrow features, the look in those dark volatile eyes, transformed him from a man who had seemed merely odd to one who now appeared grotesque. I shall never forget his quick neurotic speech and movements. The sallow tan of his skin grew paler, the double peaks of his dark pomaded hair seemed to stand on end, almost like an illustration of terror from
Varney the Vampire
or any other “Penny Dreadful” comic. There was even the suggestion of a winged predator in the abrupt hunch of his shoulders.

During our exchanges, Lestrade had moved silently out of view beyond the screen.

“And you, Mr. Dordona,” Sherlock Holmes was inquiring courteously, “who let you in? Or should I say, who gave you the key to unlock this door?”

But Samuel Dordona glanced uneasily at the hospital screen and what must lie behind it. He ignored my friend as he muttered his own erratic questions.

“Is he still here? Is the body still here? How do you know it is he?”

“For the moment,” Holmes said courteously, “I should like my own inquiry answered, if you would be so good. Who gave you the key?”

“The key!” I thought Samuel Dordona's voice might rise in a cry of anger, but it dropped away again. “Of course I have a key! These rooms are Overseas Mission premises! You know that already. What are you doing here?”

Holmes looked at him dispassionately.

“I know only, Mr. Dordona, that a man has been shot dead in these rooms this morning before our arrival. You or anyone else with a key to the apartment would have been able to come and go as you pleased. Does it not strike you that you will certainly be one of the first people to be suspected of the crime? It may even seem to the police that you have returned now to remove or to re-arrange some of the evidence of your guilt.”