Death on a Pale Horse (6 page)

At the ruins of the guard tent, he had also allowed one concession to vanity. Before mounting his horse, he drew a plain card from his pocket. He wrote five words upon it, as though it had been a
carte de visite
, and tossed it into the ruined canvas structure. It did not even matter if the words were never found, so long as they had been uttered. The author had set a title to his masterpiece of devastation.
Death on a Pale Horse
. Let the gods of battle decide whether it should ever be read—and what the world would make of it.

Riding towards the eastern ridge, he dismounted on the slope where the tall grass had been flattened by his grey horse that morning. At the foot of a thorn-bush, the pale earth was scraped into a mound that might have been a substantial ant-hill. Scattering the crumbs of soil, he uncovered an object wrapped in sacking, something the size of a football or a child's tin drum. He had been well paid and he had kept his bargain. Those who doubted him should face the dead stare of Owain Glyndwr's one remaining eye.

He looked around him once more. There was no sign of scavengers in the camp nor of Lord Chelmsford's column as the sky began to cloud over. To the superstitious, it might seem curious that a night wind had begun to moan by daylight in the singing-thorn, like an anthem for the fallen warriors of two armies who lay in such numbers on every side. Yet between its gusts, the silence of the darkening veldt was so profound that it was possible to hear a single tribesman singing somewhere on the kopje, drunk on the liquor of the defeated.

WAR DEPARTMENT RECORDS

[PROVOST PAPERS WO/ 79/4281]

Provost Marshal Cape Colony

To: Major The Hon. Lord Worsley

Adjutant to Commander-in-Chief,

His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge,

Horse Guards,

Whitehall

London SW

Sir,

I have the honour to forward for your attention the enclosed despatch form. It was found wedged and concealed within the black leather rim of the right boot, when the body of Colonel Henry Pulleine was recovered by the Provost patrol and burial party at Isandhlwana on 20 May last. The form had evidently not been discovered by the colonel's assailants after his death.

Colonel Pulleine was well acquainted with Zulu customs. Contrary to popular belief, the tribes are usually averse to slaughter. After the ritual of the Washing of the Spears, they believe that any further act of killing a foe in battle contaminates the spirit of a man. They are therefore required by their belief to take an item of a dead enemy's clothes and wear this until a rite of purification has followed battle. Colonel Pulleine also knew from experience that tunics or uniforms are often taken from the dead but boots never, for the tribes go barefoot. His chosen place of concealment for this slip of paper is significant of that.

By the time the colonel wrote his message, he must have known what his fate would be. He also knew what might happen to his body after death. Regarding the enclosed message as of the greatest importance, and being a man of supreme valour, he did all in his power to convey its contents safely. You may deduce from the appearance of the paper and from the evident haste of the writing that he had only a matter of seconds to complete and conceal it.

In remaining your lordship's obedient servant, I have the honour to request that His Grace will give the message from this brave gentleman the immediate consideration it deserves.

/s/

[Enclosure]
CAMP ISANDHLWANA, 22 JANUARY 1879, 1.35pm

WE ARE BETRAYED … FOR GOD'S SAKE LOOK AFTER OUR PEOPLE … GOD SAVE THE QUEEN …

—Lt. Col. Henry Burmester Pulleine, Officer Commanding

Her Majesty's 24th Regiment of Foot

METROPOLITAN POLICE FILE—MEPO 3

ACC/ Personal File/Sir Melville Macnaghten

221b Baker Street

London W

Sir Melville Macnaghten

Assistant Chief Constable,

New Scotland Yard

London SW

30 August 1894

My dear Sir Melville,

It comes a little late for me to forward to you the following details of Colonel Rawdon Moran,
alias
“Hunter” Moran, formerly of Her Majesty's Indian Army. However, you may care to include the following information in your files. I suggest that it is pertinent to the dossier of his younger brother, Colonel Sebastian Moran. He it was who died this morning on the gallows at Newgate Gaol for the “Park Lane Murder” of the Honourable Ronald Adair. I myself played some small part in the resolution of this mystery.

Unlike his younger brother, Rawdon Moran never incurred a criminal conviction for his many crimes. He was born in 1840, elder son of Sir Augustus Moran, who had undertaken several diplomatic missions to the court of Persia and the Sublime Porte on behalf of Lord Melbourne's administration.

I know something of Sir Augustus Moran. He and my father, Siger Holmes, were on opposite sides of the business when Edward Oxford made his attempt against the life of the young Queen. The shots were fired on Constitution Hill in the third year of her reign. My own narrative of this affair, taken down from my father's own words, must lie where it is a little longer.

Sir Augustus Moran was obliged to withdraw to exile in Hanover after the attempted assassination. His elder son Rawdon remained in England. Indeed, he attended both Eton and Oxford. As a young man, he left Magdalen College before his time, following a pistol duel with another undergraduate. He subsequently acquired a noxious reputation in London's sporting life.

After the father's disgrace, it was impossible the elder son should find a place in a fashionable regiment. I believe in 1863 he was refused when he tried to buy a captaincy under the Earl of Cardigan in the 11th (Prince Albert's Own) Hussars. His father had served in that corps as a young man. Making his way to India, where his ancestry was of less interest, Rawdon Moran first served as commander of an Indian bodyguard to the Rajah of Kalore with the local rajpoot rank of “colonel.” Long after his dismissal by the Rajah, Moran habitually made civilian use of the title this rank had given him.

He subsequently returned to direct allegiance to the British Crown and bought a place in the unfashionable corps of the 1st Bangalore Pioneers. He distinguished himself on active service in the Jowaki campaigns and was mentioned in despatches after the battle of Charasiab. Whatever his regrettable moral reputation, his personal bravery under fire cannot be questioned. When the ammunition was exhausted and the position appeared hopeless, he and his company of mercenaries defended the wounded in the field hospital by beating off the attackers with trenching tools and killing a dozen of them. In the aftermath of his recognition, he transferred to the regular Army in the 109th Regiment of Foot, subsequently known as the Albion Fusiliers.

Rawdon Moran was reputed to have a nerve of iron. The tale of how he and his younger brother, Sebastian, crawled down a culvert after a wounded man-eating tiger became a legend in the brotherhood of big-game hunters. Its truth is vouched for by five independent witnesses.

Certain other of his attainments are beyond doubt. This
soi-disant
colonel, for he still used that title as though he owed it to Her Majesty rather than to a local nabob, was the best heavy-game shot that our Eastern Empire has ever produced.

So much may stand to his credit. He was also endowed with a perverted ingenuity and a warped moral instinct. Like his father, he was an aberrant growth from an honourable ancestral tree. Discreditable stories were told in Bengal. They asserted that Rawdon Moran was a cheat at the gaming-table and an evil demon in the lives of several women. I believe, from the facts before me, that the unexplained self-destruction of Mrs. Stewart of Lauder after a matrimonial scandal fifteen years ago also stands to his account.

Though a cheat at cards and in financial matters generally, he was fierce and indomitable. To challenge him to a duel with pistols would have been madness. He had proved his skill on regimental mess nights by putting five successive pistol shots through the centre of an ace of spades at a range of thirty-seven paces. These bullets, from a .22 target pistol, were so closely placed that they entered one on top of the other, leaving a single hole. A man would therefore accept his losses rather than confront such an antagonist on a charge of dishonesty.

It was his conduct with women that ended his Indian career. You will no doubt recall the tragic case of the young military wife, Mrs. Emmeline Putney-Wilson. She it was who attempted to poison her infants and then hanged herself after the scorn and humiliation to which he exposed her. A clandestine “subalterns' court-martial” of the 109th Foot convicted him of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. A permanent injury was inflicted upon him by the officers of this “court,” rather worse than being drummed out of the regiment to the accompaniment of the “Rogues' March.” His departure in this manner made India too hot to hold him.

Returning to England, via the Zulu and South African Wars, he nursed a passion for revenge against the world and those to whom he owed his injury. London did not yet know the worst of him. He posed there as the gallant Indian officer he had once been. Indeed, he boosted his reputation by two books of reminiscences written by a journalist on behalf of himself and his brother.
Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas
appeared in 1881 and
Three Months in the Jungle
a few years later. He lived in the West End, with some extravagance, just off Bond Street. The clubs knew no positive ill of him. Until his death he remained a member of the Anglo-Indian, the Tankerville, and the Bagatelle Card-Club.

About the year 1884 he was sought out by the late Professor James Moriarty. Two or three years earlier, this luminary of crime had been dismissed with ignominy from his post in mathematics at one of our ancient universities. His offences were such as the college authorities could not get themselves to describe. The Professor got wind of the Indian scandals but also read of Colonel Moran's courage and enterprise.

These two scoundrels struck inspiration from one another. Professor Moriarty seldom exposed himself to danger but used Rawdon Moran as his brilliant aide-decamp. Their network of infamy embraced the Transvaal diamond swindles of the 1880s and the so-called Pall Mall “white slave” conspiracies of 1885–6. In the course of his South African activities in the sphere of Illicit Diamond Buying, Moran left a foolish but innocent young woman to face the gallows on his behalf for the death of her master, Andreis Reuter. At my prompting, my brother Sir William Mycroft Holmes, Permanent Secretary for Cabinet Office Affairs, intervened successfully with the Transvaal government to save her life.

Your predecessors have been sceptical of my belief in a criminal brotherhood organised for war against society. I remain convinced of its existence, upon positive evidence, and could name most of its leaders. Some of those names belong to men high in society and public life. The great prosper. As in the world of angling, it is the smaller fry who are generally caught.

Long before my own encounter with the Professor at the Falls of Reichenbach, I knew that James Moriarty could not be working alone. In the 1880s, I had also encountered Rawdon Moran. For my own safety, it became necessary that I should either leave England or that I should draw this most intrepid and resourceful of hunters into a trap of his own devising.

It was never easy to lay a snare for him. Despite his vicious conduct and repellent views, Rawdon Moran had shown himself a man of few weaknesses. He was, however, an habitual gambler at cards, notably at the Bagatelle Club. It was in his nature to cheat. He accomplished this less by sleight of hand than by judging the characters of those with whom he played.

It was characteristic of Moran that, when he had no need of money, it was his instinct to play false for the love and excitement of the thing. In cheating at baccarat, as in staking his life in a big-game hunt or a criminal venture, the thrill of the risk was more than half the reward.

The details of his career and “disappearance” have never been made public. You may now gather the story of this from Dr. John Watson's narrative. Its first chapter leads back to a time shortly before Dr. Watson and I were first acquainted. Even before that acquaintanceship, a common link was provided by the criminal activities of our adversary. These at least have been put an end to. You may rest assured, however, that, as nature abhors a vacuum, Rawdon Moran will have been replaced by now.

Should there be any further point upon which I may assist you, my talents such as they are remain at your disposal.

I have the honour to be, sir,

Your humble servant,

William Sherlock Scott Holmes.

PART II

The Narrative of John H. Watson, M.D.

1

M
y reader will readily understand that the foregoing documents have never previously been published for the world to read. The account of Isandhlwana remained classified in the criminal records of the State Papers under the name of Rawdon Moran. Other papers lie in a confidential War Office series detailing the activities of the Provost Marshal's corps, as our military police are known. Strict procedure under the Official Secrets Act of 1889 allows every Home Secretary to judge whether such papers shall be closed to the public for fifty years, or a hundred years—or for ever.