The Metropolitan Police detective force has suffered a certain amount of gentle lampooning at the pen of the Good Doctor and his literary agent, but there is no doubt in my mind that they are the best that can be obtained – for the money allocated by a niggardly Treasury. Their offices at New Scotland Yard administer a force that in total amounts now to over thirteen thousand, inclusive of their colleagues who perform the services behind the scenes, without which no substantial organisation can function, and they are no longer the well meaning but ill-organised handful of burly thief-catchers of Rowan and Bayne’s day.
What’s that? Yes, I agree that it is a slight embarrassment that New Scotland Yard was itself founded upon an unsolved mystery. The torso of the woman dug up in the preparation of the foundations in 1888 has, I must admit, never been identified to a degree that would permit a case to be made in law. However, strictly between ourselves: the disappearance, in July of that year, of the Countess of Strathmore’s lady’s maid Jane from the Royal Box at the Wimbledon Championship – together with the Strathmore tiara, valued I believe at over seven thousand pounds for the gems alone – did not, I fear, end well for the cat’s-paw who allowed herself to be persuaded by the honeyed words of her eventual killer. The theft was a well-planned one involving the distraction of the sporting event in which I believe, if I recall correctly, the thirteenth Earl[5] received a substantial defeat in the mixed doubles at the hands of the Renshaw brothers.[6] I wonder if it was the failure of him and his partner on the lawns or the theft that rankled most when the family sat down to dinner that night. One day the hand of retribution will fall upon the shoulder of the personable Colonel Moran – but forgive me it was not my intent to raise old spectres, and I fear I have allowed myself to be diverted by your remark from the narrative you originally requested. My apologies: I fear even Homer may nod.
On this particular Wednesday, Lestrade was going through reports of the beat officers from the Dulwich area looking for signs of crimes in the making. Indications that known criminals might be congregating, or for unusual spending which might tie any of the men known for such acts to the recent spate of robberies in that part of the city. You can well imagine the sort of thing that an intelligent man can glean from the chaff of the threshing, and Lestrade is by no means unintelligent. That he has not the flashy legerdemain of my brother, nor his accrued collection of bad habits, are both strengths in a man working with a regimented body: the crime solving engine that is the Metropolitan Police.
Knowing that a tool is best used for the types of fastenings with which it is by its forging designed to engage, Lestrade did not attempt to lay before Sherlock any of his diligent work, but immediately handed him the most outré and time-consuming task of the many demanding his attention. The Yard does this now at my suggestion, for a study which I am carrying out concerning the management of time has indicated that the solution of a single high profile case, though often of political importance, does not accomplish as much for the general repose and security of society as the countless smaller crimes which can be solved or even averted by the correct placement of resources. As a self-motivated agent, my brother can be deployed at no formal cost, boasting that he never varies his charges except where he defrays them altogether (a claim I do not expect always holds true, if only because he is inclined to discount the odd princely gift from a grateful nobleman or woman). He is – when bored – perfectly happy to be set upon a goal, and will – at his own expense – dig into anything if it be sufficiently interesting.
In this case it was the discovery of the body of Sergeant Major Lewis Rourke, absent without leave for five days from his Barracks – shot, it appeared, repeatedly in the chest, though not with any projectile from a normal rifle, and – this the matter that encouraged Lestrade to pass the case over to my brother – entirely clean shaven, despite his possession before his disappearance of both a large moustache, and formidable sideburns. No doubt this will eventually appear in print under such an attention-grabbing description as “The Adventure of the Shaved Sergeant” or perhaps “The Case of the Curiously Obsessive Murderer”, for, while to shoot a man more than once may be prudent, to shoot a single body twenty or thirty times suggests an unusual determination to ensure that the body breathes no more.
To give him his due, Sherlock began sensibly enough, delegating Watson – whose military background and medical acumen enabled him to undertake both tasks – to interview the enlisted men at his Barracks as to the character and history of the deceased, and to review the report of the doctor who had examined the body.
This produced the following information, which I can attest is completely true, so far as it goes: the sergeant major was – at forty-one years of age – an old campaigner and had served in India where his bald pate had been tanned by the Indian sun and his complexion had been given a florid hue that might otherwise have suggested drink. Thereafter he returned to serve as a drill sergeant and instructor of new recruits. He was regarded as being a fair man, not without a certain mawkish sense of humour, though still capable of enforcing discipline. Being himself a strict teetotaller, despite his appearance, he was but little inclined to overlook the minor japes and misdeeds committed by soldiers in their cups. Nevertheless he was well spoken of, and even those members of the regiment who had had occasion to be subject to military discipline under him appeared to have no onus for revenge, nor could a motive for his death easily be ascertained. He had been in fine fettle the day before his disappearance, and one of the gunners recalled that the sergeant had received a private letter, which had appeared, from the manner of its reception, to have conveyed good news.
As to the body itself, aside from the shaving of the moustache and sideburns, it showed no injuries other than the wounds to the chest. This was unusual, because of the many impacts and the exceptional accuracy of the marksmanship. The wounds were shallow indents from small-bore grapeshot of the kind used for the sport of hunting birds, one or even a dozen of which would not have necessarily been fatal to a man but which, impacting in great numbers upon a small part of the sergeant’s chest – which had been bared – had produced, cumulatively, a cratered wound from which he had evidently expired, the proximate cause of death being loss of blood.
At this point, if Watson were recounting the tale, there would no doubt be an erroneous theory of his coinage, there to be transcended by Sherlock’s own true account of the crime and the apprehending of the villain responsible. As I am standing in for Watson in recounting my brother’s exploit, perhaps you would care to supply your own surmise at this juncture?
Ha, you know, that’s very Watsonian. You have a surprising talent for mimicry. Your theory is not an impossible one. You suggest, on receiving good news, perhaps of a legacy long wished for but also long pushed to the back of the mind, the sergeant major slipped from his teetotal pedestal – a position occupied most forcefully always by the reformed bibber. Finding him drunk, his men – not wishing him ill, but possessed of that boisterous spirit that can make a man as intolerable in peacetime as he may be invaluable in war – proceeded to shave him, leaving him to wake to the shame of a barefaced hypocrite. So far so good. But how then in this condition would you venture the man came to die? Presumably, you frame it as an accidental demise?
6
William Renshaw and Earnest Renshaw defeated the earl and his partner Sir Herbert Wilberforce: 2-6, 1-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-3.