He took his eye off the track to give me a sidelong glance knowing full well he had me hooked as tightly as I’d had that fish, which would grow in size with every retelling. On this occasion I felt I had indulged him enough for one afternoon, so after a pause he continued — “Not being one of nature’s predators but an amateur in the true sense of the word, when you bought a rod, you would naturally buy the best and since the Army & Navy draws you like a homing pigeon … You are right-handed yet the wear on the — what do you call it? — the handle clearly indicates a left-handed person. And then the wear marks are uneven, indicating the user was not exerting the usual pressure on the finger most of us rely on …”
At that point I capitulated, as he knew I would.
“Yes, yes, elementary, my dear Holmes,” I said, imitating his distinctive voice as best I could, “but how did you know about old Tug being in the Engineers …?”
“A man may rise to the highest rank, Watson, but he will never entirely rid his nostrils of the smell of cordite nor his fingers from ingrained gunpowder. But enough of my parlour tricks. Watson, I confess I have been less that candid with you. The purpose of our little trip was not fishing …”
“That,” I said with as much irony as I could muster, “I had deduced for myself.”
“No,” Holmes continued, as though I had not spoken, “there is a party I am anxious to attend.”
“A party?” Anyone less social than my old friend would be hard to imagine.
“You’ve dragged me to this godforsaken spot for a party?”
Before I could vent my frustrations any further, something about his expression caught my eye. His face was turned in profile to me and instinctively I recalled how in times of crisis he would never make eye contact with me. It was as though to do so would break his concentration.
An anaemic sun was trying to break through the mist and it illuminated that distinctive aquiline profile that could so easily have adorned a Roman coin. The gaze was focused somewhere just beyond the apparent horizon. I prepared to listen to what he had to say, for I knew it was not idle chatter.
“You and I are about to be uninvited guests at what I believe is called a Press Party. Our host will be one John Moxton …”
“That newspaper chap who’s causing all the fuss?”
“The very same, Watson. Since he arrived from America just over two years ago with apparently unlimited resources, Mr. Moxton has — according to his admittedly jealous rivals in Fleet Street — undermined the very foundations of serious journalism as we know it.”
“Foundations built on sand, if I’m any judge,” I interrupted. “Why some of the things I’ve read in the popular press lately would shock my maiden aunt …”
“If you had a maiden aunt — which to the best of my knowledge you do not. Nonetheless, your sentiments are shared by many, old fellow. Not that I can claim to be anything of an expert in matters journalistic. As you well know, I read nothing but the police reports and the agony columns. As far as human aspiration and misery are concerned, they more than suffice. However, supposing Fleet Street is in need of a shake up, then this man is in the process of administering it.”
A recollection came to me. “Didn’t his paper — what’s it called? The Clarion? run those articles on parliamentary indiscretions over the ages?”
“Commons Ladies — a series of interviews with women who claimed to have had liaisons with Members of Parliament? Quite right, Watson. Not that you actually read them, of course. But the clever thing was that Moxton’s justification for the piece lay in the fact of aristocratic indiscretion as a British tradition going back to King Charles and Nell Gwynne and even further. And he does the same thing with all of his exposés, as he calls them. The public’s right to know. In one of them he even quotes the American Constitution and freedom of speech … In another he argues that comparable Presidential dalliances are rendered impossible because of the puritanical influence of the Founding Fathers. I wonder …”
“Then why doesn’t the fellow go back to America or wherever he came from?” I demanded. “I’m afraid I don’t have too much patience with people who come over trying to change things that have worked perfectly well for longer than some of these countries have been countries.”
Holmes, however, was not to be distracted from his theme: “What friend Moxton seems to have hit on is the fact that there is a new and reasonably literate middle class emerging who want to be talked to in their own idiom and not talked down to. When Moxton talks about the ‘popular press’ from one of his soap boxes — and you’ll notice the man is quoted constantly in his own paper, as if he were some kind of messiah — he strikes an emotional chord with a lot of people. I believe such men can be forces for good or ill but, being a pessimist by nature — as you know better than anyone, Watson — I suspect their motives. So much power can so easily corrupt those it touches. I am anxious to study the first of the species to emerge on our shores. I very much doubt that he will be the last. Ah, here we are …”
CHAPTER TWO
The trap turned into what must originally have been a large meadow that led down to the shores of the loch. On a day in high summer I imagine it must have been pleasant for the locals to picnic here but the sight that met our eyes was very different.
A large marquee had been erected, open to the water and a temporary flooring of planks had been laid, largely covered with what seemed to my untutored eye some rather valuable carpets. I spotted at least a couple of designs that seemed vaguely familiar from my days in the Raj. Clearly, no expense had been spared for this occasion — whatever it happened to be.
Circulating around this elegantly improvised drawing room were some hundred or so equally elegant people, while moving unobtrusively among them were almost as many flunkeys in formal uniform dispensing flutes of champagne and canapés. It was, to say the least, not a sight one would have expected to see in this remote spot.
Holmes resolved at least one of the questions going through my mind when he murmured: “Our friend Moxton hired a special train, I believe, to transport his guests here for the occasion.”
“Yes, Holmes,” I murmured in reply, “but what is the occasion, pray?”
Before my friend could answer, there was a sharp tinkling sound of a spoon or fork tapping the side of a glass, which quickly silenced the chatter of conversation. All eyes turned to the edge of the room nearest the water, where a tall grey haired man had moved into a space where he could command his audience. Instinctively, those nearest drew back to give him room and, indeed, there was something about his presence which seemed to demand deference.
He may have been an inch or so over six feet but his general bearing and the immaculate cut of what was obviously an expensive suit — tailored, I observed, thanks to Holmes’ persistent training in the rather more relaxed style of our North American cousins — gave the impression of a much bigger man.
Come to think of it, though, it was less his build than his eyes that dominated that assembly. Piercing and almost coal black, they shone forth from bushy white brows, leaving everyone in the room, I felt sure, with the same impression they created on me, that he had sought them out for his undivided attention. I suddenly realised that I had only seen one other pair of eyes remotely like them in my life — and they belonged to the man standing next to me.