Holmes shook his head with a glance of comic resignation and gave a chuckle. ‘There never was, and never will be another Prince as foxy as Ferdinand. We must hope to encounter him again.’
I pondered on this unexpected revelation.
‘Holmes,’ I returned, ‘that leads me to something which puzzles me still - even now there are matters still dark to me.’
‘Ask on, my friend. I shall be your fellow prisoner for some hours in this contraption. You are very welcome to put any questions you like.’
‘My first is, I am sure, a very minor one, Holmes, so please don’t jump down my throat - when we left the Barrington villa after our first visit, you asked me if I had noted the presence of a tantalus containing brandy and whisky. I had not. Nor had I noted decanters of gins or vermouths and kirsches. Was the absence of spirits of especial importance?’
‘The lack of a tantalus struck me as odd. It followed on the heels of my first observation, that Barrington’s mustachios had changed not a jot between his marriage photo and the painting by Sargent a year later. I can see that a Captain in the Connaught Rangers could conceivably have settled into the life of a teetotaller upon marrying - I recall you giving up drink when you tied the knot with Miss Morstan - but surely he would not inflict his new-found temperance on every one of his guests? What of visits by officers of his old regiment? What choice words would they use in the face of an offer of a milky Advokaats?’
‘How do you explain this oddity, Holmes?’
‘Simply by deducing the Barringtons invited no-one to hobnob at their villa, particularly anyone who could discuss military affairs or might have served in Africa with the real Captain Barrington. You and I were allowed in only in extremis. And we can deduce neither Mrs. Barrington nor Julia touched alcohol themselves except for the Advocaats.’
I digested his words for some moments and continued, ‘Holmes, I have a further question. When we were in the forest glade, you said that Julia’s cold-blooded killer deserved the hangman’s noose, that of the 40-odd murderers in your career so far - ’
‘ - he, most emphatically of them all,’ Holmes affirmed.
‘Yet as soon as you deduced it was Colonel Kalchoff you invented a device to expose him in front of Ferdinand of all people - and in the Prince’s private quarters. Why didn’t you oblige Kalchoff to face a Court of Law? Who could possibly listen to your reasoning and have any doubts as to the man’s guilt!’
‘Where was our evidence? What violent enmity did he bear towards this murdered woman, a complete stranger to him and everyone else? Where was the note calling Barrington to the obrok? What of the monogrammed handkerchief he didn’t drop?’
He gave a short, sardonic laugh. ‘No, my friend, no gallows awaited him. Even an Old Bailey jury packed full of honest Englishmen would have set our Colonel free in the blink of an eye.’
It dawned upon me. I stared at my companion aghast.
‘Holmes, are you saying you engineered the photographic session at the Palace solely to lure Kalchoff - ’
‘ - to his death? Of course! It was a deliberate ambuscade, a private court-martial. How else would a great danger to England be removed? How else would the dead woman have been revenged? How else would Mrs. Barrington be freed of this cousin before he could take her lands - and probably her life? It was serendipity indeed when the Prince gave you the Sanderson camera. Kalchoff saw us flinging ourselves from the theatre. No more than a day would pass before he discovered our destination was not the midnight train to Paris but the body in the Mausoleum. From there it would be a matter of moments before he worked out that the one clue pointing towards the murderer lay with those mustachios, that his foolhardy use of them for the Sherlock Holmes competition now threatened his liberty, even his life.’
‘Holmes,’ I protested, ‘surely you could not anticipate the Prince would stick a sword through Kalchoff’s throat the moment you - ’
‘ - proved the mustachios could only have been Julia’s in her disguise as Captain Barrington? Not only did I foresee it, I depended upon it. Any delay in ending Kalchoff’s life would have given him time to perpetrate some fresh atrocity. I smiled to myself when upon our entry I saw the Prince held the paint brush in one hand, the sword stick in the other. Our client knew that even he may not be safe from the War Minister’s obsessive ambition once Kalchoff realised the Prince’s intentions towards Mrs. Barrington.’
‘But what of your maxim that justice must be done, that the depravity of the victim is no condonement in the eyes of the law?’
‘My dear fellow,’ Holmes replied calmly, ‘once in a while we must make our plea to a higher, purer law. You recall your words upon the murder of Charles Augustus Milverton, “that it was no affair of ours; that justice had overtaken a villain”, and my words which you quote so inimitably in the Adventure of the Speckled Band regarding Dr. Grimesby Roylott, that I cannot say his terrible death is likely to weigh very heavily upon my conscience?’
Not for the first time in our long career together I realised it was Holmes’s contradictory nature, his Celtic insight that faith in reason cannot be absolute, which was and remains the engine propelling him so swiftly and inexorably along the path from mortal to myth.
My thoughts returned to the beautiful Bulgarian women we had left behind. None of us is the youngest we have ever been, I thought ruefully, but Holmes’s unthinking offer of me as her next Best Man was a forcible reminder of my advancing years. What would happen to her now?
We came to a long straight stretch of road. The chauffeur reached to one side and passed back a bulky package wrapped in French serge. It contained a butcher-blue tunic, high collar with three stars, and a hat adorned with pale-green feathers, the ceremonial uniform of an Austrian cavalry general. Beneath the tunic lay black trousers with red stripes down the sides and a gold-braided Bauchband with tassels. A page of fine pink notepaper lay half tucked into a pocket. I could hear Foxy Ferdinand’s voice as I read his words to my comrade-in-arms:
‘“Dear Mr. Holmes, my tailor Hammond in the Place Vendôme created this uniform for your brother. When I am next in London I should like Mycroft to receive me in it at Victoria Station where he and I will pose for Dr. Watson and his camera. I have pinned to the tunic a new Order which I have just invented, the National Order of Military Merit, Grand Cross. Let me know if you would like me to invent a similar Order for you in recognition of your great service to my country in recovering the Codex Zographensis”.’
There was a scrawled post-script. ‘If not a military order, I am cultivating a new type of rose with four very pretty scarlet petals which I could name Rosa sherlockholmesia.’
This was followed by a Post-post-script: ‘I forgot to inform you during your stay that His Imperial Majesty, The Sultan Abdülhamid II, Emperor of the Ottomans, Caliph of the Faithful (also known as The Crimson Sultan), wished you to travel on to an audience with him in the Sublime Porte, as he is a long-time admirer of your skill as a consulting detective. Apologies for failing to pass his invitation on to you in time. It quite slipped my mind.’
Chapter XXII
WE CONTINUE OUR JOURNEY HOMEWARD
BY early evening we were comfortably reinstated in the Prince’s magnificent carriages aboard the Orient Express tucking into Venison and Red Wine pie followed by Orange Crème Caramel with Cointreau oranges. After dinner Holmes laid out a box of matches in front of him and lit up a Dublin-clay pipe primed with an especially rank shag purchased in Sofia, thick blue cloud-wreaths spinning up from him. His eyes sparkled.