When winter set in, I decided against a grate, terrified that fire would reduce my notes and documents to ash. I made cups of coffee at a spirit-lamp and endured many long cold afternoons, feet inside a pair of cardboard boxes. When completed, I placed the work in my portfolio which I returned to its hiding-place at 221b Baker Street under our landlady’s care, alongside the Beaumont-Adams revolver.
When rumours spread that I was attempting to publish the Dead Boer against Holmes’ wishes, some members of the public wrote to me questioning my integrity, taking his side against me. Why, they wanted to know, did I try to ‘spring into print’ with the Dead Boer like an eager Globe reporter, against the combined wishes of Holmes and the Editor of The Strand and even the editors of McClure’s and Collier’s Weekly? They asked what triggered this disloyalty? A correspondent from Trincomalee inquired with Buddhist concern, what caused this change in my character? I informed them that they could find the answer to their enquiry in Peter Lely’s painting of Oliver Cromwell in the Tate Gallery.
On Holmes’ departure for Northern Italy to inspect a dozen hives of a sub-species of the Western Honey bee, I resumed my early interest in paintings and Chinese pottery, attending excellent lunchtime lectures at the Tate. I find from my notebook this was in August 1904. In the course of a lecture, our guide brought us to the portrait of General Cromwell. ‘Despite the fashion of the time,’ she told us, ‘unlike the portraits of Charles the First, Cromwell demanded to be portrayed as he really was, ‘warts and all’.’ The guide’s well-practiced and casual statement jolted me like a shock from the Electrophorus electricus, the South American apex predator. I stared hard at the Great Protector. The warts were there for all to see. In that instant I determined my obligation too was to paint Holmes ‘warts and all’. I had a mission of trust to my public. It was not my role to be a chanticleer or hagiolater but a Boswell. I would publish Holmes’ defeats and imperfections alongside his successes and be damned.
At this fateful decision I left the Tate. Back at my lodgings, I withdrew my portfolio and settled down to examine its contents. I laid aside the notes of those cases I could never publish including the ‘Foxy’ Ferdinand affair. This account of Balkan intrigue would rock the shaky edifice of European monarchy if it were to come to the world’s attention. As I leafed through my portfolio, the title I sought leapt from the ‘suspended’ folder and re-engaged my attention.
I was the more encouraged to ready the Dead Boer for publication after my friend Lomax, sublibrarian at the London Library in St James’ Square, told me my chronicles were becoming the most popular of the works they held. At one point The Hound of the Baskervilles was nearly the equal in bookshop sales to Conrad’s Typhoon. One man wrote to me during the Anglo-Boer War, ‘The stories are greatly appreciated in the midst of mud and rain and shells, and all that could make life out here in South Africa depressing’. The Editor of the London Mercury told me I was outselling all other publications in Kazakhstan and the Falkland Islands. When Lomax added that my chronicles had become the ‘birthright of all Britons’, my face flushed with pride.
Here follows the unabridged adventure I have titled Sherlock Holmes and the Dead Boer at Scotney Castle.
A Telegram Arrives
Holmes often stays in his bed until late in the day. At other times he rises with the first glimmer of dawn even before I have glanced at the clock or looked sleepily through my window at the outside world. On these not-infrequent occasions, he selects a coat from his collection as carefully as he chooses a pipe and trips with agility and anticipation down the stairs from the first-floor flat at 221b Baker Street. Sometimes he is gone all day, leaving behind a book by his chair, the pipe with the mended amber stem, and a sense of his presence. East London is his favourite stamping ground though it is undergoing sudden and savage industrialisation. Slavic agitators fleeing persecution have settled in communities around the River Lea, transforming them into principalities of crime. Few Londoners venture without need beyond the Hawksmoor Church of St. George’s-in-the-East except for those thwarted in love seeking Chinese love-potions concocted from hashish, geraniums, rose petals, lemon leaves, sugar and honey. On other occasions we will visit Narrow Street in Limehouse on matters concerning the Chinese secret society, the Hung League, that strange group of men who will only communicate with each other by pointing first at the sky, then down to the ground, and last to their own heart.
The area throngs with humanity - cooks from Hainan Island, Petticoat-lane fencers, boatswains from Canton, stewards from Ningpo, men with pointy beards and Homburg hats. Ships of the mercantile marine bring cargo from equatorial climes to London’s deep-water docks.
Holmes starts his explorations in earnest at Poverty Corner, walking many miles along the Thames, plunging into the vile alleys lurking behind the high wharves lining the north side of the river to the east of London Bridge. If wet weather prevails, as on the day whose events I now relate, he summons a street Arab and a tilbury, and in the instant is gone. He is as acquainted with St Katherine’s, Victoria, South West India, Albert and Tilbury docks as our neighbouring Regent’s Park. Fine ships still load for ‘Frisco or the Antipodes, the surrounds filled with cackling Creole beldames from Sierra Leone and holy men in turbans and gowns with a reputation for healing.
It was the 27th of May 1904 when the extraordinary and disturbing events of the Dead Boer took place. On referring to my notes I see that though I was living over my surgery at that period, I made one of my not infrequent overnight stays at my familiar old lodgings in Baker Street still filled with most of my clothing and possessions. In the morning I rose by eight o’ clock to find Holmes already returned from his sortie and finishing off a plate of the landlady’s eggs. He gave me a nod as I took my seat.
Mrs. Hudson’s breakfasts were designed more for my appetite than Holmes’. While he readily ate her eggs, he picked in desultory fashion at grilled kidneys, devilled chicken, cold ham and galantine. The kidneys (and galantine in particular) were marched across the table to my plate.
‘Holmes,’ I began, testing whether he was in a communicative humour. ‘What of your day?’
‘Watson, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your great interest and concern. I have had a most charming morning.’
‘And,’ I pursued, not discouraged by this over-effusive response, ‘what adventures among the slop-shops and gin-shops run by rascally lascars, the dark and deep waters of the docks, or murder-traps in streets mournful beyond expression have pursued you like meteors beckoned into Jupiter’s maw? Did you obey their notices against smoking, fighting, swearing and spitting?’
I added, ‘Would we had a hundred guineas for every poor devil who has been done to death in those vile dens.’
‘Adventures none but my discussions at the Blackwall Basin,’ Holmes responded in self-satisfied mood. He left the table and threw himself down into an armchair. ‘I find much of interest in Dockland, the bowsprits and jib-booms and silken sails of the Australian packets taking the early tide down-river homeward bound. The largesse of the Tropics and the Spanish Main - hogsheads and hillocks of coconuts, indigo, spice, saltpetre and tea. Where better than the Steam Packet beerhouse to purchase the Pipe-fish or the Surinam Toad?
‘Where indeed?’ I replied.
I had once accompanied Holmes to Schewzik’s Russian Vapour Baths, followed by a visit to the aforementioned Steam Packet beerhouse where I obliged the landlord by drinking a mug of tepid brown slop at twopence the pint, beneath a racing calendar punctuated by dead flies. I still recall the smell which comes alone in all the world from long years of herrings cooked on a gas grill.