I fell back on to the cab bench and reached over to lay my hand hard upon my friend’s sleeve. ‘Holmes, I speak as your friend and ally. Think what you told the Kipling League today - ‘Never do I spring to a conclusion without possession of a sufficiency of necessary and credible facts’. It embarrasses me beyond compare that I myself told them - let me quote myself - ‘Not for Holmes the fanciful weaving of ingenious theories miscalled ‘intuition’ nor the blind acceptance of circumstantial evidence untested by the searching light of cross-examination’! Here you are, scarcely three hours later, babbling on about moats and wagon ponds and the eleven-fifty rather than the three-ten train, the assassination of a Boer, the effect of temperature on rigor mortis, boiled linseed oil and scumbling... and ’ I added wildly, ‘pairs of paintings - what in Hades does it matter if Siviter commissioned one work or ten?’
My near-incoherent agitation had no effect.
‘I simply build the foundations of a case,’ Holmes responded, imperturbably. ‘I build it as the mason builds the house. You speak of circumstantial evidence as though it were inconsequential yet all the while it accumulates into a collection whose pieces become corroborating evidence. Together, they may more strongly support one particular inference over another, the more valid as proof of a fact when we have ruled out all the alternative explanations. As to the theory you propose, that such magnates have no motivation for murder, why, you are not the student of history I had supposed! Remember,’ he added inscrutably, a characteristic further honed by his lengthy stay with the Tibetan Grand Lama, ‘the Chinese character for knife is one of the simplest of two hundred and fourteen radicals. Do not be taken in by the meekness of today’s assembly - even Red Riding Hood’s wolf would look the less farouche seated on a Knole in Siviter’s parlour.’
He sat back.
‘Nevertheless, Watson, I accept you are finding the meaning of all this is very dark. Do I follow a fixed star, you wonder, or a will-o’-the-wisp? Yet you it is who helped me solve the second of the riddles. You ask, why the second canvas? Why the pair?’
‘Given you kindly say I was instrumental in the answer, Holmes,’ I replied with growing acerbity, ‘I should be eternally grateful if you can enlighten me on my solution.’
‘From the start I was certain it is a big fact. What it told us lay beyond my reach until you showed me the Watson Codex.’ To my intense irritation he continued, ‘But let me digress a short while. If we were to be their alibi, as I am certain was their plan, the very essence of their success depended on the most precise and calculated timing. I repeat, I am sure it was their watchman who stood outside our door purporting to offer hares for sale. He it was this morning who would have sent Siviter successive communications, the first to announce my return from Rotherhithe some fifteen minutes before the hour of eight, the second to say their telegram had reached our door.’
Rather than assisting my understanding, these utterances bolstered my confusion and agitation. I feared I was at breaking-point.
‘Holmes,’ I stuttered, staring at him aghast, ‘this is all ... quite the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard. Have you taken leave of your senses? How often do you remind me you need clay to make bricks? When you confront Siviter at his door with your accusations he will in his most literary way utter Ophelia’s words - ‘O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown’!’
As I spoke, our carriage swung sharp left between the church and a Crimea war memorial, plunging into the Dudwell Valley, the two greys straining to hold the sociable’s weight from running loose down the one-in-ten gradient. On the left stood the village school. Settled on the roof facing west, six ring-doves sat in line, pouting chests etched by the yellow-gold rays of the setting sun.
I looked at Holmes in desperation. ‘Why take a corpse to Scotney Castle at all? Why not the confines of the Crick’s End estate? If they wished to make a murder look like drowning, they have the mill-pond to hand!’’
‘A corpse on the doorstep of the Kipling League would be a grave embarrassment. These are not claqueurs out to gain the public’s attention. They chose Scotney Castle for three good reasons. It is at a departure from Crick’s End, it contains a moat, and most of all they can place reliance on their accomplice Lord Fusey. Left at that it would have been simple - but these rich and powerful men took delight in constructing a daring game to occupy a rainy day, far more entertaining than the hunt for elephants and tigers from the safety of a machan. In a word, they aimed to ensnare Holmes in their deadly plot.’
Holmes dropped his voice. ‘Watson, not by any stretch of my imagination was I invited as entertainment on an idle afternoon. From my calculations based on your Codex their victim was killed this morning, his corpse taken immediately to the moat. No doubt it was submerged under overhanging branches until discovery timed precisely to accommodate my lecture - your Codex proves the coolness of a moat fed by a stream would prolong the onset of rigor mortis until at least an hour past six, six being the time I should have been on my feet if we had come on the three-ten train. Seven would be the time they scheduled for the corpse’s discovery.’
‘Holmes,’ I broke in desperately. ‘The second canvas - you say I helped...’
‘...provide the solution to this vexing riddle, indeed you did, and I shall now tell it to you. There was one reason and one alone for Siviter to order the second commission. It was to provide evidence the victim was standing beside the moat at six this evening. The painting would become the set-piece in their defence if needed. They summoned me by telegram to take the three-ten train, enticing me with the prospect of a hamper and a considerable fee. At most I thought this invitation a minor flattery. I see now it was a most ingenious and brilliant conceit. I repeat, the famed consulting detective was invited to Crick End to be witness at a Court of Law, witness for the defence of famous poet, Randlord and two Gold Bugs against a charge of assassination!’
To this day I cannot recollect another instance where Holmes engaged in such extraordinary calculations. His adamant adherence to so preposterous a theory stirred me to the point of insanity.
As though taking my silence to mean I awaited further explanation, Holmes pressed on. ‘Yes, Watson, should Scotland Yard by chance adopt an interest, it was essential to the League’s original plan I and they together should be assembled at Crick’s End at six o’ clock. The local constable would be summoned from his cottage to inspect a body found in the moat by a woodman ‘in the undertaking of his rounds’ at seven, its limbs still short of stiffening, claimed by Fusey to have been alive only an hour before, corroborated by Pevensey’s painting. Instead, to the plotters’ consternation, we caught the earlier train and I would be on my feet much sooner. According to the Watson Codex, far from a need to delay rigor mortis by keeping the body cool, now they needed to speed the process up, otherwise they might lose me as their witness. Leaving the body in the cool water of the moat would have maintained the suppleness of its limbs far too long. Even the local bobby would have found it feasible the victim died well past the time of my presentation at three. We might easily have been whirling back to London. My value to the League would be placed in serious jeopardy. Hence they hastened to take the body from the moat and place it in the warmer water of the wagon pond. Thus the sheen on the figure in the Constable.’