‘The passing stranger, Holmes. Surely that could be simple poetic licence? Clearly Siviter wanted a shepherd or woodman in the landscape... why not?’
‘No Watson, the figure at the wagon pond, that was the rabbit’s tail! That’s why Siviter wanted it to replace the dog - it was not only to establish the victim was alive and present at three o’ clock, it was to concentrate our attention on it when we viewed the painting in the Mill. But why?’
Never had I seen Holmes rise so fast to such a pitch, save but once, in The Illustrious Client.
Suddenly he shouted, ‘Daubigny! Landscape With A Sunlit Stream! The other painting! Watson, we must return at once to the Mill-attic!’
Bewildered I demanded, ‘What of the other painting?
‘It is the other painting - the one they threw aside - which requires our immediate attention. The proof of murder lies in it. Watson, from a most casual look I recall it contains a serious blunder, one which will oblige Inspector Gregory to bring a charge of assassination against the Kipling League! Rather than confront Siviter openly at his door we must return with the utmost secrecy to the mill. We must at all cost gain hold of the canvas on the floor, the painting of the castle ruin and the moat!’
I stared at Holmes in stupefaction. A ruined castle in the early-evening light, a sprinkling of azaleas and a moat? How would such a painting help his cause?
By now Holmes was at the sociable, turning to beckon me with an urgent gesture. His voice rang with joy.
‘Watson, come with the greatest speed! We’ve got ‘em, by Heaven, we’ve got ‘em! Your rabbit’s tail - it has given us the key. Come, Watson, come!’ he shouted. ‘With the help of the god of justice I will give you a case which will make all England stand agog.’
Holmes flung himself aboard the carriage. At his command, the cabman flicked the reins and the greys were away, clip-clopping past an isolated farmhouse signed ‘Naboth’s Vineyard’. It was the last habitation before Crick’s End. Holmes rubbed his hands and chuckled like a connoisseur sipping a comet vintage. My spirits sank to depths never before plumbed.
We Burn Down The Mill
With the clatter of the horses’ hoofs reducing the likelihood the driver could hear our words, Holmes darted an artful glance at me and repeated in a gleeful sing-song, ‘We’ve got ‘em. I believe we’ve got ‘em!’
I peered at him reproachfully in the near-dark of the cab’s interior.
‘Holmes,’ I pleaded despairingly, ‘please inform me...’
‘The canvas on the floor, Watson. Tell me, you mentioned how artists staff such canvases with shepherds and peasants - to create the idyllic? Then what about the stranger in that painting too?’
‘Which stranger, Holmes?’ I enquired. ‘I have no recollection of any figure.’
‘Why, at the moat’s edge, where else!’
Once more my hopes rose. ‘Holmes, I recall no stranger by the moat!’
‘No stranger? Then perhaps a shepherd employed by Fusey?’
‘Holmes, there was no shepherd in the painting.’
‘Then woodman or peasant?’
‘Holmes,’ I yelled in exasperation, regardless of our driver. ‘There was no peasant nor woodman nor hunter nor pig-sticker nor mediaeval knight nor any other figure standing by the moat. I can assure you unequivocally - do you hear me? - unequivocally there was no such figure. If you now expect to base your entire case on...’
‘Was there not?’ Holmes enquired, grinning over at me in the gloom. His unnatural persistence was irritating me beyond compare. ‘You looked at it more closely than I. Surely you observed someone in the painting? Just across the moat from where Pevensey must have placed his easel, perhaps?’
‘Holmes!’ I repeated, in the tone of voice I would normally reserve for the dangerously insane, ‘let me spell it out. There - was - no - figure - by - the - moat - I - am - certain - of - it.’ I followed this in a normal voice. ‘I assure you, if there had been such a figure, it would have come to my attention.’
To my intense irritation, my companion continued, ‘You are completely certain? Surely there was a figure wearing a Tropical hat?’
‘There was not, Holmes. Yet again I must inform you, such a figure would without doubt have caught my eye.’
‘Especially with such a hat?’
‘Especially,’ I affirmed.
‘As did the figure in the painting on the easel?’
‘Precisely as did the figure in the Constable.’
If I had hoped (as I very much did) that at my adamant responses my companion would turn his face to the cabby and order him to return the carriage to Etchingham with us inside, I was disabused immediately. Far from dissuading him from proceeding to Crick’s End and professional extinction, Holmes began to sing a ditty in a jog-trot, in time with the clopping of the horses’ hoofs, ‘The dog that didn’t...’, with open delight at whatever it was which had struck him so forcibly.
‘Holmes,’ I began, ‘I beg you, you really must explain...’
It was no use. Back came ‘The dog that didn’t...’ in a high falsetto. His voice was quite unlike his usual tones. It was the most eerie trill I had ever heard, as though a Mongolian throat-singer had sprung unbidden from the dusk of the Dudwell Valley and taken over my companion’s larynx. I looked back and forth from him to the world outside. The carriage wheels drummed like tumbrels in my ear. While Holmes carolled away like a lark I meditated upon the many-sidedness of the human mind.
Suddenly the grotesque trill stopped and my companion spoke as normal. ‘Watson, motive must take a back seat for the present. We must pursue this regardless of their motive - if we can prove opportunity and planning, if we can show an irrefutable connection between moat and corpse and wagon pond, that will suffice for a jury to convict. The President of the Royal Academy is their weakest link. When we threaten him with an appearance in the dock as accessory to murder, the chainmail will unravel like an old wool cardigan. Confront him at the Royal Academy and I guarantee he will buckle. I shall provide you with the evidence of the vital role he played the moment we reach the mill-attic. After that we can, I assure you, put up the shutters on the day and pull a pint of beer. Tobias Gregson will arrest Pevensey in his studio with his customary quiet and business-like bearing. We will let Gregson and Lestrade have a report before tomorrow is out.’
By now very close, the sociable took on an ever-more-cautious pace, reducing the noise of clopping of the horses’ hoofs. My companion fell silent. He sat as I recall him at the start of every chase, arms folded, soft grey deer-stalker (though now the ear-flapped travelling cap) pulled down over his admirable forehead, chin sunk on his chest. Although almost paralytic with dread I felt proud to know him. Attired as he was, and with such a pensive mood upon his angular face, he presented a sight that will forever be pictured in the imagination of all those faithful to the memory of the nation’s greatest detective, his face so subtle in its play of expression.
The lane straightened as we approached Crick’s End head on. The high yew hedges loomed. We came ever-nearer to the wrought-iron gates. Questionable and forbidding though it appeared, it looked at most the setting for a plot of Empire rather than callous murder. To our right lay Donkey Field, stretching up at a steep incline to the village on the ridge. From it, low above the coachman’s head, the thick branches of the great oak stretched across the lane, planted when Crick’s End was in its youth. Lit by the gibbous moon, Constable clouds bubbled up from the north-west, sinuous wisps like tentacles drifting across the face of the moon. It was a place and hour you might well expect to see Kipling’s phantom rickshaw.
The carriage halted. Holmes leaped out, up for the chase. Without a backward look he swept a hand behind him.