‘It does not,’ I affirmed after a search.
‘No matter.’
Holmes reached for a strip of paper at his side and threw it across to me.
I read. ‘Confidential. From Mark Sykes, British Embassy Berlin, 31/V/1912. For the attention of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Near Lewes, Sussex, England.
The ‘Hottentot’ Election of 1907. ‘Parties of Order’ gained a solid majority. Arrival in the Reichstag of hardliners such as Count Bernhard von Bülow. Bülow picked a new kind of Hercules to sweep out the Augean Stables (the German Colonial Department), ‘a plump young banker with a light brown beard and smiling eyes’, as one German newspaper described him, named as Bernhard Dernburg. His message is visionary - economic imperialism is the answer. Germany’s African colonies could become jewels in the Kaiser’s crown through which the Reich could exploit cheap and secure sources of those raw materials most needed for a strong Defence of the Fatherland - oil, cotton and the rubber, vital to its ‘destiny’ as the world’s second greatest steel power.’
‘By strong Defence we must take it Sykes means war,’ Holmes remarked.
My companion then moved to a mysterious matter alluded to in his telegram earlier in the day: ‘Watson, are you à la page with the Kiel Canal?’
I replied I was not. At his quizzical look I added I had come across reports from correspondents in the Morning Chronicle and the London Times but such matters remained at the far margins of my interest.
Holmes nodded. ‘I see. My dear Watson, I am about to enlighten you about an unexpected turn of events. As you are seated, if precariously - I must get Mrs. Keppell’s husband to deal with that chair - let us examine this newspaper cutting pushed beneath my door. You may not know it from the photograph but the cutting refers to the man I first asked to you to look up in the Gazetteer.’
‘The conquistadore in the scramble for Africa?’
He passed me the original cutting. ‘Count von Hofmeyer, yes. I have had it translated.’
I looked at the cutting from the Rheinische Merkur. It showed a police-type photograph of an unsmiling man wearing dark glasses. Printed by it were several lines in a Teutonic type.
Holmes began to read out the translation.
‘‘Graf von Hofmeyer Declared Legally Dead’’, he began. ‘‘No Solution To The Mystery. It is seven years since Ulrich von Hofmeyer disappeared after departing the French coast at Dieppe by packet-boat for Newhaven on the coast of Sussex on the 24th of May 1904. Nothing has been heard from him since. At the request of his wife the Authorities have declared him legally dead. A figure widely identifiable in Eastern Africa because of his attachment to dark glasses and uncompromising approach to the natives, von Hofmeyer had only recently taken up new, undisclosed diplomatic duties in Berlin after disposing of extensive personal assets in Tanganyika, including three tanzanite mines at Arusha.’’
At his words I burst out in a strangulated voice, ‘the Boer at Scotney Castle...’
‘Precisely, Watson, the dead Boer...’
‘... was a Boche!’
‘You have it,’ Holmes replied, observing me quietly.
A grey mist swirled before my eyes. Everything which had seemed real threatened to tumble around my buzzing head. I felt I would swoon for only the second time in a life not absent of desperate surprises. The first occasion was when Holmes unveiled himself after years during which I thought him dead, though it was a close-run thing during my early weeks in India when a brother officer at my side in the Mess-tent, seemingly at the end of his tether, drew a khukuri and stabbed himself thrice just above the knee with the utmost savagery, screaming the while like a Banshee spirit. After some seconds of this curious display, when no artery was severed and no spurt of blood forthcoming, I realised he had a wooden leg. On both occasions it took me a while to recover.
After several moments I spoke.
‘Holmes, the article is so close to an obituary, like you I am certain the corpse was von Hofmeyer’s. He may have come intent on discussions on a matter of some moment, but still I say, to be murdered and stripped naked... surely that goes too far?’
‘Do you recall how the Sultan Saif Al-Din Qutuz and his generals treated the four emissaries of the Mongol prince Hulegu Khan when they brought a letter demanding instant capitulation?’ Holmes asked.
‘Why, no, I do not recall,’ I responded.
‘At Qutuz’ command the ambassadors were cut in half at the waist, decapitated and their heads placed on Cairo’s great Zuwila Gate.’
‘So killing the Boche and stripping off his clothing...’
‘Would it not make a considerable point, if short of being halved?’
‘It would, Holmes,’ I agreed, ‘but if he was murdered - and under the circumstance I am obliged to accept it was not suicide or death from accidental drowning - why has no effort been made, as far as we can see, by our Foreign Office or the Imperial German Embassy in London to put two and two together? We know the finding of the corpse was reported in the Standard. Particular mention was made of the presence of dark shiny spectacles - they are so much the dead man’s signature the Rheinische Merkur refers to them in this clipping.’
‘I telephoned Brother Mycroft this morning. It transpires His Majesty’s Government was fully aware of the Count’s journey to Sussex from the moment he left Berlin. Furthermore, von Hofmeyer sent a letter from Crick’s End to the Chancellery on the morning of his death using the German Naval code. His letter was intercepted at the Burrish Post-Office. It took Mycroft a mere six hours to decipher.’
‘And it said...?’
‘’Proposals well received. Anticipate arrival of eminent personages from Downing Street within hours’.’
‘Why did your brother not let you know of this at the time?’
‘The Official Secrets Act 1889 Section 2, ‘Breach of Official Trust’, that’s why. I had no idea Mycroft could be so pedantic. He insisted on reading the entire wretched Act over the telephone like the Sermon on the Mount.’
Holmes threw me a serious look. ‘Watson, I had my suspicions even then that the murder was - if not officially sanctioned - at the very least condoned by a bellicose faction inside the Government. Once von Hofmeyer left Dieppe for Crick’s End, followed all the while, he had one chance on life to a hundred chances on death.’
‘A bellicose faction inside the Government?’ I exclaimed. ‘Led by whom?’
‘Why, the Blenheim spaniel, Winston Churchill, who else? Mycroft has informed me your friend Marsh was forbidden to tell you on pain of his knighthood.’
‘But even Winston Churchill could hardly command events at Downing Street,’ I protested. ‘Ambitious he may be to a fault, but he is not yet Prime Minister. He is not even Foreign Secretary.’
‘My dear Watson,’ Holmes replied, chuckling. ‘Surely you remember our one visit to Downing Street? The labyrinthine layout, the innumerable baroque state rooms, the poky passageways, the hidden courtyards, the secluded offices. It is a wonder we ever found our way out. It only lacks a few suits of armour, oriental robes, curved swords, Ottoman miniatures, Islamic calligraphic manuscripts, murals and a ghost or two for it to be mistaken for the Topkapi Palace. Those are not the corridors of power but mediaeval courts run from broom cupboards, one of which is reserved for Mycroft Holmes but another must bear the label ‘Winston Churchill’.’
So it was that for the next fifteen minutes, swiftly by degrees, Holmes took me on a most unexpected tour d’horizon. He launched into his narrative, as strange a story as he had ever laid before me.