By now, Holmes’ fox was running at full pelt though there was no sign of exultation or satisfaction upon his face.
‘It was a serious blunder by Berlin to approach the Kipling League. Other eminent Englishmen would have been far more amenable. It was not the Kaiser’s bullying or an open threat of war the Sungazers dreaded. It was the offer of peace. Therefore the emissary must die. In the Kaiser’s Germany no cohort of men could act this way without a nod from the highest authority. Think of it, von Hofmeyer done to death, his corpse left to soak naked in a wagon pond. Not even the Imperial Russian Secret Police could kill a foreigner without the Winter Palace’s assent. The clear message to Berlin would be Downing Street wanted no entente or ‘equitable solution’. Thus Germany redoubled her efforts to build up the Kriegsmarine and train a hundred crews. Thus in response we amplified many-fold our own construction of armoured cruisers.’
‘With the result...’
‘War is on the horizon, early rather than late. Precisely what Van Beers and the Sungazers wanted.’
Holmes continued, ‘Now I see they wanted the discovery of the corpse to catch the German Ambassador’s eye. They knew an unclad body would push into the press. As to their success in misleading me... do you recall with what approval they listened when I told them how I deduced you were recently returned from Afghanistan? ‘Just returned from some time in the Tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair.’ They must have hoped we would note - and be misled by - the pattern in the corpse’s skin if by chance we entered the case.’
‘Into thinking he was a Boer...’
‘Yes.’
‘And the Boche’s shiny dark glasses, Holmes, as you surmised, a part of the semaphore?’
‘It was a signal to the Imperial German Embassy. The Ambassador would inform Berlin their Africa brute turned diplomat was dead - yet the very same clue compounded my assumption the man was resident in the Tropics.’
I ventured, ‘The hat with its lizard-skin band...’
‘Sheer genius. Again, it fed in to my deduction the crime was some dangerous residue of the South African war while it served a separate purpose. It ensured the Germans understood this was no suicide or accidental drowning. They would realise von Hofmeyer’s fedora had been exchanged for someone else’s hat. A quick trawl through photographs of the Kipling League would tell them it belonged to Sir Julius.’
‘Holmes, now that you have explained it, I confess that I am as amazed as before.’
My friend nodded. ‘They are a formidable lot.’
We turned away from the rhododendrons and seated ourselves on a shaded marble bench.
‘Suffice to say the skies are black with the clouds of war,’ Holmes went on. ‘The Sungazers have put us on the path perhaps five years earlier than might have been, though they would argue just in the nick of time. Already the German fleet has gained a complete ascendancy over that of Britain’s on the sea-routes to The Argentine.’
He sat beside me discomfited, shoulders bowed.
I asked, ‘Have you any thoughts on the offer von Hofmeyer might have brought?’
‘I have no doubt free rein for Cecil Rhodes’ dream of Africa - British from Cape to Cairo. Perhaps an alliance to wrest the Congo with its germanium and rubber from the Belgians to share between us.’
Holmes turned his head away.
‘My naivety in world affairs. We should have seen we were in March Hare and Mad Hatter Land. They were more cunning than the water-fox. Think on it - the suspicious absence of your most popular chronicles in Siviter’s study. That was not by chance. They were purposely removed. I am certain Siviter possessed The Adventure of the Speckled Band. It is a study of murder known to every Anglo-Indian. It was Siviter who ordered Sir Julius to switch his hat with von Hofmeyer’s and leave it a-top the pile of clothes.’ Again my companion shook his head with a rueful look in my direction. ‘It was wonderfully done. That speckled band sent me scurrying in quite the wrong direction. I wager they already knew The Hound of the Baskervilles - no-one shuddered. But there was a lacuna in their knowledge of your chronicles, Watson.’
‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze...’
‘Yes. Once I discussed it, Siviter and his co-conspirators must have sat there wondering was there a dog which didn’t bark in their master plan for murder? I wonder which among them re-examined the painting of the moat and saw von Hofmeyer’s shadow and reflection lying there still, without a figure? It alone would prove their first plan was to have the body discovered in the moat that evening, and not the wagon pond at 3.’
Holmes sprang up from the marble bench and paced about in uncontrollable agitation, a flush appearing upon his sallow cheeks. ‘To have forever on my mind I could have grasped their deception... Look what other clues I had to hand. I noted Sir Julius had worn a hat too small. The hat marks on his forehead were there for all to see. Were it not for the rain that day he might well have cast it in the Rother or the Dudwell. No well-dressed man resident less than half a mile from Lincoln & Bennett’s would bring a hat to Sussex half a size too small. Further, Watson, I saw at once it was German, probably purchased from the hatter Möckel, though brought into wider fashion by the old Prince of Wales. The moment I read the Standard I should have deduced far faster the hat Sir Julius brought back to Crick’s End had previously perched atop the corpse’s head while his was the one cast with such guile a-top the pile of clothes.’
With reluctant admiration he continued, ‘These Sungazers are not creatures of thin air. They have taught me a lesson I shall not relinquish, Watson. To think I mocked them on our journey to Crick’s End. I called them Late Victorians, relics of a bygone age, purblind Empire Crusaders.’
Holmes looked at me almost accusingly.
‘Just as Moriarty used so many petty criminals to do his dirty work, I am now inclined to believe the young blighter selling papers was in the Sungazers’ pay, a tiny storm petrel of crime. Dudeney could have given him his instructions. I am equally certain Sir Julius and Siviter arranged the Anatolian dish not simply for your delectation but with a purpose, to effect an hour’s delay. How otherwise can you - a greater gourmet than I - explain precisely why our stomachs were invited to digest both medlar jelly and Imam Bayildi? Quite contrary to my first assumption, they wanted us to be met by the late edition of the paper into which their corpse had pushed its way. By then it had become an open challenge - they dared to bat against me at my own game.’
A pause followed.
‘Damnation, Watson, the horror, the utter horror of it all. Those...unspeakable...those...wretched boulevard assassins. They are the skins cast off by vipers. May they be buried at cross-roads with a stake in their heart ... ‘
Then, morosely, ‘It is lucky I have my bees for consolation.’
A further pause. ‘Hanging is too good for them!’ And, ‘Nevertheless, it is worth analysis. Men of their ilk will not go away.’ And, enigmatically, ‘We must bow before the oligarchic laws of Nature.’
He continued in a sombre voice. ‘I have carried with me one memory from our encounter with the Kipling League which may stalk me for ever, like a doppelgänger sprung at me from the very depths of Hell.’