We were lucky to arrive at the station in time. Holmes’ train-catching is an anxiety to his travelling companions. It was a signal achievement on the cabman’s part, propelling us like the sun god Apollo driving his chariot to light the sky. Down magnificent Park Lane and along the Mall we rattled, ever onward. Our final drive to the departures area terminated in a triumphant flurry of foaming beasts as though preceded by fife and drum and reined in by post-boys in the boot.
The great train pulled away from Platform 6 with a sharp exhalation of steam. Aboard with my travelling companion at such propinquity I could examine Holmes’ choice of outer clothing in some detail. He had selected the rare Poshteen Long Coat. The bulky piece with its many flaps and pockets and promise of distant, icy mountain ranges contrasted oddly with the ear-flapped travelling cap clapped on his head where for myself I had chosen a glossy topper. With the Poshteen Long Coat now open, I noted that he wearing his accurate gold watch for only the second time in our long relationship, the watch-key and a gold sovereign attached to a massive Double Albert chain. The watch and chain together with two or three tie-pins and a snuffbox of old gold adorned with a great amethyst at the centre of the lid were as far as I could tell the only heirlooms Holmes possessed, apart from a battered escritoire.
I leant towards him ready to enquire whether he was wearing the Order of the Legion of Honour which would indicate to me his estimation of the occasion but before I could commence my enquiry my old friend took out a pair of black night-spectacles from a pocket sewed inside the cavernous coat. He popped them on his nose, loosened his cravat, and lay as dead for the next ten minutes.
The silence enabled me to contemplate the unexpected and well-remunerated invitation of the day.
‘So,’ Holmes spoke up suddenly, like a corpse in Shakespeare, quickening and dying and quickening. ‘At last we wander in the footsteps of Dickens.’
At London Bridge he removed the night-spectacles.
‘I see you have brought Roth’s gazetteer,’ he remarked with a nod of satisfaction, divining it was the reason I had brought a Gladstone alongside the medical bag containing my armamentarium. He replaced the night-spectacles and fell asleep again.
He awoke as the train arrived at Chislehurst. I remarked how much I looked forward to sight of Siviter’s Art collection, especially ‘The Mill’ by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. In a most off-handed manner Holmes responded, ‘I am sure the master of the house will oblige.’
I frowned. ‘Are you not in the least interested in pictorial Art?’
‘Watson,’ Holmes replied amiably, ‘no and yes. I am not, yet I am. Art is so much part of the human firmament I would be failing my profession to overlook it.’
With such conversation as I imagine Boswell undertook with Dr. Johnson on their tour of the Scottish Highlands we wound our way into Kent.
Not long past Chislehurst a railway guard went by. ‘Sevenoaks next,’ he called out. ‘Sevenoaks, Sevenoaks. Private visitors for Mr. Whitehead of Down House alight here. Down House. Alight here for Down House.’
‘Isn’t that where...?’ I exclaimed.
‘Yes, Darwin’s old abode,’ Holmes responded.
At the mention of Down House, Holmes was spurred to ruminate, looking out at the Kentish landscape.
‘I shall confess to you something I have not confessed before,’ my companion began, in conspiratorial fashion. ‘Had Darwin not preceded me, had I not, when very young, devoured The Origin of Species, I believe I would have become a Naturalist myself. It was Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection which led me to develop identical techniques in my own profession. They say Shakespeare killed off a thousand unborn playwrights. It is not too much to declare that had Darwin become a Consulting Detective and not a Naturalist, such was his skill at observation, absorption and induction, I would have been doomed at best to second place in the annals of crime - but then I would have become a Naturalist!’
My companion halted his remarkable epiphany on Darwin. ‘Come, Watson,’ he said jovially. ‘Let us have a brief account of our audience’s history and pursuits. Let us attack the gazetteer.’
I reached for the Gladstone and drew from it the large volume, placing it opened at random on my lap.
‘First,’ he commanded, ‘our host.’
SIVITER:
‘David (Joseph) Siviter.
Born 1865, Surrey, England.
Poet, short-story writer, journalist and imperialist. Much-admired chronicler of the English colonial experience in India.
Education: Stoneyhurst, Haileybury, and Imperial Service College.
1889, settled in Addis Ababa.
1892, married Abyssinian Princess Burekt. Two daughters.
1900, reported on the Anglo-Boer War.
1902, moved to Crick’s End, Sussex. MFH.
London Pied-à-terre No. 3 Gray’s Inn Place.
Best selling short-story writer, especially of children’s fables.
Publishers Macmillan, Methuen and Putnam’s.
Estimated earnings Sterling £30,000 per annum.
Bank, the Alliance.
Offices, President of the Kipling League.
Clubs, Buffalo Club, Rajputana, United Oxford & Cambridge Universities.
‘That’s the official part,’ I informed Holmes. ‘The second part is culled from a variety of opinions for which, in no uncertain terms, the gazetteer states it is not responsible but reports solely for our prurient interest.’ I paused, raising my eyebrows. ‘I must presume this would be of no concern to you, Holmes?’
‘Read on, my good friend,’ Holmes responded, with an airy wave. ‘It is ever the malicious and ill-natured which by habit and profession we so naturally find more captivating than mere age, height, weight and office.’
I continued, ‘Heroes: Van Beers, Roosevelt.
Allies in the Press, Gwynne (Standard), Blumenfeld (Express), Maxse (National Review).
Uncertain relations with the Germans, Irish and Quakers.
Contributed patriotic material to Daily Mail during South African War, i.e. ‘The Absent-Minded Beggar’.
Leading scourge of Liberalism and democracy.
Lost Sterling £2,000 in the crash of the Oriental Banking Corporation.
Quoted in Daily Mail in piece titled The New Jeremiah that England is ‘slipping down the broad, easy decline which will lead to our extinction as a Great Power with an influence to exert on the side of the angels, with a civilising tradition to plant all the world over’.’
‘That,’ I said in conclusion, ’is Siviter.
Holmes dug into a cavernous pocket and took out a tin of Egyptian tobacco, Abdulla’s Mix at an aristocratic tenpence the ounce. He preferred Abdulla’s even over fine-cut Virginia Leaf or Grosvenor mixture at eight pence an ounce. Holmes had, I reflected warmly, subscribed fully to the Kipling League’s promise of fee and all expenses.
He pointed at the open gazetteer.
‘Now to Van Beers, if you please.’
‘S...T...U...’ I muttered, turning the large pages to ‘V’. ‘Here we are, Stanley Van Beers:
Bachelor. Born 1854. German extraction.
Oxford University.
1880, Published abstract on Julius Caesar’s military campaigns, largely the battles of Thapsus, Pharsalus, Zela and Munda.
1892, Published Briton or Hun in Egypt?, arguing for greater English involvement in Egypt’s affairs.
1897, appointed high commissioner for South Africa and Governor-General of Cape Colony. His efforts to gain political rights for British settlers in Boer territories heightened a growing tension between the rival groups and helped precipitate (1899) the South African War.