I became aware Holmes had stopped talking. He was staring out at the Imperial Garden. A young woman in a velvet jacket and loose entari with an emerald-studded belt stood there, silent and watchful. A rich purple Cat’s Eye dangled on a lengthy chain from her neck. Small hands blazed with jewels, diamond rings of great lustre on each of her thumbs. Attached to her long black hair was a large bouquet of jewels made like natural flowers. She held a colourful posy of fresh flowers to her nostrils. Flowers were essential to domestic life in Stamboul. Their sweet smells masked foul body odours and the stench of human excreta. It was clear that satins, velvets, and wools were never washed. Plumbing seemed non-existent, bathing infrequent. At many a spot on our walk through the Palace the stale odour of human sweat assaulted our senses. Even the presence of phenomenally large honey-suckles in full bloom failed to provide a sufficient remedy.
Our host caught our glance.
‘Saliha Naciye,’ he said, in an affectionate tone. ‘My thirteenth wife. With a soul as sweet as blood red jam. She’s an Abkhazian. Ah, youth! So impetuous. So...volcanic.’
He turned back to us. ‘Saliha Naciye is the most assiduous of all my spies. My day is never complete unless she approaches me with news of some connivance against me.’
I wondered how someone so sequestered, observed night and day by the ever-watchful ‘Lord of the Door’, would be able to garner information from the outside world. My expression must have changed slightly. Reading my thoughts, our host exclaimed, ‘I agree, Dr. Watson. How she manages to be so well-informed about the outside world is a mystery to us all’.
He turned his gaze toward my companion, ‘If you can solve that puzzle, Mr. Holmes, you’d relieve my mind tremendously.’
The Sultan reached inside his coat and pulled The Return of Sherlock Holmes from a hidden pocket. He raised it into the air.
‘Gentlemen, this arrived before you. Please tell your King his gift is much appreciated. When I lie awake consumed with all my cares, I shall command my Chamberlain to read these cases to me.’
Even while he spoke, the Sultan’s eyes continually wandered around the room as if seeking a hidden foe. The slightest sound from outside the room, such as the snap of a dry twig, was enough to make him shy backwards as though it were the crack of a Mauser rifle. His gloved hand darted towards a gold and ivory automatic on the table before falling back once more to his lap.
‘Does the Sultan’s thirteenth wife take an interest in my friend Watson’s tales?’ Holmes asked.
The Sultan’s face twisted into a smile.
In his excellent French he said, ‘She is familiar with one or two but she and the Ikbals prefer Parisian gossip from the Jardin Mabil or the Café chantant and the romances of Paul de Kock - all those grizettes, guinguettes and cabarets.’
He tapped ‘The Return’ and said, ‘But I assure you, Mr Holmes, Dr Watson’s chronicles will be translated into Turkish one by one, and they will be read to me one each night. I shall relate them to her word for word.’
He put the chronicles down.
‘I must thank Sir Edward for sending you to my country to enquire into some presumed conspiracy against my throne. Nevertheless, the idea the Sword of Osman can be stolen is quite preposterous, as you will discover when you meet my Chief Armourer Mehmed. His men guard it with their life. I hope you have a very pleasant week here in Stamboul before returning to your country.’
‘Your Majesty,’ Holmes asked, ‘to assist our endeavours I wonder if you could supply us with a plan of this remarkable palace?’
The Sultan replied, ‘I can do better than that, Mr. Holmes!’
He gave a signal. Nadir Aga brought over a large album from a side-table. It contained photographs showing the many pavilions and the cultivated gardens and pathways that make up the Yildiz.
‘An American visited us. He was an expert on photography from the air,’ the Sultan explained. ‘He sent a camera skyward aboard a silk-string kite from a ship in the Golden Harbour.’
The Sultan pointed out places of interest including the gate where we were to meet the Head Gardener after our audience, and the Harem garden, the Prince Garden and the Sultan gardens. The American’s visit must have been in spring. The pathways were edged with a profusion of crocuses and daffodils. Sycamores, olives and lilacs, limes, elms, hackberries, laurels, the cercis, were picked out in sharp detail.
In addition to the aerial views, photographs of the interior of the Palace had been shot at ground level - exquisite rooms with apple green walls, friezes tender rose in colour, the background of the medallions light blue and lilac or rose.
The Sultan gave another order. The Second Black Eunuch returned carrying the most beautiful object I had yet set eyes on, a gift from fellow Sultan Abdul Aziz of Morocco upon our host’s marriage to Saliha Naciye. It was an Adams quarter-plate De Luxe with red-leather covered body and 18 carat gold fittings. ‘The most expensively produced hand camera in the world,’ the Sultan informed us gleefully. ‘It contains 130 ounces of the purest gold. See - each fitting, every screw and plate sheath is hallmarked.’
Observing our host’s delight in his photographic apparatus, I was relieved I had asked Shelmerdine to take my precious new camera with him.
The Sultan rose from his throne and beckoned us to observe the fine view over the three seas surrounding the Sarayburnu peninsular. A telescope was brought into the room and erected near the window. We could see the powerful British fleet amid a dozen or more Turkish ironclads dating from the past Century and the swarm of smaller craft. Several miles out I recognised the obsolete HMS Devastation. On the principle of the tortoise and the hare she must have plodded on while we engaged in gunnery and torpedo practice during the many sea miles from Gibraltar.
A grandfather clock chimed the hour. The Sultan looked at the hands of the clock and pointed to HMS Devastation, remarking ‘Her crew has been taken off’.
As he spoke one of Dreadnought’s heaviest guns roared. Every window shook. An immense shell soared upwards, dropping down towards the hapless ironclad, hitting the water just beyond her. This was followed a minute later by a simultaneous salvo of three followed by another ranging shot, and a salvo of four separated by 16 seconds. The gunnery crews had got the range. A mighty explosion threw debris and water high into the air. When it settled, Devastation was no longer to be seen. To the watching eyes of the world’s ambassadors in Pera and the Kaiser’s spies aboard the S.S. Grosser Kurfürst, it was a deliberate reminder of the length and destructive power of England’s arm.
The Sultan pointed at the Dolma Baghchech Palace below.
‘I shall purchase several of your 12-inch guns and put them above Yildiz. I moved up here because that palace was within range of the guns of even a third-rate Naval Power.’
An ever-lengthening line of supplicants and diplomats had developed outside the kiosk. We were on the point of being dismissed. The Sultan switched to English, less fluent than his French but perfectly acceptable.