Tears welled up in his eyes. ‘When I’m murdered they’ll put my brother Reshad on the throne as their puppet. He’ll do whatever they say.’
He gave us a despairing look.
‘Before you sits a man who doesn’t know which way to turn. It was my misfortune to come on the stage of history at a time the Empire was bankrupt and could not defend itself against its many enemies. What is life? It’s a seed blown hither and thither, sometimes multiplying itself and dying in the act. We reach. We grasp. And what is left in our hands at the end? A shadow. Worse than a shadow - misery. In the face of aggression from without and sabotage from within, I wage as valiant a battle as I can and must, to preserve what remains of this once mighty Empire.’
With a ghastly gesture, as though dangling from a noose, he added, ‘You see before you a man who is at present five feet six inches in your measurement. As a boy I prayed to the ninety-nine names of Allah to let me grow up to be five feet nine at least. One should beware what one asks of the All-Compassionate, the All-Merciful. Soon He may grant me my wish. Have you seen the corpses hanging beneath Galata Bridge, how they elongate?’
From his trembling lips came loud, vaporous laughter.
‘I ordered my physician to measure the cadavers before and after. A man of my size who dies by the noose lengthens at least three of your inches. My boyhood prayer will come true.’
A slight signal from the Chief Black Eunuch indicated it was time to leave. At the door I glanced back. God’s shadow on the Universe, the ruler of vast and mysterious dominions stretching from the Caucasus to the Persian Gulf, the Danube to the Nile, sat sessile, shrivelled, as catatonic as the mummy of Ramses the Second.
The Sultan caught my look. A slight smile flickered briefly around his lips. His melancholy voice followed us out into the garden: ‘Dr. Watson, if word comes I’m to be deposed, they will find me reading your chronicles while their tread grows ever nearer. I shall start on The Return of Sherlock Holmes tonight.’
In our carriage Holmes declared, as though to himself, ‘Dear me! What a rag-bag of singular happenings! I can see only two things for certain at present. The sword goes missing. In Pera the Chief Armourer dies...’
He looked at me. His eyebrows tightened.
‘Mehmed meets a violent death during the very hours we know a drama was being enacted in the Palace. Why?’
‘Chance, Holmes, surely?’ I protested. ‘Aren’t you reading too much into...’
‘You suggest the Chief Armourer’s murder so soon after the sword disappeared was mere coincidence? The odds against would be enormous.’
He turned to stare back at Yildiz.
‘Clever idea, death, isn’t it, Watson?’ he mused. ‘I wonder who came up with it?’
Back aboard the battleship Holmes and I separated to dress for dinner. As we parted he said, ‘We must pay a visit to a cemetery.’
‘A cemetery?’ I queried, perplexed. ‘Any cemetery?’
‘The cemetery where the Chief Armourer is to be buried. We need to investigate the circumstances of his death. Our dragoman will have to tell us where and when the funeral is to take place.’
At dinner my comrade was particularly preoccupied, almost aloof, despite the cheery conversation around the table. The meal came to an end. We lit our pipes. The suggestion was made to play a few agreeable hands of Bull.
‘Surgeon Lieutenant Learson,’ the Commodore observed from the head of the immense mahogany table, ‘one advantage of putting into port here is fresh fruit from the Fethiye market.’
His hands were grasping a large bowl piled high with cherries, apricots, pomegranates, lemons, unripe plums, grapes and figs. He gave the bowl a push towards me. It started on its journey down the polished surface, turning slowly, a carousel of purple, yellow, blue, green and red pennants. I saw Holmes’s head jerk forward. He was staring as though hypnotised by the bowl sliding towards us. He flung his napkin on the table and sprang to his feet.
In a voice of thunder my comrade exclaimed, ‘Watson, we have been the stupidest fellows in Europe!’
The Commodore and his sea-captains gaped as Holmes strode towards the Wardroom door beckoning me to accompany him. He turned back to address the bewildered company.
‘Gentlemen, the Surgeon Lieutenant and I thank you for an excellent repast. We must take our leave. Commodore, would you give orders for an inconspicuous boat to ferry us ashore in the morning?’
Holmes withdrew a page from his pocket and scribbled on it.
‘We would appreciate it if you can arrange for this coded signal to be sent at once to our dragoman.’
Outside, Holmes gripped my arm.
‘My dear fellow...’ I began, embarrassed at our abrupt exit.
I was cut short.
‘Watson, the jewellery attached to Saliha Naciye’s hair in the garden...’
‘Just for that you tore us away from excellent company?’ I chided. ‘Couldn’t this have waited while we played a few hands of...’
He propelled me swiftly across the deck to one of the immense guns, now silent and sinister in the light of the stars, the barrel pointing to the horizon.
‘My friend,’ came the savage reply, ‘do you suppose I would drag you away from your gambling if it was not of the utmost importance? I repeat, the jewels, what flowers did they depict? It’s imperative you remember precisely!’
I cast my mind back to the still figure standing outside the window.
I replied, ‘To the best of my recollection there were variegated buds, roses, jasmines, and jonquils. And ferns.’
‘Excellent, Watson,’ Holmes exclaimed. ‘And the jewels themselves?’
‘If we start at the buds, they were made from saltwater pearls, then the rubies...’
‘The colours, Watson, the colours! I believe you have the better of me in colour recall.’
‘The pearls...blue, champagne and green. And purple.’
‘As you say,’ Holmes breathed. ‘And the rubies? Again, the colour?’
‘Raspberry. And pink. And Pigeon’s-blood red. I would guess from Macedonia.’
‘You come into your own, Watson!
‘Next... jonquils...’
‘Yellow, if I’m not mistaken?’ Holmes broke in.
‘And something orange. I remember thinking it was the colour of a rare topaz. Finally, ferns. From peridots.’
Shelmerdine had told us the Sultan’s peridots were sourced from meteorites which plunged into the great Anatolian Desert.
‘Peridots. So they were!’ Holmes exclaimed.
I looked at him expectantly.
‘Surely you noticed?’ he pressed on. ‘The colours you described in her hair matched exactly in colour and order the garden flowers in the nosegay she held when we first glimpsed her outside the window.’
‘I confess I didn’t, Holmes,’ I responded. ‘Even if I had, what should I have made of it?’
‘That the jewels in her hair were a gift from the Sultan - they express a message of love. She matches them in the selection of flowers for the nosegay whenever she expects her Lord and Master to notice her - as when we observed her outside the window.’
My brow furrowed.
‘Aren’t you making rather a meal of it? Given they’ve been married only two years and she has born him an heir...’
‘I make a meal of it for a reason which you might find of some interest,’ my comrade retorted icily, ‘which is that shortly after we left the Sultan’s presence she lay in wait for us with a nosegay to take to the bazaar, isn’t that so?’