‘Chapeau!’ my comrade exclaimed, laughing. ‘With you at my side we shall settle this case, if not in the way I believe you anticipate.’
I stared at him.
‘How can the fact I see nothing help settle a case?’
He passed the photograph to me.
‘Watson, my dear friend, take a look. What do you see?’
Incredulously I exclaimed, ‘Why, Holmes, this photograph shows there are inscriptions in the cartouche.’
I looked up.
‘Someone must have removed them,’ I continued. ‘But why? Why would Saliha Naciye polish them out? To a Moslem that would be sacrilege. Why would anyone do that?’
‘Dear Watson,’ Holmes chortled, ‘as you imply, the answer is, no-one would. No-one on this earth would steal the Sword of Osman simply to desecrate it!’
‘I confess I’m at a loss,’ I replied haplessly. ‘What does it all mean?’
‘The scabbard is genuine but the weapon is a forgery. That’s why the inscriptions are missing. They haven’t been polished away. They were never there.’
‘But Holmes,’ I demanded, grappling with this unexpected revelation, ‘why would a forger leave out that particular detail?’
‘For one reason only,’ Holmes replied. ‘The plotters had to make their move so fast there was no time for the task to be completed. Something must have triggered panic.’
‘What do you suppose it was?’ I asked.
‘Just as the Sultan suggested,’ came the sardonic reply. ‘The unexpected arrival of a couple of counterfeit naval botanists, imposters who trip over their swords as they shimmy in and out of a boat.’
‘But if it’s just a replica, why was Saliha Naciye so terrified when we trapped her with it?’
‘There’s only one conclusion. She thinks it was the genuine Sword of Osman. She’s no idea it’s a forgery.’
He looked around the room.
‘We’re done here, Watson. We too must get out of here before our little ruse is uncovered.’
Smoke still billowed out of the buildings behind us as we hurried out of the monumental main gate along with a hundred other stragglers. Holmes hailed a cab and pointed towards the harbour. At the water’s edge I stood nervously watching the tender chugging towards us. Holmes was silent. I could wait no longer. I burst out, ‘If Saliha Naciye thought she had the true sword, surely that must mean she was engaged in a plot against the Sultan.’
‘Correct, Watson,’ came the terse reply.
‘For what possible reason could she want to see her husband deposed, worse, assassinated? She has all the...’
‘...For the simplest of reasons,’ came the rejoinder. ‘What comes above riches - above every advantage? What are women most denied? Power! The woman craves personal, palpable power!’
‘But through her husband she has...’
‘...influence alone. Even so, for how long? I ask you - as Shelmerdine put to us - would you describe Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid as decisive? Is he a second Alexander? A Julius Caesar? Does he wield authority with resolution?’
‘Well, no...’ I began.
‘Is he a ruler who can take a crumbling Empire by the throat and restore it to its former glory?’
‘Perhaps not but...’ I faltered.
‘... a Khan who ruthlessly tracks down and deals with the myriad plots which leap up like salmon in his fractured Empire, not just from Damascus or Salonika or Belgrade but Paris and London too?’
‘It’s true he dissembles but uneasy lies the head of anyone...’
‘...who bears a crown? Uneasy, yes. That’s fair enough. Bibbling, absolutely not. In a despot it’s tantamount to suicide. It invites - induces - the very aggression he hopes his evasion will dissipate.’
‘So Saliha Naciye...’
‘She knows only too well the Sultanate is under constant attack yet the indelible mark of her husband is his constant wavering. Two cruisers and a thousand men steaming up the Bosphorus could force the Sultan to flee. See it from her point of view. If any one of the conspiracies succeeds, if the Sultan is assassinated or deposed, Saliha Naciye will lose everything. Her son Crown Prince Mehmed Abid will be suffocated in his bed. She would at best have to flee, forced into living the horrible life of an aristocratic pauper. Every day she hears another plot is in the offing. Every day she takes the news to her husband. She begs him to act. He hears her out. He sits still, not so much a venomous spider immobile though alert to every message travelling along its web but an autarch frozen with fear, a rabbit confronted by a fox, unable to take the plunge, unwilling to order arrests. She decides to pre-empt all future plots by one of her own. She will steal the sword and offer it to whichever conspirators agree to replace her husband with her nine month old son. In one strike she’d become the Sultan Valide, the most powerful woman in the Ottoman Empire.’
An expression of the admiration with which botanists survey a rare and precious bloom spread across Holmes’s face.
‘How could a woman a mere twenty-four years of age, born in a village a thousand miles from here, come up with such a plan! One must admire her, Watson, and beyond any woman we’ve ever encountered. Even so, we must present our evidence to the Sultan and the Imperial Divan.’
‘But they will find her guilty!’
‘No doubt.’
‘Then what? What do you suppose they’ll do to her?’ I asked.
‘Take your pick. If she’s lucky, a garrotte or strangulation at the hands of the Chief Black Eunuch - or pruned by the Head Gardener.’
I shuddered.
‘And if she’s not so lucky?’
‘Put in a sack and dropped alive at midnight into the Bosphorus.’
My heart palpitated. I thought of the beautiful creature standing quietly in the garden, nosegay to her face. I wondered if I could offer a medical defence and at least ameliorate her likely hideous fate.
‘Is there no way we...’ I began.
Holmes cocked an eye at me.
‘You’re hatching some brilliant ruse, Watson?’
‘She could plead puerperal insanity,’ I replied. ‘The sweetest and most harmless of the female sex can quickly develop a hatred towards off-spring or mate at the time of accouchement.’
My voice tailed away. Holmes stared at me sympathetically.
He chuckled.
‘Puerperal insanity? My dear sentimental Watson, it never fails to astound me what you are prepared to do for a pretty face! It’s a charming but not infrequent characteristic you share with many men. The most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money. Puerperal insanity, you suggest! Come, Watson! Does she talk incessantly and wildly about imaginary wrongs done to her? Are you prepared to lie, to put your reputation on the line as a medical man, slur the reputation of the Regiment you served in that capacity, and that of Barts where you took your medical degree? Better you choose l’illusion des sosies - that she became convinced her husband was not the bona fide sultan but a substitute who’s keeping her real husband imprisoned in a dungeon somewhere.’
I bit at a fingernail.
‘No, Watson, you cannot,’ my comrade warned. ‘Even now she’s in her quarters trying to reconcile herself to the consequence of her ambition. We can only tell the Sultan the truth and the truth alone.’
Almost in veneration he added, ‘What a risk she took! In all history you could hardly name half a dozen women who played for such high stakes. Saliha Naciye may prefer the romances of Paul de Kock but the Sultan must once have read The Hound of the Baskervilles to her. She appropriated the ghillie suit from the package of gifts to her husband. Chiarezza must have provided the radium paint. A glowing spectre would have unhampered access to every region of the Palace.’