7: The Verdict

Ninety minutes later I looked down from the Gallery as Fenlon, white-faced and shaking, was led back to the Dock. The Jurats followed and shortly afterwards the Bailiff returned. An attentive hush fell over the imposing chamber. At a nod from the Bailiff, the Foreman got to his feet. He was asked if a verdict had been reached.

“It has, My Lord,” came the reply.

“And it was unanimous?”

“It was, My Lord. We find the Defendant not guilty on the evidence provided.”

A collective gasp echoed around the chamber. A cry of joy came from Fenlon. The bevy of reporters led by Hensman and Macpherson rose to their feet as one, snapping their notebooks shut and running to the exit. The sketch artist made some hurried final strokes of charcoal and hastened after them.

I bent forward to catch sight of Holmes. For the first time in our professional life he had ended up on the losing side in a trial. He had stayed seated, silent and motionless except for pulling on an old briar pipe, the blue smoke starting to spiral up. Was there just the twitch of a smile on his lips?

A most extraordinary thought flashed into my mind. Had Holmes elected to be a witness against Fenlon for one specific reason, to get Fenlon off the charge of murder, despite the damage it would do to his own reputation for infallibility? Chancing everything, had Holmes deliberately instilled doubt in the Jurats’ minds through the Delphic equivocation of his replies? Why else had he scattered dozens of “possiblys” and “very likelys” and “highly unlikelys” throughout his testimony?

Never before had I heard him use such unscientific terms – no bona fide expert should use such colloquial or arbitrary turns of phrase. If Holmes had appeared for the Defence, as Fenlon and I had expected, the outcome could have been tragically different. The Jurats would most likely have said to themselves, “Well Mr. Holmes attests to this or that – but he would, wouldn’t he! After all, his amanuensis’s life was saved by the Defendant at the terrible Battle of Maiwand. That’s the only reason Sherlock Holmes came to the prisoner’s defence. He wanted to get Fenlon off at any cost!”

The ominous atmosphere in the court changed from the moment the Defence began questioning Holmes on the case of the Norwood Builder. The hostility audibly developing towards Holmes among those in the Public Gallery sympathetic to the accused began to abate. They saw where the Defence Attorney was going with the Norwood case. Had Holmes covertly coached Giffard, Fenlon’s Defence Attorney, to make sure the case was brought up? Had Holmes pointed out how unlikely it was a phial could have been emptied swiftly and covertly into Delves’s glass without all five prints showing up on the body of the flask? Further, that although Fenlon was right-handed, the two prints were from the left thumb and forefinger?

That sardonic remark by the Defence Advocate that “a dollop of the poison aconite administered with a slice of fruitcake would have served an equal purpose and with rather less identification with the Indian Army” could just as well have been uttered by Holmes himself. He was well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Over the years he had trained himself to see the invisible clues and therefore imagine what is overlooked by others, why the farm dog had not barked when a racehorse was being abducted during the night, in the case of ‘Silver Blaze’.

What of Holmes’s late entry into the courtroom? Had he been delayed by composing questions the defence should put to him in the witness box? That note which the Greffier brought to the Defence Attorney at the very start – what was on it? Who wrote it? Did I see the Attorney’s eyes flicker up at me briefly before he turned to the task at hand? The extra 30-minute recess Giffard requested, was it to be sure he, Giffard, had these matters settled firmly in mind?

***

The next morning Fenlon saw me off on the ferry to England. He was still in his staff uniform, with the sabre loose in his hand. He had already booked tickets for himself to set off for Le Havre the following day. He had recovered wonderfully well from the ordeal. Humorously he mused how in Kenya it would be a relief only to face the occasional bite of a puff adder, the dangers of East Coast Fever, the deadly Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasite, or the parasitic African disease trypanosomiasis known as Sleeping Sickness, rather than a Guernsey Court of Law on a charge of murder. We parted with the solemn vow to meet up again, perhaps at Boodle’s for another dish of Orange Fool.

However, our lives took us in quite different directions. I went on to accompany Holmes in further cases, such as ‘The Adventure of the Dying Detective’ and ‘Sherlock Holmes And The Sword Of Osman’.

Some weeks after the trial I received a photograph showing Fenlon standing on the edge of the Mt. Kenya Crown Forest at the start of the Long Rains. He was holding up a Rigby-Mauser sporter as though offering it to me. The glaciers on the peaks behind him stretched up into heavy rainclouds. They reminded me of the coming of the Indian monsoons, foretold by the hot wind blowing through my bungalow day and night until the rains came down with terrific force.

After that photograph we lost contact completely. I caught a glimpse of his activities whenever his name was gazetted as he rose up the ranks, and when he won the Royal Geographical Society’s Patron’s medal, along with the award of Companion of the Indian Empire. The sealed package he had entrusted to me lay gathering dust in the vaults at Cox & Co.

Five years passed. The new Century came in. The Great Queen passed away, the throne to be taken by her eldest son, Edward V11. Holmes announced he would retire to his bee-farm in the Sussex Downs. He planned, he informed me, to write his “magnum opus”. The news shook me to the core.

I was obliged to return to the medical practice I had bought in the Paddington District as a back-stop some fourteen years earlier. Attending to the medical needs of England’s nobility and gentry provided me with a satisfactory income but I badly missed the companionship and excitement of my former life with Holmes.