The Ghost of Dorset House

by Tim Symonds

At eight o’clock on an April evening in 1894 a ghost came upon an intruder in a great London mansion and began to chase him through pitch-black staterooms and corridors. While this unusual event took place, a hansom cab was returning me to my surgery in Kensington from a visit to a patient in the fashionable district of Knightsbridge. I stared sleepily out at the deserted gas-lit streets. To judge by our twists and turns, the cabbie was treating me to a tour of the townhouses of the nation’s aristocracy - the Salisburys, the Derbys, the Devonshires. Devonshire House in particular was the site of the most exclusive social affairs, the centre of London’s political life, though one from which I had been excluded since the death at the Reichenbach Falls three years earlier of my great friend and comrade-in-arms, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, England’s greatest Consulting Detective.

I took out my pocket-watch. Ten past eight. By the most direct route I would expect to reach my quarters by half-past, but with an overturned Park Drag blocking the way ahead, the driver diverted from Park Lane and started along Deanery Street. To the left stood a gate-keeper’s lodge made of brick and heart pine. From it, a drive led to a vast house shaped like a parallelogram, the grounds circled by a massive stone wall. Any thought I might have entertained of a pick-me-up nap over the last stretch of the journey was ended by sudden frantic shouting. A man, his face strained with fear, came rushing from the lodge, shouting “Police, police!” in a high, panicky voice.

I threw down the window and called out, “My dear fellow, what on earth’s the matter?”

He gasped, “Something’s going on in the Great House, sir. There was a light inside when no-one’s meant to be there. The light went out and crashings and screams began, screams so terrible, sir, it’s hard to reconcile them with the order of Nature.”

“And you are?” I enquired.

“Sykes, sir.” He pointed at the building behind him. “The lodge keeper.”

“So, Sykes, you rushed up to the house at once?” I enquired in an ironic tone.

“No, sir, I did not,” came the lodge keeper’s petrified reply. “Not for a minute. The Master makes light of it, in fact he pooh-poohs it, but the staff say the house has become haunted. Not terrible screams like just now, but someone - more like something - straight from Hades, Lord preserve us, rushing through the corridors and rooms at night for weeks, its torso guttering like a lantern.”

“Your Master being the Duke of Weymouth?” I asked, remembering the title of the ancient family which owned Dorset House, for that is where we were.

“Not the Duke, sir, no,” the lodge keeper replied, his chest still heaving with fear. “The house is let to the American Ambassador to the Court of St. James. Mr. Hammersmith’s his name. He occupies the house, but he’s away. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him for three days. The house has been quite empty.”

“What of the other staff?” I enquired.

“All away,” came the reply. “The Master sent them away too. All except me.”

I stepped from the hansom, unhooking one of the carriage lamps.

“Lead on, my good fellow,” I ordered the trembling lodge keeper. “The cabbie can fetch a constable. As to whether a doctor may be required, considering the ghastly screams and bangings you say you heard, I am myself a member of that profession. As such,” I added, a trifle sententiously, “I’m not given to a belief in the Occult.”

“You may not, sir,” Sykes asserted, “but even famous men believe in things like ectoplasm and rappings and ghosts returning from the Other World. A demon from Hell, sir, is what we reckon it is. The cook’s already got her things together and gone back to Devon.”

It was not unexpected to find the doors at the impressive main entrance firmly locked. A hard push indicated it was also bolted. We circled the outer walls until my companion exclaimed “There!” A window had been jemmied open. We entered and shortly came to a wide hallway running the length of the ground floor. A line of antique statues lay as though scythed down, terracotta heads and arms and legs scattered several feet from their torso. Just beyond, the shattered glass of an oil lamp glittered among glossy black shards of a Bucchero pot. A heavy inundation of blood commenced some five yards beyond the figurines, but not on the marble floor. Instead, it was a foot or so to the side of a wide doorway at a height of about five feet. Judging by the explosion of blood, the impact of the man’s face on the wall had badly damaged the nasal mucosa.

My companion issued a low whistle.

“Someone must’ve banged him hard against that wall, sir,” Sykes marvelled. “Who’d ever ‘ave thought any man would have that much blood in ‘im!”

A trail of bloody shoe marks commenced immediately beyond the door, crossing to the foot of a grand staircase. I had seen this particular configuration in Afghanistan, at the Battle of Maiwand. A bullet from a long arm Jezail rifle sent me reeling off the field in the arms of my orderly, my shoulder haemorrhaging blood, soaking my boots until they began to slip and slide on the surface of the rocks.

“Now that’s interesting, sir,” the lodge keeper exclaimed. “Despite doing all that smashing of statues back there, he’s still trying to keep as quiet as possible. Look how he’s tiptoeing along.”

I replied tersely, “I doubt if the smashing was on purpose. And certainly he wasn’t tip-toeing.”

“Then why are there just toe-prints in the blood, sir?”

“Look at the length of his stride, man. The wretched fellow was running, running desperately, running for his life. He cannonaded willy nilly into those statues. His lamp smashed against the pot, but still he carried on at speed, even though - to judge by that wall - he must have been running in the pitch dark.”

“So where do you reckon he is now?” my companion whispered.

“We’ll follow the trail and find out,” I replied.

Minutes later, Sykes’s question was answered. A man lay motionless on the floor. In life he had been between fifty and sixty years of age. The face was split wide at several points across the forehead. The nose was badly broken. Around an outflung arm lay a scattering of jewellery.

“A thief all right,” my companion muttered, his voice muted at the sight of death. “That pair of emerald cuff-links, them’s Mr. Hammersmith’s.”

“You can turn on the lights now, Sykes,” I ordered.

A switch clicked three or four times.

“They’re not working,” the lodge keeper called out.

I asked, “Would your Master have ordered the electricity to be turned off while he’s away?”

“Never has before,” came the reply. “Quite the contr’y. When the place is empty, he likes me to come up at night and check all’s well. Not that I’ve done so lately,” he added.

“Can you show me where the electricity enters the house?”

“I can, sir. We’ll have to go back through that window. It’s a bit to the left of it.”

“One more thing before we go,” I said. “The rings and the cuff-links... pick them up and hand to me.”

I stood over the dead man and let the handful of jewellery dribble out of my grasp. The spread was contained to within the original foot or two of the outstretched hand.

We encountered Inspector MacDonald when I was clambering through the window to the outside, though it was his revolver I saw first. For several seconds he and I stared at each other. Noting the epaulettes, I broke the silence with, “There’s something you should see back there, Inspector.”

The policeman’s lamp came closer to my face.

“Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “Why, it’s Dr. Watson!” The inspector waved the revolver with a slightly embarrassed air and put it into a hidden holster.

“I’m gratified you recognise me, Inspector,” I replied. “My cab was passing on my way home when Sykes here came running out of the lodge.”

I pointed towards the now-invisible holster. “I didn’t know our police were armed.”

“Special duty, Doctor,” came the friendly but non-committal reply. “There’s a lot of very important people in this district, not least the prominent member of the Corps Diplomatique who lives in this house. Now tell me, what have you found in there? Cadavers galore?”

“Not galore, Inspector,” I replied. “But certainly one cadaver.”

“A very dead cadaver,” added the lodge keeper emphatically. “Blood everywhere.”

“Before I take you to the body,” I told MacDonald, “we must discover why the electricity isn’t working in the house. Our friend here is about to show me the outside connection.”

The lodge keeper led us forward and pointed at a waterproof box down low. “There, sirs. That’s what they call the disconnect box. It’s where the ‘lectricity comes in from the big new station at Deptford East. The Duke of Weymouth always likes to be first with anything new.”

“Hold back a moment, There’s a good fellow, Sykes,” the business-like inspector interrupted sharply. “Before anyone steps too close, someone get some light right over the box.”

The lamps flooded two or three square yards or so of damp earth.

“See there, Dr. Watson,” MacDonald said. “The wire’s cut. Someone’s been standing by the disconnect box with sacking over his shoes, and recently too. There are just flat impressions of the soles. I expect the corpse you found had sacking around his shoes?”

“No, Inspector,” I replied. “As you’ll soon discover for yourself,” I added grimly.

MacDonald stepped forward a pace. “You see!” he exclaimed, standing back with a tiny section of wire in his hand. “As I suspected. The cunning blighter. He didn’t just yank the cable out of the socket. He cut an inch out of it to stop it being repaired too quickly.”

I took the short piece of wire from him, turning it end to end.

“Why,” I asked, “would a burglar need to cut the electricity off when it was clear the entire house was empty? A thief could find everything he wanted with just the lamp he’d have with him.”

“That’s a fair question, Doctor,” MacDonald admitted. “Perhaps as a precaution?”

“Possibly,” I agreed, “but at a considerable risk. At the very least it would indicate a burglary had taken place. A hunt would commence the minute anyone returned to the house.”

“So why do you suppose it’s been cut?” MacDonald continued. He pointed at the piece of wire in my hand. “Cut it certainly was.”

“That’s the question I believe our dear departed friend Sherlock Holmes would ask,” I admitted, a momentary sadness overtaking me.

Inspector MacDonald threw me a sympathetic look.

“Bad deal about Mr. Holmes,” he said.

I nodded. For readers in parts of the world so remote that even such earth-shattering news never reached them, I should explain that hardly three years earlier, my great friend Sherlock Holmes and I had been in the remote Alpine village of Meiringen when Holmes had finally encountered that greatest schemer of all time, the organiser of every deviltry, Professor James Moriarty, for a once-and-for-all showdown. As was revealed in “The Final Problem”, I was tricked into abandoning Holmes for a supposed medical emergency back at the hotel. Moriarty and Holmes grappled at a cliff edge before plunging into the boiling waters of the Reichenbach Falls, held for eternity in each other’s iron grip. So died a friend and comrade-in-arms that I shall ever regard as the best and the wisest man I have ever known.

As though Holmes himself had prompted it, an idea flashed into my mind. I gesticulated urgently at the lodge keeper. “The burglar’s tools, man. Where are they? He must have had a bag with him.”

“By the broken pot, sir,” Sykes responded. “There’s a carpet-bag there. But why..?”

“Quick,” I said, “go and fetch it.” I pointed at the severed wire. “It may well contain the answer to this.”

Minutes later, the bag lay open at our feet. One by one, I took out a supply of burglar’s tools - a small crowbar, a jemmy, a chisel, and a screwdriver, none showing any signs of wear - and last of all, the object of my search, a pair of wire-cutters, lying at the very bottom. With the inspector and lodge keeper watching keenly, I snipped off a further quarter-inch from the piece of electric cable and held it up to a lamp.

“I think, Inspector,” I said rather dramatically, “you’ll see There’s a difference between the two cuts. These pliers are sharp. They sliced through the cable. On the other hand, whoever cut the wire in the first place used a blunt pair of pliers. The wires were pretty well squeezed apart, not cut. Those well-worn pliers were the ones which cut off the electricity.”

“Which means...” said Inspector MacDonald.

“It was done by someone who wanted the intruder inside the mansion with no electricity.”

“But why?” MacDonald queried. The Aberdonian accent was growing stronger, as though he was about to break into Doric.

“Answer that, my dear Inspector,” I replied, “and we are a long way towards solving this mystery.”

It was time to take Inspector MacDonald to the shattered figurines and on to the corpse. On our way, I pointed out the trail of scarlet shoe-prints.

“Inspector, look at each step. There’s just the toe of the shoe marked out in blood, the intruder’s own blood. He started to flee for his life, and he continued even after his lantern was dashed to the ground, leaving him in complete darkness. It must have been panic of the highest order which caused him to continue at such speed, even though he was crashing into walls and cannonading off staircases. At all costs, he had to get away from something utterly terrible.”

I held my lantern close to the marble floor. “As you’ll note, there’s a second person present. He’s the one with cladding over his shoes. He must have cut the electricity.”

“Then, Dr. Watson,” queried the inspector, “if the second man was pursuing him, why didn’t they grapple with each other? There’s no sign of a struggle.”

“Because,” I replied, “the pursuer had no intention of seizing him. Inspector, you have been an avid reader of my stories in The Strand?”

“Every one of them, Doctor, without fail, I can assure you,” came the reply.

“Then let me test your powers of recall. In which of Holmes’s cases did I write: ‘There was one thing in the case which had made the deepest impression both upon the servants and the police. This was the contortion of the Colonel’s face. It had set, according to their account, into the most dreadful expression of fear and horror which a human countenance is capable of assuming.’”

At this the inspector broke in with “‘More than one person fainted at the mere sight of him, so terrible was the effect.’ Why, Doctor, that’s easy! ‘The Adventure of the Crooked Man’.”

I bent down and turned the corpses head towards him. “Take a look at this man’s face,” I ordered. “As you will see, it could hardly be more contorted from terror.” I turned to the silent lodge keeper. “Sykes, would you say we’re five or six rooms from the shattered lamp?”

“Six, yes, sir. From just this side of the state rooms. Them’s down that end of the house, Inspector, near the room the Master uses for his private study.”

“Whoever chased this wretched creature could easily have grabbed hold of him a long way before they reached here,” I continued. “There’s one more thing of note, Inspector. Whoever or whatever was chasing him wasn’t holding a lamp, or at least it wasn’t lit. Otherwise, his quarry - only a yard or two in front of him - would hardly have crashed into walls or tripped up stairways. The two of them hurtled along in the pitch black, the one just behind the other...” I pointed down at the corpse. “...but only the one was cannonading into walls and door-jambs.”

“The phantom, sir!” the lodge keeper cried. “Now do you believe..?”

“Sykes,” I interrupted sharply. “I hope my cabbie has been good enough to wait for me. Would you be kind enough to return to the street? Tell him I expect to be there in a few minutes. Don’t provide him with any lurid details, only that we have found a body. Do you understand?”

When Sykes left, MacDonald asked, “If the pursuer could have grappled with him at any time, how do you explain the distance they ran?”

“Capturing the intruder wasn’t top of his priorities. What else would explain it? He wanted him to reach such a pitch of terror this man’s heart or brain would explode, as I believe the autopsy will show. Which the pursuer achieved wonderfully well.”

“Just like the case of Sir Charles and the Hound of the Baskervilles?” the inspector asked, a rather disbelieving twinkle in his eye. “Everyone at the Yard has heard of the Hound.”

“Exactly like the Hound,” I replied. “Such intense fear as I believe our cadaver here suffered in his last moments alive can cause a disorganised heart movement, a quiver. Not the regular beat required to sustain life. Driving someone to their death this way is as much murder as firing a bullet through the vital organs.”

I turned to face MacDonald head on. “Now, Inspector, I expect you’ve already come to the same conclusion as I? That something took place here quite unique in the annals of crime.”

He shook his head. “I’m baffled. Unique in the annals of crime, you say? I can’t hold with Sykes’s theory of a ghost, though the idea of being chased all that way in the utter dark has got me a bit spooked, I must admit.”

I replied, trying hard not to appear triumphal, “Let me remind you of one of my friend Sherlock Holmes’s favourite axioms: “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”

The bushy eyebrows were raised. “And what might that truth be?”

“At least you and I appear to agree on one fundamental,” I parried.

“Which is?”

“This is not the work of some Risen Dead, as Sykes is inclined to believe.”

“I think I can accept that, Doctor,” came the smiling reply. “And then?”

“The living being who perpetrated this dastardly deed knew exactly which way the dead man would have to flee - towards this door, along that corridor. His knowledge of the house must have been extensive. Inch-for-inch, in fact.”

“I’ll go along with that, yes. Next?”

“The pursuer took care to have a handful of Hammersmith’s jewellery at the ready.”

“Why in heaven’s name would he do that?” MacDonald exclaimed.

“To salt the corpse. Look at the close spread of the jewellery. When a man crashes to the marble floor the pieces should be flung from his grasp far and wide. Instead, we found them more or less as you see them now, contained to within a foot or two of his hand.”

“Very good. And?”

“Last but very far from least, the murderer has a characteristic which neither the dead man, nor you nor I nor Sykes, have in common with him, a condition normally considered a disability, but one without which his fiendish plan may have ended in complete failure.”

The eyebrows rose even higher.

“A disability?”

“A vital one,” I affirmed.

“There’s no evidence he was lame.”

“Not lame,” I replied.

“Then?”

“Blind.”

There was a moment’s astonished silence before Inspector MacDonald emitted the loudest guffaw I had ever heard.

His hand reached out and gripped my arm, his shoulders heaving. “My dear Doctor,” he gasped finally, “I assume this fellow Sykes told you?”

“Told me what?” I asked, taken aback by this unexpected reaction.

“Or did I tell you back there on the terrace? Though I don’t recall doing so, but perhaps I did!”

“Inspector, you or Sykes may have told me what?” I persisted.

“Why, the only blind person around here is the American Ambassador himself!” and once more MacDonald went off into a paroxysm of laughter. “I hope,” he spluttered, “you aren’t suggesting it was the Ambassador himself who chased the housebreaker from here to Kingdom Come!”

We returned in silence to the back terrace.

“If he’s the only blind man in the household,” I recommenced, “then, yes, I point the finger at the Ambassador, Inspector. He would know how to find his way unfailingly through every door and up and down every staircase in the pitch dark, avoiding any obstacles - even Etruscan statues - on the way. Sykes told me a demonic figure has been glimpsed running through the corridors and rooms in the dark of night for the past several weeks, ‘its torso guttering like a lantern’. The staff were frightened enough to plan to quit en masse. I suggest it was the Ambassador practicing for the events of this evening.”

“My dear Doctor Watson,” MacDonald replied, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, “even if you are right, it’s entirely conjecture. ‘Its torso guttering like a lantern’, you say. What of proof? If I take in the Ambassador of a friendly State for questioning on what we have here, I’ll become the laughing stock of the Force. My chances of rising through the ranks will be rather less than zero. I’d find myself running an alehouse in the Out Skerries. No, I’m afraid that at best I’m going to have to report death by misadventure, certainly not malum in se. What’s more, I think we’ll find the denizens of every grand house around Mayfair saying ‘Well done and good riddance’ at the demise of anyone caught stealing their valuables or family heirlooms, even at the hands of a ghost.”

Courteously MacDonald saw me back to my carriage.

I was within a quarter-mile of my residence when the driver rapped on the roof.

“I was just thinking, sir,” he called down. “You asked me back there if I’d seen anyone hurrying out of the grounds while you were up in the big house.”

“And you replied ‘no-one, except Sykes’, delivering my message to you.”

“I did indeed say no-one, sir. But you didn’t ask me if anyone come to the lodge, did you, sir?”

“I did not,” I agreed. “And did they?”

“They did. A growler comes speeding around the corner from the direction of South Audley Street. The cabbie jumps down and takes a box pushed out from the cab itself. He drops it at the lodge door, clambers straight up on the Clarence, and off they shoot. Gone in a second. If I’d got a better sight of him, I’d report him for whipping the horses like he did. I went over and took a gander at the box when Mr. Sykes fetched it in. It was marked Diplomatic Bag. There was a seal attached to it.”

“Cabbie!” I shouted out. “Return us immediately to Dorset House. Quick, man! Get us back there within fifteen minutes and There’s an extra guinea in it for you.”

Warily the lodge keeper opened the door. It was clear he was still distraught. I had to repeat my question before he pulled himself together.

“A box, sir?”

“A diplomatic bag,” I said. “Sealed. It arrived when we were up at the house.”

“Ah, that one, sir,” came the reply. “It’s over there, among the other Diplomatic bags. They arrive any time of the day or night. Look at ‘em - cardboard boxes, briefcases, crates. All sealed.”

“Open the new arrival!” I cried.

“Sir!” the lodge keeper protested. “Only the Ambassador hisself is allowed to break the seals!”

“Open it at once, man, if we are to solve this bizarre crime,” I said sharply. “Otherwise, I shall hold you responsible for letting the trail go cold.”

The lodge keeper broke the seal. I bent down and lifted out a piece of blood-stained sacking.

“Well, I’m damned,” a now-familiar voice spoke suddenly behind me. It was Inspector MacDonald.

I held out the sacking. “This what he wrapped around his shoes, Inspector. It not only prevented us from comparing his shoes to the imprints outside, but it meant he was utterly silent as he chased his victim around the house. And,” I continued, reaching down to retrieve a pair of wire-cutters, “I think we know what these were used for.”

I lifted out the final item, a black garment tailored to fit a man of about six feet in height from head to toe. Daubed on it in luminous paint, flickering like a thousand glow-worms, were the bones and skull of a human skeleton.

“Inspector, we live in an age when a white sheet and some dark shadows are quite enough to frighten even the most cosmopolitan victim to death. This outfit was as effective as if he’d taken a new Army & Navy Colt and blown the intruder’s brains out.”

MacDonald’s brows knitted. “Well,” he said cautiously. “I think we may have enough. The Met will be appreciative, Dr. Watson, I’m sure about that. You, Sykes, take some wax and reseal the box and its contents. Say nothing to anyone about it. Do I make myself clear? I’ll want to know if the Ambassador himself seems especially keen to collect it.”

The cabbie drove me home. Jubilant as I was, a sad thought recurred time and again over the journey. If only Holmes had been alive to hear a blow by blow account of how I helped MacDonald solve the murder. Alas, my old friend’s bones were entangled for ever with those of Moriarty, the “Napoleon of Crime”, in some danse macabre at the foot of those distant Falls.

In view of the inspector’s words when we parted, the reader may imagine my dismay and irritation when, two days later, tucked deep in the inner pages of The Daily Telegraph, I read:

Burglary in Mayfair - A string of burglaries may now come to an end with the discovery of the corpse of a house-thief within the premises of a grand house in Mayfair. “Swag” in the form of valuable jewellery was found at his side. He was pronounced dead by a passing doctor. The deceased’s clothing gave no clues as to his identity. No relative has come forward to claim the body. Scotland Yard Inspector Alec MacDonald told The Telegraph, “Any premature death is an unfortunate occurrence but we are confident the recent spate of burglaries near Dorset House will now cease.

A week later, the departure of the American Ambassador was widely reported, “a popular figure among the Corps Diplomatique, whose blindness proved no impediment to the successful commission of his duties.”

Ambassador Hammersmith, it was explained, had decided to return to the United States of America after being “deeply disturbed” by the recent discovery of the body of a burglar in the house he occupied on Deanery Street, London.

I flung the newspaper to one side. “He was pronounced dead by a passing doctor” hardly described the role I had played. I cancelled my day’s patients and go for an extended walk to overcome my disappointment. Even a common-or-garden burglar deserved justice.

Back at my quarters later that afternoon, an encounter took place of such magnitude that all thoughts of the case were blotted from my mind. My old comrade-in-arms Sherlock Holmes returned from the dead.

Twelve years later, I was to discover what truly lay behind the death of the intruder. The case had been curious enough, though in retrospect I was myself inclined to laugh (albeit grimly) at some of its grotesque and fantastical features.

I was on my way for a constitutional in Regents Park when threatening clouds diverted me to the Junior United Services Club, where I could spend a convivial hour in the dry with commissioned officers past and present, above all those of the 19th Punjabi and the 28th Indian Cavalry. Instead, the first person to catch my eye was MacDonald. He was seated alone, chin on hands, his great sandy eyebrows bunched into a yellow tangle. At his side lay two or three folders. I was beckoned over with a friendly wave.

“Thank goodness for a familiar face!” he exclaimed. “I confess I feel like a sore thumb sticking out among all these senior officers.”

His would-be host had as yet failed to materialise.

I pointed at the insignia of rank on his shoulders, a crown above a Bath Star, known as “pips”, over crossed tipstaves within a wreath. It was very similar to the insignia worn by a full general in the British Army.

“I read of your promotion to Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, MacDonald. Congratulations.”

“In no small part due to you, Doctor,” he replied in his still-strong Aberdonian accent. “I became a man marked out for promotion the moment you solved the Dorset House murder for me.”

My forehead furrowed. “But you reported it as a mere burglary. It didn’t even rate a snippet in the Police Gazette.”

“Paradoxically, that’s because it turned out to be the most important case Special Branch had worked on for years! Every editor in Britain was ordered in no uncertain terms not to print a word.”

I beckoned to a steward. “What’s your tipple, Commissioner?”

“Whisky would be nice.”

An unexpected silence fell upon our conversation. My companion gnawed a thumb, staring at me thoughtfully. At one point he surreptitiously ran a hand over a side-pocket.

The glasses arrived. MacDonald leaned forward.

“I’m not in a position to tell you precisely why, Dr. Watson, but it’s extraordinarily fortuitous to meet you like this. First, remind me, have you signed the 1889 Official Secrets Act?”

“I have,” I replied.

“Then you’ll especially recall Section One (c), ‘where a person after having been entrusted in confidence by some officer under Her Majesty the Queen with any document, sketch, plan, model, or information’... continue please!”

“‘...wilfully and in breach of such confidence communicates the same when, in the interest of the State, it ought not to be communicated’. I do indeed,” I replied, smiling at the officialdom. “Does this mean you’re about to tell me more about the Ghost of Dorset House?”

“I am, yes. A great deal of water has flowed under the bridge. You’ll find what I am about to reveal to you a very pretty matter indeed. You know Ambassador Hammersmith is dead? Trampled by a bison he kept as a pet.”

And so over a generous tot of fine Glen Garrioch, Commissioner MacDonald went on to fill in with remarkable detail matters of which I had known nothing.

“The Ambassador,” he began, “was a born and bred American, but a direct descendant of Junkers, members of the higher edelfrei nobility. At some point, his paternal line adopted the name Hammerschmidt. On arrival at Ellis Island, the father’s name was anglicised by an immigration official and became Hammersmith. The son’s loyalties, second to his native land, America, grew attached to the young and intemperate Kaiser Wilhelm. The American developed a great deal of sympathy for the German Emperor’s hatred of the British Empire.”

“Are you saying the Ambassador was a threat to England’s safety?” I asked.

MacDonald nodded. “More than you would ever guess,” he replied gravely, “but we’ll return to that in a moment. It seems Hammersmith had come to believe he was being watched by the British Government. Over the three months leading up to the events of that night, he had reported several break-ins. Petty thefts - silverware, some cash, that sort of thing. The claims explain why I was on the spot so quickly. I was on permanent watch in the neighbourhood. Despite my vigil, no-one was apprehended. In retrospect, we can see the thefts were entirely imaginary, but cleverly designed to influence the authorities. He was setting up the scene for the murder. The police coming to investigate the mysterious death of an intruder would readily assume the corpse was a cat-burglar who’d tried his luck at Dorset House once too often and met his come-uppance.

“At most, the coroner would register it as an unexplained death and leave it at that. Hardly a week goes by in any of our big cities where someone isn’t found dead in the course of carrying out some crime or other - falling off a roof, tumbling down a steep flight of stairs. The Ambassador must have thought he could get away with murder without the slightest suspicion falling on him, and I have to say, Doctor, had you not been passing by at that moment, that would have been the most likely outcome. None of us would ever have concluded a blind man could be the murderer. As it was, that was your remarkable deduction. The discovery of the skeleton suit confirmed it, though I was not ready to say so in front of Sykes. The moment your carriage sped on its way, I called in a dozen colleagues from Special Branch. We reconnected the electricity and went through the house with a tooth-comb.”

As he spoke he reached into a pocket and withdrew a small wooden box about an inch by one-and-a-half inches.

“We found this under a stairwell.” He passed it across.

“A miniature camera?” I asked, turning it over and over.

“A bespoke camera developed for Special Branch by the camera-makers J. H. Dallmeyer. I brought it with me today in relation to another appointment, but I think that you should have it, Doctor. It has a completely silent shutter and a special lens for close up copy work. The dead man was probably using it at the very moment the ‘phantom’ rushed in on him, but being blind, the Ambassador wouldn’t have known.”

I stared from the camera to the Commissioner in bemusement. I began, “Why would a burglar have a..?” when once again, as though Holmes were hovering at my side, the answer came to me. “You mean the victim wasn’t a simple sneak-thief after all?”

My companion slapped a hand on his thigh in pleasure. “Special Branch!” he cried. “The nation’s security was entrusted to him. Special Branch had their suspicions about the Ambassador’s repeated use of diplomatic channels to contact Berlin. Unknown to me, they put a man on to watching Dorset House, observing who came and went. The fellow knew his job. Not once did I catch sight of him. Then Hammersmith was seen driving out in his automobile, followed by a Clarence containing several pieces of expensive luggage. The servants departed soon afterwards, each carrying enough possessions to keep themselves in clothes for several days. The house was left completely dark. An opportunity to enter the mansion had presented itself. That’s when they took the decision to break in. Who could have known it was a cunning trap!”

MacDonald pulled out a rolled-up photograph. “Take a look at this,” he urged, handing it across. “He only had time to take two snaps but they provided the proof we needed. Hammersmith was providing Germany with copies of top-secret documents of international importance. The one in the photograph shows the likely deployment of the Royal Navy’s Ironclads in a first encounter with the Kaiser’s High Seas Fleet if he proved stupid enough to challenge Britain’s vast naval power.”

I passed the photograph back. “You mentioned a second snap?”

MacDonald looked around cautiously and showed me a second photograph. “This one’s of a document from Berlin. It’s the most egregious of all.”

“The Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty!” I gasped. “My Heavens, MacDonald, surely that would have provided a casus belli?”

“If the assassination attempt had succeeded, no doubt it would,” the Commissioner agreed. He pointed at the photograph.

“Thanks to this, we were able to thwart the plot. If our poor blighter had lived, he’d have been awarded a gong in Her Majesty’s Birthday Honours, that’s for sure.” What was more, the Commissioner continued, a warrant to search Dorset House revealed more stolen and copied documents under the floor-boards, “and this little curiosity.” He passed across a file titled The History of Hammersmith District. It contained a yellowing newspaper clipping dated late November 1803, some ninety years earlier than the events of that night. Somebody was roaming the nocturnal streets and lanes in a white sheet.

One night a heavily pregnant woman was crossing near the churchyard about ten o’clock... when she beheld something... rise from the tomb-stones. The figure was very tall, and very white! She attempted to run, but the ghost soon overtook her, and pressing her in his arms, she fainted. Found hours later by neighbours, she was put to bed in a state of shock and died there.

Commissioner MacDonald said, “You were right, Doctor. His intention was to frighten our man to death. And that must be where he got the idea.”

“My heavens, MacDonald,” I cried. “Adding all this up, it must have been dynamite! But the newspapers said the Ambassador took voluntary retirement? He wanted to spend more time on his buffalo ranch in Utah.”

“Not exactly voluntary, Doctor. The Prime Minister passed the evidence to the American President. Within twenty-four hours, Hammersmith had packed up his goods and chattels and was gone. He ‘retired’ from the Diplomatic Corps soon afterwards.”

I recalled the photograph in The Times, a smiling Ambassador boarding the Majestic for the Atlantic crossing.

“There was no way we could charge the fellow in a British Court, but that didn’t stop Her Majesty’s Government declaring him persona non grata,” MacDonald continued. “My report was received with relief in the highest quarters of the land. Special Branch was glad to see the back of him. It put an end to a very troublesome thorn in England’s side.” Leaning closer, he whispered, “It wasn’t long before I found myself up for a significant promotion.” He gestured at the pips on his shoulders. “You can see I haven’t looked back since. I’ve a very great deal to thank you for.”

As he uttered these words, over his shoulder I saw the steward directing an apologetic looking man towards MacDonald’s leather armchair. I recognised the visitor at once, the holder of a very high public office.

I thrust the camera into a pocket and stood up. As I did so, I whispered, “I shall go now, Commissioner. This has been a most exceptional half-an-hour. I have just deduced you must be here to brief our recent Foreign Secretary, now Prime Minister, on Hammersmith’s shenanigans, or you would not have had such an archive with you, let alone the camera.”

The Commissioner’s face turned ashen. “Good Lord, Doctor Watson, how on earth did you..?”

I replied, “Elementary, my dear MacDonald! To judge by his expression, an approaching Prime Minister is about to apologise to you for being so tardy, but I am entirely indebted to whichever matter of State it was that kept him.”

I patted my pocket. “And who knows what Sherlock Holmes and I might get up to with this treasure of a camera.”