It has to be admitted that the day after the Mansion House ball Mrs Mary Watson was on the step of Number 11, Tuesday Street, Chelsea far too early. It was only eight o’clock and a woman who has solved a crime during the morning and afternoon of the previous day and then gone on to a Mansion House ball in the evening, from which she would be unlikely to get back before two or three next morning, will not welcome the breakfast-time arrival of a friend, however keen that friend is to hear all the details of the night before. Mary herself knew she was too early, but had been unable to resist leaving the Watsons’ Battersea house, breakfastless, just after seven.
The door was opened by Betsey, Charlotte’s maid, who had lost her presence of mind completely, ‘Oh, Mrs Watson, Mrs Watson. Don’t come in. I don’t know where to put you. She’s upstairs, drinking tea. He’s downstairs eating an egg just like a normal person.’
‘Pull yourself together, Betsey,’ Mary Watson said sternly. She then pushed past Betsey and entered the breakfast room where, with sun streaming from the garden all over him and the table, eating an egg, as Betsey had reported, was a tall, handsome man with a long, aristocratic nose. He wore a red silk dressing-gown over cream silk pyjamas. The slightly long, very fair hair, the prominent nose and large blue eyes of Charlotte’s visitor were familiar to Mary Watson, a student of the better class of magazine. She mustered herself, curtseyed where she stood in the doorway just as Crown Prince Rudolph, heir to the throne of Kravonia, put down his egg spoon, stood up and bowed. Betsey, after the flurried encounter at the front door, had retreated to the kitchen. Mary began to introduce herself, but as she began to speak, Rudolph of Kravonia said, smiling, ‘I believe you must be Mrs Watson, of whom I have heard so much. Miss Holmes promised me you would be here early. Will you sit down and have some breakfast? I shall ring the bell for that eccentric maid.’
Mary, having managed the curtsey and even tried to give her name, realised now she would have to go further and speak to the Prince. Mercifully, as she opened her mouth to reply, the sound of Charlotte, evidently shouting into the kitchen, was heard. ‘Come out of there, you silly girl. Come straight to the breakfast room and ask for orders.’
Charlotte entered the room wearing a simple blue dress. Her hair was pinned on top of her head with tortoiseshell combs. The Prince half rose from his seat, then sat down again. He observed to Charlotte, ‘For a member of the Fabian Society and a supporter of the working classes, your manner to your servant is surprisingly autocratic’
‘I must try to train her,’ Charlotte responded, ‘otherwise she will be fit for no one’s service in future. Mary, my dear, I’m so pleased to see you. I see you and Prince Rudolph have already met. Now, sit down and join us for breakfast.’
In this way the amazed Mary Watson found herself on an ordinary Wednesday morning drinking coffee and eating toast and marmalade with her friend Charlotte and the future King of Kravonia who had, it was explained, accepted Miss Holmes’s offer of shelter for the night after the ball, rather than return to Buckingham Palace, where he was a guest of the Queen. Mary was not too sure about this. Royalty is royalty, she thought, but propriety is propriety. Charlotte, a single woman, was living alone, except for two female servants, so by all the rules she ought not to have had gentlemen other than relatives in the house with her overnight. Perhaps royalty was different, pondered Mary Watson – and then gave up the thought as the conversation went on, disappointingly not about the ball but the crime down in Kent solved the day before by Charlotte.
Now, Mary was shocked to hear that, for want of evidence, in all probability Lady Grimmond would go to Australia to live with a relative, rather than to the gallows for the murder of her husband. Forgetting her timidity about speaking in front of royalty, however lightly dressed and now smoking a cigar – after breakfast – in the morning room – Mary said, ‘But should such a woman really be left at liberty, completely unpunished for her crime?’
The Prince, reflectively puffing smoke at the ceiling (perhaps she should be more tolerant about Dr Watson’s pipe, thought Mary irrelevantly, if royalty felt itself able to act in this way), said, ‘Fate, rather like the famous North-West Canadian Mounted Police, has the habit of getting its man. As with the Mounties, it may take a long time, but justice, one way or another, is usually done.’
‘In that case,’ Mary remarked tartly, ‘I wonder we bother with police courts at all.’ She felt then she had been sharp with a future king and wondered how he would react, but he only muttered, ‘Perhaps,’ while Charlotte, on her own tack, interjected, ‘I believe I have induced the influential to see that it would be helpful if, before departing for Australia, Lady Grimmond, who has influence in the country, managed to secure a place for Emily Revere as a pupil teacher in some local school. A cottage could be managed, I’m sure, for her and her parents.’
Mary said, ‘That sounds very much like blackmail, Charlotte. You offer your silence in return for favours for the Revere family. Are you quite at ease with that?’
‘The evidence against Lady Grimmond might not be sound enough to convict her,’ Charlotte said placidly. ‘Even if it were, the choice is between penal servitude for a woman driven beyond sanity by her husband’s folly and vice, and a new start for a hard-pressed family. I know where my vote goes. I may be wrong.’
‘It’s a pity,’ remarked Rudolph of Kravonia pensively, ‘that, although as a species we have superiority over all others, God, or natural selection, or what you will, never added to man the asset of clairvoyance.’ His tone was melancholy as he added, ‘We must always make the best judgements we can and stand by them.’ Then he rose. ‘Well, ladies, pleasant as this is, I must go to join my councillors and Mr Gladstone at our conference. Excuse me – I will go and make myself ready.’
When he had left the room Charlotte buttered more toast and took a thoughtful bite. ‘There is a grave constitutional crisis pending,’ she said sombrely.
‘But – the ball,’ insisted Mary. It seemed to her that she would never hear the details. Charlotte was about to speak when Betsey came into the room, carrying a telegram, which Charlotte opened and read, frowning. She put it on the table, where Mary could not help observing a jumble of letters and figures on the paper. Observing her glance, Charlotte told her, ‘It’s from Sherlock. We always communicate in code where the matter is secret. But …’ and here she hit her brow with a fist, ‘what on earth is he doing? I’m certain Stapleton is not the man.’
‘Please tell me what Sherlock says,’ Mary cried in alarm. ‘For John’s been away so long and I’m concerned about the danger he’s in. Does your brother say when they will be back?’
‘It will only be a matter of days,’ Charlotte assured her. ‘Let’s hope the outcome of this case is a good one – but I doubt it.’
Before Mary had a chance to question her about what she meant there was a knock at the front door, followed by footsteps running downstairs. Prince Rudolph appeared briefly in the doorway to say goodbye to both ladies before joining the carriage which had come for him. As he departed he said to Charlotte, ‘I shall come tomorrow to say farewell – but I hope you’ll stand by what you said.’
‘Naturally,’ Charlotte responded. With a smile, the Prince left.
‘Such a handsome man,’ sighed Mary. ‘And so charming. He must be irresistible to women.’
‘Alas, not to all women,’ Charlotte said, adding, ‘But do not repeat that remark elsewhere.’
Mary’s eyebrows went up. ‘It’s hardly worth repeating,’ she told her friend. ‘It means so little.’
Charlotte smiled. ‘You’re angry,’ she said, ‘because you’ve been here for an hour and so far all that’s happened is breakfast with a prince and not one word of the lights and the table decorations, the jewels of the ladies, the orchestra – but come into my parlour and I’ll tell you everything, and play the music we danced to on my piano.’
‘I thought this moment would never come,’ said Mary.
Mary Watson was very busy at home during the following days. Dr Watson’s locum had left unexpectedly and a new one had to be found. Dr Watson’s demanding elderly aunt arrived for a visit and was not best pleased that her favourite nephew was absent. A telegram then arrived from John Watson saying that the Baskerville case was solved and he would be back from the West Country next day. Mary got her one maid to turn out the sitting-room and ordered a turbot for his dinner. (Dr Watson was very fond of turbot). That afternoon, however, she received a further telegram to say that her husband was detained and would be with her in two days’ time.
It was a disconsolate Mary Watson who, having seen off the disgruntled and disappointed aunt by train earlier, arrived at Charlotte’s house in Chelsea five days after the encounter with the Prince. The weather had become autumnal too soon; a cold wind came from the river; there was even a hint of mist in the air, and Mary was only too pleased to be ushered into Charlotte’s small sitting-room, where a bright fire burned. There were roses everywhere – on the small tables, on the piano, even on the mantelpiece, where, Mary thought, the fire would harm them. They were red, cream, some a dark purple, almost black.
‘Such roses!’ she exclaimed to Betsey. ‘Hothouse roses, many of them. How beautiful – how extravagant!’
‘Ain’t her what buys them,’ the maid responded. ‘It’s him.’
As everybody knows, a guest should never question a servant about the doings of the household. ‘Who’s “him”?’ demanded Mary instantly.
‘The Crown Prince – Rudolph,’ Betsey told her. ‘Don’t ask me what’s going on. I couldn’t tell you.’
Mary re-established the line between them. ‘Nor should you. I had no plan to ask you anything,’ she said firmly.
‘I’ll tell her you’re here,’ was Betsey’s reply as she turned on her heel and swayed out of the room, leaving Mary brooding about the bad ways of maids in general and Charlotte’s servant Betsey in particular. She would raise the subject with Charlotte as soon as she saw her, she thought.
At this point a severe-looking woman entered the room without warning. Mary, startled because she had not heard a knock at the door, said, ‘Good morning.’ The woman stood on the threshold, looking at her intently, but did not reply. She wore gold-rimmed spectacles and her under-controlled brown hair stuck out wispily from an unflattering brown felt hat, a coal scuttle-shaped affair. Over a dark blue dress which had seen better days she wore a shapeless brown tweed coat. She carried a big brown leather bag, part handbag, part briefcase. Eventually she replied, ‘Good morning,’ in the precise, well-bred tones Mary associated with sensible women like schoolteachers and librarians, unmarried women who had to earn their own living.
‘My name is Mary Watson,’ began Mary, when the woman advanced into the room, laughing and removing her hat – and the wig under it – which she flung on the sofa.
‘Charlotte!’ exclaimed Mary.
‘I took you in,’ crowed Charlotte. ‘Good. Good. My disguise must be near perfect to deceive such an old friend.’
‘But what on earth is it for?’ asked Mary.
Charlotte did not answer the question. ‘I borrowed all this,’ she said, ‘from an old friend and fellow member of the Fabian Society. The hearts of the Fabian Society are very much in the right place, but the sartorial standards do leave something to be desired. My friend is a librarian.’
‘You do not surprise me,’ Mary said. ‘But I still don’t understand …’
Charlotte said, ‘Let’s have some coffee. Where’s Betsey?’
The door opened and in came Betsey with a tray, which she set on a small table near the fire, observing as she did so, ‘Well, Miss Charlotte, you look a guy and no mistake. Are you planning to wait till November, then sit on the bonfire with a firework up your nose?’
‘Leave my service immediately,’ was Charlotte’s reply.
‘Who else would you find to put up with all these goings-on?’ Betsey retorted, and left the room.
‘I think Betsey’s suitor PC Bradshaw has been moved to another beat,’ Charlotte mused. ‘The footsteps outside my window have changed and Betsey’s in a mood. They’ll have to meet in their own free time now, instead of at my expense or that of the ratepayers’ in the case of Bradshaw, in my kitchen. Anyway, I shall not be able to plot the policeman’s comings and goings from tomorrow on – for tonight …’ and she paused, ‘tonight, I leave for Kravonia.’
‘My goodness,’ said Mary.
‘This is the reason for my disguise. You must say nothing of this but there are grave matters afoot. I go in disguise as an English governess for the two young Princesses, sisters of Crown Prince Rudolph, but that is all a blind. I go to solve a mystery.’
‘What?’ asked the faithful Mary.
‘It’s a secret. I’m under oath not to tell anybody what’s happening. But I shall stay in touch with Sherlock and I’m sure he’ll share with you as much as he’s able.’
‘How long will you be gone?’
‘A week or two, I imagine,’ replied Charlotte.
‘And these roses,’ exclaimed Mary. ‘From the Prince?’
‘He is so kind,’ Charlotte said. ‘Now, I’ll pour us some coffee.’
Later she remarked, ‘Mary, I know you have many burdens, but can I plead with you to stay in touch with Mrs Hudson at 221B Baker Street until John returns? There is a Chinese, John Lee, hanging about there. I know him, unfortunately, of old, as does John. He’s a sinister fellow. Would you get bulletins from Mrs Hudson about Lee and communicate with John for me? But please do not tell Sherlock. That is very important.’
‘A secret you are keeping from Sherlock?’ asked Mary incredulously.
‘Even in the best of families …’ Charlotte said, with deliberate vagueness, and Mary Watson, though a little alarmed, asked no more questions.
For the next few days, Mary, going about her normal duties, was able to divert herself by imagining her friend Charlotte’s progress across Europe by train through France and Germany to Norvius, the capital city of Kravonia. As she put a note through the coal merchant’s letter-box to remind him to deliver half a ton of best boiler fuel, she imagined Charlotte in evening dress in the dining compartment of the Continental Express. As she ordered yet another turbot from the fishmonger in the High Street to celebrate – she hoped – the arrival of her husband, she imagined Charlotte winding uphill towards the fourteenth-century, fairy-tale palace of Norvius. She imagined banquets in the great state dining hall; she imagined Charlotte in conversation with the venerable King Weland and his sister-in-law the Countess Seraphine. She imagined balls held under the great chandeliers of Castle Norvius, hunting parties in the forests around the city.
After Dr Watson returned, some rather shocking events ensued at Baker Street which distracted Mary’s mind completely from Charlotte and Kravonia. To put it in a nutshell, some remarks by Inspector Lestrade concerning the Baskerville case upset the delicate and already overtaxed nervous system of Sherlock Holmes so badly that he suffered something in the nature of a brainstorm, in the course of which he attempted to harm the gallant Inspector and did considerable damage to the premises at Baker Street.
Thus Charlotte had been gone a whole week when Mary, while assisting Sherlock Holmes’s housekeeper, Mrs Hudson, to clear up the wreckage in the parlour at Baker Street (poor Mrs Hudson had been unable, through nerves, to tackle the job any sooner), spotted on a desk covered with pieces of broken chemical retort some unopened envelopes bearing the stamps of the kingdom of Kravonia. She stood quite still on a carpet pitted with fragments of glass and eaten into by chemicals, on which lay broken photograph frames, even the splintered fragments of a violin. ‘Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear,’ she said aloud. Mrs Hudson, putting a lamp into a sack, stared at her.
‘Miss Holmes has been writing regularly to her brother,’ Mary said, staring at the letters. ‘She must be wondering why there has been no reply.’
‘You’d better write to her yourself, Mrs Watson,’ said Mrs Hudson. Her rosy face was flushed with effort. Her lips were set as she bravely went about her attempt to restore the parlour to something like its normal state.
Mary Watson put the letters into her handbag and went on with her labours. It was only on the bus back from Baker Street, when she opened the letters from Charlotte, that she became really alarmed. The letters, unfortunately, were in the same incomprehensible code – a jumble of letters and figures – which Sherlock had used in his telegram to Charlotte. Mrs Watson promptly jumped off the bus and got a hansom cab to the club where her husband, Dr Watson, was a member.
She waited in the hall (ladies were permitted to go no further) while the porter fetched Dr Watson. At first he frowned, unhappy to be pursued to his club by his wife, but as soon as he had seen the letters he became grave, even alarmed. There in the hall of his club, his wife and the porter looking on, he gave vent to various exclamations of despair, in which phrases on the general theme of ‘Why couldn’t she stay at home like a normal woman?’ predominated, until at last he began to smile. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘why did I not think of it? The answer to our problem lies here in this club! I have only just left Jordan Crouch, the most famous cryptologist of the Foreign Office. If he can’t crack this code no one can. I believe he is to be found at this moment in the library reading The Times. What a mercy!’ exclaimed the doctor. ‘And the fact that he is a servant of the government means there’ll be no breach of confidentiality over whatever monkey tricks our clever and delightful friend Miss Holmes has been up to in Kravonia.’
Mary said, ‘That is excellent, my dear. Although I am sure there have been no “monkey tricks”, as you call them. Please, John, hurry the messages to him and implore his help. I am so worried about Charlotte.’
‘If only Sherlock were in a position to help,’ sighed the doctor. ‘But I am convinced Jordan Crouch will solve our problem for us.’ And with this he disappeared into the fastnesses of the club for almost an hour. Mary Watson, waiting in agitation, was obliged after half an hour to ask the porter for a chair. She sprang up as she saw John Watson approaching, though, as he came closer, she could tell from his expression that the attempt at decoding Charlotte’s letters had not been successful.
‘Crouch did his level best,’ he reported dismally. ‘He even recruited another member, once an even more distinguished cryptographer than himself – but it was hopeless. Neither of them could make head or tail of the business. This is like no code either had ever seen before.’
‘Then what can we do?’ cried Mary. Two gentlemen crossing the hall gave her a severe look and the porter stared pointedly at Dr Watson as if to say, ‘If you cannot control your wife, please remove her.’
‘Hush, Mary,’ John said to his wife. ‘After all, there may be nothing amiss in Kravonia. Charlotte may even now be on her way home.’
‘John,’ remonstrated Mary, ‘we cannot be at all sure of that.’
‘The best we can do,’ he said, ‘is send a telegram to Castle Norvius, asking for news.’
But Mary Watson’s face lightened as he was speaking. ‘No!’ she cried. ‘There is another answer. Mycroft! Is he in London?’
‘I think you’ve hit it,’ responded John. ‘Mycroft may be at his club, only a step from here. Porter! My hat and coat if you please.’
John and Mary Watson hurried through the streets to Mycroft’s club, which was in a nearby street. Once again Dr Watson left his wife in the lobby as he went inside the club to find Mycroft Holmes. A few minutes later one of the club servants came with a message to inform Mary that Mycroft had been found. Only minutes afterwards John Watson and the rotund Mycroft Holmes came hurrying towards her. Mycroft had Charlotte’s letters in his hand. ‘Simple enough,’ he said to Mary, ‘to anyone with a basic knowledge of the Akkadian tongue. I’m a little surprised my old friend Jordan Crouch declared he couldn’t work it out.’
‘You could hardly expect him to think in terms of a language of which I must admit I myself have never heard,’ John said.
‘I suppose the language has not been spoken for three thousand years,’ Mycroft remarked. ‘But one would expect the Foreign Office to show some flexibility in their approach – never mind that. The essential thing is to transcribe all this as quickly as possible. Events in Kravonia are moving fast and from what I have seen Charlotte has been asking for Sherlock’s comments on a daily basis.’ He dropped his voice. ‘The fate of the Kravonian royal house, I believe, may be hanging in the balance.’
‘My dear Mycroft,’ said Dr Watson, horrified.
‘I shall be better at home, I think,’ Mycroft went on, ‘where I have various books to assist me in sorting out any knotty points I may come across in the messages. There, too, I will be able to consult certain Kravonian exiles who will interpret matters for me if necessary.’
‘But are such exiled men likely to be trustworthy in matters concerning the monarchy?’ questioned John Watson.
‘Some of the exiles, of course, are not to be trusted,’ replied Mycroft. ‘I shall have nothing to do with them. But I shall be talking to the reformers, perfectly respectable men only seeking constitutional change. It has to be said that at present it takes very little to be exiled from Kravonia.’
‘I see,’ said Dr Watson.
‘Very well,’ said Mycroft busily. ‘To work – to work. I suggest you and Mrs Watson return home and await my messenger with the full text of Charlotte’s letters. Then we will confer over what action it may be necessary to take.’
‘I’m deeply thankful we found you,’ Mary said.
‘So am I,’ responded Mycroft. ‘Charlotte, though often opinionated and leading what seems sometimes to be an ill-regulated life, is still my sister. Now, if you go about your business I will go about mine and I hope in some hours to have translated the letters.’
It was not until late in the evening, well after John and Mary Watson had eaten their dinner, that a knock came at their front door. Mary had been trying to occupy herself with some mending; John had been smoking his pipe and reading. At the sound of the doorknocker John sprang to his feet and went out into the passageway – dim, for the lights were turned low to save gas – and hastened to open the door. Mary put down her sewing, crept to the door of the sitting-room and peered into the passageway.
Outside on the step stood a man with a black beard and long black hair. He wore a dark overcoat and a big black hat which he swept off with a broad gesture as he asked, in strongly accented English, ‘Are you Dr John Watson?’
‘I am,’ responded John in an unwelcoming voice. He did not like the look of this visitor.
‘A friend asked me to deliver this,’ said the stranger, producing a thick envelope from his overcoat pocket. ‘I believe you know what it is.’
‘I believe I do,’ John said. He did not take the package immediately. ‘Who are you and how do I know who sent you?’
‘I am harmless, Dr Watson,’ replied the man. ‘This package contains messages from the sister of the man who sent me. Does that satisfy you?’
‘It does,’ John said stiffly, taking the envelope from the man’s hand.
‘Then,’ said the stranger, ‘I will bid you good evening,’ and, bowing slightly in the foreign manner, he clapped his big hat back on his head and went down the Watsons’ garden path into the darkness.
‘What is it, John? Is it Mycroft’s messenger?’ asked Mary once her husband had closed the front door.
‘Hm,’ said John as he re-entered the sitting-room. ‘I didn’t like the look of him. Mycroft’s got some peculiar friends. Well, sit down, my dear, and let us see what we have here.’
Standing with his back to the fire, Dr Watson opened the bulky envelope and pulled out a thick collection of pages, covered in small, precise, black handwriting. He took a smaller piece of paper from the top of the others and told his wife, ‘This is headed with Mycroft’s address and says, “Dear Dr and Mrs Watson, Here is the complete transcript of Charlotte’s three letters. Please read them as rapidly as you can – we must act quickly now. My messenger, by the way, is a certain Parsifal Oblomov, a member of the People’s Monarchical League of Kravonia, a group desiring a less absolute monarchy in Kravonia.” Good God!’ exclaimed John. ‘I thought the fellow looked like an anarchist! I hope it was not a mistake to involve Mycroft in all this – I hope he’s not mixing us up with a gang of bomb-throwing revolutionaries.’
‘The People’s Monarchical League sounds as if it supports a monarchy,’ reasoned Mary. ‘So perhaps he was not a really dangerous man.’
‘Who knows?’ said John dubiously. ‘The politics of Central Europe are very unlike our own. But’, he said, in a resolute tone, ‘Mycroft advises us to read Charlotte’s letters to Sherlock with speed, so that is what we will do. I shall read aloud, to save time.’
For many hours after the respectable dwellers of the neighbourhood were fast asleep, John Watson was standing by his fire, reading aloud the decoded letters to his wife.
‘My dear Sherlock,’ Charlotte’s first letter began, ‘I write to you at the end of my first day in Kravonia, hoping that what I can tell you at the outset of my stay will help you to form impressions which you could then pass on to me. I am sure your mind will work more rapidly than my own on the information I convey and would be so grateful if you would write and tell me what you think.
‘But first things first. I arrived at Norvius station yesterday evening, after three days in the train from Paris – an uneventful journey, the last part eastwards across the tip of Kravonia, after leaving Bohemia, then south through the forests and plains to the city of Norvius, capital, as you know, of Kravonia, and a flourishing seaport on the Baltic.
‘A carriage had been sent to meet me and, darkness having fallen and the weather cold, I was glad to swathe myself in the fur rug provided and lean back with the clear night sky overhead as the carriage pulled slowly through the town and up the hill on which Castle Norvius is built. You will know, Sherlock, that this stronghold was erected in the tenth century by King Fayinn of the Osteire, conqueror of Kravonia, in order to protect his men against the assaults of the conquered people, the original inhabitants of Kravonia. The old Kravonians, rather like the Welsh in our own country, still live in the west. They dwell against the German border, mostly speaking their own strange language (philologists associate it with Turkish and Finnish, but in my own view it has little connection with either) and observing many of their original customs. They are protected by thick forests. Their part of the country has poor roads, is undeveloped, and the people there are a byword among the others for their primitive lives. However, I do not imagine I will have any dealings there. I shall be chiefly at Norvius, I imagine, which is of course prosperous, mostly German- or Russian-speaking.
‘I saw little of the town itself as we passed through – though bones weary with travelling made it known to me soon enough that most of the streets are cobbled. There were a few lights twinkling in little windows, though at one point the doors of the big inn in what appeared to be a sizeable market square opened, revealing inside a handsome interior and many well-clad, cheerful drinkers. The country is prosperous, of course, its position enabling it to trade with its powerful neighbours – Germany to the west, Russia to the east – and its command of a Baltic port giving it an advantage over both somewhat landlocked countries. As we went up to the castle through steep, wooded areas I could see the lights of the great palace twinkling ahead. By day it is a fairy-tale. Set on the side of a wooded mountain, it is all towers and crenellations, the roof tiles in red. The palace looks south over the town of Norvius while from the west battlements one has a view of the thriving port, full of craft of all kinds. As we ascended towards the castle I began to smell the salty tang of the sea. The palace of Norvius has of course been much expanded over the hundreds of years during which it has stood on the same site. Fayinn’s simple wooden fortress no longer exists and would be useless if it did, for Kravonia’s enemies are now more powerful than the small, dark original inhabitants of Kravonia. They are the King of Germany and the Tsar of Russia. Kravonia has been at war since its beginnings. It seems a miracle that the nation still exists, even more miraculous that the same ruling family, the Osteires, is still in power after almost a thousand years.
‘In the castle gate stood my old friend Prince Rudolph, carrying a lighted torch in his hand. He greeted me cheerfully as I descended from the carriage and we walked together across a courtyard, deserted but for guards on patrol. We went through the huge doorway of the castle, across a hall the size of seven railway stations, lit by torches revealing walls covered with pictures and with the heads and horns of various animals hunted in the land. Then came a dizzying set of corridors and finally I was led to a small room where, I was happy to see, there was a bright fire and a meal set ready for two people – the Prince and myself. It was late, he said, far too late to be introduced to anyone, particularly my little charges, the Princesses Cunegonde and Ulrica, who are the pretext for my being here at all. They, I assumed, would have been asleep for hours – though when I met them next day I could see they might well at that hour have been anywhere, doing anything. So, after a meal I was almost too weary to eat, I said good-night to Rudolph and was led to a large room with a good fire in the grate, where I went straight to bed and slept before my head met the pillow.
‘Next morning dawned clear and I was able from my bedroom window to see the town of Norvius spread out below the castle. An illustration from a fairy-tale! There were large, gabled buildings, cobbled streets, a market square full of busy shops and stalls from which cheerful women in white aprons were selling their produce. In the bright sunshine I saw gaily uniformed hussars on their prancing horses, and laden carts coming into the town from the fields and orchards beyond. Suddenly, as I watched, the streets filled with children all going in one direction, towards a big red-tiled building where it was possible even to see the clapper of a bell going to and fro. It was at that moment that my bedroom door opened and in came a sturdy girl wearing the local costume, a big, embroidered skirt, with a pinafore, white stockings and black shoes. She carried a tray on which lay my breakfast, and told me that Chancellor Ristorin would come and collect me from my room shortly, so that I could go to the schoolroom to meet the young Princesses.
‘You will, I am sure, know of Ristorin by repute, Sherlock. A Russian by birth, he is the most trusted of the small court surrounding King Weland, Rudolph’s father. The courtiers, chiefly members of Kravonia’s small, sophisticated aristocracy, have in the past mistrusted this man, a Russian and therefore an enemy, the son of a Moscow lawyer, and therefore no aristocrat, but it is generally held in the councils of Europe that it is the vigour of Ristorin and the guidance of his master, the King, which have brought Kravonia forward and modernised, to some extent, the state. It is still an absolute monarchy, but King Weland and Ristorin together have amended many of its laws and practices. Nevertheless, Kravonia is still something of a phenomenon, a prosperous state with a well-educated middle class, yet ruled on medieval lines. And now to my meeting with the little princesses.’
It was at this point that Dr Watson lowered the pages from which he was reading and said, ‘My dear, I must have a whisky. Will you go on reading?’
‘Gladly,’ said Mary and stood to take the pages from him. As John sat drinking his whisky she began to read aloud Mycroft’s transcription of Charlotte’s letter.
Mary read: ‘Chancellor Ristorin, a man only in his thirties, I guessed, knocked on my door and with him I took the network of corridors, chambers, ante-rooms and staircases to the schoolroom where I was to meet my pupils. The Castle Norvius is built to no known plan. One minute you are going down a corridor in which classical statues stand in niches, next you are crossing a vaulted hall with a huge fireplace, totally unfurnished and giving the appearance of being the kind of room in which roistering Viking feasts might take place. Then you are in a room full of soldiers playing cards – then another corridor, small and narrow, will take you through a sitting-room in eighteenth-century style – another staircase leads, through a flagstoned room full of caged birds, to another staircase. Rooms, staircases, corridors – more rooms, more stairs, more corridors. En route I demanded of Ristorin a plan of the building. He laughed, calling me “bluestocking” and “English miss”. I responded by telling him firmly that if I was here on a sensible mission to help the Kravonian royal house out of a difficulty I had no wish to waste valuable time wandering the castle aimlessly trying to find where I wanted to go. This sobered him and he told me where the map room was, adding that no one had entered it for years so I might find it dusty and mice-ridden. Defensively, he then added that one man could not do everything. I agreed this was indeed true, but felt privately that a nation attempting to govern itself without once consulting its own maps might not be acting very efficiently. As we walked, though, from room to room, from staircase to staircase and corridor to corridor, I sensed Ristorin’s mind was on other matters. Since we already had a plan to meet at lunch to discuss the real reasons for my being in Kravonia, there was evidently another matter concerning him. We climbed a staircase into the turret room used as a schoolroom, and when we opened the heavy door to meet the little Princesses I realised what his anxiety had been.
‘A most horrible sight met our eyes. I know that you, Sherlock, are no lover of children, while you know that I, though perhaps a little more tolerant than you, am no rival to the Madonna in that respect. But the Princesses Ulrica and Cunegonde, aged ten and eleven, are certainly remarkable examples of the species “child”. When we entered the room a black cat of extreme size and emaciation stood spitting on the schoolroom table, while on the hearthrug in front of the schoolroom fire, in the bright light coming in from windows on three sides of the turret, the little Princesses, all rosy cheeks and blonde plaits, were torturing a dirty boy, evidently some palace servant. They had tied this barefoot lad, who wore only ragged trousers and a shirt, by his ankles and wrists and were now advancing a poker, which they had evidently heated in the fire, towards his bare, dirty feet. The boy, needless to say, was howling and writhing and pleading with them. Ristorin gave me one look of despair from his dark, intelligent eyes, then advanced into the room saying in a commanding voice, “Your Highnesses – your Highnesses. Here is your new governess, Miss Holmes. Please release your victim. Miss Holmes is English and you will shock and upset her and give a false impression of what you are like.”
‘Sulking somewhat, and not glancing once at me, the little Princesses undid the ropes securing their victim, who jumped up and took to his heels straight away. Cunegonde, the elder, then straightened the rug before the fire, put the poker back in its proper place and turned to look at me, shamelessly. Meanwhile Ristorin also shot me a glance as if to say, “There you are. This is what you have to deal with,” and speedily took his leave. I did not blame him. I entered the room, sat down at the table and contemplated my little pupils.
‘As I’ve said, Sherlock, we both know ourselves to be without sentimentality as far as children are concerned. As children ourselves I doubt if we were much like other children. I recall, for example, being taken to hear Mycroft addressing a crowd of eminent men at the Royal Society on the subject of Natural Selection when I was three years old, Mycroft himself being then, I suppose, ten or eleven. That he was capable of this was remarkable, but perhaps it’s extraordinary, too, that anyone thought it worth taking a three-year-old child to hear him. I understand that you, Sherlock, at the age of five invented gunpowder single-handed and blew up the summer-house. We all, I believe, were expected to read in two languages by five or six years old. Even so, as I looked into the eyes of Cunegonde and Ulrica Osteire I knew these were no usual children. The torturing of the unfortunate boy had not been a childish prank gone too far on one occasion – it was part of the pattern of their lives.
‘What looked back at me from the Princesses’ four wide, blue eyes was – I can think of no other term – evil. In their gaze was no sensibility at all. You will reproach me, Sherlock, for using that unscientific word “evil”. You will say, how would I define the word “sensibility”? Is it not merely a matter of habits and customs, the conventions by which we live? Can it be quantified, measured, weighed? I cannot answer you except to say that it is an awesome thing to look into the eyes of a fellow human being, old or young, and find no emotion, neither sympathy nor the opposite, nor any recognition of a common humanity, nor any possibility of a future relationship – nothing. Imagine staring into the eyes of a wild creature, such as a fox or a rat. Imagine that meeting of eyes where the only consideration on the part of the animal is whether one will attack it, or not, and whether it should react by fighting, or fleeing. That was the sense I had during my first contact with the Princesses Cunegonde and Ulrica of Kravonia. No wonder Chancellor Ristorin had been preoccupied on the way to the schoolroom. No wonder he had fled so hastily! He dreaded the moment when I discovered the shocking nature of my new pupils.
‘There was no help for it anyway – I had to begin my imposture and begin to act towards them as might a governess. The schedule dictated that history would be our topic for half an hour. The schoolroom containing, on shelves, a number of outdated textbooks and inaccurate globes, I set them to read aloud from a book of Kravonian history for children. They read fairly fluently from the first few pages, a eulogy of Kravonia and its beginnings all couched in most extravagant and vague terms. They then began to stumble and halt over the words. I concluded they had never got any further than the first pages, those they knew by heart, and became hopelessly confused when they struck the pages they did not know. To put it bluntly, they were almost illiterate. As we reached this point, the ragged black cat, as if on cue, sprang from its position on the table straight at my face. Only by leaping back as I saw it come at me, toppling my chair to the floor, did I evade it, and I suspect a woman less suspicious of her pupils than I was, and perhaps older and less nimble, might well have been so badly injured by the beast that history lessons would have ended well and truly that day. However, as the animal, missing me by a hair’s breadth, landed askew on the floor, I scooped it up and flung it from the door, which I slammed.
‘“He is our little pet. We have had him from a kitten,” sobbed Ulrica.
‘I merely remarked, “I think he had better stay outside the room until lessons are over,” and, as the enraged animal howled and clawed outside the door, I set my ignorant pupils to copying letters into a book and reading simple words from a child’s primer. They did this reasonably well, though sulkily. At one point I asked Cunegonde, who had flung down her pen and was staring gloomily at a blotchy page, “Do you not wish to grow up to be an intelligent and well-informed woman?” She responded by bursting into giggles and saying, “No – I want to marry the Tsar’s son and be the Tsarina.”
‘“The Tsar has no son,” said her sister.
‘“There will be one when I want him,” Conegonde told Ulrica.
‘If I had not already made some gloomy guesses about what I was up against with these girls I might have dismissed this as childish fantasy. Alas, I could not do that.
‘Three further hours of dealing with the abysmal ignorance of the daughters of the House of Osteire – and with their delight in their own stupidity – convinced me of what I already suspected. I am not cut out for a governess. I was more than relieved at midday to set them a little task for the afternoon and discharge them.
‘A servant came and took me to the small but magnificent room in which I was to take lunch with Prince Rudolph and Chancellor Ristorin. There was one arched window in the wall – the rest of the room was lined with elaborately carved amber, baroque and extraordinary and bathing the entire room in a beautiful yellow light. There were four places set at the table in the middle of the room, and as Prince Rudolph, the Chancellor and I assembled King Weland himself entered. He is a tall man, like his son, with fair-grey hair and a neatly cut beard and moustache. His eyes are blue, but even as he greeted me I saw in them a blankness and a kind of weariness which was quite upsetting. His politeness was exquisite, but mechanical. I assumed that the death of a dearly loved wife following the birth of his last child, Princess Ulrica, had damaged his life irreparably.
‘We had almost begun our meal when the door burst open and a woman dressed in a beautiful blue velvet gown, diamonds at her throat, came in at speed, apologising for her lateness. She is a tall woman with a great deal of golden hair heaped on her head with artful artlessness and a face of amazing beauty. She is about thirty years old and her best feature is two blue eyes, dark-fringed, not unlike those of the young Princesses – and, I was surprised to note, just as distant and empty!
‘It appeared that, in spite of the courteous way in which Prince Rudolph smoothly arranged a fresh place to be laid for the lady, she had not in fact been invited to the luncheon. The King introduced me. She is the Countess Seraphine, sister of the late queen and the person in charge of the rearing of little Cunegonde and Ulrica, her nieces, of course. This provided a reason for the empty eyes of my young pupils, but I did not believe it was a mere family characteristic, something inherited, like the shape of a foot or nose. No – that was not the reason, as I’m sure you, dear Sherlock, will agree.
‘She apologised for her lateness, though, as I say, I am not sure whether she was really expected. “I was with my little nieces,” she explained disarmingly, “and their praise of their new governess detained me.” I was not deceived – I’m sure those girls dislike me – and I wasn’t sure if she was in the plot to pass me off as a governess, so I said nothing except that I had enjoyed our first lesson. “The pleasure was on both sides,” she responded, while we scrutinised each other and tried not to let it show. I felt she suspected my disguise and was trying to work out if my dull clothes and spectacles were truly those of an English governess. I, meanwhile, was studying her to see if she were the person I sought. I think I satisfied her, more or less, that I was who I purported to be. In turn she satisfied me that she was the individual I sought; though much mystery remains. (Sherlock! This affair is much more complicated than I thought it would be – your impressions and conclusions, please!)
‘We were served by footmen who were in scarlet breeches, white stockings and black shoes. Everything was in the best of style, as it might have been in one of our own noble houses. But it became plainer and plainer the Countess Seraphine was an uninvited guest for the conversation between us did not touch at all on the cause of my visit to Norvius. From this I inferred that the Countess was unaware of the real reason for my visit. We spoke of similarities and differences between Kravonia and Great Britain, of Kravonian trade, of the education of young women in Britain and of the delights I could expect when the great Christmas celebrations at the Castle Norvius took place. A famous singer was expected from Denmark to sing the carols in the cathedral. There would be music, dancing and feasting. I did not say I both hoped and expected to be back in England by then. Were the Christmas customs the same in all parts of Kravonia, I asked? (You will understand why, Sherlock.) No, King Weland told me, for in the forest of Western Kravonia, the more backward part of the country, the peasants celebrated Christmas on 21st December, with many curious, unusual rites, and no sermons from the pulpit or other persuasion would make them do otherwise. At that point the Countess Seraphine turned the conversation to the prospects of the young Princesses entering Oxford University (most unlikely unless things improve, I’d say).
‘Later the King excused himself, saying he had matters of state to attend to, and after a dessert of strawberries from the palace hothouse, with the strong sweet yellow wine of the country, I, too, stood up, saying that I proposed to follow the custom of my country by going for a short walk. Chancellor Ristorin gallantly offered to accompany me to show me the town. The Countess stared but, as I’d guessed, did not suggest coming with us, for it would have been beneath her dignity to be seen strolling the town with Ristorin and the English governess. Not that my afternoon walk was in reality a walk – as soon as we had left the dining-room to its yellow light and Prince Rudolph and the Countess to the yellow wine, Ristorin took my arm and, urging me through rooms and corridors, took me out into the courtyard to the stables. Within moments we were in a carriage and going uphill from the castle on a narrow road with pine trees on either side. “The palace is full of spies,” he said to me in an undertone as we drove. “We can talk privately among the trees without being overheard.”
‘Ristorin halted the carriage higher up and we walked through the wood to an open space, where we sat down on the grass, close to the edge of a cliff. Below us lay the turrets and gables of the palace of Norvius. Smoke rose from its chimneys, grooms walked horses in the stableyard, soldiers went to and fro. A servant came through a window to hang washing on a line stretched across a flat rooftop. The town lay further below, looking even smaller than the palace from where we sat. Toy carts moved along the streets, tiny people moved about the market square, birds like dots swooped about the red tiled roofs.
‘“How charming it all looks,” I said. “A fairy-tale. Unlike vast, sooty London.”
‘“Do not be deceived,” he said gravely. “There are some very tangled skeins here. How much has Prince Rudolph told you?”
‘“I think he has told me what he knows.” I answered. “But he is bewildered, of course. Let me tell you what I have gathered. Then you must add what you think fit – but we must both be frank.” Ristorin nodded in agreement. (I trust him up to a point, Sherlock, but I am not completely confident of him.) “Very well,” I said. “What I know is that the marriage of Rudolph and Ursula of Holstein is important to Kravonia as the alliance will unite the country with its Holstein neighbour, thus forming in effect a Greater Kravonia and giving it more power to resist its jealous neighbours, the emperors of Germany and Russia. Kravonia has a major port at Norvius, which rarely freezes in winter. Kravonia has coal, Holstein iron – together they could found an industry making ships and armaments which would make Greater Kravonia a force to be reckoned with. At first sight the only objection to the marriage on either side could have been that the partners to it strongly objected to each other. But this does not seem to have been the case. Love is scarcely expected in such marriages. It comes later, they say, to the happy couple.”
‘“If at all,” said Ristorin, with a smile.
‘“Just so,” I responded. Then I went on, “But Rudolph has never said he loathed Ursula of Holstein and there’s little evidence she objected to him. A well brought-up girl who has always taken it for granted she would have no choice in her marriage would probably thank her lucky stars if her future husband turned out to be Rudolph of Kravonia. Yet the marriage never took place. Two days before the wedding, with preparations in full swing, the prospective bride and her parents left Norvius in haste. Then came the declaration that the King was ill. Now Ursula of Holstein is studying art in Paris – has, in fact, been sent well away from these regions, even though such conventional parents must flinch at the thought of their carefully reared daughter leading such an independent life, however guarded she may be from the Parisian frivolity. And that”, I told the Chancellor, “is all I know.”
‘“And your suspicions?” he enquired.
‘“I will keep those to myself, until I hear more from you,” I told him. “Though I must admit to wondering about something quite far from this subject. I’m sure you know there are rumours Prince Rudolph’s older brother, Oscar, did not die in a hunting accident five years ago, as was announced, but is, in fact, kept locked up, mad, by the Royal Family. I hope you will forgive me for being so blunt about this painful subject, but you must know these rumours have been in circulation for some years.”
‘The Chancellor did not reply immediately. Instead he asked me certain pertinent, or perhaps impertinent, questions about the friendship between myself and Prince Rudolph with which, Sherlock, I will not weary you, as they have nothing to do with the investigation. He then handed me a Turkish cigarette, took one himself and we smoked quietly, gazing down over the rooftops of the palace and the town of Norvius in the still-bright afternoon sunshine.
‘Ristorin said ruminatively, “Miss Holmes – I have a feeling very little escapes you. To begin with, as far as I know, Prince Oscar is unquestionably dead. I attended his funeral. There is no evidence to suggest he is alive. Terrible rumours always encircle the lives of prominent people – insanity, illegitimacy, monstrous births, poisonings and false declarations of death. This is how the common folk entertain and console themselves on dark winter evenings.”
‘“I know that is so,” I agreed.
‘“As to the débâcle at Norvius last September, I will tell you what I can. Prince Rudolph will not, perhaps, have given you a very detailed account. He is the least vain of men, but a young and handsome prince who experiences the sudden flight of a prospective bride only days before his wedding is bound to be shocked. But before I tell you exactly what happened I must point out how serious the matter is. The Tsar of Russia has troops now massed on our border. He says they are on manoeuvres, an old story which often leads to skirmishes, if not outright war. Our spies also believe the Tsar, to cause social instability, is funding the Kravonian People’s League. Had the Holstein wedding taken place, I doubt if the Tsar would have chosen to act so provocatively. Kravonia would have been too much a force to be reckoned with.”
‘“What is the Kravonian People’s League?” I asked Ristorin.
‘“Anarchists!” he exclaimed disgustedly. “Revolutionaries! Do not be deceived by their innocent-sounding title. They are armed. They cause explosions. They blow up railway bridges, raid the docks and steal goods to support themselves. They seduce or threaten the country people into helping them. They are vermin.”
‘“What are their principles?” I asked him. This question inflamed him further. “Principles?” he said angrily, as if I were a People’s Leaguer myself. “What principles? Explosion! Anarchy! Disorder! Chaos!”
‘At risk of further infuriating him I mentioned, “Kravonia is an absolute monarchy, is it not?”
‘“It is ruled by His Majesty and a Council of Ten, to which I have the honour to belong. I hope you are not suggesting Kravonia is some kind of autocracy such as Russia, Miss Holmes?”
‘“Certainly not,” I answered tactfully. “It has the name, among European nations, of being most enlightened.”
‘“To the events of the September wedding, then,” he said rapidly. “The Count and Countess of Holstein, with many members of their court, arrived late in August. They brought forty people, a regiment of soldiers and some fifteen wagons of baggage. Both nations rejoiced. The King, the Council of Ten and the entire court were naturally delighted.”
‘“And the Prince?” I enquired.
‘He gave me a sharp look. “Content to do his duty.”
‘“And the Countess Seraphine?” I asked further.
‘His look was even more piercing. “Happy for the Prince and the nation, so far as I am aware,” he told me.
‘“Ristorin,” I protested, “be frank with me.”
‘“Miss Holmes,” he said, “there are things – matters – it is not always wise …”
‘“Very well,” I told him, “let us go on. Will you tell me about Ursula of Holstein herself?”
‘“Healthy, pretty, well educated – more or less – well brought-up, well conducted and, as far as I could tell, of an even temperament. Rather excited, I thought,” he added, “about her wedding, and quite ready to fall in love with her husband.”
‘“What girl would not be?” I asked.
‘“Just so. The Prince’s attitude to his bride was entirely as it should have been – respectful, sympathetic, tinged with the knowledge that his bride-to-be is a young woman, inexperienced, in need of guidance …”
‘“Yet in spite of all this, two days before the wedding …”
‘“Sadly, yes – two days before the wedding, the Holstein entourage left the palace, bag and baggage, at dawn. There was little warning. All had gone well until the preceding evening, when we sat down to dinner, some fifty of us – without Ursula of Holstein. There was no explanation for her absence, she simply failed to arrive. Then she sent a message down to Prince Rudolph asking, apparently, if he would visit her in her apartment (which she shared with her mother) and come immediately, and alone. The Prince jumped up from the table and left the room without explanation. Fifteen minutes later the Countess, Ursula’s mother, unable to endure any longer the absence of her daughter, and the sudden, prolonged disappearance of the Prince, excused herself from the table, saying that she felt unwell. She was gone some time – then, in a very undignified way, and contrary to any protocol, we all began to drift from the table on one pretext or another – first the Count left, then I did. Others followed. It was quite disgraceful. When I arrived in the doorway of Ursula’s room she stood there, in her bedchamber, small, young, shaking, her mother trying to calm her. Rudolph was standing there startled and white as a sheet. Meanwhile the Count was attempting to find out what was happening and the room was filling up with people. The scene was chaotic. When the babble subsided somewhat and the room was cleared. Prince Rudolph explained that when he went to Ursula, he found her in her chamber, hysterical. She told a horrid tale. It seemed that the little Princesses, Cunegonde and Ulrica, had revealed themselves to her as witches, then led her to the attics where she had seen a dreadful spectacle – a creature, short-trunked, with a huge head, lying inside a locked and barred room, on straw, mumbling, muttering, devouring – ” and he shuddered, “a living animal, cat or rabbit, she could not tell which in the dim light. This still twitched as he ate. The creature, though hideously deformed, she said, was still human and was said by the Princesses to be their brother Oscar, not dead but horribly deteriorated. Madness, hereditary degeneracy, witchcraft – those were the accusations made by Ursula of Holstein. There was a colloquy, late into the night, between the Count and Countess and the King. An unsatisfactory conversation, evidently – next day they all went home.”
‘“Astonishing,” I said. “Did no one offer to show them the attics where, I assume, no monster is to be found?”
‘“Of course that was done,” said Ristorin. “And of course there was no trace of life there. But they knew, I suppose, that if there ever had been some poor creature captive there we would have removed it. We could not prove that it – he – had never been there.”
‘“I suppose the little Princesses were questioned?”
‘“They denied any knowledge of anything Ursula had said. They charged her with madness, claimed she had made the whole thing up.”
‘“What do you believe?” I asked the Chancellor.
‘He shrugged. “I don’t know what to believe.”
‘We gazed in silence over the scene below. A tiny man in a scrap of leather apron was chasing a minute horse, which had evidently broken free from his forge. We watched him catch it and take back to the smithy.
‘“I know”, Ristorin said, “that none of this makes sense. I assure you, Miss Holmes, that in twenty years in the service of the King of Kravonia, I have never had any evidence at all of the existence of a monster.”
‘“They are traditionally kept”, I observed, “in conditions of absolute secrecy, guarded only by a mute hunchback.”
‘“We are coming to the end of the nineteenth century,” Ristorin told me. “We are not at the start of the fifteenth. Tell me, what do you think?”
‘I had come to some conclusions, Sherlock, and now plead with you to let me know yours, on the basis of what I have so far told you. However, whatever I was thinking and whatever I was prepared at that time to reveal to Ristorin was never to be told, for suddenly, from our position on the hillside, we heard a sharp bang. The ground beneath us trembled very slightly. Below us in the market square we saw a large building, which I later discovered to be the Town Hall, disappearing in a plume of smoke, filled with debris. Small figures outside the centre of the disturbance began to run about. The smoke-cloud broadened, debris was beginning to fall. The effect of watching a bomb blow up a building so far below was extraordinary, as if we were children who had naughtily put a firework under one of the buildings in a toy village set up on the nursery floor. I expected Ristorin to jump to his feet, call the coachman and set off to see what he could do, but after we had exchanged the foolish ritual phrases inevitable on such an occasion – “A bomb?” “Yes, it must be a bomb” – the Chancellor did not move but stayed sitting despondently on the hillside.
‘“Who do you think responsible?” I asked him. He only shrugged. “The Kravonian People’s League?” I pressed.
‘“Most likely,” he responded.
‘“Let us go down to the town and see what we can do to help,” I suggested, getting to my feet. Which, dear Sherlock,’ Charlotte’s first letter concluded, ‘we did. I will be brief. While I was assisting the innkeeper of the charming traditional inn in the market square to extract his dog from the rubble he told me the name of the leader of the Kravonian People’s League, John Land – curious name, is it not – and I felt he knew more of the man than he was saying. Ristorin, regrettably, returned to the palace, in order, he said, to make out his report for the King. As the rescue work went on not one figure appeared from the direction of the palace to help, only one or two servants whose families lived in the town. Now I must hurry to catch the post. This kingdom has an atmosphere of deception, of things unsaid and unacknowledged, beneath its peaceful surface. Please let me know your views as soon as you can.’
‘And the letter ends, “your most loving sister, Charlotte”,’ said Mary Watson, placing the last sheet of the letter on the pile of papers on the small table beside her. ‘Heavens, John. This is a most mysterious story she tells. Do you think she is safe?’
‘Hard to say, my dear,’ responded John gravely.
‘It sounds very alarming.’
‘Hand me her next letter,’ said John. ‘It is my turn to read to you. We must get through all three quickly. Then decisions can be made.’
He took the second letter from Mary and began to read while Mary sat, transfixed, her eyes on his face.
‘Dear Sherlock,’ began the second letter from Kravonia, ‘I think you must by now have received my first letter. I expect your detailed reply will take a further three or four days to arrive, although I am confident you will cable me with the more important points. Indeed, as I scribble this in my room, three days after the events I described in my last letter, I hope continually that a servant will come to me with your telegram.
‘I have made further discoveries, and I suspect the discoveries mean I will shortly have to act. Therefore, your advice is urgent.
‘Well, I think I know more of the mysterious Countess Seraphine now, a knowledge, I have to confess, gained by peering through an open doorway at night. In short, attempting to find my bedroom one night and getting lost on an upper floor of the palace – easy enough in such a large, confusing building – I saw, through an open door, the Countess Seraphine in her elegant sitting-room. There was a brightly burning fire, a bottle of wine on a table and the Countess was seated, en négligée, at the end of a sofa on which lay King Weland. She was bending towards him smoothing his brow, while he, with an expression of great weariness on his face, gazed up at her in a kind of despair. This scene did not lead me to think that these two were lovers, or even that the Countess was bringing the King much consolation. Nevertheless, as I hurried past – one attempts, Sherlock, not to allow detection to dwindle into mere keyhole-peering – my mind was full of suspicion.
‘The King is a man evidently full of care, on, or over, the verge of melancholia. And the Countess is an ambitious woman. While nothing is more natural for a man, any man burdened by grief and heavy responsibility, to go to the sister of his late wife for some consolation, when that woman is the Countess Seraphine – the case is altered. Her aim? I suspect it is to marry the King! If not the King, then his son – Rudolph! Either marriage would be illegal in Britain, but I imagine dispensations, civil and religious, could be got in Kravonia to licence either marriage. If I am right about Seraphine’s intentions, and I think I am, I do not need to tell you, Sherlock, of all people, that she must be suspected of taking a hand in the ruining of the marriage of Rudolph and Ursula of Holstein.
‘Then I found my own room – and later Prince Rudolph visited me to discuss what was going on. My mind was still on the Countess’s marriage plans. I was about to ask him about his relations with her when – you know my bat’s ears, Sherlock! – I heard a small noise outside the door and crept over, signalling to the Prince to make no sound. He watched in astonishment as I reached the door and flung it open. And there was the Countess Seraphine, plainly listening outside. She was unhappy to see me, to say the least, and straightened up in confusion. I asked her what she was doing. She rapidly pulled herself together, then answered coolly, “Walking past this door, as you see. I did not know this was your room.” At that point she peered past me and curtseyed towards the Prince, who was sitting on the floor by the fire. “A million pardons, Rudolph,” she said in a surprised voice. “I did not see you there.” To me she said in the rapid undertone of those accustomed to communicating secretly in society, “Is it wise to entertain gentlemen in your bedchamber? Do British ladies greet royalty in their night attire?” (for the Prince had arrived just as I was ready for bed). Without waiting for a reply she dropped another curtsey to the Prince and swept away. Perhaps, the Prince suggested later, she had indeed been doing nothing else but passing the door when I opened it. Well, I agreed, perhaps that was all the Countess had been doing. Rudolph is a jewel among men, Sherlock, but possibly a little too trusting.
‘Next day I had yet another unexpected meeting with the Countess. If I were masquerading as a governess, then governessing was what I would do, I thought (and there can be no doubt that any particle of knowledge one might impart to Cunegonde and Ulrica would be beneficial). Therefore I breakfasted early and went to the schoolroom to prepare for the little Princesses. However, when I entered there were the Princesses, all starched petticoats and shining faces, and there, too, was the Countess. She sat with the two girls at the table and in front of them was a mass of papers, many of them old documents, some in writing, some covered with drawings and configurations. As I entered I saw on the Countess’s face the same fleeting, guilty expression which had been on it the previous night when I caught her listening outside my door. She stood up, swept all the papers together and put them under one arm, while saying rapidly, “My goodness, Miss Holmes, you are an early bird. I thought I would impart a little information to my nieces before their lessons began and here you are already.” She added, somewhat provocatively, “And after such a late night, too.”
‘“You, Countess,” I responded, “seem as fresh as a daisy after your late-night stroll through the palace corridors. But,” I said, holding out my hands for the papers she had under her arm, “do let me see what you’ve been doing? Perhaps I can continue your work with my pupils after you have gone.”
‘“Oh,” said the Countess, “this is mere genealogy. I was telling them something of their heredity – important of course, but by no means academic. These are just old papers. I will leave the more orthodox part of the Princesses’ education to those qualified, and paid, to undertake it.” And with that she swept off in her silk dress, leaving me in my wool and spectacles to deal with my two, now sulky, little charges. The morning was discouraging. The thin black cat sat on the mat in front of the schoolroom fire as ever. Sullenness at the departure of their aunt changed into something nastier as the two girls became restless and excitable. Their voices rose higher. Their concentration was negligible. They fidgeted, bit the ends of their plaits, scratched themselves and, in short, behaved like bad-tempered animals under restraint. I was not happy myself. Apart from anything else, I was trying to get them to identify the countries of the world from an ancient atlas where the continent of Africa was nine-tenths marked “Terra Incognita” and attempting to teach the rudiments of European history from a book of Kravonian history which scarcely mentioned anywhere or anything else in the world. They needed to be sent to a British girls’ school without delay, I considered. Finally I took the line of least resistance and set them to writing, leaving them scratching and spluttering away while I left the schoolroom on an errand. I didn’t imagine they would continue with their work long after I had left the room.
‘I had to start breaking the Countess’s tyranny somewhere, so I went to the kitchen to fetch food for that half-starved cat. This gave me a good chance to walk through the palace of Norvius at leisure, across courtyards full of soldiers and horses. I made a detour into the library, a vast, dusty hall full of cobwebs and apparently discarded furniture (as I opened the heavy door to go in a rat scuttled away). Here I found, in this room seemingly unentered for years, footmarks on the dusty floor leading amid books, chests of old papers and rolls of parchment to a place where some documents had evidently been removed. (A thousand years of unbroken rule, all documents intact except what will have been eaten by rats and mice – what a field for a scholar, I thought!) I saw traces of another person’s entry also, and I was not surprised to note, from the sweeping of her skirt on the floor, in what direction the Countess’s interests lay. The male footmarks, I observed, though, had led to a heavily carved bookshelf laden with unsorted maps, charts and plans, and that I cannot at present explain. I earmarked a few plans and maps for myself and put them near the door for later collection. But can you help me work out who the other researcher in this abandoned library could be? There may, of course, be a straightforward reason for the hunt for maps and plans but in that high, dusty, dark room, smelling of hundreds of years of stored documents, I suspect something strange.
‘However, back to the more cheering atmosphere in the palace kitchens where I went next. Here order and hygiene prevail. I was fortunate to bump immediately into the Comptroller of the Royal Household, a German, Herr Heinrich Krull, as he made his daily inspection. Krull, a tall, ruddy, cheerful man, kindly supplied my wants in the direction of food for the cat. In fact he sent a scullion running to the tower with a tray containing snacks for all there, Princesses and cat alike. Krull could hardly conceal his sympathy for me when he heard I was the young Princesses’ present governess and kindly offered me a cup of coffee in his office, which lay down a corridor, some distance from the kitchens. As we went there he said, “I don’t think you need to have too bad a conscience about leaving your little charges alone. They have seen off governess after governess and it would take a team of professors, now, to rescue them from ignorance.”
‘His office was comfortable and well organised. As we spoke we were interrupted by the comings and goings of staff asking for orders and information. He dealt most competently with all this, yet I had the feeling he was a man with a troubled mind. Then he told me that after two years as Comptroller of the palace, he was leaving shortly.
‘“You are homesick for Germany?” I enquired tactfully.
‘He gave me a steady, serious look and asked, “Your first impressions of me, I suppose, Miss Holmes, will not have given you the sense of a timorous, over-imaginative man?”
‘“Certainly not,” I assured him.
‘“Then you will take me seriously when I tell you that nostalgia about my native land is not my first reason for leaving here, that I have come to dread this place, that I am leaving because of that dread and that I advise you to do the same if you can.” He continued, “If I may say so you do not look like a woman who has no opportunities – and if you have only one, I suggest you take advantage of it and leave Norvius as soon as you can.”
‘Encouraged by his bluntness I asked, “What’s wrong here?”
‘He said, “Brigands, calling themselves republicans, have control over the west of Kravonia, that wild area they call Ersting. It’s always been famous for witchcraft, and poverty – now it’s famous for being run by brigands. The law has no power there. Any law administered is the law of the Kravonian People’s League. They won’t admit it here in Norvius but Ersting is like Sicily, or certain parts of America – the bandits are in charge. One used to be able to live happily in other parts of the country, but not any longer – these evil men are getting closer. Only yesterday, as I expect you know, a bomb went off in the centre of this very city, destroying the Town Hall. Yesterday the Town Hall – tomorrow the palace, eh?”
‘“I suppose that’s possible,” I said.
‘“But at least you know where you are with guns and bombs,” continued Krull. “Worse are the mysteries and strange currents here. The Holsteins left in a hurry taking their daughter with them. It was said she met a monster in the attics – as Comptroller of this household I must feel insulted. That anyone would suppose I control the palace in such a way that monsters would be left in attics without my knowledge!”
‘“But if that is a fiction, what is there to fear?”
‘“Nasty thuds and bangs, not from the attics, but the cellars. Dungeons, rather.”
‘“The dungeons lie below the palace?”
‘“It’s not so very long since they kept prisoners there. Now I don’t know what’s going on. My staff say it’s the monster.” He paused, then evidently decided to speak. “I fear Ristorin is using the cellars for the people he arrests.”
‘“Arrests? He is the Chancellor.”
‘“He is also the head of the Secret Police. He has many spies.”
‘I was startled, and rather chilled by this, but I merely responded, I hope coolly, “He seems to be having very little success when it comes to the Kravonian League. If, as you say, having made a base in the south-western areas of the country, they are now encroaching into Norvius.”
‘Krull nodded. “As you say,” he agreed. “But unfortunately inefficiency and brutality often go hand in hand.”
‘“You have not conducted a search of the cellar?”
‘“No,” said Krull determinedly. “I do not want to find out what is happening.” He looked at me earnestly and spoke rapidly. “Miss Holmes – there is too much confusion in this place in too many ways. What I see I don’t like and what I sense I like even less. It is not the bombs, it is not what may or may not be in the cellars – it is everything. I say, with your Hamlet, ‘There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark.’ Therefore, I’m leaving and advise you strongly to do the same.”
‘There was little time. I had to return to the schoolroom soon. More than that, the answers I did not get from Krull today I would not get tomorrow, for he would be gone. I told him I was no governess. Bluntly, I asked, “Do you know why Ursula of Holstein would not marry Prince Rudolph? And do you know how Prince Oscar died – or if he is dead? What of the Countess Seraphine – does she practise the black arts?”
‘He laughed. “Plenty to chew on there. Are all the women in your country so blunt? To answer your last question first – of course the Countess practises black magic. All the women of her family for generations have done so. Whether – I am a rational man – they have any success with their spells I can’t say.”
‘“Did the late Queen, her sister, also …?”
‘“I imagine so,” he said. “But she was a pleasant lady and it did no harm. As to the royal wedding’s failure, I can’t help you. Nor as to Prince Oscar’s death. It’s said he died hunting.”
‘“And I can find John Land in Ersting?”
‘In great alarm, he said, “Do not to go Ersting, I beg you.”
‘But I answered, “Perhaps I must, to solve this riddle, or part of it.” He again pleaded with me not to go, but I would give him no promises.
‘In the schoolroom my pupils were up to their tricks and when I put a stop to them they whispered and giggled and I heard them hissing, “We’ll make the Bad Thing get her.”
‘“What Bad Thing?” I asked sharply, but they would not reply. The newly fed cat, however, licked his paws and stretched out to sleep on his mat like a normal creature.’
Charlotte’s letter concluded, ‘Sherlock – I must within a few days embark on some dangerous activities. I long for your comments about all this. I need them. Will you write or telegraph as soon as possible? I’m becoming alarmed by your silence and hope there is nothing amiss. Please, Sherlock – I do so need your help.’
Dr Watson concluded the reading of this letter and then gazed at his wife in some horror. Mary was the first to speak, though: ‘How dreadful. Do you think she set off for this awful place, Ersting?’
‘I do wonder’, John Watson said, ‘if Mycroft has done anything other than transcribe these letters. He is a brilliant man, but not a man of action. Telegrams must be sent, the nearest British Embassy informed – there must be a consulate, at least, at Norvius.’
‘Do read the last letter, John,’ asked his wife. ‘It is unbearable to think of Charlotte writing all this, without knowing Sherlock would never reply and was in no position to help.’
‘Hush, then, my dear,’ said her husband, ‘and let up hope this letter contains better news.’
Then Dr Watson began to read the last letter from Charlotte to Sherlock.
‘My dear, dear, Sherlock,’ Charlotte wrote, apparently in some desperation, ‘I am so anxious about you. Why do you not write? I know you would never leave me with this silence unless there were something wrong. Or perhaps you are away? I begin to feel very strange and isolated in this place, where all is so sinister and complicated. Reason tells me that to solve the mystery of the marriage which did not take place I have to solve the mystery of the palace cellars, where I hope not to meet the Bad Thing (and do not suppose I will!). I shall also have to go and find John Land in Ersting. My hypothesis is that Land and the secret of the cellars are connected, and that finding out about those two things will go far to answering the question of the marriage. On reflection I do not think the Countess Seraphine is too deeply involved in all this. But I am desperate now for your ideas and conclusions. I am about to act and do not want to make mistakes based on faulty reasoning. Sherlock, if you can, write or telegraph as soon as possible. Your loving sister, Charlotte.’
Here, the third, final and shortest letter from Charlotte ended. John and Mary Watson looked at each other wordlessly. John muttered, This is very serious. Very grave. If I were Mycroft I would be on the train to Norvius, I think.’
‘I will go myself, if need be,’ Mary said doughtily.
‘You will not,’ her husband told her. ‘But, if necessary, I shall.’
‘By now she will have been into the cellars. She may even have gone to that fearful region full of bandits. But why should she be trying to meet this anarchist leader?’ Her eyes widened. ‘He may have kidnapped her and be holding her for ransom.’
‘We must try to keep calm and take an optimistic view,’ John said. He turned and put more coal on the fire, perhaps to hide the anxiety on his face. Mary was not deceived. ‘What shall we do?’ she asked. Then she cried, ‘Oh – heavens!’ Someone had knocked at the door, and in that silent room it sounded, to Mary, like the sudden banging of a huge drum. ‘Go to the door, John,’ she said. ‘But be careful. It may be Mycroft’s messenger again.’
John Watson left the room, leaving Mary in her chair. Then she heard the sound of voices in the hall. ‘No time to waste, John,’ said Mycroft. ‘Extremely glad to see you, Mycroft,’ said John.
Mycroft Holmes, a round figure bundled in a thick coat and scarf, entered the room, followed by John. He bowed slightly to Mary and said, ‘I apologise for calling so late.’
‘I am most relieved to see you,’ Mary said. ‘Will you sit down?’
‘Thank you, no,’ Mycroft said. ‘In fact you and I may be going on a visit. I expect a telegram at any moment. I have been to see Sherlock at the Balham sanatorium. He appears recovered, I’m pleased to say, and was naturally very upset when he read the copies of Charlotte’s letters. We talked them over and both came to the same conclusions.’
‘But what are we to do?’ cried Mary. ‘Poor Charlotte may be in danger.’
‘On balance,’ Mycroft replied calmly, ‘we think she is not – though she may have been earlier. She will have waited in vain for Sherlock’s letter, which did not come. Next day she will have searched the palace cellars and found what there is to find – weapons, most probably, we think. Then I imagine the next day she will have gone to Ersting to meet the revolutionary, Land. That would have been Tuesday, and now – ’ he glanced at his watch, ‘and now – ’ His words were interrupted by a knock at the door. He smiled with satisfaction. ‘That will be the telegram,’ he said. ‘I hope you do not mind? I asked Betsey to send it here.’ He left the room and when he came back he held the yellow slip in his hand. ‘Just as Sherlock and I concluded,’ he said. ‘Charlotte is expected back at any moment.’
‘In Chelsea?’ exclaimed Mary. ‘Heavens be praised.’
‘Just so,’ agreed Mycroft. ‘Well then – I’ve retained my cab, so if you and John would care to put on your coats we’ll go there. Charlotte might be tired, but she’ll be delighted to see us. And we must hear her story. Sherlock is very annoyed with her for endangering herself in the way she has. I almost hope he doesn’t come. He said he might be detained in Baker Street.’
‘Sherlock!’ John exclaimed. ‘At Baker Street? Is he recovered?’
‘Well,’ said Mycroft in a guarded way, ‘he was improving and this little teaser restored him. After solving this Kravonian affair, from letters alone, he turned to me and said, “Well, Mycroft – this is what I was made for.” I expect he’s on his way to Chelsea now. How could he resist confirming his conclusions at the earliest possible moment. Shall we go?’
‘You could not stop us,’ John Watson said. The couple got quickly into their coats and soon the party was on its way to Chelsea.
As they clopped over Chelsea Bridge the clocks struck one in the morning.
‘What did you mean, Mycroft, about the weapons in the cellar?’ asked Mary.
‘We shall see,’ said Mycroft mysteriously.
‘I can hardly wait to see my old friend Sherlock, restored to health again,’ declared John.
Within minutes they were at Charlotte’s house and descending from their cab. The door was opened by Betsey, in a wrapper and curlers, before they had even knocked. ‘Miss Charlotte’s back – and in such a fur!’ she cried excitedly and there in the doorway, suddenly, was Charlotte Holmes, who had plainly returned only that minute, wearing a fur hat and a long, grey, sable coat. She held out her hands and rushed towards them. ‘Welcome. Welcome. What a wonderful reception committee! John – I am so pleased to see you. Mary – let me embrace you. Oh, how good it is to see the faces of home. I hear Sherlock has been … unwell again. He is at present detained at Baker Street, waiting for a sea captain, but he hopes to be here shortly.’
‘Ah, my old friend,’ sighed John Watson. ‘Recovered, and no doubt embarked on another case.’ His wife’s face darkened at this, but she said nothing.
In the sitting-room they sat down, Charlotte flinging the sable coat over the piano stool. Betsey appeared, without her curlers, and asked if there was anything they wanted. ‘A good cup of tea,’ said Charlotte. ‘It’s a long time since I had such a thing. And I’m sure Mary will join me. Mycroft, will you pour out some whisky for yourself and John?’
‘Gladly,’ Mycroft said. ‘And let me say how happy I am to see you back in one piece.’
‘Oh, yes,’ added the beaming Mary.
‘Nevertheless,’ Mycroft continued, his back to the group by the fire as he put whisky in the glasses, ‘it was foolish to endanger yourself as you did. I know Sherlock feels even more strongly about it than I do.’
Charlotte, teacup in hand, laughed and said, ‘Yes, yes, Mycroft. But do you want to hear my story?’
‘I do indeed,’ he said, sitting down.
‘Very well,’ she said, and went on, ‘You will have seen from my last letter the quandary I was in. Sherlock had not answered any of my appeals for help, I had to ask myself, should I proceed on the basis of my own hypotheses or wait for Sherlock’s valued second opinion?’
‘We know what you should have done,’ remarked Mycroft severely, ‘and what you actually did.’
‘Then, if you know, I will say no more,’ Charlotte responded. ‘After waiting as long as I could I had to assume Sherlock was ill or away. During the days of waiting I continued with my duties as a governess and to improve my cordial relations with the Prince – ’ (‘Hmph,’ snorted Mycroft) ‘but in the end I could wait no longer. Having made a mental map of the three acres of cellarage under the palace at Norvius from one of the documents I had taken from the library, I got up at two in the morning. Armed with a torch, I went into the banqueting chamber and walked over in darkness to the vast fireplace where, in earlier days, they had roasted whole oxen. I felt the elaborate carvings on one side of the great fireplace and eventually found what I was looking for. Pressing one side of a lion’s head about half-way up resulted in a whole piece of panelling beside the fireplace opening. I looked down and there was a flight of dusty stone steps, leading into blackness. I descended with some trepidation. I had reasoned it was safe to explore the acres of cellarage, old torture chambers and the like below – but irrational fears will arise. I knew what I would find would be of human origin.’
‘An arms cache, most probably,’ Mycroft observed.
Charlotte smiled. ‘How could I have doubted you would guess?’
‘Come to a conclusion,’ pointed out Mycroft.
‘Come to that conclusion, then,’ agreed Charlotte. ‘Well, if you and Sherlock concluded that, then you are at the heart of the mystery. So – I descended the stone stairs. I went left, following recent footprints in the dust, though at one point I quailed as in that low passageway something brushed round my legs. Two strange eyes peered up at me from the ground. It was, of course, the sinister black cat which, during the past few days, had become less hell-cat and rather more an affectionate pet. The beast had been hungry. I had continued to feed it. It grew friendly. In other ways, I might mention, a more humane policy had also begun to crack the determined evilness of my other charges, the Princesses Ulrica and Cunegonde. Followed by my furry friend, then, I continued to follow the tracks of the others who had been there before me – not long before, I deduced. They had evidently been dragging some heavy items with them. I walked along (the cat padding after me), always following the tunnel where there were footmarks and the overhanging cobwebs had been disturbed. There was another tunnel leading off at one point, the dust undisturbed from the end at which I stood, but, training my torch along it, I saw signs of disturbance further up. There was what looked like a bloodstain there, too, and I believe from the smell that there were cells at that end – occupied, for I heard a groan. I believe someone had been dragged, bleeding, from the other end of the passageway, and imprisoned.’
‘Then I fear the reports of unrecorded arrests and detentions in Kravonia may be true.’ said Mycroft.
‘Ristorin, trying to tackle the increasing power of the Kravonian People’s League, is almost certainly going well beyond anything we might think right,’ Charlotte said.
‘Shocking,’ John said. ‘Surely the King must know.’
‘King Weland is a broken man,’ Charlotte told him.
‘Proceed, Charlotte,’ instructed Mycroft.
‘I went on,’ she reported, ‘until I was, I imagine, somewhere under the kitchens. There I saw on my right a wooden door, slightly scored around the bottom, and it was plain from the scuffled dust under my feet that whatever had been brought down into the cellars from the secret door in the banqueting hall had been hauled into that room. The door was secured with a seemingly ancient, rusty padlock, but from the scratches around the lock it was obvious it had been opened recently. I also opened it, with my skeleton keys, and entered the room.
‘The room was about ten feet square. From the chains attached to its walls I assumed that it had once been used as a prison cell. But facing me I saw by the light of my torch two fully assembled guns of the Gatling kind, standing on crates and pointing straight at me! And all around, more crates, evidently containing rifles, ammunition and several wooden boxes, marked, in German, “Dynamite”. Between them Herr Krupp and the Birmingham Small Arms Factory appeared to have supplied enough weaponry to defeat three regiments! I looked no further,’ Charlotte reported. ‘I replaced the padlock and crept back to the staircase below the banqueting hall. I did not think Chancellor Ristorin would be very pleased with me if he caught me near his torture chamber. I mounted the stairs and re-entered the upper part of the palace.’
‘Extraordinary place for an arsenal,’ murmured John. ‘Very dangerous.’
‘It was not the palace arsenal,’ Charlotte explained. ‘It was the secret arms store of the Kravonian People’s League.’
‘My God!’ exclaimed John. ‘What audacity! To place their weapons right under the palace itself! How could they have got them there? Surely the palace was guarded?’
‘The individual who placed them in the palace cellars knew how to get in and out unobserved – knew the secret of the tunnel from the hillside into the city, a precaution in case of siege, and of the network of old doors and passageways honeycombing the building. And where he was uncertain, he knew where the old plans were kept in the library.’
John thought. ‘Only Chancellor Ristorin would dare put a secret cache of arms in the cellars, so close to where he carried out his nasty activities. Is he in league with the republicans?’
‘That thought crossed my mind,’ Charlotte told him. ‘But if he is involved, he is not the prime mover.’
‘Sherlock, without of course knowing the details of your search of the cellars, did speculate about whether Ristorin was backing both sides, the King’s and the republicans’,’ observed Mycroft.
‘Speaking of Sherlock – where can he be?’ wondered Mary.
‘Even Mycroft and I cannot detect where Sherlock’s activities are now taking him,’ Charlotte said. ‘However – to continue. I retired that night to sleep the sleep of the just. As far as I was concerned, one part of the mystery was solved. At the foot of my bed the great black cat who had accompanied me on my adventure slept. Ah, there he is,’ she announced, as Betsey came into the room with a telegram which had just been delivered. The large black beast which slid in at the same time, strolled across the room and sat down on the mat in front of the fire. He licked his paw and gazed around him with big, yellow, arrogant eyes.
‘I can’t say I like him very much,’ Mary observed in an undertone to her husband. But John’s eyes were on Charlotte as she scanned the telegram.
‘Sherlock’s gone back to the Priory,’ suggested Mycroft.
‘Yes,’ Charlotte agreed. She read out, ‘Unusually fatigued by analysis Kravonian matter. Have returned Priory to recuperate. Much regret not being with you tonight. Kindly inform Mr Pemberton-Jones of Dulwich items he seeks are in Lost Property Office Baker Street. He may collect but must not, repeat not, take them to Embassy. Congratulations Order of St Stanislaus. Most urgent you talk Mycroft Her Majesty, Kravonian constitution, position Prince Rudolph.’
‘Very disappointing Sherlock cannot be with us,’ said John Watson. ‘But, Charlotte, do please continue with your adventures.’
‘Before you do, though, please register Sherlock’s urgent request that you and I should speak – ’ said Mycroft to his sister who responded, though with a look which somewhat belied her innocent words. ‘Of course Mycroft. Would I do otherwise?’ She continued on a more pleasant note, ‘And so – on with my tale.
‘Next morning, telling no one, I left by coach for Ersting. The coachman had been found for me by my friend the innkeeper. Few drivers were prepared to take the bad roads, or run the risks of a journey to Ersting. Those who were not afraid of breaking an axle were afraid of witchcraft. And those not afraid of either were afraid of the brigands who haunt those territories.
‘It was a cold, clear day as we left Norvius. The town sparkled under winter sunshine. The coachman grumbled, saying if we were caught by early snows in Ersting he wouldn’t answer for the consequences. But we went on at a cracking pace, at first through fields and cultivated land where the small villages showed every sign of prosperity and then, after a midday stop for refreshment, and to rest the horses, into the ever-deepening forests which marked the boundary of the area known as Ersting. The roads became darker as the forest thickened. They were rougher too, cracked and broken by the roots of trees. I began to understand that old, primitive fear of the woods which so characterises the tales and legends of northern Europe. The few villages we went through became poorer. Where we passed through small hamlets people came to their doorways and stared at us as if they had never seen a carriage before. Rounding a bend at one point I thought I saw a horseman galloping off into the trees. The coachman now began to grumble in earnest. The horses were tired. The snow was threatening. The town to which we were going, Jatyi, was the headquarters of John Land, the leader of the People’s League. I told him that he had known when we set out where we were going and presumably that the journey would tire his horses. He wished to turn back. I wished to go on. We went on.
‘Jatyi lies on a broad and sluggish river. There is a small port with a dilapidated wooden pier there, mostly used by fishing craft. We went in the darkness along the unpaved main street, full of small narrow houses in need of repair. It was dark, the sort of gloom that presages snow. I saw no lights in any of the houses. No one was about. Only the smoke rising from some chimneys persuaded me there was anyone in the village at all. At the end of the street the land widened out into a small area of fields (beyond them thick unbroken forest stretched away). Just before the fields began, a little to the right of the village, lay the church. This wooden building is surrounded by a small graveyard of curiously carved headstones. I indicated that it was at the church I wished the coachman to stop. He turned round, pointed at the sky, and said, “Look up there – full of snow. We could be stuck in this awful spot for weeks if the snow comes tonight.” And he shuddered. “Look up at the church spire, too. See that? No cross.”
It was true the wooden spire of the church carried no cross. As I walked up the path through the graves to the church porch under lowering skies, I must admit my heart quailed. I shivered, and not only with the cold, which was piercing. The coachman was out of sight, now. I imagined he had gone inside the coach and was huddled under my rugs, refreshing himself, no doubt, from a bottle of spirits. But I had come all this way to find out what was going on in Jatyi and knew I had to meet the so-called John Land.
‘I went into the empty church. It was heavily panelled, with a high, vaulted ceiling, and even colder than the world outside. Benches on either side of the aisle led to a bare altar covered with a red cloth, embroidered in black. In the middle of aisle were the remains of a fire. There was no need to ask why, in this nominally Roman Catholic area, the altar bore no cross or other religious impedimenta, or to wonder at the absence of the holy statues and pictures one might have expected to find. No need, either, to question whether the stories of the chasing out of priests and black magic were true. They plainly were. In various niches about the church were carved figures of a kind I have never seen before. One, black with age, was of a crone carrying a sack; another showed a man with an axe, wearing a wolf’s-head cap. There was a girl dancing, with her arms curved above her head. There were images of animals, foxes, deer, a bear. It is sinister to stand in a church, where one expects to find the icons of Christianity, and find the emblems of another religion. But I saw no evidence of that shoddy Satanism we sometimes find in places where people need to find a sordid excuse for their all-too-human perversions. There were no upside-down crosses, no pentacles – nothing of that kind. As I gazed about me, looking for the man I had come to meet, I wondered if the people of this part of the country had not so much taken to Satanism as revived some only half-abandoned earlier religion they had once practised, some faith based on animals and forests and many gods.
‘Then, silently, the church began to fill up. There were young men in fur coats with rifles, women in shawls, there were old men and women, and children. Most of poverty-stricken Jatyi, ragged and dirty, was entering the church on some pre-arranged signal. One woman was dragging in a goat. I stood still by a bench near the aisle, with the incurious glances of these people passing over me. They began to sing. It was a sombre song, grim even, and it grew louder and louder. To my horror I saw that they were rebuilding the fire in the church aisle and had tethered the goat near the altar. I guessed they were about to make a sacrifice. I must confess that at that moment my knees were jelly. I was surrounded by roughly dressed Ersting peasants, all accustomed to a hard and brutal life. I had intruded on a ceremony. And in the crowd were many armed men – if these toughened outlaws were typical of the Kravonian People’s League, then I feared for King Weland and his court. The singing continued. The crowd, by then numbering a hundred (and more were arriving) continued to ignore me, but they were pressing ever closer as the church filled. I had better do something, I thought. But what?
‘Then came a voice behind me, speaking English with that faint trace of a Highland accent I knew very well. It said, “You are Miss Holmes? You wanted to meet me?”
‘I turned to see a tall, fair man in his thirties, wearing a fur cap and leather jacket lined with sheepskin. There was a gun at his belt. Much of his face was hidden by a big, blond beard. I replied, as calmly as I could, “You are John Land.”
‘He smiled. It was, I noticed, a familiar smile. When he took me by the arm I had been so unnerved by my wait in the church I nearly jumped out of my skin. “No need to tremble,” he said. “You must be tired and hungry. Let me take you somewhere more private.” People stepped aside for us as he took me across the church into what must once have been the sacristy – but thick coats hung on the pegs instead of church vestments, there were rifles stacked on the floor instead of a humble collection of clerical umbrellas and galoshes. Judging by the piles of bedding on the floor, troops slept in there at night. Jatyi’s church had become both a centre for pagan rights and a barracks. We sat down at the table in the middle of the room. John Land poured some spirits from a jug into two enamel mugs and cut me a slice of black bread from a loaf on the table. “Rough fare,” he commented.
‘“More than welcome,” I said, coughing as the fiery spirit went down.
‘“Why have you come here? What did you want to talk to me about?” he asked.’
Charlotte, in the pleasant sitting-room, where the fire burned brightly and the clock ticked, smiled at the shocked John and Mary Watson. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘a bizarre scene, you’re thinking. Outside the former sacristy they were slaughtering a goat in a Christian church. Inside your friend was drinking raw spirits with an anarchist. But you will be more surprised yet, though perhaps Mycroft will not.’ She continued her story, saying, ‘Land had asked me why I wanted him and I thought this no moment to beat about the bush. I told him bluntly I knew him to be Prince Oscar of Kravonia, thought to be dead. I said his brother, Crown Prince Rudolph, had asked me to look into why Ursula of Holstein had refused to marry him. “John Land,” I said, “because the wedding was cancelled, Kravonia’s enemies are readying themselves for attack. Whatever you think about the government of Kravonia, presided over by the King, your father, and the Council of Ten, it will hardly help your cause to have the country in the hands of the Russian Tsar. He is no democrat, as you know. Will Kravonia be better off as part of the tyrannical Russian Empire?”
‘He said nothing, though I know my words hit home. I told him only what, since his brother’s wedding had failed to take place and the Tsar had begun manoeuvres on the borders of Kravonia, he must often have thought himself. He took a gloomy swig from his mug. Meanwhile, the singing outside went on. Through the half-open door I could see people dragging the goat close to the fire in the aisle. “How did you know I was here?” he asked. “Did my father tell you?”
‘I shook my head. “Most think you dead – even your brother, who still mourns you. Have you no pity for Rudolph?”
‘“I much regret the necessity for secrecy. But if Father told you nothing, how did you find me?”
‘“I concluded,” I told him, “that the monster shown to Ursula of Holstein in the tower did not exist. Your little sisters, at the instigation of the Countess Seraphine, who has too much influence over them and pretends to be a witch (I don’t know whether she believes it herself or not), led the hapless young woman to the tower to see the supposed monster. Fairly soon after my arrival I assumed Seraphine had hired an actor to play the part of the monster. It was a crude self-interested attempt to destroy the Holstein alliance by a woman too short-sighted to see that if the marriage did not take place Kravonia’s enemies would come round about her ears. All she wanted was to be a royal queen, a royal marriage for herself, whether to her brother-in-law, the King, or Rudolph.”
‘“Rudolph!” he exclaimed.
‘“I presume she believed she could marry Rudolph by appealing to his conscience in some way and by bribing or threatening the Council of Ten to support her plan and persuade Rudolph it was his duty.”
‘“Telling each member that if she did not get her way they might soon find themselves a Council of Nine,” he observed gloomily.
‘I smiled. “Seraphine is cunning, ambitious, very determined and not very intelligent. A fatal combination. Her one aim was to make herself Queen. And be warned – she still may. And she is young enough to bear a child. If she succeeds in marrying your father and bearing him a son, she will have then to get rid of your brother Rudolph to make her own child King. Please consider that charming prospect when you decide what you must do.”
‘Prince Oscar – John Land – looked at me soberly. But I continued, “Seraphine’s plot was crude and unlikely to succeed. The young Countess could be terrified by hearing tales of witchcraft and hereditary madness – convinced, perhaps, she should not marry Rudolph. But none of this, I thought, would deter her parents for a moment. Dynastic marriages have been conducted, forced on the parties concerned if need be, in the face of far worse things than that. Where there is a will to an alliance a girl of twelve will be married to an old man, a dwarf to a giant, a madman to a nun. Those who arrange these things are not scrupulous. As a rational woman I could not, of course, believe your sisters to be witches, or that there was a gibbering monster in a tower somewhere, still less that the monster was your good self. These things are for frightening children. But even if the palace had been stuffed with authentic monsters, witches and madmen, I doubted if that would have sent the Holsteins and their entourage away from the castle at dawn next day. Yet – something had. I concluded it must have been the interview, the night before they left, between the Count and Countess of Holstein and your father, the King, which persuaded Ursula’s parents there was no point in a wedding between their daughter and Rudolph. No one else was present – not Ursula, nor Rudolph, nor Ristorin. So, what was said, I asked myself?
‘Through the door I had been watching the sacrifice of the goat. They then spitted the beast and put it over the fire while an old woman chanted. In the dark, de-Christianised church, where torches were now lit, the scene had an impressive, frightening look, but I have been present at many rituals all over the world and have witnessed worse, far worse; this was restrained compared with others I have seen.
‘John Land, as I will go on calling him, was meanwhile sitting at the table in the same position, his chin in his hand. He regarded me wryly. I told him, “Parents are made of strong stuff when marrying their children in the direction of money and titles. Very little puts them off when it comes to dragging a bride to the altar to make a useful connection. So I put the legend of your not having died in the hunting accident together with the rapid evaporation of the Holsteins after a conversation with your father – and came up with my hypothesis. What is more likely to discourage the parents of a daughter about to marry the heir to the Kravonian throne than the information that the prospective bridegroom is not the heir to the throne at all? Your father, I thought, let slip, or deliberately revealed, the fact that you were alive. Perhaps he said he knew you to be John Land, that you had escaped to join the revolutionary movement, that he had put it out that you were dead to cover up this fact?
‘Prince Oscar looked at me unhappily. He saw his future and did not want it. He preferred a hard and dangerous life to the one awaiting him, I think. I went on ruthlessly, “When I found the arms cache in the cellar I knew it must be yours. You, of course, would know many of the secret ins and outs of the palace, or where to find the plans in the library, if you did not.” I paused again. Land, again, had nothing to say. “You will want to know how I connected John Land with the late Prince Oscar. All my other conclusions were on the whole logical, but that revelation came by chance. One might say you hastened your own discovery. After you blew up the Town Hall I helped to recover from the ruins the dog of the landlord at the inn. He then offered me the hospitality of the inn to wash myself. The landlady was quite embittered about your actions: in addition to destroying the Town Hall, you had nearly killed her pet. She had kept your secret until then. Now she told me her suspicions. ‘To think Prince Oscar would descend to blowing up a little dog,’ was how she put it. For she knew you were John Land. Some months earlier one of your men in his cups at the inn had described you, right down to your missing earlobe. The landlady had been the assistant nurse to your old nanny, Nanny Macgregor, so she remembered an episode in your youth when you jumped from an apple tree, leaving part of your ear behind. I still hear Mrs Macgregor’s gentle, Scottish tones in your voice,” I added, perhaps irrelevantly. I also said, “One’s mysteries and secrets so often come out in these accidental ways. Few secrets can be kept for ever, Prince Oscar.”
‘There was a long silence now. I allowed it to continue. He silently filled both our mugs again. “Don’t think I’m unsympathetic,” I told him. “I am a republican myself. But your secret is almost out. How long do you expect the landlady of the inn at Norvius to keep her suspicions to herself? There will be more rumour and uncertainty. Your father will become more melancholic, Ristorin more violent and repressive. Nothing effective will be done; the country will grow weaker; Kravonia’s enemies will triumph.”
‘“You are suggesting I reclaim the throne?” he said. But it was hardly a question.
‘“I think you have no choice,” said I.
‘“I don’t want to be king,” he protested. “I hate the idea of kingship.”
‘“I understand that,” I said. “But the Tsar could attack at any moment. This part of the country is under your law, waiting the moment when you and your men take over the rest of it. But what if you fail? What if the Tsar succeeds before you can make your attempt? I see danger everywhere – your men may fall into the hands of Ristorin. The whole country may fall to the Tsar. Whatever happens, bloodshed, slavery and starvation are the likely outcome. You can continue to choose the revolutionary path, and face the risks, or go back to Norvius, claim the throne and begin your regime immediately. King Weland would be only too glad of your guidance, I’m sure. Get rid of Ristorin and the Council of Ten, announce elections, build hospitals and schools and relieve these people, among others, of their many burdens.” I indicated the poverty-stricken worshippers, the armed men. I added spitefully, “I don’t imagine you have told them, or your adherents, that you are Prince Oscar. If you put it to them democratically that you have the power to turn Kravonia into a democracy and asked them to vote on what you’re to do, what do you think they’d vote? For continuing poverty and war? For a revolution in which many might be killed? For the possibility of becoming slaves to the Tsar? I don’t think so. They would tell you to do what you can and must do. Go back to Norvius and claim the throne.”
‘He looked at me sadly. “It seems I cannot escape my birth.”
‘I said, cruelly, I suppose, “Many people would be glad to have your choice.” I then glanced at the fire in the church, the roasting goat, and added, “I won’t stay to dinner, thank you. Would you be able to escort me from Ersting? It’s getting dark and the coachman is nervous.”
‘And that,’ concluded Charlotte, ‘is how we left Ersting – in the coach driven by an irregular of the Kravonian People’s League, with horsemen carrying torches fore and aft. Inside the coach were the coachman, Prince Oscar (lately John Land) and myself. We rushed through the great forests under moonlight. It was most romantic. Prince Oscar dismounted once we reached the more civilised areas of Kravonia; he and his horsemen disappeared back into the forests. That evening I spoke confidentially to King Weland. Next day I left. And here,’ she said, ‘I am.’
It was two o’clock. There was a silence after Charlotte had finished her story. John Watson said, ‘Well done, Charlotte. Well done.’
Mycroft considered, then said, ‘If Kravonia becomes a monarchy run on democratic principles much of that will be due to you, my dear.’
‘And I suppose that horrible Countess Seraphine will stand for Parliament,’ Mary said.
‘I’m sure of that,’ said Charlotte.