The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (66 page)

We came back to Baker Street by the night ferry to Charing Cross and arrived home in good time for lunch. That evening, as I watched Holmes arranging some experiment or other upon the familiar stained table, I brought up the subject that had lain between us for the last few days.

“If you are right about Balincourt, Holmes…”

“I am seldom wrong in such matters, Watson,” he said gently, without looking up.

“If that man tampered with the box of capsules in the Élysée Palace…”

“Quite.” He frowned and took a little brush to dust a surface with white powder.

“Then it was not an old man's lust that destroyed him, though it gave the opportunity.”

“Quite possibly.”

“Balincourt or one of their spies knew that Faure was about to change his policy—that he would turn to the
Dreyfusards
! That he would order a retrial! She had persuaded him.”

“I daresay,” he murmured, as if scarcely hearing me.”

“It was not a love philtre but an instant poison, after all, disguised among the other capsules!”

He looked up, the aquiline features contracting in a frown of irritation.

“You will give me credit for something, I hope! My first analysis in Paris was confirmed by a more searching examination here. What was in the remaining capsules was a homeopathic quantity of canthar. They call such pills ‘Diavolini.' The truth is that their contents would not even stimulate passion in a man, let alone kill him. Their effect, if any, is entirely upon the mind.”

He returned to his studies.

“Then we witnessed it, after all!” I exclaimed.

“Witnessed what, my dear fellow?”

“The assassination of the President of France by those who had most to fear if Dreyfus were found innocent!”

“Oh, yes,” said Holmes, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. “I had never supposed otherwise. However, it would not do for you to give that to the world as yet, Watson, in one of your little romances. Sleep on it a little, my old friend. Speaking of romances, there is one that requires our attention without delay.”

He took a bundle of papers from a Gladstone bag and broke it open. A pile of well-filled foolscap envelopes slithered out randomly across the table.

“I have made my promise to Gustave Hamard,” he said. “Madame Steinheil has paid me in kind. All debts are now discharged.”

He took the first sheaf of papers, on which I just had time to catch sight of a few names and phrases in a neat plain hand. “General Georges Boulanger…Colonel Max von Schwartzkoppen, Königgrätzstrasse, Berlin…Pensées sur le suicide du Colonel Hubert Henry…Les crimes financières de Panama…L'affaire de Fashoda…Colonel Picquart et le tribunal…” An envelope lay addressed in black ink to Major Count Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy, Rue de la Bienfaisance, 27, Paris 8
^e
.

The fire in the grate blazed whiter as the first pages burned. Holmes turned to take another envelope and emptied it. There fluttered down to the floor a note on the stationery of the Italian Embassy in the Rue de Varenne, inviting Colonel Schwartzkoppen to dine with Colonel Panizzardi. He scooped it up and dropped it into the flames. The fire blazed again and a shoal of sparks swept up the chimney. For half an hour, the secret ashes of the Third Republic dissolved in smoke against the frosty starlight above the chimney-pots of Baker Street.

ONE OF GIBRALTAR'S
most distinguished citizens for many years, Dr. Samuel G. Benady (1937– ) was born on the island into a family who has lived there since 1735 (an ancestor was kidnapped by pirates and had to be ransomed). After receiving his medical degree in London, he practiced pediatrics in Bristol and Jerusalem before returning to Gibraltar, where he has lived ever since.

Benady ran the Gibraltar Child Health service and single-handedly ran the Gibraltar Health Authority from 1980 until his retirement in 2002. He is a frequent lecturer at the Gibraltar Museum and regularly contributes articles to the newsletter of the Gibraltar Heritage Trust.

His lone book devoted to Sherlock Holmes was
Sherlock Holmes in Gibraltar
(1990), which featured two long short stories: the present one, in which Holmes solves one of the greatest mysteries of the sea, the abandonment of the
Mary Celeste
, and “The Gibraltar Letter,” which narrates Holmes's involvement in the abduction of the Duke of Connaught while he was stationed in Gibraltar.

More recently, he has been cowriting (with Mary Chiappe) a series of mystery novels featuring Giovanni Bresciano, an amateur detective working in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Gibraltar. The titles are
The Murder in Whirligig Lane
(2010),
Fall of a Sparrow
(2010),
The Pearls of Tangier
(2011),
The Prince's Lady
(2012),
The Devil's Tongue
(2013), and
Death in Paradise Ramp
(2014).

“The Abandoned Brigantine” was first published in
Sherlock Holmes in Gibraltar
(Gibraltar, Gibraltar Books, 1990).

“
YES, WATSON
,”
SAID
Mr. Sherlock Holmes, raising his head briefly from his huge book of references, which he had been engaged in cross-indexing. “The sea is indeed mysterious and terrible.”

“Most mysterious!” I replied absently, and then started with astonishment as I realised that, yet again, Holmes had penetrated my inmost thoughts.

“Holmes,” I expostulated, “how could you possibly have known what was going through my mind? I have said not a word to you for over thirty minutes.”

He looked up again with a chuckle. “True, you did not speak,” he remarked. “But nevertheless you told me your thoughts as clearly as if you had shouted them from the roof-tops.”

“This is too much, Holmes,” I exclaimed. “Explain yourself!”

“Only if you promise not to say ‘How absurdly simple' when you have heard my explanation.”

“Done!”

“When you came into the room,” said he, “you were carrying a copy of
The Strand Magazine
, which carries on its cover an illustration of a sailing ship in distress—a brigantine, if I am any judge. You then settled into the armchair and commenced to read. Within minutes, looks of perplexity and then of sadness appeared on your face. You put down the magazine and stared fixedly for a full minute at that picture of a tea clipper which hangs on our wall. You then rose, went to the bookshelf and withdrew one of the volumes which contain the somewhat sensational accounts which you have written of my cases, in particular, the one which includes the cases of the barque
Gloria Scott
and the one which you have chosen to entitle
Black Peter
. Having opened and perused this volume for a while, you returned to your chair, where you sat with an expression of gloom until I ventured to break into your thoughts with my not very profound observation, which merely followed the thoughts which were implicit in your face and actions.”

“How absurdly simple—” I began, and then instantly joined him as he laughed heartily.

“Holmes,” I said, passing him the magazine, “have you ever heard of a more mysterious and impenetrable problem than that detailed in these pages?”

He opened the magazine and glanced at the article in question.

“
An Unsolved Mystery
. I see that they have misspelled the name of the ship as usual and no doubt have repeated all the other errors and absurdities which were perpetrated some years ago by some scribbler named Boyle, or Doyle.”

“You are acquainted with the case, then?”

“I have some slight recollection of it. Let us look it up in my book of references.”

He opened the index volume and scanned it intently.

“Musgrave Ritual,” he read. “That was a mysterious and tragic case. Moriarty; plenty
of references to him, of course. Mazarin stone, Merton the pugilist—same case, those two.
Matilda Briggs
—another sea story there, Watson. Margolis the strangler. Ah, here it is,
Mary Celeste
.” He selected the appropriate volume, turned over the pages, and handed the heavy volume to me.

I settled down to read the pages which he indicated. They were mainly abstracts of court proceedings and official reports, interspersed with cuttings from newspapers, mainly English and American, but including the
Gibraltar Chronicle
and a few which were presumably from Spanish and Portuguese papers.

“The real facts are certainly more prosaic,” I remarked. “But the problem seems no easier to solve.

“Holmes,” I continued, as a thought struck me, “surely you would find it easy to solve the case, which has baffled the whole world for years, by the application of those deductive methods of reasoning which you have so often employed in the past.”

“You overestimate my powers, Watson,” said Sherlock Holmes, with some amusement, although I could see that he was pleased by the compliment to his abilities. “I do not think that even I could reach the correct solution by pure reasoning from the facts available in these files.”

Waving aside my protestations, he lapsed into a thoughtful silence for a few minutes. Then a gleam of amusement appeared in his deep-set eyes.

“Well, Watson,” said he, languidly, “why do you yourself not make an attempt to formulate a hypothesis which will account for the facts? After all, you have been my colleague for many years, ample time to have absorbed the principles of deductive logic of which you speak so highly.”

“I certainly shall!” I exclaimed hotly, for I thought I detected some slight irony in his voice. “We shall see whether by tomorrow I cannot present you with a logical explanation for the mysterious happenings on the
Mary Celeste
.” With that, I went to my room, taking the book of references with me.

“We shall see,” said Sherlock Holmes thoughtfully, as I left.

On the following morning I rose late, after a largely sleepless night. A wintry December sun shone through the windows of our rooms in Baker Street. Holmes was already at the breakfast table. He looked up as I entered.

“A fine day, Watson,” said he, cheerfully. “Have you made any progress with the intellectual problem you have set yourself?”

“Indeed I have,” I rejoined, somewhat coolly. “And I will give you a full account of my solution as soon as I have had some breakfast.”

A little later, when we were seated in our armchairs, Holmes looked at me expectantly.

I arranged my papers in front of me. “The first thing to do,” I said, I dare say somewhat self-importantly, “is to marshal the relevant facts. The
Mary Celeste
left New York on November the 7th '72 with a cargo of methylated spirits for Genoa. Her captain was Benjamin S. Briggs, who was accompanied by his wife and child. There was a crew of eight men. She was sighted by the brigantine
Dei Gratia
on December the 5th, derelict and abandoned, some 400 miles east of the Azores, and was boarded and taken into Gibraltar by a prize-crew from the latter vessel. At the subsequent hearing by the Vice-Admiralty Court in Gibraltar, it was established that the ship was sea-worthy, although she bore every sign of having been hastily abandoned. There was no sign of violence on board.”

Holmes stirred in his seat. “Was there not a sword found in the captain's cabin?” he asked.

“There was, but it was in its scabbard, and stains found on it were analysed and found not to be blood. It was an Italian sword, with a cross of Savoy on the hilt, and was thought to be a souvenir acquired by Captain Briggs on his travels.”

“Pray continue with your exposition.”

“The last entry on the log slate was for 25th
November, giving the ship's position as six miles to the north of Santa Maria island in the Azores. The ship's boat was missing, and all the signs were that the ship had been abandoned hurriedly. There was no indication why this might have been done, and no trace of the boat or the crew has ever been found.”

“I seem to recall that there were some strange marks on the hull.”

“I cannot explain those,” I admitted. “Each side of the bows had an almost symmetrical strip shaved off just above the water-line. I suppose that this could have been caused by rocks, during a near-shipwreck in the Azores, but all accounts state that the strips appeared very regular, as if they had been cut by a sharp instrument.”

“What then is your solution to the mystery?”

I leaned backwards in my armchair. “I think that we can discard theories involving the slaughter of the crew by pirates, for the Atlantic has been free of these for almost a century. Mutiny by the ship's crew, or their murder by the crew of the
Dei Gratia
for the salvage money, which was the theory put forward by the Admiralty Advocate in Gibraltar, seems even more unlikely; in all these cases, signs of a struggle would surely have been found. I am prepared to discount theories of sea-monsters rising from the deep to swallow up the crew—”

“Are you?” said Sherlock Holmes, and smiled.

A little nettled, I continued, “The only remaining possibility, then, seems to be that the ship was abandoned voluntarily because of some danger to those on board her, and that the ship's boat was then swamped and all on board drowned. But the
Mary Celeste
was sea-worthy when found, although there had been a storm and the rigging and sails were damaged. I do not believe that an experienced captain, as all agree Captain Briggs was, would put those in his charge to the perils of an Atlantic storm in a small boat unless his ship were actually foundering, or if those on board were in deadly danger.”

“You appear to have eliminated your last possibility,” Holmes observed.

“Not quite,” I replied triumphantly. “The sea is not the only possible source of peril to those on board a ship. A situation may have arisen on board which seemed so dangerous to the captain that he saw no alternative but to risk his wife and child, and his crew, to the fury of the Atlantic waves. Indeed, it has been suggested, on the strength of some minor damage to one of the casks in the cargo, that an explosion of spirit fumes may have been feared, and that the captain may have decided to launch the ship's boat and stand off from the ship until the fumes had dissipated, and that the
Mary Celeste
then drifted away, leaving them to their fate.”

“But this, I take it, is not your preferred solution,” Holmes observed.

“Indeed not,” said I. “The evidence for a serious leak of methylated spirit is very poor, and in any case, I cannot imagine that seasoned seamen such as Captain Briggs and his crew would not have taken the precaution of fastening a tow-line to the ship. It is true that a tow-line might have snapped, but no trace of this was found aboard the ship.

“The true solution to the mystery was suggested to me by a remark which you once made during the case of the missing racehorse Silver Blaze, to the effect that sometimes it is not the presence but the absence of something which may be significant.”

Holmes clapped his hands in approval.

“Excellent, Watson, excellent!” he cried. “I see that you have taken note of my methods, even while you were recounting them to the public in so sensational a manner. I believe there is hope for you yet.”

Thus encouraged, I continued, “Those who boarded the abandoned vessel described in great detail what they found on her, but nowhere is there any mention of an animal on board. Now, there can be very few vessels which do not carry one or more cats on board, to keep down the rats, and frequently also a dog, to guard the ship against intruders when it is in port—”

“Might these animals not have been taken into the boat by the crew?”

“The
Mary Celeste
was abandoned in such haste that all personal belongings were left behind.
There was then surely no time to hunt down the ship's pets. No, Holmes, the explanation for the absence of the animals is more sinister: I believe that these creatures had become infected with rabies, or hydrophobia, and this so terrorised the crew that in a mad panic they took to the boat, which was then swamped with the loss of all aboard. As the disease progressed, the rabid animals then jumped or fell overboard, leaving the ship deserted and a mystery which has remained unsolved—until today!” I added with some satisfaction.

“Capital, Watson, capital!” exclaimed Sherlock Holmes with a broad smile. “You have excelled yourself!”

“Do you then agree with me that I have divined the solution to this hitherto insoluble problem?” I inquired.

“Indeed not! But your solution is ingenious, and not entirely devoid of logical reasoning.”

Somewhat crestfallen, I persisted.

“How can you maintain, then, that mine is not a possible solution?”

“For at least four reasons.”

“Four!” I exclaimed, wounded. “Come, Holmes, I cannot believe that you have found so many flaws in my theory. Let us hear them!”

“Very well,” said Holmes languidly. “
Primus
. I cannot believe that a crew of able-bodied men, used to facing all the dangers of the sea, would flee in panic from rabid animals into the greater danger of an Atlantic storm, rather than banding together with knives, boathooks, and belaying-pins to hunt the creatures down.
Secundus
. Should they indeed have decided to flee, which would presuppose not only cowardice but stupidity, as they would have been exposed to attack by the creatures while they laboured to launch the ship's boat, they would surely have seized every weapon available in order to defend themselves. Yet the sword remained in the cabin.
Tertius
. I think we must assume that there were several animals, even to attempt to justify this improbable panic. Yet the
Mary Celeste
was not found to be in total disorder, as it would have been had these creatures run wild through it in their final frenzy, prior to casting themselves so conveniently overboard.”

He paused for a second, and I returned to the attack.

“Your fourth reason, Holmes. Which is your fourth reason? Your first three only make my solution improbable, not impossible.”

“My fourth reason you may well find more convincing. I
know
that matters did not proceed as you have conjectured, for I was on board the
Mary Celeste
on that fateful voyage.”

I stared at Sherlock Holmes in disbelief.

“Holmes, that is impossible!” I ejaculated. “You were surely too young—”

“I was young,” he agreed, “but not too young. I will recount to you what truly happened, but only on the condition that it remain a secret during the lifetime of all those involved.”

“You may rely on me,” said I earnestly.

The Lily of Aosta

Holmes rose, and filled his pipe from the Persian slipper on the mantelpiece. When he had returned to his seat, he lit the pipe, and spent some minutes smoking it thoughtfully. I was in a fever of impatience to hear his tale, but I knew better than to interrupt his reverie.