deserve it. They are not saints. As I say, Private Levens and Private Moss were reported absent from duty without leave that very same day. It was at the evening roll-call, I believe.”
“I am sorry to repeat myself, but what became of them?”
“Private Moss was never seen again. He may still be alive; he may be dead. A few months after the inquest on Captain Carey, the body of Private Arnold Levens was found in the new drainage canal just north of Calcutta. It was reported in the local press. The body had been there some time, and the cause of death could not be determined. He was identified by the contents of his pockets. It is a common enough story when a poor fellow is on the run, at the end of his tether, befuddled with drink perhaps.”
“He destroys himself?”
“Sometimes deliberately, Mr. Holmes, more often it happens accidentally. Something as simple as a fall into a canal while reeling drunk.”
“And occasionally, no doubt, he is assisted. Thank you so much, Mr. Dordona,” Holmes said with brisk courtesy. “Until tomorrow afternoon, then.”
From the window, veiled by its net curtain, we watched Samuel Dordona walk slowly back to the waiting cab and begin his return to the mansion blocks of Victoria.
“He seems straight enough,” I said, clearing papers from the table for Mrs. Hudson’s maid-of-all-work to set down the tea things.
Sherlock Holmes still watched the street from the window. He spoke as though he had not heard me.
“I suggest Mr. Dordona no more wrote that letter than I did, Watson. It was written for him. Who can tell whether a colleague then posted it, leaving him no alternative but to keep an appointment with us?”
“How can you possibly say that, Holmes?”
“With every confidence, my dear fellow. Did you not notice his reluctance to commit his pen to paper in our presence?”
“That was nothing!”
“Was it? It is not just a matter of handwriting. Read his letter again. Then tell me whether the Mr. Dordona whom you have brought here could possibly have written it in his own person! Like his clothes, it is the letter of a clergyman from a stage comedy, not the resourceful client we have just met. There are two people in this. Who the other is I cannot yet say. But I have every intention of finding out before we go further.”
“You think Samuel Dordona is a criminal? Surely not!”
“You misunderstand, Watson. I should call Mr. Dordona decent and honourable, a good friend to Captain Carey. A credit to his calling. Paradoxical that he should also be such a calculating deceiver. An honourable but deliberate liar. A charming combination, is it not? Worthy of Robert Browning’s honest thief or tender murderer.”
I stared at him as he turned away from the curtains, but knew that he would say no more just then. I said simply, “We shall see for ourselves at Carlyle Mansions at three o’clock tomorrow.”
He looked at me in astonishment. “I have no intention, Watson, of going to Carlyle Mansions at three o’clock tomorrow.”
“I don’t follow that, Holmes. You have already agreed to be there.”
“You do not follow? Very well, I do not propose to be ambushed at Carlyle Mansions by Mr. Dordona or anyone else. Before three o’clock, I intend to know all there is to know about that establishment. If there is any ambushing, Watson, rest assured that I shall be the one to do it.”
A light tap at the door and the entry of Molly with the tea and muffins on a tray put a stop to this conversation for the time being.
As Holmes had previously remarked, we were not overburdened with clients just then. Much might depend on our success in the present investigation—possibly the entire future of our detective agency. During the rest of that afternoon, however, it seemed as if the assassination of the Prince Imperial and the death of Captain Carey had ceased to be worth further consideration. Holmes diverted himself for the next hour by taking his violin from its case and coaxing from it a newly discovered set of variations by the eighteenth-century Italian master Arcangelo Corelli.
Only when I knew my friend better did I understand an important truth of his character. If the “Scotland Yarders” whom he mocked were so far behind him, it was because they practised as a profession what Sherlock Holmes regarded as an art. It was precisely when his whole being seemed to drift into the sublime abstraction of the music of the