it is the cordon of the Grand Cross of the Légion d’Honneur. It is, perhaps, the most celebrated chivalric order in the modern world, instituted by the Prince Imperial’s immortal great-uncle in 1802. The missing medal belonging to this ribbon has a silver star of five double points surrounding the head of the first Emperor Napoleon. In this case, its silver star now lies somewhere in the African dust.”
There was a silence in the cubby-hole office. Then Sherlock Holmes resumed.
“It was no ordinary death. To all his supporters, perhaps to the majority of the French people by now, this young man was Emperor of France, Louis Napoleon, and therefore Grand Master of the Order. As a mere soldier, however, it seems that the poor fellow was as good as dead the moment he rode out on his last morning.”
I shook my head. “Cutting the harness could not ensure that the prince would fall to his death. No murderer would trust to such a chance device as that. It might have held for a few seconds longer.”
To my surprise, it was Albert Gibbons who replied. The handsomely whiskered face still regarded me sadly, as if I might have been a persistent member of the defaulters’ squad on a barrack square.
“No one trusted to that, sir. You will observe that several of the tribesmen carried rifles captured at Isandhlwana. The aim mattered nothing. The shooting was necessary only to bring about the disorder which followed and to scatter the horses.”
For me, this was far too simple an explanation. “If the prince mounted safely, as almost all the others did, what chance had these untrained tribesmen of bringing him down?”
The sad eyes now regarded me with a little more sympathy for my brave effort.
“You may be sure, sir, if shots proved necessary to kill him in the saddle, they would easily be fired by a concealed marksman who could bring a rider down with a single bullet at twice that range. A hunter. The credit for the killing would still go to the tribes. The identity of the actual assassin would be perfectly covered by the presence of these tribesmen firing in all directions. As it happened, not a single bullet from a marksman was needed. The strap broke.”
My mind went back to our visitor on the previous afternoon. “A marksman? Concealed with his weapon on a hill-top overlooking the skirmish?”
So much for the stories of a lone horseman in his saddle, on the ridge above the kraal. Several further pieces of the puzzle fell into their proper places.
Albert Gibbons nodded. “If the prince was brought down from his saddle by a bullet, sir, it would surely be called a lucky shot by one of the tribesmen. For who else was there to shoot him but the tribes, according to the courtroom evidence? They had thought of everything.”
I was about to ask who “they” might have been, but Holmes answered him first.
“Someone had thought of it, Mr. Gibbons. Someone who could shoot the heart out of the ace of spades with five successive shots at forty paces. But, as it happens, the very thing they planned for took place. The leather stitching broke and the hero fell among his assailants.”
I looked at the broken strap and the dried blood on the scarlet ribbon of the Légion d’Honneur. “But surely the conspirators would destroy the evidence of their crime, rather than preserve it?”
Holmes shook his head.
“I think not, Watson. Not these conspirators. These are hunters of big game. Such items are hunters’ trophies. Some time ago you were kind enough to entertain me with the story of a subaltern’s court-martial. That tale had been told to you by a pair of jackanapes on a train from Bombay to Lahore. I recall your account of the trial of a certain captain—the self-styled Colonel Rawdon Moran. After he had been branded with the Mark of the Beast on the orders of a man whose wife he had destroyed, Moran’s last words to his former comrades were, ‘I’ll be revenged upon the whole pack of you.’ Correct me if I have got that wrong.”
“You are entirely correct, Holmes, as the stories of revenge have been told. First at Isandhlwana; second at the death of the Prince Imperial; third in the Transvaal and the murder of Andreis Reuter.”
My friend gave a humourless chuckle.
“Then let us take the scoundrel at his word. However, those who truly relish revenge cannot enjoy its delicacy unless the world knows that they have