Death on a Pale Horse - By Donald Thomas Page 0,16
BETRAYED … FOR GOD’S SAKE LOOK AFTER OUR PEOPLE … GOD SAVE THE QUEEN …
—Lt. Col. Henry Burmester Pulleine, Officer Commanding
Her Majesty’s 24th Regiment of Foot
METROPOLITAN POLICE FILE—MEPO 3
ACC/ Personal File/Sir Melville Macnaghten
221b Baker Street
London W
Sir Melville Macnaghten
Assistant Chief Constable,
New Scotland Yard
London SW
30 August 1894
My dear Sir Melville,
It comes a little late for me to forward to you the following details of Colonel Rawdon Moran, alias “Hunter” Moran, formerly of Her Majesty’s Indian Army. However, you may care to include the following information in your files. I suggest that it is pertinent to the dossier of his younger brother, Colonel Sebastian Moran. He it was who died this morning on the gallows at Newgate Gaol for the “Park Lane Murder” of the Honourable Ronald Adair. I myself played some small part in the resolution of this mystery.
Unlike his younger brother, Rawdon Moran never incurred a criminal conviction for his many crimes. He was born in 1840, elder son of Sir Augustus Moran, who had undertaken several diplomatic missions to the court of Persia and the Sublime Porte on behalf of Lord Melbourne’s administration.
I know something of Sir Augustus Moran. He and my father, Siger Holmes, were on opposite sides of the business when Edward Oxford made his attempt against the life of the young Queen. The shots were fired on Constitution Hill in the third year of her reign. My own narrative of this affair, taken down from my father’s own words, must lie where it is a little longer.
Sir Augustus Moran was obliged to withdraw to exile in Hanover after the attempted assassination. His elder son Rawdon remained in England. Indeed, he attended both Eton and Oxford. As a young man, he left Magdalen College before his time, following a pistol duel with another undergraduate. He subsequently acquired a noxious reputation in London’s sporting life.
After the father’s disgrace, it was impossible the elder son should find a place in a fashionable regiment. I believe in 1863 he was refused when he tried to buy a captaincy under the Earl of Cardigan in the 11th (Prince Albert’s Own) Hussars. His father had served in that corps as a young man. Making his way to India, where his ancestry was of less interest, Rawdon Moran first served as commander of an Indian bodyguard to the Rajah of Kalore with the local rajpoot rank of “colonel.” Long after his dismissal by the Rajah, Moran habitually made civilian use of the title this rank had given him.
He subsequently returned to direct allegiance to the British Crown and bought a place in the unfashionable corps of the 1st Bangalore Pioneers. He distinguished himself on active service in the Jowaki campaigns and was mentioned in despatches after the battle of Charasiab. Whatever his regrettable moral reputation, his personal bravery under fire cannot be questioned. When the ammunition was exhausted and the position appeared hopeless, he and his company of mercenaries defended the wounded in the field hospital by beating off the attackers with trenching tools and killing a dozen of them. In the aftermath of his recognition, he transferred to the regular Army in the 109th Regiment of Foot, subsequently known as the Albion Fusiliers.
Rawdon Moran was reputed to have a nerve of iron. The tale of how he and his younger brother, Sebastian, crawled down a culvert after a wounded man-eating tiger became a legend in the brotherhood of big-game hunters. Its truth is vouched for by five independent witnesses.
Certain other of his attainments are beyond doubt. This soi-disant colonel, for he still used that title as though he owed it to Her Majesty rather than to a local nabob, was the best heavy-game shot that our Eastern Empire has ever produced.
So much may stand to his credit. He was also endowed with a perverted ingenuity and a warped moral instinct. Like his father, he was an aberrant growth from an honourable ancestral tree. Discreditable stories were told in Bengal. They asserted that Rawdon Moran was a cheat at the gaming-table and an evil demon in the lives of several women. I believe, from the facts before me, that the unexplained self-destruction of Mrs. Stewart of Lauder after a matrimonial scandal fifteen years ago also stands to his account.
Though a cheat at cards and in financial matters generally, he was fierce and indomitable. To challenge him to a duel with pistols would have been madness. He had proved his skill on regimental mess nights by putting five successive pistol shots through the centre of