‘Half an hour should do it.’
‘Half a sovereign if you do it in twenty minutes.’
Holmes clambered in the cab before me and looked back through the open door with a quelling expression. ‘Come in and seat yourself comfortably, Watson, we still have some time before we confront them at their door. Now,’ he added, once I had joined him with a hang-dog look, ‘bring out the gazetteer. Let us have the facts. Take up where you ended on our downward journey. Please select the most important elements concerning the Transvaal from events preceding the South African War.’
Not since The Five Orange Pips had I seen Holmes riven by such barely-contained excitement. Soon we should be grotesquely insulting four of the first brains of the greatest, wealthiest, and most powerful empire the world has ever seen. My spirits drifted ever-downward. I retrieved the gazetteer, and began, ‘The Transvaal is central to the strategic map of Africa.’
‘Yes!’ Holmes breathed. ‘Go on! Do go on!’
Main towns: Potchefstroom and Pretoria.
Republic founded in 1840 by dissident descendants of the Dutch settlers in Cape Colony and Natal.
Annexed in 1877 by Cape government on spurious grounds of ‘disorder’.’
‘Once Bismarck made his unexpected lunge at Angra Pequena, the Cape had a new German colony on its north-western border. If the Transvaal, at a second attempt, could take Bechuanaland, it would join hands with Germany and snap its fingers at British paramountcy.’
I looked up. ‘Holmes here is a mention of Viscount Van Beers.’
‘Good! Excellent, in fact!’ Holmes cried. ‘Read on.’
‘1897 Van Beers sent to Cape Town to pick up the pieces after the Jameson Raid. He returned to London in 1897 ‘to stamp on Chamberlain’s ‘rose-coloured illusions’ about South Africa. Kruger re-elected for a fourth term as President of the Transvaal. Kruger believed Van Beers’ aim was to humiliate the Volk, divide them from their fellow Boers of the Orange Free State and the Afrikaners of Cape Colony. Kruger purchasing large quantities of guns from Germany. The gold-rush to the Transvaal turned South Africa on its head: the new political centre was Johannesburg, not Cape Town. The Transvaal Boers could unite the whole of South Africa in a republic and Britain would lose both Natal and the Cape.’
On I read. ‘’If war was to ensue, it needed a crisis. It is now known Van Beers forged a secret alliance with the two richest ‘gold bugs’ of the Rand, Alfred Weit and Sir Julius Wernher. In 1899 they and Van Beers paid for an anti-Kruger press campaign in Johannesburg, a significant destabilising factor in the path to the outbreak of war. Weit and Wernher among other of the Randlords believed to have joined with Van Beers in a secret plan to settle the newly-annexed Transvaal and Orange River Colony with Anglo-Saxon emigrants.’
Holmes muttered, ‘Secret alliances... the Jameson Raid... why, the unscrupulous, unprincipled adventurers!’
My heart was turning leaden. ‘Holmes,’ I protested, putting the gazetteer to one side, my eyes on the paved road unravelling beneath us, ‘these leaps of yours are most entertaining but they remain mere will-o’-the wisps of your imagination. I can hardly bear the thought of standing at your side as you confront the members of the Kipling League. I do not judge Van Beers to be of a particularly forgiving disposition. We are recklessly to accuse four - throw in Lord Fusey, five - of the richest, most masterful men in England - six if we add the President of the Royal Academy - with the murder of a stranger, perhaps a Boer, more likely a tramp in stolen attire, with not a jot or tittle of proof! One does not need to be a toady or a sycophant to recognise the power and eminence of the Kipling League. They are men of the utmost wealth and consideration. Why, Holmes, the four in the parlour were in King Edward’s grouse-shooting parties when he was heir to the throne!’
Despite my heated protestations, Holmes’ demeanour remained as resolute and collected as ever I had seen.
‘For fear of being overheard, Watson,’ he replied, pointing upwards to the cabman’s perch, ‘let us henceforth refer to these members of the Kipling League as the Sungazer Gang. I tell you, notwithstanding you deem them the greatest subjects of the Crown, they have the edge over all the crooks and loafers we have ever encountered in all the underworlds of Liverpool or London.’
‘By the by,’ I returned, ‘though I do not suppose it to be of the slightest importance - certainly you appear to consider it entirely inconsequential to your case - you have not yet answered how you intend to attribute opportunity to the Kipling League when, as you admit, all four were in our presence in the parlour at three this afternoon, the very hour this crime, if crime it is, is purported to have happened quite some miles away.’
Mistaking my companion’s failure to retort at once as discomfit at my reminder, I took a risky step and added a provocation. ‘Surely that is fatal to your theory?’
Rather than answering with the angry words I anticipated, Holmes responded with a heightened amiability which served only to increase my agitation. ‘Watson, of course that is fatal to my theory - of course we were with them at that time.’
‘But Holmes,’ I floundered, ‘if we were with them ... how can they be...?’
‘Perhaps I should put it another way,’ Holmes went on. ‘Of course we were with them at three o’ clock, the very time the coroner will rule the time of death. That was their intention. Watson, don’t you see, that’s the infernal genius of this ... this Sungazer Gang. They will call us - you and me - as principal witnesses before a jury of honest foremen and clerks from the stores. I contend you and I are the planet-wheel in a most cunning scheme. Do you not see,’ he repeated, voice dropping low, ‘that is why we received their urgent summons. We are to be their alibi if needed.’
‘Alibi!’ I exclaimed. I gave an incredulous laugh. ‘My dear fellow, surely...’
‘Surely you say! I say surely you see the similarity to the Foxy Ferdinand matter?’ Holmes retorted.
This was a reference to the case of the Prince Regnant of Bulgaria four years earlier, a matter of the most profound international importance. My account in manuscript form lies in the tin box under our landlady’s supervision, never to see the light of day until the Prince’s death or exile.
Holmes shook his head.
‘Vanity, Watson! Vanity as vast as their power and wealth. I say they retained this Boer as their guest behind those high Yew hedges until this morning, kept alive like a chicken for a voodoo ceremony in Port-au-Prince - until they were assured I was back at Baker Street fresh from my peregrinations around the docks. Hence the watchman with the amber eyes who never sold a hare. Once they were assured their telegram had found its mark, they killed the Boer and cast him in the moat.’
‘Moat, Holmes?’ I exclaimed in great surprise. ‘You are mistaken. The body was discovered in the wagon pond.’
‘Indeed - an inexplicable fact for which I do not as yet have an answer.’
My heart leapt with disloyal hope as he went on.
‘Watson, I agree I must do some pondering on that inconvenient matter. We are lost if an answer to the conundrum is not soon forthcoming. As to motive... it is surely connected to the recent South African War. There remain many unresolved hatreds. Boers’ wives and children by the thousand died from enteric fever in our concentration camps. Or a more venal reason. You yourself have recounted tales of the maelstroms that lay around the reefs of gold in Australia - why not around South Africa’s Rand?’
‘Holmes,’ I argued, ‘Weit and Van Beers and Sir Julius comprise Randlord and Gold Bugs, but what about our host? Siviter’s life is the sub-Continent, not South Africa. I estimate he possesses more than five hundred volumes on India.’