Peter Tremayne - An Ensuing Evil and Others

“But to kill a cardinal-”

“-having enticed him from Paris to this country thinking he was going to meet with members of the Irish Nationalists,” interposed Holmes.

“-to deliberately kill a cardinal to cause such alarms and… why, Holmes, it is diabolical.”

“Unfortunately, my dear Watson, this becomes the nature of governments who maintain secret organizations that are not accountable to anyone. I was tried and found wanting, Watson. This case was my biggest single failure.”

“Oh come, Holmes, you could not have known….”

Holmes gave me a pitying look.

“You must take Morans gibes and insults from whence they came. You could do no more,” I assured him.

He looked at me with steely eyes. “Oh yes, I could. I told you about how important it is to pay attention to detail. From the start I committed the most inexcusable inattention to detail. Had I been more vigilant, I could have laid this crime at the right door. It is there in Morans text, a fact made known to me right from the start and which I ignored.”

I pondered over the text but could find no enlightenment.

“The visitors cards, Watson. The mistake over the visitor’s cards presented by the mysterious caller to the cardinal.”

“Mistake? Oh, you mean the name being T W Tone, the name of someone long dead? I didn’t realize that it was a false name.”

“The name was merely to confirm the notion that we were supposed to be dealing with Irish Republicans. No, it was not that. It was the harp device, which was also meant to lead us into thinking that it was presented by an Irish nationalist, being the Irish national symbol. The fact was that the harp was surmounted by a crown-that is the symbol of our colonial administration in Ireland. No nationalist could bear the sight of a crown above the harp. I should have realized it.”

Holmes sat shaking his head for a while, and then he continued:

“Place the case of Cardinal Tosca in your trunk, Watson. I don’t want to hear about it ever again.”

Even then I hesitated.

“Granted that Moran worked for some superior-have you, in retrospect, come to any conclusion as to who Moran’s superior was? Who was the man who gave him the order and to whom he was writing his letter?”

Holmes was very serious as he glanced back at me. “Yes, I know who he was. He died in the same year that Moran was arrested for the murder of Lord Maynooth’s son. You recall that Moran died in police custody after his arrest? It was supposed to be a suicide. I realized that should have been questioned. But then I heard of the death of…” He paused and sighed. “Morans superior was a brilliant politician but a ruthless one. He, more than most, reawakened the Orange hatreds against the Catholic Irish in order to maintain the Union.”

“He was a member of the government?” I cried, aghast.

“He had been until just prior to this event, but he was still influential.”

“And this code name ‘Wolf Shield’? You were able to tell who it was by that?”

“That part was simple. The name, sounding so Anglo-Saxon, I simply translated ‘Wolf Shield’ back into Anglo-Saxon, and the man’s name became immediately recognizable. But let him now rest where his prejudices cannot lacerate his judgment any more.”

In deference to my old friend’s wishes, I have kept these papers safely, appending this brief note of how they fell into my hands. It was Holmes, with his biting sense of humor, who suggested I file it as “A Study in Orange,” being his way of gentle rebuke for what he deemed as my melodramatic title of the first case of his with which I was involved. With this note, I have placed Moran’s manuscript into my traveling box, which is now deposited in my bank at Charing Cross. I have agreed with Holmes’s instructions that my executors should not open it until at least fifty years have passed from the dates of our demise.

The one thing that I have not placed here is the name of Moran’s superior, but that anyone with knowledge of Anglo-Saxon personal names could reveal.

The harsh monsoon winds were rattling fiercely at the closed shutters of the British Residency building. The Residency itself stood on an exposed hillock, a little way above the crumbling banks of the now turbulent Viswamitri River as it frothed and plunged its way through the city of Baroda to empty into the broad Gulf of Khambhat. The building had been secured from the moaning wind and rain by the servants; the lamps were lit, and the male guests still lounged in the dining room, unperturbed by the rising noise of the storm outside.

The ladies had withdrawn, shepherded away by Lady Chetwynd Miller, the wife of the Resident, while the decanter of port began to pass sun-wise around the eight remaining men. The pungent odor of cigar smoke began to permeate the room.

“Well,” demanded Royston, a professional big-game hunter who was staying a few days in Baroda before pushing east to the Satpura mountains to hunt the large cats that stalked the ravines and darkened crevices there. “Well,” he repeated, “I think the time has come to stop teasing us, Your Excellency. We all know that you brought us here to see it. So where is it?”

There was a murmur of enthusiastic assent from the others gathered before the remnants of the evening meal.

Lord Chetwynd Miller raised a hand and smiled broadly. He was a sprightly sixty-year-old; a man who had spent his life in the service of the British Government of India and who now occupied the post of Resident in the Gujarat state of Baroda. He had been Resident in Baroda ever since the overthrow of the previous despotic Gaekwar or ruler. Baroda was still ruled by native princes who acknowledged the suzerain authority of the British Government in India but who had independence in all internal matters affecting their principality.

Five years previously a new Gaekwar, Savaji Rao III, had come to power. If the truth were known, he had deposed his predecessor with British advice and aid, for the previous Gaekwar had not been approved of by the civil servants of Delhi. Indeed, he had the temerity to go so far as to murder the former Resident, Colonel Phayre. But the British Raj had not wanted it to appear as though they were interfering directly in the affairs of Baroda. The state was to remain independent of the British Government of India. Indeed, the secret of the success of the British Raj in India was not in its direct rule of that vast subcontinent, with its teeming masses, but in its persuasion of some six hundred ruling princes to accept the British imperial suzerainty. Thus much of the government of India was in the hands of native hereditary princes who ruled half the land mass and one quarter of the population under the “approving” eye of the British Raj.

Baroda, since Savaji Rao III had taken power, was a peaceful city of beautiful buildings, of palaces, ornate gates, parks and avenues, standing as a great administrative center at the edge of cotton-rich plains and a thriving textile-producing industry. A port with access to the major sea lanes and a railway center with its steel railroads connecting it to all parts of the subcontinent.

After the establishment of the new regime in Baroda, the British Raj felt they needed a man who was able to keep firm control on British interests there. Lord Chetwynd Miller was chosen, for he had been many years in service in India. Indeed, it was going to be his last appointment in India. He had already decided that the time had come for retirement. He was preparing for the return to his estates near Shrewsbury close to the Welsh border before the year was out.

“Come on, Chetwynd,” urged Major Bill Foran, of the Eighth Bombay Infantry, whose task it was to protect the interests of the British Residency and the community of British traders who lived in Baroda. He was an old friend of the Resident. “Enough of this game of cat and mouse. You are dying to show it to us just as much as we are dying to see it.”