CHAPTER THREE

He who would be a surgeon should join the army and follow it. - Hippocrates

For a good five minutes as the cab clopped through the streets a deathly, almost tangible silence reigned among the three of us. Holmes was seated across from Ives and me, shooting the former wary glares and refusing to meet my gaze at all. Ives was complacently glancing out at the scenery with the contented air of a man who knows there is a strain and that he had no part or blame in it.

Finally I broke the very uncomfortable silence, shifting in my seat and not speaking to one of them more than the other.

"Would one of you be good enough to enlighten me as to the nature of these doctors' harassments?" I asked, almost surprising myself at the frigid tone of my voice.

"It is –"

"You see –"

Both Ives and my friend spoke at the same moment, stopping to fix each other with challenging glares that would have made me laugh aloud had the circumstances of their meeting not caused the unveiling of a deception upon me.

Ives raised his bushy eyebrows at my friend, who was still studiously avoiding looking at me, and Holmes finally broke the gaze, turning back to the window wordlessly. Ives turned to me.

"It began inoffensively enough, juvenile insults and mild threats tucked into doorways and mail slots. Knopp received two such messages, though I learned this only after speaking with him. The Times made no mention of those, though they certainly spared no ink when it came to the lurid details of the third incident. But perhaps that is an unfair judgement," Ives conceded, in a rare show of tolerance. "Even Knopp himself failed to take them seriously at first."

"He destroyed the notes, of course," Holmes interjected without looking away from the passing scenery.

Ives sent him a pointed glare. "I should hope you have a better opinion of the nerve of army men, having lived with one for over a decade, Mr. Holmes."

Holmes stiffened but said nothing to the barb, and Ives went on, turning back to me.

"Of course he destroyed them. Why should he not, if they were empty threats? But the third occurrence, the one that made the Times, was slightly more arresting than the first two."

"Which was?" I asked, eyeing Holmes's rigid posture with growing unease.

"Knopp was in his study, just before twilight, when a large rock came crashing through his bay window, barely missing the man as he walked past the pane. He rushed to the opening in time to see a man disappear through the hedge. And he was unable to give any more detail than that it was indeed a man. No traces were found of the culprit.

"That was the first show of real violence. General Malkin received only the notes, as have many of the others, but a few . . . well, Preston, whom you served under, received a well-throttled and bloodied pigeon on his doorstep last week. You see the reason for concern, Doctor. The violence is escalating as 

this blackguard gains nerve. And now a man has been killed. Douglas Chamberlain was not a particularly a good man, had plenty of enemies, but his death now is more than a trifle suspicious in light of the pattern," Ives finished. "Anything to add, Mr. Holmes?"

"Nothing," my companion replied curtly, "you seem to need no help from me in explaining your . . . investigation, Dr. Ives."

There was a very thinly veiled sarcasm evident in Holmes's manner that I bristled defensively at; the old army doctor, however, never twitched, ignoring my friend completely. It did more to irritate Holmes than a rebuttal or verbal sparring match would have.

"How was Chamberlain killed?" I asked, my curiosity overcoming my annoyance.

Holmes and Ives exchanged wary stares before Ives gave a rather gracious inclination of his head and folded his arms with a smirk.

"Chamberlain was killed at ten last night. There was a strange pounding on his front door and when he answered it he was shot," Holmes summarized less graciously, still not quite meeting my eye. "Servants were all abed at this time at the back of the house and heard muffled noises, nothing more, and no one on the street appears to have seen or heard anything that would aid us in our inquiry."

"According to the article in the Times this morning, anyway," added Ives softly.

"I wouldn't know," I managed tightly. "Holmes burned the article about Chamberlain shortly before you arrived. Before I had a chance to read it."

Again Ives cocked a bushy eyebrow at Holmes in disbelief, which Holmes pointed ignored. It was around that time that I decided to ignore Holmes to the best of my abilities and Ives, true to form, seemed silently amused by the melodrama playing out before him.

The air in the cab was charged with an electric edge of tension by the time we reached Scotland Yard, and it was with an immense feeling of relief that I disembarked from the carriage and followed Holmes and Dr. Ives inside the stately building.

After a bit of arguing with the man on duty, the combination of both of those formidable personalities directed in unison upon the cringing sergeant got us into the police morgue with a thoroughly cowed guide, who promptly left us after a terrified backward glance at my two companions.

Dr. Douglas Chamberlain was somewhere between my age and that of Ives, closer to the latter – very late fifties or early sixties I should judge. More than that I had not time yet to see, for Holmes had at once thrown himself into a close and minute scrutiny of the body, completely either forgetting or ignoring our presences.

Ives stepped a bit closer to me and leaned over.

"He probably would have made a passable surgeon," he observed, seeing Holmes's methodical inspection.

I nodded briefly without speaking, for I was still rather piqued at being kept in the dark yet again by the man, good reason or no.

Ives asked a few questions about Holmes's background and other matters which I answered, but at the end I glanced up to see Holmes glaring at both of us, the merest hint of what in any other man should have been described as jealousy written across his face. But Holmes, jealous? No, surely not.

"If you've both finished discussing my life's history?"

Ives's eyebrows went towards his hairline and I glared at Holmes. Honestly, the man could be a perfect child when the fit so struck him. I stepped over to the body, ignoring his black looks with the ease that comes only of long practice.

"Shot through the heart – or rather, that was the intent. I can't say that I've ever seen a wound quite like that before. It looks terribly mutilated; death must have been instantaneous," my friend said, gesturing to the corpse.

I bent over to inspect the wound and suddenly straightened up in shock, my eyes darting to my fellow practitioner.

"Dr. Ives," I gestured toward the body, stepping back out of the light.

"What is it?" Holmes asked, his curiosity overcoming his pride and breaking our strained edge of converse.

Ives studied the wound with a practiced eye. "You're quite right. That was no ordinary bullet," he said, glancing at me.

I nodded, indicating my bad shoulder. "It's a Jezail bullet, no question about it."

"The same kind –"

"The same kind that still resides in fragments in your biographer's left shoulder," Ives said impatiently, probing the area. "The only predictable thing about jezails is their unpredictability. They are often comprised of scrap metals, making them mushroom out as soft-nosed bullets or shatter and splinter inside the body. That is why they cause incredible damage, as you can clearly see here."

I felt a subconscious twinge in my own arm to echo the older man's words, and instinctively stiffened my shoulder. Holmes looked at the horrible mutilation of the wound and then glanced back at me, all animosity gone from his face and replaced by a sickly pallour as he realised exactly what had nearly cost me my life in the Afghan War.

"That is – dreadful," he said, looking rather ill.

"That is a colossal understatement, Mr. Holmes," Ives replied dryly, pulling the sheet back over the body and looking at the two of us. "But that is the way of war."

Holmes's face was unnaturally pale as we made our way to the door, and I saw him shudder once as he glanced back at the body and then to me; it took no great powers of perception to see the drift of his thoughts. But I suddenly remembered something.

"That Jezail bullet means an Afghanistan connection, not just a British Army or medical connection," I said suddenly. "Were the other doctors who were harassed serving in the country as we were, Ives?"

"Knopp was, certainly. Holmes?"

"I am afraid I did not research that far into their histories," my friend said in a subdued voice.

"We should rectify that at once, then. Come along."

I repressed a laugh at Ives's so very peremptorily taking over the investigation and Holmes bristled, his emotional reaction to finding out what kind of wound I had suffered in the war disappearing in the face of this extreme annoyance.

If looks could kill, Ernest Ives would have been dead long before he reached the doors of army records repository from the glares Holmes was shooting at his rapidly-moving back. I remained silent; although a bit of my anger had dissipated at Holmes's reaction to the wound, I still was more than a little irked with his subterfuge in the case.

We stopped at the desk and allowed Ives to take command – as a Surgeon-Colonel, he had the rank necessary to access private records without the bother civilians and lower ranking soldiers ran into. Holmes acknowledged the wisdom of allowing Ives to lead us at the front desk, though his ire was still apparent.

Hours later, we were safely back in the cab, heading to the home of the late Dr. Chamberlain. Our work was not as fruitful as we had hoped. Of the doctors who had been targeted, not all had served in Afghanistan. Several had, but some had served in only India. Holmes detailed what he had scribbled from the reports into his notebook, occasionally shooting a nervous glance at Ives's sharp scrutiny – the detective was not used to being the one under the microscope and the sensation could not be very pleasant.

I was more preoccupied with the image of the body we had examined. I shuddered – the man we were after was either deranged or the most cold-blooded fiend I had encountered; shooting a man whose profession was one of mercy, and in his own home, was simply unnatural.

Holmes shot a glance to me, then back to Ives. "How far of a range does a Jezail gun – a rifle, I believe? – have?"

"Maximum of 500 yards," I answered before Ives could, and the elder doctor corroborated my statement with a nod.

Holmes's eyebrows raised in surprise. "That far? Then the man could have been anywhere – it is no wonder we have no description of him here in this report. At that distance, the household would indeed not have heard a loud report."

"But the jezail rifle itself is an unreliable weapon, its deadliness dependent on the quantity of shots rather than quality," Ives replied. "It takes a steady hand and steadier eye for any degree of accuracy. Shooting a man through the heart with a jezail rifle means he was a great deal closer than 500 yards or that he had the very luck of the devil. We will, of course, need to visit the house," he added, banging on the cab roof and shouting an order to the driver, "to see the location and calculate angles. The position of the murderer should be fairly easy to calculate once we see the scene."

This time I grinned outright at Holmes's black scowl as the cab obediently turned in the direction Ives had named. My friend sat back in the cab and folded his arms, glaring moodily out at the passing scenery, and his brows furrowed and his eyes darkened as Ives started up a conversation with me about one of our mutual acquaintances of years gone by.

This investigation could prove to be most interesting, in more ways than just the case with which we were engaged.