The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (21 page)

Without prolonged study of the temple, he continued, he did not think that he could solve the mystery of the death of good King Dharmadeva. And so he put his things in order to be ready for the first break in the rains, bade good-bye to the pandits in the Residence, and spent his last days in seclusion in Gorashar’s establishment.

In a short time, the sun came out from behind the clouds and the sky cleared. Holmes decided to leave, still in the guise of the pandit through whose identity he had become known, and to change only when he had crossed the border into India.

On the evening before he was about to leave, however, he found a note addressed to him from a scholar visiting from Paris. It read:

My dear Pandit Kaul,

I have learned through the offices of the Maharajah Deb Shamsher and the Rajguru of Nepal of your presence here in the Valley. I understand that you are performing some philological tasks for Grierson. I would like very much to meet you and to share your knowledge of the country and its history. I myself am investigating the ancient inscriptions of the Valley, and if you have come across any in your wanderings, I would be most grateful for your information and advice. At present, I am the guest of the Maharajah and am staying in the guest house at Thapathali. If I do not hear otherwise, I shall call on you tomorrow morning at seven. With my most distinguished sentiments,

(Prof.) Sylvain Levi

Holmes received the note too late to inform Levi of his imminent departure, and so the following morning at seven he found myself unavoidably at tea with the learned French savant. Levi was, according to Holmes, a most entertaining fellow, very much aware of his intellectual gifts. In his late thirties only, he had already published learned articles on Indian history and religion. He proudly presented him with copies of two of his works,
La Notion du Sacrifice dans les Brahmanas,
and
Le Thêátre Indien,
neither of which particularly took Holmes’s fancy, but for which he thanked the good professor. In turn, Holmes handed him his rough reading and translations of the Sanskrit inscriptions he had found in the Valley, including the one at Changu. He no longer had any use for them. Levi thanked him profusely for them, but noticing the latter, he remarked, “I have no need of this one. I already have it—and more.”

Holmes continued pacing back and forth, his hands together behind his back, a slight smile on his lips as he recalled the tale that he continued to narrate to me. Levi was an intelligent man, he said, but he showed a strong disdain for the local population that made his presence at that moment unpleasant. He criticised the government and its officials, and the priests of the country, especially those at the temple at which he was pursuing his scholarly investigations.

“These ignorant priests have tried to thwart me at every turn,” he said. “My greatest desire has been to read the pillar inscription of King Manadeva that stands in front of the temple of the god Changu Narayan. Manadeva was one of the great kings of antiquity, but little is known of him. As you may know, there is a portion of the inscription that lies below the surface, buried and unread for centuries. I tried in a friendly way to convince the priests that I be able to excavate and read the inscription in its entirety. They refused. They would not even allow me into the temple area, saying that as a foreign barbarian I would desecrate and pollute it.
Sacré bleu!
Can you believe in such ignorant superstition? I finally convinced the Maharajah of the importance of my work, and he sent several soldiers into the temple to dig it up. The priests were furious, but there was nothing they could do. In a few hours, I had a complete rubbing of the inscription, including the buried portion. It is
mon triomphe!
”

Levi’s eyes glowed with a sense of victory, and Holmes remarked that he was very fortunate to have arrived at the time that there was such a maharajah as this one. But Levi scoffed and said that anyone would have helped him, knowing that he was the best of European Sanscritists.

“‘And I have still not been allowed into the temple compound to study its treasures. The family jewels of Manadeva are reportedly there, hidden somewhere. But I shall find a way. Ah,
ces prêtres
.”

Holmes had soon begun to tire of this gentleman. He stood up, extended his hand, and bade him adieu. Levi took his leave, and Holmes went about his affairs, his departure now delayed by a day. He spent the rest of the afternoon with his friend Gorashar, who had promised that he would accompany him to Bhimphedi, the last post in the hills before one descends to the Tarai and the plains of India.

“It was early the following morning, as I prepared to depart, that I received an unexpected visitor. Lakshman, my servant, scrambled up the five flights of stairs to my room and announced breathlessly that there was a messenger from the Maharajah, who insisted on delivering a note himself. I told Lakshman to accompany the messenger to my room. Soon I was face-to-face with a member in full regalia of His Majesty’s Royal Guard.”

The soldier handed Holmes an envelope that bore the official seal of the Maharajah, Deb Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana. The note was short and was written in what he took to be the Maharajah’s own hand:

M. Sylvain Levi, the French scholar, has disappeared without a trace. He left his quarters late yesterday afternoon and has not been seen since. Please come at once since I believe that you may be of assistance in locating him.

Deb Shamsher J.B.R.

The messenger told Holmes that he was ordered to accompany him without delay. And so, his departure thwarted once again, he found myself on another, most unexpected adventure.

The trip from the hotel by carriage to Thapathali, the Maharajah’s residence, was normally of very short duration, but this time it took almost a full hour. The monsoon had struck again that morning, and the roads of Katmandu were flooded and thick with swirling mud. They passed through the imposing gates of the palace and rode through the front gardens to the veranda.

The Maharajah Deb Shamsher stood there waiting, surrounded by servants and umbrellas to protect him from the rain, but as soon as the carriage stopped he jumped forth and pulled the door open himself, escorting Holmes inside.

It was Holmes’s first taste of this kind of Oriental splendor, and he found it most impressive. They walked through a large receiving hall filled with the luxuries of every country of Europe, then through a room that marked the love of the hunt, the
shikar
of the Ranas. The remains of tigers, leopards, and antelope, the great beasts of the southern jungles, were everywhere. They passed from there into a small room, which Holmes assumed to be the Maharajah’s own study.

“‘I know who you are, Mr. Holmes, and that is why I summoned you. Your secret is safe with us, however.”

Holmes was taken aback at first by his statement, but he realised that it would have been foolish of him to think that he could maintain his secret indefinitely. The Maharajah’s agents had probably overheard his name at the Residence.

“I believe that it is indeed time for me to leave Nepal,” he said.

Holmes watched him closely to see the effect of my answer. He was a small dark man, but with an enormous head upon which played a roundish face that had more of intelligence in it than the cruelty usually associated with his kinsmen. His eyes narrowed as he spoke.

“You are, as usual, correct. It is indeed time for your departure,” said he, “and I will see that you are aided on your journey. It is probable by now that some of your worst enemies know of your survival, and so I deem it best that you leave. But you will always be welcome here. We are indebted to you for your service to us in the recent matter at the Residence, and in the assistance which you gave to us in ridding our country of a number of unwanted pests. There is now, however, the rather delicate problem of the missing Frenchman. I am distressed to tell you that my agents have failed to locate him, and therefore I must enlist your aid, even if it means postponing your departure once again. His disappearance is an embarrassment in itself, but even more so because the French ambassador to India, Monsieur Bertrand, is due to arrive in Katmandu tomorrow with Prince Henri of Orleans, on an important diplomatic visit. The recognition of our independence by France is one of my chief goals, Mr. Holmes, and I can hardly tell the Prince and his ambassador on their arrival that the greatest Sanscrit scholar of France is unaccounted for.”

Holmes asked him what information his agents had been able to unearth.

“What my agents have uncovered, Mr. Holmes,” replied the Maharajah, “is that after his return from his visit to you yesterday, Monsieur Levi lunched with his wife here at my guest house. Madame Levi then retired for an afternoon nap. When she awoke, she found that her husband was not there. She questioned the servants, who said that he had left alone at about three. This was in no way unusual, for she was used to his habits of work, which left her to her own devices for the better part of the day.
‘Mon pauvre mari travaille toujours,’
she had said to me on their arrival. She only became alarmed at nightfall, when he had not returned. That is when she notified me of his absence. My agents learned that he travelled by rickshaw to the great Buddhist shrine at Bodhnath, where he was observed transcribing Tibetan inscriptions. He wore, as he has regularly since his arrival, local attire, including the Nepalese black cap, or
topi
. He was last seen before dusk leaving Bodhnath on foot through the great southern gate.”

“‘What chances are there that he was abducted to embarrass Your Highness?” asked Holmes.

“‘This is always possible, of course, but we should have been made aware of this by now by his abductors. I doubt this, therefore. My men have entered every house at Bodhnath. As you know, the inhabitants there are almost all poor peaceful Tibetans and would have little reason to harm him. No, something unexpected has happened that has put him beyond my spies. Mr. Holmes, we must find him. I can assure you that in this you will have my every assistance. You may have as many of my men as you need.”

“I shall do my best,” he said, “but I shall work alone. I should like, however, to visit Madame Levi, before I depart.”

He was led directly to the guest house, where he found Levi’s wife staring mournfully out the window. As he entered with the Maharajah, she began to weep. She was not a pretty woman, but one of rather coarse features and of a kind of stoutness that one associates with French peasant stock. It was clear as soon as one saw her eyes, red and swollen from her fits of grief, that she had nothing to do with her husband’s disappearance. Because her English was poor, they spoke in French. She said that she knew no more than what she had told the Maharajah, that her husband returned from his visit with Pandit Kaul, mentioned to her that he had much work left before their departure, and after lunch retired to his desk to work, where he was when she retired to take her afternoon rest.

Holmes then asked her permission to examine Levi’s desk and the work that he was doing before he left. There were no notes to his wife of any kind, no messages, nothing to indicate where he had gone. But he had indicated to Holmes in their conversation that he was still preoccupied with Changu, its treasury, and its pillar inscription. As Holmes looked at his work, however, he noticed that he had placed a large exclamation point next to a line in the inscription, a line that he remembered, and a question mark next to one that he had not seen before, one which must have been found in the excavated portion of the pillar. It seemed that he had most emphatically understood the first, but not the second.

Holmes paused for a moment. “I must risk boring you, Watson, for the words here are important to the solution. The line with Levi’s exclamatory mark read in Sanscrit in part:

. . . raja udyanam iva tridivam gatah.

These words mean literally, “the king went to the other world as if he had gone to the pleasure garden.”

“How odd,” I said, not a little confused, but amused as well, as the strange words rippled off his tongue mellifluously.

“But the line questioned by Levi,” he continued, “read:

ahsevinahsenagartihb ahsevarpunhsivrihab

“Its meaning? Well, my dear Watson, I was for the moment baffled. It made no sense, and appeared almost as a meaningless series of syllables. So supple and flexible is Sanscrit, however, that, with enough time, a variety of translations might be possible. In any case, I surmised that Levi had seen a connection between the two lines and that he had gone to Changu to investigate. I also reminded myself of a general truth that had become apparent to me during my stay in Nepal: that nothing there was simple.”

By this time my mind was reeling from the complexity as well as the speed of Holmes’s account. That part of it was in Sanscrit did not reassure me in my attempt to understand what was happening.

“I am more than a bit confused, my dear Holmes. A king was apparently murdered fifteen hundred years ago, and a French scholar has disappeared before your eyes. Yet somehow their fates are intertwined. And somehow the fate of both men is buried in some difficult lines of an inscription in Sanscrit.”

“Excellent, Watson, excellent. You have seen through to the crux. In the first line, Levi had seen something that no previous commentator had seen.

“And what was that? Perhaps the king merely died of natural causes, and it means only that he died as if he had been at play, at perhaps some wanton sport,” I ventured.

“And that is the way it was often construed in Nepal. But Dharmadeva was a paragon of virtue, probably incapable of the kind of vice that would do him in. Still, there was something strange about the words, I thought, as if through their very strangeness the poet were pointing to something unusual. Perhaps there was a clue to his death in this phrase, perhaps a pun, a dual meaning. All of this, however, I retraced in my mind when I saw the words marked in Levi’s manuscript. Had he realised something that I had not? As to the other line, he had not deciphered it, nor could I!”