Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

Goodcastle had been a gunner with the famed Royal Horse Artillery, which was among the detachments ordered to stop an enemy force of ghazis intent on attacking the British garrison at Kandahar. On the searingly hot, dusty day of 27 July, 1880, the force of 2,500 British and Indian infantry, light cavalry, and artillery met the enemy at Maiwand. What they did not realize until the engagement began, however, was that the Afghans outnumbered them ten to one. From the very beginning the battle went badly, for in addition to overwhelming numbers of fanatical troops, the enemy had not only smoothbores, but Krupp guns. The ghazis pinpointed their weapons with deadly accuracy, and the shells and the blizzard of musket balls and repeater rounds ravaged the British forces.

Manning gun number three, Goodcastle’s crew suffered terribly but managed to fire over one hundred rounds that day, the barrel of the weapon hot enough to cook flesh — as was proven by the severe burns on his men’s arms and hands. Finally, though, the overwhelming force of the enemy prevailed. With a pincer maneuver they closed in. The Afghans seized the English cannon, which the British had no time to spike and destroy, as well as the unit’s colors — the first time in the history of the British army such a horror had occurred.

As Goodcastle and the others fled in a terrible rout, the ghazis turned the British guns around and augmented the carnage, with the Afghans using the flagpoles from the regiment’s own flags as ramming rods for the shot!

A horrific experience, yes — twenty percent of the Horse Artillery was lost, as was sixty percent of the 66th Foot Regiment — but in some ways the worst was visited upon the surviving soldiers only after their return to England. Goodcastle found himself and his comrades treated as pariahs, branded cowards. The disdain mystified as much as it devastated their souls. But Goodcastle soon learned the reason for it. Prime Minister Disraeli, backed by a number of lords and the wealthy upper class, had been the prime mover in the military intervention in Afghanistan, which served no purpose whatsoever except to rattle sabers at Russia, then making incursions into the area. The loss at Maiwand made many people question the wisdom of such involvement and was an instant political embarrassment. Scapegoats were needed, and who better than the line troops who were present at one of the worst defeats in British history?

One particular nobleman infuriated Goodcastle by certain remarks made to the press, cruelly bemoaning the shame the troops had brought to the nation and offering not a word of sympathy for those who lost life or limb. The shopkeeper was so livid that he vowed revenge. But he’d had enough of death and violence at Maiwand and would never, in any case, injure an unarmed opponent, so he decided to punish the man in a subtler way. He found his residence, and a month after the improvident remarks the gentleman discovered that a cache of sovereigns — hidden, not very cleverly, in a vase in his office — was considerably diminished.

Not long after this, a factory owner reneged on promises of employment to a half-dozen veterans of the Afghan campaign. The industrialist, too, paid dearly — with a painting, which Goodcastle stole from his summer house in Kent and sold, the proceeds divvied up among those who’d been denied work. (Goodcastle’s experience in his father’s antiquities business stood him in good stead; despite the veterans’ concern about the questionable quality of the canvas, done by some Frenchman named Claude Monet, the thief was able to convince an American dealer to pay dearly for the blurred landscape.)

The vindication these thefts represented certainly cheered him — but Goodcastle finally came to admit that what appealed most deeply wasn’t revenge or the exacting of justice but the exhilaration of the experience itself... Why, a well-executed burglary could be a thing of beauty, as much so as any hand-carved armoire or Fragonard painting or William Tessler gold broach. He tamed his guilt and began pursuing his new calling with as much vigor and cunning as was displayed by all men, in whatever profession, who were counted successful.

Once he inherited the familial shop on Great Portland Street, he found that he and his workers had unique access to the finest town homes in metropolitan London, as they collected and delivered furniture — perfect hunting grounds for a refined burglar. He was too clever to rob his own clients, of course, but he would listen and observe, learning what he might about these customers’ neighbors or acquaintances — any recent valuables they’d purchased, sums of money they’d come into, where they might secrete their most precious objects, when they regularly traveled out of London, the number and nature of grooms and waiting-servants and guard hounds.

A brilliant idea, and perfectly executed on many occasions. As on Thursday last in the apartment of Sir Robert Mayhew.