Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly

8

So we came face-to-face with the terror of St Vincent’s. As a villain and tyrant, I confess, he was a great disappointment. Apple-cheeked and blue-eyed, he was large but flabby rather than muscular. His hair was fair and curly. I should have thought him a mother’s darling. Perhaps, ten years hence, the curly hair and apple cheeks might ingratiate him in the favours of a young lady with a taste for naval officers of a certain immaturity.

He did not sit down, nor did Holmes invite him to do so. Instead, Sovran-Phillips stood—and remained—at attention. Sherlock Holmes gazed past him at the sky through the latticed window of the sanatorium, and then back at the youth.

“You are R. J. Sovran-Phillips, are you not?”

“Sir!” He almost stamped his feet together as he said so.

“I shall not keep you long. I have only one or two questions. I take it that you know of the present predicament of your termmate Patrick Riley?”

“Yes, sir. And very sorry I am to hear that the poor fellow has got himself into such trouble!”

The tone was eerily similar to the sleek sympathy of Reginald Winter. There was abundant good nature in it. But unless Patrick Riley had lied most skilfully, Sovran-Phillips was about to step into an elephant pit of unimaginable depths.

“I am sure you are sorry,” said Holmes reassuringly. “And you know, of course, of the ten-shilling note and the sixpenny piece, missing since Porson’s postal order was cashed dishonestly?”

“Yes, sir. We all know that.”

“Do you indeed?” Holmes looked up, stared him directly in the eyes, and the destruction of Sovran-Phillips began. “Can you tell us how it might be that a ten-shilling note and a sixpenny piece should be found concealed in the linesman’s hut by the railway line?”

If Sovran-Phillips was out of his depth and drowning he was no more so than I. How could Holmes possibly know? Arthur the fireman had only thought the first boy might have been in there to begin with. But Sovran-Phillips went beetroot-red with panic.

“Perhaps …” he began.

“Yes?” Holmes said patiently.

“Perhaps it is not the same money.”

Holmes nodded encouragingly.

“You are quite right that it might be an entirely different sixpenny piece. Notes, however, are drawn new from the bank by certain post offices and their numbers are consecutive. We should be able to check that.”

If notes were drawn in this manner it would surely be by post offices in major cities, but Sovran-Phillips was in no position to know it. He stood before us like a lost soul. It was plain that Holmes had hit a target of some importance with his first shot. He let the silence extend, gazing at the youth until our subject could bear it no longer.

“When were they found?” Phillips asked. Had he stopped to think, he would have known this was a question most likely to be asked by the thief. What could it matter to anyone else?

My friend looked surprised.

“I did not say that they had been found. I was very careful to ask you hypothetically how they might get there—not why they are there.”

“Then they were not there?”

Uncertainty was almost worse for him than defeat.

“I most assuredly did not say that either.” Holmes replied mildly.

“If they are there …” Sovran-Phillips was no longer at attention. “Riley must have taken them there, if they are there. Perhaps after he first got them. How else could they be there?”

“That is what we are here to discover. When do you suggest that Riley would have done that?”

“He was there last Sunday afternoon. We have all been told that.”

Holmes relaxed.

“You know he was there, do you not? So were you, some time before him, I understand. He would hardly try to hide them with someone else present. Did you see him do so? Be careful before you say you did. You do not yet know they were ever there at all. Perhaps someone else hid them before his arrival. Did you see anyone else going into the hut? No? Did you see other witnesses?

“Sir?”

“One other witness, I should say. Mr Reginald Winter.”

The mention of the headmaster as a witness knocked the wind from him.

“Mr Winter?”

“You did not know that he was there? To be sure you did. He really is most grateful for receiving Riley’s intercepted message chalked on the sanatorium tray. I daresay your friend Mitzi will enlighten us further when we question her.”

That last promise took the breath from him again. The next ten minutes were an object lesson in cross-examination, never hectoring, always courteous, and terrifying in its unpredictability. This youth had no idea how much Holmes already knew, let alone what the maidservant might say. His confidence was systematically shot through and through. Obnoxious though he might be, Sovran-Phillips made a pitiful figure by the time Holmes had finished, painstakingly stripped of every defence by the masterly bluff of his interrogator. At last his answers were little more than a mumble and a shake of the head. It was visible that he longed to be dismissed, no matter what the result. My friend brought the final silence to an end.

“Master Phillips, I can spare you a few minutes to make your choice. Please do not prevaricate. Did you entice Patrick Riley to the linesman’s hut on Sunday to settle scores with him man-to-man? Or did you propose to associate Riley with the discovery in the hut of a ten-shilling note and a sixpence, relying upon Mr Winter as a witness? It will be quite useless to pretend you were not there at the time or that you did not ensure the headmaster’s presence. When your plans were thrown into confusion by the approach of the Bradstone stopping train, did you not take the opportunity to start a rumour that Riley had tried to throw himself under the engine, thereby confirming the charge against him?”

There was a long pause, during which the youth’s facial muscles moved but he remained silent.

“Well?” said Holmes helpfully.

“I was never near the post office that afternoon, sir. I had no exeat permit. Riley must have chanced it without one, He was lucky not to be stopped and asked for it.”

“Perhaps not quite as lucky as a Captain of Boats and prefect of his year who was the last person likely to be stopped. Was he not?”

“I have nothing to say.”

“Do you not? I daresay that is very wise. We have almost done with you, Master Phillips. You will now accompany Dr Watson to your quarters. There you will produce to him the pad of permits issued to you at the start of every term. I believe each of them, when correctly completed and signed, entitles you to make a visit to the village. You did not go to the village on the Saturday in question, according to your own account. We can always ask the petty officer or master-on-duty for confirmation.”

As if he had lost the power of speech, the youth nodded.

“Good,” said Holmes encouragingly, “In that case, this term there have been two previous Saturdays and one since. Your pad of permits will be complete except for three torn off, will it not? Off you go, then. Dr Watson is waiting.”

A glance at Sovran-Phillips’s face told me that his mind was fully occupied with the absence of a fourth permit, no doubt faked for use in case of being stopped with the postal order in his pocket. Had he only had a few minutes warning of this interrogation, he might have destroyed or hidden his pad of permits or at least made up a story to explain the missing one before his mind was thrown into turmoil. But Sherlock Holmes had ambushed him pitilessly and repeatedly in every question.

There is only one description that I can give of the young Captain of Boats as we left the sanatorium. His self-confidence had been comprehensively wrecked after fifteen minutes in the presence of an accomplished cross-examiner. I caught him by the arm to steady him as he stumbled on the winding staircase that led down to the dormitories and reading rooms.

Without a word, he handed me the pad of yellow permits, from which a few had been torn off by this early stage in the summer term. We made our way back, and once again the unfortunate cadet stood before Holmes, who took the pad from me and fingered it.

“Excellent,” he said, glancing up at Sovran-Phillips. “These are your record of Saturday afternoon exeats, as I believe the word is. You have received three exeats so far, I understand, yet four permits have been used. How does that come about?”

Phillips had now recovered sufficiently to say, “A chap can easily get one wrong and have to write it again.”

At first it might have saved him, but now it was far too late for this sort of thing.

“I’m sure a chap can,” said Holmes patiently, “and you need have no fear. There will be fair play. Mr Thomas Gurrin, of the Home Office, is now retained in this case to make a full examination of all papers and documents. Even to the extent of seeing where a pencil may have pressed down to leave an indentation of its writing on the layer below—on a permit as well as a postal order. We all know, do we not, that a forgery may be traced rather than copied? So does Mr Gurrin. I feel quite sure that a chap may have every confidence in Mr Gurrin. His evidence, in one or two cases at least, has seen men hanged. A chap could not be in better hands. That will be all. Thank you.”

And so the witness, whom I can only keep describing as an unfortunate youth, was dismissed.