Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly

9

Spithead fell behind us as the paddles of the steamer Ryde cut the calm evening water with late sunlight on the grey battleship hulls and dock cranes of Portsmouth ahead. Holmes drew the pipe from his pocket and began to fill it from his pouch. Faced by his deductive power, small wonder that the venomous Sovran-Phillips should have crumpled before our eyes that morning. By tea-time, Sherlock Holmes had been only too pleased to be quit of what he called the spite and snobbery of St Vincent’s.

“I would remind you of the first article of our creed,” he said casually. “What matters in this life is not what you can do but what you can make people think you can do. In the case of Sovran-Phillips that equation was not difficult. He was bowled middle stump, was he not?”

“The linesman’s hut was never searched?”

“Sovran-Phillips enticed Patrick Riley there in the knowledge that Winter would be watching. Phillips did not intend that he himself should be seen. But then he did not intend that a railway engine should be brought to a halt by Riley standing in front of it!”

The breath of a seagull’s wing, diving for a catch, caught both our faces.

“Phillips feared that Riley’s goose was not quite cooked by the theft alone,” Holmes said. “That is what this is all about. Suspicion was strong but not absolute. Suppose, however, that Riley should be seen by Winter on that Sunday afternoon near the hut or, better still, entering it. Suppose that the hut should then be inspected and the money—or an equivalent sum—found there.”

“Proceedings which were interrupted by the stopping train from Bradstone.”

“Indeed. And circumstances arose which enabled Phillips to embroider a story of Riley waiting to throw himself under the wheels of the engine. A situation which also gave welcome support to Winter’s judgement of the boy. It has been evident to me from an early point in our case, Watson, that this had little to do with a stolen postal order. That was the means to an end. Ten shillings and sixpence, though always welcome, is hardly worth risking the rest of one’s career for, unless one is a pathological thief and liar. Patrick Riley is no such thing. Sovran-Phillips is a repulsive piece of work but also an ambitious one.”

“The Admiral’s Nomination?”

“Precisely. Imagine this son of a prestigious naval family, with a cruiser captain for a step-brother, and an admiral lurking in the ancestral shadows. He regards a Nomination as his birthright. The money is nothing to him, it is the prestige. The racing start that it would give to a chap’s career. There is only one Nomination for each year at St Vincent’s.”

“And would he not get it?”

“I am sure Reginald Winter would dearly love him to. His report, as headmaster, would say so. Term prefect and Captain of Boats, like his brother before him. Cricket, boxing, football. The irony is that he might have got a Nomination in any case. But then there was Patrick Riley. No naval influence, father a bank clerk, a starveling, as they call it. Obliged to win his way by brains or talent. A rather lonely boy whose so-called friends easily turned against him. Organised bully-ragging might break him—and bully-ragging is not discouraged by the likes of Winter, who regards it as character-building. A plausible charge of theft, even if not fully proved, would put him out of the running. By taking his hope of preferment, that also might break him. Confidential dismissal.”

“After all,” I said, “he would not go to prison, merely to professional disgrace in the Royal Navy. There he would always be the boy accused of stealing the postal order.”

“Precisely. Sovran-Phillips and his kind have influence. But the likes of Jackie Fisher value brains and talent. Suppose influence should fail. Riley was the one boy whose mind and enthusiasms could beat Sovran-Phillips—or so Phillips thought. Even Reginald Winter might not be able to save his favourite Ocean Swell.”

The little pieces formed their pattern as we took dinner in the Pullman car of the express from Portsmouth to Waterloo.

How easily Phillips might purloin a braided jacket for half an hour and a pair of glasses from the locker of a boy who wore them. How easily he could provide himself with an exeat permit of his own devising. The impress of the last one issued would be on the thin paper of his pad. Only the master’s initials need be traced. But who would challenge the captain of his year or do more than glance at the exeat? Tracing over Porson’s permit and the boy’s signature, the indentation would be left upon the postal order. He had only to follow this impress at the post office counter. Riley’s game with Porson and the “exchange” of signatures had been nothing but a joke and no more than amateur copying. It was Sovran-Phillips who had proved to be the professional thief.

We were later informed that Sovran-Phillips had left St Vincent’s as soon as his bags could be packed. This did not surprise me. Even when I escorted him to get his pad of exeat permits, I thought he might bolt there and then, out of the nearest door. It was said that he left school on medical advice, consequent on contracting a nervous fever. No proceedings were taken against him. With his departure, it was possible for Reginald Winter to inform the governors that the case had been fully investigated and no boy at his school was involved in it. The money had been found abandoned near the school grounds and restored to its owner.

Their lordships of the Admiralty discontinued their licencing of St Vincent’s. Its numbers declined until it ceased to be a school of any kind. The final terms were transferred to Dartmouth or Osborne as age and examination performance permitted. The buildings were purchased by the government and converted into a naval hospital serving Gosport and Portsmouth. Sherlock Holmes received each successive announcement in the Morning Post with a shout of derisive laughter at the preposterous evasions by the authorities.

“My dear Watson! This whole affair will have saved more faces than the Day of Judgement!”

Patrick Riley remained at the school only long enough to take the July examinations, in which he distinguished himself. After a meeting between Sherlock Holmes and his brother Mycroft, the boy transferred to Dartmouth for his remaining year as a junior and his entire senior cadetship. We were subsequently informed that he had passed out with distinction as a Royal Navy lieutenant at eighteen years old, in time to serve during the final year of the Great War.

Considerations of money had at first barred his way. His examinations at fourteen produced distinctions in mathematics and navigation, history and algebra. An essay on Athenian naval tactics at the battle of Salamis in 480 B.C. caused our friend Professor Strachan-Davidson to incline his head approvingly. Yet despite these distinctions, the boy had not been supported by Reginald Winter in his bid for an Admiral’s Nomination. Happily, he received this preferment directly from Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Fisher without reference to the headmaster. Sherlock Holmes would take no other fee for his advice in the case.