Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly

3

“Hardly the companion I should choose for a walking tour or a reading party,” I said, as we crossed the playing field towards a gate in the hedge and moved out of earshot of the buildings.

Holmes gave a quiet snort.

“A shabby fellow. An exceptionally nasty piece of work. The last person whom I would put in charge of children. Fortunately for our client, as I think Patrick Riley must now be called, Winter has made a strategic error. He would dearly love to massage the tale of attempted suicide into a confession of guilt. That would end the matter. He is too stupid or perverse to see that it is his weakest spot. It is where I believe we shall find the loose thread that unravels this entire conspiracy.”

“Conspiracy?”

“What else? There is far more to this than Winter’s obvious defects of character.”

The so-called School Field, which was not strictly part of the grounds, was rough going, with chalk under a few inches of soil. It looked useless for crops or pasture, or indeed for anything else. The grass grew in brief, uneven tufts, and the broad path was something like a disused cart-track.

To judge from the present state of the earth, the rain that had spoilt so many cricket matches in the northern and eastern counties last week had probably cleared the Isle of Wight a day or two earlier. Patterns of footsteps left on the muddy surface the previous Sunday had accordingly been dried and hardened by a steady south-westerly breeze from the English Channel. Among these prints must surely be those of Patrick Riley and, indeed, whatever so-called witnesses there may have been. If Reginald Winter’s order putting the field out of bounds had been obeyed, as I felt sure it would have been, the latest prints must necessarily have been preserved for a few days.

We walked almost half-way across the field, following the track, before Holmes stopped and surveyed the path ahead. It is necessarily true that more people will cross the first half of a field than the whole of it. Where we were standing, there were three prominent sets of prints which were continuous and a number of others which appeared from time to time on the track, as though someone had been walking at first on the grass but occasionally on the path. My companion stood there for a moment, staring down at these foot patterns. He looked up.

“I believe, Watson, that we have found our man, if Patrick Riley is he. Boys, being boys, will amble about all over the place, mostly on the grass of the field. But imagine that you were running to reach a particular destination on the far side of the field as quickly as you could, and that the surface was still damp from rain. You would, I think, prefer to follow the firmer ground and straighter line of the path. Would you not?”

“As you say.”

“It is so obviously the best way that while you were running you would hardly think about it. It is what you would do by instinct. In any case, if you were in such a hurry that it was necessary to run, then wet grass on either side would slow you down. Now then, you will see there are footsteps here which I have been following from a little way back.”

He paused, turned round the way we had come and then swung round again.

“See here. The length of the stride suggests the height. The depth of the impression in damp earth indicates the weight or build. What I have found is evidence of a lightly-built boy, about five feet six inches in height. At first, just for a little, the soles and heels of his shoes were equally printed, therefore he was walking. I have noticed several similar tracks, but his is consistent and therefore presumably the one we want. You see it here?”

I looked at the print of a business-like sole and heel, the plain uniform shoe of so many schools and colleges. At this point, however, the print of the heel was hardly visible and all the weight seemed to be on the toes. To me the stride appeared longer than that of a boy who was five feet six inches in height. In company with Sherlock Holmes, the explanation was obvious.

“By the time he got here, he had started running!”

“Indeed he had. Of course, there is nothing remarkable in that. Boys of his age, when they have leisure, are normally lazy. But they will run a few steps or a few yards in a game. However, ask yourself how many would run alone the width of a large field, almost start to finish, in a Sunday suit for no good reason. Everything here invites a stroll, not a run. According to the evidence, only Patrick Riley was seen to run towards the railway embankment last Sunday afternoon. See for yourself. There are no continuous running prints but these.”

He stopped again and glanced up at the light cloud veiling the pale Solent sky. I took the chance to intervene.

“That hardly tells us more than we knew already.”

“You think not? I believe it tells us a good deal more. Let us enumerate the details. So far, we were merely informed that he ran across the field. The foolish and improbable suggestion was an intent to throw himself under a train. It was not suggested, for example, that he was running away from pursuers or that he wished to avoid surveillance. If that was the case, his fear would not be that he might be late for the train which was going to kill him but that he wanted to avoid being seen or captured.”

Having demolished the theory of suicide for Winter’s benefit, Holmes now sought to replace it.

“I don’t entirely follow you,” I said.

“Just here, old fellow, there are two prints made by the boy who was running—whom we shall assume was Riley. They are the only ones so far that do not point forwards. The right foot is at a right angle from the path. The left foot also points right at a lesser angle. Now see here. Stand with your feet exactly where the prints are. It will not matter if you disturb the earth. You see? As you stand now, the slightest movement of your head or torso gives you a full view of the field behind you on your right. And a few yards further on our fugitive does it again—this time to the left.”

“But why?”

“Perhaps, like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, ‘he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread.’ Or simply because he was looking out for someone who might be behind him—or ahead of him.”

As we walked on, the same “turning prints” occurred more frequently to right and left, as if our fugitive indeed watched for pursuers gaining upon him or sought for friends.

The path on the far side of the field reached the so-called fence, a few strands of wire stretching along waist-high posts. It would have stopped no one. On the other side the slope went up roughly trodden steps to the top of the railway embankment. We stood by the linesman’s hut and gazed towards the black mouth of the tunnel. Looking back, it was also clear that without realising it we had been climbing a slope as we crossed the field.

“Most interesting,” said Sherlock Holmes quietly. “Most, most interesting.”

He knelt and made careful measurements of the final imprints of the shoes, as well as mapping the characteristic pattern and blemishes of the sole and heel. Then I supposed we were about to walk back to St Vincent’s, but he had not quite finished.

“There is something more, Watson. I cannot quite put my finger on it—call it intuition. I daresay it comes from not liking Mr Reginald Winter. Even on so short an acquaintance.”

“You would hardly need an instinct to persuade you of that!”

“He is further involved in this than we believed. Why is it so important to him that Riley should have been thought to attempt suicide? You would suppose he might be pleased to discover it was not so. No matter for the moment. Do you notice a pond in line of sight from here?”

“I cannot see water anywhere. Why?”

“Ponds are generally surrounded by trees, which they naturally nourish. The trees are very often ash and elder or species that grow quite densely. As a result, quiet corners are provided for concealment, a useful shelter for observation. I have once or twice made use of them myself.”

We skirted the field. In its furthest corner from which the ground sloped a little, we found what Holmes had looked for. It was no surprise in such a place. This pond, looking back along the track, was not more than eight or ten feet across, the result of a small spring, its surrounding foliage hardly more than an extension of the hedge which ran up to the railway bank on that side. The marshy ground would accommodate no more than two or three people. Bushes and saplings were packed thick enough to conceal whoever might be there, except from a deliberate search. Even this was unlikely to happen without warning, given the view of the approaches, visible between twigs and leaves. Because it was the remotest corner of the field, it was in any case the least likely to attract attention. The immediate view in that direction was along the railway line. It occurred to me that so long as a train was passing—or standing still at this point—the view of the linesman’s hut would be briefly obscured.

We pulled aside two branches and soon stood in this overgrown space. It would have made an admirable hide for wildfowlers. The flowering elder provided excellent cover. My friend interested himself in the soil around us. Presently, his agile back curved as he swooped upon his prey.

“Rather as I supposed,” he said with a contented sigh.

Taking his magnifying lens from his waistcoat pocket, he unfolded it and stooped again to examine two or three square feet of bare earth, still tacky in the warmer weather. Even without a glass I could see clearly that half-a-dozen matchsticks had been trodden into the ground. But Holmes was examining something I should have missed. In two places close together was the dottle from the bowl of a pipe, which someone had knocked out in order to refill it. Whoever it was had also spat several times on the soil.

“It seems that he stayed long enough to finish one pipe, light and smoke another, then knock that out as well before he left,” I said enthusiastically.

Holmes straightened up.

“The number of matches may be more significant. If you look about you, this is far the best cover for a man to strike matches on a windy day. There is nowhere else. Even lower down in the lee of the railway embankment you could not do it with a south-westerly blowing half a gale.”

“Not Reginald Winter,” I said, “He has a study to smoke in. More likely it was one or two of the boys taking shelter here for an illegal smoke.”

He shook his head.

“Dear old Watson, you have such an eye for the obvious! I am quite sure that the boys of St Vincent’s stunt their growth by furtive smoking as surely as in any other school. However, I suggest that they are a little young for pipes. In any case, a packet of cigarettes is so much easier to conceal than a pipe with its cleaner, pouch of tobacco and all the rest of the paraphernalia.”

I looked at the ground again.

“Why should Winter come here?”

Holmes chuckled.

“The answer to that question will illuminate a good deal—when we find it. What we have here is a man alone. He takes shelter, knocks out his pipe and refills it. He smokes it through and knocks it out again. He must have passed some time here—half an hour I daresay. I suggest he can only have been here as a spy.”

“When did he do it?” I asked, “That may tell us whether he was a spy or not!”

Holmes looked about him.

“Even concealed by these bushes, it takes him several attempts on that windy day to strike a match and light his pipe. See for yourself. Of the six matches lying there, four have burnt only at the tip because they were blown out at once. Only one has burnt far enough down its length to be effective in lighting a pipe. During the time he was here, the casual movements of his feet trod four of the matches into damp earth. I also observe that our smoker spat several times. It is a frequent accompaniment to the lighting of a pipe filled with strong tobacco. On Mr Winter’s mantelpiece you may have noticed an unopened packet of strong Old Glory Navy Cut. Many smokers use shag, but they are veterans rather than schoolboys.”

“All of which does not put Reginald Winter here on Sunday afternoon.”

“Quite true. It is John Fisher who does that, without knowing it. Before he left us yesterday I asked him to supply me with a copy of Admiralty weather station reports for the past week from coastal stations between Plymouth and Dover. They arrived by first post this morning. Dame Fortune has placed a coastal station at Osborne Royal Naval College. It is about a dozen miles north of here as the crow flies. The weather last week produced light but constant rain. A force five wind from the Western Approaches picked up at noon on Sunday and blew until the small hours of Monday morning. Since then the reports record dry and mild weather with a light southwest wind.”

“In other words, the usual climate for May.”

“I daresay. But if that evidence is to be trusted, it restricts our smoker’s occupation of this place to Sunday afternoon or evening. The boys are permitted to walk across the field on Sunday afternoon but you may be sure they and their headmaster are at chapel on Sunday evening. If Winter was here, I have no doubt he was spying on them. Perhaps to catch them meeting or talking to those whom they should not meet or talk to. I have scanned the regulations that Fisher was also good enough to supply. Any word spoken to a female of whatever age or station during these strolls is a grievous offence. So is breaking bounds beyond the limits set for a walk. I imagine it gladdens Winter’s heart to catch a handful of culprits for his delectation.”

Having met the man, I had no difficulty in accepting this analysis of his character.

“Yet if he was here when Riley made his famous run,” I said, “why has he never mentioned it?”

“Precisely. Unless my instincts deceive me, he was not spying on his boys—just one boy. It was Patrick Riley, who had ventured out of the sanatorium for some reason of his own. I am entirely satisfied that the lad was not contemplating suicide. Far more likely he was attempting to meet someone. Winter would give a good deal to know who—and for what purpose. And so would I.”

I thought about this for scarcely a moment before saying,

“It can’t see it, Holmes. Whether Riley was hoping to meet someone—or even commit suicide—how could Reginald Winter know in advance? As I understand it, the boy was incommunicado and he would hardly tell Winter himself. Unless he was there by pure fluke, Winter would not know what time to take up watch or even where.”

“Winter does not strike me as a man who does anything by a fluke.”

“Well, there you are. Even if he knew Riley had slipped away from the sanatorium and was running across the field, it would be far too late and much too obvious to start running after him. Winter could only spy on him at the railway bank by being in place here before him. And he could not do that unless he knew which way he was going to run and when he was going to do it. There is a hopeless inconsistency.”

“No, my dear fellow, what lies at the heart of this is a mystery. It is an article of faith in our detective agency that all mysteries have a solution.”

He was looking back towards the stretch of line running on its embankment. If anyone was going to spy, I thought, this was certainly the place from which to do it.

“We had best be getting back,” I said.

But he was still looking about him in this little enclosure. I had no idea what else he expected to find, nor, I think, did he. Presently he chuckled, relaxed and took out his pocket-knife. He was staring at an elder branch, or rather what remained of it. Someone had cut through it at a point where it was the thickness of a large thumb. The cut was recent, to judge by the light colour of the exposed wood. It suggested to me that a walker had improvised a stick for himself, perhaps in the muddy weather. The absence of wood shavings indicated that the stick had been cut to size from the bush without any immediate need for trimming or shaping.

“Goodness knows how many boys cut sticks and whittle them,” I said sceptically.

He opened his pocket-knife and cut a further length of the sapling, no more than three inches, for what good that would do. He slipped the cutting into his pocket, closed his knife and we began to walk back. Perhaps evidence of a kind against Winter had begun to accumulate in that cold rational brain. But evidence of what?

I thought we were going to walk back the way we had come, but Holmes set off on a path behind the hedge. This was parallel to the School Field though concealed from it. At the far end, a small iron gate opened into a domestic “chicken field” where St Vincent’s grew its vegetables. A further gate let us into an enclosed lawn whose door was evidently the headmaster’s direct entrance to his own quarters. A hand-bell had rung and it seemed that the “cadets” were now released from their classes. They were curiously dressed, like child sailors in their blue uniforms. A few wore a grey, braided edging to the lapels and the hems of their “Engineer” jackets.

In the corridor on which Winter’s study was located Holmes stopped again, as if to check his appearance in the hall-stand mirror, a vanity he seldom indulged. No one who saw him would have thought twice about what he was doing. Unobtrusively, he slipped his left hand into his pocket and withdrew the three-inch cutting of the elder branch. His right hand moved cautiously over the umbrella stand. Presently he relaxed and drew out a freshly-cut stick.

“I must confess that I noticed this when we came out, Watson. I have been looking for its partner ever since.”

He turned it over and joined to its end the three-inch cutting he had taken from his pocket.

It was, of course, a perfect fit.