Sherlock Holmes (10 page)

On the following Saturday, Mrs Hudson drew my attention to an article in the latest edition of the
Illustrated London News
, a copy of which she had happened to purchase that morning. Written by none other than Archie Slater, it was an account of the first public demonstration of the Thinking Engine and was as biased and jaundiced a specimen of journalism as I have ever read. Slater painted a portrait of Holmes and his behaviour that day which was so inaccurate as to be justly termed a travesty. He averred that Holmes had “spluttered and frothed with indignation” when the Thinking Engine had pronounced on the case.

It would be fair to say that Mr Sherlock Holmes exhibited neither grace nor forbearance as Professor Quantock’s remarkable machine poured forth an accurate and credible solution. Rather, the venerable sleuth raged like an inmate of Bedlam, his high forehead agleam and the nostrils of his prominent, beak-like nose positively flaring. He then had the temerity to pretend that he too had arrived at the same solution, when it was obvious to everyone present that he had done no such thing and that this was a mere feint, a flagrant and desperate attempt to save face. The self-styled consulting detective had in truth been stumped, and his ignorance now stood revealed courtesy of a mechanical ‘brain’ that is clearly, in every way that counts, the superior of his.

I read on, my eyes widening in disgust and my jaw slackening in disbelief. Slater, not content with accusing Holmes of unruliness and imposture, stated that my friend had yelled caustic threats at Quantock and Lord Knaresfield before storming out. “His lack of self-restraint would seem to indicate a man at the end of his tether, who realises that his livelihood is now imperilled by the march of technology. Foolish would be the prospective client who entrusts his problems to Mr Holmes’s care when the Thinking Engine is capable of performing the same task no less efficiently and
sans
displays of arrogance and emotionality of the kind we saw last Wednesday.”

I immediately set to penning a letter of rebuttal, addressed to the newspaper’s editor and disputing Slater’s article point by point. I all but accused Slater of libel and implied that Holmes would have every right to institute legal proceedings against him. As I was sealing the envelope, however, Mrs Hudson brought up a telegram.

WATSON

BURN OUTRAGED LETTER TO ILN STOP NOTHING ACHIEVED BY SENDING IT STOP COME TO OXFORD AT FIRST OPPORTUNITY STOP

HOLMES

Again I availed myself of the service of my locum, Mukherjee, who joked that I was at risk of losing my patient list to him if I persisted in taking these leaves of absence. I also withdrew reluctantly from a rugby match scheduled for that afternoon. We, the Medics XV, were up against our arch rivals, the Silks XV, made up of barristers from the Inner Temple, but my team would just have to do without me and, despite the short notice, find another man to fill the Number Eight slot in the scrum. A higher duty called.

Holmes met me off the train at Oxford, and if he was at all discomfited by the way Slater had traduced him in print, he gave no sign. All he said, when I broached the subject, was that Slater was entitled to his interpretation of events and that the freedom of the press was sacrosanct.

“But not when it misrepresents the truth, surely,” I said.

“For now, it is no more than a distraction. Slater’s words will be forgotten soon enough.”

I had my doubts, but said nothing.

Holmes had booked me into the Randolph again, and once I had deposited my belongings there, he led me straight out to a public house not far away, the Eagle and Child on St Giles’. It was a rambling, wood-panelled establishment, and we went through to an alcove at the back known as the Rabbit Room, which formed a cosy and very private space.

Here he introduced me to Dr Merriweather, a Classics don at Magdalen College whose handshake betrayed a detectable tremor and whose overall demeanour, down to his unkempt grey hair, was that of someone labouring under considerable strain.

“Dr Merriweather contacted me yesterday,” Holmes said, “wishing to consult my advice on a personal matter of some delicacy.”

“
Great
delicacy,” said Merriweather. “Hence my proposal that we meet in a public place affording some level of anonymity, rather than in my rooms.”

We were alone in the Rabbit Room, with the door between us and the rest of the pub shut. Even so, we spoke in lowered voices so as not to be overheard by eavesdroppers.

“I am,” said the classicist, “currently the object of what I can only call a poison pen campaign. I have been receiving letters whose content is of the most scandalous nature. The sender accuses me of grievous professional misconduct and threatens to make these calumnies known to the college president, Sir Herbert Warren. That will not do at all.”

“I take it, from your use of the word calumnies, that nothing the letters say is true,” I said.

“Not one iota. The very idea! They are filled with baseless slurs only. Yet their progenitor has the power to harm me nonetheless.”

“How?”

“For an academic at Oxford, Dr Watson, reputation is all. Careers rest, sometimes precariously, on the continuing respect of one’s peers. Lose that and you lose everything. Common rooms are hotbeds of gossip, too, and college Fellows as prone to spreading scurrilous rumour as any charlady or parlourmaid. Once a whiff of impropriety adheres to one, it is hard to shake. One may as a result lose advancement, preferment, even one’s post. All it would take is my persecutor dripping his venom in the right ears, and I would be done for.”

“Who do you think it might be? A rival?”

“I do not know. It pains me to think that one of my colleagues would be so envious and resentful that he would subject me to such torment, but it is, I suppose, possible. There is always someone jockeying to take one’s post and the benefits that go with it.”

“The alternative is a disgruntled student.”

“There have been pupils who have reacted badly when I give their work a low mark. One young man in particular, the Honourable Aubrey Bancroft, was unduly upset by my response to an essay he submitted on Homeric epithets earlier in the term. It was shoddy stuff, quite the laziest thing a student of mine has ever turned in, and I castigated him accordingly. He, in return, blamed my poor teaching. We had something of a row about it, I’m afraid, to the point where I felt moved to threaten him with rustication if he did not back down and recant.”

“The Honourable,” I said. “He hails from aristocracy?”

“The younger son of Charles, thirteenth Earl of Shiplea. Minor nobility, by all accounts.”

“Minor or not, it seems young Bancroft does not take kindly to a mere commoner impugning the quality of his scholarship.”

“A very disagreeable, stuck-up sort,” Merriweather confirmed. “He was cowed, however, by the prospect of punishment, and I have not had any trouble from him since. He has, if anything, been more diligent than ever, and his work has markedly improved.”

“He may still be the one responsible for the letters. Vengeance can lurk behind a chastened smile.”

“That is all too sadly true.”

I realised that I had been doing all the talking, while Holmes had been keeping his own counsel. I turned to him now and asked, “Is there anything you’d like to add?”

“You have been conducting the investigation in such a capital manner, Watson, I was loath to intrude. I should, though, like to see the offending letters. You have of course brought them along, Dr Merriweather?”

“Of course.”

Merriweather delved into his inner jacket pocket to produce three small envelopes, which he handled in a gingerly fashion, placing them on the table in front of us as though they were as unstable as nitroglycerine.

“They were slipped under my oak in the night,” he said. By “oak” I knew him to mean the outer of the two doors of his rooms; it is a university expression, and to “sport one’s oak” means to keep that door shut as a sign to discourage unwanted visitors. “The first appeared a fortnight ago, the second ten days after that, the third the day before yesterday. I don’t know if the timings are a useful detail.”

“No details are useless,” said Holmes. “Some are less relevant than others, that is all.”

“I live on a staircase on Magdalen’s Great Quad – ground-floor accommodation, as is customary for dons. The staircase entrances line the cloisters and are accessible to anyone, so at night-time, under cover of darkness, the culprit would have been able to dart in, deliver the letter and dart out with little risk of being spotted.”

“Unless he lived on the same staircase himself, meaning he would only have to creep down and back and it is even less likely that anyone would have seen him.”

“That is so, yet I do not share the staircase with any of my own pupils. The students who live on the two floors above count no Classics men amongst their number.”

“That does not necessarily preclude them from guilt. And Bancroft?”

“His rooms are also on the quad, on the opposite side from mine.”

“Very well. Now then, let’s see what we have here.” Holmes took the topmost of the envelopes and fished out the letter from inside. “This is the first of them, I presume?”

Merriweather nodded.

“Generic notepaper,” Holmes said. “Twenty-pound bond. Cotton content. Cockle finish.” He held it up to the window. “Conqueror watermark. Manufactured by Wiggins Teape. All of which tells us nothing, alas. It could have been purchased at just about any high-street stationers.”

He applied himself to examining the letter’s short piece of handwritten text. I read it over his shoulder.

MERRIWEATHER, YOU PIFLLING PERNACIOUS FOP, YOU DO NOT DESERVE THE EASE AND BARM THAT LIFE HAS BROUGHT YOU. YOUR DOCTORATE WAS OBTAENED BY FRAWD, YOUR THESIS AN ACT OF PLAGIARIZM. I WILL EXPOSE YOU.

“This cannot be the handiwork of an educated man,” I averred. “The numerous misspellings suggest poor schooling and literacy. That surely rules out any Oxford man, doctor – students, your fellow academics, Bancroft himself.”

“So I assumed,” said Merriweather. “Yet it has occurred to me that that could be precisely what the sender wishes me to think. He is feigning a low level of mentality in order to deflect suspicion.”

“Holmes? Your view? Any inklings?”

But Holmes was already engrossed with the second letter.

REFLEKT ON YOUR MANY FEILINGS, MERRIWEATHER. YOU HAVE NOT EANNED YOUR PUSITION ON MERIT. I AM TAUKING OF YOOR PROPENSITY FOR BLATANT BLANDICHMENT AND BOOT-LICKING.

“Our letter writer has a penchant for alliteration, I’ll give him that,” I said. “What does his use of capitalisation signify, I wonder.”

I was prompting Holmes for an opinion, but he offered none. Instead, having perused the second letter for some minutes, he turned his attention to the third, which was the longest of them all.

YOU ARE IMFAMOUS FOR TREETING SOME OF YOUR PUPILS MORE FORGIFINGLY THAN OTHERS. YOU HAVE SUPPLYED THEM CONCISTENTLY WITH HIGH MARKS WHICH INCREASE THE MORE THEY COMBLIMENT AND FLATTER YOU. YOU HAVE FOREWARNED THEM OF THE QUESTIONS THEY WILL BE FOWCED TO CONFRONT IN THEIR EXOMS. THE PARSIALITY AND FAVOORITISM YOU SHOW ARE ENBARRASINGLY OBVIOUS. DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM NOW? OF THE MANY EXCEPTIONAL CHARACTERS THAT STAND BEFORE YOU, MINE SHOULD NOT BE TOO DIFFICULT TO SINGLE OUT CORRECTLY.

“He has grown in confidence with this one,” I said. “He is taunting you in a whole new way, Dr Merriweather. Not content with insulting and denigrating, he is inviting you to guess his identity. Clearly he is familiar to you, an acquaintance of some sort. The final sentence admits it. ‘Of the many exceptional characters that stand before you…’ He is someone who has been in your presence more than once.”

“I have drawn a similar conclusion,” said Merriweather. “But a goodly number of people, exceptional or otherwise, might be said to ‘stand before’ me in the normal course of my duties. Stand in my rooms awaiting my assessment of an essay. Stand in the dining hall as I and the other faculty members walk past in procession to reach the high table. Stand in the college chapel for the singing of hymns at Sunday service. Magdalen comprises a student body of some two hundred. Faculty and ancillary staff add a few dozen to that total. Far from narrowing down the list of suspects, the ‘characters’ reference would seem to widen it to include just about the entire college.”

“Do any of the accusations hit home? I’m not suggesting that they’re true, but do any of them strike you as the sort of opinion one particular individual might hold about you?”

Merriweather shook his head vehemently. “I cannot believe I have given anyone grounds even to suspect me of such actions. I have always endeavoured to comport myself with dignity and integrity in every aspect of my life. I have never plagiarised. I have licked no one’s boots – vile expression. I have never consciously shown favouritism, nor would I ever facilitate cheating in an exam. I prize
virtus
above everything. Do you know what that is? It is the Ancient Roman concept of virtue, encompassing the attributes of courage, honesty and worth. These should apply not just in one’s private practices but in one’s public dealings. For the Romans,
virtus
was gained through both illustrious deeds and proper conduct. I have written a paper on it, focusing on the writings of Sallust and Cicero, both of whom expounded on it at great length, and it is a philosophy that has, I hope, shaped my own nature.”

“It is almost as though your epistolary abuser knows that and is using it against you.”

“He could not wound me better than by aiming his malicious arrows at the values I hold dearest.”

Holmes, who had been busy going over all the three letters once again, at last looked up and spoke.

“You are both of you missing what lies plainly before you,” said he. “The culprit has identified himself by name in these letters.”

“He has?” said Merriweather and I in unison.

“Moreover, in a manner specifically designed for you to interpret, Dr Merriweather.”

“I am at a loss to see how.”

Holmes’s grey eyes danced with delight. “Allow me to illuminate.”