Sherlock Holmes (11 page)

“The misspellings,” Holmes said, “give the superficial impression that the sender of the letters is not a cultured, erudite man. Yet that impression is patently erroneous. Would an illiterate employ words such as ‘pernicious’ and ‘plagiarism’? Regardless of how inaccurately he has spelled them, they are long and complex words. Similarly, the syntax of the sentences is anything but straightforward.

“Further to that, the misspellings themselves are inconsistent. Our poison pen friend gets ‘your’ right every time except once in the second letter when he uses two
o
’s in place of
o-u
. A simple monosyllable is normally no problem for him but defeats him on one occasion? I find that hard to swallow.

“And who would write ‘earned’ as ‘eanned’? It is not as though the latter sounds like the former when said aloud. The same goes for ‘fowced’. Misspellings tend to be phonetic. He would far more likely write ‘forced’ with an
s
instead of the
c
or perhaps with a
u
inserted between the
o
and the
r
.

“In all, it seems rather contrived, does it not? As if the misspellings are there to serve some specific, deliberate function. That was the view I took, at any rate, as I read through the letters, and the closing sentence of the third confirmed it for me. The word ‘characters’, after all, does not simply mean people or personalities. It also, in a more literal sense, refers to a letter of the alphabet or symbol, written or printed. Many such
exceptional
characters stand before us on these pages. If, as instructed, we single them out correctly – by which I mean extract the letter which should appear in each misspelled word were that word spelled as it ought to be – we derive a series of characters.”

“You’re saying the letters have some sort of cryptic cipher embedded in them?” I said.

“That is exactly what I am saying.” Holmes produced a fountain pen and a small notebook and began to write. “It should be an
f
rather than an
l
to make ‘piffling’. ‘Pernicious’ has an
i
as its second vowel, not an
a
. ‘Balm’ is spelled with an
l
.”

He continued in this fashion until he had written down a line of letters:

FILIUSCAROLUSNAVISPRATUM

This he divided up into four separate words using diagonal strokes:

FILIUS/CAROLUS/NAVIS/PRATUM

“Now then, Dr Merriweather,” he said. “That looks like Latin to me, but my schoolboy knowledge of the language is a tad rusty. Would you be so good as to translate?”

“
Filius
means son,” said Merriweather. “
Carolus
– that’s medieval Latin for Charles.
Navis
is ship,
partum
meadow. My God!”

“Yes. The letters’ author has named himself. The son of Charles, Earl of Shiplea. Lea and meadow are synonymous, of course.”

“Bancroft,” I said. “He is the guilty party after all.”

“The impertinent whelp!” Merriweather exclaimed.

“It is quite a clever trick,” said Holmes. “The first word is concealed within the first letter, the second within the second, and the last two words, which effectively make up a single word, within the third. Together they form a signature in a dead tongue with which you, Dr Merriweather, are intimately familiar.”

“As though he is further mocking me.”

“The use of capitals is an authentic touch, since that is how the Romans themselves wrote their texts.”

“And yet the grammar is deficient.
Carolus
,
navis
and
partum
are all in the nominative case but ought to be in the genitive: ‘the son
of
…’ That is typical of Bancroft. He is hopeless on his declensions. I am forever marking him down in his Latin compositions, and his Greek, on that front. To be honest, Bancroft is one of the worst students I have ever had the misfortune to teach. He barely scraped a Third in his Honour Moderations and I do not expect big things from him in his Greats either.”

“How does he come to have a place at Oxford at all?” I said.

“That is one of the mysteries of life – although it may have something to do with the generous sum his father, himself a Magdalen alumnus, has pledged towards the refurbishment of the library roof. I was rather prevailed upon by my head of department to accept the son for matriculation, when his Oxbridge entrance exam papers suggested he has no great aptitude for Classics nor the kind of first-class brain we look for here. Money, alas, so often trumps ability.”

“Now, at least, Bancroft has sabotaged himself. He surely cannot stay on at Oxford after this. You need only present your President with the evidence which Holmes has revealed, and Bancroft will be sent down in disgrace.”

Merriweather looked very satisfied at the prospect. “I should not be sad to see him go.”

Holmes held up a hand. “Let us not be too hasty. I think it only right that we confront Bancroft first before condemning him. Who is to say that the coded signature isn’t itself a piece of misdirection?”

“Someone else sent the letters,” said Merriweather, “and is trying to pin the blame on Bancroft?”

“It is a possibility that should not be discounted. I doubt your fractious relationship with him is a secret within the college. Who better to make a scapegoat for this malfeasance than a pupil of yours with a known antipathy towards you? Watson, you and I shall pursue this further at Magdalen. Dr Merriweather, I suggest you do not come with us. To be seen at the college in the company of Sherlock Holmes may lead people there to wonder why you might need me, and that runs the risk of exposing a problem you would rather did not become common knowledge. I shall do all I can to preserve your anonymity. With luck, we shall manage to resolve this matter in such a way that your
virtus
remains intact.”

Magdalen College proved to be one of the most beautiful places I have encountered, more like a stately home than a seat of learning. It was a symphony of battlemented walls, Gothic and medieval architecture, and long sweeping elevations, all built of warm Cotswold stone and set within extensive grounds through which the River Cherwell, a tributary of the Isis, ran in several divergent channels like the marbling of fat in a side of fine beef. It boasted an imposing bell tower, tree-lined walks, and even a deer park whose expanses of grass were empurpled by spring fritillaries and being nibbled by a small herd of fallow deer.

Getting into this academic Arcadia was, perhaps predictably, not easy. At the Porters’ Lodge, the college’s main entrance on the High Street, Holmes and I were soundly rebuffed. In no uncertain terms the porter told us that as we were neither Fellows nor students, we were not permitted onto the property, not without express invitation, preferably a letter of introduction. In the absence of that, we could not take one step further, and if we tried he would summon a Bulldog, a member of the university’s private police force, and have us forcibly evicted.

Holmes took the setback in good spirit. “There is more than one way to skin this cat, Watson,” he said as we beat our retreat. “I have spent much of the time since we last saw one another familiarising myself with the layout of the city by means of long exploratory walks. I am aware that I am out of my customary milieu, and it pays to know the local terrain. The majority of the colleges in Oxford are like castles, walled and gated, their entry points manned, but Magdalen’s borders are somewhat more porous. Be warned, however. We are going to get our feet wet.”

And so we did, taking a convoluted route that entailed trudging through damp swampy meadows and a shallow stream until finally we emerged in a gardened area somewhere at the back of the college. It was then a relatively simple matter to navigate our way to the Great Quad. Holmes insisted that while on the college property we must act as though we belonged, so as not to arouse suspicion and draw attention to the fact that we were trespassers, and to that end he affected a confident, strutting air which I did my best to emulate. My squelching shoes and sodden trouser cuffs made it more difficult than one might suppose. We did attract inquisitive glances from some of the people we passed, but Holmes simply touched a finger to the brim of his hat and bade them good day in such a charming and disarming fashion that their curiosity was assuaged.

“The key to duplicity,” he confided to me, “is not to act furtively in any way, and the means to achieving that is to adopt a role and believe in it. Right now, for instance, I am a visiting ecclesiologist, here to study fifteenth-century liturgical texts kept at the Bodleian Library. If confronted, I shall say precisely that, and quote such titles as
The Whetenal Psalter
and
The Closworth Missal
. My tone will be polite but pious, like that of a rural vicar. I doubt anyone will argue.”

“And what if you are recognised as Sherlock Holmes?”

“Then my fame, such as it is, will be my armour.”

In the event, he was not called upon either to deploy his thespian skills or to exploit his celebrity, and we reached our destination unchallenged. The Great Quad’s ivy-wreathed cloisters circumvallated a large, immaculate lawn. Atop the buttresses perched a series of stone figures which ranged from the representational – a hippopotamus, a greyhound, a jester – to the grotesque, the latter category including gargoyles and miscellaneous unclassifiable monsters. Holmes informed me that these statues were known at Magdalen as “hieroglyphicals” and were alleged to represent the virtues which students should seek to embody and the vices they should strive to avoid.

“So now we shall ascertain whether or not Aubrey Bancroft has absorbed a moral lesson from his surroundings,” he said.

Names painted on boards outside the entrance to each staircase identified the residents therein. The young aristocrat was at home and opened the door to Holmes’s knock with alacrity. A bottle of champagne hung from his hand, and his face was flushed.

“About time you turned up with that extra booze. This one’s nearly… Oh. Who are you?”

“I am—” Holmes began.

“Don’t care,” said Bancroft. “Stopped caring three seconds ago. Goodbye.”

He swung the door shut, only to find Holmes’s foot interposed between it and the jamb.

“What the devil? How dare you. Remove your foot at once, sir, or you will answer for it.”

“I would advise you, young man, to listen closely to what I have to say and heed it well,” Holmes intoned in a voice that brooked no demurral. “A great deal depends on what you tell me during the next few minutes, not least your future at Oxford. There is also a fair chance that your life is in danger.”

“Is that a threat? Do you know who I am?”

“I am not threatening you and I am not your enemy. If, however, you are in cahoots with someone, a person who has inveigled you into committing a misdemeanour against your tutor Dr Merriweather, then it is possible you may not live to rue your involvement in his schemes. Do I have your attention now?”

The inebriated Bancroft sobered up somewhat at that. “You’re serious.”

“Deadly so.”

“You had better come in then.”

His lodgings were disorderly. Sundry items of clothing and sports equipment were strewn on the floor, books were stacked in teetering piles, and empty bottles cluttered up corners. I found myself thinking that we were in the presence of someone no less dissolute than Nahum Grainger but, unlike that menial, so cushioned by family wealth that such a lifestyle was readily sustainable and even carried a weird sort of glamorousness. He could afford, in every sense, to fritter his days away in indolence and debauchery. As the younger son of the Earl of Shiplea, he would not even have to shoulder the responsibilities of the hereditary title upon his father’s death. Those would fall to his older brother. His own future was a horizon of hazy, cloudless blue.

Catching my disapproving gaze, he said, “Bit of a mess, I appreciate. My ‘scout’ despairs of me. I pay him extra not to bother tidying up. It’s such a nuisance to have someone busybodying around during the day when I am trying to work or… other things.” He smirked, as though the “other things” referred to were clearly pursuits of more importance to him than any intellectual labour. “So what are your names, gents? And to what do I owe the honour of your visit? What is so important that you have come barging in on a man when he’s making the most of an idle Saturday afternoon?”

Holmes introduced us, and Bancroft affected disdain.

“Ah yes, the detective fellow and his doctor friend. I’ve heard of you. Pals of mine follow your adventures avidly. Me, I prefer a bit more derring-do in a story. Kipling – now he can spin a yarn. And the Raffles tales by that Hornung chap, they’re jolly fun.”

“Those are fiction,” I pointed out. “I trade in reportage.”

“Highly fictionalised reportage,” Holmes interjected.

“Reportage sprinkled with a dressing of fictionality,” I rejoined, “to make it more easily palatable.”

Bancroft gave a rather odd twitch of the head, then swigged from the neck of the champagne bottle, upending it to shake the last few drops down his gullet. “So, am I to feature in one of your next offerings, Dr Watson? I daresay I would buy that issue of
The Strand
, in order to see my name in print.”

“You realise you are in some considerable trouble, don’t you?” Holmes said, holding up the three letters in their envelopes, which Merriweather had permitted him to take with him.

“For those things? The letters I sent to mimsy old Merriweather? I don’t think so. Just a spot of harmless fun. The silly beggar had it coming. Rusticate me?
Me
?” Bancroft twitched his head again – some kind of involuntary spasm, as it seemed to my eyes. Perhaps an idiosyncratic reaction to alcohol, I thought. “Never happen. Pater would never allow it. Does Magdalen want its library roof fixed or not?”