The Sherlock Holmes Megapack: 25 Modern Tales by Masters: 25 Modern Tales by Masters (20 page)

Andrea was a fine-looking woman who appeared to be fearlessly approaching thirty, with intelligent brown eyes set in a broad face and a head of thick, brown hair, which fell down her back to somewhere below her waist when she didn’t have it tied up in a sort of oversized bun circling her head. She was of a solid appearance and decisive character.

Her sister, “Lucy” to all who knew her, was somewhat younger and more ethereal in nature. She was a slim, golden-haired creature of mercurial moods: usually bright and confident and more than capable of handling anything the mean old world could throw at her; but on occasion dark and sullen and angry at the rest of the world for not measuring up to her standards. When one of her moods overtook her, she retired to her room and refused to see anyone until it passed, which for some reason the young men of the college found intensely romantic. She had an intense manner of gazing at you while you conversed, as though your words were the only things of importance in the world at that instant, and she felt privileged to be listening. This caused several of the underclassmen to fall instantly in love with her, as she was perhaps the first person, certainly the first woman aside from their mothers, who had ever paid serious attention to anything they said.

One of the underclassmen who was attracted by Miss Lucy’s obvious charms was Mr Sherlock Holmes. She gazed at him wide-eyed while he spoke earnestly, as young men speak, of things that I’m sure must have interested her not in the least. Was it perhaps Holmes himself who interested the pert young lady? I certainly hoped so, for his sake. Holmes had no sisters, and a man who grows up without sisters has few defences against those wiles, those innocent wiles of body, speech and motion, with which nature has provided young females in its blind desire to propagate the species.

I was not a close observer of the amorous affairs of Lucy Moys, but as far as I could see she treated all her suitors the same—neither encouraging them nor discouraging them, but enjoying their company and keeping them at a great enough distance, both physically and emotionally, to satisfy the most demanding duenna. She seemed to me to find all her young gentlemen vaguely amusing, regarding them with the sort of detachment one finds in the heroines of Oscar Wilde’s plays, to use a modern simile.

Professor Maples took the
in loco parentis
role of the teacher a bit further than most of the faculty, certainly further than I would have cared to, befriending his students, and for that matter any students who desired to be befriended, earnestly, sincerely and kindly. But then he seemed to truly care about the needs and welfare of the young men of Wexleigh.

Personally I felt that attempting to educate most of them in class and at tutorials was quite enough. For the most part they cared for nothing but sports, except for those who cared for nothing but religion, and were content to allow the sciences and mathematics to remain dark mysteries.

Maples and his wife had “at home” afternoon teas twice a month, the second and fourth Tuesdays, and quite soon these events became very popular with the students. His sister-in-law, who was invariably present, was certainly part of the reason, as was the supply of tea-cakes, scones, fruit tarts, and other assorted edibles.

I attended several of these, and was soon struck by an indefinable feeling that something was not what it seemed. I say “indefinable” because I could not put my finger on just what it was that puzzled me about the events. I did not attach too much importance to it at the time. It was only later that it seemed significant. I will try to give you a word picture of the last of these events that I attended; the last one, as it happens, before the tragedy.

It was Holmes who suggested that we attend Professor Maples’s tea that day. I had been trying to impress upon him a rudimentary understanding of the calculus, and he had demanded of me an example of some situation in which such knowledge might be of use. I outlined three problems, one from astronomy, involving the search for the planet Vulcan, said to lie inside the orbit of Mercury; one from physics, relating to determining magnetic lines of force when an electric current is applied; and one based on some thoughts of my own regarding Professor Malthus’s notions on population control.

Holmes waved them all aside. “Yes, I am sure they are very interesting in their own way,” he said, “but, frankly, they do not concern me. It does not matter to me whether the Earth goes around the Sun or the Sun goes around the Earth, as long as whichever does whatever keeps on doing it reliably.”

“You have no intellectual curiosity regarding the world around you?” I asked in some surprise.

“On the contrary,” Holmes averred. “I have an immense curiosity, but I have no more interest in the Binomial Theorem than it has in me. I feel that I must confine my curiosity to those subjects that will be of some use to me in the future. There is so much to learn on the path I have chosen that I fear that I dare not venture very far along side roads.”

“Ah!” I said. “I was not aware that you have started down your chosen road, or indeed that you have chosen a road down which to trod.”

Holmes and I were sitting in an otherwise unoccupied lecture hall, and at my words he rose and began pacing restlessly about the front of the room.

“I wouldn’t say that I have chosen the road, exactly,” he said, “to continue with this, I suppose, inescapable metaphor. But I have an idea of the direction in which I wish to travel.” He made a point of his right forefinger and thrust it forcefully in front of him. “And I feel I must carefully limit my steps to paths that go in that direction.”

“Is it that pile of erasers or the wastebasket at the end of the room at which you hope to arrive?” I asked, and then quickly raised a conciliatory hand. “No, no, I take it back. I’m glad you have formulated a goal in life, even if it doesn’t include the calculus. What is the direction of this city on a hill toward which you strive?”

Holmes glowered at me for a moment and then looked thoughtful. “It’s still slightly vague,” he told me. “I can see it in outline only. A man,” he gathered his ideas, “A man should strive to do something larger than himself. To cure disease, or eradicate hunger or poverty or crime.”

“Ah!” I said. “Noble thoughts.” I fancied that I could hear the lovely voice of Miss Lucy earnestly saying that, or something similar, to Holmes within the week. When a man is suddenly struck by noble ambitions it is usually a woman who does the striking. But I thought it would be wiser not to mention this deduction, which, at any rate, was rather tentative and not based on any hard evidence.

“It’s Professor Maples’s afternoon tea day today,” Holmes commented, “and I had thought of going.”

“Why so it is,” I said. “And so we should. And, in one last effort to interest you in the sort of detail for which you find no immediate utility, I call to your attention the shape of Lucinda Moys’ ear. Considered properly, it presents an interesting question. You should have an opportunity to observe it, perhaps even fairly closely, this afternoon.”

“Which ear?”

“Either will do.”

“What’s the matter with Miss Lucy’s ear?” Holmes demanded.

“Why, nothing. It’s a delightful ear. Well formed. Flat, rather oblate lobes. I’ve never seen another quite like it. Very attractive, if it comes to that.”

“All right, then,” Holmes said.

I closed the few books I had been using and put them in my book sack. “I hereby renounce any future attempt to teach you higher mathematics,” I told him. “I propose we adjourn and head toward the professor’s house and his tea-cakes.”

And so we did.

The Maples’s event was from three in the afternoon until s
ix in the evening, although some arrived a bit earlier, and some I believe stayed quite a bit later. The weather was surprisingly mild for mid-October, and Holmes and I arrived around half past three that day to find the professor and his household and their dozen or so guests scattered about the lawn behind the house in predictable clumps. The vice-chancellor of the university was present, relaxing in a lawn chair with a cup of tea and a plate of scones. Classical Greece was represented by Dean Herbert McCuthers, an elderly man of intense sobriety and respectability, who was at that moment rolling up his trouser legs preparatory to wading in the small artificial pond with Andrea Maples, who had removed her shoes and hoisted her skirts in a delicate balance between wet clothing and propriety.

Crisboy, the physical education instructor who roomed with the Maples, a large, muscular, and pugnacious-looking man in his late twenties, was standing in one corner of the lawn with a games coach named Faulting, a young man with the build and general appearance of one of the lithe athletes depicted by ancient Greek statuary—if you can picture a young Greek athlete clad in baggy grey flannels. The comparison was one that Faulting was well aware of, judging by his practice of posing heroically whenever he thought anyone was looking at him.

The pair of them were standing near the house swinging athletic clubs with muscular wild abandon, and discussing the finer details of last Saturday’s football match, surrounded by a bevy of admiring underclassmen. There are those students at every university who are more interested in games than education. They spend years afterward talking about this or that cricket match against their mortal foes at the next school over, or some particularly eventful football game. It never seems to bother them, or perhaps even occur to them, that they are engaged in pursuits at which a suitably trained three-year-old chimpanzee or orang-utan could best them. And, for some reason that eludes me, these men are allowed to vote and to breed. But, once again, I digress.

Maples was walking magisterially across the lawn, his grey master’s gown billowing about his fundament, his hands clasped behind him holding his walking-stick, which jutted out to his rear like a tail, followed by a gaggle of young gentlemen in their dark brown scholars’ gowns, with their mortar-boards tucked under their arms, most of them giving their professor the subtle homage of imitating his walk and his posture.

“The ideal of the university,” Maples was saying in a voice that would brook no dispute, obviously warming up to his theme, “is the Aristotelean
stadium
as filtered through the medieval monastic schools.”

He nodded to me as he reached me, and then wheeled about and headed back whence he had come, embroidering on his theme. “Those students who hungered for something more than a religious education, who perhaps wanted to learn the law, or what there was of medicine, headed toward the larger cities, where savants fit to instruct them could be found. Paris, Bologna, York, London. There the students gathered, often travelling from city to city in search of just the right teacher. After a century or two the instruction became formalized, and the schools came into official existence, receiving charters from the local monarch and perhaps from the pope.”

Maples suddenly froze in mid-step and wheeled around to face his entourage. “But make no mistake!” he enjoined them, waving his cane vigourously in front him, its duck-faced head pointing first at one student then another. “A university is not made up of its buildings, its colleges, its lecture halls, or its playing fields. No, not even its playing fields. A university is made up of the people—teachers and students—that come together in its name.
Universitas scholarium
, is how the charters read, providing for a, shall I say guild, of students. Or, as in the case of the University of Paris, a
universitas magistrorum
, a guild of teachers. So we are co-equal, you and I. Tuck your shirt more firmly into your trousers, Mr Pomfrit, you are becoming all disassembled.”

He turned and continued his journey across the greensward, his voice fading with distance. His students, no doubt impressed with their new-found equality, trotted along behind him.

Lucy Moys glided onto the lawn just then, coming through the French doors at the back of the house, bringing a fresh platter of pastries to the parasol-covered table. Behind her trotted the maid, bringing a pitcher full of steaming hot water to refill the teapot.

Sherlock Holmes left my side and wandered casually across the lawn, contriving to arrive by Miss Lucy’s side just in time to help her distribute the pastries about the table. Whether he took any special interest in her ear, I could not observe.

I acquired a cup of tea and a slice of tea-cake and assumed my accustomed role as an observer of phenomena. This has been my natural inclination for years, and I have enhanced whatever ability I began with by a conscious effort to accurately take note of what I see. I had practiced this for long enough, even then, that it had become second nature to me. I could not sit opposite a man on a railway car without, for example, noticing by his watch-fob that he was a Rosicrucian, let us say, and by the wear-marks on his left cuff that he was a note-cashier or an order clerk. A smudge of ink on his right thumb would favour the note-cashier hypothesis, while the state of his boots might show that he had not been at work that day. The note-case that he kept clutched to his body might indicate that he was transferring notes to a branch bank, or possibly that he was absconding with the bank’s funds. And so on. I go into this only to show that my observations were not made in anticipation of tragedy, but were merely the result of my fixed habit.

I walked about the lawn for the next hour or so, stopping here and there to nod hello to this student or that professor. I lingered at the edge of this group, and listened for a while to a spirited critique of Wilkie Collin’s recent novel, “The Moonstone,” and how it represented an entirely new sort of fiction. I paused by that cluster to hear a young man earnestly explicating on the good works being done by Mr William Booth and his Christian Revival Association in the slums of our larger cities. I have always distrusted earnest, pious, loud young men. If they are sincere, they’re insufferable. If they are not sincere, they’re dangerous.

I observed Andrea Maples, who had dried her feet and lowered her skirts, take a platter of pastries and wander around the lawn, offering a cruller here and a tea-cake there, whispering intimate comments to accompany the pastry. Mrs Maples had a gift for instant intimacy, for creating the illusion that you and she shared wonderful, if unimportant, secrets. She sidled by Crisboy, who was now busy leading five or six of his athletic protégés in doing push-ups, and whispered something to young Faulting, the games coach, and he laughed.