“Hardly surprising under the circumstances,” I suggested.
“The identification was in what they call the Parents’ Waiting Room, near the head’s study. I was asked to look at eight of the cadets as they stood in a row. I remembered that the boy I served definitely had a grey edging to his jacket, like one of the Engineer Cadets. From what I see, not many of them is an engineer, which made it easier. Also, the one I served wore glasses, and he was about so high.”
She raised her hand to indicate a height of five feet and six or seven inches.
“And what made you pick out the boy in question?”
Miss Henslowe withdrew again to her defensive line.
“To be honest, people round here always say that they all look alike in those uniforms. I suppose that’s the idea. And even two days is a long time to wait when you didn’t think at the time there was any reason to remember someone.”
“But even so, you picked one out?”
She huffed a sigh at the difficulty of it all.
“There’s a difference, isn’t there, Mr Holmes? If someone shows you eight cadets and says it’s definitely one of them, then you can pick whichever one looks most like. That’s how it seemed to be. If they’d shown me two hundred cadets, I might have picked another.”
“Or you could have picked no one.”
She shook her head.
“From everything that was said, they knew who did it and he was there. Even Mr Carter on Saturday seemed to know which boy it was the navy could do without. I thought the fairest thing was to say I couldn’t be sure, but if it was one of those eight, he was the one I picked out. That was fair, wasn’t it? At least I got the others out of trouble, didn’t I? The headmaster didn’t say anything. And on the way out, Mr Carter said that it couldn’t have been any of the other seven. They were all at the boats until after three.”
“And the boy you picked was Patrick Riley?”
“I told Mr Winter exactly the same as I told you. I was busy at the counter, but this one was wearing glasses and had the grey edging to his jacket.”
“Both of which could have been borrowed.”
“I suppose they could. But Mr Winter was fair about that. He told me to take no notice of whether they had the grey braid or not. Three had and five hadn’t. Then, to begin with, all of them had to stand in line without glasses and afterwards with glasses on. I suppose they borrowed spectacles for the ones that never wore them. Most boys don’t.”
My heart sank at the prospect of Miss Henslowe in the witness-box telling the world how fairly Reginald Winter had conducted his identification parade. But Holmes seemed entirely satisfied with her and merely asked, “Miss Henslowe, would you do me a very great favour?”
“If I can, sir.”
“Would you come to the school now and look at a photograph? I promise that we shall have you back here in no time, but it is of the very greatest importance and urgency.”
Miss Henslowe looked at Mrs Franklin. The older sister shrugged.
“Of course she will. Go on, Violet!”
Holmes had timed it to perfection. We arrived in the headmaster’s corridor a minute after 8.30. It was the one time of day when Reginald Winter was guaranteed to be absent. I caught an organ groan drifting from the chapel as we passed and then two hundred voices at full volume.
Will your anchor hold in the storms of life,
When the winds unveil their wings of strife?
When the strong tides lift, and the cables strain,
Will your anchor drift, or firm remain?
Somewhat to my surprise Holmes was humming this Evangelical refrain as a tune long familiar to him. I had sometimes pondered over his childhood religion. A tin-roofed sailors’ chapel had not been among my imaginings until now.
The main building was silent, and we reached the headmaster’s corridor without a challenge. The assistant postmistress was quiet and apprehensive until Holmes stopped before a recent school photograph on the wall.
“Now, Miss Henslowe, have the goodness to examine this. Disregard the importance of spectacles and of uniforms. Taking away those things and suppose that one of these boys, as Mr Winter suggested, must be he who visited you on that Saturday afternoon, which one would it be?”
“I already picked Mr Riley.”
“Ignore him. Try again.”
She ran her eye along the rows and pointed to another, still bespectacled. Holmes made a note in his pocket-book.
“And just one more.”
She repeated the scrutiny and touched the glass where a boy of about fourteen, better-built than the previous one, stood without spectacles or Engineer braiding.
“Very good,” said Holmes. “And now if we may, Miss Henslowe, we shall escort you back. You have no doubt been uneasy at the prospect of involvement in a court case with its examination and cross-examination of your testimony, the attendant publicity in the newspapers. I think I may promise you that you will not be troubled any further.”
She seemed startled rather than relieved.
“How can you be certain of that, Mr Holmes?”
“Dear madam, I have a long experience of giving opinions in such matters. So far, I have been invariably proved right.”
Miss Henslowe moved away and walked ahead of us. Holmes seemed to dawdle. Presently, not far from the door to the courtyard, he tugged at my sleeve, his finger to his lips. I turned and looked at the object of his interest, a far smaller picture framed among several others. It showed a rowing eight from a previous term plus their cox, five boys sitting and four standing behind them, crossed oars mounted on the wall.
At the centre of the front row sat the Captain of Boats, holding a small silver cup. The face might have been the double of the one that Miss Henslowe had pointed out to us a moment before. Yet it could not be the same, for the date on this smaller photograph was five years earlier. Moreover, on a team photograph the names of the members are printed underneath—as they could not be for all two hundred boys.
I recalled the voice of Patrick Riley, talking of his tormentor.
“His step-brother’s a cruiser captain and his real brother was here a few years ago. He’s at Dartmouth now.”
The name below the double of Miss Henslowe’s choice was “H. R. Sovran-Phillips.”
As we stepped out into the sunlight, Holmes remarked, “Perhaps we shall not be quite as late arriving in Baker Street tonight as I had supposed.”
I did not like to suggest that optimism is no substitute for proof.
6
Our last inquiry in the village was at mid-morning. Its venue was the old “Rest and Be Thankful” inn, dating from an age when most travellers went on foot—“Shanks Pony” as the term was in my childhood. They toiled up from the foreshore to the height of Boniface Down, where this homely signboard announced a respite.
As we ducked our heads under the low lintel of the bar parlour and stepped down on to its floor of waxed red tiles, our visitor was waiting, in conversation with the landlady. Samuel Wesley, a grey-haired veteran of the South Coast Railway engine drivers, was not a drinking man. His neat, plain Sunday suit, worn out of courtesy to us, had the discreet badge of a Missionary Fellowship in its buttonhole.
We shook hands and sat down with nothing stronger than small beer between us. Introductions were brief. Samuel Wesley was, as he said, a lover of truth and straight talk. Attempted suicide was “a terrible thing to say about a young man.” Unlike Reginald Winter, he was reluctant to say it.
“I suppose you might call it that, Mr Holmes, according to what you saw and how your mind works.”