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’ 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’ event was from three in the afternoon until six 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; here the students gathered, often traveling 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 pointedly in front him, its duck-faced head point first at one student and 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,
