Holmes introduced us, and Mrs Franklin at the counter summoned Miss Henslowe, who was indeed her younger sister. Miss Henslowe was a maiden lady of forty or so with a fine-boned beauty, what the weekly magazines describe as features of “a tea-cup delicacy.” The telegraph boy stopped reading and gaped at us.
“I shall not interrupt you for more than a moment,” said Holmes politely. “I have been asked to review the case of Patrick Riley on behalf of the Admiralty. I merely need to confirm with you what you have said and done already.”
“There was little enough,” said Miss Henslowe, responding to him with a half-smile. With such a charming smile, I wondered why she was still a maiden lady.
“Just so,” said Holmes courteously. “Tell me, were you alone in the post office on the Saturday afternoon in question?”
“Alone at the counter,” she said readily. “My sister and her husband had gone into town. Freddie who takes the telegrams was sitting on his stool.”
Freddie, whose mouth had been gaping at the sight of us, closed it at the mention of his name and pretended to read his comic.
Holmes continued to question his witness.
“A boy came in, signed his postal order form at the counter and then handed it in? You saw that?”
“I was busy with telegram forms, Mr Holmes, so I did not watch his every movement. But he certainly did as you say.”
“Very well. You took the order, then counted out the money for him—a ten-shilling note and a sixpence, I imagine. You handed it to him and he left. Was that all?”
“Not quite, Mr Holmes. I noticed that he had signed the order as ‘John Porson,’ when it was made out to ‘J. L. Porson.’ I asked him to insert the ‘L.,’ which he did.”
“And that was all?”
“He showed me his
“Most interesting,” said Holmes thoughtfully. “And you were subsequently asked to go to the school and see if you could identify the boy who cashed the postal order?”
“Petty Officer Carter came down and asked me. I went up on the Monday, two days later. Very upset he was, Mr Carter.”
“In what way?”
“For the honour of the service, Mr Holmes. Twice he said something like, ‘This is the sort of boy the Royal Navy can do without.’”
“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.
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
