hide for wildfowlers. The flowering elder provided excellent cover. My friend interested himself in the soil around us. Presently, his agile back curved as he swooped upon his prey.
“Rather as I supposed,” he said with a contented sigh.
Taking his magnifying lens from his waistcoat pocket, he unfolded it and stooped again to examine two or three square feet of bare earth, still tacky in the warmer weather. Even without a glass I could see clearly that half-a-dozen matchsticks had been trodden into the ground. But Holmes was examining something I should have missed. In two places close together was the dottle from the bowl of a pipe, which someone had knocked out in order to refill it. Whoever it was had also spat several times on the soil.
“It seems that he stayed long enough to finish one pipe, light and smoke another, then knock that out as well before he left,” I said enthusiastically.
Holmes straightened up.
“The number of matches may be more significant. If you look about you, this is far the best cover for a man to strike matches on a windy day. There is nowhere else. Even lower down in the lee of the railway embankment you could not do it with a south-westerly blowing half a gale.”
“Not Reginald Winter,” I said, “He has a study to smoke in. More likely it was one or two of the boys taking shelter here for an illegal smoke.”
He shook his head.
“Dear old Watson, you have such an eye for the obvious! I am quite sure that the boys of St Vincent’s stunt their growth by furtive smoking as surely as in any other school. However, I suggest that they are a little young for pipes. In any case, a packet of cigarettes is so much easier to conceal than a pipe with its cleaner, pouch of tobacco and all the rest of the paraphernalia.”
I looked at the ground again.
“Why should Winter come here?”
Holmes chuckled.
“The answer to that question will illuminate a good deal—when we find it. What we have here is a man alone. He takes shelter, knocks out his pipe and refills it. He smokes it through and knocks it out again. He must have passed some time here—half an hour I daresay. I suggest he can only have been here as a spy.”
“When did he do it?” I asked, “That may tell us whether he was a spy or not!”
Holmes looked about him.
“Even concealed by these bushes, it takes him several attempts on that windy day to strike a match and light his pipe. See for yourself. Of the six matches lying there, four have burnt only at the tip because they were blown out at once. Only one has burnt far enough down its length to be effective in lighting a pipe. During the time he was here, the casual movements of his feet trod four of the matches into damp earth. I also observe that our smoker spat several times. It is a frequent accompaniment to the lighting of a pipe filled with strong tobacco. On Mr Winter’s mantelpiece you may have noticed an unopened packet of strong Old Glory Navy Cut. Many smokers use shag, but they are veterans rather than schoolboys.”
“All of which does not put Reginald Winter here on Sunday afternoon.”
“Quite true. It is John Fisher who does that, without knowing it. Before he left us yesterday I asked him to supply me with a copy of Admiralty weather station reports for the past week from coastal stations between Plymouth and Dover. They arrived by first post this morning. Dame Fortune has placed a coastal station at Osborne Royal Naval College. It is about a dozen miles north of here as the crow flies. The weather last week produced light but constant rain. A force five wind from the Western Approaches picked up at noon on Sunday and blew until the small hours of Monday morning. Since then the reports record dry and mild weather with a light southwest wind.”
“In other words, the usual climate for May.”
“I daresay. But if that evidence is to be trusted, it restricts our smoker’s occupation of this place to Sunday afternoon or evening. The boys are permitted to walk across the field on Sunday afternoon but you may be sure they and their headmaster are at chapel on Sunday evening. If Winter was here, I have no doubt he was spying on them. Perhaps to catch them meeting or talking to those whom they should not meet or talk to. I have scanned the regulations that Fisher was also good enough to supply. Any word spoken to a female of whatever age or station during these strolls is a grievous offence. So is breaking bounds beyond the limits set for a walk. I imagine it gladdens Winter’s heart to catch a handful of culprits for his delectation.”
Having met the man, I had no difficulty in accepting this analysis of his character.
“Yet if he was here when Riley made his famous run,” I said, “why has he never mentioned it?”
“Precisely. Unless my instincts deceive me, he was not spying on his boys—just one boy. It was Patrick Riley, who had ventured out of the sanatorium for some reason of his own. I am entirely satisfied that the lad was not contemplating suicide. Far more likely he was attempting to meet someone. Winter would give a good deal to know who—and for what purpose. And so would I.”
I thought about this for scarcely a moment before saying,
“It can’t see it, Holmes. Whether Riley was hoping to meet someone—or even commit suicide—how could Reginald Winter know in advance? As I understand it, the boy was incommunicado and he would hardly tell Winter himself. Unless he was there by pure fluke, Winter would not know what time to take up watch or even where.”
“Winter does not strike me as a man who does anything by a fluke.”
“Well, there you are. Even if he knew Riley had slipped away from the sanatorium and was running across the field, it would be far too late and much too obvious to start running after him. Winter could only spy on him at the railway bank by being in place here before him. And he could not do that unless he knew which way he was going to run and when he was going to do it. There is a hopeless inconsistency.”
“No, my dear fellow, what lies at the heart of this is a mystery. It is an article of faith in our detective agency that all mysteries have a solution.”
He was looking back towards the stretch of line running on its embankment. If anyone was going to spy, I thought, this was certainly the place from which to do it.
“We had best be getting back,” I said.
But he was still looking about him in this little enclosure. I had no idea what else he expected to find, nor, I think, did he. Presently he chuckled, relaxed and took out his pocket-knife. He was staring at an elder branch, or rather what remained of it. Someone had cut through it at a point where it was the thickness of a large thumb. The cut was recent, to judge by the light colour of the exposed wood. It suggested to me that a walker had improvised a stick for himself, perhaps in the muddy weather. The absence of wood shavings indicated that the stick had been cut to size from the bush without any immediate need for trimming or shaping.
“Goodness knows how many boys cut sticks and whittle them,” I said sceptically.
He opened his pocket-knife and cut a further length of the sapling, no more than three inches, for what good that would do. He slipped the cutting into his pocket, closed his knife and we began to walk back. Perhaps evidence of a kind against Winter had begun to accumulate in that cold rational brain. But evidence of what?
I thought we were going to walk back the way we had come, but Holmes set off on a path behind the hedge. This was parallel to the School Field though concealed from it. At the far end, a small iron gate opened into a domestic “chicken field” where St Vincent’s grew its vegetables. A further gate let us into an enclosed lawn whose door was evidently the headmaster’s direct entrance to his own quarters. A hand-bell had rung and it seemed that the “cadets” were now released from their classes. They were curiously dressed, like child sailors in their blue uniforms. A few wore a grey, braided edging to the lapels and the hems of their “Engineer” jackets.
In the corridor on which Winter’s study was located Holmes stopped again, as if to check his appearance in the hall-stand mirror, a vanity he seldom indulged. No one who saw him would have thought twice about what he was doing. Unobtrusively, he slipped his left hand into his pocket and withdrew the three-inch cutting of the elder branch. His right hand moved cautiously over the umbrella stand. Presently he relaxed and drew out a freshly-cut stick.
“I must confess that I noticed this when we came out, Watson. I have been looking for its partner ever since.”
He turned it over and joined to its end the three-inch cutting he had taken from his pocket.
It was, of course, a perfect fit.
