Sherlock Holmes (12 page)

“You could well be sent down for what you’ve done. Disgraced.”

“Poppycock. I am going to graduate, come what may. My father’s donation is conditional on that. No MA Oxon, no cash, it’s that simple. I can’t believe Merriweather didn’t take it all in the spirit in which it was intended, as a prank. What a stick-in-the-mud he is.”

“Did you not anticipate that you might be found out?”

“It was a possibility, I suppose,” Bancroft replied with a shrug. “I tried hard to disguise my handwriting. Using capitals helped.”

“And the Latin cipher pointing to your identity?”

The young aristocrat blinked. “Beg pardon? Latin cipher?”

“The misspelled words.”

“Oh, those. It was meant to look like the letters were from some ignorant dullard. Throw the foxhounds off the scent, as it were.”

“You’re unaware that the misspellings served a subsidiary purpose?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Bancroft moved to a chair, which he cleared of detritus before sitting down heavily in it. “Sorry, feeling a bit queer all of a sudden.” He inspected the champagne bottle. “Think I’ve managed to drain this one all by myself. Normally I have a good head for champers. Must be stronger stuff than I thought.” His neck tightened briefly in a kind of rictus. That was when I began to grow concerned.

“Holmes…” I said.

“Just a moment, Watson. Allow me to go out on a limb here, Mr Bancroft, and assert that you yourself did not come up with the content of the letters. Rather, they were dictated to you by a third party.”

“Maybe. What of it?”

“You copied out verbatim a text you were given for each one.”

“Why not? It read so well.”

“Who was it? Who put you up to the deed? Is it by any chance the same person you were expecting to see when Watson and I arrived? The one who’d gone out to fetch, as you put it, ‘extra booze’? Have you and he been celebrating together? Toasting your collaboration?”

“Me toasting it, not him. Doesn’t drink, does he? Teetotal, temperate, whatever it’s called. Happy to open a bottle but not to touch a drop. How can someone not like alcohol?”

“Would you describe him to us?” Holmes persisted. “Name him, even? Can you do that for us?”

“More questions,” said Bancroft, beginning to slur his words. “You make my brain very noisy with your questions. Make lights flash in front of my eyes as well.”

That clinched it. “Holmes,” I said firmly, “unless I am very much mistaken, this man has been—”

Before I could complete the sentence, Bancroft lurched from the chair. His limbs shook as though he were afflicted with St Vitus’s dance, and then he collapsed supine on the floor, the bottle slipping from his grasp and rolling away.

I sprang to his side, giving him a quick but thorough examination.

“What’s wrong with him, Watson? This isn’t mere drunkenness.”

“No,” I said. “He has been poisoned. Strychnine, if I don’t miss my guess.”

As if to prove the accuracy of my diagnosis, Bancroft started to go into convulsions. His back arched, while his lips pulled back into a terrible grimace and his eyes rolled up until only the whites showed. His heels drummed on the floor.

“Damn it,” Holmes said. “Of course! The head and neck movements. Those are the early signs of strychnine poisoning. Fool that I am for not recognising it. Tend to him, Watson. What must be done to save him?”

“Ideally, a dose of bromide of potassium and chloral, or else tannic acid, administered orally. But as I have none of those to hand, we must induce emesis – get him to vomit up the poison. A salt water solution should do the trick.”

Holmes searched the rooms for salt. Finding none, he hurried off at full tilt for the college kitchens. I, meanwhile, made Bancroft as comfortable as I could, placing a bundled-up sweater under his head for a pillow. The convulsions grew steadily more violent, his body bending backwards in an opisthotonus so severe that I could swear I heard tendons creak. His jaw locked open in trismus, and moans issued forth from his gaping mouth that sounded like the agonies of a soul in Hell.

After several minutes with still no sign of Holmes, I realised that Bancroft was at risk of causing himself permanent muscular damage if he continued to contort and hyperextend in this way; he might possibly even shatter vertebrae. In the absence of an ingestible emetic substance, I had no alternative but to force him to vomit manually. I plunged the index and middle fingers of my right hand into his throat, pressing down on the tongue and prodding the uvula. I braced myself for the rush of regurgitation, which when it came was copious and noxious. Most of it sprayed up my sleeve and into my lap, although some also found its way onto my face.

I knelt by Bancroft; he lay shuddering before me, both of us covered with the contents of his stomach, I more liberally than he. Little by little his convulsions subsided. His moans abated. I felt close to vomiting myself, but my years of medical experience had taught me how to control my gag reflex. There is a kind of detachment that descends over one when presented with human effluvia in all its glutinous and often vile-smelling glory. A good doctor can switch off his body’s natural responses by focusing his mind on the suffering and wellbeing of the patient. I call it the distance of care.

Bancroft was stable and calm by the time Holmes returned with a shaker of salt. Holmes, by contrast, was panting hard, and his hat was gone, his jacket lapel torn, and his tie wrenched askew.

Before I could ask why he had taken so long and looked so dishevelled, a couple of bowler-hatted men burst in behind him and grabbed him by the elbows.

“Got you!” one of them cried. “You won’t escape from us again, chum.”

Holmes tossed the salt shaker to me underarm, and I caught it. That action drew his pursuers’ notice to Bancroft and myself and our respective states of vomit-besmirched prostration and genuflection.

“What’s all this? Is that Mr Bancroft? What in God’s name have you done to him?”

“I?” I said. “Nothing much. Merely saved his life – although he is still in jeopardy and must be got to a hospital forthwith. He needs an oral application of an activated charcoal infusion to soak up any strychnine still in his digestive tract, and thereafter round-the-clock observation. There remains the danger of lung paralysis and death by asphyxiation, and also of brain damage. Well? What are you waiting for? Don’t just stand there gawping. Fetch transportation. Hop to it!”

The bowler-hatted men, whom I understood to be Bulldogs, exchanged looks. Neither seemed to know what to do. Eventually they agreed that one of them should go to flag down a passing cart or cab while the other stayed to keep Holmes in custody.

“Well done, Watson,” my friend said. “Good work.”

“Shut up, you,” said the remaining Bulldog. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but Mr Bancroft looks in a bad way, and if you’ve had anything to do with it…”

“I assure you I have not,” said Holmes. “I too was attempting to save him when you and your colleague apprehended me. Had you but listened to my protestations then, instead of belabouring me with your fists, I would have got back here sooner and perhaps spared Watson his unfortunate showering.”

“Yes, well, you shouldn’t have resisted arrest. Fetched me a couple of decent blows, you did. That didn’t incline me to give you the benefit of the doubt, if you catch my drift.”

“I had to escape your clutches somehow. Trust me, if I had really wanted to hurt you, I would have. I tend not to unleash the full panoply of my baritsu skills on those whose job it is to uphold law and order. I could have utterly incapacitated the pair of you, but instead I let you off easy.”

“My aching ribs say otherwise.”

“It seems I needn’t have bothered, however. Watson had the matter well in hand. Look at the state of you, poor chap. Mrs Hudson will not be happy about taking that suit in hand.”

“I fear this suit is beyond salvage and destined for the dustbin,” I said, glumly eyeing my soiled garments. “Did you not try your ecclesiologist persona when accosted? Did it fail you?”

Holmes chuckled mirthlessly. “Alas, neither this fine representative of the university police nor his cohort gave me time to. As I left the kitchens, they were upon me in a flash. It is almost as though they were lying in wait for me.” He turned to the Bulldog. “Is that the case?”

“We had a tip-off,” the man said. “Someone told us there was an intruder on the premises, and furnished us with your description and the location where he’d spotted you.”

“How fascinating. And what did this someone look like?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but it was one of the dons. Can’t say I recognised him, but he was wearing the clobber – robe, mortar board. Biggish chap. Moustache. Red hood on his gown. That’s about all I can tell you. Didn’t stop and talk to us for more than ten seconds. Me and Coggins hurried off soon as he was done, and when I chanced to look back over my shoulder, he was gone.”

“Did that not strike you as peculiar?”

“When it comes to dons, peculiar is par for the course. So, no. Anyway, that’s enough of that. You’re the suspicious character here. Your friend too. It’s you two who should be giving explanations, not me.”

“Once the Honourable Aubrey Bancroft is safely on his way to hospital, I shall answer any questions you have. I shall also avail myself, if I may, of the opportunity to summon Inspector Eden Tomlinson of the Oxfordshire Constabulary. He will vouch for the bona fides of both Watson and myself, and with his assistance I am sure we can unpick this knotty predicament.”

By the time Tomlinson arrived, Bancroft was on his way to the Radcliffe Infirmary on Woodstock Road. At a hospital of such repute, I had no doubt he would receive top-notch care. The next twenty-four hours would be critical. If he survived those, he stood to make a full recovery.

“What’s all this then, gents? Got ourselves into a spot of bother, have we?”

Holmes outlined the situation, illustrating his account by showing Tomlinson the poison pen letters and demonstrating how the cipher worked, to the inspector’s intense fascination. He also drew Tomlinson’s attention to the discarded champagne bottle whose contents had poisoned the wielder of the poison pen, saying it was a crucial piece of evidence.

“Have your forensics man use Mandelin’s reagent on whatever liquid remains inside,” he said. “I’m sure the results will test positive for strychnine.”

All this took place under the glowering gaze of the two Bulldogs, who seemed to resent the presence of a police officer on the college grounds but also had no choice but to accept it. The university might be a self-governing body but even it must bow before the law of the land.

“What a pretty pickle,” Tomlinson said. “It doesn’t look good for you and Dr Watson, Mr Holmes, on the face of it. A person might readily assume that the pair of you were the culprits. You were caught in a room with a poisoned man. It’s at least plausible that you administered the dose yourselves.”

“It is not!” I expostulated. “It’s absurd. If not for us, Aubrey Bancroft would be lying dead. What would we have to gain from killing him anyway? And why would we do it in so self-incriminating a manner, loitering at the scene to watch him die? It would be as though we were begging to be caught red-handed.”

“Please calm yourself, doctor. I don’t think for one moment that you are guilty, either of you. I was going to say that that would be the inference of a complete idiot.”

The last three words were aimed with some acerbity at Coggins and the other Bulldog, whose name we had ascertained was Stanway.

“Likewise only a complete idiot,” Tomlinson continued, “would apprehend a gentleman who insisted, as Mr Holmes did, that he was undertaking an errand of mercy.”

“He’d stolen a silver salt shaker from the kitchens,” Coggins protested.

“Borrowed it,” Holmes said.

“It looked like thievery,” said Stanway. “We weren’t to know.”

“Besides, he oughtn’t to be here,” said Coggins. “The other fellow neither. They haven’t permission. They’re interlopers, like.”

“That is true,” Holmes allowed. “I hold my hand up and admit it unreservedly. Watson and I did gain access to the college by illicit means.”

“There. See?”

“There was no alternative. It was essential that we pay a call on Bancroft at the earliest opportunity, and in the event it is just as well that we did. Now, if the President of Magdalen wishes us to make reparation somehow, I’m sure we can come to some arrangement. Perhaps a donation towards the upkeep of the library roof? I fear the Earl of Shiplea’s promised funding for the repairs may not, after all, be forthcoming.”

Thus was the matter smoothed over, and Holmes and I were given leave to depart. Tomlinson accompanied us to the Randolph, where I gratefully bathed and changed into a spare suit of clothes. I came downstairs to find Holmes and the inspector taking afternoon tea together in the hotel lounge, and I joined them, gladly wolfing down finger sandwiches and scones.

“Amazed you can eat at all, doctor,” said Tomlinson, “after what you’ve just gone through.”

“Loss of appetite has never been a problem for Watson,” said Holmes. “His rotundity should attest to that.”

“Military service and my surgical residency at Netley,” I said, aiming a sharp look of rebuke at my friend, “taught me the imperative of filling my stomach whenever I could, whatever the situation, however hungry I was. One could not be sure when or where one’s next mealtime might be. It is a habit which has stayed with me ever since and which has only been broken on occasion, under extenuating circumstances.”

One of those occasions had been in the wake of Holmes’s supposed death, when for a spell my grief almost completely suppressed the instinctive desire for sustenance; similarly following Mary’s death, when all food tasted like ashes to me and I wasted away to a skeleton of myself. It was only since the new year, in fact, that my capacity for dining had returned to its former level and I had begun to put on weight again. I would not have described myself as “rotund”, however. I may have been carrying an extra pound or two around the midriff, but I was, thanks to my rugby playing, in fairly respectable shape for a man in his mid-forties.