Sherlock Holmes (18 page)

“There’s one at the rear of the building,” said Gill. “A cupboard, really. We keep cans of grease in it, and spare seats, tools, other paraphernalia. It is hardly used. My goodness, do you mean to say Trenchard has been there all along? I must go to him.”

Gill moved towards the boathouse, but Holmes stopped him.

“I daresay another five minutes of captivity won’t hurt. Before he is freed, I would like to hear what his crewmates have to say for themselves.”

The members of the Oriel 1st VIII blustered and protested, but guilt was writ large across their faces. The game was up and they knew it.

“After all,” Holmes continued, “if they come clean now, we can work on a strategy for dealing with Trenchard once he is released. He will doubtless be extremely irate and will regard their cavalier treatment of him as a kind of mutiny. I imagine he may wish to punch at least one of them, if not all. Appropriate contrition will mollify him, and perhaps he and his crewmates can be reconciled in time for the regatta tomorrow. I think the best tactic is to identify the ringleader, the person on whom the lion’s share of the blame can be apportioned and onto whom Trenchard can vent his spleen. And that would be…”

Holmes raised a forefinger, running it back and forth along the ranks of the crewmen as though lining up a shot at tin ducks in a fairground shooting gallery. His aim came to rest on Llewellyn.

“You.”

“What? No. Ringleader? Me? You’re mistaken.”

His crewmates took an unconscious step back, leaving him isolated, unsupported.

“We all agreed to it,” Llewellyn insisted. “It was a shared plan. We’re all equally responsible. Isn’t that what we said? All in it together. That’s what we said. Boyos?”

“You’re the one who proposed it in the first place, Taff,” said Allardyce. “You encouraged us. If it wasn’t for you, we’d never have gone through with it.”

“I will not be made a scapegoat!” Llewellyn said hotly. “That’s not fair. Yes, it was my idea to nobble Trenchard, but you wanted it as much as I did. Isn’t that so, Stevens? Preston? Jenkins? You swine, how dare you turn on me! We should be presenting a unified front. Instead, you’re making it out to be all my fault. That’s what Mr Holmes wants, don’t you see? Divide and conquer. So we’ll confess more easily.”

“There’s no need for a confession,” said Holmes. “You’ve made one already, as good as. Nor is there any need to divulge how you managed to make it look as though Trenchard went overboard. I know.”

“Oh yes, I’m sure you know,” sneered Llewellyn. “Mr Holmes always knows. Mr Holmes is so terribly clever. Everything is elementary to Mr Holmes.”

“You won’t goad me into saying that word again, if that’s what you’re after. But I will happily explain the trick you pulled.”

“Go on then. If it makes you feel better.”

“Simply put,” Holmes said, “Trenchard did not jump out of the boat this morning because Trenchard was never in the boat.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Gill. “I saw them with my own eyes, rowing away from the pontoon. There were quite clearly eight oarsmen, plus Preston. It was misty, I admit. Visibility was poor, twenty yards at most. But I am adamant that Trenchard was in his seat.”

“Someone was in his seat,” said Holmes, “but it wasn’t Trenchard. It was in fact you, Preston.”

The cox lowered his gaze, abashed.

“You,” Holmes went on, “rowed in Trenchard’s place. From the opposite bank, through thick mist, the substitution would have been hard to tell. One silhouette of a rower would have been all but indistinguishable from another. You may not be the oarsman Trenchard is, but the boat only had to travel a short way, approximately a third of a mile, from here to the Gut. For that span of distance you could serve as an adequate replacement. How do I know this? Remember how I shook your hand earlier? I had observed that there was a blister on your right palm. You winced slightly at my grip, showing that it was a fresh one. Your hands are soft, and the blister would have been raised by using an oar for a few hundred yards. Your crewmates’ palms and fingers are, by contrast, well callused. The blisters they have accrued during months of training have hardened over. I didn’t have to discover that by shaking hands with any of them. One can tell just by looking. The calluses are quite prominent, and are typical of those who participate in this sport.”

Preston inspected his palm. A blister the diameter of a sixpence obtruded from the ball of his thumb, inflamed and red.

“But if Preston was in the stroke’s position,” said Gill, “then who was coxing?”

“No one,” said Holmes.

“But I distinctly saw someone.”

“What you saw was an effigy. It had been prepared beforehand, dressed up in suitable clothing, and no doubt secreted in the same store cupboard where Trenchard currently resides.”

“Effigy?”

“Made of this.” Holmes reached into the cox’s seat and produced a tiny strand of straw. “I found it lodged in the crevice between two planks.”

“But Holmes,” I said, “the cox steers the boat, surely. How then did they navigate?”

“Again, bear in mind it was only a short way. Minor course corrections may be achieved by the crewmen on one side pulling slightly harder than those on the other side. To veer left, the stroke-side men increase their effort. To veer right, the bow-side men. With careful co-ordination, the boat can wend its way without the application of the rudder.”

This time it was Gill who raised the objection. “True enough, but the rudder must be held fixed, otherwise it will swing fully one way or the other and no amount of pulling on either side will prevent the boat turning in a circle.”

“I noted small circular marks on the saxboards just where the toggles on the rudder cords would be positioned were a cox keeping the rudder dead straight.” Holmes looked at the crew. “Clamps, am I right? You screwed them into place to hold the toggles steady. The ends of the clamp bolts left indentations in the wood.”

One or two of the crewmen nodded.

“Then what became of this effigy?” asked Gill.

“It did what Trenchard didn’t: went overboard. The straw would have become waterlogged in a trice and the effigy would have sunk quickly. Weighing it down with bricks or rocks would have helped.”

He looked to the crew for confirmation. Again, there came a few sheepish nods.

“The clamps went to the riverbed with it,” Holmes carried on. “All of this took place during the period while the boat was out of your sight, Mr Gill. Down went the cox effigy, and Preston resumed his rightful position, nipping across from the stroke’s seat to his own, where he undid the clamps, tossed them out, and took command of the rudder. When you at last appeared on your bicycle, ‘Trenchard’ was no longer at his oar. The crew then fed you their cock-and-bull story about him spontaneously leaping into the Isis and swimming to shore, prompting you to give fruitless chase. You looked for him everywhere except the last place you would have thought to look for him, which is right here.”

Gill was clearly having trouble absorbing the revelation that the crewmen he had coached so assiduously had deceived him. It was a profound betrayal of trust.

“So I presume they must have supplanted Trenchard with Preston just after they put the boat in the water,” he said, “as I was cycling over Folly Bridge.”

“You were out of earshot as well as out of sight,” Holmes said. “You wouldn’t have heard his cries of protest as his crewmates set upon him and bundled him into the boathouse. Eight against one – he wouldn’t have stood a chance. The mist, you see, was crucial to their whole plan, in particular the way it occludes both sound and vision. I doubt they could have succeeded without it. Today was the first day this term that the climatic conditions were just right for their purposes.”

“It’s true,” said Jenkins. “We’ve been waiting over a fortnight for a mist like this. We were beginning to think it wouldn’t happen. Then, just in time, it did.”

“Why?” said Gill plaintively to the Oriel 1st VIII. “Why would you do such a thing? Don’t you see you’re sabotaging your own chances of victory?”

“To teach the high-and-mighty Trenchard a lesson,” said Preston. “Put him in his place. Show him he’s not indispensable.”

“This close to Torpids,” said Knight, “we were hoping he might even take the hint and resign.”

“Failing that,” said Allardyce, “we’d have kept him in the store cupboard until tomorrow at least, and have Hargreaves stroke for the first race.”

“We would have fed and watered him,” said Stevens. “Made sure he’s comfortable. We’re not monsters.”

“Llewellyn,” said Holmes. “You’ve gone quiet. Before we fetch Trenchard out and you face the music, do you have anything to add?”

“Not that you’d want to hear, Mr Holmes.”

“As the man who meddled with Trenchard’s rigger earlier in the term so that he would catch a crab, you would be the best candidate for organising an even nastier offensive against him, such as this one.”

“So?”

“Your ploy of picking a fight with him just before the outing – that was to provide a plausible motive for him quitting. It would be consistent with his character to respond petulantly to personal slights. He would see them as a challenge to his authority.”

“Again, so?”

“Such keen psychological insight.”

“Are you talking about me or you?”

“Such intricate forward planning, too.”

“You’re insinuating something, but I don’t know what it is.”

“I have to ask myself, did you manage it alone?”

I knew, as Llewellyn did not, what Holmes was driving at. He was probing to see if there was a connection between this incident and the Jericho murders and the poison pen letters. He suspected the hand of our Oxford agent provocateur behind the Oriel mutiny. Llewellyn was just another cat’s paw.

“For the last time, it was all of us,” said Llewellyn. “All eight of us. I’ll not be made a pariah here. Bad enough that I’m Welsh. Not many of my countrymen get to Oxford. You should hear the things the other students call me, the jokes they make about me. ‘Leek eater,’ they say. ‘Wash the coal dust off you.’ And that’s just the least of it. ‘Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief,’ they chant. Then there are the various sheep-related remarks, which I shan’t go into. I put up with it, I play the clown, I grin and try to be accepted. But I will not put up with—”

A shot rang out.

The instant before we heard it, Llewellyn keeled over, clutching his chest.

With the
crack
of the gun report still echoing across the water, everyone stared in shock at the hapless Llewellyn, who was sprawled on his back, a patch of blood blossoming across the front of his shirt. Even Holmes was momentarily paralysed, although he was the first to recover his wits.

“Quick!” he cried. “All of you, take cover!”

I, who knew what it was to come under fire, sprang into action. The oarsmen, cox and coach were still frozen in alarm. I set about chivvying them away from open ground, shepherding them urgently towards the shelter of the boathouse. Holmes did the same. At any moment I expected further gunshots, more bullets whizzing our way.

With the rest of the Oriel men safely indoors, I darted back for Llewellyn. I had no idea where the sniper was, but judging by the sound of the gunshot he was positioned on the opposite bank, most likely in the lee of one of the tall trees there, concealed amongst a stand of shrubbery and thick undergrowth.

Crouching, making myself as small a target as possible, I edged alongside the boat, which sat perpendicular to the river. Llewellyn was alive, shuddering, one hand clawing the air spasmodically. There was a space of five yards between him and the vessel. To reach him I would have no choice but to cross it, leaving myself fully exposed to the sniper. I wished I had my service revolver on me; I could have used it to lay down return fire. I wouldn’t have had a hope of hitting anyone at that range, but it would have given the gunman something to think about and deterred him long enough for me to retrieve Llewellyn.

Holmes appeared beside me.

“What are you doing?” I hissed. “Trying to get yourself killed?”

“No more than you are, Watson. We can’t just leave Llewellyn. His would-be killer is lining up a second shot even now, to put his fate beyond question. The mist has thickened, but it is shifting. When it parts again…”

“If only there was some way of protecting ourselves so that we can get to him.”

“Yes, but… Ah! I have it.”

Holmes grasped the nearest rigger and spun the boat over in its trestle sling until it was at right angles, stroke-side pointing to the sky. Then he kicked one of the trestles flat, taking the weight of the boat on his shoulders as he did so. With a grunt he sank to a squatting position, supporting the boat in the meantime so that it did not crash violently to the ground. It came to rest tilted, still partly perched on the remaining trestle, its bow in the air.

“Now, Watson,” Holmes said, “if you could see your way to doing the same…”

I emulated him, kicking out the other trestle. Together, teeth clenched, grimacing with effort, we lowered the boat until it was lying horizontal again, balanced on its bow-side riggers with us braced beside. We did this as carefully as we could, but it was difficult to be delicate about it. The two of us were performing a job which normally demanded the combined strength of eight men.

I heard a groan of dismay from the boathouse. This was Gill lamenting the abuse being meted out on his crew’s precious craft. I personally thought Llewellyn’s life more important than any boat, but then I was not a rowing coach. Besides, other than a couple of dented rigger gates, the thing was not faring too badly.

“Now,” said Holmes, “we must slide it round.” He reached either side of him to grasp a section of the boat’s ribs. I followed suit. Both of us dug in our heels and heaved, and the boat began to rotate on its central axis. Its stern swung out towards the river, its bow round towards Llewellyn.

A break in the mist came, allowing the sniper to unleash his next shot. The delay cost him, however, for when he did fire, the bullet struck the boat and ricocheted away, raising a shower of splinters. I felt the impact reverberate through my neck and arms, and redoubled my efforts. The boat slithered and grated across the ground. It seemed to weigh a ton.