The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures (4 page)

“To be sure; to be sure,” the other muttered, “but your reference to the traffic?”

“Even simpler, sir. It has been raining lightly for the past ten minutes yet only the upper part of your clothing is wet. Clearly you were obliged to leave the protection of your cab before reaching the station. That you did so in some haste is evidenced by the fact that, having paid the driver, you are still clutching your purse in your hand.”

“Remarkable,” said the stranger, sitting back in the seat. “You are obviously a very observant young man. May I know your name?”

“Sherlock Holmes, undergraduate of Grenville College, at your service, sir.”

“Grenville, eh? Then we are close neighbours. I am …”

“William Spooner, fellow of New College. Please, do not register surprise, sir. You are one of the celebrities of Oxford.” “The Spoo”, as the young lecturer in Ancient History and Philosophy was known to undergraduates, had already acquired that reputation for eccentricity which was later to spread well beyond the confines of the university.

Spooner nodded mournfully. “Ah, yes, it’s those
things
I say, isn’t it? I can’t help myself you know; they just pop out like habbits from a role.”

After exchanging a few more courtesies each passenger settled to his own occupation for the journey. Holmes returned to his paper. Spooner spent a considerable time organizing his possessions into some semblance of order and arranging them on the overhead rack, then extracted a slim volume of Ovidian poetry from the pocket of his surtout, curled himself into the opposite corner and began to read with the page held close to his face. Yet neither was able to concentrate. Holmes was intrigued by the albino and was conscious that Spooner was taking no less interest in him. Several times the younger man glanced surreptitiously across the intervening space only to find that New College’s most remarkable resident was staring fixedly at him. Once or twice Spooner opened his mouth as though he would speak but either the words would not come or he thought better of them. At last, however, he did break the silence.

“Mr Holmes, I apologize for disturbing you. I wonder, would you mind if I asked you to discuss a certain matter … delicate, bewildering?”

“If I can be of service, sir.”

“It is not the sort of thing I would normally broach with someone upon such short acquaintance but you appear to be a singularly astute young man and it may be that Providence has brought us together.”

Holmes waited with carefully suppressed amusement to hear what perplexing problem the eccentric don was about to share.

“I am convinced that the whole thing is an undergraduate prank. It may be that you have heard about it from the perpetrators.”

“Heard about what, sir?”

Spooner squinted impatiently through his glasses. “Why the painting, of course – the Dutch
Nativity.
We’ve lost it permanently for three weeks.”

“Perhaps, sir, if you were to start from the beginning?”

“Ah, yes, well Giddings, you see, our senior fellow, brilliant mind, Renaissance scholar, very gracious, not at all put out over the election.”

The story which would have taken any normal narrator ten minutes or so to recite occupied Spooner for the remainder of the journey, involving, as it did, acrobatic leaps from thought to thought and perilous balancing on the high wire of tenuous connections. Holmes was amused as much by the effort of following the disjointed account as by the events to which it referred. Briefly, these were as follows:

Some eleven years previously there had been an election for the wardenship of New College. The contest had been between the then dean and the senior fellow, Dr Giddings. The fellowship had decided on the dean, for Giddings, though highly respected, was already well smitten in years and did not enjoy robust health. The old don had shown his regard for the college by warmly congratulating the warden elect and donating to the chapel a magnificent
Nativity
by Rembrandt. It was this painting which, in October 1873, had been stolen.

Holmes asked why the crime had not been reported to the police and received the reply that the fellows were disposed to regard it as an internal university matter. Over the past few months there had been a series of similar incidents in various colleges. Oriel’s standard had been removed from its flagpole. A hanging candelabrum had been absconded from the hall at Merton. An ancient sundial had been prised from a quadrangle wall at Magdalen and, more recently someone had walked out of Radcliffe library with a rare incunabulum, deceiving the staff by leaving a superficial fake in its place. The New College authorities attributed these escapades to undergraduate high spirits and were persuing their own enquiries but to Holmes it was evident that Spooner and, probably, his colleagues were more exercised by their loss than they were prepared to admit.

Having heard his fellow passenger’s tale, my friend could only express his condolences over New College’s loss and regret that he knew nothing which could be of any help in the recovery of the painting. As a new arrival in Oxford he had yet to acquaint himself with the student grapevine, he explained, and, in any case, he was, himself, of a rather solitary and studious disposition.

Having arrived at Oxford the two travellers shared a cab into the city centre, where they parted company. Holmes resolved to put the New College painting from his mind but the curious elements of Spooner’s narrative no less than the disjointed mode of its delivery declined to be easily banished. Thus he found himself next morning in the chapel of the nearby college gazing at a large area of empty stone wall. A small card pinned to a stall beneath the space read: “the nativity of our lord by rembrandt van ryn, 1661. This painting has been temporarily removed for restoration.”

Holmes climbed onto the wooden seat to inspect the wall more closely. Faint dust marks could be seen where the frame had touched the stonework and, using the span of his outstretched right hand, which he knew to be nine and a quarter inches in width, he measured the dimensions of the missing painting. It was as he was stretching upwards as far as he could reach to gauge the height of the absent masterpiece that he heard an outraged voice behind him.

“Ere! What d’you think you’re a-doing of?”

Calmly Sherlock Holmes stepped down and turned to confront an aged college servant whose faded black gown proclaimed him to be some sort of sexton or verger. “Are you in charge here?” he enquired.

“That I am and right tired of the antics of you young gentlemen. This is a house of God and not a place for your pranks. Now be off with you, before I call the dean.”

“Oh, there’s no need to disturb him,” said Holmes casually. “I’m sure you can tell me all I need to know.” He produced a half sovereign from his pocket. “I’m interested in your excellent painting and was very sorry not to be able to see it. Do you know where it has gone to be restored?”

The old man’s tone changed at the sight of the gleaming coin. “Yes, sir,” he said, holding out his hand for the unexpected gratuity. “I’ve got a note of the address in my vestry. If you’d care to step this way. I take it you’re a student of art, sir.”

“That’s right,” Holmes agreed.

“Well, I don’t know as you’ll learn much from that painting. Right dark and gloomy it is. You can’t scarcely make out any of the figures in it. They say it’s very valuable, but I wouldn’t give it house room. If you wouldn’t mind waiting there a moment, sir.” He unlocked a small door and shuffled into a chamber scarcely larger than a broom cupboard. Seconds later he re-emerged bearing a card.

“Ah yes, Simkins and Streeter,” Holmes said, nodding approvingly. “I know them well. They’ll do a first class job. When did they take it?”

“It was three weeks ago.”

“Was it Mr Simkins or Mr Streeter who called to supervise the removal?”

“That I couldn’t say, sir. I wasn’t here.”

“You mean these people came from London and removed this valuable college treasure without your personal supervision?” Holmes asked with an air of concerned astonishment. “That was not very courteous of them.”

The verger visibly warmed to his visitor. “Well, that same thought did strike me, sir. Apparently it was all a rushed job. They was due to come in the afternoon but they never showed up. On the Thursday morning when I came in there was the picture gone. I was a bit worried, I don’t mind telling you and I rushed straight to the dean. He set my mind at rest straight away. ‘Not to worry, Tavistock,’ he said. ‘The restorers came for the painting quite late. It seems they’d had some trouble on the road with a lame horse and, by the time they’d changed it over they were running well behind time.’ ”

“So you never saw the men who collected it?”

“No, sir.”

“It must have taken several people to remove the painting. It is large and heavy.”

“That it is,” the old man laughed. “Why, when old Dr Giddings presented the picture to the college it took six of us to put it up – an’ all the time the dean – that’s the former dean who’s now warden – hopping and dancing around and shouting at us to be careful.”

As they walked the length of the long nave Holmes asked, “You were saying you’d had some trouble with boisterous undergraduates.”

“Gentlemen they call themselves!” the aged verger sniffed. “Sacrilegious and heathen hooligans I calls them. First week of term it was. I caught four of ‘em in here, scrambling about over the stalls. One of them had a lamp and he was holding it up to that Dutch painting. I was afeared he’d set light to the thing. You can imagine, sir, when I saw you on the same spot it brought it all back. So you’ll forgive me if I was a bit sharp with you.”

“I quite understand,” Holmes replied sympathetically. “Yours is a heavy responsibility. What happened to these rowdies?”

“I fetched Junkin, the senior porter, and a couple of his men. They were more than a match for a bunch of drunken undergraduates. We turfed them out and took their names and I reported them directly to the warden. What happened to them after that, I don’t know. They’ve certainly not been back here.”

“Do you remember any of their names?”

“Indeed I do, sir. They was all Magdalen men and their ringleader was the Hon. Hugh Mountcey, Lord Henley’s son. You’d think the aristocracy would know better, wouldn’t you, sir?”

They had arrived at the west door and the guardian of the chapel held it open. Holmes thanked his informant and passed into the narrow lane outside.

Back in his rooms Sherlock Holmes abandoned all pretence of pursuing his own studies. The mystery of the missing painting had quite taken hold of his reasoning faculties. He threw himself down on a sofa, lit a pipe and pondered the additional information gleaned from the verger. The
Nativity
, it appeared, had been scheduled for restoration, a fact which now enabled the fellows, temporarily, to conceal its abduction. It had also seemingly provided excellent cover for the thieves. As to the Magdalen men who had made a nuisance of themselves, that certainly suggested a connection with the earlier outrages perpetrated during the summer and autumn terms.

Clearly this motley assortment of stolen Oxfordiana had common features. Each item was treasured by the establishment which owned it. Abduction of each required audacity and daring. Its removal was designed to create embarrassment for its owners, who, for that reason, were unlikely to call in the police, thus risking scandal and popular ridicule.

Yet, Holmes mused, there were also disharmonies. The stolen objects differed greatly in quality, importance, and size. There seemed to be no pattern to the thefts. The removal of Oriel’s flag had demanded mountaineering ability; Magdalen’s sundial had been neatly prized from its surrounding stonework by someone well versed in the skills of the mason. Only a scholar with a knowledge of rare printed books could have created the forgery which had, briefly, deceived the Radcliffe library staff. Then there were the elements of difficulty and risk. With each escapade these had become greater. There was a considerable gulf between the nocturnal raid on Oriel to remove its standard and the carrying off of the New College painting. The former certainly had the air of a traditional student rag. The latter was a major crime and had called for elaborate and meticulous planning.

That brought one on to the issue of motive. What did the perpetrators want with this bizarre collection of objects? Three of the items had little monetary value. The incunabulum and the painting were, by contrast, highly prized artefacts which could only be disposed of through specialist underworld channels. Holmes dismissed the idea of student escapades. They were never malicious; they were simply tiresome displays of exhibitionism and high spirits. This series of thefts was different. It had caused distress and embarrassment to the colleges concerned. Had that been the intention?

Holmes knocked out his pipe in the hearth and consulted his pocket watch. There wanted a few minutes to two o’clock. It was time for another call. Donning a light top coat and extracting a cane from a wicker basket beside the sitting room door, he let himself out and ran lightly down the stone staircase.

Twenty minutes brisk walking through the city centre and out along the Banbury Road brought him to the edge of the city’s suburbs. Here the substantial houses were well spaced out and overlooked fields and meadows running down to the Cherwell. Holmes found the one he was seeking almost at the end of the row. It was a large double-fronted villa approached by a short gravel drive. A pull upon the bell brought a manservant to the front door.

Holmes handed in his card. “I am an art enthusiast and an amateur collector, currently residing at Grenville College,” he explained. “I must apologize for calling without an appointment, but I should deem it a great honour to be permitted to view Dr Gidding’s collection.”

The major domo admitted my friend to a spacious hall and asked him to wait. Within moments he returned, ushered the visitor into a well furnished library and announced him. Holmes looked around a room which, at first acquaintance seemed empty. Then he espied a bath chair, its back to him, facing a french window giving onto the garden.