by David Marcum
“Oh, that,” said Holmes. “That was really a trifle. It happened while you were busy, and is hardly worth talking about.”
“Do tell,” I said. “I am frightfully curious as to why you’re receiving someone else’s correspondence.”
“As a matter of fact, that was intended for myself,” said Holmes. “But the writer of the letter, as you can tell, did not feel comfortable in writing to me openly.”
“Aha! Reverend Dupin? A literary reference, I see, to Poe’s detective, although if memory serves, I believe he was M. le Chevalier, and not M. le Curé. Still, despite such technicalities, I’m sure you caught the allusion to the surname at once.”
“The allusion was meant to be caught,” replied Holmes placidly. “Normally, when one engages in secret writing, the two parties agree as to how the sensitive information is to be disguised. But when one of the parties is in the dark, as it were, the originating party makes things fairly easy to understand, else one may end up as did Le Chevalier de Rohan, when he was unable to decipher the secret message reassuring him that the Sieur de Latréaumont had died without confessing their treachery.”
“So what things did Miss Jackson make it fairly easy for you to understand?” I inquired.
“The same details are before you as were before myself,” he replied. “Pray make your own inferences.”
“As fatigued as I am?” I said, examining the return address. “Well, I am not familiar with Petrus de Crescentiis, nor with the Ruralia Commoda, but I would infer that St. Catherine’s Collegiate School is a school of some size for young ladies of some means, if it has its own classics department. However, I take it the young lady was not asking for assistance in her exercises.”
“Indeed. Petrus de Crescentiis was the fourteenth century Italian jurist. His Ruralia Commoda was one of the most significant contributions to agricultural literature since Columella. The book has some very charming woodcuts, but merely served as a conversational pretext,” said Holmes. “St. Catherine’s is a liberal humanist school for young ladies of the upper middle class, whose parents wish to give them the same education as their treasured sons, and send them there in the hopes that a few years’ study will enable them to sit for examinations and take courses at Cambridge, Oxford, and some of the other superior establishments upon these islands which have lately cracked their doors to admit the fairer sex.”
“To have voluntarily assumed such a burden!” I said, thinking back to certain school-room moments perhaps better left forgotten. After a few moments, I shook off the memories of the distant past and resumed my inspection of the letter in front of me. “The paper is of a very cheap and common sort,” I said, feeling its thinness and lack of texture. “And although the hand itself is neat and regular, I find the red ink garish. It is hard to take a woman seriously when she doesn’t write in sensible brown or black. The young lady herself, despite her intellectual aspirations, is probably of a flighty disposition, of humble origin, and of little personal wealth, perhaps flamboyant in dress or character, and given to imagination and romanticism, especially when taken in conjunction with the reference to Poe.”
“Excellent work, Watson!” said Holmes. “Or rather, points for imagination and romanticism, but falling short of the mark.”
“What conclusions did you draw?”
“This letter was not premeditated. It was rather hastily drafted with materials immediately at hand. You remarked upon the quality of the paper, which was a correct observation, as far as it went. You failed to notice either the dimensions of the page, or the telltale staple marks, which indicate that this is a sheet of paper hastily drawn from a student’s exercise book.”
“But you already knew it was from a school, based upon the return address,” I objected.
“You will further note,” Holmes continued, as though I had not interrupted, “that the hand in question is not the undeveloped hand of the schoolgirl, but the confident hand of the instructor. It has form and distinction and character, and the character is such that it would not normally be attracted to garish colour or haphazard construction. And please take note of the date: we are nearly at the end of the term. I had in my mind a picture: a Classics teacher, at a girls’ school, in the midst of grading end-of-term papers, most likely in a busy room. Something has distressed her, but she feels intimidated about reaching out for assistance. It is not her place to solve the problem, yet it is not her nature to stand idly by and do nothing. She cannot leave her post without arousing suspicions, and she cannot write openly. She makes up her mind; she determines to reach out for help. Using the materials at hand - paper from the exercise book, red ink from the grading well - she drafts a brief letter, cryptic enough to not arouse suspicions of those around her, should they read over her shoulder or query about the nature of her correspondence, but obvious enough to one who is trained to observation. And it is a literal call for help.”
“Literal?”
“You yourself noticed the neatness and regularity of her hand, and yet at the same time, there are breaks within words that make little sense. One’s pen may skip or slur over certain letters through frequent habit, such as with one’s signature. Other people have the deplorable habit of mixing printing with writing, though that is difficult with a nib, and more often encountered when writing with a pencil. Yet here, the breaks occurred with neither regularity nor pattern. The artificiality of their nature drew my attention, and I sought to discern the reason for their existence. The ‘a’ in ‘am’; the ‘d’ in Commoda; the ‘i’ in ‘Crescentiis’ - I will save you the tedium of identifying them all, but they spell out ‘adiuva me’.”
“‘Adiuva me’?” I asked, groping around in the foggy recesses of my memory.
“What else would one expect from a Classicist, but a literal cry for help in Latin?” Holmes asked, laughing that silent laugh of his.
“Well, I never!” I exclaimed, not sure what to make of this eccentricity. “Did you ever ask her what possessed her to ask for help in Latin, of all things?”
“She later told me she was afraid that ‘help’ would have been too short, and I might not have picked up on it,” came the straight-faced reply. “So thus it was that the next day, I found myself in the guise of an elderly clergyman, the Reverend Dupin, come to St. Catherine’s ostensibly to consult with Miss Jackson regarding the state of her translation, but in fact, intrigued by what it was that compelled her to seek my assistance in such a roundabout fashion.
“The address proved to be situated at the end of a row of Georgian townhouses that had once been a fashionable neighborhood, and still was a desirable location, but no longer possessed of the exclusivity that it had once enjoyed a generation ago. That could be deduced by a discreet ‘room to let’ sign within the windows of one of the middle neighbors, and the observation that the front steps on a few of the homes were no longer daily whitened, as in the best establishments, and in the presence of the school itself, which would never have been tolerated in better days. I knocked upon the door. It was answered by the housekeeper herself, who asked me my business. If I had not presented myself as a man of the cloth, I suspect she would have dealt with me more harshly than she did. I presented the letter, which she examined with great suspicion, but she begrudgingly permitted me to seat myself in the front hall and disappeared. Within a few moments, the headmistress arrived to ask me to explain my intrusion yet again.
“I prattled foolishly about the art of translation, and the importance of nuance, and the contributions of the work in question to history, and how eager I was to see it done justice, so how happy I was that Miss Jackson had chosen to consult with me regarding her project. From there, I moved to compliment her school - if she had such erudite faculty at hand, she and her work were exactly what this country needed, and while there’s certainly a time and a place for vocational education, it’s not as forward-thinking as one might wish to see. The head
mistress was mollified by the Reverend Dupin’s praise and admiration, and she overcame her personal distaste for my presence to admit me into the teachers’ inner sanctum, where Miss Jackson was at work.
“‘The Reverend Dupin to see you,’ said the headmistress, making it clear by her tone that explanations would be demanded of her after my departure. Miss Jackson had the grace to blush, and rose from her desk to greet me.
“The room was much as I had imagined it: a large, communal room, well-lit by tall windows overlooking the front street. During its time as a private house, it had obviously been a gentleman’s study. The walls were still paneled in a very masculine way, although the shelves that lined the room were now filled with books one might expect to find in any school of advanced study. The carpet seemed recent, and of a rather feminine pattern and colour, all pinks and purples and acanthus and cabbage-roses. The room itself was spacious enough, but felt a bit overwhelmed by six desks placed in a double-row up and down the room, and a more substantial desk placed at their head, closest the windows, but awkwardly off-center in comparison with the symmetry presented by the other furnishings. The other instructresses seemed to be in class with students at the moment, but I could imagine that it would be difficult to find much privacy in such a workspace once the students no longer demanded attention.
“And such it proved. The headmistress took her seat at her own desk at the front of the room, but one could tell her ears were alert to every word of our conversation, seeking the smallest infraction. I told Miss Jackson I was sadly unfamiliar with the school and its work. How long had they been in this neighborhood? She was pleased to inform me that they were primarily a day school, although a third of their student body were boarders. They currently had eighty-five young women enrolled, and six teachers, and had outgrown their previous location some time ago. They had been enabled to tenant this property through the mediation of a pleased mama with connections - it belonged to the Earl of Redmund, and the premises became available last year when his youngest son vacated them in favor of adventure in the Argentine. The papers were signed in the early summer, and they lost no time in getting settled, so that, come October, they were able to begin the new school year in their new facility.
“Miss Jackson taught Latin. She was the daughter of Sir Arthur Jackson, who had acquired a degree of admiration for his translation of the Psalms, for his work upon some of Paracelsus’ previously unpublished toxicology notes, and for his excellent translations of some obscure manuals of short-sword techniques. Upon his passing, Miss Jackson was left to make her way in the world, and based upon the invaluable assistance she had rendered to her father while working at his side upon these heavy projects, obtained the post of Classics Mistress, which she has occupied for the last six years.
“The headmistress was growing weary of our small talk by this point, so by discreet signs, I inquired as to how fluent she was in the language itself. Hardly at all, came the reply, and so we brought the conversation around to her copy of the Ruralia Commoda. Her edition was not particularly expensive or uncommon. It was a later-period edition, printed in legible type, and not some eye-straining approximation of a scribal hand. It was thankfully mostly free of those obnoxious abbreviations and liberally illustrated with woodcuts. There was plenty to talk about, and talk about it we did. She would pretend to ask me questions about an obscure phrase, and I would pretend to answer. It was about that time that the headmistress was summoned away to take care of an issue that had arisen in another part of the building, and thus it was that we were left unsupervised for a few moments, and could set aside the charade.
“‘I apologize for having wasted your time. It is so dreadfully difficult to have a moment alone,’ she said. ‘I shall get straight to the point. Ours is a school of eighty-five young ladies, and if word ever got out to the parents that there were intruders roaming the premises, our school should be ruined, and our livelihoods along with it.’
“‘When did the problem begin, and how are you aware that you are being intruded upon?’ I asked, and she explained that the intruders had struck three times now, the third time being the date of her letter to me. The first time, the Friday night of the previous week, the Mathematics Mistress had awoken at some noise in the hall. All the teachers permanently reside upon the premises, supervising the boarding population. Thinking it was a student astray from bed, she went out upon the landing to investigate, a reprimand at the ready. Instead, she observed a stranger, muffled in a hat and overcoat, standing in the hall, where a light is kept low and burning. She raised the alarm, and the stranger fled up the servants’ staircase, but no one could find where he had gone.
“The second time was the Sunday. The staff, servants, and students in residence were in the habit of attending service nearby as a group. However, the Music Mistress - who teaches voice and pianoforte - was feeling poorly, and ended up leaving upon the heels of the Gospel’s conclusion. Upon her arrival, she stopped by the office to fetch some papers to examine in her room while she rested, and discovered an intruder in the act of tearing up the carpet in the teacher’s room with a knife. She raised the cry of alarm, even though she was alone in the building. Assuming that she was calling to others who had also returned earlier than was their habit, the intruder shoved past her and disappeared up the servants’ staircase. It happened so quickly, she was unable to tender a good description of him, beyond being ‘fierce-eyed’ and ‘taller than herself’ (she being under five foot,) and smooth-faced and of an indeterminate age. Again, any identifying characteristics were disguised by the bulky and unseasonal outfit he had adopted. She was unwilling to summon a policeman and submit the premises to external scrutiny, but no one internally, upon their return, was able to discover the intruder or what had become of him. It was only with much difficulty that the matter was kept quiet. It was several hours’ work, however, to set the room to rights again: several desks had been dragged around the room and knocked over, books and papers falling where they may. The carpet itself was a loss, and could not be repaired, and no money for its immediate replacement was available in the budget. The headmistress’ heavy desk was placed over the vandalized portion until the matter could be permanently resolved. Everyone marveled, however, at the boldness of the intruder, who had chosen broad daylight to wreak his destruction upon the premises.
“The third time was the early hours of Tuesday morning. Our own Miss Jackson had been mulling over a certain passage regarding the management of woodland, which had been presenting her with difficulty. A particularly elegant way of phrasing the thought had occurred to her as she drowsed, and she was anxious to write it down before she forgot it. Not having a private room, she was loath to disturb those who slumbered close by, so she hurried down to the teachers’ room to eke out a bit of work before inspiration passed. And would you be able to guess what she found there?”
“Not the intruder, come yet again?”
“Like a stage comedy, her timing was impeccable. He was busily engaged in scrambling the files and pulling books from the shelves.”
“Gracious, Holmes. The building must be like Waterloo Station.”
“Don’t you recall your own academic days, Watson? The only miracle so far is that one of the boarders has not yet encountered our midnight wanderer.”
“The young ladies at this school are obviously far more well-behaved and obedient than the youths at my own,” I replied.
“As mine, friend Watson,” said Holmes, with his silent laugh. “Well, it goes without saying that the alarm was raised, the servants were roused, the culprit escaped, the chaos tidied, and so on. The ladies of the school were certain, by this point, that it was not an ordinary casual burglar, who would wander off in search of easier prey that was less diligently guarded. Yet knowing neither his identity nor his goals made the stress of the situation all the more difficult, for when will he stop? With so many young ladies in their care, you understand that the
situation is delicate, and that the livelihoods and reputations of the school itself lie in the balance as well. The students may go back to their families, but what of the unprotected single ladies of the faculty, such as the enterprising Miss Jackson, who have neither husband nor father to depend upon?”
I knew that Holmes had little interest in women in a personal sense, neither caring for them nor trusting them, but was always nothing if not courteous to those who sought his aid. I was touched by this evidence of his sensitivity to their plight.
“And thus?” I prompted him.
“And thus I took my departure,” he said. “The young lady had a class that was to start in five minutes, and three other instructresses entered the room at this point, making further conversation quite impossible.”
“You ought to have at least explored,” I said reproachfully. “Aren’t you always murmuring about data, and evidence, and not operating in their absence? Surely you could have looked around, and found tell-tale signs of the scoundrel hiding in the attics, or perhaps discovered a secret cupboard under the stairs.”
“The ladies of the establishment were already suspicious of any unknown adult male over five foot in height,” replied Holmes. “And you yourself have already noted, it would have been easier to look around Waterloo Station than it would have been to explore all the nooks and crannies of this school without raising suspicion. I daresay that’s true, as far as it goes, for at least at Waterloo, one would have a crowd to hide amongst, and when one assumes a reasonable air of authority regarding one’s doings, everyone else presumes you are indeed about your business. Whereas at St. Catherine’s, everyone is quite aware of everyone else’s business, and to pretend otherwise, even to the very lowest scullery maid or the dullest student, is a very difficult thing.”
