“At the worst, I suppose, the poor fellow has been criminal. I prefer to think that, on both occasions, he was merely weak. The second occasion appears to confirm the first, does it not?”
A familiar look in Holmes’s eye assured me that Winter had just stepped neatly into a trap.
“Without it we should lack that confirmation, should we?”
But the headmaster was not so easily caught.
“Mr Holmes, I have known this boy for almost two years. He is not evil. I wish him well. I hope he may thrive elsewhere. But I have taken the only course open to me.”
“Elsewhere?” Sherlock Holmes put more into the two syllables than I would have thought possible. Winter became ingratiating.
“This will seem a strange world to you, sir. I have the advantage of living in it for some years and understanding the best interests of individual boys.”
“Capital,” said Holmes expressionlessly, and for a moment the headmaster seemed to believe that he was safe. But Sherlock Holmes never took his eyes off him.
“Patrick Riley is a sensitive boy,” Winter explained, as if with a little difficulty, “whatever his faults or virtues. I believe his reaction to being caught demonstrates that—his refusal to take his medicine. I fear, gentlemen, the Royal Navy is not the best place for a boy of the sensitive poetic spirit, the young philosopher, the scholar whose whole heart is in his books.”
“And is Patrick Riley such a boy?” Holmes inquired politely.
Reginald Winter smiled again and made another gesture of infinite good nature.
“The worst I could say before this incident was that during two years he had not been a good mixer. Riley prefers to keep himself to himself. Normal boys do not like that sort of thing. It makes a fellow seem as if he thinks himself better than they. A little more sociability or geniality would have made him popular enough.”
“And was he unpopular?” I asked, “Do I take it that he has been bully-ragged?
“No!” Mr Winter looked startled, “No boy is bullied at St Vincent’s, sir. In case you think so, perhaps it is best that you should form your own conclusions of his character when you meet him—for meet him you shall, I promise you that. He is fortunate to have such counsel for his defence!”
Having failed once, he tried a second time to smile us into friendship. Not a muscle in Holmes’s face moved.
“I am not here as anyone’s counsel, Mr Winter. You have found the boy guilty of theft. The boy denies it and, whatever the pressure put upon him, has not changed his plea. Sir John Fisher has asked me to establish the truth. That is all. Though, of course, there is also the allegation against him of an attempt to kill himself. Attempted suicide is a crime as surely as theft.”
The headmaster shook his head sympathetically. He mistakenly believed he was out of the wood now.
“Even without the matter of theft, it would be difficult to keep him after the second incident. We are not equipped to care for a boy who may attempt anything of that kind. Meanwhile, the others believe that it confirms his guilt. Would an innocent boy behave in such a manner? They naturally think not. Suicide is bound to be regarded as a sign of cowardice in the face of adversity.”
The opinion which Reginald Winter attributed to his boys was surely his own.
“Yes,” said Holmes, languidly arrogant, “the cowardice of the late Captain Lawrence Oates, who deliberately walked out into a South Pole blizzard in order that his companions might have a better chance of survival on their doomed trek homewards.”
Reginald Winter tried to smile, but temper was getting the better of him.
“That was not what I meant, Mr Holmes. It rests on my conscience that a boy in my school should condemn himself twice, as a thief and a coward, by attempting such a dreadful thing. But there is a world of difference …” Then, as he sat on the padded top of his fire-surround, he stopped and smiled down at us, as if he realised that a joke had been practised on him.
“Are you playing games with me, Mr Holmes? They say it is your habit.”
“Do they, Mr Winter? Do they say that indeed? Then let me tell you something for your comfort.”
“Comfort, sir?” There was a mocking curiosity in this query, but I knew from the cold, sardonic tone in my friend’s voice that the sparring was over. Holmes had got him and was about to land a decisive blow.
“In order that your conscience may lie quite easily …”
I winced at the savage double meaning of this statement.
“… you may put it from your mind that Patrick Riley tried to commit suicide. He did not.”
The headmaster’s smile went out like a light.
“You were not there, Mr Holmes. Several witnesses were. They saw him run at the train. In law, a man must be assumed to intend the natural and probable consequences of his acts. What would those consequences have been if the fireman had not seen him as the train emerged from the tunnel and the driver had not pulled on the brake at once?”
Holmes relaxed, drew a sheet of notepaper from his breast pocket and handed it to Winter. I recalled that he had been compiling this from his shelves the evening before. It had not occurred to me to ask him what it was.
“Mr Winter,” he continued languidly, “you may examine the tables of coroners’ courts, not to mention the statistics of alienation. There you will find suicides of every description. Suicide by poison or firearms, by noose or by falling from a height, by drowning or by burning. It is very difficult to stab oneself, of course, which is why defeated generals of the ancient world ordered their servants to hold out a sword that they might run upon it.”
“I have heard of that,” Winter snapped impatiently.
“And to be sure, there are poor souls who have thrown themselves under the wheels of trains.”
“Then you admit it?”
Holmes ignored this.
“You will find from the evidence that they often lingered at the last moment or even waited patiently for a train to appear. Some fell in front of trains, some jumped, some stood or lay upon the rails. But you will search long and hard, Mr Winter—dare I say until hell freezes over?—before you find one who ran to die in front of a train, as if he feared being late for an appointment. Hesitation or uncertainty, procrastination or postponement, not precipitation, is the governing impulse.”
Mr Winter had ignored the sheet of paper and stared hard at Sherlock Holmes during this recital. Now he blinked at the paper in his hand and then looked up again.
“And so …” he began.
“And so, Mr Winter, every statistic and every scrap of medical experience is against you on this. It is even less likely that Patrick Riley tried to commit suicide, which I do not hear that he has admitted, than that he stole the postal order. You have—to use a common expression—not a leg to stand on.”
The headmaster swallowed gently and continued to stare. Holmes continued.
“Now, sir, I fear we must put suicide out of the question. What remains is the testimony of Miss Henslowe, who attended the identification parade, and the opinion of Mr Thomas Gurrin on the handwriting. None of this evidence has been subject to challenge or examination. My task is therefore to let a little light into dark corners. Unless we are to be governed by the jurisprudence of the late Tomas de Torquemada, Patrick Riley’s protest of innocence stands firm unless—and until—proved otherwise. Why should anyone want to undermine it?”
“Not I, Mr Holmes.” Like so many of our opponents who started out in bluff self-confidence, Reginald Winter was beginning to lose his nerve in the face of my friend’s meticulous rationality. The headmaster’s smooth face creased carefully to suggest a sincere alarm at being misunderstood. “I should be only too happy to find him innocent, if the evidence were not all the other way! Believe me, it does a school no good if an offence of this sort becomes public gossip. For Riley’s own sake the best course is to note the facts, not all of which are known to you yet, and to leave us quietly to do what must be done.”