Denis Smith - The Mammoth Book of the New Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes

‘As for you, sir,’ Holmes continued, turning to Dr Glimper, ‘your behaviour has been disgraceful. Your loyalty to your brother is understandable, even if your chief motive seems to have been to preserve your own position at the cathedral; your succumbing to the temptation to steal the cheque is also understandable, if highly reprehensible in a man of your position and learning; but your treatment of Mr Zennor: that, sir, is unforgivable. To allow a young man you knew to be perfectly innocent to suffer the shame of baseless suspicion, and the scorn and distrust of his companions and superiors, when all the time you had it within your power to free him in an instant from these chains of disgrace: that, sir, is despicable!’

At that moment the two policemen reappeared from the direction of Abercorn Place and between them they held Dr Glimper’s brother. As they approached us, he let out a stream of foul abuse, directed particularly at his brother, who hung his head in shame.

‘Put him in the van,’ said Inspector Jackett.

‘You see a gulf between us,’ said Dr Glimper, looking up abruptly, ‘but it was not always so. It is not I who have risen, but he who has fallen. We are from a good family and I am sure the Glimpers of Newbury are still well spoken of. My brother was educated at one of the finest schools in England, and had all that a good education and a loving family could provide. But his course was set on dishonesty, deceit, debauchery and depravity, and this is where that course has led him. You are right, sir,’ he continued, addressing Holmes, ‘to call me despicable in my treatment of Zennor. It is the lowest, meanest act of my life and I despise myself for it. But I shall make amends at once and tender my resignation this very day. I shall make a full statement of the facts to the Dean this evening, totally exonerating Zennor and confessing my own guilt.’

‘Before you do any of that,’ said Inspector Jackett in a dry tone, ‘I shall need your full name and address, and those of these other gentlemen, too. You may be called as a witness in the criminal proceedings against your brother.’

I asked Holmes that evening, as we discussed the case over supper, whether he had already suspected the truth before Dr Glimper had arrived at St Mark’s.

‘I was tolerably certain of it,’ said he, nodding his head.

‘I don’t see how you could be,’ I responded. ‘When I saw the notes you had made, they appeared to consist chiefly of a series of zigzag lines, interspersed with hieroglyphics! How that could possibly indicate Dr Glimper’s guilt, I cannot imagine!’

Holmes chuckled. He reached for his note-book and opened it at the relevant page. For a moment, he studied it in silence, then he passed it to me. ‘I suppose it does look a confused muddle if you don’t understand what it represents,’ he conceded; ‘but it’s not really quite so complex as you suppose, Watson.

‘To begin with, we were presented with the problem of how the envelope containing the cheque had found its way into Zennor’s coat pocket. He had not placed it there himself and therefore someone else had done so. He also said that it was practically inconceivable that anyone should dislike him so much as to place it there deliberately in order to incriminate him. This I accepted, not simply because it was Zennor’s opinion, but also because such an underhand scheme was very unlikely to be successful. If, for instance, he had noticed the envelope when he first put on his coat at the cathedral, possibly in the company of others, he would never have been suspected of trying to steal it. Suspicions were only aroused because of the somewhat odd circumstances in which the envelope came to light: the hue and cry had already gone up over the theft in Zennor’s absence, and he was then seen, when alone in the garden of Lambeth Palace, to be doing something with an envelope he had just taken from his pocket. This is what roused suspicions against him.

‘So, if the envelope had not been placed in Zennor’s pocket deliberately, either by himself or by someone else, then it had been placed there in error. But what could that mean? Zennor told us that there was no legitimate reason for the envelope to be in anyone’s pocket – the Dean’s secretary was to deal with the cheque later – so the reason was clearly an illegitimate one. In other words, it must be that someone had intended to steal the cheque and had meant to place it in his own pocket, but had made a mistake and put it into Zennor’s pocket instead. How could such a mistake have occurred? Only, surely, if the raincoats had got muddled up. Thus you see, Watson, that even on the most preliminary analysis of the matter, I was drawn to the conclusion that the whereabouts of each of the coats on the day in question was likely to be crucial to the solution of the case.

‘This is where we come to that diagram you see before you. Now, altogether, there are seven overcoats to consider, the six belonging to the minor canons and that of Dr Glimper, which are all customarily hung in the corridor outside the cathedral office. But we can immediately eliminate several of them from our inquiry, which helps us enormously. That is the significance of those little stick figures you see at the top of the page, which have a line through them. Henry Jeavons had left about seven o’clock in the morning, wearing Michael Earley’s coat, so that coat can be removed from the equation. But Jeavons’s own coat was left, not in the corridor, where anyone might use it, but in his bedroom. So that coat, too, can be eliminated. Then there is the coat belonging to Wallace Wakefield: he is a somewhat larger size than anyone else and would very quickly have realised his mistake had he put anyone else’s coat on, so he was undoubtedly wearing his own, which can, therefore, also be eliminated. This leaves us with the coats belonging to Martin Zennor, Stafford Nugent and Hubert Bebington, which are all the same, and that of Dr Glimper, which is slightly larger.

‘Now we know, from the testimony we heard, that Zennor arrived back at Canterbury wearing his own coat, a fact he verified by examining the initials in the pocket, and that Nugent, who had also been up to London, was wearing a coat that fitted him, but which was not his own as it did not have the loose button which he mentioned to us. This coat could only therefore have been Bebington’s. Hence, the coat that Earley was wearing, when he left to go to Ramsgate, which he admitted was not his own, but which he said fitted him perfectly well, must have been that of Nugent. As Earley was away in Ramsgate all day, only arriving back in the late afternoon, Nugent’s coat can therefore also be eliminated from the equation. The only coats which are relevant to our little problem, then, are those of Zennor, Bebington and Glimper.

‘When Nugent was first leaving the cathedral precincts, there was only one coat remaining in the corridor, so he took it and hurried off to catch Zennor up. He had got only halfway to the railway station, however, when he remembered the book he had intended to take back to Lambeth Palace. He therefore returned to the cathedral to get the book, but saw when he did so that there was now another coat hanging in the corridor which looked more like his own, so he took off the one he was wearing and put on the other. It seems certain, then, that the first coat he took was that of Dr Glimper, which is why it didn’t fit him so well, and the second coat either Bebington’s or Zennor’s. Where had this second coat come from? Clearly it had been used by Bebington when he went to the stationer’s. He had gone out five or ten minutes before Zennor and Nugent left, and had returned a few minutes after they had gone, and perhaps seven or eight minutes before Nugent came back to get his book. You will see I have marked all the timings down the edge of the page. But Bebington told us that the coat he was wearing during his brief visit to the stationer’s was not his own. It was, therefore, Zennor’s, and Zennor himself must have gone off to London wearing Bebington’s coat.