A Study in Sherlock

“The smell of bergamot,” he said, “is a dead giveaway. Oswego tea, they call it in America, where they drink an infusion of the stuff for no other reason than pleasure. Have you been to America?”

“Not in some time,” I said.

“Ah.” He nodded. “Just as I thought.”

“You seem to be a very observant person,” I ventured.

“I try to keep my hand in,” he said, “although it doesn’t come as easily as it did in my salad days. Odd, isn’t it, how, as they gain experience, the senses become blunted. One must keep them up by making a game of it, like the boy, Kim, in Kipling. Do you enjoy Kipling?”

I was tempted to reply with that exhausted old wheeze, I don’t know, I’ve never kippled, but something told me (that strange sense again) to keep it to myself.

“I haven’t read him for years,” I said.

“A singular person, Kipling. Remarkable, is it not, that a man with such weakened eyes should write so much about the sense of sight?”

“Compensation, perhaps,” I suggested.

“Ha! An alienist! You are a follower of Freud.”

Damn the fellow. Next thing I knew he’d be asking me to pick a card and telling me my auntie’s telephone number.

I gave him half a nod.

“Just so,” he said. “I perceived by your boots that you have been in Vienna. The soles of Herr Stockinger are unmistakable.”

I turned and, for the first time, sized the man up. He wore a tight-fitting jacket and ragged trousers, an open collar with a red scarf at his throat, and on his head, a tram conductor’s cap with the number 309 engraved on a brass badge.

Not a workman—no, too old for that, but someone who wanted to be taken for a workman. An insurance investigator, perhaps, and with that thought my heart ran suddenly cold.

“You must come here often,” I said, giving him back a taste of his own, “to guess out the occupations of strangers. Bit of a game with you, is it?”

His brow wrinkled.

“Game? There are no games on the battlefield of life, Mr.—”

“De Voors,” I said, blurting out the first thing that came to mind.

“Ah! De Voors. Dutch, then.”

It was not so much a question as a statement—as if he were ticking off an internal checklist.

“Yes,” I said. “Originally.”

“Do you speak the language?”

“No.”

“As I suspected. The labials are not formed in that direction.”

“See here, Mister—”

“Montague,” he said, seizing my hand and giving it a hearty shake.

Why did I have the feeling he was simultaneously using his forefinger to gauge my pulse?

“… Samuel Montague. I am happy to meet you. Undeniably happy.”

He gave his cap a subservient tip, ending with a two-fingered salute at its brim.

“You have not answered my question, Mr. Montague,” I said. “Do you come here often to observe?”

“The parks of our great city are conducive to reflection,” he said. “I find that a great expanse of grass gives free rein to the mind.”

“Free rein is not always desirable,” I said, “in a mind accustomed to running in its own tram tracks.”

“Excellent!” he exclaimed. “A touch of metaphor. It is a characteristic not always to be found among the Dutch!”

“See here, Mr. Montague,” I said. “I don’t know that I like—”

But already his hand was on my arm.

“No offence, my dear fellow. No offence at all. In any case, I see that your British hedgehog outbristles your Dutch beech marten.”

“What the devil do you mean by that?” I said, leaping to my feet.

“Nothing at all. It was an attempted joke on my part that failed to jell—an impertinence. Please forgive me.”

He seized my sleeve and pulled me down beside him on the bench.

“That fellow over there,” he said in a low voice. “Don’t look at him directly—the one loitering beneath the lime. What do you make of him?”

“He is a doctor,” I replied quickly, eager to shift the focus from myself. The unexpected widening of my acquaintance’s eyes told me that I had scored a lucky hit.

“How can you tell?” he demanded.

“He has the slightly hunched shoulders of a man who has sat by many a sickbed.”

“And?”

“And the tips of his fingers are stained with silver nitrate from the treating of warts.”

Montague laughed.

“How can you be sure he’s not a cigarette smoker and an apothecary?”

“He’s not smoking and apothecaries do not generally carry black bags.”

“Wonderful,” exclaimed Montague. “Add to that the pin of Bart’s Hospital in his lapel, the seal of the Royal College of Surgeons on his keychain, and the unmistakable outline of a stethoscope in his jacket pocket.”

I found myself grinning at him like a Cheshire cat.

I had fallen into the game.

“And the park keeper?”

I sized up the old man, who was picking up scraps of paper and lobbing them with precision into a wheeled refuse bin.

“An old soldier. He limps. He was wounded. His large body is mounted upon spindly legs. Probably spent a great deal of time in a military hospital recovering from his wounds. Not an officer—he doesn’t have the bearing. Infantry, I should say. Served in France.”

Montague bit the corner of his lip and gave me half a wink.

“Splendid!” he said.