The Case of the Hallmoor Pass Tunnel

0:00 Sleet, Coal Rations and Correspondence for the Grate

0:04 Watson: Coal smoke and wet wool were the smells of the sitting room at Baker Street on Monday evening, the fourteenth of April, nineteen fifty-two. Sleet ticked at the windows, and the scuttle held our last ration of coal until Friday. I sat in my overcoat, totting up a week of unpaid surgery bills. Holmes, wrapped in his dressing gown, was reading his dullest correspondence aloud and then feeding each letter to the grate for whatever warmth it gave.

0:31 Holmes: "Dear Sir, my neighbour's hens have stopped laying." Into the fire. Watson: That one burned rather well.

0:39 Holmes: Complaints usually do. Now, a vicar who suspects his organist of drink. Watson: Stop! Not the blue envelope! Give it here.

0:50 Holmes: You've singed your fingers, Doctor. Was it worth it? Watson: That's Pargeter's cheque! He's kept me waiting since— since Michaelmas, and you nearly made kindling of it.

1:00 Holmes: Then at least he'd have warmed you once. Watson: You're incorrigible, Holmes. Hand me the poker before the rug goes next.

1:09 Holmes: One ring, and nothing after. Someone down there is losing their nerve. Madam! You in the nurse's cape -- don't turn away now.

1:19 Bianca: I'd changed my mind. I've changed it back. Mrs Hudson: That's my door to answer, sir!

1:25 Holmes: You were a flight too slow, Mrs Hudson. Tea, please. Come up, miss.

1:29 Bianca: Thank you. I'm— my name's Bianca Esposito. From Guy's Hospital.

1:35 Watson: Do sit down. The fire's on its last legs, I'm afraid. Bianca: My father's a sleeping-car attendant on the Marenthal-Orient, Mr Holmes.

1:44 Holmes: The night express through the Alps. And? Bianca: An American naval captain travelling in his carriage died last night.

1:52 Watson: Good Lord. Bianca: And the Salzburg police already have Father in a cell. Holmes: Every daughter swears her father innocent, Watson.

2:02 Bianca: I haven't sworn anything yet. Watson: Well said. Holmes: And Salzburg lies in an occupied country, where I've no standing—

2:09 Watson: Never mind standing. Count the hours. The captain died only last night.

2:14 Holmes: Well? Watson: And her father's behind bars already. That arrest was made before the facts could possibly be in.

2:21 Bianca: That's what frightened me, Doctor. Not the death. The speed of it.

2:27 Holmes: Haste is the signature of a mind made up beforehand. Watson: Then the practice can spare me. Pargeter's cheque is safe in my pocket.

2:36 Holmes: Your hat, Watson. Watson: We left the last of the coal in the scuttle and Mrs Hudson's kettle still singing on the landing.

2:48 A Sleeping Car on a Salzburg Siding

2:53 Watson: By the following dusk we stood in the dead man's sleeping car on a Salzburg siding, with an Austrian inspector and our client from Guy's. Holmes: Locked fast. Inspector Zorn, it won't give even from the inside.

3:07 Zorn: It will not. At night the attendant locks the outer doors. Inside or outside, only his square key opens them. And when one closes, it locks itself.

3:20 Holmes: Yet Captain Mercer went out through this one. Zorn: In the Hallmoor Pass, in the tunnel. A blow to the back of the skull, then out.

3:29 Watson: From behind, then. No fall from a train puts a wound there. Zorn: And afterwards the door was found shut and locked. So, a key opened it and closed it, and—

3:39 Bianca: And you've already decided whose. Zorn: Fräulein, I'm sorry. Your father holds the keys, and nobody else.

3:47 Holmes: Was anything taken? Zorn: One letter from his dispatch case. Only one. What letter, the Americans will not say.

3:55 Holmes: One letter gone and the rest untouched? Then the thief knew his envelope before he— Zorn: Or someone told him which one. An attendant earns very little.

4:05 Bianca: Twenty-two years Father's worked this line, Inspector, and never once— Zorn: And he keeps a cabin at the end of this corridor. Look for yourself.

4:13 Watson: A stool, a spirit kettle, a timetable, and a photograph pinned above the stool. Bianca: That's... that's me. My first day in the cap. I sent it him from Guy's, and he's — he's pinned it where he'd see it every time he sat. I said I wouldn't do this in front of anybody...

4:35 Two Passengers Under a Stag's Head

4:39 Watson: The passengers were kept at a hotel across the square; in its lounge, under a stag's head, two of them sat waiting to go home.

4:53 Lennox: You'll be Holmes. Lennox. I write from Budapest for an Edinburgh paper. Sit down, man.

5:00 Holmes: Mr Lennox. You were the captain's friend, I'm told. Lennox: Since forty-one. Eleven years. I still can't believe it.

5:10 Holmes: And you, Miss, typed for him at the legation. Pauline: Pauline. Two years in Carpesti, and a boat home from Cherbourg on Tuesday.

5:19 Holmes: Gloves on indoors, your bag at your feet. You expect to be told you may go at any— Pauline: Expect? I've stopped expecting anything in Salzburg, Mr Holmes. I just sit here in my gloves and hope.

5:30 Watson: The inspector's keeping you both for the inquest? Lennox: He is, and I'd stay unasked. Somebody should speak for what Mercer was doing. Fighting for Frank Dorsey, an American businessman the Hungarians have jailed these three months as a spy. Every legation wrote Dorsey off. Mercer drove in from Carpesti week after week and wouldn't.

5:52 Watson: And did it do any good? Lennox: It might have. That's the part I can't—

5:56 Pauline: Not another toast, Mr Lennox, please. My mother's in Richmond with the porch light on. I want to go home.

6:04 Lennox: And so you shall, lass. But not before he's had his due. Your glass, Doctor.

6:10 Lennox: To the last honest man east of Vienna. Watson: Hear, hear.

6:16 Snow in the Yard Behind the Police Cells

6:20 Watson: Snow fell thick in the yard behind the police cells, where a warder had turned us all back at the gate, and Miss Esposito stood under a lamp with a scrap of paper. Bianca: Not even his own daughter. Five minutes, I asked for.

6:35 Holmes: Nor me, nor anyone, until Inspector Zorn allows it. What have you there? Bianca: From Father. A warder slipped it me at the hotel.

6:44 Holmes: Pencil, pressed clean through, written on his knee in poor light. In Italian, I take it. Bianca: All but five words. What the voice said, he's put down in English, exactly as he heard it.

6:58 Holmes: Nobody inventing a story bothers to keep five words in another tongue. Read it out. Bianca: After the Hallmoor tunnel he went down the corridor, taking the morning calls. He knocked at the captain's door, and a voice told him, Call me at half seven.

7:14 Watson: Your hands are blue. Take my gloves, Miss Esposito. Bianca: He's underlined after the tunnel. Twice. He knows that line in the dark, Doctor, every tunnel by its sound.

7:26 Watson: But by then the captain was lying in the tunnel. Bianca: I know...

7:33 A Bare Desk at Police Headquarters

7:36 Watson: Inspector Zorn received us across a bare desk at police headquarters, with nothing on it but a ledger and a lamp. Holmes: The stop here at Salzburg, Inspector. What happened in that coach?

7:48 Zorn: The register tells it, Herr Holmes. The attendant carries the passports to the officer on the platform. Seven from his coach. Five American, always many Americans on this train, one Austrian, and only one British. All stamped, nothing irregular.

8:06 Watson: And Esposito's own papers? Zorn: Crew papers. Italian, for he's from Naples. Another officer sees those; they're not among the seven.

8:15 Holmes: Ah. So all through the stop your attendant stood under an officer's eye. The one man in that coach you can prove—

8:22 Zorn: At Salzburg, yes. Not in the tunnel. Not afterwards, at the captain's door. He told us of this voice himself, before he knew where the captain fell. A clever man prepares.

8:35 Holmes: Or an honest one speaks before he knows what it'll cost him. Watson: And the passengers, while the train stood? Zorn: Asked them? No. Why should I? Witnesses only, the passengers. The attendant had the keys.

8:49 Watson: Extraordinary.

8:53 A Pen Scratching in the Hotel Writing Room

8:57 Watson: We found Pauline writing home in the hotel's writing room, and Lennox drifted in behind us, glass in hand. Holmes: Forgive me, Miss Pauline. The captain's habits, if you would. Not his virtues.

9:09 Pauline: Black coffee, no sugar. And he hated the telephone worse than the Russians. Holmes: An attaché can't hide from his telephone. So when it rang and he wouldn't answer, where—

9:20 Pauline: Asleep, Mr Holmes, after a night in the cipher room. Nothing wickeder. So I'd pick up and be him. Two years of his dictation, and I had the captain's voice to the life.

9:33 Watson: A man's voice? Come. Lennox: Oh, she had. She kept the British Minister talking a full minute. Go on, Pauline. Do him.

9:42 Pauline: He isn't two days dead— Lennox: That's why. I'd like to hear him once more.

9:47 Pauline: All right. The telephone rings... Mercer. No, sir, the Minister will have to wait. I'm up to my neck in cables.

9:56 Watson: Good heavens. I take back every word. Lennox: That's Tom, God rest him. To the breath.

10:04 Holmes: From the chest, every vowel clipped. She's done that a great many times. After the tunnel, when the attendant knocked, where were you, Miss?

10:16 A Brandy Bottle at the Hotel Bar After Dinner

10:14 Pauline: Me?

10:20 Watson: Lennox had the hotel bar to himself after dinner, a brandy bottle beside him, and he waved us to the chairs opposite. Lennox: Holmes. Doctor. Sit. I've been drinking to Mercer alone, and it's poor work.

10:34 Holmes: Then give me his last night instead. Budapest to the tunnel. Lennox: Cards, his pipe in the corridor. And Pauline, jumpy as a cat.

10:44 Watson: She'd a boat to catch. I'd be jumpy myself. Lennox: Would you? Then here's what I've told nobody, Doctor. Not even Zorn.

10:52 Lennox: Last month Mercer saw her— he saw her in a Carpesti park, passing an envelope to a Romanian. Watson: A Romanian, in Carpesti? Come, man, that's half the—

11:03 Lennox: A clerk from their Foreign Ministry. Mercer had it out with her. Holmes: And you kept it from the inspector out of kindness.

11:11 Lennox: Out of cowardice. I'm fond of the lass. And there's worse.

11:17 Holmes: Oh? Lennox: I looked in during the stop with a cigarette for her, and— well, her berth was empty at Salzburg. Blankets thrown back.

11:27 Holmes: Thrown back, not folded. She left in a hurry and meant to be quick. Lennox: I've a dead friend and a frightened lass, Holmes, and I don't like the sum.

11:37 Holmes: Have you put it to her? Lennox: She swears she slept through it. Ask her.

11:43 A Hard Chair in the Hotel Lobby

11:47 Watson: Pauline sat on a hard chair beside the lobby's telephone cabinet, waiting on a trunk call to Carpesti, when Holmes and I came through.

12:01 Holmes: A trunk-call receipt in your glove, paid in schillings. Not a legation call, then. Pauline: The legation doesn't pay for typists to get homesick down a wire.

12:11 Watson: Homesick for Carpesti? I'd have said Richmond. Pauline: Richmond's an ocean off, Doctor. Carpesti is where my things are.

12:21 Holmes: The last letter you took down for the captain, Miss Pauline. When was it? Pauline: Budapest, before we— before we pulled out. Someone brought him an envelope, creased and grubby. He read it twice, standing up.

12:35 Pauline: Then he sat me at the machine. A cable to Washington, most urgent. Three words in, he laid his hand flat across the keys.

12:44 Watson: Whatever for? Pauline: He said, "It can wait till Paris," and tore the sheet out and burned it in the ashtray. Holmes: Read twice, and a cable burned. That envelope is the letter gone from his dispatch case.

12:57 Pauline: Gone? Nobody— nobody told me anything was gone. Holmes: While the train stood at Salzburg, Mr Lennox looked in on you. Nobody was in your berth, so where—

13:07 Pauline: I was asleep. I've told everyone who asks.

13:16 Pauline: That's Carpesti. Excuse me. Yes, operator. Hello? Yes... yes, it's me.

13:25 The Empty Platform After the Last Departure

13:29 Watson: Long after the last departure, Holmes walked me down the empty platform where the express had stood, our boots squeaking on the packed snow.

13:44 Holmes: The coach stood here. The frontier officer's table stood there, under that lamp. Watson: Twenty minutes, the stop. It's on the timetable in Esposito's cabin. Holmes, I keep putting two things together, and they won't come apart.

13:59 Watson: An empty berth during the stop. And a woman who can be Mercer through a shut door. I've heard probationers take off a ward sister till the patients sat up. Nothing like hers. That was the man.

14:13 Holmes: Then leave them side by side, Watson. Don't nail them together yet. But mark that lamp. Whoever stepped down here stepped into its light, under an officer's nose.

14:24 Watson: And nobody's said a word about seeing her. Holmes: Nobody's been asked. Watson: Then where was she, Holmes, all the time the train was halted here?

14:35 Breakfast Time in the Hotel Lounge

14:39 Watson: Zorn came to the hotel before the breakfast things were cleared, and sent for Pauline to the lounge where Holmes and I were waiting. Zorn: Sit, Fräulein. I have thought again about the attendant's voice behind the door. Perhaps he doesn't invent it. Someone answered from the captain's compartment, someone who sounds as the captain did.

15:00 Zorn: And I'm told you do this. At the legation, on the— Pauline: Who told you that?

15:04 Holmes: I did, Miss Pauline. Watson: Inspector, she's a typist, not a— Zorn: Doctor, in Carpesti a typist sees every cable that goes out.

15:13 Holmes: The knock came after the tunnel. The voice had to pass with a man who'd taken the captain's orders all evening. Only one passenger in that coach has the captain's voice to the life.

15:24 Pauline: Me? That was a parlour game! Mr Lennox made me—

15:28 Holmes: In the writing room. Nobody made you do it for the British Minister. Zorn: You'll come with me now. The rest we say at headquarters.

15:36 Pauline: Now? He used to put his head round my door before he turned in. Every trip. He'd say seven-thirty sharp, Miss Pauline, the cables won't type themselves... and I'd say yes, sir, like a fool, every night... Please. Whatever you do with me, don't tell the legation. Please don't— don't tell them.

16:00 A Brass Grille at the Station Telegraph Counter

16:04 Watson: The station's telegraph counter smelt of paste and wet coats, and Lennox stood at its brass grille when we arrived, licking a pencil over a form. Holmes: You've started that wire four times, Mr Lennox. The pencil has furrowed the pad right through.

16:20 Lennox: Five times. "American typist held in attaché's death." It's not a story I'm proud to—

16:27 Watson: Then don't send it. She's not been before any court. You'd hang her in print first?

16:33 Lennox: If I don't, the agencies will by morning, Doctor. Better a friend's words than theirs. Holmes: Then be a friend and hold it till the inquest. Once it's printed, you can't take it back.

16:45 Lennox: You don't think she did it. Holmes: I think an inquest is kinder than a front page. Lennox: All right. For her sake. Miss, keep that one on the spike, would you?

16:56 Lennox: And if my editor wires back, have it sent across to the hotel at half seven. Till the inquest, then. For Mercer.

17:05 A Whitewashed Cell and a Plank Bed

17:09 Watson: Zorn himself turned the key that evening and let us into a whitewashed cell, Miss Esposito first, where her father rose from a plank bed. Esposito: Bianca! Cara, they let you come all this way?

17:23 Bianca: Of course I came, Father. This is Mr Holmes. Tell him about the voice.

17:28 Zorn: Ten minutes, Esposito. Herr Holmes, your questions. Holmes: Your five words. On this line at night I'd expect to hear them in German. Halb acht.

17:38 Esposito: I swear it, Mr Holmes, it was English: Call me at half seven, clear as a bell through the door. Halb acht I say to the Austrians every night. Half seven— never, never in my life. That's why I wrote it down so carefully.

17:53 Zorn: And his call list reached the chef de train at Bischofshofen before anyone missed the captain. The captain's line is on it. Holmes: Then the answer was written down while the whole train still thought the captain asleep.

18:05 Bianca: There! Holmes: Now the spare key. Where do you keep it?

18:10 Esposito: On a hook in my cabin, under her picture. My own key never leaves my belt. Holmes: And when is the cabin empty?

18:18 Esposito: Only at Salzburg, while I take the passports out to the officer on the platform. Holmes: And in the morning? Esposito: It was on its hook. I looked before the police came.

18:28 Holmes: So it was borrowed at Salzburg and brought home again. Zorn: Borrowed by the typist. We have her two doors down, for that voice.

18:37 Esposito: The American lady from the legation? No, no. She never went near my— Zorn: You were on the platform. How can you know?

18:44 Esposito: Because I know exactly where she was, Inspector. And the typist was at my elbow the whole stop.

18:52 Zorn's Office the Next Morning

18:56 Watson: Zorn had Pauline brought up from the cells to his office next morning, and Lennox came across the square at his summons, hat in hand. Zorn: Sit, Fräulein. Herr Holmes wishes me to hear this again, with you in the room.

19:10 Holmes: Esposito swore from a cell, Inspector, with nothing to gain. His very words were "at my elbow the whole stop." Meaning you, Miss Pauline.

19:20 Pauline: Then he's been kinder to me than I've been to anybody. Lennox: She told Holmes she slept, Inspector, when her berth was empty at Salzburg. I saw it.

19:30 Zorn: This you didn't tell me, Herr Lennox. Lennox: I'd hoped I'd never need to. She's a decent lass—

19:36 Zorn: Decent girls do not lie to police. Fräulein. Asleep, or on the platform?

19:43 Pauline: On the platform. Beside Mr Esposito in that lamp, every minute of the twenty. Holmes: Then you were watching the officer, not the train. Something in your passport you didn't want him to find.

19:55 Pauline: A letter. From a clerk at the Romanian Foreign Ministry. We're— we're engaged, and the legation forbids it. So I watched that man turn every page. Then I lied to all of you, because the truth could put him in a cell like mine.

20:12 Watson: So the envelope in the park was a love letter. Pauline: Who told you about the park? Tom saw that once and asked me straight, and I told him. He let it be.

20:23 Lennox: Lord knows I'd like to believe her. But a secret fiancé, a lie to Holmes, and now a tale that moves her twenty yards— Zorn: Twenty yards from the key, Herr Lennox, under a frontier officer's eye.

20:36 Holmes: The only time all night that key hung unwatched, and she spent it in the one lit spot on the platform. Zorn: Fräulein, go back to the hotel. Don't leave Salzburg.

20:47 Pauline: Thank you. Zorn: Then, Herr Holmes, it is the attendant again. Holmes: Is it?

20:55 Shut Inside the Captain's Compartment

20:59 Watson: Holmes took me back to the siding that afternoon and shut us both inside the captain's compartment, with the dispatch case open on the berth. Holmes: Knock, Watson. As Esposito knocked.

21:11 Holmes: Who answers you? Watson: You, I suppose. But through that panel I'd swear to the words sooner than the man.

21:18 Holmes: Exactly what Esposito did. He swore to five words, never to a face. Watson: The voice wanted waking at half past seven, put the short way. And yesterday, at the telegraph grille, Lennox— Lennox wanted his editor's reply sent round at that hour. Put the same way...

21:37 Holmes: I draw nothing from it yet. A phrase isn't a fingerprint. Watson: Then what is it?

21:44 Holmes: A habit. And who in that coach would say half seven?

21:49 The Inspector Keeps His Coat On

21:53 Watson: Holmes had Zorn gather everyone in the hotel bar that evening; Pauline took the stool farthest from Lennox, and the inspector kept his coat on.

22:08 Lennox: Will this take long, Holmes? My editor's wires come over to the hotel at half seven, and I'd like to read tonight's sober. Holmes: Brief as I can. Miss Pauline, for two years you were the captain on every telephone in Carpesti.

22:22 Pauline: For all the good it's done me this week. Holmes: Then you knew his morning call better than he did. Each night, seven-thirty sharp, Miss Pauline, the—

22:31 Pauline: Don't. Yes. Never half anything. Tom thought that sloppy.

22:37 Holmes: So, had you stood behind that door doing Mercer, which words would you've used? Pauline: His, of course. You learn a man's words first, Mr Holmes. The voice comes easy after.

22:49 Holmes: Just so. A mimic copies his words. Whoever answered that knock wasn't copying the captain at all.

22:56 Watson: He was simply asking to be woken the way he's always asked. Zorn: Half seven. So. An English way to speak.

23:05 Holmes: British, Inspector. Mr Lennox put it exactly so not five minutes— Lennox: Man, any Scot says it! Half of Edinburgh says it every morning of its life.

23:16 Holmes: Any Scot. Inspector, how many Scots were in that coach?

23:21 A Lit Stove in the Office That Night

23:25 Watson: The stove in Zorn's office was lit when we came in that night; Lennox took the chair across the desk, and Pauline kept to the wall by the door. Zorn: The frontier register, Herr Holmes, as you asked. Seven passports from that coach. Of the seven, five American, one Austrian, and only one British, and that one is yours, Herr Lennox.

23:49 Lennox: I'm a Scot with a British passport, Inspector. Half the sleeping cars in Europe carry one. Holmes: And the attendant is a Neapolitan who says halb acht to every Austrian on the line.

24:01 Zorn: Yes. He wrote down English he never uses, on a call list that reached Bischofshofen before the captain was missed. He didn't invent this voice.

24:11 Holmes: Nor was Mr Lennox abed at Salzburg. By his own account he was in the corridor, looking in on an empty berth. In the twenty minutes the spare key hung unwatched on its—

24:21 Lennox: With a cigarette for a lass! You'd hang a man on— on a figure of speech and a cigarette? Zorn: Herr Lennox, I charge you with the murder of Captain Tom Mercer.

24:32 Lennox: You can't— Holmes: At Budapest, Miss Pauline watched him burn a cable, most urgent, with Dorsey still in his cell. It can wait till Paris, he told her. Why should anything wait, for a man who drove in week after week and—

24:47 Lennox: Because it was me! Pauline: No... Lennox: Dorsey got a letter out. Out of that prison. The name of the man who sold him to the Hungarians.

24:58 Watson: Your name. Lennox: They wanted an American, and I'd a permit and a column to keep. I gave them the one who trusted me. Tom read it at Budapest. I watched his face. All night at the cards, he knew.

25:13 Holmes: And still he went with you to the carriage door. Lennox: I asked him out for a smoke, and he came. Knowing. Do you understand? He came—

25:22 Pauline: Knowing? Then why go? Lennox: To give me till Paris. To cable it myself, under my own name, and be a man once. That's what he said...

25:33 Lennox: And then the tunnel, and the roar of it, and I — eleven years, and I couldn't let him... Pauline: It could wait till Paris. He was giving you till Paris.

25:45 Back in Baker Street Before a Full Scuttle

25:49 Watson: From my journal, the last page of it: Baker Street again, Holmes and I before a full scuttle at last, and Mrs Hudson's step on the stair. Mrs Hudson: Miss Esposito, Mr Holmes. Walked from the station in this wet, so mind my hearthrug.

26:05 Bianca: I'll not stop, Mrs Hudson. I came to tell you, and to give the doctor these back. Watson: My gloves! I'd quite given them up for lost.

26:15 Bianca: Father's out. Inspector Zorn signed the order himself. And Mr Lennox stands charged with murder in Salzburg.

26:23 Watson: Splendid! Bianca: Father's back on the Marenthal Monday. Says the line can't run without him.

26:31 Watson: I keep turning it over, Holmes. A man undone by two words. Holmes: Not the words, Watson. Whose words they were.

26:40 Watson: But how could you be sure it wasn't Pauline putting on a voice? Holmes: She told us herself, in the bar: a mimic learns the words first. As Mercer, she'd have said seven-thirty.

26:52 Watson: Ah. Holmes: Whoever stood behind that door wasn't playing anyone. He talked the way he always talks, and Zorn's register held one British passport.

27:02 Bianca: And all of it hung on Father's knock. Nobody believed him but you. Holmes: He set down an English phrase he'd never use himself. Honest men are pedantic. Liars improve.

27:15 Watson: And Mercer walked to that door knowing. That's the part I can't get past. Holmes: Mercer offered him till Paris. Salzburg will be less generous.