Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly

I could see, like a torpedo through the water, the question that Holmes was about to launch and which must not be asked now. It was a demand to hear of the last terrible moments with Miles. I judged that Victoria Temple’s nerves were exhausted. If I did not bring the interview to a halt, she most certainly would. There might be such an outburst as would make any further visit impossible.

So I cut short my friend’s inquiry.

“You have done enough, Miss Temple. More than enough in agreeing to discuss these difficult matters so bravely with us. Please believe that we shall do all we can to help you. If we return, it will only be to clarify points of detail. Thanks to you, the great part of the work is done.”

From the look that Holmes gave me, he thought our work was anything but done. Yet I knew as a medical man that this inquisition had gone as far as was prudent. Perhaps we should one day discuss with Miss Temple the last moments of Miles Mordaunt. If not, then we must shift for ourselves.

We left our client and pleaded the mandate of Bradshaw’s railway time table to avoid a tea-table conversation with Dr Annesley.

As our country carriage rattled back to Wokingham over the uneven surface of the lanes, I said, “Hysteria may explain her loss of awareness on three occasions. Quint disappearing from the tower. Miss Jessel vanishing in the schoolroom. The governess coming to her senses with Miles dead in her arms. It is not always required that an hysterical personality should fall into an outright swoon. And then there is a recovery, a return of the senses.”

My friend frowned across the passing hedgerows to the Surrey hills as he spoke.

“‘Some unseen mysterious principle again sets in motion the magic pinions and the wizard wheels. The silver cord was not for ever loosed, nor the golden bowl irreparably broken. But where, meantime, was the soul?’”

“Edgar Allan Poe,” I said, recognising the quotation. “I am there before you, Holmes!”

“If we rule out apparitions, what are we left with except the fragile psychic mechanism of Miss Victoria Temple?”

He drew from the pocket of his travelling cloak a silver flask, a present from a grateful royal personage in a case of alleged cheating at baccarat. We shared a tot of cognac in place of the tea we had abandoned. My friend watched a carter’s wagon edging past us in the other direction. Then he resumed.

“We are left with the detection of a crime. Let us return to the practical question. Why should anyone—living or dead—desire the death of this ten-year-old schoolboy? Why should an apparition bother to entice him to the eternal exile of the damned? Cui bono, as the lawyers’ dog Latin has it—who would benefit? There, if anywhere, lies the answer.”

He tapped his walking-stick thoughtfully against his boot and continued in one of his characteristic monologues.

“Did you not observe, Watson, the most curious omission in this afternoon’s interview?”

“I was not aware of any omission.”

“Were you not? Really? When Miss Temple arrived at Bly, Miles Mordaunt was not yet there. He was dismissed from King Alfred’s some weeks later. His offence was so injurious to the other children that Dr Clarke could not permit him to remain. What offence was so terrible in a child of ten that all his future hopes and prospects must be destroyed in this manner? And why was it left under a veil of mystery? Did not Miss Temple know what it was? A child cannot be expelled from school without a reason! James Mordaunt was evidently in France, and she was the only responsible person available to receive notification. Yet she said nothing of it.”

“Why did you not ask her?”

“The fact that Miss Temple chose not to reveal it is far more important to our case than the exact peccadillo of Miles Mordaunt.”

He was right, of course. I was left to my own meditations.

“Miss Temple found him beautiful in soul and body,” I said presently, thinking aloud, “Except for his refusal to admit seeing the apparitions, which seems to me evidence of his common sense.”

He ignored this and returned to his strong practical objections.

“It is time to put the apparitions on one side, Watson. We must not forget that in the first place we are dealing with a recorded crime of homicide. We shall overturn the verdict against Miss Temple only by following the evidence. It is plain to me that our next step must be to establish the cause—and equally important, the circumstances—of Miles Mordaunt’s dismissal from school.”

I laughed at this.

“An old-fashioned headmaster of King Alfred’s like Austen Clarke will not discuss scandal with us! You may be sure of that.”

“Happily, I think we may dispense with Dr Clarke’s assistance. King Alfred’s is situated at Blackdown, within the Douglas family’s area of influence. The current edition of Who’s Who? informs me that it has educated two cousins of Hereward Douglas, Galahad and Lancelot. I believe our client can procure an introduction to a master able to throw light on the boy’s disgrace. Your invaluable Bradshaw will suggest a convenient train. This time we shall require the Great Western line to Taunton—and the dining car.”

3

Dr Austen Clarke was not approachable. His pride was to have been a boy at the most exalted Victorian school, Thomas Arnold’s Rugby. He would never admit—let alone discuss—the expulsion of one of his own pupils. Fortunately our client’s elder cousin, Galahad Douglas, had spent four years at King Alfred’s before graduating to Eton. He offered to approach its modern-minded history master, William Spencer-Smith.

It was the headmaster who had put all blame squarely on Miles Mordaunt. This ten-year-old had sinned against heaven, in the shape of the school rules, and must go. His continued presence would “injure” the other children. By contrast, the history master, William Spencer-Smith, had argued that the school owed a duty of care towards this troubled boy and that it had failed him.

Galahad Douglas reported that Spencer-Smith would receive us on two conditions. First, our conversation must remain confidential. Second, Dr Clarke must not be told of our visit on any account. I diagnosed Spencer-Smith as an unquiet spirit who was relieved by the chance to talk of his troubles.

We left Baker Street for Paddington Station and the Taunton train on a morning just before the boys of King Alfred’s returned from their Easter holidays. At the Somerset market town, a rusty one-horse hackney cab was waiting in the station approach. Holmes instructed the driver to drop us outside the school gates and await our return.

On the edge of the town, the creeper-covered stone of King Alfred’s, with its low, crenellated central tower, was a copy of Oxford colleges built two centuries ago. The wide front lawn had been planted with a fine cedar of Lebanon and a stone-cross memorial to the fallen alumni of the Crimean and South African wars. Within the main building lay the Great Hall, classrooms, dormitories and chapel. The high view from the rear terrace encompassed playing fields, cricket pavilion, with the bleak heights of Exmoor and Dunkery Beacon in the distance.

Here the senior boys lived and worked. The juniors walked in for breakfast from several large houses nearby, each named after a royal dynasty: Tudor, Stuart, Brunswick and Hanover. A note in the margin of Miss Temple’s journal informed us that Miles had been a member of Brunswick for two years. His housemaster was Mair Loftus, a Cambridge Master of Arts who also taught chemistry.

During the holidays the main building was silent and its grounds deserted. Yet William Spencer-Smith remained in residence. This was his home, for he had no other. We followed the porter up a wide staircase with glimpses of long dormitories and neat rows of beds to either side. At the top landing, a narrow corridor ran off under the eaves of the building. Our guide knocked on a door at the far end and we entered Spencer-Smith’s cross- beamed room, immediately below the tiles.

He was a short, rotund man in his thirties with a face that was soft and kindly, his manner nervously evasive. This uneasy disposition was kept in check by quick smiles and rapid talk. I guessed that he was ragged by the boys more than he deserved.

Two broken-down easy chairs, a sofa, a cluttered desk and a length of overcrowded bookshelves made up his spartan furniture. The contents of the room were a match for his shabby jacket and flannels. As we shook hands, a westerly Atlantic wind rattled the old bones of the school at this height. After we had taken our places in the chairs,