John Watson. We arrived a little early and have been admiring the glories of your garden. The penstemon, the tea- roses, the agapanthus, the sedum and sweet peas are charming. Your tiger lilies are splendid and your cedar trees are a glory.”
Blushing with pleasure, she dropped a half-curtsey. Mrs Grose was a comfortable figure in dark grey dress and white cap. Her face had filled out with age, but the grey wide-set eyes and handsome features suggested that she had been a “stunner” in her youth. A comfortably furnished room was set apart for her on the first floor. Presently we stood in its window, looking down on the geometry of the garden.
“What is on the island at the end of the lake, Mrs Grose?” I inquired
She chuckled.
“Not much, sir! Mostly covered in trees and bushes now. So overgrown you’d very likely hitch a foot and break an ankle. There was a summer house, so called. Hard to see it for the overgrowth now. What the man Quint called the temple of Pros-er pine. Whatever that may be!”
“Pro-ser-pine,” said Holmes pedantically. “The goddess of hell.”
She pursed her lips.
“Well he should know, Mr Holmes, because that’s where he is now. Good riddance to bad rubbish, as they say.”
Our hostess shivered but continued her explanation.
“Master Mordaunt, father to Mr Charles and Mr James, built it as a pleasure pavilion, when he came home from Asia. Fitted it up with chairs and cushions, even a piano of sorts that went out in sections on a cattle raft. In those days, they had music and lanterns on summer evenings. But they tired of it all even before the father died. With Mr Charles in India it was left to rot. Then Mr James did nothing to it but wouldn’t have it touched, though it had gone so shabby and the raft might have cleared it. I daresay he had some plan of his own.”
Mrs Grose put a certain emphasis on this last remark. I guessed the housekeeper and I were thinking of the same plan. Two lovers naked together in perfect safety, as they could never quite be in the house itself. Once the major had taken the only boat to the island, there would be no spies and no interruptions.
“Tell me, Mrs Grose,” said Holmes quietly, “are the stone sheds in use at this end of the lake? They appear abandoned, which seems a waste.”
“They want taking down and clearing away likewise,” she said with a knowing smile. “All the tools were moved last winter when they built the new kitchen garden to the other side of the house. Major Mordaunt was spoken to about it but he had no more interest than his brother used to have. They’ll fall down before they’re took down. You can’t run a house like Bly with an absentee master, sir. And that’s what both brothers have been.”
With that, it seemed she had been as indiscreet as she was prepared to be. As we sat down, a silver tray was brought in by a maid. She studied Holmes and me as eagerly as if we were exhibits in a zoo.
Mrs Grose poured tea and said, “Master James being in France, as is usual with him in spring, I took on myself to receive you gentlemen here. He hates being bothered and I know as much about the place as he does. Anything that attracted sightseers would be disagreeable to him. If Miss Temple’s visions became gossip, we might have folk coming to stand and stare, when summer’s here.”
“And Major Mordaunt would not care for that,” Holmes said firmly.
“I should think not!” She looked at him as if they were sharing a joke. Then she became solemn. “To be fair, though, when Miss Temple was in trouble, he did everything for her. He was away in Paris at the time but he never begrudged a penny of what it cost to save her from prison—or worse. Still, he’d rather those ghosts should be delusions of her poor frightened mind than horrors for the world and its wife to come tripping after.”
“And Miss Temple?” I inquired.
Her pause told me that she disliked this question more than the ghosts.
“Of course, sir, we all hope she’ll be well again and they’ll set her free.”
Holmes listened, his left thumb under his chin and two fingers curled across his mouth. Then he lowered his hand and took the tea-cup. “What about you, Mrs Grose? You are not a believer in apparitions?”
She put down the pot and spoke carefully.
“Not exactly, sir. But I was by the lake with Miss Temple and Miss Flora, the second time Miss Jessel was supposed to appear. The little girl had gone ahead of us. Perhaps she unhitched the boat and rowed to where we found her. She was alone. The boat was almost out of sight, tied to the fence where it comes down to the water.”
Holmes nodded, saying, “Miss Temple described seeing Miss Jessel on the far bank, beyond the Middle Deep. On the island. Flora, I believe, was positive she saw no one. You neither saw nor noticed anything?”
“Saw? No, sir. Noticed? It felt for that moment as if the world had stopped. As if you might look at your watch five minutes later and find the time just the same as when it all began. Everything motionless. Just like the figure of Miss Jessel herself was said to be.”
“How long did this last?”
She looked at him awkwardly.
“That’s just it, sir. I couldn’t say.”
“Of course not,” he said courteously. “And what else?”
“Looking at Miss Temple, I’d take my oath she saw something. Or perhaps she only thought she saw it, but she was not making up a story. Like when she saw Quint at the dining-room window, just before evening church. I never saw anyone then but I was afraid without knowing why. Even Miss Temple said I was white as if I’d seen a ghost myself.”
“Was she afraid of these apparitions?”
“Angry, more like.”
“And you were there with the children present?”
“Only when Miss Flora was with us by the lake. Just once.”
“Of course,” said Holmes kindly. “Flora was there, before you and Miss Temple. We shall never know what may have passed between her and the vision of Miss Jessel before you both arrived.”
“Something happened to that child, Mr Holmes, while the world was so quiet and still. Something she was glad of. I stood to one side but Flora was with Miss Temple. And Miss Temple was pointing her to look across to where there was a gap between the bushes on the far bank. I couldn’t see because of a rhododendron bush immediately beside me.”
She paused, glancing towards the window with the garden view beyond, recalling her thoughts. Then she spoke firmly.
“Miss Flora vowed she never saw anything. But I know children. That child was too upset for nothing to have happened. She clung to my skirts, crying to be taken from her hateful governess! When we were alone together the poor little mite told me horrors. What she heard Miss Temple had said and done at other times. How Miss Temple was in league with the dead, if you please! You may be sure she got that from Master Miles and his loose talk. And she talked scandal of Miss Temple misbehaving with the master! How could she when he was in France? But that child’s words shocked me, sir. I can’t think where she picked them up, not even from her brother.”
Holmes nodded, as if all this was to be expected. To me, such talk of a league with the dead reeked of Miles Mordaunt.
“After the incident at the lake, you took the same route back?” I asked.
“We did.”
“And you passed the boat which the little girl had moored there?”
Mrs Grose stiffened, as if caught in an untruth.
“No, sir. We went through the gate in the fence but the boat had gone. Most likely, Master Miles took it while we were further on. It’s a little thing, convenient to handle.”
Holmes returned to his ghosts.
“At other times, did Miss Temple herself think the children behaved as if they had seen Maria Jessel or Peter Quint, even though she had not?”
She looked from one to the other of us.
“I know children! These two were up to some mischief or other. I’d catch them whispering and laughing together. They’d smile at us, as if they knew what we were thinking. As if saying they’d have their way with us and nothing we could do would prevent it.”
It was almost exactly what Victoria Temple had said to us. Perhaps she had got it from Mrs Grose.
