Yet some other man’s child remained the means by which he still commanded Miss Jessel’s obedience.
In the next half-hour we heard how Charles Alfred had been sent to a nursery school in Yorkshire, if baby farms for unwanted children can be called nurseries. Paid for by money drawn from the Bly estate, James Mordaunt kept it out of sight and mind at this private institution It was an establishment founded at Greta Bridge by William Shaw, twice sued by parents after children had gone blind from infection and gross neglect. Little Charles Alfred remained there, in pawn for his mother’s obedient behaviour.
I took my chance.
“Do you tell us, Miss Jessel, that Mordaunt had such a hold over your affections that you would consent to this dreadful thing for your child?”
“I think not, Watson,” Holmes interrupted gently, as our suspect began to weep. “Neither affection nor passion holds them now. Fear of discovery is the bond.”
He turned to her again.
“You had best tell us, Miss Jessel, what happened on the night that you—or more probably Major Mordaunt —killed Peter Quint at Bly House. That is to say when the father of your child, then still unborn, was killed.”
He could not be certain of so much! He seemed like the gamester who risks one throw too many because his feral instinct senses a winning streak.
She looked up in tears, her hair straggling a little, and Holmes resumed.
“Was it the jealousy of your two lovers—servant and master—that caused the quarrel?” The pitiless voice was hardly more than audible. “Was it Mordaunt’s discovery that you were carrying Quint’s child—or was it something more? Did Quint strike you, for some reason, and did Mordaunt then deal him a murderous blow in return—across the skull with a blunt instrument? You left Bly for your so-called holiday a day or two later, did you not, wearing a convenient travelling veil to hide a swollen mouth or a bruised cheek?”
There was no reply, only a relentless sobbing.
“Peter Quint was a brute,” Holmes continued quietly. “Did you perhaps strike in your own defence? You are not powerfully built, Miss Jessel, but even you might catch him from behind while he was sitting in a chair. Even you are strong enough to smash a poker down on his head. If one blow did not do it, you dared not let him recover and strike back. Blow must follow blow. Quint was a powerful man. He could kill you and your unborn child with a stroke of his arm or a swing of his boot. You had no alternative but to repeat those blows with force enough to cause that dreadful wound. Such a wound as might be mistaken for a flying impact against a stone parapet! To strike again and again for fear he should live and retaliate!”
At that instant, Holmes illustrated such violence by bringing his fist down on the table with a reverberating impact and Maria Jessel cried out, “No! Oh, no!”
But all sympathy had drained from my friend’s voice.
“To carry him to the bridge that winter night offered a desperate escape. But you could not have lifted him. Mordaunt could. I have examined the inquest papers, the photograph of the body where it lay. Your hobble-de-hoy country coroner saw simply what he expected to see. I know rather more of blood and fatal wounds—and I have read the medical evidence. Peter Quint bled too little, even on a winter night, to have died at the bridge. The dead do not bleed as freely as the living—and he had almost stopped before he was placed there. I could prove, if I had to, that he lost too little blood at that place—even in the ice and cold.”
“No!”
What did this denial mean? That Quint’s body was not carried to the bridge or that she was not involved in his death?
“Oh yes, madam,” Holmes persisted. “He was killed elsewhere and laid in the freezing darkness to be discovered next day when the medical evidence would be less clear. A man with medical knowledge, well within the competence of Surgeon-Major Mordaunt, could easily assist in misleading the coroner.”
Our poor butterfly was pinned and wriggling.
“Quint walked back to Bly that evening,” Holmes continued quietly. “At Bly he died from a blow—or blows—to the head, dealt by one or both of you. Mordaunt, let us say, carried or drove the body to the bridge. It would be frozen by morning. The correct time of death would be judged from when he left the inn. He was a drunkard who appeared to have died a drunkard’s death. Why go further? If he died at the bridge, you and Major Mordaunt were both safely at Bly House when it happened.”
He did not hurry her. At last she looked up.
“James Mordaunt,” she said. “I could not do it! I had not the strength.”
Her tears had stopped with the suddenness of fright, but her face was as wild-eyed as a fury of Greek tragedy.
Holmes was gentle with her again.
“I believe you did not do it, Miss Jessel. I believe I could prove that, if you will help me. But I can do nothing until I know why you assisted Major Mordaunt to drive Miss Temple almost out of her mind.”
In these three sentences her persecutor offered to become her champion and lit the way through her despair. She looked at him uncertainly and then burst out:
“I did not want to harm Miss Temple! Why should I? But Quint had told secrets to little Miles. Secrets that James Mordaunt assured me might destroy us both, if they went further. The little boy betrayed them innocently when he said things at school. We did not know this when Miss Temple first came and Miles was still at King Alfred’s. But we could not risk what he might say to her if she remained.”
In similar words, Spencer-Smith recalled how Miles “said things” to the other children.
“Secrets about the evil eye and the selling of souls, perhaps? Crime and criminals? Power over others?”
She nodded without looking up.
“The boy worshipped Quint like a father.”
“Go on, please.”
“Such secrets would destroy us, if ever Miles was questioned about them!”
I saw my friend take a breath before his next question, as if the croupier’s wheel was spinning once more.
“Destroy you and Major Mordaunt?”
She answered with her eyes and now I saw the whole truth, even before she told it. Maria Jessel was calmer. She addressed Holmes in a quiet monotone.
“If Miles believed that Quint was dead, James Mordaunt feared the boy might not hesitate to tell the man’s secrets. But Miles would do nothing to hurt Quint if the man might be alive in some form. If we could make the boy and his sister believe that Quint and the dead governess could somehow linger at Bly.” She dropped her voice to a whisper, “Even as ghosts. Miles loved tales of terror, as children do. He believed all that Quint had told him.”
Inspector Gregson intervened cautiously.
“Did Major Mordaunt suggest to you that if the secret of Quint’s murder was known, he would hang for his crime and you as his accomplice? Is that what it comes to?”
She looked at Holmes, as if for authority to answer. He gave a single nod.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “He suggested that threat to me—only once.”
“So Peter Quint and you, the dead governess, must appear at a convenient distance?” I asked. “Upon a tower or across a lake?”
“Half a moment,” said Gregson, lifting his hand. “The boy would know the difference between Quint and his uncle in disguise, even at a distance.”
“Of course,” said Holmes casually, “and that is why Miles was never to see him, except possibly once at the window of a tower in the dark. Miss Temple was to identify him, with Mrs Grose’s assistance. Major Mordaunt could carry off an impersonation for the benefit of Miss Temple, who had never seen Quint himself. The same build, the same clothes, the hair-piece of unusual red and the whiskers. For good measure, Flora saw the real Miss Jessel and knew she could not be mistaken. If Miles Mordaunt truly believed in the powers of darkness, then from all he heard he must have thought his prayers had been answered.”
“Apparitions?” Gregson asked anxiously.
“Only Miss Temple was to see apparitions of both the so-called Quint and Miss Jessel. If Mrs Grose confirmed the descriptions, there was powerful temptation for Miles to believe. Small wonder that the children talked excitedly together of little else but hauntings. They no doubt compared secrets about the two friends whom they must protect, even in death. We cannot be sure that it was Mordaunt whom Miss Temple had seen at the solicitor’s
