Eaton Place five minutes ago. No report of injuries but no further information. A service revolver by the sound of it.”
10
“You have the instinct of a marksman, Mr Gregson.”
“We don’t carry guns on duty, Mr Holmes. You know that.”
“You miss the point, my dear fellow. After Miss Jessel’s warning to him, we may take it that you now have Major Mordaunt as a target on the wing.”
“Or with a bullet through his brain,” I suggested, too quietly for the inspector to hear.
Gregson glanced over his shoulder. Here was my chance.
“Twenty years ago, Gregson, our man fought in a successful guerrilla war across Afghanistan, under Major- General Sir Frederick Roberts, as he was then. So did I. His regiment, the Queen’s Rifles, scouted over the most hostile terrain you can imagine. Leaving a dark house, hidden by shrubbery, on a moonless night would be child’s play.”
“Take no notice of Watson, inspector, you will have your man!”
Gregson withdrew into a suspicious silence, no doubt brooding over the interruption of his questions to Miss Jessel. We followed him to the Embankment Gate of Great Scotland Yard. The quarters of half-past ten droned through the air from Parliament and a light rain began to fall. The inspector hoisted his bulk into the black cab that had brought Maria Jessel from Kensington. It bore us past Westminster Abbey in the lamplight and into the dim reaches of Victoria Street, its shops and offices unlit. A scent of oranges and peaches from the greengrocers’ stalls of the South Coast Railway hung in the mild rainy air at Victoria Station.
Mordaunt had caught himself in a trap of his own making! Quint and Miss Jessel had certainly earned the reputation that Mrs Grose gave them. What the good housekeeper did not know was that with every arrival of Mordaunt at Bly, the young woman must slip from the embrace of a menial into the arms of her master. The vicious passion of Quint and the arrogance of Mordaunt were well matched. For a master to seduce a governess was a cliche of fiction. For the young woman to be the mistress of a valet at the same time—carrying that valet’s child!— foreshadowed catastrophe for all concerned.
Twice in my professional career I had encountered a man and woman drawn together by such animal attraction and held together by a crime. Yoked together in fear, passion grown cold, there was as much love then as between two ferrets confined in a sack. Mordaunt and Miss Jessel had nothing to hold them but a memory of Quint and a sick fear of the noose. The master hardly dared let the young woman out of his sight. He was secure only through Charles Alfred, held as an innocent ransom in the cruel confinement of William Shaw’s baby farm at Greta Bridge.
The conclusion was plain as a proof in geometry. There could now be no safety for either party except through the death of the other. But how might that be accomplished?
We crossed Buckingham Palace Road and came to the cream fronts and garden shrubberies of Eaton Place.
These villas and mansions seemed quiet enough, but I made out half a dozen helmeted figures among the bushes. Those who had been on observation earlier had no doubt dived for cover as soon as they heard the gunshot. There was still confusion. Several uniformed men were arguing as to whether there had been one shot or two—or possibly even three. A stationary cab on the adjoining side of the square contained two or three plain- clothes officers, no doubt issued with police pistols.
The disturbance had drawn residents and passers-by to their vantage points. On the next street corner a knot of sightseers had gathered from the saloon bar of the Royal Clarence Hotel. Several wore the brown-and-white- check overcoats of rat-catchers or racing tipsters.
Within its shrubbery, Mordaunt’s villa was immediately opposite us. Heavy curtains had been drawn across the tall ground-floor windows. There was no sign of light or movement.
“I never knew a suicide who bothered to turn the lights off before despatching himself,” Holmes said thoughtfully.
As a military man, I found the concealment of the police officers deplorable. An old soldier like Mordaunt with Indian service in his blood would spot their first movement from behind his darkened windows. Alerted by Miss Jessel, startled into action, he would not miss a single movement.
In the drizzle of the spring night, Gregson led us up the front path between dripping laurel branches. Two plain-clothes men flanked us. The man next to me had the flap of his jacket loose. His hand was close to a Mauser “Zig-Zag,” so-called because of its quick-reloading position. Gregson pulled the doorbell. It jangled somewhere in the basement but there was no response.
“Who did he shoot,” Gregson muttered to me, “if not himself?”
“We cannot assume he is dead,” I whispered. “He may be lying wounded—and armed.”
The inspector reached for the black knocker of the front door. Its thump reverberated through the house. If the fugitive was there, we were giving him ample warning. Our plain-clothes men now crouched to one side. Only Sherlock Holmes stood upright, immobile and sceptical.
Gregson motioned to one of the uniformed men. The constable drew his truncheon and shattered the nearest sash window close to its catch. The others held back and waited, but still there was no response. The man edged his arm through the broken pane and drew the catch. Nothing moved in the darkened room. Gregson stepped forward and eased the window-frame upwards until there was enough height to step across its sill. Holmes and I followed with the plain-clothes detail.
We stood on a carpeted floor in the dimly-reflected lamplight from the street. By the aid of a constable’s lantern I saw only what I had expected. An immaculately-papered room was furnished by two silk divans and matching chairs of inlaid wood, more elegant and appealing than the interior of Bly. Gregson pushed open the hall door. Reflected light fell on the curve of a silent staircase. We followed cautiously up the carpeted steps. Once again I thought of my own revolver lying uselessly in its Baker Street drawer.
As we came level with the landing, a patch of light showed where a bedroom door was not quite closed. Without seeming to push past Gregson, Holmes reached the landing first. He edged the door a little, then flung it wide.
We were on the threshold of a dressing-room. Behind its velvet curtains, a pool of electric light fell upon the leather inset of a dressing-table. Gregson and his men continued to search by the subdued light of dark lanterns.
“Curious,” Holmes murmured. “As we came in at the lower window there was still an air of gun-smoke—quite acrid. Up here it is clear.”
I could smell another odour and was trying to put a name to it. It was a spirituous tang. Not medical but almost like confectionary. I thought, absurdly, of theatrical whiskers.
“I believe we have the measure of him,” Holmes continued, in the same quiet voice. “Mordaunt must choose between the hangman’s art or his own hand. Miss Jessel has left him no other choice. Beware the selflessness of passionate love as it takes on a merciless egotism. I should not care to be in this poor devil’s shoes.”
By now, I was creeping back down the stairs behind one of the plain-clothes men. We crossed the hall and cautiously entered a ground-floor sitting-room at the rear to light the gas. These windows looked out onto a small garden behind the house. The man ahead of me stumbled in the semi-darkness, cursed, and then spoke with some awe.
“It’s a body, doctor!”
And so it was. In a moment, the light went on. We found ourselves looking down at the body of a pure white greyhound, shot cleanly through the skull. This poor creature was added to the haphazard menagerie of
