The chief inspector paused and the illuminated clock jerked forward to the next minute on the dial.
“In that case …” Lestrade began hesitantly.
“In that case, you must make Mordaunt hang himself. It can be done but it must be done now.”
“How?”
“Leave it to me! Get me Alfred Swain!”
Lestrade looked long and hard at the clock again, while Gregson ran across the forecourt towards us. Something unpleasantly like a smirk distended his thin, pale face. He drew a sheet of paper from his pocket.
“A man positively answering the description of Major Mordaunt, as given to us by your young friend this evening, purchased a first-class single ticket to Harwich at approximately five minutes to eleven.”
“Oh really?” said Holmes indifferently. “Well he would, wouldn’t he?” He turned again to Lestrade. “I must positively insist upon the two requests that I have made. One is of no use without the other.”
Lestrade peered at him through the steam-laden railway mist.
“He bought a ticket to Harwich, Mr Holmes—not Abbots Langley!”
“Which is why he will not be going to Harwich,” said Holmes in some desperation.
We were standing beside a first-class passenger coach with a guard’s compartment which formed the rear of the mail train. Holmes gripped the handle of the locked door. It was evident to me that he had no intention of letting go of it and that he must be dragged down the platform if the engine moved. There was a reproving shout from the station-master, who was standing with his whistle raised near the locomotive. Lestrade began to flounder. He gave a short nod and let out a hard breath.
“Very well, Mr Holmes.”
The station-master’s whistle blew, hard and sharp from the front of the train. The uniformed guard at the rear replied. Without another word, Lestrade walked off towards the overnight telegraph office. He showed all the enthusiasm of an aristocrat of the
Holmes patted the brass handle of the carriage door.
“Ours, I believe.”
The guard opened the door with a bolt-key and we took our seats. My friend settled himself into a window corner. There was a final sharp note from the guard’s whistle and the first rhythmic blast of steam ahead of us. We rumbled sedately through long soot-lined tunnels under the tenements of Whitechapel and Shoreditch. As we gathered speed among the sleeping suburbs of Hackney and Stratford, Holmes offered us his cigar-case.
“There is nothing so deceptive as an obvious fact,” he said, as if to himself. “It is truly extraordinary the extent to which people believe whatever they are told. They see what they expect to see. My own profession would be impossible if they did not. However it also enables villains like James Mordaunt to live easy and reputable lives.”
“Lying does not convict him of criminality,” I said patiently.
“It is not in itself a criminal offence, Watson. Yet how easily Mordaunt was believed! Miss Temple, the new young governess, expected to be interviewed by Mordaunt. She never doubted it was he. Who knows? Perhaps it was he—or perhaps a paid impostor. At Bly he merely informed Mrs Grose that the previous governess, Miss Jessel, was dead. The good woman would hardly demand to see a coroner’s certificate! They agreed not to upset the lower servants by telling them. Why should she doubt her master?”
“And then?” I asked sceptically.
Holmes returned the slim cigar-case to his pocket and lit a match.
“Mordaunt assured Miss Temple that he had no interest in Bly or the children. The lawyers would see that she had ample funds for whatever was needed. She had only to ask. He preferred to spend most of his life in France, with an independent income from his property there. The rest of the time he lived at leisure in Eaton Place.”
Tobias Gregson looked increasingly uneasy during all this.
“And you know better, do you, Mr Holmes?”
A brief grimace suggested the answer.
“The world believed James Mordaunt to be a man of substance in fashionable Belgravia, but more often to be found abroad in Biarritz or the Boulevard St Germain. He never seemed short of money.”
“And do you know better, sir?” Gregson repeated, leaning forward.
“It is my business to know better,” Holmes remarked airily with a wave of his cigar. “One or two servants at the Bear-garden Club, to which he belonged, knew him better. Before his brother’s death in India, the major was a most unlucky gambler. One man, in particular, also recalled him as an habitue of certain establishments where none of us would care to be seen. There was a whisper of a subpoena to summon him to the trial of Mrs Mary Jefferies during the white-slave scandals stirred up by W. T. Stead and the
Gregson managed to look both sceptical and uneasy.
“That’s a new one on me, Mr Holmes. All his wealth was a put-up job?”
“The fashionable world—and the money-lenders—must be made to believe he could afford his losses. So they did. They thought him nothing but a rich fool. In truth, his inheritance was so emaciated that he acted as a criminal receiver to his former batman. That batman, Peter Quint, had become his valet after being discharged from the Army. But it was not sentiment that kept them together. Unhappily, Quint committed murder in the course of the Five Stones robbery for which Mordaunt was to act as receiver. They were both parties to the crime. Mordaunt could not withdraw, for if Quint was caught he promised to drag down Mordaunt with him.”
“But what of France,” I protested, “and the property there?”
“According to information gathered in Belgravia by our young friends, Mordaunt was seldom absent from Eaton Place. I have established that the house he lives in was never owned by him. There was no property in France. He was there briefly, because it was safer to change stolen gold into respectable bank-notes and bonds in Paris than in London. So long as he appeared as an Englishman of substance, he could do it. It must be he. A ruffian like Quint could never have crossed the doorstep of Rothschilds or the Credit Lyonnais.”
The black chimneys of North London had fallen behind us and the lamps of villages were a pin-point scattering in the dark. Gregson sat back with a sigh.
“I still say, Mr Holmes, you will need more than tales of servants from the Beargarden Club or the likes of Mrs Jefferies and her young ladies.”
My friend smiled at him sympathetically.
“There was more than one document in the Court of Chancery, for those prepared to dig a little. They related to actions pending against James Mordaunt for substantial sums. Gambling debts may not be recoverable at law. Unpaid rents in Belgravia are another matter. Happily for our man, his brother Colonel Mordaunt then died in India. James Mordaunt became trustee to the estate and guardian to the two children. Miles could not inherit until he was twenty-one—eleven years more Meanwhile, as if by magic, Chancery actions were withdrawn and bills were paid. The guardian of Bly avoided ruin by the skin of his teeth.”
“Eleven years in which to pilfer the estate!” I said.
“Eleven years in which to remove a delicate child from this world to the next. Otherwise the embezzlements must come to light. Mordaunt would inherit the estate in his own right if Miles should die before him. Ironically, a few tiny diphtheritic bacteria made all his scheming unnecessary.”
Gregson shook his head.
“If there was eleven years to do the deed, Mr Holmes, he seems to have been in a bit of a hurry to get it finished.”
“No, Gregson. I should say he had been planning unhurriedly for a year or two. It was the behaviour of Miles at King Alfred’s school that shook him. The boy’s stories of the Five Stones robbery and a murder. How many people had Miles told the story to? How long before someone who heard the tale put Peter Quint’s name to the facts—and Quint’s name involved his master? There must be no more stories. The boy must never leave Bly for school again. Hence Mordaunt’s eccentric preference for having him taught at home by his sister’s governess.”
We roared through a deep cutting between fields.
“So Mordaunt sought out Miss Temple?” I asked sceptically.
