Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly

Holmes chuckled.

“My dear Watson, murderers are opportunists far more often than they are planners. He needed a governess for little Flora. Why not one who was emotionally frail and naturally compliant? That was why he rejected so many. With Victoria Temple, he saw at once what might be done. He interviewed no other candidate afterwards. Though she refused at first, he paid highly for her services two months later.”

“I suppose you can be sure of that, can you, Mr Holmes?” Gregson asked cautiously.

“Two weeks ago, I visited Appleford’s Scholastic Agency, by whom Miss Temple was sent. I explained that Major Mordaunt had recommended them. Could they offer any other young lady whom the major had chosen to interview after Miss Temple’s first refusal?”

“And did they?”

“Not at first. They insisted the matter was sensitive and confidential. However, they checked their lists. Then they were quite ready to tell me that Major Mordaunt had not interviewed any other candidate during the two months between Miss Temple’s first refusal and her acceptance of the post at an unusually high salary. The major had rejected the offer of a dozen candidates for interview in the meantime.”

Tobias Gregson and I stared at each other as the iron bogey-wheels of the railway coach rattled over the points of a country junction. The inspector sat forward and said earnestly,

“In a nutshell then, there could be no doubt in the children’s minds that Maria Jessel was real—if a ghost can be real—because she was truly Miss Jessel at a convenient distance. Mrs Grose never saw the so-called ghost of Quint. But she identified Quint from Miss Temple’s description of someone else disguised as him. In the little boy’s mind, if the first vision was real, how could the second not be?”

“In a nutshell, if you insist,” Holmes said sympathetically, “James Mordaunt is no fool. His cunning in the arts of camouflage and disguise was no doubt sharpened by war against the Afghan tribes. But it was his knowledge of human hopes and fears that helped him most. All that he did at Bly was certainly done with skill and subtlety. Miles believed the truth his sister and his governess told him. Both had seen Miss Jessel. One had every reason to believe she had seen Peter Quint. More important than that, Miles believed what he wanted to be true, that his hero still haunted Bly in some form or other. His real father was nothing to him. The boy could dispense with both his parents rather than lose Quint. Do not underestimate, Gregson, his passionate longing for these stories of the apparitions to be true.”

“Once upon a time all the world waited for King Arthur to come again,” Gregson said with a laugh. “This must be a small matter compared to that.”

Holmes smiled at him.

“Very neat!”

“A further point,” I told Gregson. “Mrs Grose tells us that the man Quint resembled his master sufficiently in his height and his girth for him to steal Major Mordaunt’s clothes when he went to the village inn. According to Mrs Grose, there was also a hair-piece that Quint wore from vanity. It was not listed among items at the supposed scene of his death, though he had been wearing it at the inn—no more than two hundred yards away. I understand it has never been seen since. It argues, of course, that he did not die at the place where his body was found.”

“And Miss Temple, gentlemen?” Gregson inquired. “Which was she to be? The mad governess who put the boy to death by suffocation or in some accident upon the lake?”

Holmes shrugged

“My dear Gregson, you must not step into a trap. A fall from the ghostly tower perhaps, precipitated by a vision of the beckoning dead. Or Miles ‘spooning’ on the water with his infatuated governess, a boating accident at the weir or the sluices of the haunted lake. The drowned lovers lifted from the Middle Deep in one another’s arms. None of it impossible. But Major Mordaunt would not plan such catastrophes. He need only wait for an opportunity to present itself.”

Conversation died until Gregson leant forward again earnestly.

“If you want my opinion, Mr Holmes, this case could still go all wrong. Maria Jessel won’t destroy Mordaunt. Not if it means leaving her child abandoned to a baby farmer.”

Holmes looked a little self-conscious.

“You are quite right, Gregson. I confess I have kept one detail to myself until now. I believe Maria Jessel no longer fears for her little boy.”

“And why might that be, sir?”

“Charles Alfred Jessel died a fortnight ago during a routine epidemic of scarlatina at William Shaw’s nursery school in Yorkshire. Not two years old.”

Gregson stared at him.

“Why did you say nothing when we questioned her?”

“I am a cold-blooded creature, Gregson. Silence suited my purpose.”

“But does she know of her child’s death?”

“I believe she must know. Hence, perhaps, her interest in the spirit world and her grief that Little Charley waits for her where the flowers they loved are in bloom. However, the entry of the child’s death will not yet be in the Somerset House registers. For that reason, she presumably thinks we do not know. That was important to her this evening. She would not wish us to guess the incalculable depth of her hatred for Major James Mordaunt.”

“Neither can ever be free of the other,” I said, “until that other is dead.”

Holmes drew out his watch and glanced at it.

“Let us deal with first things first. What will hang Mordaunt is the discovery of evidence, unless he can destroy it before we find him. And that is why he cannot make a bolt for the Continent yet.”

“Then where, Mr Holmes?”

“My dear Gregson, you may proceed to the docks at Harwich, if you wish. Watson and I must leave you at Abbots Langley.”

“For Bly?” I exclaimed. “In the middle of the night? We have already been there by daylight and seen for ourselves.”

“We have been there and, I fear, not seen for ourselves.”

He closed his eyes, thinking, not sleeping. As we lost speed before our arrival at Abbots Langley, he looked up and pulled his coat into place.

12

In his plain clothes, Inspector Alfred Swain of the Essex Criminal Investigation Department had a quiet and scholarly look. He stood six feet and a couple of inches in the neat tailoring of a charcoal grey suit, with a slight benevolent stoop. He was thin and clean-shaven. His light blue eyes seemed to doubt politely everything he saw. There was an equine intelligence and gentleness in his glance. The sole ornament to his dress was a gold watch-chain which looped across his narrow abdomen from one waistcoat pocket to the other. I recalled that he and Holmes had met before, most recently in the case of the Marquis de Montmorency Turf Frauds. Following certain disagreements with his superintendent, Swain had been banished from Scotland Yard to the fields of Eastern England.

“Mr Holmes, sir!” He shook my friend’s hand in a more cordial manner than Gregson or Lestrade would ever have done. As I was introduced I remembered Holmes’s description of him as the best fellow Scotland Yard ever had. A self-educated man, Swain had read Sir Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology and Tait’s Recent Advances in Physical Science as easily as Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. By dint of early rising on the first day of sale, the young inspector had bought a first edition of Mr Robert Browning’s translation of The Agamemnon of Aeschylus.

Such was our guide to murder! His mild eyes surveyed us.

“A telegram for you, Mr Holmes, which you won’t much like. Neither Major Mordaunt nor anyone who could be him—in any disguise—was seen between Colchester and Harwich on the ferry train.”

So much for a bolt to the Continent! Holmes gave Gregson a smile so sharp that it was hardly a smile at all. Then he turned back again.