nothing else all his life. I followed, standing on the knot and holding as high as I could.
“Grip tight and hold, sir,” said Swain quietly. Then I was guided by either arm to the safe flooring of the attic. Light through a rear dormer window was quite enough for our investigation.
Disused garden furniture made up the lumber, except for a military travelling chest of dark, varnished elm. This was some four feet long by two feet wide and eighteen inches deep. Its dark lacquer was scratched and worn, as if from campaigning. At the centre of the lid, in a scroll of dim red letters, I read “J. Mordaunt, M.D., Netley.” How well I knew that design! It was almost a twin to the one which accompanied me to Netley barracks as a newly-qualified physician beginning my regimental training, twenty years before.
Holmes was on his knees, inspecting the keyhole with its old-fashioned ornamental plate. It was surely a match for the key. My friend scrutinised the floorboards at the front of the box.
“No one has opened this for some months. Possibly not since Miss Temple’s trial.”
“You are sure?” I asked.
“Once the poor young woman was locked away in Broad-moor, believing gratefully that Mordaunt had saved her from the gallows, the evidence ceased to matter to him. See here. There is an infestation of woodworm— furniture beetle—in the rim of the lid. The eggs are laid in existing holes by the adult beetle during the autumn, usually in September. The larvae eat their way out in the spring—April or May, as a rule. The powder—the frass—is undisturbed in this case. Mordaunt thought he had all the time in the world. That was very nearly the truth. Casual neglect of this sort—postponing the destruction of evidence—has proved fatal even to some of the great criminal minds. Mordaunt was not remotely of that first rank.”
He turned the key and raised the hinged lid. The interior had been divided, as usual, into shelves or trays which could be lifted out in turn. It was by no means full. The upper level contained a leather case for a razor, another for two silver-backed hair-brushes and what I can only describe as cosmetics, to judge from a faint odour of the barber’s saloon which emanated from the dark bottles. A second layer held two silk shirts, a port-wine cravat and a green waistcoat with a pattern of fleurs-de-lis. Such a style, once fashionable among young men at Oxford and Cambridge, had not been seen for ten or fifteen years, except on such occasions as Miss Temple confronting Peter Quint through window-glass or upon a garden tower.
The deepest tray had room for a jacket and breeches of brown Norfolk cut, equally suited to gamekeeper or village squire. The clothes were a perfect match for those “borrowed” by Quint to be handy with the village girls, as Mrs Grose put it, and to adorn Miss Temple’s vision. From among the hair-brushes and treasures of the dressing- room, Holmes picked up the reddish brown brush of a small fox, or so I thought.
“A hunter’s trophy!” I said casually.
“My dear Watson! In all your medical experience, did you never see such a piece, affected by men who have lost their own hair?”
I never did. But I was looking elsewhere.
“Look in the box, Holmes.”
“You have truly not seen a wig such as this one—unmistakably of Quint’s colour, as it was described to us?”
“Look in the box!”
He stopped and looked down. There it was. The case was leather. It might have held a large-sized pair of field-glasses, but its shape was square and not long. The leather was stamped with a War Department “crow’s foot” and a simple inscription: “R. J. Begbie & Son, Woolwich, Field Heliostat, Standard Issue.”
It was surely the glass that had blinded Miss Temple as she came face-to-face with Maria Jessel. Only James Mordaunt would have been likely to conceal it among the costume pieces for his masquerade as Peter Quint. And who but Quint’s murderer would be in possession of the hair-piece worn by the man that evening in full view of a score of people but missing from the body when it was found a stone’s throw away?
Holmes returned the items, locked the box and gave the key to Alfred Swain. The young inspector must now take the credit for these discoveries on the island. Holmes was insistent upon that. As we crossed back over the Middle Deep, he repeated for Swain’s benefit, “It is the most humble inconsistencies which are frequently the evidence of major crime. I commend the thought to you, Mr Swain.”
Swain bent his back to the oars and said, “I have never doubted it, sir.”
“Good. When you make your report, let it be terse and to the point.”
“Indeed, Mr Holmes.”
“The facts are these. The world knew it was Peter Quint’s body lying dead on the bridge that winter night because Major Mordaunt told them so. After that, what remained of Quint became the property of the coroner’s officer and the anatomist from Chelmsford. They knew him only as a corpse. They did their duty meticulously, every item of evidence was accounted for. They did not inquire for a missing hair-piece. Why should they? They knew nothing of its existence. Those villagers who merely saw his body laid out would hardly be surprised if it was not still in place. Yet its absence, a stone’s throw from where he was seen wearing it, further suggests that he cannot have died at the bridge—therefore not in an accidental fall. Miss Jessel has told us the truth if anyone has.”
“Then it just amounts to the hair piece, Mr Holmes?”
“What it amounts to, Mr Swain, is that Mordaunt killed Quint. Within a day or two, Maria Jessel left for her holiday, during which her death was reported. She was carrying Quint’s child. Thus we have one singular incident coming close to the heels of another singular incident. So close, in this case, that she and Mordaunt were privy to them both. It does not make her party to Peter Quint’s death. There is nothing against her on that but her unsupported statement. There is conclusive evidence against him.”
That afternoon, Mordaunt’s boat was pulled on to dry land. Several fittings, including both oars, had floated clear as it settled in the water. The oarsman’s seat had gone and two of the footboards across the bottom of the shell were detached. Superintendent Truscott was occupied elsewhere and Swain stood over the wreck. While we waited for the hackney carriage to take us to the train at Abbots Langley, Holmes carried out a discreet inspection.
With the two footboards gone and the hull drained, the cause of the catastrophe seemed clear. Mordaunt had not thrown the boat out of balance by standing up or as his pistol recoiled.
“The plug in the drainage hole at the bottom of the hull was forced in by a rush of water,” said Holmes casually. “See for yourself, Watson. That is quite apparent as the cause of the boat settling in the water.”
I cast myself as the schoolboy oarsman I had once been.
“In a boat of this sort, the plug is hardened cork and conical-shaped so that an inward pressure of water would force it all the tighter.”
“Indeed it would,” he said placidly, “unless it had been tampered with.”
“Tampered with? How?”
“Look at the convex shape of the drainage hole. If a bung were mutilated, or reversed, or in any way loosened, it would yield to the pressure of water and sink the boat. This craft certainly did not tip over or flood as a result of Mordaunt’s antics. It foundered under a weight of water below the footboards. The bottom of the boat had been flooding gradually ever since he pushed it out into the shallows. As the weight increased, his progress became slower, precisely as we saw.”
I stared at it and shook my head.
“Come, Watson. It may simply have been removed. If I were the killer, I should prefer if possible to fit the plug so that it would not give way completely until he got above the Middle Deep. A reversal of its position, ideally. I doubt that the major had bothered to take up the boards and inspect the bung when he had the hounds at his heels. Even if I am mistaken in that, at a glance it would seem intact. Especially in the half-light.”
I had stopped listening to him. Was this the plan Mordaunt had laid?
“It sounds to me, Holmes, more like the boating accident that might have overcome Miles and Miss Temple as they yielded to a beckoning ghost. Perhaps, by some evil irony, his own method was turned against him.”
But Sherlock Holmes had already turned away and was indicating the waiting carriage
It was half an hour later when we paid off our driver in the cobbled forecourt of the railway yard at Abbots Langley. The express was not due for twenty minutes. As we stood talking on the platform in the sunshine I was aware of distant hoof-beats, a rider approaching at a canter. The sound died away and presently the tall neatly- suited figure of Alfred Swain came down the steps of the bridge. So far as he could ever be, he seemed a little excited.
“They’ve found him, Mr Holmes! Major Mordaunt. Just under the ledge of the Middle Deep. The bullet had
