clipped him at one side, enough to knock him into the water. After that, it seems he drowned!”
14
“I am bound to think occasionally, Watson, how pleasant it would be to retire from all this sort of thing. To seek out a fold or a ridge of the Sussex Downs and live entirely for oneself. I can almost taste at this moment the clean salt air across the Channel waves and over the chalk cliffs. Yellow gorse in the thickets, the sheep bells and the restful murmur of bees in warm summer evenings.”
“You would go out of your mind, Holmes, without a case to investigate.”
“I should devote a small part of my time to critical monographs on speculative topics. The ironies of justice, for example. I should choose as my cast those murderers who have gone to the gallows when the victim whose wealth they coveted would have died of natural causes a few months later in any case. Or the artless cracksmen in 1884 who went to great lengths in planning to break the safe of the City and Suburban Bank, only to find on arrival that another gang were already in possession of it on that same night. The subsequent battle between the two sides woke the entire neighbourhood and resulted in the arrest of all concerned.”
“I take it that you would include the Bly House murder in this catalogue of ironies?”
“Possibly. Major Mordaunt is a perfect example of the man who uses all his talent to plan murder, in this case to kill his nephew Miles, only for nature to do the job before he can.”
“And the murder of Quint?”
“Quite lacking in irony. As the immortal Robert Browning described his own Roman murder story in
“And the death of Major Mordaunt himself?”
He looked at me innocently. I prompted him.
“The sabotage of the boat.”
“Let us call it the curiosity of the boat!”
“If the cork bung had not burst inwards and the craft had not begun to founder, Mordaunt might have clung to the wreck. The bullet wound was not fatal. He might have been pulled ashore and his wound dressed.”
Holmes shrugged.
“To save him for the hangman and possibly to take Maria Jessel with him. He would not thank you for that.”
I was not to be deterred.
“Once she knew of her child’s death she would be a fury from the gates of hell. She has that build and that temperament. You have seen her. A fit young woman who could easily walk five miles to Bly from the station at Abbots Langley—and five miles back. She had been his partner in deception—if not murder. Ten-to-one she knew where the boat was hidden from their days together when she was his governess. She knew, at any rate, that he alone had access to the oars. If anyone used that boat to cross to the island now it would be he. By adjusting the bung, she had a perfect opportunity to ensure that the next time he used it would be his last. Even if a servant had seen her walking through the woods at Bly—she would have been reported as another apparition of the living dead. That would have been believed by no one. We know better!”
He gazed across the flat fields and shook his head in admiration of the theory.
“Knowledge is not proof, Watson. You also forget the part our client must play in any further investigation. Miss Temple would not thank you for putting her through the public ordeal necessary to convince a jury that Maria Jessel drowned Major Mordaunt. I will grant you that the message she sent from our seance was intended to destroy him, not to save him. But you can scarcely expect her to admit it now. We must leave it there.”
He beckoned the steward of the dining car.
“Her child is avenged,” he continued. “The sole witness who might implicate her in the death of Peter Quint is now dead. Let it rest there.”
He paused to order a pot of Earl Grey with cinnamon tea-cakes. Then he added, “When the contents of the military travelling chest are examined, the murderer of Peter Quint will be identified beyond question and Alfred Swain will earn the commendation that Scotland Yard always denied him.”
It was now almost two days since we had seen our beds. He stifled a yawn and stared from the carriage window across a ripening cornfield scattered with poppies. Then he looked back at me with a certain disapproval.
“The hunting instinct is strong in you, Watson. I have to tell you that if Miss Jessel is still in custody when we reach London, I shall advise her that she is entitled to legal representation. I shall also inform her that a competent Queen’s Counsel might go before a judge in chambers and, upon the present evidence, apply successfully for a writ of
“And we shall say nothing more of the boat?”
“I think Maria Jessel has suffered enough. I, at least, will take no further part against her.” He turned and looked at me with exasperation. “For God’s sake, Watson, I will not hound that young woman in order to please Tobias Gregson! Sometimes I must be judge and jury in the case I have established. I know you would not have it otherwise, old fellow!”
Then he stretched out his long legs as far as the carriage seats would permit and was asleep before our steward returned with the tea-tray.
Next day, when we were safely back in Baker Street, a wire from Lestrade confirmed that Major James Mordaunt, late surgeon of the Queen’s Rifles, had “popped up” from the lake at Bly as Superintendent Truscott had predicted. An autopsy was undertaken and an inquest was to be held in a fortnight’s time. Holmes and I had been witnesses to the man’s death and our attendance was required. I had no wish to see Bly again and was not best pleased that the court would convene in its manorial hall rather than at the Abbots Langley coaching inn. In case the jurors might need to view the scene, the house was thought to be more convenient.
There is a good deal of press interest in any case where a police officer has shot dead a suspect. The coroner, Dr Roderick Allestree of Chelmsford, strove to repress sensationalism. He instructed the jurors to find a verdict in the death of Major James Mordaunt—and no more. At the first hint of ghosts or previous murders or robbery at the Five Stones, he called the inquest to order. How did Major Mordaunt die? That was all.
Alfred Swain was first exonerated and then commended. He had fired to prevent the certain death of Sherlock Holmes. His marksmanship was impeccable and his bullet was found in the arm that held Mordaunt’s Webley pistol. The wound alone would not have been fatal, even without immediate medical attention. The major had drowned.
Ranged with plain wooden chairs, the dark manorial hall of Bly was oak-panelled and high-windowed but a little smaller than I had expected. Despite Dr Allestree’s best efforts, it was hard to separate the death of Major Mordaunt from the question of whether Peter Quint died in consequence of foul play at his hands.
Maria Jessel was probably saved by the manner in which Holmes gave evidence. He endured cross- examination by a legal bumpkin, Mr Mossop. This fellow had been hired by the Quint family to keep a watching brief, in case something might now be got by way of damages from the Mordaunt estate for the death of their relative. Mossop evidently believed that the implication of Maria Jessel—even if only as an accessory to crime—might open the way to a financial settlement of some kind with the Mordaunt estate.
It was a poor case, but it also put her in danger of criminal prosecution. As Holmes remarked beforehand, a conviction of Miss Jessel as accessory required a principal crime of murder to be proved, which seemed impossible with Mordaunt dead. However, if Mr Mossop hoped to succeed in getting his clients bought off, an indictment of some kind against Maria Jessel would open the way.
Mossop’s cross-examination of Sherlock Holmes was the keystone of this attempt. The process evoked an image of a short, stout gunboat popping its cannon at a well-armoured and deftly-manoeuvred battle-cruiser.
“Mr Holmes, as a criminal investigator, you will concede that facts pointing to the role of James Mordaunt in the death of Quint point also to Maria Jessel as an accomplice? In the light of present evidence, a verdict of
