“And what persuaded you to accept the post at last, after you had first refused?” I asked.
“By the time that Major Mordaunt wrote to me again, two months later, I had found no other appointment. I also saw how the increased stipend, which I was now offered, might help my sisters. They were poorly provided for, as matters stood. My mother had now died and my father had few prospects. I had received one or two disturbing letters from home, as to his condition. Therefore I consented.”
“Perhaps you will help me to visualise the occasion,” said Holmes courteously. “The interview took place in a solicitor’s office, simply between the two of you?”
“Correct.”
“Major Mordaunt sat on the far side of his desk?”
“Yes.”
There was a pause, as if she expected him to continue. When he did not, she looked up and smiled.
“Major Mordaunt is a very charming man, of course, and certainly persuasive. I did not see him for more than fifteen or twenty minutes, but I once told the housekeeper, Mrs Grose, that I had been quite carried away by him. She said, ‘You’re not the first.’ When she first described Miss Jessel to me, I said, ‘He seems to like us young and pretty.’”
“A ladies man?” Holmes asked casually.
“I have nothing to complain of in his conduct. He was beyond reproach.”
“Good,” he nodded, “You never suffered insubordination from the servants at Bly nor any disobedience on the part of the children?”
“Nothing at all, unless you count their denials of seeing the intruders.”
“The children’s denial of seeing the apparitions?”
“They were intruders, Mr Holmes! Who cares in what form they came?”
So Miss Temple was no mere hysteric who insisted upon ghosts. I found that interesting, but Holmes was impatient and our time with this client was passing too quickly.
“Tell me, Miss Temple, are you a needlewoman or an artist?”
“I crochet and sketch, Mr Holmes. Ah, yes. Of course. I know what you mean. The hospital records will tell you that I do not need glasses for either short or long sight. I see what is in front of me distinctly. That is your point, is it not? Very well. I do not imagine visions, apparitions, or whatever else you like to call them. I can describe what I saw.”
“Indeed,” said Holmes gravely. “Then tell me about Peter Quint. What did he look like?”
She was a little flustered at this demand but quickly composed herself.
“I first saw him on the garden tower at Bly, standing at the battlements, as I looked up from the lawn. We stared at one another, I cannot tell you for how long. He held a rather unnatural pose, like an actor. Presently he turned and walked to the far corner of the tower out of sight and I saw him no more. He was dressed in clothes that seemed too fancy for a mere valet. As we stared at one another, the world went into a strange silence. The sheep bells and the bird calls stopped.”
“So I understand,” said Holmes briskly. “However, we will leave the sheep and the birds out of it. His appearance, if you please.”
By a glance I tried to warn him against this approach, without Miss Temple seeing me. I need not have bothered. She was quite able to hold her own.
“He never wore a hat,” she said, “and so I saw his hair clearly. It was unusually red and tightly curled, red whiskers too. He had bushy whiskers—not a beard—of the mutton-chop kind that a sergeant-major might wear. He had not been a sergeant-major, of course. I understand he was only the major’s batman in the Army but followed his master into civilian life, as a valet. He had a long face, rather red, as if he drank too much or was sunburnt from service in foreign parts. His features were straight. His eyes seemed hard as stone. I remember thinking that sapphires so hard would never melt into the sea as they did in Lord Tennyson’s poetry! His mouth was wide, but so far as I could tell his lips were thin. He wore—they say he often wore—the same fancy waistcoat. Mrs Grose, the housekeeper, told me that Quint frequently wore garments stolen from his absent master. This waistcoat might be one of them.”
“We will also leave Lord Tennyson and the waistcoat to one side,” said Holmes. “How far from the tower were you standing?”
“Twenty-five feet, I daresay—perhaps thirty.”
“Were you looking straight up at him with your head held back or was it a more level view from farther off?”
“I stared straight at him. At a little distance.”
“You must have been at a sufficient distance to see him walk across the platform of the tower when he disappeared. Yet you could tell his lips were thin and his eyes hard? Now then, there were three floors of the house, the tower platform and the battlements—forty feet or more vertically. Add to that your horizontal distance from it. Not less than thirty feet, if you had a view of the direction in which he walked away.”
“Perhaps that was so, Mr Holmes.”
“As a governess, Miss Temple, I daresay you are familiar enough with the theorem of Pythagoras to teach it to your pupils. Will you take it from me, as a matter of geometry, that such dimensions would put the two of you about fifty feet apart?”
“I must accept that, if you say it is so.”
“I do say it, madam. Let us proceed. This man was standing with his face to the east, staring out at you, while the light was dying in the west behind him. His face was red? Was not his face in shadow, though? And could you tell in such poor light, at such a distance too, that his eyes were blue and his lips were thin?”
“Perhaps his lips were not thin. His whiskers hid them, but that was my impression.”
I was uneasy at this sceptical cross-examination, but Miss Temple still held her own. She would have done well in the witness-box, after all.
“Your impression alone will not quite do,” said Holmes gently.
For the first time, she showed a little irritation with him.
“I saw enough of him in the evening light, Mr Holmes, to know that he was the same man I saw close up, some weeks later, through the dining-room window by lamplight. Mrs Grose and I were setting out for Sunday evening service. The carriage was waiting at the terrace steps and I went into the room just to fetch a pair of gloves I had forgotten. The man who had been on the tower was on the terrace, staring at me through the glass without moving. That night I gave Mrs Grose the description I have just given to you. I was close enough to him for that.”
“How far is the church from the house?”
“It is on the estate, about ten minutes’ walk, but it was customary to take the carriage.”
“And at what time is Evensong?”
“Half-past six.”
“This was in early November, I understand, and therefore after dark?”
“It was.”
“How many lights were burning in the dining-room?”
“The central gasolier was lit but turned low when we left the room. The wall mantels had been extinguished. They would not be lit until we returned for supper.”
“Reflection from the half-lit gasolier, through the window and onto the terrace, was enough to show you the man’s features on such a dark November evening?”
“I first ran towards the window, Mr Holmes. He did not move. Then I ran out into the hallway and out at the main door. He had gone. I am no liar, sir!”
This was a more dangerous exchange, but Holmes inclined his head courteously.
“Indeed you are no liar, Miss Temple. A liar would insist that she was far closer to the man on the tower at the first encounter. On the second, she would probably have told me that all the lights in the dining-room were fully lit and shining onto the terrace, where the man stood. She certainly would not have omitted accidentally, as you have done, that there would also be a lamp on the terrace itself—as well as on the carriage—to light you on your way. It must have been bright enough to show the way down the steps to the conveyance which would take you to Evensong.”
She looked down with her closed fist lightly to her lips a
s if she might weep. Holmes forestalled her.
“I have dealt with a good many liars, Miss Temple, and I am so far satisfied that you are a truthful young woman. I cannot yet say that your visitor on the tower or at the window was a creature from the realms of darkness. That you saw a figure of some kind is evident to me.”
“Thank you,” she said softly.
My friend resumed.
“What else did you see on this second occasion?”
“There was no one on the terrace by the time I reached it, no sign of an intruder. Not a footprint in the earth, not a gate nor door swinging open. Having seen him twice, I still thought he was an ordinary trespasser. It was only after this second appearance that I told Mrs Grose. She replied that I had exactly described Peter Quint—and that Quint had been dead for a year. Until then I had not known our housekeeper well enough to confide in her. I had suspected that this fellow might be a hanger-on of one of the women at the house. Or perhaps the servants were playing a game to frighten me. There is often a grudge against a poor governess. She is in some ways their mistress—able to give them orders—but not truly mistress of the house. They are quick to complain that she has got ‘above herself.’”
“They did not complain in your case?”
“No. They were all kind to me.”
“Excellent,” said Holmes, and his mood changed at once. Miss Temple’s answers had unquestionably been straight and true. To me she seemed an honest witness, however deluded. And still there was a simple strength in her. Without that, we might have faced a catastrophe as she gave way under questioning. She now looked at us both and continued.
“Mrs Grose told me how Quint had left the village tavern one winter night and was found dead on the road next morning with a fearful gash across his head. The local coroner from Abbots Langley described the injuries to the jury. From where the dead man lay it was plain that he lost his footing and went headlong. His skull had struck the edge of the parapet over the stream. The sharp ice cut him deeply. After that, Mrs Grose talked to me of the fellow’s secret vices, his drinking and his affairs with the village girls. Worst of all, he was too free with Miles. It was outrageous that a promiscuous brute like he should act as the little boy’s tutor and guide!”
“And what of Miss Jessel?” I asked.
She paused, as if to gather her strength after the outburst.
“A week or so later I was walking with Flora one afternoon, by the lake. A woman appeared on an opposite bank, the wooded island at the far end. She was too far off for anyone to reach her before she disappeared among the trees again. At first I supposed she must be a servant but then I saw by her clothes she could not be. She was dressed in shabby black mourning, not a maidservant’s uniform. Her hair was dark. I thought her beautiful, but in an unearthly way. A beautiful corpse, if there can be such a thing. Make no mistake, Dr Watson, I saw her as plainly as I see you now, but she was not looking at me. Her eyes were on the little girl, Flora. In that moment they became such awful eyes, Mr Holmes, filling gradually with a fury of evil triumph.”
“Though she was dead, you thought you knew who she must be?”
“I felt sure, even before I described her to Mrs Grose. I suppose I sound mad to you, do I not? But what was more important, I knew that I was merely a witness. She had not come for me. Like Quint, she had come for the children. Mrs Grose had only told me that Miss Jessel had been as infamous in her lifetime as Quint. In the end, she had gone on a long holiday and had died at her father’s home. That was told to Mrs Grose by Major Mordaunt in confidence, for fear her death should upset the other servants.”
“And then Miles was sent back from school?”
She nodded.
“We had a season of great happiness, Miles, Flora and I. Music and costumes, theatricals and games. I loved them both, Mr Holmes, because it was so easy to love them. Yet this changed quite suddenly. There were now moments when the children cuddled together and talked of some secret, smiling at me as if to tell me that it was to be kept from me. To be kept from all of us! I swear that was the truth. I knew then that Flora had also seen the figure of Miss Jessel across the lake, just as Miles had seen Quint. The girl had said nothing of it to me—only to Miles. If Flora had been alone, I fear she would have gone without protest, through the veil of death. Thank God I was there.”
“Tell me,” I asked, “did you ever see these figures indoors?”
“I believe so, though Bly is a dark house with too few windows. A little while later, just as November twilight was vanishing into dark, I crossed the upper gallery of the staircase and saw a man on the half-landing below. If I went down he would have gone before I got there. There were two men on the estate at the time, the gardener and the groom. It was neither of them. I knew that it must be Quint. He stared up at me, as he had stared down from the tower, though I could not tell his face this time. Then my candle went out and there was only a glimmer of cold twilight in the glass above me and a gleam on a polished stair below. By the time I lit the candle again, the figure had gone.”
“And Miss Jessel?”
“Several weeks later, from the top landing in the dark, I made out the figure of a woman sitting on a bottom stair with her head in her hands. She seemed to be weeping, like Hecuba in vengeful mourning. The image vanished in a moment. I could not see her face but I know it was she.”
“Did you ever see her at close range?” I asked.
“Yes.” Miss Temple turned slightly and stared through the window at the roses in the hospital garden. “Feeling a little unwell, I came back early from church on a Sunday morning at the end of November. It was ten minutes or so before the end of the service. The figure of Miss Jessel was standing by my own desk at the far end of the schoolroom, on the upper floor. It was daylight, clear noonday light. She was once more the tragic heroine. For a second, she seemed unaware of me, as though we were in different worlds. This time I was not afraid, Dr Watson. I faced her, filled with anger, and shouted, ‘You terrible, miserable woman!’ She remained quite still, as if uncertain whether she had heard anything. And then she vanished.”
“How did she vanish?” I asked.
The young woman sighed, as if at the impossibility of being believed.
“She was simply no longer there, Dr Watson. How shall I describe it? The brilliant sunlight of that morning came in a beam through the window. It shone directly into my eyes, as if the clouds had suddenly cleared. For an instant I could see nothing but dazzle, like a bad migraine but with no headache. Then the air was black for a moment, as in a faint. Afterwards I could see only dust floating in an empty sunbeam where the woman had been before. I had suffered faintness and mottled dark—a shimmering mottled dark. I stepped out of this and my eyes emptied of her.”
“And you had been feeling unwell in church?”
She shrugged and nodded.
“Perhaps I fainted away for a few seconds, but I did not fall. There was a moment like that after I first saw Quint upon the tower. As if some lapse of consciousness for a few seconds had left me standing where I was. Who knows? Cannot a shock wipe out consciousness? That morning, when I came to myself, I was clutching the schoolroom table for support. The last terrible day with Miles was something of the kind.”
“Shock may explain it,” I said.
“But it will not explain her,” she said fiercely, “for that was Miss Jessel in the schoolroom, if Miss Jessel ever was!”
I continued to study Miss Temple. Was she one of those hysterics who expend all their energy in an emotional crisis and then faint into unawareness? “I knew no more,” she had said of Quint’s disappearance from the tower. Miss Jessel in the schoolroom dissolved into sunlight and dust. A few weeks later, at the moment of her revival in the dining-room, the weight in her arms was the body of the dead boy, of whose precise moment of death she seemed unaware. My friend’s voice roused me from these thoughts.
“Tell me, Miss Temple,” he was saying gently, “Why were you so sure that the
children saw the apparitions? They were not together on any one occasion, were they?”
She was eager to answer.
“They were not, Mr Holmes. Miles saw only Quint—or so I believe. I saw the child standing on the grass in the early dark, looking up at the garden tower as I had done when I saw that man. From where I stood indoors, of course I could see no one. But that child saw someone if ever a child did. I swear it. His little face told a story, betrayed a secret, call it what you will.”
“And Flora?” I prompted her.
“Flora saw only Miss Jessel. Yet I swear brother and sister were accomplices, each sharing a secret with the other. Had you seen them together, you would not doubt it. I knew! I was closer to them than their parents had been, than their guardian could be. Ask Mrs Grose! She was there the second time that Miss Jessel appeared across the lake. She was certain that Flora had seen, as I had seen—for she herself felt the presence of that horrible being!”
“Oblige me by describing that second afternoon at the lake,” said Holmes patiently. His voice was quiet, but we were now coming to a crisis. Miss Temple looked about her, as though she might be overheard by an invisible presence in that plain hospital room. Then she faced us.
“That was a damp and grey afternoon about an hour before early dusk. I could hear Miles practising in the schoolroom, playing the piano. The Beethoven Minuet in G was one of his accomplishments. Mrs Grose came to me because she was sure Flora had gone out without her hat. Why I cannot tell you—but I could scarcely breathe for fear. I knew the child had gone to that dead woman and that something fearful might have happened already. Mrs Grose and I ran out—down the avenue of the herbaceous borders to the bank of the lake. There was no sign of Flora, but I had a dreadful picture in my mind of the child’s face floating under the water by the lily pads.
“The mooring was empty, the little rowing-boat had gone. Flora might have taken it, but there was no sign of her. We walked quickly round past the rhododendrons, where they trail in the water. We saw the boat, moored to a stake. It had gone by the time we returned. I breathed again as I saw the child standing a short way off. She was looking across the water, not at us but at the far bank. I walked up to her and asked directly, “’Where, my pet, is Miss Jessel?’
Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly Page 11