Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly

by Donald Thomas

  I was quite sure that Lestrade’s inclination was to refuse us, but he mastered his feelings after a few moments’ thought.

  “Very well, Mr Holmes. You have done us a good turn in finding Maria Jessel. We owe you a favour. You shall have two men at Colchester. And your other request?”

  “A little more ambitious. I require Inspector Alfred Swain of the Essex Constabulary Criminal Investigation Branch, his sergeant and a dozen good uniformed men to meet this mail train at Abbots Langley. Mind you, Lestrade, it must be Alfred Swain.”

  I thought there was going to be a pitched argument over this. What possible reason could there be for a detachment of police to meet a train on which Major Mordaunt could not possibly travel? He would surely be at Harwich by then! Our Scotland Yard man drew his plaid cape more tightly round his shoulders and spoke quietly.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing, Mr Holmes. I do so hope you do. As for Alfred Swain, I suppose you know his story? He had to leave Scotland Yard for a country posting. A matter of personal differences with his commander.”

  “Differences with Superintendent Toplady that I might also have had, were I in Swain’s place.” Holmes became more coaxing. “My dear Lestrade, Mordaunt is no ordinary criminal. I believe you are playing for higher stakes than you suppose. On the evidence you have, the major could reduce Maria Jessel’s story to thin air, the vapours of feminine spite. Who are your witnesses? A poor mad governess now lying in Broadmoor and a cast-off mistress who must almost admit to murder herself in order to catch him. I fear you would seize him only to let him go again.”

  Lestrade fell silent for a moment. Then, he said, “Meaning what in particular?”

  “Your supposition is correct but your timing is in error. Mordaunt will make a sudden bolt for the Continent. However, he will not do so—he dare not—until he is certain that nothing is left behind to betray and therefore destroy him. Your evidence remains precarious. I warn you that you must catch him in the act or you will not catch him at all. With due modesty, I believe I am the only person who can accomplish that.”

  “Do you indeed?” Lestrade straightened up and looked at him hard. “You don’t think much of yourself, do you, Mr Holmes?”

  Holmes ignored this pleasantry.

  “Take him too soon, Lestrade, and what have you got? Can you even prove that Mordaunt killed Quint and that it was not some other man of Miss Jessel’s acquaintance whom she now protects? Can you prove that Mordaunt carried Quint’s body to the bridge and left it there? You know you cannot. Even the verdict of the coroner’s court stands against you. You may suspect it but you can prove nothing. Leave that to me!”

  Lestrade appeared to chew his lip. It was now 11.45 by the illuminated clock-face above the platform.

  “A man as clever as you say Mordaunt is will not wait around to be caught by you, Mr Sherlock Holmes!”

  A little twitch of impatience pulled at Holmes’s mouth.

  “I venture to think he is a little less clever than I shall be.”

  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 ancien régime keeping an appointment with the tumbrel.

  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 habitué 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 Pall Mall Gazette some years ago. Fortunately for him, that came to nothing. He had covered his tracks. Even so, he soon exhausted a younger son’s inheritance. In consequence, his pretended indifference to Bly masked a determination to get every penny from
the estate.”

  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 Crédit 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.

  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.