Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly (12 page)

“According to her journal, two apparitions were seen several times at Bly but not together. A man, identified as Peter Quint, had been dead for a year or more. He had been valet to Major Mordaunt, the uncle. Before that, he was the major's batman in the Queen's Rifles. He was seen by Miss Temple at least three times. On a further occasion at night, though she did not see him, she was convinced that the little boy Miles was staring up at him in a window above her. The boy behaved as though he had seen this man. The last time she saw Quint was recorded in the journal just before her arrest. It was at the moment of the boy's death.”

“And the second figure?”

“From Miss Temple's description this was identified by Mrs Grose, the housekeeper, as Miss Maria Jessel. That young woman had been the preceding governess. She had gone on a long holiday the year before—it seems she was unwell. She died at her father's home before her return. Her death left the post vacant for Miss Temple.”

I glanced covertly at Holmes to see how he was taking this catalogue of make-believe. If he felt any scorn for the ghostly visitors he certainly did not show it. He continued to question Hereward Douglas.

“How did she know these figures were ghosts?”

“Miss Temple had no idea who the two figures might be until she was told. It did not occur to her at first that they might be ghosts, because they were usually seen in full daylight. But as soon as she described the figures, Mrs Grose named them. That lady swore to me that Miss Temple was accurate in every detail. Only then did Mrs Grose tell the young governess that the two people she depicted in such detail were dead.”

“Is it not possible that Miss Temple had seen Quint and Miss Jessel during their lives and perhaps mistook two other people for them after their deaths? A trick of light or distance?”

Hereward Douglas shook his head vigorously.

“Until coming to London and to Bly, which is on the other side of the country, she had never set foot outside the southwest of England. So far as we know, neither Quint nor Miss Jessel had any connections or had ever been there.”

That was as far as Holmes allowed him to get.

“I have to tell you, Mr Douglas,” he said gently, “that it is vastly more probable for Miss Temple to have seen them previously—even if it was when they visited her home county of Devon for some very unlikely reason—than for a man or a woman to return from the grave. However, by all means continue, if you believe it will serve your purpose.”

The young man began to look a little downcast and his voice was quiet.

“Peter Quint, the Mordaunt valet, was the first apparition she saw. He was standing by the parapet of the garden tower at Bly, looking down at her across the lawn as a late summer evening turned to dusk. She thought perhaps he was an intruder but she said nothing to anyone. That autumn, seeing him again, outside the dining-room window this time, she complained to the housekeeper and gave the man's description. Mrs Grose told her that she had depicted Peter Quint, down to his stature, the colour and texture of his hair, even the unusual waistcoat that he wore. Only then did the housekeeper tell Miss Temple that Peter Quint had died the previous year.”

Holmes watched him carefully as Hereward Douglas continued.

“The previous winter, Quint had fallen head-first and smashed his skull open, after drinking late at the village inn. As usual, he had drunk far too much. He was alone in the country lanes on a bitter icy night without a lantern. It seems that he pitched over a large stone in the darkness—went flying, as they say—and broke his head clean open on the jagged flint parapet of a bridge across the stream. Two carters found him dead and frozen next morning. Miss Temple could only have seen his ghost.”

“And what did Miss Temple say to his reappearance?”

“Her first reaction, as her journal tells us, was to suppose that the servants were playing tricks on her. Or else that she had seen someone resembling Quint, as you suggest. A brother perhaps. But the man had no brother.”

“And the other residents at Bly?”

“They saw nothing. Dr Mordaunt, the guardian uncle, was living in France just then. There were only the servants and the children in the manor house. Dr Mordaunt had sometimes visited Bly before Peter Quint's death, but he had long given up any interest in the place. He thought the house remote and dreary. Unfortunately, it was not his to dispose of. With the death of Colonel Mordaunt, it was held in trust for young Miles, the colonel's only son.”

Holmes sighed.

“So Miss Temple's visions of Quint and Miss Jessel are entirely unsupported?”

“Not quite.” Hereward Douglas's young face still showed a determination to fight for the unfortunate young woman. “The housekeeper was present the second time that Miss Temple saw Miss Jessel, at a distance of a hundred and fifty feet or so across the lake. The little girl Flora was with them. It is true that Mrs Grose saw nothing, but she had a powerful sense that she was in the presence of an evil force.”

“Tell me, pray, how did she sense it?”

“There was an unnatural stillness on that autumn afternoon, Mr Holmes. When Miss Temple first saw Quint, on the tower in late sunlight, she was alerted to his presence by the same eerie way in which the sheep bells fell silent and the rooks ceased to caw. It was as if time and nature ceased when the figures appeared.”

“That is really not the same thing as if the housekeeper had also seen the apparition,” my friend said reproachfully.

“The children, Mr Holmes!” Douglas had been driven back into his corner but he came out fighting again. “Miss Temple was certain that the children saw the figures, on four occasions at least. Their reactions made it plain.”

“And what did the two little ones say about these ghostly appearances?”

“At first she thought they were too frightened to admit them. Then she saw that they were too guiltily excited to confess.”

Holmes sucked in his sallow cheeks a little and then breathed out.

“I fear that will be the rock on which your case founders, Mr Douglas. However, let us leave it for a moment. Let me ask you something else. Suppose all this is true. Suppose Miss Temple saw—or even thought she saw—these apparitions. For what reason would two such people return from the dead in order to materialise before your susceptible young friend? She had never known them. She had no interest in them, nor they in her, presumably.”

Our visitor leant forward again, eager to dispel a misunderstanding.

“You make my point for me, Mr Holmes. Miss Temple was only a bystander. Their manner and their movements convinced her that their true object had nothing to do with her. Their purpose was the seduction of the two children into the realms of evil and the world of the damned. She had been told repeatedly by the housekeeper, and by servants at Bly, of the malignant and corrupting influence that Quint and Miss Jessel exercised, during their lives, over the two children.”

If the rest of the tale was implausible, this was preposterous.

“A power sufficient to commit murder from beyond the grave?” Holmes inquired sceptically.

“No, sir. The little girl, Flora Mordaunt, died of diphtheria in the London fever hospital. Miss Temple was accused of smothering the boy a few days later.”

Holmes sat taller, fingers clasped and elbows on the arms of his chair. Hereward Douglas still held my friend's impatient interest, if only by a thread.

“You will read in the journal, Mr Holmes, why Miss Temple was certain that the children saw the apparitions. Miles and Flora were the objects of these evil visitations. It was only some exceptional and special sensibility that enabled the governess to share the visions.”

“Neither Master Miles nor Miss Flora remarked upon these ghosts?”

“No,” said Douglas forlornly. “Both denied them.”

“Dear me,” said Holmes lightly. “So you ask us to believe in these appearances because the children—from fear or wickedness—denied them? I am bound to say, Mr Douglas, it is as well for you that you are not, at this moment, bound by the rules of evidence in a criminal court. Pray continue, however. Your narrative is most unusual, if nothing else.”

“That was not all!” Surely it was desperation that brought this protest from our visitor. “Miss Temple was certain the children saw for themselves. Do you not understand? They were in league with these visitors! The willing victims! Unless you can accept that possibility, I am wasting my time.”

Holmes shrugged.

“In league with them? But for what possible purpose?”

Douglas spoke quietly.

“To be united in death—all four—in a state of damnation to which the children were being seduced. A state for which their corrupted childhood had trained them. There is no other way to put it, Mr Holmes.”

I could see from the brightness in my friend's gaze that this folklore of the dead possessing the living was not a mere absurdity to him. Its possibility glimmered on what Robert Browning called the dangerous edge of things. How his rational soul longed to believe!

“By what means were the children to be drawn to damnation?” I asked. Hereward Douglas turned in his chair.

“By self-destruction, Dr Watson. Quint and Miss Jessel were usually seen ‘across and beyond,' as Miss Temple puts it. They appeared almost motionless, at a distance, and almost always where they were inaccessible. Death beckoned the children across the deep waters of a treacherous lake—the Middle Deep, as it was called—or from the height of a dilapidated tower. It was as if the two devils summoned their victims to come to them and perish in the attempt. Quint also appeared twice to Miss Temple through the closed windows of a room. Terrifying but, once again, always inaccessible.”

“Not tempting her to destruction, however?”

He shook his head.

“No. Taunting her. Doing battle with her for the souls of two innocents.”

Holmes met this with the cold inquiry of the logician. Could he believe or could he not?

“If the children should perish, what would that accomplish?”

Our visitor was careful not to give away too much.

“In Miss Temple's mind—and even to the housekeeper—Miss Jessel and Quint were damned, as they deserved to be. Their spirits lusted for the children to share their hellish privations.”

This talk of hell and damnation was too much for me. I was about to say so, but Holmes glanced at me and Hereward Douglas resumed.

“Mrs Grose, of course, did not share Miss Jessel's vision of the dead. If she believed in the possibility of their evil presences, it was because she had known the man and woman during their lives. She had sensed the depravity of which they were capable towards the sensitive and imaginative children in their care.”

So much for ghosts! A fascination with human evil was now all that kept the ball in play between the two debaters in our sitting-room.

“How exactly did the children die?” Holmes asked finally.

“The little girl, Flora, died first. She was taken ill in London with high temperatures and dangerous symptoms. After a day or two, she was moved to the fever hospital for better care. It was already too late. Her fever turned to diphtheria and she died in the following week. Before this was known at Bly, Miles showed signs of a milder fever but not of diphtheria. There had been something of the kind at school. This was not apparent until a day or two after his sister's death and certainly did not seem to threaten his life. He remained at Bly with Miss Temple. I fear the local doctor was old and ignorant. The boy might have recovered with proper care.”

“And what of the ghosts?” I asked cautiously.

“The last apparition of Peter Quint materialised quite suddenly, Dr Watson, in broad daylight at the window of the dining-room. It was the white face of damnation, as Miss Temple calls it in her journal. She seized the ailing boy in her arms to shield him from it.”

“But only according to her own journal?”

Hereward Douglas nodded at the volume which Holmes was holding.

“It is there word for word, written just after the event.”

“Written to conceal some wrong-doing of her own perhaps?”

“No, Dr Watson. If ever a suspect condemned herself, it was Miss Temple in that journal. She describes how she clutched Miles to her breast to hide from him the terrible vision of Quint on the far side of the glass. In covering his eyes during her hysterical anger at the phantom she also covered his nostrils and mouth. Miles had his eyes tight shut against the horror beyond the window. She admits that he gave a frantic little struggle for light and air. So she allowed the boy a respite but caught him again and pressed him close. She must keep the dreadful eyes from the child's gaze. After that she lost her composure, probably she lost consciousness as well. When she came to herself, at the end of a minute or so, the life had gone from Miles Mordaunt. Miss Temple was staring at an empty window with the dead child in her arms.”

“A difficult case to try,” Holmes said sympathetically.

“It was, Mr Holmes. Miles was a boy of delicate health, in any case, and underdeveloped for his age. Unfortunately for Miss Temple, the judge ruled at the outset of the case that those who kill must take their victims as they find them. After that, Miss Temple could not put forward this child's weakness as a mitigating circumstance. The servants could only say that they never saw anything but an empty window, where Miss Temple twice saw the features of Peter Quint.”

I tried to console the young man.

“A verdict of insanity was her only hope of life. The best way to it was to plead that some form of hysteria had robbed her of consciousness and volition, if only for a moment or two. Otherwise her sole witness was a ghost! A court would dismiss that as sheer fabrication and no defence at all.”

The young man shrugged and shook his head. He had done his best against two older and more sceptical listeners but it had got him nowhere.