Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly (14 page)

“And that the Crown should accept a plea of not guilty by virtue of insanity,” Homes said quietly.

I feared the words might distress her, but Victoria Temple seemed indifferent to them.

“Without that, Mr Holmes, I should have been hanged. If Major Mordaunt had not found Mr Ballantine for me—and paid his fee—I should have been lost. I knew so little of the law that I was afterwards possessed by the idea that if ever they believed I had recovered my sanity, the law would oblige them to come for me and hang me. I had the most fearful dreams at first of being woken for that purpose. Dr Annesley and others worked with great patience to encourage me and bring me to my senses over it. And now Mr Douglas, whom I have not seen in all this time, has been good to me as well, persuading you to visit me here.”

Then it seemed that the conversation ran into a brick wall. There was silence until Miss Temple herself broke it with a slight wave of her hand.

“Gentlemen, you may talk of whatever you please. The apparitions, Mrs Grose and the others at Bly, the children. Even little Miles. I weep for him, of course, but I am quite all right now. I can speak of him, as I am speaking to you at this moment.”

“Very well then,” said Holmes quietly. “Tell me, please, before your arrest how many times had you seen Major Mordaunt?”

“Once.” She paused for a moment, as if to check her accuracy. “He interviewed me in London, at the office of his solicitor in Harley Street. I was offered the place of the late Miss Jessel. From what I have heard, I was not the first to refuse. You must remember that I had never held a post of this kind. There was no master or mistress in the house, only the servants. My employer would not even be in England much of the time. I was a newcomer and I thought the responsibility too great.”

She paused, looked about her, and then returned her gaze to us.

“I feared the loneliness and the lack of company, the distance from my home. There would be no one to whom I could turn for advice, for instructions or decisions. Major Mordaunt made that clear. He had never wanted to be guardian of his brother's children and estate. He preferred that it should be done by others.”

“You were to have charge of both children?”

“Only the little girl, Flora, at first. Miles was away at King Alfred's School. He was sent home some time after my arrival.”

“For the holidays?”

“No, Mr Holmes. He was dismissed from the school, unfairly dismissed. Dr Clarke, the headmaster, went so far as to insist that his continued presence would injure the other boys. The head would say nothing more than that. I was never able to determine the exact cause. That boy, Mr Holmes, was beautiful in soul and body. He was the type that such schoolmasters dislike. He was too good for them!”

“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 as 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?”