Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly (17 page)

“A mathematical dodge with a pair of dice!” said Holmes scornfully. “He had learnt it somewhere—from an adult, of course. Who taught him, I wonder? Let me tell you, Mr Spencer-Smith, it is a trick based on multiplication by five. Once his dupes gave him the final total, all he needed to do was subtract from it the square of five. Twenty-five. That would invariably and infallibly give him the numbers on the two dice. So, for example, sixty-two would always equal six-plus-two, thirty-five would always give him three-plus-five. It never fails. It is no more magic nor witchcraft than a recipe for plum pudding! But surely he was not expelled—even for this?”

“No, Mr Holmes. His downfall was the Five Stones murder in the neighbourhood of his home, far away at Bly. I daresay you have heard of it? A mill-owner was driving a cart with a barrel of gold coins, believing that no one knew of his cargo. It was the quarter's takings from several saw-mills which he was carrying to his safe. It was a good deal of money and he had been careful to tell no one of it, as he thought. Unfortunately for him, his route was known to the robber, even if the size of the cargo was not. He was attacked and clubbed to death while crossing the heathland near the prehistoric Five Standing Stones of Bly. Little remains of four stones, but the fifth is still upright. The perpetrators were never caught. For no good reason, it was locally believed that there were five robbers—as there were five stones at the scene of the crime. The fifth, supposed to be the actual murderer, was popularly nicknamed the Fifth Stone.”

“I have heard of the crime,” said Holmes tolerantly.

“But why was the child expelled from school?” I persisted.

“For what followed, Dr Watson. The master of Brunswick House, Mair Loftus, was not an amiable man. Ill-tempered, strict and pious, he kept his wife and son in fear of him. He was a rasping bully. To all criticism, he replied, ‘When I was a junior boy, I feared my master. Now, by God, these juniors shall fear me.' He has since left us. Miles cordially loathed the man and, quite simply, set out to destroy him. For devilment, I suppose, this little boy swore to his friends that he knew a secret about this murder committed near his home. Mair Loftus, all the way down in the West Country, was an accomplice of the Fifth Stone. This housemaster was the receiver of the stolen gold. Little by little, Miles told his friends, the robber brought the gold coins all the way down to Somerset. Loftus changed them at his bank into negotiable notes and even into government bonds. Who would suspect a schoolmaster, especially one with a private income? Miles swore that he had this story from the Fifth Stone himself.”

Sherlock Holmes shook his head thoughtfully.

“Wait, Mr Holmes,” said Spencer-Smith abruptly. “Brunswick House is a red-brick residence, a home to thirty junior boys. Close to its rear door is a very large, quick-growing Monterey cypress. It should have been felled years ago but now its base is quite four feet across. Miles assured his friends that if they put their ears to the bark and listened very carefully, they might hear whispering. With the breezes from Exmoor and the Bristol Channel in the branches, it was not difficult for some children to convince themselves and their friends that they heard whispers. Perhaps they could not make out the words. But rumour runs like fire through a community of small boys. If two or three believed it, the rest were not to be left out.”

Holmes sat back, finger-tips tracing patterns on the padded leather arm of his chair.

“According to Miles Mordaunt,” Spencer-Smith continued, “the proceeds of the robbery had been worth a fortune. The Fifth Stone still visited Mair Loftus, to trade gold for bank-notes. In a hollow within the base of this giant pine—a small kiosk, as it were, with underground access—the two conspirators met to negotiate the disposal of the booty. The power of seeing into rooms and minds, which Miles had already demonstrated, enabled him to detect what was going on. It was a yarn straight out of a penny dreadful.”

“Pray continue,” said Holmes softly. “You have my complete attention.”

“Mair Loftus had always acted as if his duty was to keep the boys in awe of him. This child showed an extraordinary adult subtlety and intelligence. Because most of the boys shared his loathing of Loftus they were eager to believe that they also heard the whispering of words in the trunk of the old fir tree. After all, they had seen Miles Mordaunt's occult powers demonstrated elsewhere.”

“And now they believed him in this case?” I asked.

“It was as if there was another personality within him, Dr Watson,” said Spencer-Smith sadly, “or perhaps one that had taken him over. To hear him speak, to watch his mannerisms, was to believe that an adult was imprisoned in the body of an underdeveloped child of ten.”

“And in due course these stories of Mr Loftus reached Dr Clarke?” Holmes inquired.

“They came to the chaplain first and thence to the headmaster. They were absurd!”

“His parents,” I said suddenly, “were they dead by this time?”

“The news had barely reached us. I understand they had both died during a single cholera epidemic in India. Because the news was received just as the decision to dismiss their son from school was taken, our action seemed the more heartless. Now here is another curiosity for you. The boy himself appeared quite unaffected by the loss of his parents. It was almost like a liberation, a confirmation that he had left childhood behind him.”

“It is a moral oddity perhaps,” I said, “but not unknown to medicine.”

“Not entirely an oddity, Dr Watson. Colonel Mordaunt's regiment had been in India for most of the child's life. Miles cannot have been close to his parents in any case, though our rules required him to write to them every week on Sunday afternoon. He can rarely have seen them. Perhaps he had come to resent their desertion of him, as it may have seemed to him.”

“What arrangements were made for him after their deaths?”

“Of course he was his father's heir as lord of the manor of Bly, though he would not come into the property until he was twenty-one. The guardian of both the children and trustee of the estate was automatically his uncle.”

“And he was …” Holmes prompted him.

“Colonel Mordaunt's only brother, Major James Mordaunt, an Army surgeon-major in his youth. I understand he had seen service in India and Afghanistan. He remains a bachelor with no pretensions to marriage or fatherhood, as I was told—certainly not to practicing medicine any longer. When their father died twenty years ago, Colonel Charles Mordaunt inherited Bly, as the eldest son, but the major was also provided for. He lives sometimes in a fashionable area of London but mostly in France.”

“Then what became of Miles and Flora?” I asked.

“Major Mordaunt did his best, while their parents were in India. He had no true interest in them. I do not recall that he ever visited Miles here. I cannot even say whether he ever saw the children. At any rate, when we sent the boy away, Major Mordaunt had already employed Miss Temple as governess for the little girl. The major insisted time and again that he did not want to be bothered over the children's upbringing. She was to deal with any contingencies as she saw best. Whatever was needed, she had only to ask the lawyers for money.”

“So she has told us,” said Holmes.

“I argued with Austen Clarke, Mr Holmes, believe me I did. Miles should not have been dismissed from the school. He should have gone to one of the other houses, away from Mair Loftus. We should have helped and cared for him. His so-called necromancy was the silliest nonsense, but the emotional disturbance within him was terribly real. Dr Clarke simply replied that the boy had plotted to destroy the authority of Mr Loftus, to make his position in the school untenable. Subversion of that kind could not be countenanced.”

“Tell me,” I asked, “was Miles seen by a physician while he was at King Alfred's?”

“He was, Dr Watson. For a week or two he was confined in the school sanatorium with catarrhal pneumonia, an inflammation of one lung which yielded quite readily to treatment. Every boy returning to school at the beginning of each term has to bring a certificate, signed by the family physician, to confirm that he is not suffering from any disease—contagious or otherwise. Miles Mordaunt was not physically robust, as his appearance would suggest, but since then he always seemed buoyant and in high spirits.”

“Was he seen by a specialist at the time?”

“I recall that his uncle arranged for him to be seen by a chest specialist in London. It seemed that the boy had made a complete recovery.”

Holmes put his hand on the arms of the chair as if about to stand up. Then he paused.

“Can you can tell me, Mr Spencer-Smith, how news of the boy's expulsion was conveyed to his family?”

A hint of frank bewilderment passed across the history master's face.

“Why, Mr Holmes, Dr Clarke wrote a letter to Major Mordaunt, as the boy's guardian, after he had discussed the matter with the rest of us.”

“That is not quite what I meant. Dr Clarke did not presumably tell the major that Miles was harming the other boys—and leave it at that?”

Spencer-Smith seemed relieved at the explanation.

“Certainly not. These occasions are happily rare, but the headmaster is always very specific in his reasons. I believe he does this to forestall argument. He naturally cited the harm caused by Miles to the other boys and the undermining of the housemaster's authority. I think you will find that Dr Clarke even reported the substance of the puerile slander so that Major Mordaunt would see that it was impossible for us to keep the boy. I believe there was a temporary dispute of some kind over the amount of school fees which were owing. Major Mordaunt eventually settled the bill.”

Holmes relaxed again. He stood up and held out his hand.

“We will impose on you no longer, sir. You have been most patient.”

It was now Spencer-Smith who hesitated.

“One more thing, Mr Holmes—a curiosity, perhaps! We had not done the boy justice. I wrote to Major Mordaunt. If he sought another school for Miles, he must call upon me for support in the strongest terms. I am not without influence in other places. He need not fear the outcome.”

“And Major Mordaunt responded?”

“His letter thanked me in charming and gracious terms. He would accept my offer in due course. For a while, however, he would entrust the boy to his new governess. The rest you know.”

Holmes took the master's hand again.

“You have been most generous with your time and advice, sir.”

“If poor Miss Temple is innocently condemned, I am at your service.”

We made our way down the narrow corridor and the staircase. Our ancient cab, spattered from the local lanes, was waiting for us. My friend said nothing until we were sitting in a compartment of the London train and the low-lying Somerset pastureland, still water-logged from spring rains, was slipping past our window. At length he spoke.

“Mr Spencer-Smith has all the trappings of the schoolmaster, does he not, Watson? A man among boys but a boy among men. I fear he and Miss Temple have told us all that they are likely to tell. By-the-by, did you observe a curious detail at the end of our conversation this afternoon?”

“What was that?”

“Major Mordaunt preferred that his nephew should be taught by a governess at Bly, rather than educated at one of our great schools, which Spencer-Smith's offer would have made possible.”

“It was too soon after the boy's dismissal. It would have come in time.”

Holmes relaxed.

“I wonder. Then that leaves only Bly as the key to the puzzle, perhaps in the hands of the worthy housekeeper, Mrs Grose. I fear we must return to Miss Temple's ghosts.”

Two passengers took seats within earshot. He drew his silver cigarette case from an inner pocket. Then he opened a slim mathematical treatise on the enigma of the Riemann hypothesis and spent the rest of the journey to London in a cloud of meditation.

4

N
one of this persuaded me to believe in Victoria Temple's “apparitions.” She was an honest witness, but I had treated too many hysterics and neurotics in twenty years of medical practice to regard such visitations as anything but a disturbance of troubled minds. Like Scrooge in his dream, I would dismiss a nocturnal ghost as nothing but a piece of undigested cheese.

Yet if any place could persuade me of hauntings, I suppose it would be the landscape of Bly. Even the governess's journal of her six months' residence had not prepared me for its air of the remote and the abandoned. Where the ghosts were said to have walked, we were warned that several wooden steps inside the garden tower were now missing. We soon saw for ourselves that the lakeside structures were in decay. A sense of isolation was pervasive. Yet the railway line with restaurant cars and morning newspapers was only five miles away across the fields. There was a village just a mile off and several nearby farms to the north-west.

Our carriage turned from the country lane into a gravelled drive, running over flat pasture through an avenue of tall lime trees. After the traffic and street cries of London, this seemed like the last place on earth. The housekeeper, housemaid, dairywoman, groom and gardener had done nothing but keep the place tidy for the absentee Major James Mordaunt. But his interest in it had long withered. He had no taste for riding to hounds or weekend parties. Bly's empty rooms, dark corridors and crooked staircases, its stables and yew-tree walks, needed a family complete with attendants. Without them, it was dead.

The house had been built three centuries ago for some Elizabethan Master-in-Chancery or Baron of the Exchequer. Its first owners had been too occupied in the London courts to come down here often. Bays of leaded windows rose handsomely from lawn to rooftop. Yet the prison-grey stone, enclosing its gravelled forecourt, looked no better than cement rendering. This plain front and tall chimneys gave it a barrack-like appearance.