Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly (27 page)

“Her freedom, I suppose,” said Holmes unhelpfully.

Lestrade pulled a face.

“I don't see it. What's she after?”

“Justice, if you prefer it.” My friend looked at me, his back to the chief inspector, and raised his eyebrows as if in despair of him.

“Then why won't she ditch him and have done with it, sir?”

Holmes swung round on him.

“I believe, Lestrade, I may go so far as to say we shall learn the answer to that by tomorrow morning. Meantime, I have two requests to make.”

The Scotland Yard man's eyes narrowed a little.

“Yes? Such as?”

“Your colleague Gregson is on a somewhat different track to us. He fancies Mordaunt will make a dash for the Hook of Holland.”

“And how do you propose to remedy that, Mr Holmes?”

“By assuming that Mr Gregson is mistaken. The ferry train is not half-way to Harwich yet. Colchester is the last stop before the docks, I believe. Put aboard two plain-clothes men for the last leg of the journey. Give them Mordaunt's description, as we have it. He can hardly change it much in full view of the other passengers. By this time of night there will be only a final handful of travellers still making for the docks. Just let your two men search the train unobtrusively between Colchester and Harwich for anyone who might be Mordaunt. From the police post at the docks let them wire the result of their search to every station-master along the route.”

Lestrade's eyes widened.

“You think he might not be on the train after all this?”

“Let us say I think it very unlikely that they will find him on it.”

“Then you're the only one who does!” said the chief inspector humorously. “After he bought a ticket for the docks!”

“Just as any man would who wanted to throw off the pursuit. As for other opinions, I am well used to being in a minority.”

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?”