Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly (28 page)

“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

I
n 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.

“Mr Holmes, sir!” He shook my friend's hand in a more cordial manner than Gregson or Lestrade would ever have done. As I was introduced I remembered Holmes's description of him as the best fellow Scotland Yard ever had. A self-educated man, Swain had read Sir Charles Lyell's
Principles of Geology
and Tait's
Recent Advances in Physical Science
as easily as Lord Tennyson's
Idylls of the King
. By dint of early rising on the first day of sale, the young inspector had bought a first edition of Mr Robert Browning's translation of
The Agamemnon of Aeschylus
.

Such was our guide to murder! His mild eyes surveyed us.

“A telegram for you, Mr Holmes, which you won't much like. Neither Major Mordaunt nor anyone who could be him—in any disguise—was seen between Colchester and Harwich on the ferry train.”

So much for a bolt to the Continent! Holmes gave Gregson a smile so sharp that it was hardly a smile at all. Then he turned back again.

“You are mistaken in one thing, Mr Swain. I like it very much. And what of passengers leaving the train here?”

Swain gave an awkward sideways nod of his tall head.

“Major Mordaunt would find it hard to pass in disguise round here. He's not been seen, not before the ferry train and certainly not since.”

“Then that's that!” said Gregson irritably. “By playing games, we've lost him!”

In his indignation he spoke across Holmes directly to Swain.

“I think not,” said Holmes quietly.

“Then how—”

“One moment.”

Conversation was impossible as the engine of the mail train uttered its long shunting blasts of steam, pulling the jolting sorting-vans towards King's Lynn.

Instead of replying to Gregson, Holmes turned to Swain and took the inspector's lamp.

“If you please, Mr Swain.”

Swain let it go. With his grey cloak wrapped round him, Holmes patrolled the edge of the platform, shining the lamp across the dark iron rails to the platform on the far side. He turned to the station-master.

“When was the last train tonight from the far platform?”

“Ten-fifteen, sir. Always the last. After that the gate is locked and the way over the footbridge is closed as well. You don't want that side, sir!”

“On the contrary,” said Holmes under his breath, “it is the very thing I do want and mean to have.”

He drew his cloak tighter around him, still holding the police lamp. The station-master had just time to cry, “You can't do that, sir!”

But Holmes had done it. In a swirling leap he was down from the platform onto the iron rails where the mail train had stood. Three strides carried him across the double tracks. One hand at waist height on the opposite paving and a lithe upwards swing bought him, crouching, onto the far platform, breaking every railway by-law on his way. The station-master could only watch as Swain, Gregson and I followed more cautiously. Holmes was staring at a cream-painted wooden wicket-gate that led to the station yard and a darkened road. It would serve well enough to enforce ticket collection among law-abiding passengers. He unwrapped his cloak and handed it to me, took two long-legged strides, and cleared the top bar effortlessly. He landed heels-down on the soft earth beyond.

Presently he called back to us.

“In the dark, no one would see him drop down on this side while the train was stationary. From other sets of footprints—the depth of their impact—this has been a popular escape route from railway premises by those who feel disinclined to buy a ticket.”

Swain was inspecting the wicket-gate.

“You might have saved yourself the trouble, Mr Holmes. Someone kicked this fastening loose after it was locked tonight. Anyone could walk out of here.”

“Very well, Mr Swain, then we will begin our advance upon Bly, if you please. Let us take a roundabout route. If Major Mordant is on foot, as he may be, or if he is lying low, we must not alert him. It is almost five miles. With the use of a vehicle, we may still count on getting there first.”

So began our journey in the dark. A black van stood in the lamplight of the cobbled yard outside the country station. Its horses were restless in the chill. A sergeant and six uniformed men of the local division were waiting. A second sergeant and a constable had gone ahead to reconnoitre the gates and approaches of the house. With Holmes, Gregson, Swain and myself, there were twelve in the van. Gregson was of equal rank to Swain. Yet without speaking a word on the subject, Holmes had made the country policeman his second-incommand.

Mordaunt, if it was he, would be an hour ahead of us but on foot. I calculated his route as a trek across rough ground in the dark. The summer night was damp and much cooler by the time we reached the deserted gate-house of Bly, its long driveway between lime trees leading to the main courtyard and house. Sergeant Acott saluted his inspector and spoke softly.

“No sign yet, sir. He must either cross the road from Abbots Langley or take the lane from the village. He hasn't done either yet—and both are being watched. What's more, he could hardly penetrate these woods without a light—and we haven't seen one.”

“Major Mordaunt served with scouting parties of the Queen's Rifles in the Second Afghan Campaign,” said Holmes quietly. “You will not see him. We shall not get a sight of him until he reaches us.”

A few stars were out. The landscape was almost dark except where the tallest trees and the hedges caught what light there was in the sky. We passed on foot through a strange white-onblack world like a photographic negative. Acott with his constable remained at the gates as we approached the forecourt of the empty house.

Holmes and I knew the lie of the land as well as any of the others. Acott posted another two men to keep surveillance on the house. Four more were to lie low at different points in sight of the lake. With one lantern between us, its shutter almost closed, Holmes and I with Swain and the sergeant followed the shadows of the rear lawns until we came to the locked stone structure of the boat shed in its walled rose garden. Among these smaller formal gardens, Holmes took a general survey without making a sound or casting a shadow. I followed him to the door of the stone shed, whose simple lock he had picked with his pocket-knife on our first visit. He tried the handle and found it still locked.

“Excellent,” he said softly to one of our uniformed constables. “Stand out of sight by the corner of the wall. If anyone should approach, alert us. You will have time to get round the far side of the wall. I do not think he will come this way now, but we must know at once if he does.”

Not five seconds later the lock clicked and the door eased open. Here was the same stone interior, facing the dark lake. The grimy window panes still danced with their mad race of little flies in a dimmed blade of lamplight. It was impossible to risk the reflection of a lantern on the white-washed stone interior.

“He will not come here now,” Holmes repeated softly. “He has been. See for yourself, Watson. A man who would keep pace with the scouts of the Queen's Rifles on campaign must cover forced marches over the worst terrain of barren hills. He would cross the fields from Abbots Langley to Bly at night as light-footedly as a huntsman with a pack of beagles. He has quite literally stolen a march upon us.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Look up there on the brackets. The oars have gone. The boat that looked as if no one used it can be used after all. But only by the man who can get at its oars. Only by the man who could open the lock on this shed. Therefore, only by Major Mordaunt. I daresay Miss Jessel might purloin the key, but she is otherwise engaged.”

In the uncertain starlight we followed the path taken long ago by Victoria Temple, Mrs Grose and Flora on the afternoon of Miss Jessel's apparition. It now occurred to me that Mordaunt was certainly armed. He had used a gun to put down his dog. No gun was found in his house, therefore he still had it with him. I had not packed my Army revolver because I had not supposed I should need it at a spiritualist séance! Gregson had not stopped to draw a handgun, knowing his plain-clothes men in Eaton Place would be carrying their police pistols. Holmes seldom bothered with firearms. As for “Mr Swain” with his poetry books and his geology! I doubted if he knew one end of a gun from the other. Our manhunt might yet turn into an awkward business with an armed and determined fugitive.