Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly (31 page)

He turned the key and raised the hinged lid. The interior had been divided, as usual, into shelves or trays which could be lifted out in turn. It was by no means full. The upper level contained a leather case for a razor, another for two silver-backed hair-brushes and what I can only describe as cosmetics, to judge from a faint odour of the barber's saloon which emanated from the dark bottles. A second layer held two silk shirts, a port-wine cravat and a green waistcoat with a pattern of fleurs-de-lis. Such a style, once fashionable among young men at Oxford and Cambridge, had not been seen for ten or fifteen years, except on such occasions as Miss Temple confronting Peter Quint through window-glass or upon a garden tower.

The deepest tray had room for a jacket and breeches of brown Norfolk cut, equally suited to gamekeeper or village squire. The clothes were a perfect match for those “borrowed” by Quint to be handy with the village girls, as Mrs Grose put it, and to adorn Miss Temple's vision. From among the hair-brushes and treasures of the dressing-room, Holmes picked up the reddish brown brush of a small fox, or so I thought.

“A hunter's trophy!” I said casually.

“My dear Watson! In all your medical experience, did you never see such a piece, affected by men who have lost their own hair?”

I never did. But I was looking elsewhere.

“Look in the box, Holmes.”

“You have truly not seen a wig such as this one—unmistakably of Quint's colour, as it was described to us?”

“Look in the box!”

He stopped and looked down. There it was. The case was leather. It might have held a large-sized pair of field-glasses, but its shape was square and not long. The leather was stamped with a War Department “crow's foot” and a simple inscription: “R. J. Begbie & Son, Woolwich, Field Heliostat, Standard Issue.”

It was surely the glass that had blinded Miss Temple as she came face-to-face with Maria Jessel. Only James Mordaunt would have been likely to conceal it among the costume pieces for his masquerade as Peter Quint. And who but Quint's murderer would be in possession of the hair-piece worn by the man that evening in full view of a score of people but missing from the body when it was found a stone's throw away?

Holmes returned the items, locked the box and gave the key to Alfred Swain. The young inspector must now take the credit for these discoveries on the island. Holmes was insistent upon that. As we crossed back over the Middle Deep, he repeated for Swain's benefit, “It is the most humble inconsistencies which are frequently the evidence of major crime. I commend the thought to you, Mr Swain.”

Swain bent his back to the oars and said, “I have never doubted it, sir.”

“Good. When you make your report, let it be terse and to the point.”

“Indeed, Mr Holmes.”

“The facts are these. The world knew it was Peter Quint's body lying dead on the bridge that winter night because Major Mordaunt told them so. After that, what remained of Quint became the property of the coroner's officer and the anatomist from Chelmsford. They knew him only as a corpse. They did their duty meticulously, every item of evidence was accounted for. They did not inquire for a missing hair-piece. Why should they? They knew nothing of its existence. Those villagers who merely saw his body laid out would hardly be surprised if it was not still in place. Yet its absence, a stone's throw from where he was seen wearing it, further suggests that he cannot have died at the bridge—therefore not in an accidental fall. Miss Jessel has told us the truth if anyone has.”

“Then it just amounts to the hair piece, Mr Holmes?”

“What it amounts to, Mr Swain, is that Mordaunt killed Quint. Within a day or two, Maria Jessel left for her holiday, during which her death was reported. She was carrying Quint's child. Thus we have one singular incident coming close to the heels of another singular incident. So close, in this case, that she and Mordaunt were privy to them both. It does not make her party to Peter Quint's death. There is nothing against her on that but her unsupported statement. There is conclusive evidence against him.”

That afternoon, Mordaunt's boat was pulled on to dry land. Several fittings, including both oars, had floated clear as it settled in the water. The oarsman's seat had gone and two of the footboards across the bottom of the shell were detached. Superintendent Truscott was occupied elsewhere and Swain stood over the wreck. While we waited for the hackney carriage to take us to the train at Abbots Langley, Holmes carried out a discreet inspection.

With the two footboards gone and the hull drained, the cause of the catastrophe seemed clear. Mordaunt had not thrown the boat out of balance by standing up or as his pistol recoiled.

“The plug in the drainage hole at the bottom of the hull was forced in by a rush of water,” said Holmes casually. “See for yourself, Watson. That is quite apparent as the cause of the boat settling in the water.”

I cast myself as the schoolboy oarsman I had once been.

“In a boat of this sort, the plug is hardened cork and conical-shaped so that an inward pressure of water would force it all the tighter.”

“Indeed it would,” he said placidly, “unless it had been tampered with.”

“Tampered with? How?”

“Look at the convex shape of the drainage hole. If a bung were mutilated, or reversed, or in any way loosened, it would yield to the pressure of water and sink the boat. This craft certainly did not tip over or flood as a result of Mordaunt's antics. It foundered under a weight of water below the footboards. The bottom of the boat had been flooding gradually ever since he pushed it out into the shallows. As the weight increased, his progress became slower, precisely as we saw.”

I stared at it and shook my head.

“Come, Watson. It may simply have been removed. If I were the killer, I should prefer if possible to fit the plug so that it would not give way completely until he got above the Middle Deep. A reversal of its position, ideally. I doubt that the major had bothered to take up the boards and inspect the bung when he had the hounds at his heels. Even if I am mistaken in that, at a glance it would seem intact. Especially in the half-light.”

I had stopped listening to him. Was this the plan Mordaunt had laid?

“It sounds to me, Holmes, more like the boating accident that might have overcome Miles and Miss Temple as they yielded to a beckoning ghost. Perhaps, by some evil irony, his own method was turned against him.”

But Sherlock Holmes had already turned away and was indicating the waiting carriage

It was half an hour later when we paid off our driver in the cobbled forecourt of the railway yard at Abbots Langley. The express was not due for twenty minutes. As we stood talking on the platform in the sunshine I was aware of distant hoof-beats, a rider approaching at a canter. The sound died away and presently the tall neatly-suited figure of Alfred Swain came down the steps of the bridge. So far as he could ever be, he seemed a little excited.

“They've found him, Mr Holmes! Major Mordaunt. Just under the ledge of the Middle Deep. The bullet had clipped him at one side, enough to knock him into the water. After that, it seems he drowned!”

14

S
herlock Holmes adjusted the curtain of the dining-car window against a strong afternoon sun as the coaches of the London train eased forward. With a sigh, he lowered himself into his seat and waved a hand towards the distant landscape.

“I am bound to think occasionally, Watson, how pleasant it would be to retire from all this sort of thing. To seek out a fold or a ridge of the Sussex Downs and live entirely for oneself. I can almost taste at this moment the clean salt air across the Channel waves and over the chalk cliffs. Yellow gorse in the thickets, the sheep bells and the restful murmur of bees in warm summer evenings.”

“You would go out of your mind, Holmes, without a case to investigate.”

“I should devote a small part of my time to critical monographs on speculative topics. The ironies of justice, for example. I should choose as my cast those murderers who have gone to the gallows when the victim whose wealth they coveted would have died of natural causes a few months later in any case. Or the artless cracksmen in 1884 who went to great lengths in planning to break the safe of the City and Suburban Bank, only to find on arrival that another gang were already in possession of it on that same night. The subsequent battle between the two sides woke the entire neighbourhood and resulted in the arrest of all concerned.”

“I take it that you would include the Bly House murder in this catalogue of ironies?”

“Possibly. Major Mordaunt is a perfect example of the man who uses all his talent to plan murder, in this case to kill his nephew Miles, only for nature to do the job before he can.”

“And the murder of Quint?”

“Quite lacking in irony. As the immortal Robert Browning described his own Roman murder story in
The Ring and the Book
, an episode in burgess life, nothing more.”

“And the death of Major Mordaunt himself?”

He looked at me innocently. I prompted him.

“The sabotage of the boat.”

“Let us call it the curiosity of the boat!”

“If the cork bung had not burst inwards and the craft had not begun to founder, Mordaunt might have clung to the wreck. The bullet wound was not fatal. He might have been pulled ashore and his wound dressed.”

Holmes shrugged.

“To save him for the hangman and possibly to take Maria Jessel with him. He would not thank you for that.”

I was not to be deterred.

“Once she knew of her child's death she would be a fury from the gates of hell. She has that build and that temperament. You have seen her. A fit young woman who could easily walk five miles to Bly from the station at Abbots Langley—and five miles back. She had been his partner in deception—if not murder. Ten-to-one she knew where the boat was hidden from their days together when she was his governess. She knew, at any rate, that he alone had access to the oars. If anyone used that boat to cross to the island now it would be he. By adjusting the bung, she had a perfect opportunity to ensure that the next time he used it would be his last. Even if a servant had seen her walking through the woods at Bly—she would have been reported as another apparition of the living dead. That would have been believed by no one. We know better!”

He gazed across the flat fields and shook his head in admiration of the theory.

“Knowledge is not proof, Watson. You also forget the part our client must play in any further investigation. Miss Temple would not thank you for putting her through the public ordeal necessary to convince a jury that Maria Jessel drowned Major Mordaunt. I will grant you that the message she sent from our séance was intended to destroy him, not to save him. But you can scarcely expect her to admit it now. We must leave it there.”

He beckoned the steward of the dining car.

“Her child is avenged,” he continued. “The sole witness who might implicate her in the death of Peter Quint is now dead. Let it rest there.”

He paused to order a pot of Earl Grey with cinnamon tea-cakes. Then he added, “When the contents of the military travelling chest are examined, the murderer of Peter Quint will be identified beyond question and Alfred Swain will earn the commendation that Scotland Yard always denied him.”

It was now almost two days since we had seen our beds. He stifled a yawn and stared from the carriage window across a ripening cornfield scattered with poppies. Then he looked back at me with a certain disapproval.

“The hunting instinct is strong in you, Watson. I have to tell you that if Miss Jessel is still in custody when we reach London, I shall advise her that she is entitled to legal representation. I shall also inform her that a competent Queen's Counsel might go before a judge in chambers and, upon the present evidence, apply successfully for a writ of
habeas corpus
.”

“And we shall say nothing more of the boat?”

“I think Maria Jessel has suffered enough. I, at least, will take no further part against her.” He turned and looked at me with exasperation. “For God's sake, Watson, I will not hound that young woman in order to please Tobias Gregson! Sometimes I must be judge and jury in the case I have established. I know you would not have it otherwise, old fellow!”

Then he stretched out his long legs as far as the carriage seats would permit and was asleep before our steward returned with the tea-tray.

Next day, when we were safely back in Baker Street, a wire from Lestrade confirmed that Major James Mordaunt, late surgeon of the Queen's Rifles, had “popped up” from the lake at Bly as Superintendent Truscott had predicted. An autopsy was undertaken and an inquest was to be held in a fortnight's time. Holmes and I had been witnesses to the man's death and our attendance was required. I had no wish to see Bly again and was not best pleased that the court would convene in its manorial hall rather than at the Abbots Langley coaching inn. In case the jurors might need to view the scene, the house was thought to be more convenient.

There is a good deal of press interest in any case where a police officer has shot dead a suspect. The coroner, Dr Roderick Allestree of Chelmsford, strove to repress sensationalism. He instructed the jurors to find a verdict in the death of Major James Mordaunt—and no more. At the first hint of ghosts or previous murders or robbery at the Five Stones, he called the inquest to order. How did Major Mordaunt die? That was all.

Alfred Swain was first exonerated and then commended. He had fired to prevent the certain death of Sherlock Holmes. His marksmanship was impeccable and his bullet was found in the arm that held Mordaunt's Webley pistol. The wound alone would not have been fatal, even without immediate medical attention. The major had drowned.

Ranged with plain wooden chairs, the dark manorial hall of Bly was oak-panelled and high-windowed but a little smaller than I had expected. Despite Dr Allestree's best efforts, it was hard to separate the death of Major Mordaunt from the question of whether Peter Quint died in consequence of foul play at his hands.