Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly (11 page)

“Precisely. Imagine this son of a prestigious naval family, with a cruiser captain for a step-brother, and an admiral lurking in the ancestral shadows. He regards a Nomination as his birthright. The money is nothing to him, it is the prestige. The racing start that it would give to a chap's career. There is only one Nomination for each year at St Vincent's.”

“And would he not get it?”

“I am sure Reginald Winter would dearly love him to. His report, as headmaster, would say so. Term prefect and Captain of Boats, like his brother before him. Cricket, boxing, football. The irony is that he might have got a Nomination in any case. But then there was Patrick Riley. No naval influence, father a bank clerk, a starveling, as they call it. Obliged to win his way by brains or talent. A rather lonely boy whose so-called friends easily turned against him. Organised bully-ragging might break him—and bully-ragging is not discouraged by the likes of Winter, who regards it as character-building. A plausible charge of theft, even if not fully proved, would put him out of the running. By taking his hope of preferment, that also might break him. Confidential dismissal.”

“After all,” I said, “he would not go to prison, merely to professional disgrace in the Royal Navy. There he would always be the boy accused of stealing the postal order.”

“Precisely. Sovran-Phillips and his kind have influence. But the likes of Jackie Fisher value brains and talent. Suppose influence should fail. Riley was the one boy whose mind and enthusiasms could beat Sovran-Phillips—or so Phillips thought. Even Reginald Winter might not be able to save his favourite Ocean Swell.”

The little pieces formed their pattern as we took dinner in the Pullman car of the express from Portsmouth to Waterloo.

How easily Phillips might purloin a braided jacket for half an hour and a pair of glasses from the locker of a boy who wore them. How easily he could provide himself with an
exeat
permit of his own devising. The impress of the last one issued would be on the thin paper of his pad. Only the master's initials need be traced. But who would challenge the captain of his year or do more than glance at the
exeat
? Tracing over Porson's permit and the boy's signature, the indentation would be left upon the postal order. He had only to follow this impress at the post office counter. Riley's game with Porson and the “exchange” of signatures had been nothing but a joke and no more than amateur copying. It was Sovran-Phillips who had proved to be the professional thief.

We were later informed that Sovran-Phillips had left St Vincent's as soon as his bags could be packed. This did not surprise me. Even when I escorted him to get his pad of
exeat
permits, I thought he might bolt there and then, out of the nearest door. It was said that he left school on medical advice, consequent on contracting a nervous fever. No proceedings were taken against him. With his departure, it was possible for Reginald Winter to inform the governors that the case had been fully investigated and no boy at his school was involved in it. The money had been found abandoned near the school grounds and restored to its owner.

Their lordships of the Admiralty discontinued their licencing of St Vincent's. Its numbers declined until it ceased to be a school of any kind. The final terms were transferred to Dartmouth or Osborne as age and examination performance permitted. The buildings were purchased by the government and converted into a naval hospital serving Gosport and Portsmouth. Sherlock Holmes received each successive announcement in the
Morning Post
with a shout of derisive laughter at the preposterous evasions by the authorities.

“My dear Watson! This whole affair will have saved more faces than the Day of Judgement!”

Patrick Riley remained at the school only long enough to take the July examinations, in which he distinguished himself. After a meeting between Sherlock Holmes and his brother Mycroft, the boy transferred to Dartmouth for his remaining year as a junior and his entire senior cadetship. We were subsequently informed that he had passed out with distinction as a Royal Navy lieutenant at eighteen years old, in time to serve during the final year of the Great War.

Considerations of money had at first barred his way. His examinations at fourteen produced distinctions in mathematics and navigation, history and algebra. An essay on Athenian naval tactics at the battle of Salamis in 480 B.C. caused our friend Professor Strachan-Davidson to incline his head approvingly. Yet despite these distinctions, the boy had not been supported by Reginald Winter in his bid for an Admiral's Nomination. Happily, he received this preferment directly from Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Fisher without reference to the headmaster. Sherlock Holmes would take no other fee for his advice in the case.

2

The Case of the

Ghosts at Bly

1

“W
hat would you do if you saw a ghost, Mr Holmes? Before I go further into a very sensitive matter, I should like to hear your opinion.”

Holmes raised one eyebrow a fraction higher than the other.

“On the existence of ghosts, Mr Douglas, I can only take refuge in the wisdom of Dr Samuel Johnson. All argument is against it, but all feeling is for it.”

We received our young visitor on a bright morning in the spring of 1898. A mild west wind ruffled the awnings of shops and cafes along Baker Street. Below us echoed a bustle of Saturday trade, a rattle of harness, a grinding of wheels against kerb stones, a brisk rhythm of hooves.

I had never heard my friend questioned about ghosts. We had never discussed the matter between ourselves. Our visitor sat back. He studied Holmes's aquiline features and waited.

The Honourable Hereward Douglas had the air of a tailor-made English gentleman, freshly brushed and combed as if he had stepped from a band-box. Taller even than Holmes and quite as lean, he must have been about twenty-five. There was a striking contrast between his smooth black hair, the restless gleam of dark eyes, and a fairness of skin with a youthful blush. Eton College had formed his manners as a schoolboy. Trinity College, Cambridge, had done the rest.

This young paragon won his open scholarship to Trinity in classics,
cum laude
. He then gained a “blue” at cricket, hitting eighty in an hour at Lords, where he led his team to victory in the annual Oxford and Cambridge match. A model of courtesy and elegance, he was any mother's pride and every young girl's ambition. If he outlived his siblings, he would inherit the Earldom of Crome. What had occurred in his privileged young life to bring him to Sherlock Holmes?

“Setting aside Dr Johnson, Mr Holmes, do you believe in ghosts?”

Holmes contracted his eyebrows.

“I shall not dodge your question, Mr Douglas. Bring me the evidence and I will sift it, as a rational inquirer. Probably I shall find a natural explanation. If not, and if all other possibilities are exhausted, I must consider whether these events may not be produced by causes beyond my power to detect. To conclude otherwise would make me a bigot. I may even have to accept, as the song has it, that King Henry VIII's unhappy queen, Anne Boleyn, walks the Bloody Tower with her head tucked underneath her arm. Come to me without such evidence, however, and I must be a sceptic.”

“You make a joke of it, Mr Holmes,” said the young man reproachfully.

“On the contrary, Mr Douglas, I was never more serious. But now you have roused my curiosity, I beg you will satisfy it. I can act only upon evidence.”

Hereward Douglas inclined his head in acknowledgement.

“That is as I would wish it.”

“Admirable.” Holmes reclined against the back of his chair. I believe you are turning out to bat for Middlesex against Yorkshire this afternoon. It is now gone half-past ten. Therefore your time is rather more valuable than my own.”

Common sense told me that Holmes would never waste his talents on make-believe. Yet he seemed to look for a pretext to involve himself with ghosts and ghouls.

Mr Douglas ignored my friend's cricketing pleasantry. He opened a briefcase and drew out a handsome quarto diary, bound in maroon leather.

“This is a private journal, Mr Holmes, kept by Miss Victoria Temple. It covers events during six months when she was governess to two children at Bly House, the Mordaunt estate in Essex.”

Holmes stared at him hard but said nothing. Victoria Temple! Why did I know that name? For a moment I could not place it. My friend had been lying back, as if prepared to be entertained. His eyelids had been almost closed and the tips of his fingers placed lightly together. Now he straightened up and sat forward.

“The Bly House child-murder,” he said expectantly. “The trial was last year, was it not?”

Hereward Douglas nodded

“The verdict was insanity, Mr Holmes. Unfit to stand trial. Guilty but insane.”

“I recall that. Pray continue.”

Mr Douglas became, if possible, still more earnest.

“As you may know, gentlemen, my family's country seat is in Devonshire, near Ottery St Mary. In my second Long Vacation, I came down from Cambridge for the summer. My sister Louise is eight years my junior. Miss Temple had arrived as her governess a month earlier. I found her a delightful and intelligent young woman. It was no fault of hers to be born into genteel poverty, the youngest of ten daughters of a widowed clergyman. His parish lay some forty miles away. My father was patron of the living. My mother knew of the family's misfortunes. She interviewed Miss Temple and offered her the post of governess to my sister. For several weeks we were thrown into one another's company. We talked and strolled together in the garden. During summer afternoons we sat with our books in shady corners of the lawn under the great beeches.”

“And there was no more?” Holmes inquired curtly.

The faintest resentment tightened our visitor's mouth.

“There could be no place for romance, Mr Holmes. I am no snob, nor are my people. Yet an alliance with my sister's governess was not what my parents would have chosen for me. In October, I returned to Cambridge. The young lady and I made vows of friendship, shook hands, and parted for ever. Yet during that summer I heard something of how arduous and solitary her life had been.”

“How long was this summer idyll before the death of the child at Bly?”

“I knew nothing of that tragedy until after I had left Cambridge. Even then it was merely a paragraph in the
Morning Post
despatched from Chelmsford Assizes. A charge of murder had been brought against Miss Temple, over the death of Miles Mordaunt, a boy of ten, at Bly House. It was alleged she had smothered the child. After judicial argument and medical evidence, some of it from Professor Henry Maudsley himself, a plea of ‘guilty but insane' was accepted by the Crown. As is customary, the sentence was indefinite. Miss Temple was ordered to be detained during Her Majesty's pleasure, as the saying is. She was committed to the Criminal Lunatic Asylum at Broadmoor.”

Holmes slipped his hands into his pockets and stretched out his legs.

“From a legal standpoint, Mr Douglas, that is the end of the matter, is it not? In English law, an appeal is impossible against a finding of insanity. By accepting such a verdict, those who represent the accused concede that he or she is guilty of the act, though without the necessary intent to make it criminal. I take it that the evidence was not disputed in court?”

“It was not, Mr Holmes. That was the end of the case but not the end of my story. Last winter I was in London, preparing for the Foreign Office examinations. I came home to my chambers in the Albany one evening. My manservant handed me a package. It was addressed to me by Thurlow and Marston, attorneys-at-law of Lincoln's Inn Fields. They had acted for Miss Temple after her trial. The parcel contained this journal, kept during her time at Bly. The entries begin six months before the death of the little boy, Miles Mordaunt. They end with a confused account of his last moments. Miss Temple's narrative must have helped to convince Professor Maudsley and the court of her so-called insanity.”

“A curious keepsake, Mr Douglas! What did she hope to gain from you?”

“In their letter, her lawyers told me that she wished me to have the volume. I was the one person she thought might still believe in her innocence. Her own circle of friends contained no one able to exercise influence on behalf of a poor young lunatic.”

He stood up and handed my friend the quarto volume. Holmes glanced through it with a frown. He turned to the last page.

“More than two hundred pages covering, as you say, six months. Well, Mr Douglas, I must not keep you waiting while I read it. Perhaps you can help me a little before I do so. What does this volume contain that might have influenced a trial judge or jury?”

Hereward Douglas enumerated the contents on the fingers of his left hand with the forefinger of his right.

“First, their uncle's choice of Miss Temple as governess of the two children at Bly. Miles Mordaunt was ten, his sister Flora younger by two years. Their parents, Colonel and Lady Mordaunt, had lately died in a cholera epidemic in Bengal. The children were left under the indolent wardship of their uncle, Dr James Mordaunt, also known as Major Mordaunt of Eaton Square, Belgravia. He was a retired surgeon-major of the Queen's Rifles. He summoned Miss Temple to his solicitor's chambers in Harley Street and interviewed her alone.”

“And she accepted the post?”

He shook his head.

“She felt herself too inexperienced and unequal to such a trust. She thanked him but refused his offer. It seems he had no luck in finding any other lady. After a second invitation, still having no employment herself, she accepted.”

My friend made a note on his starched cuff.

“Let us come directly to the ghosts, if you please. Let us also be specific. Who saw them—Miss Temple, presumably? And where exactly did they appear?”