Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly (13 page)

“I apologise, gentlemen, if I have taken up your time to no purpose. I was bound to do what I could for my friend.”

He was an amiable young man, and I tried to make some amends for my disbelief.

“From many years of medical practice, Mr Douglas, I assure you that you have acted honourably and courageously. The sudden loss of reason in a friend or loved one, who has given no other sign of infirmity, is the most distressing form of separation. Far worse than many a mortal disease when it turns a friend into a stranger.”

He looked at me, oddly as I thought.

“You misunderstand me, Dr Watson,” he said quietly. “I do not come to you for comfort in this matter. I do not ask that you should believe in tales of ghosts or demons. I am no lawyer and certainly not a medical man. I am here because I cannot believe that Miss Temple was responsible for that child's death. A finding of insanity may have saved her from the gallows. Now she lies in a criminal lunatic asylum. But I will take my oath that she is as sane as you or I.”

Holmes watched these exchanges, his eyes motionless as a lizard's measuring a fly. He closed the morocco volume which he had been holding open at its final page. Then he stood up and turned to our visitor.

“If you hoped to convince me of the apparitions, Mr Douglas, I fear you have failed so far. However, though you may not think so, I believe you have done enough to persuade me that Miss Temple is no murderess.”

“And manslaughter?” Hereward Douglas murmured anxiously.

Holmes looked surprised.

“I should not accept this case merely to agree a compromise over mental frailty. With me, Mr Douglas, the battle is all or nothing.”

“Then what of insanity?”

“I have not yet had the pleasure of her acquaintance but I am ready to suppose it possible that Miss Temple is as sane as you or I. Of course, I must inquire for myself. Yet nothing you have told me so far convinces me that she is insane. “

“Thank God!” he said softly.

Sherlock Holmes was not given to fatherly gestures but he laid a hand on the young man's shoulder.

“Now, Mr Douglas, you must permit me to read the young lady's journal for myself. I promise you, it will not detain me long. I shall communicate with you by Monday at the latest. Until then, I suggest that you should give your best attention to Lords cricket ground and the match this afternoon.”

The tension in our sitting-room thinned and vanished like a drift of cigar smoke. Hereward Douglas was astonished to be dismissed so kindly after bringing us what we ought to have rejected as nonsense. When we were alone I waited for an explanation. After all, Holmes knew about Miss Temple's appearance at Chelmsford Assizes. I had read only a brief press report. He was susceptible to damsels in distress. I hoped his championing of this young woman was not a mere quixotic impulse.

He had turned his back to me and was staring into the grate, his hands upon the shelf of the mantelpiece. He gave a light kick at a burnt log in the fireplace, laid for a chilly evening the day before. Its carbonised crispness disintegrated under the impact. I guessed what was coming.

“I will tell you now,” I said quietly, “that you will not easily be granted a visitor's pass to a criminal lunatic asylum like Broadmoor. That is where reprieved murderers are held. Let alone will they permit a private interview with an inmate. At the first mention of ghosts and apparitions, they will probably detain you there as well.”

He turned with a smile, the first since Hereward Douglas began his tale.

“Dear Watson, you are right as always. Except in one detail. Before our young friend arrived, I thought it best to establish his lineage from the pages of
Burke's Peerage
. His father is the Earl of Crome. Therefore, should Hereward Douglas outlive his elder brothers and any sons they may have, he will succeed to that title.”

“He would rather captain the England cricket team against Australia!”

“I daresay.”

“Then how will the peerage help us with Miss Temple?”

“Among other accomplishments, the present Earl of Crome sits on a government committee known as the Prison Board. It is one of his many good works. Certain members are also deputed to attend the Board of Governors of Broadmoor Hospital. I should not be surprised if, by his influence, the hospital superintendent were to permit us to visit one of his patients. Despite my eccentric views, he may even allow me to leave again. You recall that Miss Temple was governess to the earl's own daughter for several months? Mr Douglas spent a summer in her company and has just confirmed that she made an excellent impression on the family.”

“You think that will be sufficient?”

“I am confident enough to suggest that you should consult your invaluable copy of Bradshaw's
Railway Guide
. For obvious reasons, the whereabouts of the asylum at Broadmoor is not advertised. It lies near the village of Crowthorne at a little distance from Wokingham. We shall require a morning train from Waterloo. An express, if possible. At Wokingham, we shall easily procure a carriage for the final stage of our journey.”

I had feared from the outset that his curiosity would get the better of him. Mr Douglas had won his point. We were to become ghost-hunters.

2

I
n the course of our partnership, the case of Victoria Temple was the first to bring Holmes and me to the criminal lunatic asylum of Broadmoor. Even as a medical man, I knew of the place only through legends of raving homicides, cut-throat zealots, baths of blood and giggling mania. Its sufferers were confined within fortress walls. They presumably spent most of their lives in strait-jackets or under other forms of restraint. After this sensational reputation, I was quite astonished by the reality.

Had I stopped to inquire, I should have discovered that the inmates of the infamous “Bedlam” asylum in South London had been transferred to an Italianate palace built on a slope of the downs. It rose among fields and hills some thirty miles southwest of London. The incline of a hill had been incorporated in the grounds so that the inmates looked over the outer walls across a landscape of pastureland, farm buildings and copses.

Holmes had been correct. The Earl of Crome, father of Hereward Douglas and former employer of Miss Temple, had secured our passes to the visiting room. I was a medical man retained on Miss Temple's behalf and Holmes was my professional colleague. Outside the main gate we left the brougham which had brought us from the railway and were escorted up a driveway lined with laurel and rhododendron. It might have been a nobleman's estate. We turned a corner and confronted a rather heavy Venetian campanile, colonnades, handsome galleries and elegant windows. Dr Annesley, the Superintendent, waited at the top of the broad steps.

This was no prison. The outer walls and gates were secure but within the building its inmates had the run of broad corridors, a dining-hall and separate day-rooms for men and women. In two well-lit, plainly-furnished lounges, patients might converse, read or pass their time in hobbies. Men who were for the most part elderly sat talking quietly in pairs at little tables. Others were reading, writing or reclining on side seats with their hands thrust into their pockets, staring into space. How strange that some of these veterans had committed the most pitiless and blood-chilling crimes of the age.

Just before we came to the end of the corridor, Annesley paused. We were beyond earshot of the rooms to either side.

“I will suggest one caution, Dr Watson, and I will give you one warning. Whatever Miss Temple refers to or introduces into the conversation you may discuss as freely with her as your professional good sense indicates. But I must ask you not to question her upon such topics as the so-called apparitions or anything that may be contentious, unless she alludes to it first. I believe you are here to determine whether there may have been a miscarriage of justice.”

“I shall do nothing to distress her,” I said. “It would be the worst thing in her own interests and our own. Perhaps you would tell me whether what you have just said is a request or a caution.”

This serious little man frowned as if I had made a joke in bad taste.

“My warning is this. Whatever you may think of her case, Miss Temple is a tragic and unstable young woman.”

“Because she saw ghosts?”

Annesley shook his head.

“Because her relationship with Miles Mordaunt was what a woman's with a ten-year-old boy should never be. She behaved so unwisely that the child boasted of his power over her.”

“In what way?”

“According to the housekeeper, they created a fiction that Miss Temple was just twenty-one years old. When Miles grew up they were to be married and he would be the master. Such was the difference in their social standing. Already, when the boy took her out in the little boat on the lake at Bly, he talked of ‘spooning' with her and ‘squiring' her. Goodness knows where the child got such words from!”

“There was no evidence of vicious conduct?” I asked.

“Evidence? No.”

“Harmless make-believe, I daresay,” said Holmes brusquely.

“So it might have been, Mr Holmes, had she not encouraged it. She played up to him and allowed the boy to treat her like a female subordinate. In consequence she lost all authority over him. Major Mordaunt was plainly unaware of this. Otherwise Miss Temple's tenure at Bly would have been brief indeed. I merely warn you, Dr Watson, that this is an area of inquiry best left alone. It would not serve you.”

“I am obliged to you for that.”

We faced the closed door of the visiting-room. Its interior was again plainly furnished, a polished table with a small hand-bell upon it, several leather chairs, a tiled fireplace and prints of landscape views. As we entered, a young woman rose from one of the arm-chairs to greet us.

“Miss Victoria Temple,” said Dr Annesley, by way of introduction, “Dr John Watson and Mr Sherlock Holmes.”

I had formed a picture of Victoria Temple, looking much younger and more dainty. No doubt a child's death and a criminal trial, even the threat of execution on the gallows, had added to her years in reality. She was tall but a little stooped, brown hair in a bun, her complexion worn rather than lined. She seemed a plain country girl. Genteel poverty had left her to perform tasks which fortunate daughters might delegate to servants. There was something unsteady about her, combined with a look of latent physical strength. Her profile, with the broad points of her cheek-bones, was calm but resolute. In the last resort she would outmatch a boy of ten. As for crime, she looked capable of anything—or nothing.

“I shall leave you together,” said Annesley with a pleasant smile. “Perhaps you will take tea before you leave. Meantime, if there is anything you require, you have only to ask.”

I took this to mean that if Miss Temple became distressed or “difficult,” we should remember the little bell on the table. Annesley withdrew, pulling the door but not quite closing it. The young woman sat down.

“It is good of you to come,” she said in the most quiet and reassuring voice I had ever heard. “I am not sure what I can do for you, but whatever it may be, I will try.”

I took the seat opposite her at the table, with Holmes to one side.

“I am here as a medical man, Miss Temple. My colleague, Mr Sherlock Holmes, is a criminal investigator. Our sole purpose is to ensure that justice shall be done you.”

She looked down at the table, then up again.

“I cannot complain of injustice. I have been kindly treated. As for my medical condition, perhaps you hope that I shall deny my visions. I fear I am a little like Joan of Arc and her voices. I cannot deny what I have seen. It would be so much simpler if I could, would it not?”

I shook my head.

“No, Miss Temple. Only the truth will serve us and you must not depart from that, however convenient it might be.”

“But you think me mad? You must, surely?”

Holmes intervened.

“No, madam. If that were so, we should not be here.”

Victoria Temple looked at us, her eyes brighter.

“I am better now, whatever I may have been last year. I was ill, distressed, perhaps mad—I do not know. I am still distressed, beyond anything you can imagine. But I am sane. How can I prove I am not mad? They say you cannot prove the contrary, do they not?”

“Then we must prove you to be a rational young woman,” said Holmes firmly.

Miss Temple looked at him as if he had perplexed her and she could not think of a reply. At length she said, “They are very kind, Mr Holmes. Ever since that dreadful day at Bly everyone has been good to me—none more so than Major Mordaunt. He still has that title, though since he left the Army he is Dr Mordaunt. He always gave me complete freedom to care for the children. I was to be the mistress of Bly Hall. He felt no inclination for the place, though I believe he lived there with them for a short while after his brother's death. He would never neglect his duties to them. He never forgot them, though he paid others to attend to them. I owe my life to him.”

“Very commendable,” I said gently.

“When my ordeal came on, Major Mordaunt was living in France. Yet it was he who supported me from there during my trial. I could not believe I had committed murder, though that was what they called it. I knew I never meant harm—but who would believe me? The evidence was all one way, unless I could tell my story well enough in the witness-box. But my recollection was imperfect. I could never have withstood cross-examination by a clever lawyer. What jury would believe my account of the apparitions? Left to myself, I should have been convicted and hanged.”

“But thankfully that did not happen,” said Holmes reassuringly.

“No, Mr Holmes, it did not, thanks to James Mordaunt. He found a Queen's Counsel for my defence, Mr Ballantine. And Mr Ballantine was on terms with the Treasury Solicitor. There were discussions and I was seen by several physicians—specialists of Mr Ballantine's acquaintance. I do not know how these things are done but it was arranged that the same gentlemen should give their evidence to the court.”