Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly (15 page)

“I felt sure, even before I described her to Mrs Grose. I suppose I sound mad to you, do I not? But what was more important, I knew that I was merely a witness. She had not come for me. Like Quint, she had come for the children. Mrs Grose had only told me that Miss Jessel had been as infamous in her lifetime as Quint. In the end, she had gone on a long holiday and had died at her father's home. That was told to Mrs Grose by Major Mordaunt in confidence, for fear her death should upset the other servants.”

“And then Miles was sent back from school?”

She nodded.

“We had a season of great happiness, Miles, Flora and I. Music and costumes, theatricals and games. I loved them both, Mr Holmes, because it was so easy to love them. Yet this changed quite suddenly. There were now moments when the children cuddled together and talked of some secret, smiling at me as if to tell me that it was to be kept from me. To be kept from all of us! I swear that was the truth. I knew then that Flora had also seen the figure of Miss Jessel across the lake, just as Miles had seen Quint. The girl had said nothing of it to me—only to Miles. If Flora had been alone, I fear she would have gone without protest, through the veil of death. Thank God I was there.”

“Tell me,” I asked, “did you ever see these figures indoors?”

“I believe so, though Bly is a dark house with too few windows. A little while later, just as November twilight was vanishing into dark, I crossed the upper gallery of the staircase and saw a man on the half-landing below. If I went down he would have gone before I got there. There were two men on the estate at the time, the gardener and the groom. It was neither of them. I knew that it must be Quint. He stared up at me, as he had stared down from the tower, though I could not tell his face this time. Then my candle went out and there was only a glimmer of cold twilight in the glass above me and a gleam on a polished stair below. By the time I lit the candle again, the figure had gone.”

“And Miss Jessel?”

“Several weeks later, from the top landing in the dark, I made out the figure of a woman sitting on a bottom stair with her head in her hands. She seemed to be weeping, like Hecuba in vengeful mourning. The image vanished in a moment. I could not see her face but I know it was she.”

“Did you ever see her at close range?” I asked.

“Yes.” Miss Temple turned slightly and stared through the window at the roses in the hospital garden. “Feeling a little unwell, I came back early from church on a Sunday morning at the end of November. It was ten minutes or so before the end of the service. The figure of Miss Jessel was standing by my own desk at the far end of the schoolroom, on the upper floor. It was daylight, clear noonday light. She was once more the tragic heroine. For a second, she seemed unaware of me, as though we were in different worlds. This time I was not afraid, Dr Watson. I faced her, filled with anger, and shouted, ‘You terrible, miserable woman!' She remained quite still, as if uncertain whether she had heard anything. And then she vanished.”

“How did she vanish?” I asked.

The young woman sighed, as if at the impossibility of being believed.

“She was simply no longer there, Dr Watson. How shall I describe it? The brilliant sunlight of that morning came in a beam through the window. It shone directly into my eyes, as if the clouds had suddenly cleared. For an instant I could see nothing but dazzle, like a bad migraine but with no headache. Then the air was black for a moment, as in a faint. Afterwards I could see only dust floating in an empty sunbeam where the woman had been before. I had suffered faintness and mottled dark—a shimmering mottled dark. I stepped out of this and my eyes emptied of her.”

“And you had been feeling unwell in church?”

She shrugged and nodded.

“Perhaps I fainted away for a few seconds, but I did not fall. There was a moment like that after I first saw Quint upon the tower. As if some lapse of consciousness for a few seconds had left me standing where I was. Who knows? Cannot a shock wipe out consciousness? That morning, when I came to myself, I was clutching the schoolroom table for support. The last terrible day with Miles was something of the kind.”

“Shock may explain it,” I said.

“But it will not explain her,” she said fiercely, “for that was Miss Jessel in the schoolroom, if Miss Jessel ever was!”

I continued to study Miss Temple. Was she one of those hysterics who expend all their energy in an emotional crisis and then faint into unawareness? “I knew no more,” she had said of Quint's disappearance from the tower. Miss Jessel in the schoolroom dissolved into sunlight and dust. A few weeks later, at the moment of her revival in the dining-room, the weight in her arms was the body of the dead boy, of whose precise moment of death she seemed unaware. My friend's voice roused me from these thoughts.

“Tell me, Miss Temple,” he was saying gently, “Why were you so sure that the children saw the apparitions? They were not together on any one occasion, were they?”

She was eager to answer.

“They were not, Mr Holmes. Miles saw only Quint—or so I believe. I saw the child standing on the grass in the early dark, looking up at the garden tower as I had done when I saw that man. From where I stood indoors, of course I could see no one. But that child saw someone if ever a child did. I swear it. His little face told a story, betrayed a secret, call it what you will.”

“And Flora?” I prompted her.

“Flora saw only Miss Jessel. Yet I swear brother and sister were accomplices, each sharing a secret with the other. Had you seen them together, you would not doubt it. I knew! I was closer to them than their parents had been, than their guardian could be. Ask Mrs Grose! She was there the second time that Miss Jessel appeared across the lake. She was certain that Flora had seen, as I had seen—for she herself felt the presence of that horrible being!”

“Oblige me by describing that second afternoon at the lake,” said Holmes patiently. His voice was quiet, but we were now coming to a crisis. Miss Temple looked about her, as though she might be overheard by an invisible presence in that plain hospital room. Then she faced us.

“That was a damp and grey afternoon about an hour before early dusk. I could hear Miles practising in the schoolroom, playing the piano. The Beethoven Minuet in G was one of his accomplishments. Mrs Grose came to me because she was sure Flora had gone out without her hat. Why I cannot tell you—but I could scarcely breathe for fear. I knew the child had gone to that dead woman and that something fearful might have happened already. Mrs Grose and I ran out—down the avenue of the herbaceous borders to the bank of the lake. There was no sign of Flora, but I had a dreadful picture in my mind of the child's face floating under the water by the lily pads.

“The mooring was empty, the little rowing-boat had gone. Flora might have taken it, but there was no sign of her. We walked quickly round past the rhododendrons, where they trail in the water. We saw the boat, moored to a stake. It had gone by the time we returned. I breathed again as I saw the child standing a short way off. She was looking across the water, not at us but at the far bank. I walked up to her and asked directly, “'Where, my pet, is Miss Jessel?'

“She gave me a smitten glare. I followed her eyes across the water. On the opposite bank—more than a hundred feet away with the wild trees behind her—was a wraith in shabby black, rigidly still, a terrible sardonic face. Her eyes were on Flora.

“‘She's there!' I cried out to Mrs Grose. ‘She's there!' I felt a thrill of joy at producing the proof of it. Surely the housekeeper could see! How could she not? I was not mad, after all! But Mrs Grose was so frightened by my cry that she stared at me, rather than across the lake. I raised my arm, but when she turned to follow the line of my finger it was too late, the vision had faded. From my behaviour, Mrs Grose never doubted that I had seen something. Flora turned upon me and cried out that she saw nothing.

“‘I never have! I think you're cruel,' she sobbed. She hugged Mrs Grose's skirts and pleaded, ‘Take me away from her.' And that good woman calmed her in the only way she could, saying, ‘Nobody's there—when poor Miss Jessel's dead and buried.' What else could she say to a distressed child? It would have been more than her employment was worth! When I pointed again, the figure that beckoned the child across the water had already dissolved in air. My last chance to save Flora had been lost.”

There was silence between us in the visiting-room. Holmes changed direction, as if to prevent Miss Temple brooding too long.

“How did Miles take his dismissal from school?”

Miss Temple looked surprised.

“He wanted to go back, if not to King Alfred's then to some other school. That was natural enough. He talked as if I were the child and Flora what he called a ‘baby.' He would insist, ‘I want to see more life. I want to be with my own sort.' Because he knew I thought him so pure and beautiful, he added, ‘Think me for a change bad.' He spoke for all the world as if he were the man and I the child. ‘Look here, my dear,' he said, ‘when in the world am I going back to school?'”

I could see, like a torpedo through the water, the question that Holmes was about to launch and which must not be asked now. It was a demand to hear of the last terrible moments with Miles. I judged that Victoria Temple's nerves were exhausted. If I did not bring the interview to a halt, she most certainly would. There might be such an outburst as would make any further visit impossible.

So I cut short my friend's inquiry.

“You have done enough, Miss Temple. More than enough in agreeing to discuss these difficult matters so bravely with us. Please believe that we shall do all we can to help you. If we return, it will only be to clarify points of detail. Thanks to you, the great part of the work is done.”

From the look that Holmes gave me, he thought our work was anything but done. Yet I knew as a medical man that this inquisition had gone as far as was prudent. Perhaps we should one day discuss with Miss Temple the last moments of Miles Mordaunt. If not, then we must shift for ourselves.

We left our client and pleaded the mandate of Bradshaw's railway time table to avoid a tea-table conversation with Dr Annesley.

As our country carriage rattled back to Wokingham over the uneven surface of the lanes, I said, “Hysteria may explain her loss of awareness on three occasions. Quint disappearing from the tower. Miss Jessel vanishing in the schoolroom. The governess coming to her senses with Miles dead in her arms. It is not always required that an hysterical personality should fall into an outright swoon. And then there is a recovery, a return of the senses.”

My friend frowned across the passing hedgerows to the Surrey hills as he spoke.

“‘Some unseen mysterious principle again sets in motion the magic pinions and the wizard wheels. The silver cord was not for ever loosed, nor the golden bowl irreparably broken. But where, meantime, was the soul?'”

“Edgar Allan Poe,” I said, recognising the quotation. “I am there before you, Holmes!”

“If we rule out apparitions, what are we left with except the fragile psychic mechanism of Miss Victoria Temple?”

He drew from the pocket of his travelling cloak a silver flask, a present from a grateful royal personage in a case of alleged cheating at baccarat. We shared a tot of cognac in place of the tea we had abandoned. My friend watched a carter's wagon edging past us in the other direction. Then he resumed.

“We are left with the detection of a crime. Let us return to the practical question. Why should anyone—living or dead—desire the death of this ten-year-old schoolboy? Why should an apparition bother to entice him to the eternal exile of the damned?
Cui bono
, as the lawyers' dog Latin has it—who would benefit? There, if anywhere, lies the answer.”

He tapped his walking-stick thoughtfully against his boot and continued in one of his characteristic monologues.

“Did you not observe, Watson, the most curious omission in this afternoon's interview?”

“I was not aware of any omission.”

“Were you not? Really? When Miss Temple arrived at Bly, Miles Mordaunt was not yet there. He was dismissed from King Alfred's some weeks later. His offence was so injurious to the other children that Dr Clarke could not permit him to remain. What offence was so terrible in a child of ten that all his future hopes and prospects must be destroyed in this manner? And why was it left under a veil of mystery? Did not Miss Temple know what it was? A child cannot be expelled from school without a reason! James Mordaunt was evidently in France, and she was the only responsible person available to receive notification. Yet she said nothing of it.”

“Why did you not ask her?”

“The fact that Miss Temple chose not to reveal it is far more important to our case than the exact peccadillo of Miles Mordaunt.”

He was right, of course. I was left to my own meditations.

“Miss Temple found him beautiful in soul and body,” I said presently, thinking aloud, “Except for his refusal to admit seeing the apparitions, which seems to me evidence of his common sense.”

He ignored this and returned to his strong practical objections.

“It is time to put the apparitions on one side, Watson. We must not forget that in the first place we are dealing with a recorded crime of homicide. We shall overturn the verdict against Miss Temple only by following the evidence. It is plain to me that our next step must be to establish the cause—and equally important, the circumstances—of Miles Mordaunt's dismissal from school.”

I laughed at this.

“An old-fashioned headmaster of King Alfred's like Austen Clarke will not discuss scandal with us! You may be sure of that.”

“Happily, I think we may dispense with Dr Clarke's assistance. King Alfred's is situated at Blackdown, within the Douglas family's area of influence. The current edition of
Who's Who
? informs me that it has educated two cousins of Hereward Douglas, Galahad and Lancelot. I believe our client can procure an introduction to a master able to throw light on the boy's disgrace. Your invaluable Bradshaw will suggest a convenient train. This time we shall require the Great Western line to Taunton—and the dining car.”