Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly (21 page)

“A delicate and under-developed child of ten was seized by a healthy and well-built woman in her twenties, certainly capable of overpowering him and depriving him of air.”

He shook his head.

“There is no evidence of that whatever except in her journal, which Miss Temple completed in the short period before her arrest and with her mental balance in question. She is no diagnostician and would not know the first thing about a diphtheritic deposit. She convinced herself that she must have smothered the child and worked backwards from there! It was diphtheria which killed him!”

“You think so?”

“She came round from her hysterical
absence
, as the French call it. The live child she had been hugging before was now dead in her arms. Therefore she concluded that she must have caused his death. Oh, she believed it, I am quite sure. Having passed judgement on herself, she then did her best to get herself hanged, as if seeking expiation. Her journal and her statements are totally uncorroborated. To say the least, she wrote the final pages in a state of extreme mental confusion. She sincerely believed that the boy's soul had been carried off by Peter Quint as an agent of the devil. It was her fault, for which she sought punishment. Such a confession should never have been allowed in evidence! Miles Mordaunt was in all probability dead from a blow to the heart by the dislodgement of diphtheritic deposits before she took him in that last embrace.”

“Impossible to prove!”

He handed me Stresemann's book.

“Impossible to disprove, rather. Ironically, the post-mortem evidence does not incriminate Victoria Temple. If she had never kept that journal, she might not even have been a suspect. If you do not object, however, we will keep this to ourselves for the moment.”

“While Miss Temple remains in Broadmoor?”

“For the shortest possible time. As the great military strategist Clausewitz remarked, a wise commander fights the right battle, at the right time, and in the right place. That moment is approaching but it has not quite arrived. There is still murder at the heart of this case but it is not the murder of Miles Mordaunt and certainly not of his little sister.”

“Who else can it be?”

He was not yet to be drawn. For much of that day he sat in an easy chair smoking his pipe, or droning on his violin, or lounging with a handful of Boxer cartridges and his hair-trigger revolver, elaborating with bullet pocks our patriotic
VR
—for
Victoria Regina
—on the opposite wall. Life, it seemed, was returning to normal.

It was almost dusk. Streaks of late sunlight across the carpet were deepening to a tawny orange. There came an erratic hammering at the front door, followed by a scampering on the stairs. His Baker Street Irregulars had returned. He took half a dozen sheets of paper from them and studied the contents. Then he threw back his head and began to chuckle. The chuckle grew to laughter, as if at the most preposterous tale he had ever read.

He was still laughing as the six young scamps, each clutching a half-sovereign, scrambled back down the stairs and disappeared, shouting, into the street.

7

I
f Holmes was right—there was an end of our case, ghosts and all! How absurd it was for him to continue talking about murder! Who the devil had been murdered, if it not little Miles Mordaunt? And who could have committed murder upon the child if not Victoria Temple? I suggested facetiously to my friend that perhaps he believed the apparitions had murdered one another. He looked at me seriously and with a nod of approval.

“As to that, Watson, you may be closer to the mark than you realise.”

The next day—and the day after that—I saw nothing of him between breakfast and dinner. This was not unusual when he had a case in progress. From time to time during our investigations there would be days of absence without explanation. Despite my impatience, I confess that they had sometimes brought about the sudden and triumphant conclusion of an inquiry.

After dinner, he showed no appetite for conversation. When the meal was over, he rang for the housemaid to clear the plates and dishes. To avoid interruption, he transferred himself to a plain wooden chair at his disreputable work-table with its stained surface, bottles of malodorous preparations and untidy piles of paper. Now he began to read, not with laconic amusement, as he read the newspapers, lounging by the fire. He devoured books and articles so quickly that one could hardly believe he had read them at all. His lean angular features were drawn in a grimace of concentration. From time to time, he made a pencil note in the margin of a volume or on his starched white shirt-cuff.

I made a pantomime of yawning, looking at the clock—and so to bed. As I passed, I noticed the titles of the books at his elbow. One was a treasure in any collection, Reginald Scot's
Discoverie of Witchcraft.
Published in 1584, it was still in its primitive sheepskin binding. Stamped in gold on polished calf, was the
Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae.
It had been given to the world in 1645 by a scholar of the occult and the arcane, Father Athanasius Kircher. Even that formidable Jesuit could have known little more than Sherlock Holmes by now about the art of light and shade.

I waited for him to resume idling about the house, playing the fiddle, and reading in a desultory fashion. Despite his promise of an early solution to the mystery, a week passed. Then it seemed his work was over. He breakfasted late and went nowhere. At four o'clock that afternoon, he put down his teacup and spoke from behind the evening paper.

“If you have nothing better to do this evening, Watson, you may care to be my guest.”

There was an irony in his tone that made me uneasy.

“You have not joined a club? You of all people!”

“Certainly not. I am not inviting you to dinner, my dear fellow. I have already alerted Mrs Hudson to feed us by seven o'clock.” He folded his copy of the
Globe
and pushed aside the tea-plate from which he had been eating richly buttered toast. “Our destination is not a club. I might call it an intimate theatre or perhaps a learned society, which it is hoped you will join. That is the pretext for your attendance.”

“What society?”

He stood up and filled his pipe with tobacco from the Persian slipper.

“You will recall the murder at the Yokohama Club two years ago and our efforts to save Mrs Edith Carew from the gallows? That case persuaded me to keep abreast of matters which apparently defy scientific explanation. I associated myself some time ago with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Light.”
*

“A bunch of crack-pots!”

He shrugged.

“I have attended several meetings, at the first of which I was initiated. In consequence, my membership gives me the entrée, as a distinguished guest, to almost any séance in London, genteel or fraudulent.”

So that was it!

“This is still about those confounded apparitions, is it not?”

He occupied himself with a lighted match, drawing smoke from his pipe. Shaking out the flame, he looked across at me thoughtfully and said,

“We are to be in Kensington by eight-thirty this evening. If all goes as I intend, I shall present an apparition that will put to shame Peter Quint and Maria Jessel. By the way, old fellow, in these arcane circles I am known only as Professor Scott Holmes.”

“A séance in Kensington, to which you will be going under a false name and title?”

It was one of the rare occasions when I saw him wince. He said, “It is commonplace for members of such societies to adopt a
nom de plume
. I employ two of the names conferred on me at the baptismal font. I am, after all, William Sherlock Scott Holmes. I may surely decide which I shall use? I already have some reputation in the occult world, uncompromised by my career in criminal investigation. To go as Sherlock Holmes would cloud the issue and startle my hosts.”

“Ghosts!”

“Oh, let us call them spirits. It sounds so much more polite.”

“If they did not manifest themselves to us at Bly, you may be sure they will not condescend to appear in West London!”

“There I think you may be mistaken.”

“So you expect to raise Peter Quint or Miss Jessel from the dead?”

“My sights are set higher—on an Egyptian courtier of the Eighteenth Dynasty.”

This was far beyond a joke. I scented real danger and made one more effort. I spoke quietly and, as it seemed to me, sensibly.

“Holmes, we have done our duty to Miss Temple. A favourable outcome to her case is in sight. Do you not see that if we are now known to dabble in nonsense of this kind, we shall make complete fools of ourselves? We have nothing to gain from it and everything to lose. If the story gets around, as it is bound to, we shall be lucky if we have a single client left.”

There was a disconcerting merriment in his dark eyes.

“You must not come, old chap, if it will embarrass you. I have undertaken to conduct a most important experiment and I am obliged to be there. It is only my second visit to this suburban villa and its clientele. I had not been there at all until I called to make myself known and to offer my services last week. Happily, my fame as Scott Holmes went before me. So I made a promise. Now I have a reputation to preserve—or lose.”

Before I could reply, he walked from the room and closed the door gently behind him. I heard him stride up the next pair of stairs. There were sounds of banging about in the attic. He was up there for more than an hour, before coming down with a brown leather hatbox and a large basket, better employed for a riverside picnic. He was formally suited, as if he might be attending a recital or an opera.

Without a glance in my direction, he took a flimsy telegram form across to the bureau and began to write. I could not read the words of the message from where I sat. When it lay folded on the table, I was able to glimpse a name on the envelope, “Inspector Tobias Gregson” and the address “Criminal Investigation Division, Scotland Yard.” He had once assured me that Gregson was the smartest member of the Yard's detective force. This, at least, gave me some reassurance.

He rang for Mrs Hudson's Billy, gave the lad a coin and despatched him with the electric message to the post office at Baker Street Underground station. Sitting down, he yawned, opened the evening
Globe
once more, and appeared to give no more thought to his plans for that evening. All attempts to entice him into conversation failed.

As a medical man I was trained in scientific habits of thought. I had always regarded spiritualist mediums as dupes or swindlers. Their séances were surely meetings of deluded believers preyed upon by avaricious charlatans. I had good reason to abhor the heartless exploitation of grief by wraiths of ectoplasm or greetings from the after-life. The reader must remember that I had lost my own young wife seven years earlier. Hints from well-meaning friends had nudged me towards the possibility of communication with the dead. The closer I came to the magicians, the more strongly was I repelled.

As I gazed towards the park trees at the end of our street, I had no doubt that Sherlock Holmes had produced a diagnosis of diphtheria which must soon establish the innocence of Victoria Temple. Having won his case, why should he care about the poor young woman's hysterical visions?

Just before eight o'clock, Mrs Hudson's long-suffering Billy was sent to call our chosen cab off the rank. In the thickening summer twilight, we pulled out along the Marylebone Road towards Sussex Gardens and Hyde Park. A last golden glow darkened along the cream terraces of the Bayswater Road. Lamps were lit in the little shops of Kensington Church Street.

Our destination was Sambourne Avenue, a secluded street of double-fronted villas, built ten years earlier in mellow red brick with white-painted gables. They rose three storeys above the broad tree-lined thoroughfare, each with a spacious area and basement below. These were substantial homes with bay windows and conservatories. By contrast, they made our old-fashioned quarters in Baker Street appear cramped and gloomy. Yet I felt no envy. Suburban houses of this type too often attract rackety people with more money than sense.

Our brown-whiskered cabman, whom I now noticed for the first time, unloaded the leather hatbox and picnic hamper. I know most of the drivers on the Regent's Park rank, but this one was unfamiliar. Perhaps he was not a regular, just a supernumerary who must work when he could. It seemed he was obliged to take his child with him on the cabbie's perch, as if having no one else to look after her. In response to his knock, the hatbox and hamper were taken in by a manservant at the door of the basement kitchen. Holmes turned to our postillion.

“You will wait, my man. I may be some time. You shall be well remunerated on my return. If it should be a long visit, I shall ask them to give you and your little girl something in the kitchen.”

The wiry, gnome-like fellow began to grumble.

“I don't know so much, guv. I brought you here fair and square. I can't spend all evening sitting about with no chance of another fare.”

“Very well,” said Holmes impatiently. “Take this and get refreshment for yourself and the child at the coffee stall off Kensington High Street. No beer—no gin! And be back here no later than an hour from now.”

He handed the man a shilling. We left this Jehu muttering to himself that “proper toffs” would have treated him more handsomely.

The whole of this pantomime was witnessed by a maid in a plain cap and apron. She had come to the front door in response to Holmes's ring at the bell. We went up the glossily-blacked steps and were admitted.

To begin with, I thought we had come on the wrong evening. There was not a sound to be heard, even though it was half-past eight. The maid led us down the hallway to a baize-covered door. There was far more depth to this house than I had supposed, covering a larger area than appeared from the street.

We crossed a dark-curtained and over-furnished reception room. Its olive-green walls were hung with oil-painted figure-studies of women, done in a questionable taste. So much for spirit portraits! A black-leaded fire-place was lined by hand-painted Dutch tiles of a similar nature. Above the mantelboard with its green leather and brass-headed nails, the wall was fitted with shelves displaying curious little terra cotta figurines and Chinese jars. On the mantelshelf below, an ornate gold-and-enamel Buhl clock backed by a mirror ticked time away with a soft uneasy beat.