Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly (32 page)

Maria Jessel was probably saved by the manner in which Holmes gave evidence. He endured cross-examination by a legal bumpkin, Mr Mossop. This fellow had been hired by the Quint family to keep a watching brief, in case something might now be got by way of damages from the Mordaunt estate for the death of their relative. Mossop evidently believed that the implication of Maria Jessel—even if only as an accessory to crime—might open the way to a financial settlement of some kind with the Mordaunt estate.

It was a poor case, but it also put her in danger of criminal prosecution. As Holmes remarked beforehand, a conviction of Miss Jessel as accessory required a principal crime of murder to be proved, which seemed impossible with Mordaunt dead. However, if Mr Mossop hoped to succeed in getting his clients bought off, an indictment of some kind against Maria Jessel would open the way.

Mossop's cross-examination of Sherlock Holmes was the keystone of this attempt. The process evoked an image of a short, stout gunboat popping its cannon at a well-armoured and deftly-manoeuvred battle-cruiser.

“Mr Holmes, as a criminal investigator, you will concede that facts pointing to the role of James Mordaunt in the death of Quint point also to Maria Jessel as an accomplice? In the light of present evidence, a verdict of accidental death upon Peter Quint can hardly be sustained.”

Dr Allestree stirred himself to intervene. Before he could do so, Holmes fixed his eyes six inches above the top of Mossop's large head and asked, “You do not mean that question literally, do you, Mr Mossop?”

Dr Allestree sat back expectantly. An uneasy look came over Mossop's reddening features, the face of one who senses some irretrievable error but cannot yet identify it. A large pit had opened and his adversary was nudging him gently towards it. Allestree intervened, as if to save him for Holmes to deal with.

“I think, Mr Holmes, we must do Mr Mossop the courtesy of assuming that he means what he says.”

Holmes, in formal morning dress and white tie, made a short bow to the coroner. As the jury looked on, it was greatly to Mossop's disadvantage that he had thought a Norfolk tweed jacket would be good enough for a country court. He looked as if he might have been sent to Bly to carry the luggage for Sherlock Holmes. My friend was careful to look into the jurors' eyes as he spoke, cutting out his adversary altogether.

“Were I fortunate enough to be retained on Miss Jessel's behalf, I should undertake her case with complete confidence in the young lady's innocence.”

That tripped Mossop very neatly. The jurors, who seldom took their eyes off the famous detective, heard that the great Sherlock Holmes believed in the young woman. After that, my friend could have said anything. What followed was conclusive.

“To see Miss Jessel is to know that she has nothing like the strength required to strike that terrible blow to Quint's head, let alone to carry the body of a full-grown man half a mile over icy paths to the river bridge. If she did neither of those things, what part did she play in this crime—whose very occurrence remains unproven?”

“Major Mordaunt—”

“Quite so. Major Mordaunt was a well-built veteran of active service. He had escaped suspicion as accomplice to robbery and murder at the Five Stones. Quint was the only man who might still betray him. He and he alone had cause to wish that man dead. Major Mordaunt, now being dead himself, cannot be prosecuted. I have such faith in British justice that I do not believe any case against Miss Jessel would get past a local magistrate's court, let alone a red judge at the Old Bailey.”

“Thank you, Mr Holmes,” said Dr Allestree, but my friend bowed again.

“It would be impertinent in me, sir, to suggest that this court should not take Mr Mossop's question seriously. I, however, cannot.”

There was absolute silence among the jurors, and for a dreadful moment I thought they might applaud him. Mr Mossop sat down. In a few sentences, Sherlock Holmes had backed him into a corner and tied him into knots. The greatest criminal investigator of the age had announced to the world the innocence of the young woman whose liberty was at stake.

Dr Allestree rubbed salt into Mr Mossop's wounds by reminding us that the sole issue was the death of James Mordaunt and the conduct of Alfred Swain, who had undoubtedly precipitated it. I hoped for “misadventure” or even “justifiable homicide.” Guided by the coroner and puzzled by the medical evidence, the jurors returned an open verdict.

I stood up and turned round. At the back of the court were two figures, sitting decorously apart. Maria Jessel wore a black veil of mourning. I could not imagine what had brought her to Bly. Despite Inspector Gregson's memorandum, the Treasury Solicitor recommended no action against her. Peter Quint had died in the County of Essex, and Alfred Swain had argued against a prosecution. As for the boat, how a bung came loose was a matter of pure conjecture, and no evidence could be found to connect her with this. The one item that now appeared to prove her innocence beyond question was a message from her on the night of Mordaunt's death loyally warning her lover of the danger he was in.

The second figure behind me wore no veil. It is always within the Home Secretary's discretion to release a prisoner from Broadmoor—and that discretion had been exercised several days before. Proceedings to set aside the verdict of “not guilty by reason of insanity” on Victoria Temple were more complex and might be argued delicately throughout the summer term by the Lords Justices of Appeal. There was no doubt of the outcome.

Holmes and I congratulated our client. We listened encouragingly to her plans for buying a small house on the Devonshire coast, near Lynmouth, and joining a friend who ran a little school there. We congratulated Alfred Swain, whose integrity and marksmanship had carried the day.

Holmes was in demand for a further half-hour. He congratulated Superintendent Truscott on resisting a prosecution of Maria Jessel. In truth, Truscott had been all for it but was outmanoeuvred by Swain. Holmes, in his most affable manner, also suggested that reputations would suffer if the debacle of Victoria Temple's case were to be followed by another. He intimated that Edward Marshall Hall and Rufus Isaacs had already offered their services to the young woman without fee. Isaacs was a demon in cross-examination with no great respect for the constabulary. Miss Jessel was troubled no further.

I took a final circuit of the lake. Summer warmed the immaculate lawns, the cedar canopies and alleys running to the water. The lake was full, its yellow pads of lilies stretching to rhododendrons in purple view. The sounds and the sense of habitation died away. I stared again across the Middle Deep to the shore where Miss Temple had seen Miss Jessel.

It was perhaps fifteen minutes' walk back to the house. As on that previous occasion, there was an unaccountable stillness. As I listened, I heard not a sound of a bird—nor a sheep. I had surely been walking back for much longer than fifteen minutes. It was almost a relief, as I passed opposite the clearing of the apparitions, to hear the call of a bird and see the lake move. That call came again, but not quite at the same pitch or of the same duration. Of course it was an animal, not a bird.

It seemed best to step out and be going, but that curious call rang again. It was surely a cat's cry. But it could not be. No cats could get to the island. How would they live there? It was damned nonsense—but it was a cat if it was anything. Then I thought of the mewling of the children as they stalked Victoria Temple. Damned nonsense, to be sure. If there were no cats on the island there were certainly no children! But in the warm summer gardens the air was cold. That was the breeze on the lake, no doubt.

A cat's wail may be long and even undulating, but it does not break, as this one did, into a sob. This was distant, treble, plaintive, the hiccupping rhythm of a human motor that will not start. Very well, then there must be a children's picnic on the island. It was entirely probable on a summer day and a preferable explanation to any other.

There was no boat, but even so … The sobbing rose louder and fell again. It broke as infant tears, then into a laugh. It was someone playing a joke! Who? And how? Another laugh, chuckling, derisive. In that case, reason required that children were playing a trick as Miles and Flora had played one with Miss Temple. That was all. But Miles and Flora had been alive—and now they were certainly dead.

All I had to do was to walk steadily along the remainder of the lakeside path. There was nothing to impede me, and every step brought me closer to the company of Holmes and the others. But to welcome safety in this way was to give in to the thing again. As I walked, the sobbing or chuckling, which had fallen behind, now seemed to keep pace. I hope I am no coward in such matters. Twice I swung round—and saw only motionless water-lilies and the high white clouds still as a stage-set against the blue summer sky.

The lawn was in front of me now and the gate to the courtyard. The Tudor garden tower with its ruined staircase rose warm and still at my side. This was where the whole thing had started and it proved to be no more than an easy cheat by James Mordaunt. No apparition could linger here now. I paused and listened. The calls and cries, whatever they were, had gone. How could they be more than country children sounding closer than they were—the effect of the wind carrying sound through branches and over quiet water? But now there was no wind, it was still again. The birds and the sheep were silent once more, for all the world as if they were listening to the silence.

I was level with the brick tower and I kept a dignified pace as I passed towards the courtyard gate. I was not to be hurried. I could look where I liked and hold my own. But I did not feel the need to look up at those battlements. Whether it was because I disdained to do so or because I preferred not to, I must leave to the reader to judge.

3

Sherlock Holmes

the Actor

A FRAGMENT OF BIOGRAPHY

A
number of my readers will be familiar with the fragments of biography which I have recalled in illustrating the cases of my friend Mr Sherlock Holmes. As we enter the world of the London theatre—“gaslight and greasepaint,” as he used to call it—I must say something of his youthful stage career. It was very brief, beginning in 1879 and ending in the early spring of 1881, shortly before we first met.

I only once saw the tall, spare figure of Sherlock Holmes upon a stage. The audience had left the auditorium of the Royal Herculaneum more than an hour before. The curtains had been drawn open again to reveal the set. The lights had gone up and, by the battlements of Prince Hamlet's Elsinore, stood Holmes, tall, hawk-like and angular. In the white tie and tails of his evening clothes, he was in conversation with the stage manager, Mr Roland Gwyn. Beyond earshot were two stage-hands, one or two actors with minor parts, and two officers from the Metropolitan Police. Inspector Hopkins of Scotland Yard was in plain clothes. Superintendent Bradstreet of the nearby Bow Street police station wore the frogged jacket of the uniformed branch. A few yards away, one of the greatest actors in England—in the world, indeed—lay dead in his dressing-room.

Let us leave that great tragedian lying there a moment longer, while I explain our involvement in what I have called “The Case of the Matinee Idol.”

If ever a man was a born actor, it was Sherlock Holmes. Early in our friendship, he employed masterly disguises as a cabman and as an elderly nonconformist clergyman, in our case of “A Scandal in Bohemia.” I remarked to him at the time that the stage had lost a great actor when he turned his back upon it in order to become a specialist in crime. To my surprise, he took the comment seriously and at once began to compare himself favourably with the great performers of the day. Holmes never suffered from false modesty. He thought he would have encountered little competition on the London stage—except perhaps from Irving and possibly from Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. But that was all.

This will sound absurdly boastful to those who know little of his life before our meeting in 1881. Indeed, few of his clients or acquaintances at Scotland Yard, let alone his enemies, ever had any idea that he once lived and worked in the company of such theatrical giants as Sir Henry Caradoc Price or popular character actors like “Captain” Carnaby Jenks. On half-a-dozen occasions, as an understudy, he even played opposite the great Sir Henry Irving himself.

My companion's longest theatrical acquaintance was with “Caradoc,” as the mercurial Welshman was universally known. By 1890, Caradoc Price's Royal Herculaneum Theatre in the Strand was a by-word for the boldest and the best. In his own estimation, at least, this flamboyant actor-manager was the greatest Shakespearean of his day.

A few weeks ago, having decided to give this story to the world, I made my way once again up the steep stairs of the Baker Street attic. Among dust and cobwebs in that lumber room stand such souvenirs as the fine silhouette profile of the Great Detective, designed and fashioned by the renowned theatrical artist of Grenoble, Monsieur Oscar Meunier. When it was set against the curtain of our sitting-room after dark, those looking up from the street were convinced that it moved as the angle of the light changed. It was first used to bring to justice the notorious Colonel Sebastian Moran, and several times persuaded Holmes's enemies that he was at home when in truth he was many miles away.

At the far end of the loft was the cumbersome tin trunk, which had belonged to my friend since he left home in his teens. Its hinge moved a little stiffly and the black lacquer was somewhat chipped. Yet the documents and legal parchments it contained were as crisp and alluring as ever. Each represented some
tour de force
of his analytical reasoning.

Here and there I noticed packets of letters, tied with tape and pencilled “Miss Ethel Le Neve
in re
H. H. Crippen for murder,” or “Society for Insuring against Losses on the Turf,” or “The City of Paris Loan Frauds.” Elsewhere, barristers' briefs, black-letter legal parchments, had been marked by Holmes's scribble. He had written on
Rex v. Dougal
, “The Case of the Naked Bicyclists,” and on
Regina v. Temple
, “The Bly House Murder.” The notorious Siege of Sidney Street by Russian anarchists, which brought gunfire and insurrection to the London streets, was annotated rather whimsically as “The Mystery of the Yellow Canary.” News of a missing canary was indeed the first clue to the conspiracy.