Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly

1

“What 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?”

“According to her journal, two apparitions were seen several times at Bly but not together. A man, identified as Peter Quint, had been dead for a year or more. He had been valet to Major Mordaunt, the uncle. Before that, he was the major’s batman in the Queen’s Rifles. He was seen by Miss Temple at least three times. On a further occasion at night, though she did not see him, she was convinced that the little boy Miles was staring up at him in a window above her. The boy behaved as though he had seen this man. The last time she saw Quint was recorded in the journal just before her arrest. It was at the moment of the boy’s death.”

“And the second figure?”

“From Miss Temple’s description this was identified by Mrs Grose, the housekeeper, as Miss Maria Jessel. That young woman had been the preceding governess. She had gone on a long holiday the year before—it seems she was unwell. She died at her father’s home before her return. Her death left the post vacant for Miss Temple.”

I glanced covertly at Holmes to see how he was taking this catalogue of make-believe. If he felt any scorn for the ghostly visitors he certainly did not show it. He continued to question Hereward Douglas.

“How did she know these figures were ghosts?”

“Miss Temple had no idea who the two figures might be until she was told. It did not occur to her at first that they might be ghosts, because they were usually seen in full daylight. But as soon as she described the figures, Mrs Grose named them. That lady swore to me that Miss Temple was accurate in every detail. Only then did Mrs Grose tell the young governess that the two people she depicted in such detail were dead.”

“Is it not possible that Miss Temple had seen Quint and Miss Jessel during their lives and perhaps mistook two other people for them after their deaths? A trick of light or distance?”

Hereward Douglas shook his head vigorously.

“Until coming to London and to Bly, which is on the other side of the country, she had never set foot outside the southwest of England. So far as we know, neither Quint nor Miss Jessel had any connections or had ever been there.”

That was as far as Holmes allowed him to get.

“I have to tell you, Mr Douglas,” he said gently, “that it is vastly more probable for Miss Temple to have seen them previously—even if it was when they visited her home county of Devon for some very unlikely reason—than for a man or a woman to return from the grave. However, by all means continue, if you believe it will serve your purpose.”

The young man began to look a little downcast and his voice was quiet.

“Peter Quint, the Mordaunt valet, was the first apparition she saw. He was standing by the parapet of the garden tower at Bly, looking down at her across the lawn as a late summer evening turned to dusk. She thought perhaps he was an intruder but she said nothing to anyone. That autumn, seeing him again, outside the dining-room window this time, she complained to the housekeeper and gave the man’s description. Mrs Grose told her that she had depicted Peter Quint, down to his stature, the colour and texture of his hair, even the unusual waistcoat that he wore. Only then did the housekeeper tell Miss Temple that Peter Quint had died the previous year.”

Holmes watched him carefully as Hereward Douglas continued.

“The previous winter, Quint had fallen head-first and smashed his skull open, after drinking late at the village inn. As usual, he had drunk far too much. He was alone in the country lanes on a bitter icy night without a lantern. It seems that he pitched over a large stone in the darkness—went flying, as they say—and broke his head clean open on the jagged flint parapet of a bridge across the stream. Two carters found him dead and frozen next morning. Miss Temple could only have seen his ghost.”

“And what did Miss Temple say to his reappearance?”

“Her first reaction, as her journal tells us, was to suppose that the servants were playing tricks on her. Or else that she had seen someone resembling Quint, as you suggest. A brother perhaps. But the man had no brother.”

“And the other residents at Bly?”

“They saw nothing. Dr Mordaunt, the guardian uncle, was living in France just then. There were only the servants and the children in the manor house. Dr Mordaunt had sometimes visited Bly before Peter Quint’s death, but he had long given up any interest in the place. He thought the house remote and dreary. Unfortunately, it was not his to dispose of. With the death of Colonel Mordaunt, it was held in trust for young Miles, the colonel’s only son.”

Holmes sighed.

“So Miss Temple’s visions of Quint and Miss Jessel are entirely unsupported?”

“Not quite.” Hereward Douglas’s young face still showed a determination to fight for the unfortunate young woman. “The housekeeper was present the second time that Miss Temple saw Miss Jessel, at a distance of a hundred and fifty feet or so across the lake. The little girl Flora was with them. It is true that Mrs Grose saw nothing, but she had a powerful sense that she was in the presence of an evil force.”

“Tell me, pray, how did she sense it?”

“There was an unnatural stillness on that autumn afternoon, Mr Holmes. When Miss Temple first saw Quint, on the tower in late sunlight, she was alerted to his presence by the same eerie way in which the sheep bells fell silent and the rooks ceased to caw. It was as if time and nature ceased when the figures appeared.”

“That is really not the same thing as if the housekeeper had also seen the apparition,” my friend said reproachfully.

“The children, Mr Holmes!” Douglas had been driven back into his corner but he came out fighting again. “Miss Temple was certain that the children saw the figures, on four occasions at least. Their reactions made it plain.”

“And what did the two little ones say about these ghostly appearances?”

“At first she thought they were too frightened to admit them. Then she saw that they were too guiltily excited to confess.”

Holmes sucked in his sallow cheeks a little and then breathed out.

“I fear that will be the rock on which your case founders, Mr Douglas. However, let us leave it for a moment. Let me ask you something else. Suppose all this is true. Suppose Miss Temple saw—or even thought she saw—these apparitions. For what reason would two such people return from the dead in order to materialise before your susceptible young friend? She had never known them. She had no interest in them, nor they in her, presumably.”

Our visitor leant forward again, eager to dispel a misunderstanding.

“You make my point for me, Mr Holmes. Miss Temple was only a bystander. Their manner and their movements convinced her that their true object had nothing to do with her. Their purpose was the seduction of the two children into the realms of evil and the world of the damned. She had been told repeatedly by the housekeeper, and by servants at Bly, of the malignant and corrupting influence that Quint and Miss Jessel exercised, during their lives, over the two children.”

If the rest of the tale was implausible, this was preposterous.

“A power sufficient to commit murder from beyond the grave?” Holmes inquired sceptically.

“No, sir. The little girl, Flora Mordaunt, died of diphtheria in the London fever hospital. Miss Temple was accused of smothering the boy a few days later.”

Holmes sat taller, fingers clasped and elbows on the arms of his chair. Hereward Douglas still held my friend’s impatient interest, if only by a thread.

“You will read in the journal, Mr Holmes, why Miss Temple was certain that the children saw the apparitions. Miles and Flora were the objects of these evil visitations. It was only some exceptional and special sensibility that enabled the governess to share the visions.”

“Neither Master Miles nor Miss Flora remarked upon these ghosts?”

“No,” said Douglas forlornly. “Both denied them.”

“Dear me,” said Holmes lightly. “So you ask us to believe in these appearances because the children—from fear or wickedness—denied them? I am bound to say, Mr Douglas, it is as well for you that you are not, at this moment, bound by the rules of evidence in a criminal court. Pray continue, however. Your narrative is most unusual, if nothing else.”

“That was not all!” Surely it was desperation that brought this protest from our visitor. “Miss Temple was certain the children saw for themselves. Do you not understand? They were in league with these visitors! The willing victims! Unless you can accept that possibility, I am wasting my time.”

Holmes shrugged.

“In league with them? But for what possible purpose?”

Douglas spoke quietly.

“To be united in death—all four—in a state of damnation to which the children were being seduced. A state for which their corrupted childhood had trained them. There is no other way to put it, Mr Holmes.”

I could see from the brightness in my friend’s gaze that this folklore of the dead possessing the living was not a mere absurdity to him. Its possibility glimmered on what Robert Browning called the dangerous edge of things. How his rational soul longed to believe!

“By what means were the children to be drawn to damnation?” I asked. Hereward Douglas turned in his chair.

“By self-destruction, Dr Watson. Quint and Miss Jessel were usually seen ‘across and beyond,’ as Miss Temple puts it. They appeared almost motionless, at a distance, and almost always where they were inaccessible. Death beckoned the children across the deep waters of a treacherous lake—the Middle Deep, as it was called—or from the height of a dilapidated tower. It was as if the two devils summoned their victims to come to them and perish in the attempt. Quint also appeared twice to Miss Temple through the closed windows of a room. Terrifying but, once again, always inaccessible.”

“Not tempting her to destruction, however?”

He shook his head.

“No. Taunting her. Doing battle with her for the souls of two innocents.”

Holmes met this with the cold inquiry of the logician. Could he believe or could he not?

“If the children should perish, what would that accomplish?”

Our visitor was careful not to give away too much.

“In Miss Temple’s mind—and even to the housekeeper—Miss Jessel and Quint were damned, as they deserved to be. Their spirits lusted for the children to share their hellish privations.”

This talk of hell and damnation was too much for me. I was about to say so, but Holmes glanced at me and Hereward Douglas resumed.

“Mrs Grose, of course, did not share Miss Jessel’s vision of the dead. If she believed in the possibility of their evil presences, it was because she had known the man and woman during their lives. She had sensed the depravity of which they were capable towards the sensitive and imaginative children in their care.”

So much for ghosts! A fascination with human evil was now all that kept the ball in play between the two debaters in our sitting-room.

“How exactly did the children die?” Holmes asked finally.

“The little girl, Flora, died first. She was taken ill in London with high temperatures and dangerous symptoms. After a day or two, she was moved to the fever hospital for better care. It was already too late. Her fever turned to diphtheria and she died in the following week. Before this was known at Bly, Miles showed signs of a milder fever but not of diphtheria. There had been something of the kind at school. This was not apparent until a day or two after his sister’s death and certainly did not seem to threaten his life. He remained at Bly with Miss Temple. I fear the local doctor was old and ignorant. The boy might have recovered with proper care.”

“And what of the ghosts?” I asked cautiously.

“The last apparition of Peter Quint materialised quite suddenly, Dr Watson, in broad daylight at the window of the dining-room. It was the white face of damnation, as Miss Temple calls it in her journal. She seized the ailing boy in her arms to shield him from it.”

“But only according to her own journal?”

Hereward Douglas nodded at the volume which Holmes was holding.

“It is there word for word, written just after the event.”

“Written to conceal some wrong-doing of her own perhaps?”

“No, Dr Watson. If ever a suspect condemned herself, it was Miss Temple in that journal. She describes how she clutched Miles to her breast to hide from him the terrible vision of Quint on the far side of the glass. In covering his eyes during her hysterical anger at the phantom she also covered his nostrils and mouth. Miles had his eyes tight shut against the horror beyond the window. She admits that he gave a frantic little struggle for light and air. So she allowed the boy a respite but caught him again and pressed him close. She must keep the dreadful eyes from the child’s gaze. After that she lost her composure, probably she lost consciousness as well. When she came to herself, at the end of a minute or so, the life had gone from Miles Mordaunt. Miss Temple was staring at an empty window with the dead child in her arms.”

“A difficult case to try,” Holmes said sympathetically.

“It was, Mr Holmes. Miles was a boy of delicate health, in any case, and underdeveloped for his age. Unfortunately for Miss Temple, the judge ruled at the outset of the case that those who kill must take their victims as they find them. After that, Miss Temple could not put forward this child’s weakness as a mitigating circumstance. The servants could only say that they never saw anything but an empty window, where Miss Temple twice saw the features of Peter Quint.”

I tried to console the young man.

“A verdict of insanity was her only hope of life. The best way to it was to plead that some form of hysteria had robbed her of consciousness and volition, if only for a moment or two. Otherwise her sole witness was a ghost! A court would dismiss that as sheer fabrication and no defence at all.”

The young man shrugged and shook his head. He had done his best against two older and more sceptical listeners but it had got him nowhere.

“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.