Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly

2

In 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.”

“And that the Crown should accept a plea of not guilty by virtue of insanity,” Homes said quietly.

I feared the words might distress her, but Victoria Temple seemed indifferent to them.

“Without that, Mr Holmes, I should have been hanged. If Major Mordaunt had not found Mr Ballantine for me—and paid his fee—I should have been lost. I knew so little of the law that I was afterwards possessed by the idea that if ever they believed I had recovered my sanity, the law would oblige them to come for me and hang me. I had the most fearful dreams at first of being woken for that purpose. Dr Annesley and others worked with great patience to encourage me and bring me to my senses over it. And now Mr Douglas, whom I have not seen in all this time, has been good to me as well, persuading you to visit me here.”

Then it seemed that the conversation ran into a brick wall. There was silence until Miss Temple herself broke it with a slight wave of her hand.

“Gentlemen, you may talk of whatever you please. The apparitions, Mrs Grose and the others at Bly, the children. Even little Miles. I weep for him, of course, but I am quite all right now. I can speak of him, as I am speaking to you at this moment.”

“Very well then,” said Holmes quietly. “Tell me, please, before your arrest how many times had you seen Major Mordaunt?”

“Once.” She paused for a moment, as if to check her accuracy. “He interviewed me in London, at the office of his solicitor in Harley Street. I was offered the place of the late Miss Jessel. From what I have heard, I was not the first to refuse. You must remember that I had never held a post of this kind. There was no master or mistress in the house, only the servants. My employer would not even be in England much of the time. I was a newcomer and I thought the responsibility too great.”

She paused, looked about her, and then returned her gaze to us.

“I feared the loneliness and the lack of company, the distance from my home. There would be no one to whom I could turn for advice, for instructions or decisions. Major Mordaunt made that clear. He had never wanted to be guardian of his brother’s children and estate. He preferred that it should be done by others.”

“You were to have charge of both children?”

“Only the little girl, Flora, at first. Miles was away at King Alfred’s School. He was sent home some time after my arrival.”

“For the holidays?”

“No, Mr Holmes. He was dismissed from the school, unfairly dismissed. Dr Clarke, the headmaster, went so far as to insist that his continued presence would injure the other boys. The head would say nothing more than that. I was never able to determine the exact cause. That boy, Mr Holmes, was beautiful in soul and body. He was the type that such schoolmasters dislike. He was too good for them!”

“And what persuaded you to accept the post at last, after you had first refused?” I asked.

“By the time that Major Mordaunt wrote to me again, two months later, I had found no other appointment. I also saw how the increased stipend, which I was now offered, might help my sisters. They were poorly provided for, as matters stood. My mother had now died and my father had few prospects. I had received one or two disturbing letters from home, as to his condition. Therefore I consented.”

“Perhaps you will help me to visualise the occasion,” said Holmes courteously. “The interview took place in a solicitor’s office, simply between the two of you?”

“Correct.”

“Major Mordaunt sat on the far side of his desk?”

“Yes.”

There was a pause, as if she expected him to continue. When he did not, she looked up and smiled.

“Major Mordaunt is a very charming man, of course, and certainly persuasive. I did not see him for more than fifteen or twenty minutes, but I once told the housekeeper, Mrs Grose, that I had been quite carried away by him. She said, ‘You’re not the first.’ When she first described Miss Jessel to me, I said, ‘He seems to like us young and pretty.’”

“A ladies man?” Holmes asked casually.

“I have nothing to complain of in his conduct. He was beyond reproach.”

“Good,” he nodded, “You never suffered insubordination from the servants at Bly nor any disobedience on the part of the children?”

“Nothing at all, unless you count their denials of seeing the intruders.”

“The children’s denial of seeing the apparitions?”

“They were intruders, Mr Holmes! Who cares in what form they came?”

So Miss Temple was no mere hysteric who insisted upon ghosts. I found that interesting, but Holmes was impatient and our time with this client was passing too quickly.

“Tell me, Miss Temple, are you a needlewoman or an artist?”

“I crochet and sketch, Mr Holmes. Ah, yes. Of course. I know what you mean. The hospital records will tell you that I do not need glasses for either short or long sight. I see what is in front of me distinctly. That is your point, is it not? Very well. I do not imagine visions, apparitions, or whatever else you like to call them. I can describe what I saw.”

“Indeed,” said Holmes gravely. “Then tell me about Peter Quint. What did he look like?”

She was a little flustered at this demand but quickly composed herself.

“I first saw him on the garden tower at Bly, standing at the battlements, as I looked up from the lawn. We stared at one another, I cannot tell you for how long. He held a rather unnatural pose, like an actor. Presently he turned and walked to the far corner of the tower out of sight and I saw him no more. He was dressed in clothes that seemed too fancy for a mere valet. As we stared at one another, the world went into a strange silence. The sheep bells and the bird calls stopped.”

“So I understand,” said Holmes briskly. “However, we will leave the sheep and the birds out of it. His appearance, if you please.”

By a glance I tried to warn him against this approach, without Miss Temple seeing me. I need not have bothered. She was quite able to hold her own.

“He never wore a hat,” she said, “and so I saw his hair clearly. It was unusually red and tightly curled, red whiskers too. He had bushy whiskers—not a beard—of the mutton-chop kind that a sergeant-major might wear. He had not been a sergeant-major, of course. I understand he was only the major’s batman in the Army but followed his master into civilian life, as a valet. He had a long face, rather red, as if he drank too much or was sunburnt from service in foreign parts. His features were straight. His eyes seemed hard as stone. I remember thinking that sapphires so hard would never melt into the sea as they did in Lord Tennyson’s poetry! His mouth was wide, but so far as I could tell his lips were thin. He wore—they say he often wore—the same fancy waistcoat. Mrs Grose, the housekeeper, told me that Quint frequently wore garments stolen from his absent master. This waistcoat might be one of them.”

“We will also leave Lord Tennyson and the waistcoat to one side,” said Holmes. “How far from the tower were you standing?”

“Twenty-five feet, I daresay—perhaps thirty.”

“Were you looking straight up at him with your head held back or was it a more level view from farther off?”

“I stared straight at him. At a little distance.”

“You must have been at a sufficient distance to see him walk across the platform of the tower when he disappeared. Yet you could tell his lips were thin and his eyes hard? Now then, there were three floors of the house, the tower platform and the battlements—forty feet or more vertically. Add to that your horizontal distance from it. Not less than thirty feet, if you had a view of the direction in which he walked away.”

“Perhaps that was so, Mr Holmes.”

“As a governess, Miss Temple, I daresay you are familiar enough with the theorem of Pythagoras to teach it to your pupils. Will you take it from me, as a matter of geometry, that such dimensions would put the two of you about fifty feet apart?”

“I must accept that, if you say it is so.”

“I do say it, madam. Let us proceed. This man was standing with his face to the east, staring out at you, while the light was dying in the west behind him. His face was red? Was not his face in shadow, though? And could you tell in such poor light, at such a distance too, that his eyes were blue and his lips were thin?”

“Perhaps his lips were not thin. His whiskers hid them, but that was my impression.”

I was uneasy at this sceptical cross-examination, but Miss Temple still held her own. She would have done well in the witness-box, after all.

“Your impression alone will not quite do,” said Holmes gently.

For the first time, she showed a little irritation with him.

“I saw enough of him in the evening light, Mr Holmes, to know that he was the same man I saw close up, some weeks later, through the dining-room window by lamplight. Mrs Grose and I were setting out for Sunday evening service. The carriage was waiting at the terrace steps and I went into the room just to fetch a pair of gloves I had forgotten. The man who had been on the tower was on the terrace, staring at me through the glass without moving. That night I gave Mrs Grose the description I have just given to you. I was close enough to him for that.”

“How far is the church from the house?”

“It is on the estate, about ten minutes’ walk, but it was customary to take the carriage.”

“And at what time is Evensong?”

“Half-past six.”

“This was in early November, I understand, and therefore after dark?”

“It was.”

“How many lights were burning in the dining-room?”

“The central gasolier was lit but turned low when we left the room. The wall mantels had been extinguished. They would not be lit until we returned for supper.”

“Reflection from the half-lit gasolier, through the window and onto the terrace, was enough to show you the man’s features on such a dark November evening?”

“I first ran towards the window, Mr Holmes. He did not move. Then I ran out into the hallway and out at the main door. He had gone. I am no liar, sir!”

This was a more dangerous exchange, but Holmes inclined his head courteously.

“Indeed you are no liar, Miss Temple. A liar would insist that she was far closer to the man on the tower at the first encounter. On the second, she would probably have told me that all the lights in the dining-room were fully lit and shining onto the terrace, where the man stood. She certainly would not have omitted accidentally, as you have done, that there would also be a lamp on the terrace itself—as well as on the carriage—to light you on your way. It must have been bright enough to show the way down the steps to the conveyance which would take you to Evensong.”

She looked down with her closed fist lightly to her lips as if she might weep. Holmes forestalled her.

“I have dealt with a good many liars, Miss Temple, and I am so far satisfied that you are a truthful young woman. I cannot yet say that your visitor on the tower or at the window was a creature from the realms of darkness. That you saw a figure of some kind is evident to me.”

“Thank you,” she said softly.

My friend resumed.

“What else did you see on this second occasion?”

“There was no one on the terrace by the time I reached it, no sign of an intruder. Not a footprint in the earth, not a gate nor door swinging open. Having seen him twice, I still thought he was an ordinary trespasser. It was only after this second appearance that I told Mrs Grose. She replied that I had exactly described Peter Quint—and that Quint had been dead for a year. Until then I had not known our housekeeper well enough to confide in her. I had suspected that this fellow might be a hanger-on of one of the women at the house. Or perhaps the servants were playing a game to frighten me. There is often a grudge against a poor governess. She is in some ways their mistress—able to give them orders—but not truly mistress of the house. They are quick to complain that she has got ‘above herself.’”

“They did not complain in your case?”

“No. They were all kind to me.”

“Excellent,” said Holmes, and his mood changed at once. Miss Temple’s answers had unquestionably been straight and true. To me she seemed an honest witness, however deluded. And still there was a simple strength in her. Without that, we might have faced a catastrophe as she gave way under questioning. She now looked at us both and continued.

“Mrs Grose told me how Quint had left the village tavern one winter night and was found dead on the road next morning with a fearful gash across his head. The local coroner from Abbots Langley described the injuries to the jury. From where the dead man lay it was plain that he lost his footing and went headlong. His skull had struck the edge of the parapet over the stream. The sharp ice cut him deeply. After that, Mrs Grose talked to me of the fellow’s secret vices, his drinking and his affairs with the village girls. Worst of all, he was too free with Miles. It was outrageous that a promiscuous brute like he should act as the little boy’s tutor and guide!”

“And what of Miss Jessel?” I asked.

She paused, as if to gather her strength after the outburst.

“A week or so later I was walking with Flora one afternoon, by the lake. A woman appeared on an opposite bank, the wooded island at the far end. She was too far off for anyone to reach her before she disappeared among the trees again. At first I supposed she must be a servant but then I saw by her clothes she could not be. She was dressed in shabby black mourning, not a maidservant’s uniform. Her hair was dark. I thought her beautiful, but in an unearthly way. A beautiful corpse, if there can be such a thing. Make no mistake, Dr Watson, I saw her as plainly as I see you now, but she was not looking at me. Her eyes were on the little girl, Flora. In that moment they became such awful eyes, Mr Holmes, filling gradually with a fury of evil triumph.”

“Though she was dead, you thought you knew who she must be?”

“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.”