Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly

3

Dr Austen Clarke was not approachable. His pride was to have been a boy at the most exalted Victorian school, Thomas Arnold’s Rugby. He would never admit—let alone discuss—the expulsion of one of his own pupils. Fortunately our client’s elder cousin, Galahad Douglas, had spent four years at King Alfred’s before graduating to Eton. He offered to approach its modern-minded history master, William Spencer-Smith.

It was the headmaster who had put all blame squarely on Miles Mordaunt. This ten-year-old had sinned against heaven, in the shape of the school rules, and must go. His continued presence would “injure” the other children. By contrast, the history master, William Spencer-Smith, had argued that the school owed a duty of care towards this troubled boy and that it had failed him.

Galahad Douglas reported that Spencer-Smith would receive us on two conditions. First, our conversation must remain confidential. Second, Dr Clarke must not be told of our visit on any account. I diagnosed Spencer-Smith as an unquiet spirit who was relieved by the chance to talk of his troubles.

We left Baker Street for Paddington Station and the Taunton train on a morning just before the boys of King Alfred’s returned from their Easter holidays. At the Somerset market town, a rusty one-horse hackney cab was waiting in the station approach. Holmes instructed the driver to drop us outside the school gates and await our return.

On the edge of the town, the creeper-covered stone of King Alfred’s, with its low, crenellated central tower, was a copy of Oxford colleges built two centuries ago. The wide front lawn had been planted with a fine cedar of Lebanon and a stone-cross memorial to the fallen alumni of the Crimean and South African wars. Within the main building lay the Great Hall, classrooms, dormitories and chapel. The high view from the rear terrace encompassed playing fields, cricket pavilion, with the bleak heights of Exmoor and Dunkery Beacon in the distance.

Here the senior boys lived and worked. The juniors walked in for breakfast from several large houses nearby, each named after a royal dynasty: Tudor, Stuart, Brunswick and Hanover. A note in the margin of Miss Temple’s journal informed us that Miles had been a member of Brunswick for two years. His housemaster was Mair Loftus, a Cambridge Master of Arts who also taught chemistry.

During the holidays the main building was silent and its grounds deserted. Yet William Spencer-Smith remained in residence. This was his home, for he had no other. We followed the porter up a wide staircase with glimpses of long dormitories and neat rows of beds to either side. At the top landing, a narrow corridor ran off under the eaves of the building. Our guide knocked on a door at the far end and we entered Spencer-Smith’s cross-beamed room, immediately below the tiles.

He was a short, rotund man in his thirties with a face that was soft and kindly, his manner nervously evasive. This uneasy disposition was kept in check by quick smiles and rapid talk. I guessed that he was ragged by the boys more than he deserved.

Two broken-down easy chairs, a sofa, a cluttered desk and a length of overcrowded bookshelves made up his spartan furniture. The contents of the room were a match for his shabby jacket and flannels. As we shook hands, a westerly Atlantic wind rattled the old bones of the school at this height. After we had taken our places in the chairs, he came quickly to the point.

“I have agreed to talk of this matter—Mr Holmes—Dr Watson—because I blame myself in part for the outcome. I have thought a good deal about it. Had I argued more vigorously on the child’s behalf, he might still be alive. Who knows?”

“But no longer at King Alfred’s,” Holmes suggested.

Spencer-Smith shrugged.

“Of course he sometimes made mischief. What boy of spirit does not, at his age? The tragedy is that we sent him home just after his parents had died, when we should have cared for him. After all is said and done, he was only a child of ten. We might have saved him from himself. The unfortunate young governess inherited the difficulties we bequeathed to her. To be sure, the dead are beyond our aid, but it is of the highest importance that we should do all in our power for the living.”

“Your feelings do you credit,” Holmes said courteously, “To put it briefly, Miss Temple is confined in a criminal lunatic asylum. She is there because a verdict of insanity was agreed upon by the Crown and the defence—a convenient decision which now seems grievously in error.”

As they talked of Victoria Temple’s plight, I scanned the bookshelves. There was little to suggest the history master, but a good deal of mental philosophy, individual psychology and the education of the child.

“You must tell me what I can do,” our host was saying. “It is a terrible thing for an innocent woman to be tormented in such a way. Galahad Douglas spoke to me of her misfortune.”

Holmes stretched back in his chair.

“Miles Mordaunt was dismissed from school,” he said languidly. “Pray tell me why. It was never made clear by Dr Clarke to the family nor to the governess.”

Spencer-Smith stared past us as though he saw something at the far end of his long garret room.

“Did he steal?” Holmes prompted him, and the poor fellow shook his head.

I put my own question before he could continue.

“It was alleged that he harmed the others. Was he immoral or depraved in some way?”

“He was not.”

“Then what did he do that he must be dismissed?” I persisted.

“He said things.”

I was about to ask what these things were. Holmes took another tack.

“To whom did he say them? It is of the greatest importance that we should have witnesses.”

“He would never give us their names. One or two admitted it of their own accord. He spoke only to a few boys, I think. To those he liked.”

Glancing at Holmes, I saw an impatient tightening of the mouth.

“And they repeated his words to others?”

“Yes. To those they liked. As a special secret, I suppose. Boys of that age are excitable. They love secrets but they never keep them.”

Spencer-Smith paused. When he spoke again it was with great deliberation.

“You should understand, Mr Holmes, that Miles Mordaunt was not as other boys. He was with us for two years but he never fitted in.”

“He was in Brunswick House, I believe?”

Spencer-Smith nodded.

“He was one of the second-year Brunswicks. Though he was intellectually gifted, he lacked normal physical stamina and agility. Perhaps he had been unwell, in some way unknown to us, before he came to King Alfred’s. At all events, he avoided games and sports whenever he could. The others would take a cold plunge at Parson’s Pool, where the river bends. He never did. I do not believe he could swim a stroke to save his life. Well now, a boy of that type in a school of this sort either goes under or learns to acquire strength of a different kind. He gains power over the minds of others, unless his life is to be made a misery. He must be stronger in brain than they can ever be in body. That is the key to this child’s character.”

“And so he said things?” Holmes suggested laconically. “I suppose, in the end, these things came round to you?”

“They did. But it was not I who told Dr Clarke.” He looked hastily from one to the other of us. “That was done by the chaplain and another senior master before I could intervene. I should have spoken to the boy first.”

“You have no objection to revealing what the child said to his friends?”

Spencer-Smith looked still more uneasy.

“You need not fear that we shall betray confidences,” Holmes added quietly.

The history master shook his head.

“I only fear that you may think me ridiculous.” He paused awkwardly, then continued. “Miles Mordaunt told his friends that he had received supernatural powers. Others said that he claimed he had sold his soul to the devil in exchange for such powers. I could find no conclusive evidence that he ever said anything of the sort. It was hearsay.”

I intervened.

“Surely he was not expelled for hearsay?”

The selling of a soul is utter nonsense to an intelligent adult. Yet it might be terrible for a child of ten to boast of it. The more I heard of Miles Mordaunt, the more I thought the boast was possible. A new intensity in my friend’s deep-set eyes suggested that he took this seriously.

“Did he offer his friends evidence of these powers?” Holmes asked.

“He was good at tricks, tricks of all kinds.” Spencer-Smith lit a cigarette, as if to steady him for what lay ahead. He shook out the match. “That made some of the others uneasy about him and some admired him. For example, he boasted of his occult power to materialise in two places at the same time. He could produce his doppelgänger, as he called it.”

“Where did he hear the word, at his age?”

“I have no idea, Dr Watson. But he proved it to them. In the previous summer, the school photograph was taken on the front lawn, with the main building as its background. The boys wore the short jackets and striped trousers of their ‘Eton suits’ and stood in long rows, ranged according to height.”

He nodded at an assortment of framed prints on the far wall and then continued.

“When the photographs were printed, a slightly-built, fair-haired junior was at the left-hand end of the back row. That was Miles Mordaunt.”

“Where was the trick?”

“Behind him, doctor. As I mentioned, the front of the school building was the background. There is a three-sided oriel window in a room to the right of the main entrance door. Within the diagonal leaded lights of its Tudor window, forty feet or so behind the row at whose far end the boy stood, was also the face of Miles Mordaunt. It was a fainter image but beyond doubt it was the same child with the same look of frustrated energy. To credulous junior boys of eight or nine, he offered it as proof of his ability to materialise in two places at the same time.

“A prank,” said Holmes dismissively, “I daresay few of his dupes knew that such long photographs are taken in sections and matched together. Miles Mordaunt had only to stand within the window when the process began and then sneak round to the end of the back row before the camera lens shifted its angle.”

“With his friends who knew that, he treated it as a secret joke. If they did not know, he made it a demonstration of his psychic powers.”

“He was surely not dismissed for such a game!” I said.

“But that was only the beginning, Dr Watson. Next came a series of rumours, dark secrets confided to close friends. He described to one crony how he had drowned his sister’s governess when she betrayed a promise. The intensity of his confessions was such that even you might almost believe him, until you knew better. Her death was thought to be a tragic mishap and he was never suspected. There was no truth in this. The poor lady died of natural causes at her father’s home, many miles away. She was, of course, replaced by Miss Temple.”

“A great misfortune, as it turns out!” said Holmes softly.

“Mr Holmes, there was also a man at Bly, who died in an accident. He was a servant of some kind …”

“Quint,” I said at once.

“I believe so, Dr Watson. He and the boy were great chums, according to Miles. There were no other males in the household—except possibly a gardener from the outlying estate. Quint, if that was his name, had warned the boy never to let himself be put upon by any governess or female servant. Better drown them like kittens than let them grow to be cats, Quint had said, if the boy was to be believed.”

“And that was the worst that Miles said?” I asked.

“Unhappily not, Dr Watson. The boy gathered a coven about him. By closing his right fist, then extending the thumb and small finger, he taught those who swore allegiance to him how to exercise the curse of the evil eye. He confided to them how he had placed curses on those who crossed him and how these had been fulfilled. He always tailored this to misfortunes which had actually occurred, so that he was more easily believed.”

I was about to inquire where a child of his age could have picked up such poisonous nonsense, but the thought of Peter Quint provided an answer.

“A boy so young!” I said incredulously.

“Just so, doctor. Children may be capable of the worst imaginings and dishonesties.”

I followed his gaze as he spoke. Subconsciously he had led me to a bookshelf and a volume of Cases at Salem: Drawn from Pleas of the Crown. How strange to be reminded in this sunlit room of those innocent American men and women sworn to their deaths by children in the famous witch trials two centuries ago.

“He was believed by the junior boys?” Holmes asked.

“Not at first, I daresay. Yet it gave him an air—a reputation for malevolent power. To silence the doubters, he undertook to prove publicly the powers which his demon—Quint perhaps—had conferred upon him.”

Holmes sat back with his fingers folded together, missing no word nor nuance of the young master’s explanation.

“He performed his tricks, Mr Holmes. I cannot put it any other way. For instance, he claimed that he could see through walls. He could even see into the skulls of others and read their thoughts.”

“What was his proof?”

Our host thought for a moment.

“It varied. Several times, to my knowledge, he used a pair of dice. Two boys would go into another room—even into another building—and roll the dice. Miles could not possibly see the result. He told them to take the figure on the left hand die and double it. They must then add five to that answer and multiply the whole by five. Finally they must add the number on the right hand die. Once they gave him that total, even though they had been a dozen miles away, he would give them the precise numbers on the two dice, which he now saw in their minds. He was never wrong. He claimed that he could read their minds as plainly as they themselves. Some of the little boys grew afraid of him. A few began to believe in the things that he told them. Even the seniors grew wary of him.”

“A mathematical dodge with a pair of dice!” said Holmes scornfully. “He had learnt it somewhere—from an adult, of course. Who taught him, I wonder? Let me tell you, Mr Spencer-Smith, it is a trick based on multiplication by five. Once his dupes gave him the final total, all he needed to do was subtract from it the square of five. Twenty-five. That would invariably and infallibly give him the numbers on the two dice. So, for example, sixty-two would always equal six-plus-two, thirty-five would always give him three-plus-five. It never fails. It is no more magic nor witchcraft than a recipe for plum pudding! But surely he was not expelled—even for this?”

“No, Mr Holmes. His downfall was the Five Stones murder in the neighbourhood of his home, far away at Bly. I daresay you have heard of it? A mill-owner was driving a cart with a barrel of gold coins, believing that no one knew of his cargo. It was the quarter’s takings from several saw-mills which he was carrying to his safe. It was a good deal of money and he had been careful to tell no one of it, as he thought. Unfortunately for him, his route was known to the robber, even if the size of the cargo was not. He was attacked and clubbed to death while crossing the heathland near the prehistoric Five Standing Stones of Bly. Little remains of four stones, but the fifth is still upright. The perpetrators were never caught. For no good reason, it was locally believed that there were five robbers—as there were five stones at the scene of the crime. The fifth, supposed to be the actual murderer, was popularly nicknamed the Fifth Stone.”

“I have heard of the crime,” said Holmes tolerantly.

“But why was the child expelled from school?” I persisted.

“For what followed, Dr Watson. The master of Brunswick House, Mair Loftus, was not an amiable man. Ill-tempered, strict and pious, he kept his wife and son in fear of him. He was a rasping bully. To all criticism, he replied, ‘When I was a junior boy, I feared my master. Now, by God, these juniors shall fear me.’ He has since left us. Miles cordially loathed the man and, quite simply, set out to destroy him. For devilment, I suppose, this little boy swore to his friends that he knew a secret about this murder committed near his home. Mair Loftus, all the way down in the West Country, was an accomplice of the Fifth Stone. This housemaster was the receiver of the stolen gold. Little by little, Miles told his friends, the robber brought the gold coins all the way down to Somerset. Loftus changed them at his bank into negotiable notes and even into government bonds. Who would suspect a schoolmaster, especially one with a private income? Miles swore that he had this story from the Fifth Stone himself.”

Sherlock Holmes shook his head thoughtfully.

“Wait, Mr Holmes,” said Spencer-Smith abruptly. “Brunswick House is a red-brick residence, a home to thirty junior boys. Close to its rear door is a very large, quick-growing Monterey cypress. It should have been felled years ago but now its base is quite four feet across. Miles assured his friends that if they put their ears to the bark and listened very carefully, they might hear whispering. With the breezes from Exmoor and the Bristol Channel in the branches, it was not difficult for some children to convince themselves and their friends that they heard whispers. Perhaps they could not make out the words. But rumour runs like fire through a community of small boys. If two or three believed it, the rest were not to be left out.”

Holmes sat back, finger-tips tracing patterns on the padded leather arm of his chair.

“According to Miles Mordaunt,” Spencer-Smith continued, “the proceeds of the robbery had been worth a fortune. The Fifth Stone still visited Mair Loftus, to trade gold for bank-notes. In a hollow within the base of this giant pine—a small kiosk, as it were, with underground access—the two conspirators met to negotiate the disposal of the booty. The power of seeing into rooms and minds, which Miles had already demonstrated, enabled him to detect what was going on. It was a yarn straight out of a penny dreadful.”

“Pray continue,” said Holmes softly. “You have my complete attention.”

“Mair Loftus had always acted as if his duty was to keep the boys in awe of him. This child showed an extraordinary adult subtlety and intelligence. Because most of the boys shared his loathing of Loftus they were eager to believe that they also heard the whispering of words in the trunk of the old fir tree. After all, they had seen Miles Mordaunt’s occult powers demonstrated elsewhere.”

“And now they believed him in this case?” I asked.

“It was as if there was another personality within him, Dr Watson,” said Spencer-Smith sadly, “or perhaps one that had taken him over. To hear him speak, to watch his mannerisms, was to believe that an adult was imprisoned in the body of an underdeveloped child of ten.”

“And in due course these stories of Mr Loftus reached Dr Clarke?” Holmes inquired.

“They came to the chaplain first and thence to the headmaster. They were absurd!”

“His parents,” I said suddenly, “were they dead by this time?”

“The news had barely reached us. I understand they had both died during a single cholera epidemic in India. Because the news was received just as the decision to dismiss their son from school was taken, our action seemed the more heartless. Now here is another curiosity for you. The boy himself appeared quite unaffected by the loss of his parents. It was almost like a liberation, a confirmation that he had left childhood behind him.”

“It is a moral oddity perhaps,” I said, “but not unknown to medicine.”

“Not entirely an oddity, Dr Watson. Colonel Mordaunt’s regiment had been in India for most of the child’s life. Miles cannot have been close to his parents in any case, though our rules required him to write to them every week on Sunday afternoon. He can rarely have seen them. Perhaps he had come to resent their desertion of him, as it may have seemed to him.”

“What arrangements were made for him after their deaths?”

“Of course he was his father’s heir as lord of the manor of Bly, though he would not come into the property until he was twenty-one. The guardian of both the children and trustee of the estate was automatically his uncle.”

“And he was …” Holmes prompted him.

“Colonel Mordaunt’s only brother, Major James Mordaunt, an Army surgeon-major in his youth. I understand he had seen service in India and Afghanistan. He remains a bachelor with no pretensions to marriage or fatherhood, as I was told—certainly not to practicing medicine any longer. When their father died twenty years ago, Colonel Charles Mordaunt inherited Bly, as the eldest son, but the major was also provided for. He lives sometimes in a fashionable area of London but mostly in France.”

“Then what became of Miles and Flora?” I asked.

“Major Mordaunt did his best, while their parents were in India. He had no true interest in them. I do not recall that he ever visited Miles here. I cannot even say whether he ever saw the children. At any rate, when we sent the boy away, Major Mordaunt had already employed Miss Temple as governess for the little girl. The major insisted time and again that he did not want to be bothered over the children’s upbringing. She was to deal with any contingencies as she saw best. Whatever was needed, she had only to ask the lawyers for money.”

“So she has told us,” said Holmes.

“I argued with Austen Clarke, Mr Holmes, believe me I did. Miles should not have been dismissed from the school. He should have gone to one of the other houses, away from Mair Loftus. We should have helped and cared for him. His so-called necromancy was the silliest nonsense, but the emotional disturbance within him was terribly real. Dr Clarke simply replied that the boy had plotted to destroy the authority of Mr Loftus, to make his position in the school untenable. Subversion of that kind could not be countenanced.”

“Tell me,” I asked, “was Miles seen by a physician while he was at King Alfred’s?”

“He was, Dr Watson. For a week or two he was confined in the school sanatorium with catarrhal pneumonia, an inflammation of one lung which yielded quite readily to treatment. Every boy returning to school at the beginning of each term has to bring a certificate, signed by the family physician, to confirm that he is not suffering from any disease—contagious or otherwise. Miles Mordaunt was not physically robust, as his appearance would suggest, but since then he always seemed buoyant and in high spirits.”

“Was he seen by a specialist at the time?”

“I recall that his uncle arranged for him to be seen by a chest specialist in London. It seemed that the boy had made a complete recovery.”

Holmes put his hand on the arms of the chair as if about to stand up. Then he paused.

“Can you can tell me, Mr Spencer-Smith, how news of the boy’s expulsion was conveyed to his family?”

A hint of frank bewilderment passed across the history master’s face.

“Why, Mr Holmes, Dr Clarke wrote a letter to Major Mordaunt, as the boy’s guardian, after he had discussed the matter with the rest of us.”

“That is not quite what I meant. Dr Clarke did not presumably tell the major that Miles was harming the other boys—and leave it at that?”

Spencer-Smith seemed relieved at the explanation.

“Certainly not. These occasions are happily rare, but the headmaster is always very specific in his reasons. I believe he does this to forestall argument. He naturally cited the harm caused by Miles to the other boys and the undermining of the housemaster’s authority. I think you will find that Dr Clarke even reported the substance of the puerile slander so that Major Mordaunt would see that it was impossible for us to keep the boy. I believe there was a temporary dispute of some kind over the amount of school fees which were owing. Major Mordaunt eventually settled the bill.”

Holmes relaxed again. He stood up and held out his hand.

“We will impose on you no longer, sir. You have been most patient.”

It was now Spencer-Smith who hesitated.

“One more thing, Mr Holmes—a curiosity, perhaps! We had not done the boy justice. I wrote to Major Mordaunt. If he sought another school for Miles, he must call upon me for support in the strongest terms. I am not without influence in other places. He need not fear the outcome.”

“And Major Mordaunt responded?”

“His letter thanked me in charming and gracious terms. He would accept my offer in due course. For a while, however, he would entrust the boy to his new governess. The rest you know.”

Holmes took the master’s hand again.

“You have been most generous with your time and advice, sir.”

“If poor Miss Temple is innocently condemned, I am at your service.”

We made our way down the narrow corridor and the staircase. Our ancient cab, spattered from the local lanes, was waiting for us. My friend said nothing until we were sitting in a compartment of the London train and the low-lying Somerset pastureland, still water-logged from spring rains, was slipping past our window. At length he spoke.

“Mr Spencer-Smith has all the trappings of the schoolmaster, does he not, Watson? A man among boys but a boy among men. I fear he and Miss Temple have told us all that they are likely to tell. By-the-by, did you observe a curious detail at the end of our conversation this afternoon?”

“What was that?”

“Major Mordaunt preferred that his nephew should be taught by a governess at Bly, rather than educated at one of our great schools, which Spencer-Smith’s offer would have made possible.”

“It was too soon after the boy’s dismissal. It would have come in time.”

Holmes relaxed.

“I wonder. Then that leaves only Bly as the key to the puzzle, perhaps in the hands of the worthy housekeeper, Mrs Grose. I fear we must return to Miss Temple’s ghosts.”

Two passengers took seats within earshot. He drew his silver cigarette case from an inner pocket. Then he opened a slim mathematical treatise on the enigma of the Riemann hypothesis and spent the rest of the journey to London in a cloud of meditation.