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?”