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.”