“It is my business to know better,” Holmes remarked airily with a wave of his cigar. “One or two servants at the Bear-garden Club, to which he belonged, knew him better. Before his brother’s death in India, the major was a most unlucky gambler. One man, in particular, also recalled him as an habitué of certain establishments where none of us would care to be seen. There was a whisper of a subpoena to summon him to the trial of Mrs Mary Jefferies during the white-slave scandals stirred up by W. T. Stead and the Pall Mall Gazette some years ago. Fortunately for him, that came to nothing. He had covered his tracks. Even so, he soon exhausted a younger son’s inheritance. In consequence, his pretended indifference to Bly masked a determination to get every penny from the estate.”
Gregson managed to look both sceptical and uneasy.
“That’s a new one on me, Mr Holmes. All his wealth was a put-up job?”
“The fashionable world—and the money-lenders—must be made to believe he could afford his losses. So they did. They thought him nothing but a rich fool. In truth, his inheritance was so emaciated that he acted as a criminal receiver to his former batman. That batman, Peter Quint, had become his valet after being discharged from the Army. But it was not sentiment that kept them together. Unhappily, Quint committed murder in the course of the Five Stones robbery for which Mordaunt was to act as receiver. They were both parties to the crime. Mordaunt could not withdraw, for if Quint was caught he promised to drag down Mordaunt with him.”
“But what of France,” I protested, “and the property there?”
“According to information gathered in Belgravia by our young friends, Mordaunt was seldom absent from Eaton Place. I have established that the house he lives in was never owned by him. There was no property in France. He was there briefly, because it was safer to change stolen gold into respectable bank-notes and bonds in Paris than in London. So long as he appeared as an Englishman of substance, he could do it. It must be he. A ruffian like Quint could never have crossed the doorstep of Rothschilds or the Crédit Lyonnais.”
The black chimneys of North London had fallen behind us and the lamps of villages were a pin-point scattering in the dark. Gregson sat back with a sigh.
“I still say, Mr Holmes, you will need more than tales of servants from the Beargarden Club or the likes of Mrs Jefferies and her young ladies.”
My friend smiled at him sympathetically.
“There was more than one document in the Court of Chancery, for those prepared to dig a little. They related to actions pending against James Mordaunt for substantial sums. Gambling debts may not be recoverable at law. Unpaid rents in Belgravia are another matter. Happily for our man, his brother Colonel Mordaunt then died in India. James Mordaunt became trustee to the estate and guardian to the two children. Miles could not inherit until he was twenty-one—eleven years more Meanwhile, as if by magic, Chancery actions were withdrawn and bills were paid. The guardian of Bly avoided ruin by the skin of his teeth.”
“Eleven years in which to pilfer the estate!” I said.
“Eleven years in which to remove a delicate child from this world to the next. Otherwise the embezzlements must come to light. Mordaunt would inherit the estate in his own right if Miles should die before him. Ironically, a few tiny diphtheritic bacteria made all his scheming unnecessary.”
Gregson shook his head.
“If there was eleven years to do the deed, Mr Holmes, he seems to have been in a bit of a hurry to get it finished.”
“No, Gregson. I should say he had been planning unhurriedly for a year or two. It was the behaviour of Miles at King Alfred’s school that shook him. The boy’s stories of the Five Stones robbery and a murder. How many people had Miles told the story to? How long before someone who heard the tale put Peter Quint’s name to the facts—and Quint’s name involved his master? There must be no more stories. The boy must never leave Bly for school again. Hence Mordaunt’s eccentric preference for having him taught at home by his sister’s governess.”
We roared through a deep cutting between fields.
“So Mordaunt sought out Miss Temple?” I asked sceptically.
Holmes chuckled.
“My dear Watson, murderers are opportunists far more often than they are planners. He needed a governess for little Flora. Why not one who was emotionally frail and naturally compliant? That was why he rejected so many. With Victoria Temple, he saw at once what might be done. He interviewed no other candidate afterwards. Though she refused at first, he paid highly for her services two months later.”
“I suppose you can be sure of that, can you, Mr Holmes?” Gregson asked cautiously.
“Two weeks ago, I visited Appleford’s Scholastic Agency, by whom Miss Temple was sent. I explained that Major Mordaunt had recommended them. Could they offer any other young lady whom the major had chosen to interview after Miss Temple’s first refusal?”
“And did they?”
“Not at first. They insisted the matter was sensitive and confidential. However, they checked their lists. Then they were quite ready to tell me that Major Mordaunt had not interviewed any other candidate during the two months between Miss Temple’s first refusal and her acceptance of the post at an unusually high salary. The major had rejected the offer of a dozen candidates for interview in the meantime.”
Tobias Gregson and I stared at each other as the iron bogey-wheels of the railway coach rattled over the points of a country junction. The inspector sat forward and said earnestly,
“In a nutshell then, there could be no doubt in the children’s minds that Maria Jessel was real—if a ghost can be real—because she was truly Miss Jessel at a convenient distance. Mrs Grose never saw the so-called ghost of Quint. But she identified Quint from Miss Temple’s description of someone else disguised as him. In the little boy’s mind, if the first vision was real, how could the second not be?”
“In a nutshell, if you insist,” Holmes said sympathetically, “James Mordaunt is no fool. His cunning in the arts of camouflage and disguise was no doubt sharpened by war against the Afghan tribes. But it was his knowledge of human hopes and fears that helped him most. All that he did at Bly was certainly done with skill and subtlety. Miles believed the truth his sister and his governess told him. Both had seen Miss Jessel. One had every reason to believe she had seen Peter Quint. More important than that, Miles believed what he wanted to be true, that his hero still haunted Bly in some form or other. His real father was nothing to him. The boy could dispense with both his parents rather than lose Quint. Do not underestimate, Gregson, his passionate longing for these stories of the apparitions to be true.”
“Once upon a time all the world waited for King Arthur to come again,” Gregson said with a laugh. “This must be a small matter compared to that.”
Holmes smiled at him.
“Very neat!”
“A further point,” I told Gregson. “Mrs Grose tells us that the man Quint resembled his master sufficiently in his height and his girth for him to steal Major Mordaunt’s clothes when he went to the village inn. According to Mrs Grose, there was also a hair-piece that Quint wore from vanity. It was not listed among items at the supposed scene of his death, though he had been wearing it at the inn—no more than two hundred yards away. I understand it has never been seen since. It argues, of course, that he did not die at the place where his body was found.”
“And Miss Temple, gentlemen?” Gregson inquired. “Which was she to be? The mad governess who put the boy to death by suffocation or in some accident upon the lake?”
Holmes shrugged
“My dear Gregson, you must not step into a trap. A fall from the ghostly tower perhaps, precipitated by a vision of the beckoning dead. Or Miles ‘spooning’ on the water with his infatuated governess, a boating accident at the weir or the sluices of the haunted lake. The drowned lovers lifted from the Middle Deep in one another’s arms. None of it impossible. But Major Mordaunt would not plan such catastrophes. He need only wait for an opportunity to present itself.”