Conversation died until Gregson leant forward again earnestly.
“If you want my opinion, Mr Holmes, this case could still go all wrong. Maria Jessel won’t destroy Mordaunt. Not if it means leaving her child abandoned to a baby farmer.”
Holmes looked a little self-conscious.
“You are quite right, Gregson. I confess I have kept one detail to myself until now. I believe Maria Jessel no longer fears for her little boy.”
“And why might that be, sir?”
“Charles Alfred Jessel died a fortnight ago during a routine epidemic of scarlatina at William Shaw’s nursery school in Yorkshire. Not two years old.”
Gregson stared at him.
“Why did you say nothing when we questioned her?”
“I am a cold-blooded creature, Gregson. Silence suited my purpose.”
“But does she know of her child’s death?”
“I believe she must know. Hence, perhaps, her interest in the spirit world and her grief that Little Charley waits for her where the flowers they loved are in bloom. However, the entry of the child’s death will not yet be in the Somerset House registers. For that reason, she presumably thinks we do not know. That was important to her this evening. She would not wish us to guess the incalculable depth of her hatred for Major James Mordaunt.”
“Neither can ever be free of the other,” I said, “until that other is dead.”
Holmes drew out his watch and glanced at it.
“Let us deal with first things first. What will hang Mordaunt is the discovery of evidence, unless he can destroy it before we find him. And that is why he cannot make a bolt for the Continent yet.”
“Then where, Mr Holmes?”
“My dear Gregson, you may proceed to the docks at Harwich, if you wish. Watson and I must leave you at Abbots Langley.”
“For Bly?” I exclaimed. “In the middle of the night? We have already been there by daylight and seen for ourselves.”
“We have been there and, I fear, not seen for ourselves.”
He closed his eyes, thinking, not sleeping. As we lost speed before our arrival at Abbots Langley, he looked up and pulled his coat into place.
12
In his plain clothes, Inspector Alfred Swain of the Essex Criminal Investigation Department had a quiet and scholarly look. He stood six feet and a couple of inches in the neat tailoring of a charcoal grey suit, with a slight benevolent stoop. He was thin and clean-shaven. His light blue eyes seemed to doubt politely everything he saw. There was an equine intelligence and gentleness in his glance. The sole ornament to his dress was a gold watch-chain which looped across his narrow abdomen from one waistcoat pocket to the other. I recalled that he and Holmes had met before, most recently in the case of the Marquis de Montmorency Turf Frauds. Following certain disagreements with his superintendent, Swain had been banished from Scotland Yard to the fields of Eastern England.
“Mr Holmes, sir!” He shook my friend’s hand in a more cordial manner than Gregson or Lestrade would ever have done. As I was introduced I remembered Holmes’s description of him as the best fellow Scotland Yard ever had. A self-educated man, Swain had read Sir Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology and Tait’s Recent Advances in Physical Science as easily as Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. By dint of early rising on the first day of sale, the young inspector had bought a first edition of Mr Robert Browning’s translation of The Agamemnon of Aeschylus.
Such was our guide to murder! His mild eyes surveyed us.
“A telegram for you, Mr Holmes, which you won’t much like. Neither Major Mordaunt nor anyone who could be him—in any disguise—was seen between Colchester and Harwich on the ferry train.”
So much for a bolt to the Continent! Holmes gave Gregson a smile so sharp that it was hardly a smile at all. Then he turned back again.
“You are mistaken in one thing, Mr Swain. I like it very much. And what of passengers leaving the train here?”
Swain gave an awkward sideways nod of his tall head.
“Major Mordaunt would find it hard to pass in disguise round here. He’s not been seen, not before the ferry train and certainly not since.”
“Then that’s that!” said Gregson irritably. “By playing games, we’ve lost him!”
In his indignation he spoke across Holmes directly to Swain.
“I think not,” said Holmes quietly.
“Then how—”
“One moment.”
Conversation was impossible as the engine of the mail train uttered its long shunting blasts of steam, pulling the jolting sorting-vans towards King’s Lynn.
Instead of replying to Gregson, Holmes turned to Swain and took the inspector’s lamp.
“If you please, Mr Swain.”
Swain let it go. With his grey cloak wrapped round him, Holmes patrolled the edge of the platform, shining the lamp across the dark iron rails to the platform on the far side. He turned to the station-master.
“When was the last train tonight from the far platform?”
“Ten-fifteen, sir. Always the last. After that the gate is locked and the way over the footbridge is closed as well. You don’t want that side, sir!”
“On the contrary,” said Holmes under his breath, “it is the very thing I do want and mean to have.”
He drew his cloak tighter around him, still holding the police lamp. The station-master had just time to cry, “You can’t do that, sir!”
But Holmes had done it. In a swirling leap he was down from the platform onto the iron rails where the mail train had stood. Three strides carried him across the double tracks. One hand at waist height on the opposite paving and a lithe upwards swing bought him, crouching, onto the far platform, breaking every railway by-law on his way. The station-master could only watch as Swain, Gregson and I followed more cautiously. Holmes was staring at a cream-painted wooden wicket-gate that led to the station yard and a darkened road. It would serve well enough to enforce ticket collection among law-abiding passengers. He unwrapped his cloak and handed it to me, took two long-legged strides, and cleared the top bar effortlessly. He landed heels-down on the soft earth beyond.
Presently he called back to us.
“In the dark, no one would see him drop down on this side while the train was stationary. From other sets of footprints—the depth of their impact—this has been a popular escape route from railway premises by those who feel disinclined to buy a ticket.”
Swain was inspecting the wicket-gate.
“You might have saved yourself the trouble, Mr Holmes. Someone kicked this fastening loose after it was locked tonight. Anyone could walk out of here.”
“Very well, Mr Swain, then we will begin our advance upon Bly, if you please. Let us take a roundabout route. If Major Mordant is on foot, as he may be, or if he is lying low, we must not alert him. It is almost five miles. With the use of a vehicle, we may still count on getting there first.”
So began our journey in the dark. A black van stood in the lamplight of the cobbled yard outside the country station. Its horses were restless in the chill. A sergeant and six uniformed men of the local division were waiting. A second sergeant and a constable had gone ahead to reconnoitre the gates and approaches of the house. With Holmes, Gregson, Swain and myself, there were twelve in the van. Gregson was of equal rank to Swain. Yet without speaking a word on the subject, Holmes had made the country policeman his second-incommand.