“You think that will be sufficient?”
“I am confident enough to suggest that you should consult your invaluable copy of Bradshaw’s Railway Guide. For obvious reasons, the whereabouts of the asylum at Broadmoor is not advertised. It lies near the village of Crowthorne at a little distance from Wokingham. We shall require a morning train from Waterloo. An express, if possible. At Wokingham, we shall easily procure a carriage for the final stage of our journey.”
I had feared from the outset that his curiosity would get the better of him. Mr Douglas had won his point. We were to become ghost-hunters.
2
In the course of our partnership, the case of Victoria Temple was the first to bring Holmes and me to the criminal lunatic asylum of Broadmoor. Even as a medical man, I knew of the place only through legends of raving homicides, cut-throat zealots, baths of blood and giggling mania. Its sufferers were confined within fortress walls. They presumably spent most of their lives in strait-jackets or under other forms of restraint. After this sensational reputation, I was quite astonished by the reality.
Had I stopped to inquire, I should have discovered that the inmates of the infamous “Bedlam” asylum in South London had been transferred to an Italianate palace built on a slope of the downs. It rose among fields and hills some thirty miles southwest of London. The incline of a hill had been incorporated in the grounds so that the inmates looked over the outer walls across a landscape of pastureland, farm buildings and copses.
Holmes had been correct. The Earl of Crome, father of Hereward Douglas and former employer of Miss Temple, had secured our passes to the visiting room. I was a medical man retained on Miss Temple’s behalf and Holmes was my professional colleague. Outside the main gate we left the brougham which had brought us from the railway and were escorted up a driveway lined with laurel and rhododendron. It might have been a nobleman’s estate. We turned a corner and confronted a rather heavy Venetian campanile, colonnades, handsome galleries and elegant windows. Dr Annesley, the Superintendent, waited at the top of the broad steps.
This was no prison. The outer walls and gates were secure but within the building its inmates had the run of broad corridors, a dining-hall and separate day-rooms for men and women. In two well-lit, plainly-furnished lounges, patients might converse, read or pass their time in hobbies. Men who were for the most part elderly sat talking quietly in pairs at little tables. Others were reading, writing or reclining on side seats with their hands thrust into their pockets, staring into space. How strange that some of these veterans had committed the most pitiless and blood-chilling crimes of the age.
Just before we came to the end of the corridor, Annesley paused. We were beyond earshot of the rooms to either side.
“I will suggest one caution, Dr Watson, and I will give you one warning. Whatever Miss Temple refers to or introduces into the conversation you may discuss as freely with her as your professional good sense indicates. But I must ask you not to question her upon such topics as the so-called apparitions or anything that may be contentious, unless she alludes to it first. I believe you are here to determine whether there may have been a miscarriage of justice.”
“I shall do nothing to distress her,” I said. “It would be the worst thing in her own interests and our own. Perhaps you would tell me whether what you have just said is a request or a caution.”
This serious little man frowned as if I had made a joke in bad taste.
“My warning is this. Whatever you may think of her case, Miss Temple is a tragic and unstable young woman.”
“Because she saw ghosts?”
Annesley shook his head.
“Because her relationship with Miles Mordaunt was what a woman’s with a ten-year-old boy should never be. She behaved so unwisely that the child boasted of his power over her.”
“In what way?”
“According to the housekeeper, they created a fiction that Miss Temple was just twenty-one years old. When Miles grew up they were to be married and he would be the master. Such was the difference in their social standing. Already, when the boy took her out in the little boat on the lake at Bly, he talked of ‘spooning’ with her and ‘squiring’ her. Goodness knows where the child got such words from!”
“There was no evidence of vicious conduct?” I asked.
“Evidence? No.”
“Harmless make-believe, I daresay,” said Holmes brusquely.
“So it might have been, Mr Holmes, had she not encouraged it. She played up to him and allowed the boy to treat her like a female subordinate. In consequence she lost all authority over him. Major Mordaunt was plainly unaware of this. Otherwise Miss Temple’s tenure at Bly would have been brief indeed. I merely warn you, Dr Watson, that this is an area of inquiry best left alone. It would not serve you.”
“I am obliged to you for that.”
We faced the closed door of the visiting-room. Its interior was again plainly furnished, a polished table with a small hand-bell upon it, several leather chairs, a tiled fireplace and prints of landscape views. As we entered, a young woman rose from one of the arm-chairs to greet us.
“Miss Victoria Temple,” said Dr Annesley, by way of introduction, “Dr John Watson and Mr Sherlock Holmes.”
I had formed a picture of Victoria Temple, looking much younger and more dainty. No doubt a child’s death and a criminal trial, even the threat of execution on the gallows, had added to her years in reality. She was tall but a little stooped, brown hair in a bun, her complexion worn rather than lined. She seemed a plain country girl. Genteel poverty had left her to perform tasks which fortunate daughters might delegate to servants. There was something unsteady about her, combined with a look of latent physical strength. Her profile, with the broad points of her cheek-bones, was calm but resolute. In the last resort she would outmatch a boy of ten. As for crime, she looked capable of anything—or nothing.
“I shall leave you together,” said Annesley with a pleasant smile. “Perhaps you will take tea before you leave. Meantime, if there is anything you require, you have only to ask.”
I took this to mean that if Miss Temple became distressed or “difficult,” we should remember the little bell on the table. Annesley withdrew, pulling the door but not quite closing it. The young woman sat down.
“It is good of you to come,” she said in the most quiet and reassuring voice I had ever heard. “I am not sure what I can do for you, but whatever it may be, I will try.”
I took the seat opposite her at the table, with Holmes to one side.
“I am here as a medical man, Miss Temple. My colleague, Mr Sherlock Holmes, is a criminal investigator. Our sole purpose is to ensure that justice shall be done you.”
She looked down at the table, then up again.
“I cannot complain of injustice. I have been kindly treated. As for my medical condition, perhaps you hope that I shall deny my visions. I fear I am a little like Joan of Arc and her voices. I cannot deny what I have seen. It would be so much simpler if I could, would it not?”
I shook my head.
“No, Miss Temple. Only the truth will serve us and you must not depart from that, however convenient it might be.”
“But you think me mad? You must, surely?”
Holmes intervened.
“No, madam. If that were so, we should not be here.”
Victoria Temple looked at us, her eyes brighter.
“I am better now, whatever I may have been last year. I was ill, distressed, perhaps mad—I do not know. I am still distressed, beyond anything you can imagine. But I am sane. How can I prove I am not mad? They say you cannot prove the contrary, do they not?”