The Redacted Sherlock Holmes - Volume 4 Page 12

  Unavailing were the attempts of both Holmes and me to convince Sir Henry that it had never been Holmes’s intention for the hound to get anywhere near him. “Why did you not ambush Stapleton at the outhouse where he had kept the dog that night?” he reiterated in another letter. “Good for the box-office, bad for the client,” was his curt response to our assurances that Holmes’s plans had been thrown off course by a bank of fog descending at a time and at a place which meant that we had not been able to bring the beast down long before it got to him.

  It was only after long years of discussion that a draft could be agreed which reflected the events of 1889 but which gave sufficient exposure to the shortcomings perceived by Sir Henry of Holmes’s investigation. Even then, the final draft had to be agreed with a firm of lawyers appointed by Sir Henry and, in the negotiations that ensued, the possibility of taking legal action against Holmes for his conduct in the case was actively considered.

  The draft, which became the published version, stopped with Dr Mortimer and Sir Henry visiting Holmes and me in Baker Street before setting off on their voyage. By agreement it did not hint at the only very partial success of the cruise in arresting the steep and seemingly irreversible decline in Sir Henry’s inner well-being, to which I have referred. The book also contained no explanation for the long gap between the events and publication and was bereft of any sort of direct acknowledgement of the roles of Mortimer and Sir Henry in the book.

  “So what can a member of the Baskerville family want with me now after all these years?” asked Holmes with a sigh. “Surely after a full score of years has passed since the events themselves, and eight years since final publication of your novel containing the contents that Sir Henry agreed to, there cannot be further matters to discuss, however profound our differences of opinion are on the way I handled the case. I confess the endangerment of my client, over which I had little control, is a blot on my record. But I killed the hound, I rescued Sir Henry, and if Stapleton was not apprehended and hanged, it was only because he lost his life in his attempt to escape. None of the copious correspondence you receive from readers of your books has ever criticised my handling of the Baskerville case even though, somewhat unusually for you, Watson, your account stays closely to the facts.”

  “That was at the insistence of Sir Henry,” I replied, “I offered to change all names, locations, and many of the story details, if that helped him but he said, ‘I want the unvarnished facts to speak for themselves. People should know what they are dealing with when they put their affairs into the hands of Mr Sherlock Holmes.’ But you are right to say that no outsider has ever criticised the handling of the case, although I was quoting your exact words when I have you say that the danger to which you exposed Sir Henry was a reproach to your handling of the case.”

  At half past seven, the buttons opened the door of Holmes’s flat to Peers Baskerville.

  I knew from my correspondence with Sir Henry Baskerville that his son was by now nineteen years old. Despite his youth, the tall, strongly built young man before us - predominately Anglo-Saxon in looks, though with hazelnut brown eyes and hair as befitted his partially Spanish descent - still conveyed an air of confidence as he sat down in the chair to which Holmes normally directed his clients.

  “Good evening, Mr Holmes, and to you too, Dr Watson,” he said. “I can recognise who is who from the pictures in your books, Dr Watson. I have come to discuss the great Devon mystery with you.”

  “What is there to discuss?” asked Holmes with a wearied air. “Sir Henry has you as a son and heir, Stapleton is dead, and the hound hounds your family no more.”

  “Mr Holmes, although you are right to say that Sir Henry has me as his heir, we are by no means convinced the mystery is truly solved or that Stapleton is dead. There have been a number of recent events that have caused us to have severe doubts on this point. For one thing, a horde of wraith-like Spanish-speaking gypsies have recently occupied Merripit House where Stapleton used to live.”

  “My dear Mr Baskerville, an over-suggestible mind may see false connections between the appearances of any number of people and events. How likely is it that Stapleton would return to Dartmoor even if he had escaped the clutches of the Grimpen Mire mud, which I have no reason to believe to be the case? And surely, if he wanted to disguise himself, an ability to speak Spanish would be the one thing he would take pains to conceal.”

  “Mr Holmes, it was you yourself who spotted the family resemblance between Stapleton and the original Hugo Baskerville.”

  “I did not say that I myself was suggestible. I merely pointed out that other people are prone to jump to unlikely conclusions because they are suggestible.”

  There was a pause before Peers Baskerville said anything else.

  “I have something more material than that.”

  “And what is that?” asked Holmes, sitting bolt upright.

  “Sir Henry continues to give his old clothes to the poor. Last week a shepherd was found dead at the bottom of one of the great granite cliffs that fill Dartmoor and he was wearing clothes which had previously been worn by Sir Henry. It was I who found the body as I took a walk on the moor. His body was untouched but was surrounded by blood which had poured from a wound to his head.”

  “Anything else?” asked Holmes, although my tautened senses were already telling me what was coming next.

  “Mr Holmes, beside the body was the footprint of a gigantic hound.”

  Although my faculties had aged since 1889, I could not suppress a shiver of terror at the memories that Mr Baskerville aroused from their slumber.

  “So what did you do?”

  “I called on Dr Mortimer’s surgery, as the nearest physician. He was away but his assistant, Dr Michaels, was kind enough to accompany me back to the moor. Michaels pronounced Garside, the shepherd, dead from a fall.”

  “And...” ejaculated Holmes, who had started to pace the room as was his wont in his moments of greatest agitation, “did you not draw the Doctor’s attention to the footprint?”

  “The distance from the body to Dr Mortimer’s house at the village of Grimpen had taken well over an hour to cover and by the time Dr Michaels and I were back at the body, over three hours had elapsed. In that time there had been a violent squall and all markings around the body - the mark of where Garside had landed when he fell, my own footprints, and the hound’s footprint - were much more indistinct than when I saw them. Dr Michaels agreed that the death bore many disquieting similarities to the death of Selden as described by Dr Watson, but on the evidence he saw, he was unable to be definitive about the print of a hound that I had observed.”

  “And have there been any other signs of a hound being loose on the moor?”

  “The moor is a large and wild place and there is always something supernatural about it: strange phenomena, unusual flora and fauna, sudden fogs, lights and sounds.”

  “And what do the local people say?”

  “The Dartmoor people are not given to talking freely, but the beast which was the subject of Dr Watson’s book is by no means the first fantastical creature to have been visited on the locals.”

  “And how has Sir Henry reacted to this?”

  “As I have indicated, my father’s mood is unpredictable at all times. Sometimes he is the vigourous figure Dr Watson portrays in the early chapters of his novel. At other times, we are all relieved when he takes to his bed as it is difficult to see a man, still only in his mid-forties, in a fit of nervous tension with his hands trembling and his mood out of control. He is leading an increasingly withdrawn life and takes less and less of a role in running the estate. Indeed, because of the clothing, when I saw the body from a distance, I thought it was my father’s body as his state of mind can be precarious, as is the case with so many people who live on the moor, and he often talks about his own death. Since we told him about the discovery of Gar
side’s body and the attendant observations that I made, his moods have grown darker still. If he is not sedated in bed, he runs wailing through the house, irrespective of the hour of the day or night.”

  Holmes grimaced at these disclosures.

  “So Mr Baskerville,” he finally asked. “What is it you want me to do? You will only have heard the events of 1889 through what your father and others on Dartmoor have told you and what you have read in Dr Watson’s account of events. You will know that twenty years ago, Watson accompanied your father to Baskerville Hall, and that I came down to Dartmoor, and spent some time living on the moor. Watson relates in his version of events that he has never seen a man run as I did on the night the hound was on the trail of your father. I am sure you will understand that many of the things I was capable of doing in 1889, I am no longer capable of doing in 1909.”

  “Next Friday, there will be an inquest into Garside’s mysterious death. In spite of Dr Watson’s book on the subject, there is widespread scepticism in Devon about whether the description he gives of the events from twenty years ago is accurate. The original inquest into my great-uncle’s death ascribed it to natural causes. No inquest was held into Selden’s death as it was clear his death was due to a fall and there was no other mark on the body. There are even those who maintain that the beast never existed.”

  I made to interrupt, but Peers Baskerville continued.

  “Many local people, Mr Holmes, have pointed to your comments about how Dr Watson romanticises and embellishes events in his stories. I want a witness who can give a vivid description of the chase across Dartmoor and of the diabolical hound. It would be too much of a strain on my father’s nerves to ask him to do this. Therefore, I was hoping I could persuade either you or Dr Watson to speak at the inquest to substantiate my concerns. I want to ensure that a verdict of unlawful killing rather than death by misadventure or suicide is brought in, so that the local police are required to conduct a proper investigation. If you and Dr Watson could conduct your own investigation into the death of Garside, that would be even better.”

  “I have my own day in court on Friday,” said Holmes. “Two cases, the nature of which I cannot disclose to you, are due to have hearings on that day, so I regret I cannot come to Devon. In any case, is this not a matter for the police?”

  “You will recall, Mr Holmes, no local officer was involved with the investigation. The only policeman at the scene was Inspector Lestrade, who has since died. As the closure of events of twenty years ago was entirely in the care of you two gentlemen and Lestrade, you and Dr Watson are the only people who could take the witness stand.”

  “Was no police report of any sort ever drafted on events?”

  “As you are aware, Mr Holmes, the hound was the only thing that definitively died on that night on the moor and no charges were ever pressed for the slaying of it. The man you identified as the criminal was Stapleton but no trace was ever found of him. His widow, Beryl Stapleton, declined to ask for a missing person’s enquiry as she feared that if he were declared dead, the Costa Rican authorities would look to her to return public money that her husband was alleged to have purloined from there. As long as Stapleton’s whereabouts were unknown, she continued to have use of it. Thus, the only report of the events on Dartmoor twenty years ago is from the pen of Dr Watson, whom you have repeatedly described as an unreliable witness.”

  Holmes paused and, again, I knew what was coming next.

  “Watson, could your practice spare you for a day or two?”

  I confess to a feeling of reluctance to leave London for Devon for however short a period when I had declined to support my wife’s efforts at her mother’s house, but I nevertheless consented to be on the night train to Devon on Thursday night and to testify at Exeter the next morning.

  Holmes turned to Baskerville. “Are you returning to Exeter on the night train tonight?”

  “I had intended to spend the night in London and return tomorrow. I will ask my coach driver to find suitable accommodation for me at one of the hotels.”

  “So did you hire a coach for the day?”

  “Yes, we use the firm Nickley’s every time we are in London: as you will imagine, my father has had to visit many nerve specialists here over the years for the different treatments he has had to undergo.”

  Baskerville was visibly relieved by the outcome of our meeting and shook our hands warmly before leaving us. I had fully expected Holmes to want to follow Baskerville, but he sat disconsolately back in his chair and blew smoke rings.

  “There is no point in my trying to follow a four-wheeler either on foot or in a cab,” he said, as ever reading my thoughts. “In any case, we have no evidence that young Baskerville is being dogged by a pursuer here in London, although misfortune seems to haunt his family at every step.”

  “I had better get back to Queen Square,” I said. “I will need to arrange for my neighbour to look after my practice and to advise my wife of what I am planning.”

  Holmes and I had dinner on Thursday evening before I went to Paddington.

  “This is a most mysterious affair,” my friend opined. “When Dr Mortimer brought us the original Baskerville case, there were issues that I was able to substantiate fairly quickly. Stapleton’s dark episode as the headmaster of a private school; his elaborate and easily penetrable masquerade of posing as a man who lived with his sister, although she looked and spoke nothing like him; the spate of unsolved crimes at large houses in Devonshire - all these I was able to investigate before I went down to Devon. Here, we have nothing other than what Peers Baskerville has said. He alone found the shepherd’s body on the moor and he alone made the observations that harked back to the hound.”

  “So you do not believe that a hound is at loose on the moor again?”

  “The death of this shepherd, Garside, in a manner uncannily like the death of Selden is real enough, although there are obvious uncertainties in Peers Baskerville’s account. If we were to conduct an investigation, we would also want to examine this family of Spanish gypsies, as well as seeing what other neighbours the Baskervilles now have. A lot may have changed in the twenty years since 1889. It would be of immeasurable value to me if you could spend a few days down in Devon to find out what you can.”

  “That is what I thought when I asked my neighbour to take on my practice until Friday of next week. My wife has telegrammed to say that her mother is improving, but that she cannot return until the middle of next week at the earliest. I have already asked Peers Baskerville if I could stay at Baskerville Hall until then and he has referred the request to his father, who has kindly assented.”

  As I stood up to leave, Holmes embraced me warmly. “I knew,” he said, “you would not let me down at this hour. Have you your revolver with you?”

  “For a case like this, I would not be without it.”

  “I fear that your precaution is wise. And rest assured, a telegram day or night will bring me to your side as fast as transport will allow.”

  II. My Day in Court

  The next morning saw me arrive at Exeter station and a carriage took me to the courthouse, where Peers Baskerville and Dr Mortimer were waiting. The twenty years since our last meeting had not been kind to Dr Mortimer. His slim figure had gone, along with most of his hair. I am not sure I would have recognised him but for his nervous manner, his earnest voice, and his habit of rolling his own cigarettes with striking dexterity. I was also introduced to Dr Michaels, his assistant - a vigorous man in his late twenties - who was with them.

  The ill fortune that seemed to dog the Baskerville clan ensured there was a large audience in the courthouse.

  Peers Baskerville was questioned first as finder of the body. Gasps of disbelief rippled through the spectators when he testified to seeing the print of a hound by the body of Garside. These were small compared to the wave of shock when the submission by Dr M
ichaels failed to provide clear backing to Baskerville’s testimony. I noted that Michaels was at pains to point out that, while he could not confirm what Peers Baskerville had testified, he did not dispute the possibility that it might be true.

  When it was my turn on the witness stand, I took care not to make any comments on the testimony of Michaels and Baskerville.

  I confined my remarks to confirming that the hound of 1889 had been real, of unnatural size and strength, and that there was no reason to doubt either that the sight of it had killed Sir Charles Baskerville, or that it had chased the escaped prisoner, Selden, over a cliff.

  “To what extent,” asked the coroner, “was your work embellished to titillate the public?”

  “None at all,” I answered. “At the insistence of Sir Henry Baskerville, I let the facts speak for themselves.”

  “Your friend, Mr Holmes, regularly expresses the view that you romanticise his works. What have you to say to that?”

  “I can only repeat that, while in some of my works I change details to protect identities, or to make it difficult for people to copy some of the criminal acts I describe, there is no case where I stuck closer to the events than this one. The absence of any human deaths that night meant that there was nothing actionable against any living party, and so no legal process needed to be brought against anyone which would have substantiated the verisimilitude of my account.”

  “And the dog were real?”

  “I would refer you to my previous remarks.”

  The inquest brought in an open verdict though as I left the court I heard a local journalist comment that he was not sure whether the open verdict was on Garside’s death or on my reputation as a chronicler.