The Redacted Sherlock Holmes - Volume 4 Read online

  As I got nearer, an elderly woman in a head-scarf came down the stairs and called to the children in a language that was not English. The younger ones ran into the house, but one, a lass of about seventeen, sat on a boulder by the gatepost.

  “What is your name?” I asked gently, as I saw she was weeping piteously.

  “I am Arianna,” she sobbed, though with an exotic accent still audible, “and I have been told that I should not talk to anybody.”

  I was about to ask her more questions when a bent-backed old man appeared in the doorway of the house and shouted out. The girl disappeared like the children.

  From a distance, I wondered whether the man who now approached me could possibly be Stapleton. He had been, as I remembered, a small, slim, clean-shaven, prim-faced man, flaxen-haired and lean-jawed, between thirty and forty years of age. Even after making every possible allowance for the effect of the passage of twenty years, I could not see Stapleton in this veteran who looked closer to seventy, although he still looked familiar. As I continued to look, the man propped himself up on a stick to straighten out to his full height and thereby removed any doubt. I racked my mind to fathom why I felt I had met the man before and, as I continued to stare, I realised there was a spark of recognition in the old man’s eyes too.

  “What are you seeking here?” he asked.

  It was his accent that gave me the final clue as to who he was. I remembered Stapleton’s wizened retainer called Anthony. Like the woman Stapleton passed off as his sister, Anthony spoke very good English but with a hint of a lisp. And here was Anthony before me now. We stared at one another for a few seconds, and I felt I had nothing to lose in revealing that I recognised him.

  “You are Anthony who fled the country after the uncovering of Stapleton’s plot to kill Sir Henry Baskerville. Holmes thought it was you who fed the hound in Stapleton’s absence.”

  “And you are Doctor John Watson,” he hissed at me. “I thought that girl was enough of a troublemaker, but I now find myself faced with you. I am indeed Anthony who worked for Mr Stapleton, or Mr Baskerville as he called himself when I first met him. I also knew him as Mr Vanderleur.” He stared defiantly back at me.

  “And where is he now?” I asked.

  Anthony turned away and spat before turning back to face me.

  “He is gone from this house these twenty years. I first started to work for his father, Rodger Baskerville, when I was a child in Costa Rica. And I had left the country before the events you describe at the end of your book. Your suggestion that I fled and that my flight was after the discovery of a plot against Sir Henry Baskerville meant that I was forced to stay away from this country for many years after the publication of your book.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I spent my time in South America.”

  “And what is your own version of events as to why you went to South America?” I asked, conscious that I had only taken Holmes’s word for it that Anthony had left Dartmoor after the night of the failed murder attempt on Sir Henry Baskerville as it was not a matter I had been able to verify.

  “Mr Baskerville always said he would go back there as he thought it would be easier to pursue his claim on the Baskerville estate with the British authorities there than here. I went to explore how such a thing might be done. And then Beryl Baskerville sent me a letter saying that there was no chance of making a claim and that there was no reason why I should return.”

  “But you must have known that there were several claimants to the Baskerville estate ahead of your employer.”

  “What would you know about what it is like to work for the same family from boyhood? My father was in the service of the Baskerville family and I was born to it. You know you are hearing a mixture of truths, half-truths and lies, but you don’t know which is which.”

  “And is there a monstrous beast on the moor now?”

  “The beasts are only monstrous if there is someone with a monstrous intent controlling them or adopting their characteristics.”

  “If Stapleton or Vandeleur or Baskerville’s intent was monstrous, why did you help him?”

  “You ask too many questions. History is full of reports of strange animals - animals that exist, animals that don’t exist. And animals where the beast and human are mixed. Then it has an animal’s strength, but a human’s cunning. The stories are centuries old and exist all over the world. Why should now be different and why, here in Dartmoor of all places, should it be different? Animals, people, people with evil intent - they never go away.”

  The more questions I asked, the more menacing and stranger the answers seemed to be. I did not know what to say next and wished Holmes were with me.

  “Why do you think I should answer your questions?” growled Anthony suddenly. “None of the investigations of you or your friend has ever brought anything but destruction here. My jefe and his wife are gone from this house. The Baskervilles are but a shadow of what they were. There is nothing left to discuss with you.”

  And he turned on his heel and went back into the house.

  V. An Encounter with Dr Mortimer

  As I headed back towards Baskerville Hall, I was overtaken by Dr Mortimer. He was sitting in his carriage.

  “I can give you a lift and save you a walk,” he called down.

  I was wearied after the trip to Merripit House and was grateful to avoid the long trek back.

  “Your carriage is one of the few things that has changed in these parts since when I was down here in ’89,” I said.

  “Over the last year or so I have felt the need to slow down. I want to extend the time that I can remain in practice. I accordingly found a more comfortable means of transport than my old dog-cart and took on an assistant,” said Mortimer.

  I thought this was a good opportunity to find out more about comings and goings in this corner of Devon and noted that most of the people seemed unchanged from the time of the original Baskerville adventure.

  “Indeed,” concurred Mortimer, becoming more expansive. “Only Seamus Lyons and my assistant, Dr Michaels, are new and, in the case of Lyons, he is someone who had been in the parish previously.”

  “Had you known him when he first came to Dartmoor?”

  “I moved to Dartmoor when I left Charing Cross Hospital in 1884 and acquired a practice here. Mrs Lyons had already been married and abandoned by the time I arrived.”

  “So where did you hear the story of her abandonment?” I asked.

  “Oh, from her. I am sure your experience of practice will have taught you, Dr Watson, that patients are very willing to impart the most intimate details of their past to their physician. As you may recall, I made her acquaintance when I advanced her a small sum to help her set up her typing business - there are not many other ways in Dartmoor that an educated woman can sustain a living and no one wanted to see her destitute. Sir Charles Baskerville also provided support and I heard the same unhappy story from him.”

  “How much do you know about Seamus Lyons’s first sojourn in Devon?”

  “I was told that he had been an impoverished sketcher who tried to sell his sketches to the few leisure travellers who come to Dartmoor, but that proved unprofitable. But his impact on the young Laura Lyons was instant. She had lost her mother at an early age, and had good reason to find her father a difficult man to live with. I understand that when Seamus Lyons arrived on the scene the attraction between the two was instant. She had only just achieved her majority, but they eloped and then presented themselves to old Frankland as a married couple. He immediately cast her out of his house - not because she had got married, but because Seamus Lyons had failed to obtain his consent - and said he would disinherit her. But in the end, he never took the step of making the will that would have done so.”

  “Is there anyone left who would know Seamus Lyons from his first appearance in Dart
moor?”

  Dr Mortimer gave me a curious look.

  “I am not sure that there is. As I indicated, his first arrival here was before I acquired my practice. Sir Charles Baskerville and Frankland are no more. You may be able to strike an acquaintance with one of the long-established moorland farmers, but I am not sure how much sense you will get out of them on matters that occurred more than twenty-five years ago in social circles about which they will have known very little. In any case, a man with a shaven head and a beard may have looked quite differently all that time ago.”

  I paused to docket this information.

  “And do you know what eventually became of Beryl Stapleton?”

  “She disappeared from Dartmoor about eight years ago - so in 1901 - having led an entirely withdrawn existence. I suspect that her eventual disappearance may not have been unconnected with the final appearance of your book. It would have been hard to live here with everyone knowing of her faked relationship with Stapleton, his bigamous offer of marriage to Laura Lyons, and her involvement in the plot to kill Sir Henry, however unwitting it may have been.”

  “How about Sir Henry?”

  “He wisely kept his distance, as far as I am aware; Frankland and I were the only people of education who might have taken an interest. Frankland tried to bring a case of animal cruelty against her for the coating of the hound with phosphorus, but eventually withdrew it. I felt constricted by my involvement on the Baskerville case and so barely saw her. She must have found it lonely.”

  “So did she make no attempt to resume contact with any of the people who were her neighbours?”

  “Not to my knowledge. As far as I am aware - and, you will understand, I was not in the business of shadowing her every move - she kept herself to herself and then disappeared overnight. Perhaps she went to Spain or South America, where she had originally come from.”

  “It is strange that Sir Henry, so soon after his abortive wooing of Mrs Stapleton, should have married someone of Iberian origin.”

  “A cruise, Dr Watson, is a liberating experience and Miss de Teguise was both attractive and entertaining. In all the difficult times over the last twenty years, it was only when Sir Henry was engaged in wooing Miss de Teguise that the shadow that has mantled him since the night with the hound was lifted. He might have made a full recovery from that if his marriage had not been ended by her untimely death.”

  “So how did she die?”

  “She got blood fever soon after the birth of Peers Baskerville. I was with her at the end. Indeed, I was alone with her when she died, as Sir Henry had to be confined to an asylum in Plymouth at the time - you will appreciate that this is not something that is widely known about.”

  A silence came over us and I decided to break it by asking about Michaels.

  “It must have been hard to get a capable assistant to come down here.”

  “Michaels has said he wants to buy a share of my practice and then buy me out completely when his finances allow. That expectation is one of the reasons why I have been more expansive in my outgoings than was the case twenty years ago, when I had no expectation of being anything other than a life-long sole practitioner.”

  I would have been eager to continue this line of discussion, but we were already back at Baskerville Hall and I went into lunch with much to think about.

  VI. The Screes

  The afternoon remained bright. As we sat at lunch, I told Peers Baskerville of my activities of that morning.

  “And did you not see anyone who looked like Stapleton at the house?” he asked.

  “The people I have mentioned are the only ones I saw,” I repeated. “It would undoubtedly merit a longer observation to see who else is living there, as I suspect there are regular comings and goings in a house that has been appropriated in that way.”

  There was a pause before Baskerville spoke again. “And what are your plans for the afternoon, Doctor?”

  “I was going to ask you if you could show me the site of Garside’s death.”

  “Let us go straight after we have finished eating. It is a fair walk as there is no way for horse-drawn transport to get there.”

  We did as Baskerville suggested and just after the grassy turning to Merripit House, we struck off from the road onto a pebbly path.

  “Do you think your friend Mr Holmes will come down to Devon?” asked Baskerville at length.

  “You will be aware,” I replied cautiously, “that at the time of the events of the hound, Holmes came down to Devon without making me aware of his presence. At the time, I was sharing quarters with Holmes and so we had the closest of relations. Even then I had no inkling that he was here and only discovered his presence by chance. Our contact is now intermittent, and I have no idea of his plans. I am sure that if I put in an urgent summons, he would be with us as swiftly as the train timetables allow, but we have, as yet, nothing tangible. The death of Garside is real, but there was no definite conclusion to the inquest. My trip to Merripit House did not identify anyone who might have been Stapleton there, for all that I found someone with a connection to him. There is no reason at present to summon him, although I cannot rule out that he has made his own way here without telling me.”

  We walked another ten minutes before Baskerville struck off from the path onto apparently untrodden heathland. Ten minutes more and we came to a small patch of woodland with deciduous trees in gold, ochre and green, which created an arbour, in stark contrast to the brushy heather we had traversed so far. The ground was carpeted with fallen leaves which gave off an intoxicating smell. I was pleased to see the trees as a signpost of our route as the landscape was otherwise featureless. The woodland was next to the lip of a bowl in the hillscape surrounded by slopes, screes and, at one point, a sheer drop. As we descended, crows screeched menacingly overhead, and Baskerville said we were close to the place where Garside had fallen.

  “What were you doing here?” I asked, as I looked around at the desolate surroundings. A wind had sprung up and howled eerily through the gaps between the granite boulders that ancient man had piled in random heaps on the moor.

  “I walk widely among the fells on the criss-crossing paths and off them. I simply struck out and followed my feelings,” said Baskerville a little wildly. “My time is never very fully occupied at Baskerville Hall and no one watches my comings and goings.”

  “And where did you find the body?”

  “At the bottom of the cliff over yonder,” said Baskerville. We went over to the precise spot and I looked vertically upwards to the point from which Garside must have fallen. There was no sign of any special event at the spot that Baskerville pointed to - the weather over the previous weeks had seen to that - but the ground at the foot of the cliff was strewn with boulders resting on rough, grey sand which would be consistent with death from a fall and with a dog or some other creature leaving a recognisable trace of their presence.

  I looked around, wishing that Holmes were present to ask an insightful question. “Is this not a strange place for a shepherd to bring sheep?”

  “Sheep wander everywhere here on the moor and, in any case, Garside’s presence at this desolate spot was obviously involuntary. He may have been grazing his sheep up there.” And he pointed up to the lip of the cliff down which the shepherd had fallen.

  “Can we get up there?”

  We had to scramble up grass banks thick with dead heather and stunted gorse bushes before we arrived at the top. Garside had fallen from a narrow tongue of rock that extended out from the grassland behind it. As we got to the top, a heavy shower broke out and the piercing wind made the rain blow straight into our faces. The moor stretched in mottled tussocks of grass as far as the eye could see.

  “Can one tell whether sheep have been grazing here?”

  “Normally by cropped grass and droppings - there are some over there,” sai
d Baskerville, pointing towards a gorse bush. “But there is no knowing that Garside was actually pasturing his flock here - he might have been chased a distance before he fell.”

  There seemed no point staying any longer at this desolate spot and we repaired to Baskerville Hall. I wrote up my notes of events for Holmes and had Perkins take them to Grimpen in time to catch the evening post. I concluded my report with the remark, “I can see no immediate reason for you to come down, but I have never known a case when I am not happier with you at my side.”

  VII. Lunch at Lafter Hall

  The Sunday of the lunch invitation from Laura Lyons dawned bright and surprisingly warm after a Saturday evening of unbroken rainfall. As the sun rose over the boundless moorland, it was hard to imagine that we were in the midst of a county in which I had known nothing but deceit and tragedy. This thought applied not only to the three deaths associated with the plot against Sir Henry Baskerville in 1889 and the matter at hand, but also to the matter I have narrated under the title Silver Blaze. These latter events had led to the death of the horse trainer John Straker and the subsequent barring of Holmes from the turf, following the betting coup involving the disappearance and unexplained reappearance of the favourite for the Wessex Cup, in which my friend had the closest involvement.

  I put these thoughts to one side and decided to make the most of the clement weather by taking a walk in the grounds before breakfast. I met Peers Baskerville, who had had the same idea. Our stroll took us down the famous Yew Avenue, where the autumn brought the familiar sight of huge spiders’ webs spreading from one dark green branch to another in the chill morning air.