The Redacted Sherlock Holmes - Volume 4 Page 18

  “I hardly think,” retorted his father, “that a lineage which produced Hugo Baskerville and Rodger Baskerville, not to mention the villain who introduced himself as Jack Stapleton, will be defiled by the infusion of some fresh blood, Peers. And my grandchild will also be carrying the lineage of the fair Letizia.”

  “You may pass over your personal wealth to your grandchild, Baskerville,” said Mortimer addressing Sir Henry with another sneer, “but you cannot break the entail of your baronetcy.”

  “I would suggest, Dr Mortimer,” replied Sir Henry disdainfully, “both my son and you will be most reluctant to challenge any change to my will that I choose to make. I have a hold over both of you, and ruin will attend you if you attempt to oppose my changes. And I have two lawyers at hand to make the necessary changes.”

  “Sir Henry,” murmured one of the lawyers, “while we may amend your will as you have requested, and while you may be right to assume that no one will challenge your change, I would nevertheless suggest that your grandchild and the child’s mother will need to be the ward of some named and reputable person even if facilities for living quarters are provided here in Baskerville Hall.”

  “It is certainly right,” said Sir Henry, “that the Baskerville line is under constant threat and will need someone conscientious, loyal and, above all, good-hearted to protect my grandchild in the event of my demise. Dr Watson, would you be able to oblige?”

  “I can confirm, Sir Henry,” broke in Holmes, “that there is no man of my acquaintance who has the qualities you describe in similar abundance as my friend.”

  Not many minutes passed before I had assented to this commission. With remarkable swiftness the documents were signed to formalise the role.

  “I said on my first arrival in Devon that I never knew a Devon man who did not swear by his county,” I commented. “I will now have a greater opportunity to see and enjoy its beauty, as well as responsibility for a new and exciting chapter in the history of the Baskerville line.”

  XII. A Retrospective

  Matters relating to the destiny of the Baskerville estate had just been finally resolved, when a telegram arrived from my wife which said she had brought forward her return to London. Accordingly, Holmes and I hastened to Exeter, and were just in time to catch the three o’clock train to London.

  Neither of us had yet eaten that day and so we went straight to the buffet car. It was only once we had eaten that Holmes lit his pipe and looked out over the darkening countryside.

  “If you choose,” opined my friend, as he drew on his pipe, “to make a record of this second Baskerville case, it will be a story of which you may wish to remind me - like The Yellow Face - should you ever feel that I have become too confident of my powers.”

  He sat back and looked out of the window at the setting sun, a look of melancholy coming over him.

  “I think, Holmes,” I replied loyally, although even I was not entirely convinced by what I said, “your judgement on yourself is too harsh. You alone saw through the reasons for Peers Baskerville’s fall from the carriage, for Sir Henry’s fall from the tower, for the two attacks on Mortimer, and for his unwillingness to press charges. You had done the research to eliminate the presence of the beast and to eliminate Seamus Lyons as well as Dr Michaels from the inquiry. You seem to me to have solved the case as completely as possible and its outcome is a fresh start for Sir Henry, Peers Baskerville and the next member of the ancient Baskerville line.”

  Holmes sat back in his seat. “Peers Baskerville is not the first person with criminal intent who has consulted with me,” he mused. “You will remember Josiah Amberley of the matter you narrated as The Retired Colourman, who consulted me after killing his wife and her lover?”

  “As I recall,” I interjected, “you commented that he had done it so that he could say he had consulted not only the police but even Sherlock Holmes.”

  “In this present case, I think,” replied Holmes, “Peers Baskerville needed not only to have a heightened effect on his father but also to convince a sceptical public that there had been a real hound twenty years ago. The blackmail by Dr Mortimer gave him the need for money and the suicide of Garside gave him the opportunity to use the hound legend. Involving me was the last link in the chain to prey on the nerves of the over-wrought baronet.”

  “Perhaps you could explain your modus operandi in this case?”

  “I have the benefit of coming to all investigations with an open mind as I have learnt that the most refined and horrific crimes can often stem from the most elevated sections of society. Accordingly, suspicion of Peers Baskerville’s motives was never entirely absent, even though it was he who presented the petition. In most of the cases I have had the honour of investigating with you, it has been rare for us to have a finite number of suspects, but here the field of suspects, even assuming anything at all was amiss, really only consisted of Seamus Lyons, Dr Michaels, Peers Baskerville and Dr Mortimer. Once Lyons and Michaels had been eliminated from our enquiries, it was a question of looking at what could be motivating the latter two. It was clear to me from your reports that Dr Mortimer’s financial means had been inexplicably transformed and that an assault on Sir Henry Baskerville, with the way his will had been written, could only really benefit his son.”

  “You make yourself very plain.”

  “When the coachman referred to two smaller hills on the horizon as ‘minor tors’, it recalled to my mind the Theseus legend which has remarkable parallels to the Baskerville case we have just seen. In both cases, a son and heir attempts to unseat his father in a way that does not give rise to a charge of patricide. I fear that neither the Theseus legend nor the Baskerville case just resolved, show humankind in a flattering light.”

  Holmes sat back in his seat and blew smoke rings into the air. His face had a most disconsolate expression, but eventually, perhaps thanks to his pipe, always his closest companion of all, his frown cleared.

  “Perhaps it is as well,” he said, “that we can conclude this adventure as we did the first Baskerville case - with a trip to Covent Garden. My recollection is that then we heard Giacomo Meyerbeer’s The Huguenots and this case has started with Bellini’s I Puritani. My record on cases set in the southwest leaves something to be desired. It is thus perhaps appropriate that the opera being staged tonight in the latest instalment of the Covent Garden Bellini Festival is the Italian composer’s masterpiece about a sleepwalker, La Sonnambula. If we get a cab at Paddington, we should be just in time to catch the rise of the curtain.”

  Also from MX Publishing