The Baskerville Curse (Watson & the Countess Book 1) Read online

  Contents

  1 The Second Last Day

  2 The Last Day

  3 The Last Night

  4 The Long Night

  5 The Morning Night

  6 A Dark and Stormy Night

  7 The Digs in the Night

  8 The Day of the Devil Dingoes

  9 The Big Dead Dog

  10 A Dog of a Day

  11 Death of the Dog Star

  12 The Dog That Jumped Over the Moon

  13 The Day of the Double Funeral

  14 A Sack Full of Trouble

  15 The Dog Cart

  16 Moonlight and Mist

  17 Queenie

  18 The Dogs of Death

  19 The Master of Baskerville

  1

  The Second Last Day

  The large black door glimmered invitingly in the misty glow of a flickering London gaslight as Dr Watson thrust a key into the lock of number 221B Baker Street. The clatter of bone china from the basement kitchen told him Mrs Hudson was already preparing his supper.

  Out of habit, he glanced at the comptoise clock on the landing – it was moments away from half past seven. Taking the risers by two set off a hacking cough that left him wheezing by the time he pushed open the door to the little sitting room at the top of the stairs. The parlour was a haven of sameness when so much else was in flux; quietly humming Auld Lang Syne when everyone else was counting down the days to the turn of the century. If Sherlock were to return this very minute he would feel at home. He would smile wryly at the bullet holes in the wallpaper, nod at the Persian slipper stuffed with shag, sigh at the Stradivarius propped artfully in the corner, and then scowl at the one change that had taken place: sniffing out the lack of noxious fumes imbuing the faded furnishings with ether de Bradley.

  The chime for the half hour echoed up the stairs as the loyal housekeeper arrived with his supper on a tray, grimacing at the gilt-edged invitations lining the mantel and the coal bucket standing empty on the tiled hearth. “I shall fetch up more coal after I wash up the supper things. The coalman made his delivery after Mrs Pordage, the new char, had taken herself off home for the night. The coalman said he couldn’t deliver at the usual time because his lorry broke down on the Euston Road.”

  “No need for it tonight, Mrs H, I shall be leaving in half an hour and I will not expect to return until after midnight. First thing in the morning will do.”

  “And where are we off to on this fine Michaelmas night?”

  She used the royal we. “Belgravia; Lady Fanshawe; an unrolling party.”

  “Mrs Pordage says her nephew supplies bodies for unrolling parties. He gets the corpses from the unconsecrated graveyard at Southwark.”

  “Stuff and nonsense! Grave-robbers have gone the way of whipping boys. Mummification is a serious avenue of scientific study. In fact, I have been thinking for some time of taking myself off to Egypt, partaking of a Nile cruise, and picking up a mummy or two while they are still to be had for a song on the blackmarket.”

  “If you say so,” she sniffed, giving the doorknob a polish with her apron. “That’s a nasty cough you’ve got there. I heard you barking as you mounted the stairs. It might do you good to stay in for once. Mrs Pordage put your slippers by the fire. They should be toasty warm by now. She says you ought to take up smoking again. She says there is nothing like it for clearing out a man’s lungs.”

  “Well, if Mrs Pordage says so…” he delivered dryly, breaking off a crust of cold pork pie. “I promise to give it some thought,” he added when she gave him one of those nanny-knows-best looks, though perhaps the new char was on to something. That bright young surgeon from Guy’s recommended it for improving circulation of the blood and balancing the humours. “Did you remember to air my white tie and tails?”

  “Course I did, and though I am not one for taking umbrage, well, with all your fancy gallivanting, you might consider taking on a valet. By the way, there was a visitor to see you this morning - a foreign lady, well-to-do. I showed her up to the sitting room same as I always did for Mr Holmes. She left without leaving a message. I only knew she had taken herself off when I came upstairs to enquire if she should be wanting a cup of tea.”

  The Belgravia drawing room of Lady Felicity Fanshawe was swarming with shareholders of American Tobacco. He was the only dissenter by the looks of things. Oh, there was one other, poised glamorously in the doorway leading to the music room; dressed a la mode; a svelte brunette draped in a daring, backless, ice-white gown. Svelte. Yes svelte. He liked that word. It had sprung from nowhere and suited her perfectly. She was perfectly svelte. His brain whirred in idle amusement which he likened to skating on a pond in winter. Her daring gown had him imagining her as one of those brave lady pilots, or should that be pilotesses? Their eyes met and he could have sworn she gave him one of those looks – young women were quite shameless these days – but before he had a chance to step up, the gong sounded for the commencement of the unrolling. Mahogany doors were thrown open with ecstatic fanfare and everyone hastened slowly into the adjoining ballroom to snaffle the best seat. Laid out on a catafalque was a mummy draped in bandages. Perfumed candles and Byzantine censers exuding exotic fragrances such as chypre and myrrh served to mask the smell of death, decay and tobacco fumes.

  A noted Egyptologist wearing a white caftan and an expert in cadavers from St Bart’s wearing a white dustcoat hovered over the corpse like sorcerer’s apprentices. He wondered if they would pull a dung beetle out of a nostril for the grand finale. The svelte brunette had managed to snag a seat near the head of the bier. A Circean smile beckoned him toward the vacant seat alongside but as he ploughed through the perfume the vacant chair was claimed by old Lady Jarvis and he failed to snag anything at all.

  The two magicians worked the gawping crowd like a pair of spruikers at Billingsgate fish market as they educated Belgravia’s finest on the art of mummification according to Herodotus. Male or female? Young or old? Third dynasty or tenth? All would soon be revealed!

  His mind drifted to the notion of life after death, the enduring belief of an afterlife, bog bodies preserved in peat, and that urgent missive from Lady Laura Baskerville. Was some fresh horror stirring to life on the moor ten years after the hound from hell was put to rest?

  A frightful odour forced his focus. Elegant hands were fumbling for scented handkerchiefs to mask the nauseating smell coming from the mummy. Bandages continued to unfurl and fall to the floor until the nether regions were exposed. When a male appendage popped up it became glaringly obvious that the ancient Egyptian mummy who was thought to be female at the commencement of proceedings turned out to be neither female nor a mummy; and not even Egyptian. He tried not to think of Mrs Pordage as he gagged on the stench while guests jostled for the door, handkerchiefs over their mouths to avoid sucking back noxious fumes, whetting their appetite on the sad carcass with the shrunken husk along the way.

  “Dr Watson, I presume?”

  What luck! The night was not a total loss! It was the svelte brunette! “I believe we have not had the pleasure of being introduced.”

  “Countess Vavara Volodymyrovna.”

  Bushy brows rocketed north; her name certainly had Slavic verve but the exotic onomatopoeaia did not match the Anglicised patois. Her aristocratic accent was minus the thick nasally intonation that usually accompanies names from the Steppe.

  “Names are an important adjunct to personality,” she observed blithely, noting his over-arching reaction. “That is why I chose to revert to my maiden name upon becoming widowed. It has esprit. Everyone to whom I am introduced displays a similar reaction to your own. Singularly impress
ed is how I define it.”

  His eyes automatically checked for the gold wedding band. Right hand, check, nestled between some impressive sparklers, check, check, check. “Er, yes, indeed, singularly.”

  Talking to her was not like skating on a pond in winter, more like skiing down the steep side of Mont Blanc, free-wheeling and exhilarating; he could almost feel the wind in his hair.

  “Of course, when I say ‘maiden name’ I refer to my step-father.”

  She was clearly heading somewhere while he was skiing in the dark minus flares and a compass. He decided to start steering the conversation in some meaningful direction. “Your step-father was Russian?”

  “Ukrainian.”

  “I believe they are one and the same; everything Ukrainian is Russian.”

  “It is actually the other way around. Take the term Russian Cossack. There is no such thing. The Cossacks came from the zaporizhznya on the banks of the River Dnipr in Ukraine. Likewise the Antaeans, Scythians, Samartians, Cimmerians, Avars and Magyars sprang from the area above the Black Sea, not the Muskovy Marsh. I daresay you would baulk if I asserted that everything Scottish is Irish and everything English is French.” She enunciated as if he might be hard of hearing or slightly retarded. “But I digress. The Count of Odessos - Count Volodya Volodymyr - was unmarried and already fifty when he adopted me. He drowned while crossing the Volga one winter. I was consequently raised by his unmarried sister, Countess Zoya Volodymyrovna. I had numerous private tutors of various nationalities and that is why – as you have probably already noted – I do not speak with a Slavic accent. My step-aunt was an adventurous woman for her time. She enjoyed travelling more than anything and together we travelled almost everywhere. I’ve visited every continent except Antarctica.”

  “And your mother?” he posed in a quasi-interested monotone, picturing her in peasant dress, flowers in her hair, kicking up her heels with some drunken Cossacks on the banks of the Volga where a blind begger strummed a balailaka.

  “I have no memory of her at all. She gave me up without even naming me.”

  This conversation was beginning to go round in circles - a bit like the folk-dance in his head. She was clearly a young woman of considerable vanity who believed that any stranger she bailed up would be interested in her life story the moment she opened her pretty rosebud lips.

  “That is a very unfortunate tale, or perhaps fortunate if you enjoy travelling. Good evening, Countess.” With a polite inclination of the head he turned to go.

  “Irene Adler.”

  He felt like he’d just skied off the side of a mountain and crashed into a ravine. After picking himself up, he whirled back faster than a vodka-fuelled Cossack. “Your mother was Irene Adler?” he tested, and this time he didn’t care whether he appeared retarded or not.

  An affirmative nod and sympathetic smile induced a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, as if that cold pork pie he’d had for his supper had been rancid. “And your father?” he dared, though he had an inkling he wouldn’t like this destination after all and would do better to avoid it. “Your biological father?” he clarified dyspeptically. “Not your step-father – Count Volodymyrovna.”

  “Volodymyr,” she corrected with asperity. “The last two vowels denote the feminine. You disappoint me, Dr Watson. I thought you would have surmised that for yourself by now. I am the daughter of Sherlock Holmes.”

  Of course! Of course! She wasn’t the first to claim kinship! There had been others! Clever charlatans! Kooks and nutters! One had held up the will for months. Another had stalked him all the way to Vienna and then attempted to strangle him at the opera. A third had ended up in the nuthouse after becoming dangerously deluded and gutting a prostitute in Whitechapel, claiming to be the son of Jack the Ripper one day and Sherlock Holmes the next - offering to solve his own sick crime! And yet, and yet, there was something in her manner, in the way she rattled on provocative and proud, and vain too, yes, above all, vain! He let rip a bully-ragging laugh. Several guests turned to look.

  “So what brings the daughter of Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler halfway across the world to the humble home of Lady Felicity Fanshawe on Michaelmas night?”

  His tone bristled facetiousness.

  “You – Dr Watson.”

  “Me?”

  “Six months ago I found myself all alone in the world, an orphan sans famille, and decided I needed to meet the only person who had meant anything to the father I never met.”

  “Really?” he said peevishly.

  She took hold of his two hands in a gesture implying intimacy. “Dear Dr Watson – my father’s comrade-in-arms, his stalwart companion, his closest confidante, his trusty sidekick, his one and only friend - would you agree that is a fair and honest summation?”

  Sweaty hands always feel less cold and clammy nestled in warm, soft, scented palms, but he withdrew them as if she had just announced she had leprosy. “My opinion on the matter of your fanciful summation is pointless and immaterial. I am leaving forthwith and if you attempt to contact me again I shall initiate legal proceedings. Good evening, Countess, with or without the string of vowels!”

  She pursued him out of the ballroom and down the hall like a shuttlecock on a string attached to his coat tails. “You cannot run from destiny. We are connected by history. We are family in all that the word implies.”

  “Go tell that to Mycroft!” he shot back with keen-edged diction. “I am not, repeat not, family! Sherlock and I were never related!”

  “Mycroft is harder to track down. I thought I should start with you.”

  “Oh, really!” he huffed as he hurtled down the curve of cantilevered stairs.

  “I can help you solve the Baskerville curse!”

  Clever minx! His unknown foreign lady! She had visited his sitting room! Perused at leisure the two letters he left carelessly lying on his desk! He whirled round the scagliola column in the entry hall and confronted her head on as she made a brisk but balletic descent. “What do you know of the Baskerville curse?” he posed bluntly in order to expose her prying.

  “I read the correspondence on your desk,” she confessed with disarming candour. “The initial invitation from Lady Laura Baskerville struck me as mildly interesting but the second missive stuck me as terribly urgent. We have no time to lose.”

  “We?”

  “Sleuthing is in my blood. A medical man such as yourself who has embraced the extraordinary theory of the courageous Mr Darwin – I saw the book on your desk - should know that. You cannot solve this fresh curse without my superior brain.”

  Good God! He could actually hear Sherlock in every word that fell from her rosebud lips! “I’ve a good mind to take you to Devon and slip you loose upon the moor on a moonless night mantled in drizzling mist! What I am about to embark upon is no game!”

  “And I’ve a good mind to let you travel alone to Devon so that you can make a fool of yourself with that flowery turn of poesy. You have failed to solve a single case since the so-called ‘death’ of Sherlock – though that is another matter. You used the word game and how apt it was. You will merely play at sleuthing until Fate overtakes you and sucks you down into the great Grimpen Mire called Failure.”

  Another matter! What did she mean by that? Hang on! He was getting side-tracked! “How do you know I haven’t solved a single case? Oh, never mind!” he gurgled, indignation rising up his throat. He hated that she was right, the same way he always secretly hated when Sherlock was right. Sidekick, indeed! For once, just for once, he wanted to be proved right, not wrong! He wanted to see a case through to its conclusion without Sherlock! Above all, he wanted to prove to himself that he could do it!

  His mind was bunged up with unresolved grievances when he caught sight of a reflection in the mirror above the demi-line table that caused him to stop dead. The image that stared back at him was pale and terrified, as if running for its life. Sometime during the past year he had slipped from middle-age into comfortable old slippers, and his life had
slipped into dull predictability. The bold man of action, adventurous and unafraid, had been replaced by a timid old man who played it safe. How many times had Sherlock entreated him pack his bags at the eleventh hour? And how many times had he refused? None! Never! Nix!

  Who was this provocative young woman? Why did she have such a violent effect on his carefully balanced humours? Where did she spring from? What was her true motive in seeking him out? He had always consulted his betters, deferred to those he considered wiser and nobler, but Mycroft was currently out of the country – involved in something of national importance. There was no chance of consulting him. As for Sherlock…well, the less said the better.

  One phrase kept repeating in his head like a gatling gun as the hall porter passed him his evening cloak, silk scarf, top hat and trusty battered cane: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. The door stood open for him to pass through. He could walk out that door and never see her again or he could put her – and himself - to the test.

  “I shall be taking the 8.20 to Devon tomorrow morning. If you are on the platform at Paddington you may accompany me to Baskerville Hall. If not, it was a singular pleasure to meet you. Good evening, Countess Volodymyrovna.”

  He made sure to put an emphasis on the vowels denoting the feminine.

  2

  The Last Day

  Dr Watson hoped he would not live to regret his volte-face, but it was too late now, and besides, he could keep an eye on her in Devon. It was better than leaving her running fast and loose in London blabbing that she was Sherlock’s offspring. No doubt, this latest Baskerville business would be wrapped up by the close of the weekend and he would have a much better idea of her true character. What harm could she possibly do at a country house party in Dartmoor? He could pretend to take her into his confidence and if all went well it would be a feather in his cap for a change. His chest puffed out at the thought then deflated like a pricked balloon. If the svelte creature with the provocative repartee and propensity for startling honesty was who she claimed to be then she was her mother’s daughter as well as her father’s – a femme fatale, an arch enchantress, a diabolical villainess!