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

“That brings us back to Lafter Hall.”

  Her brain began whirring much too fast. “He must have the dingoes kenneled at Lafter Hall! That is the hard evidence we need!”

  “Oh, think, woman! We both spotted that boy running across the moor during the storm. He had some dogs with him that did not have the gait of fox hounds. My guess is that the dingoes are kept at the old tin mine, the same place that Stapleton kept his gigantic hound.”

  “We need to check the old tin mine!”

  He caught her arm as she turned to race off across the moor. “First, we need to go to Lafter Hall. We need to speak to Barrymore. We need to ascertain when Gaston left the Hall.”

  Lady Laura had already been informed of the death of the French gardener and had suffered terrible cramps in her stomach that sent everyone into a panic. Fortunately, the cramps turned out to be nothing more than phantom contractions, but Dr Mortimer had been summoned to give her a reassuring examination. Dr Watson decided to post a sentry outside her bedroom door. This business was turning nasty. Two footmen, brave and sober fellows, were chosen. Fedir was put in charge of their round-the-clock shifts, much to the chagrin of the butler.

  After a quick bite of lunch and a change of clothes, they set off for Lafter Hall in the Peugeot with the doctor driving.

  Lafter Hall was the quintessential Jacobean pile – red brick, high gables, oodles of leaded windows, jutting bays, and jumbles of chimneystacks. Framing the front entrance was a climbing rose, blowsy blooms all but spent, but in the summer it would have provided a glorious welcome.

  The housekeeper informed them that the mistress was not at home and the master was in the stable. One of the mares was soon to foal and he was checking progress. They assured the housekeeper theirs was not a formal visit or a social call and they did not wish to disturb the household. They headed toward the stable.

  Nowhere was there a more touching farmyard scene than the one they encountered as they entered the stable. A newborn foal was just finding its feet for the first time and John Barrymore was beaming proudly, looking as though he might have sired that foal himself. By his side was an English setter with large liquid eyes and a lovely creamy mottled coat.

  “Hello, there,” he greeted, still beaming proudly.

  They did not shake hands. His hands were slimy and his clothes were splattered with blood and gore from the after-birth. They exchanged a few words about the foal then launched into Gaston’s death without preamble to gauge his reaction. He appeared genuinely shocked but remained in control of his emotions. While he washed his hands in a bucket of water he ordered one of the stable boys to inform the cook to prepare tea and buttered crumpets, and to bring them to the summerhouse.

  “I’m in no fit state to entertain inside the Hall and Mrs Barrymore is in Tavistock until tomorrow. She is staying with an old friend and buying some new hats and gloves for the winter that she cannot seem to find in the stores in Coombe Tracey. You don’t mind if we have afternoon tea in the summerhouse?” he said by way of apology.

  The summerhouse suited them perfectly. Their conversation would be more like an interrogation and they preferred that he not have a sympathetic audience, though the short stroll across the lawn gave Barrymore time to dream up a litany of lies as long as his arm. The octagonal summerhouse was draped with mauve wisteria that had shed its flowers and was currently shaking off its leaves. The English setter sat at her master’s side and licked her paw.

  “What’s the matter, Bessie?” he said. “Have you picked up another hay seed? Give it here.”

  The dog lifted her paw and he poked around between the fringing, feeling for something.

  “Ah, here it is!” he said, extracting something the size of a pin. “And here comes our treat. A little treat for you too, Bessie. You’ve been a darling girl.”

  “This is not a social call, Mr Barrymore,” interrupted the doctor, enunciating each syllable to make sure it was clearly heard. “What time did Gaston de Garonne leave Lafter Hall and what day was it? I would prefer you to be as precise as possible.”

  Barrymore appeared unperturbed by the impertinent tone, or perhaps he did not notice it.

  “Countess, will you do the honours with the teapot. Let me see, it was the night of the thunderstorm. Dinner finished around ten o’clock. My wife went straight up to her bed with indigestion. She likes to lie down following a large meal, despite her acids being in flux. Gaston and I continued to discuss the cost of the knot garden over a brandy. He had been invited to stay the night because of the storm, and my wife had the guest room made up for him expecting that he would take up the offer, but at eleven o’clock - I remember counting the chimes because I thought it might be midnight and was surprised that there were only eleven - he suddenly stood up and said he remembered he had a rendez-vous.”

  John Barrymore paused in his monologue to feed some buttery bits to his dog and to study their incredulous faces. “I was as bemused as you are now.”

  “Who do you think he could have been meeting?” quizzed the doctor skeptically.

  “At that late hour and in that wild weather it could only have been the devil himself.”

  Still affected by the grisly death of the gardener, the doctor was not in the mood for more supernatural piffle about headless horsemen and hairy hands. “Do you own any dingoes?”

  That rattled the proud gentleman farmer right off his bucolic stool.

  “I could lie to you but since this business is a life and death matter involving people I care about, and I take it you have good reason to put the question so bluntly, I will tell you the truth. Yes, I brought two dingo pups, male and female, out with me from Australia. The dingo is an interesting animal, nocturnal and easily agitated by the presence of humans but it is also a born hunter. Dingoes hunt in packs like wolves and usually kill by biting the throat, but unlike wolves they can be tamed. Some farmers back in Australia claim that dingoes maim for the thrill of it and I did once see a mob of sheep with their hind legs torn to pieces, but only two dead sheep in the paddock. I know of no other dog that does that but I think there was strategy to their biting madness. I was hoping to tame them and breed them and use them for hunting but I no longer have them. One morning, several years ago, I found the gate to their kennel open and the pair gone. The bitch was pregnant. I have not seen them since.”

  “You say the gate was open,” pressed the Countess. “Was the latch faulty?”

  “No, it had been deliberately unlatched.”

  “You are familiar with the distinctive wailing howl of dingoes,” she continued, “have you heard anything similar since that time - perhaps on the moor?”

  He looked her directly in the eye. “In case you have not noticed, dear lady, I am almost deaf.”

  While the Countess blushed with shame, he gave his darling Bessie a gentle pat and enquired as to the exact circumstances of Gaston’s death. The ferocity seemed to shock him and it was clear he understood the similarity of the frenzied killing to the attack on the sheep he had just described, but it was the fact the mutilated body was found half a mile from the castle that seemed to disturb him the most.

  “Whoever he went to meet must have killed him,” he muttered, “and that person used the dogs to finish him off. But who would do such a thing? What sort of fiend do we have living among us?”

  “Which way did Monsieur de Garonne go when he left Lafter Hall?” pursued the doctor.

  “It was too dark to see, and the rain was coming down thick and fast, but if he was found by Cleft Tor then he must have been meeting someone by Cleft Tor.”

  “The thing is,” said the Countess, “we don’t believe he was killed at Cleft Tor. We think he was killed elsewhere.”

  “Elsewhere?”

  “Elsewhere,” repeated the doctor a little more volubly, irritated by the fact they were still going round in circles. “Do you have any idea where else elsewhere might be?”

  “The moor is a big place - a world in itself, a law unto itself.” />
  “He is as guilty as sin!” condemned the doctor as soon as they were in the Peugeot and trundling back to the castle.

  “Nonsense! He is a saint. You saw the way he pulled that thorn out of the dog’s paw. Your skeptical nature blinds you to the simple soul of a man like John Barrymore.”

  “It was a hay seed, and you didn’t seriously believe that amateurish Francis of Assisi performance staged for our benefit. I expected choirs of angels to start singing in the shrubbery!”

  “Always trust a man who loves dogs.”

  “Loves dogs! He spirited two dingo pups away from their natural habitat and subjected them to a grueling sea voyage for the purposes of selfish breeding in order to trump his neighbours at next season’s tally-ho! Sir Olwen has probably imported two Russian borzois and Dogger is probably cross-breeding Irish Wolfhounds with Dalmations so that the next master of Baskerville can ‘spot’ his hunting pack despite the moor being mantled in drizzling mist!”

  “Now you’re being utterly ridiculous. Wait! What did you just say?”

  “Mantled in drizzling mist – I was waxing lyrical for the purposes of...”

  “No, no, not that bit. The bit about Dogger. You are brilliant, Dr Watson! Dogger must have stolen those dingoes. Forget Barrymore. Dogger is the only man who could successfully tame and breed dingoes without having his throat ripped out. When we saw that figure running across the moor during the thunderstorm we assumed it was a boy. But Dogger is not much bigger than a twelve year old. Oh, why didn’t I see it before? I am so stupid sometimes!”

  He was tempted to agree with her assessment of herself when something caught his eye. They had been so busy arguing they had failed to see a man on a dog cart travelling at a brisk pace across the uplands almost parallel to the road. He was weaving between the bogs and boulders with a deftness that defied belief. The dog was an English mastiff.

  “Do you see that?” said the doctor. “Look how fast that dog cart is moving.”

  She looked past his shoulder and her blood ran cold when she realized who it was and what the doctor was thinking. “Are you thinking that a dog cart might be a good way of transporting a dead weight across the moor at night?”

  “That is exactly what I am thinking. Do you have any idea who that man is?”

  “I think it might be that ruthless gypsy you mentioned. You can see the bandage around his head and over his ear.”

  “Jago!”

  “I think he might be the how and who.”

  “Now all we need is the where and why. And I think I have the answer. John Barrymore’s stable.”

  “No! You are way off track.”

  “Listen to reason. Gaston has a few brandies too many. He walks into the stable, perhaps looking for his horse, or to get out of the storm, or perhaps he hears something while relieving himself. It’s dark. He doesn’t know the stable is where the dingoes are kept. They are born killers, starving and vicious, perhaps waiting to be fed, perhaps protecting their young; they attack and tear him to pieces. The raging storm drowns out the frenzied noise. Mrs Barrymore sleeps through the whole thing. Mr Barrymore has to cover up the deed. He spreads hay over the incriminating blood and gore. He pays Dogger to move the dingoes to the tin mine. He pays Jago to move the dead body to Cleft Tor using the dog cart. He rumples the bed in the guestroom to make it look as if Gaston has slept the night to fool his wife and the servants. He makes up that story about Gaston going to meet someone to put us off the scent because his wife is not here to confirm or deny it. It makes sense. Admit it. It makes perfect sense!”

  Her head throbbed violently with all the perfect sense it made. “All right! I admit it! It makes sense. It neatly ties up all the facts. It explains Gaston’s violent death without conflicting with the strange goings on at Baskerville Castle. I saw Gaston’s body and immediately jumped to the conclusion that his death was aligned to the deaths of James Desmond, Sir Henry and Beryl Stapleton, probably because I didn’t want to face the horrid fact it might be tied to his preference for the love that dare not speak its name, but I’m relieved it’s not related to the way he was. I’m actually glad that the death that looks like murder is an accident; as for the deaths that look like accidents, well, are they murder or not? I think I’m getting a headache. Do you have one of those new pills that everyone is popping?”

  “Aspirin – I can give you one when we get back.”

  “Sherlock Holmes would have solved this case by now,” sighed the Countess when she and the doctor had finished dinner and were enjoying a cigarette on the terrace prior to calling it a night.

  “We cannot be sure we even have a case to solve.”

  “This sleuthing business is not as easy as it appears. I thought it would come naturally to me. I thought it would be a simple matter of finding clues, eliminating suspects and voila!”

  “Our suspects are eliminating themselves.”

  “At least with Lady Laura under guard there can be no more surprises at breakfast.”

  He felt the contents of his dinner perform a gurgling somersault. “My stomach cannot handle any more surprises at breakfast.”

  “Promise me you will wait for news from Tavistock before accusing John Barrymore of covering up the death of Gaston de Garonne.”

  “Very well,” he promised before changing the subject. “Tell me about your husband.”

  She took a long puff of her cigarette and used the moment to gather her thoughts. “His name was Jack Frost. That wasn’t his real name, of course. He chose it because it was easy to remember. He said that if a man changes his name he needs to have something he can still remember when he is drunk. His real name was Darcy Droitwych. His forebear, a forger, had been transported to Australia among the First Fleet. My husband struck it lucky - he found a huge gold nugget and became a millionaire overnight. My step-aunt had just died, bitten by a tiger snake during a picnic at Hanging Rock, and for the first time in my life I was all alone in a strange land and feeling immensely sorry for myself when he swept into my life and swept me off my feet. He was madly flamboyant and twenty years my senior. We had a fabulous life for three years. Melbourne was a thriving colony and had the sort of optimistic vibrancy that all new cities have. We shared our time between a mansion south of the Yarra and a country house east of the Yarra. One day he fell off his horse and became a cripple. He was always larger than life and not the sort of man who could live confined to a wheelchair. He shot himself on his forty-third birthday. At twenty- three years of age I was a widow and once again all alone in the world.”

  It was a balmy autumn night, windless and still. A harvest moon was sailing in and out of rivers of cloud. The beautiful garden of Gaston de Garonne was limned in threads of gold. It was all so terribly sad and wretchedly romantic. Gently, the doctor caught her arm as she turned to go back into the library, her eyes blurred with tears. Emboldened by the fact her late husband had not been such a young buck after all, he was about to kiss her when a chorus of wailing howls caused them both to flinch as if struck.

  “It’s just the dingoes in the old tin mine,” he said softly.

  “Yes, I know, but they sound so…”

  9

  The Big Dead Dog

  Lady Laura requested to speak to her two guests in her bedroom straight after they had finished their breakfast. She had been thinking about the plague of letters and the spate of deaths. She could think of nothing else. “I know you will think me quite mad but I cannot rest easy until I am sure that Jack Stapleton is dead. And the only way to confirm that is to drain the bog where he drowned ten years ago. I charge you with discovering which bog to drain and I do not care if you choose to drain the entire Grimpen Mire in the process. Please instruct the American engineer to cease all other work and to oversee the drainage of the mire at once. Until the bones of Stapleton are found I cannot find peace.”

  She began to weep piteously and they left her to it, knowing that it would take deeds not words to console her tortured soul. As luck would ha
ve it, she had charged them with a task they secretly wished to perform. Dr Watson had initially suspected Jack Stapleton of being behind this baffling business and now he would finally have a chance to confirm his suspicions and to solve the Baskerville curse. The Countess immediately offered to seek out the American engineer and personally inform him of Lady Baskerville’s wishes so that the importance of the task would not be lost on him. In the meantime, the doctor would explore the area where he believed Stapleton disappeared ten years ago so that work could commence without delay. The cook would pack him a picnic lunch so that he could check the old tin mine afterwards. They were due for dinner later that night at High Tor Farm but that was many hours away.

  Roderick Lysterfield was supervising the retrieval of the horse and cart that had gone into the bog on the evening of the last day of September. The body of the man had been retrieved that same night and Roderick had seen to it that the widow had been paid decent compensation, but the horse and cart could not be retrieved without a team of oxen.

  The engineer was standing shirtless, sheened with sweat, by the side of the bog, supervising the men guiding the rope tethered to ten oxen; his muscles bunching and bulging each time he gave a jerk on the rope to steady it. When the Countess’s presence was brought to his attention he moved quickly to locate his shirt so as not to offend her sensibilities.

  “Good morning, Countess Volodymyrovna,” he delivered in throaty syllables as the blood rushed to her face.

  “You know who I am?” Her voice came out sounding kittenish and she kicked herself. She was no demure maiden, but a widow, albeit a young one, foreign, worldly and well-travelled.

  “I make it my business to know whatever is important.”

  There were at least a hundred different coquettish responses to that line but she shook off the demure mantle of vanity before she made a complete ass of herself. She had not sought him out for the purpose of engaging in shameless flirting, nor did she wish to encourage him to think so. She adopted a peremptory tone while informing him of Lady Baskerville’s wishes. He understood the urgency and agreed to get straight to work. She was following the path back to the castle when he caught up to her.