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

  “Come to dinner tonight,” he said, catching her by surprise. “And bring your doctor friend,” he added quickly when she started shaking her head. “Merripit House. Six o’clock.”

  “I, er, we, have a prior engagement at, at, High Tor Farm this evening.” Good grief she was stammering like a breathless virgin.

  “Tomorrow night, then; I never take no for an answer twice.”

  He picked some pink heath and pressed it into her hand; and as she walked back alone she gave thanks he couldn’t see how smitten she was with the little offering.

  Dr Watson thought it would be a simple matter of locating the bog where Stapleton’s boot had been found but every bog soon started to look like the next one and the one after that, and after ten years of exposure to the elements the lay of the land as he remembered it looked vastly different. After fruitlessly scouring the path between Baskerville Castle and Merripit House he decided to concede defeat. It was late afternoon and he had not yet started out for the old tin mine; he felt the burden of bitter disappointment dragging on him all the way back to the castle.

  High Tor Farm was a sturdy marriage of stone and cob that had stood the test of time. It had a large porch, sash windows and a grey slate roof punctuated by dormer windows. It was symmetrical, balanced and pleasing to the eye - a gift from Sir Henry when the residents of Grimpen hamlet were re-located to accommodate his vast workforce. But the thing that made it a real gem was the garden. On one side of the house was a delightful sunken garden protected from the wind by high walls; behind it was tucked a tidy kitchen garden also walled. On the other side of the house was a small apple and pear orchard. To the rear could be found a sheltered cobble-stoned court yard and beyond that a beautiful wildflower meadow and some paddocks for sheep and horses. The drive to the house was shaded by horse chestnuts that framed the approach from gate to porch.

  Mrs Meredith Mortimer did all the gardening herself - apart from the heavy work - and could name every flower in her garden. The name of each flower was inscribed in beautiful calligraphy along with the date each bloom had been picked and pressed into her little book of pressings. She had filled ten volumes.

  Dr James Mortimer had converted the cellars under the house into a museum of Neolithic skulls. He enjoyed nothing more than digging up bones and was currently excavating the barrow at Long Down. His collection was so vast he had dispensed with shelving and had started arranging his skulls the way he had observed in the catacombs in Montparnasse when he did the Grand Tour with Sir Henry. Whoever had arranged those skulls had been both a scientist and an aesthete, he declared, yes, a genius of the first order.

  He had given up his medical practice when the huge workforce began arriving from all over Devon to transform the Baskerville estate and Sir Henry had asked him to administer solely to the men and their families. It was an arrangement that suited him very well. Sir Henry was a generous employer and it gave him more time to catalogue his collection. One day he would write a book. It would be his magnum opus.

  They sat down to a homely dinner of pea and ham soup, shepherd’s pie, and bread and butter pudding. Their dog, Molly, a golden cocker spaniel, sat under the table and waited for tidbits to drop. Molly had been purchased by the doctor from Ross and Mangles, the dog dealers in London, when he went to deliver his lecture to The Royal Society. It was a fortieth birthday gift for his wife to replace the spaniel they had lost ten years earlier during that terrible business with the gigantic hound. Dr and Mrs Mortimer both suspected their spaniel of being dognapped and fed to the hound, though neither ever spoke of it, and it had taken many years before they could bring themselves to get another dog. Molly was the apple of their eye.

  Dr Watson broached the topic of Sir Henry’s will. Dr Mortimer steered the conversation back to supra orbital crests and maxillary curves. The Countess pressed the point.

  “I cannot rightly say who will inherit,” huffed Dr Mortimer, “since the child is not yet born and may not be a boy even when it is born, and most likely even if it is a boy cannot be next in line since it was not born before the baronet actually died. In other words, someone who does not exist cannot trump someone who is already living. The house is entailed. The title goes with the house. The money goes with the title. It is a considerable fortune but who it goes to is not for me to say. It is all very vexing. When Sir Charles died in 1889 there had been only two claimants: Henry Baskerville and Reverend James Desmond. Neither had produced male heirs. Both are now dead. It was a nuisance the baronet dying like that,” said Dr Mortimer, not unkindly, expressing his frustration. “Lady Baskerville may be thrown out of her own home, along with the unborn child. It is a terrible business, a terrible business. I may be the executor of the will but I am merely a medical man and an amateur archaeologist, not a legal expert on feudal inheritance and royal prerogative. Sir Olwen at Drogo would be able to explain the ins and outs of English law better than I. It is all very vexing.”

  They were half way through dessert when there came a loud and insistent knocking at the door. Since it was not the time for callers, they all paused mid-pudding to see who it might be.

  A young man with a thatch of red hair was ushered in by the housekeeper. It was the groom from Lafter Hall. Something terrible had happened and the doctor was to come at once. He did not know what that something terrible was that had happened but he had been instructed by the master to deliver the message to the doctor.

  Both Dr Watson and Dr Mortimer stood up simultaneously.

  “Which doctor?” they addressed to the groom at the same time.

  Flummoxed, the man looked from one doctor to the other and shrugged. “The master did not say. I was told to deliver the message as stated and to return with the doctor.”

  “We might as well both go,” said Dr Watson.

  “Very well,” agreed Dr Mortimer, feeling totally vexed.

  The Countess immediately put down her spoon and leapt to her feet. “If this something terrible cannot be put into words I wish to know what it is.”

  The two doctors tried to talk her out of it, but she would not be swayed, and while they were providing all the reasons in the world for her not to go, she had already donned her coat and hat and was striding out the door.

  Dr Mortimer took the gig. Dr Watson and the Countess took the Peugeot. It was a cloudless night with no chance of rain. Peering down from the astrological vault was the Dog Star content in his heavenly kennel. The moor seemed at peace and all seemed right with the world. But they knew it wasn’t.

  A gibbous moon was straddling the gables of Lafter Hall as they came down the long drive. Lights could be seen burning in several of the windows, including a high window set in the apex of one of the tall gables. John Barrymore, looking anxious, met them at the door. He did not stand on ceremony but immediately hurried them up the stairs and along a low-beamed corridor to an oddly shaped door set in a cruck frame. He pushed open the door and bade them enter without explaining himself. The room turned out to be a spacious and elegant bathroom with a fireplace, dressing-table, chaise longue and a claw-foot bath taking pride of place in the centre. The fire in the grate had burnt itself out and on the mantle two stubby candles were flickering in pools of their own wax. As soon as they stepped inside they could see what that terrible something was.

  Eliza Barrymore was floating in the bath - dead.

  “You may wish to examine the body,” said Barrymore, devoid of emotion. “I will be waiting down stairs in the parlour. I will have some strong brandy standing by.”

  The Countess rushed straight to the naked body while the two men hung back; perhaps embarrassed that a young woman was present or perhaps thankful that she was.

  Eliza Barrymore was not a particularly attractive woman in life and in death looked even less so. To describe her as a lardy-cake would be a compliment. She was fat. Her complexion, though pale, could never be described as porcelain; it was more like putty, though at the moment it looked like dirty clay. Dozens of moles and fre
ckles dotted the pudgy arms dangling either side of the bath and the hands were badly calloused. Red spider veins marred the jowly face and the enormous sagging mono-bosom. And though the legs were submerged, the thick purple veins that clotted them were clearly visible. Frizzled, up-pinned hair, poking above the waterline, resembled a scraggly bird’s nest. Her eyes were closed. Oddly, she looked at peace. Hers had not been a violent end.

  Beside the bath, on a round table, were an empty glass and two empty vials of pills.

  While the Countess checked the temperature of the dead body, the bath water, and looked for any contusions, the two men examined the glass and the vials.

  “Scopolamine and aspirin,” said Dr Mortimer. “I prescribed both of these myself - a harmless sedative and a harmless headache powder but fatal if taken in a combined dose all at once.” He gave a sorry sigh as he replaced the vials. “For all her energetic garrulousness, Eliza Barrymore was an insecure woman who suffered poor health. She compensated for her insecurities by prattling incessantly and over-eating, and was subsequently tormented by indigestion that encouraged her hypochondria.”

  Dr Watson smelled the empty glass. “I think you can add brandy to the fatal dose. Was she fond of a tipple?”

  “No,” said Dr Mortimer. “She rarely touched alcohol. She was crazy for cocoa and consumed it at every possible opportunity.”

  “Perhaps she wanted to mask the unpalatable mix of powders. She must have filled the glass with brandy before coming upstairs. There’s no brandy bottle anywhere to be seen.”

  “Or perhaps the maid brought it up for her. It would be an easy thing to check.”

  “The temperature of the water is icy,” interrupted the Countess. “The body is stone cold. Her toes look like bleached prunes. She has been here for a considerable time. There are no marks on the body indicating she was strangled or beaten or forced into the bath against her will.”

  The two men looked at each other and nodded sagely. “Suicide,” they said.

  “Not so fast,” contradicted the Countess, thinking that she may have been fooled by the Francis of Assisi act yesterday but today Barrymore was behaving more like a cold-hearted sinner than a warm-hearted saint. “I seem to recall Barrymore looking rather longingly at Lady Baskerville that first night at dinner, and her looking rather longingly back. It seems a fortunate coincidence that he is now a widower and she a widow.”

  “You cannot be serious!” spluttered Dr Mortimer, before glancing at the closed door and lowering his voice. “That is a monstrous slander that I hope you will not repeat outside this room! I am shocked to hear you suggest such a thing! Eliza Barrymore may not have been a great beauty, she may not have been endowed with brains, she may have been nothing more than a servant who came into a modest bequest and managed to lift herself above her station, but she was as honest as the day was long! And John Barrymore was an attentive and devoted husband. He saw her shortcomings and chose to overlook them. He never once belittled or berated her in my presence or the presence of anyone else!”

  The Countess accepted the ticking off for the moment and examined the items on the dressing-table. There were a dozen different perfumes and every type of maquillage money could buy. Insecure indeed – but with good reason perhaps! “Did he ever kiss her hand? Did he ever stroke her cheek? Did he ever smile at her? Did he ever pay her a compliment in your presence or the presence of anyone else?”

  “This is Devon, Countess Volodymyrovna, not the Russian steppe. We do not go in for Tolstoyan displays of affection and dramatic outbursts of Chekhovian emotion.”

  “Only Dostoyevskyan violence,” she responded tartly, “and the steppe is in Ukraine. Let us proceed downstairs to the parlour.”

  Barrymore was waiting for them. Bessie was at his feet, her long nose resting across one boot, offering comfort to her master. Her limpid eyes took the measure of the interlopers.

  “Help yourselves to a brandy, gentlemen,” Barrymore offered, indicating two tumblers and a cut glass decanter on the sideboard. “And some hot cocoa and ginger biscuits for the countess,” he said, gesturing toward a butler’s tray. “I dare say you want to question me about my wife’s suicide. Take a seat, make yourselves comfortable and ask what you must.”

  “You used the word suicide,” began the Countess. “How do you know it was suicide?”

  “It could not be anything else,” he replied guilelessly. “You saw the body. You saw the empty vials. You saw the empty glass. It is the way a woman would choose.”

  “Why would your wife choose to do such a thing?” pursued the Countess.

  Bessie picked up on the prickly intonation and sat up. Soothingly, he stroked the dog and thought for a moment. “My wife was not a happy woman. I believe she never really recovered from the death of her younger brother – chased to death by a gigantic hound. She was a poor sleeper and suffered from nightmares. She often thought she heard dogs in the night and imagined they were coming after her. She was even frightened of gentle Bessie here. She once said it would have been better for her brother to have been hanged for his crimes than to die of fright. I thought she might be alluding to her own nightly terrors. She felt guilty too because it had been her idea to give Sir Henry’s old clothes to her brother to help him escape. She thought she might find peace in Australia but it turned out to be a hostile land that she could not love, despite the fact we prospered in our boarding-house business with lodgings in Maldon, Castlemaine and Bendigo. When she became homesick we sold up and returned to Devon and bought Lafter Hall and I thought that she might finally be content. But she never felt accepted by the gentry hereabouts and she believed the servants looked down their noses at her. Apart from Mrs Mortimer she had no other lady friends. She had been born into service and had no idea of ladylike pursuits. She found consolation in food but it brought her no joy. My wife was not a happy woman.”

  The logs in the fire crackled and the grandfather clock ticked, and that was the only sound in the room for several minutes. Dr Mortimer offered to speak to the servants to verify details and to escape the heavy silence. Dr Watson tried to verify some details of his own after his colleague exited the parlour.

  “No doubt Dr Mortimer will issue a death certificate confirming death by suicide, but before we leave you to mourn in private, can you just clarify some minor details for us. For example, when the countess and I paid a call here yesterday afternoon you said your wife was in Tavistock. What time did your wife return to Lafter Hall?”

  “She returned early this evening. I cannot say exactly when. I was out hunting on the moor. I was trying out a new hammerless gun that I purchased from Purdey and Sons in South Audley Street the last time I went up to London. I had walked further than I intended and had a longer trek home than I would have liked. I was alone except for my darling Bessie. It was the housekeeper who informed me that my wife had returned and was taking a bath. I chose not to disturb my wife in her bath and went out to the stable to check on the new foal. When my wife did not come down to dinner the housekeeper went personally to check and discovered the body. That’s the first I saw of my wife since she left home the morning of the day before. I knew Dr and Mrs Mortimer would be having their own dinner and I did not wish to disturb them. I waited until nine o’clock before dispatching the groom.”

  “Your thoughtfulness in the face of personal tragedy is admirable, Mr Barrymore,” praised the Countess, sounding almost sincere. “You mentioned yesterday that your wife was visiting an old friend in Tavistock. What friend was that?”

  “It was someone she befriended whilst in service. I cannot recall the woman’s name. I don’t believe I was ever introduced or if I was I paid the name no heed. My wife tended to talk a lot about matters that did not interest me and I tended to turn a deaf ear.”

  “You also said your wife was doing some shopping for hats and gloves,” continued the Countess. “Did she come home with many purchases?”

  “I cannot say. We kept separate bedrooms. She would have taken th
e parcels up to her own room. It hardly matters now what she bought. I will probably give the purchases to the housekeeper.”

  “Your housekeeper is a loyal servant?” observed the Countess – it was half question, half statement, sardonically underscored.

  John Barrymore flushed red, pushed up abruptly from his chair and moved to the fireplace, where he rested one hand on the elaborately carved mantle to steady his rising anger. “I may be hard of hearing but I hear what you are getting at Countess Volodymyrovna. And I take umbrage. Yes, umbrage. My housekeeper is a loyal servant but I did not murder my wife and my housekeeper is not an accomplice to any so-called crime. You may twist the facts any way you wish but my wife took her own life and that is all there is to the matter. I wish you to leave so that I may see to the body in the bath and show respect to the dead!”

  “There is absolutely no evidence to suggest foul play and you were extremely insensitive back there,” admonished Dr Watson as he and the Countess were bumping along the moonlit road back to the castle. “And that parting gesture was unseemly and in bad taste - it did not excuse your badgering and it is completely inappropriate for a young lady of good breeding to shake the hand of a widower while offering insincere condolences.”

  “I have never seen a man so unmoved by his wife’s death!”

  “This isn’t the Ukrainian Steppe,” he reminded sternly. “We English prefer to adopt a stiff-upper lip when in mourning.”

  She wondered if he might be alluding to his own period of mourning and decided to change tack before he accused her of being hard-hearted as well unseemly, insensitive and insincere. A woman could not win – either she was hysterical or heartless; simpering or unseemly; boring or badgering. “What about what you said yesterday about him being as guilty as sin?”