Sherlock Holmes and the Beast of the Stapletons

by James Lovegrove

  “I shall defer to your medical expertise, Doctor. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye, Mr Holmes.”

  The two men cordially parted company, and Holmes wended his way back to Baskerville Hall.

  Chapter Nineteen

  FOUR DAYS WITHOUT GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT, AND ONE NIGHT WITH

  By this point in Holmes’s narrative we had both finished the second of the prophesied three pipes. Tobacco smoke hung in a haze above our heads, like the pall sent up by factory chimneys in a northern industrial town. Holmes helped himself to a fresh wad of shag from the Persian slipper, inviting me to do the same.

  “After the visit to Mrs Lyons and tea with Dr Mortimer, Watson,” said he, “there followed four full days in which I was not at all gainfully employed.”

  “Why ever not?” I asked.

  “The desired criteria were not met.”

  “What were these criteria of yours? Can you say yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “More suspense. I must say, Holmes, you do seem to be relishing the role of storyteller. And, what’s more, you have quite a flair for it.”

  “It is an easy skill to acquire,” he said dismissively. “Any fool can do it – even you.” Then, having gauged my reaction, he laughed. “Come now, Watson. Don’t look so embittered. I spoke in jest. I rate your talents as an author highly, you know that, and it is an esteem I share with countless others. I simply wish, at times, that the literary success you enjoy with my cases did not come at the expense of the proper scientific explication of my methodology.”

  Pipe relit, and me somewhat mollified, Holmes resumed his account.

  The sole pursuit in which he could engage himself over those four otherwise idle days, he said, was the ditch digging at the Grimpen Mire; and in this he was an onlooker only. He followed the progress of the earthworks with keen interest. Damerell had been correct in every regard when it came to the number of eager artisans who showed up. The first day, it was a dozen. The second, twice that. On the morning of the third, no fewer than fifty men assembled. From near and far they flocked, spurred by the news that riches were on offer to anyone with callused palms and a labourer’s physique.

  Gradually the main ditch grew, like a brown snake crawling up from the stream’s edge towards the mire. At the same time, the tributary ditches wormed their way down towards it. Grier and Damerell had staked out lengths of twine to show the course and width of each channel, and within these demarcations the diggers hacked away the soft grass and exposed the soft, peaty flesh of the moor.

  Hard though these men toiled, none toiled harder than Grier himself. The man was indefatigable. He was always the first to lift his shovel in the morning and the last to down tools at dusk. He scarcely stopped for lunch, and never to rest.

  By noon on the third day, more or less on schedule, the groundwork was complete. The tributaries forked up from the main channel in a delta shape to their plank-stoppered heads. Each had been dug so that its bed was on a gradient, starting a few inches deep and shelving steadily until it achieved a depth of some two feet at its destination. Likewise the central ditch went from two feet to three at its terminus, the point where it adjoined the bank of the stream.

  Now all that remained to be done was remove the planks that formed dams.

  There was no great surge of water. Rather, a brown trickle seeped through the wall of earth separating each of the tributary ditches from the Grimpen Mire. These flows of muddy water slithered down their courses like melted chocolate, converging in the central ditch and continuing onward. A pool formed at the end of the ditch and slowly spilled its contents into the stream.

  The stream’s limpid tide became polluted by the influx of stagnant mire water. Its level rose and soon it was bursting its bounds and spreading to either side in a greasy flood. The current was strong enough, however, to carry along the bulk of the additional volume all the way to whatever river the stream decanted into.

  A cheer went up from the assembled labourers. Holmes clapped Grier on the back. Damerell permitted himself a nod of satisfaction.

  Gradually, in imperceptible increments, the great Grimpen Mire began to drain.

  Whereas the progress of this enterprise had been smooth and trouble-free, by contrast life at Baskerville Hall was anything but. Sir Henry was a constant brooding presence at the house, alternately jumpy and despondent. He was drinking a lot, seldom seen without a glass in his hand. Now and then he would patrol the house’s interior, looking out from each window like a prowling cat. He snapped at Harry over the smallest infraction, then would feel moved to apologise to the child in fulsome terms and beg his forgiveness. His eyebrows were perpetually knotted.

  Both Holmes and Grier tried to jolly him out of his disagreeable mood, and when that failed they resorted to stern admonition, which was no more effective. Sir Henry’s response was usually a sullen silence, or else just a sigh.

  Harry, infected by his father’s volatility, became awkward. Holmes was witness to one or two tantrums of quite spectacular intensity. To watch the lad scream and shout, you might have thought he was invoking the wrath of God upon the world. One evening at bedtime, he could not find a beloved picture book and became so enraged that he started ripping the pages out of other volumes whose only fault was not being the one he desired. Grier was on hand to resolve the crisis. He began singing to the boy in a deep, rich baritone. A lilting lullaby tripped from his lips, and Harry became entranced, so much so that when the song was done he demanded another, and then another. “I bought me a cat, the cat pleased me,” Grier crooned, and, “Swing low, sweet chariot,” and “Hush, little baby, don’t say a word.” Soon Harry fell into a contented doze, and Grier scooped him up and carried him to his room, saying to Holmes and Sir Henry, “My mother used to sing like that to me when I couldn’t sleep. Worked like a charm every time.”

  That was the evening of the day after the day that the mire started to drain. It was also the first time Holmes returned to Lafter Hall since his initial visit. After dinner, as he was getting ready to depart, he drew Grier aside for a word in private.

  “Make sure Sir Henry gets to bed in good time,” he said.

  “That should not be difficult. The way he’s drinking right now, he is usually close to passing out by ten.”

  “Encourage him to turn in earlier than that, if you can. And, just as importantly, I want you to make sure all the curtains in the Hall are tightly drawn. Those in Harry’s bedroom most of all.” Sir Henry had taken to sleeping by his son’s side the whole night through, on a camp bed made up next to Harry’s bed.

  “You suspect another manifestation of the moth is imminent?”

  “Yes, but if it does appear, I must ask you to do your utmost to ignore it. Whatever happens, even if it awakens Harry or Sir Henry, let it be.”

  “Why?”

  “Please just take my word on it.”

  “Very well,” said Grier, “but what if the moth should attack? What if it tries to break in through the window this time?”

  “If I am right about it, it shall not,” said Holmes.

  “And if you are wrong?”

  “I seldom am, but should that unlikely event come to pass, then feel free to repel the thing with all the force you can muster.”

  Confident that Sir Henry and Harry were safe in Grier’s care, Holmes strode out across the moonlit moor, heading into the teeth of a turbulent wind. It was around ten o’clock when he knocked up Frankland’s household.

  “I was wondering if you were ever going to come back, Mr Holmes,” said Frankland.

  “Tonight is an auspicious night for telescopy,” Holmes said.

  “But it isn’t the stars you’ll be looking at, is it?”

  “No. What I am hoping to see is somewhat more terrestrial, albeit not necessarily earthbound.”

  “The moth, you mean? Is that what you’re after?”

  “Well guessed.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s the only reason
I can come up with as to why you might want the use of a telescope. You are moth-spotting. I have looked for it myself on a couple of occasions, out of curiosity more than anything.”

  “But not seen it, presumably.”

  “Nor much wanted to,” said Frankland. “By the sound of it, it is fearsome to behold.”

  The two men ascended to the roof. Frankland fussed over the telescope for a while until he had it calibrated exactly as he wanted. Then he stepped back and invited Holmes to take command of the instrument.

  “Mind if I don’t stay up here with you?” Frankland said. “It’s a bit brisk for me tonight. These days the wind knifes into my old bones in a way it never used to.”

  “Not at all. This is business I am perfectly happy to conduct on my own.” Holmes did not add that in fact he preferred it that way. He knew he could concentrate better on his task without Frankland hovering at his shoulder.

  Frankland left, and Holmes re-familiarised himself with the telescope’s controls, then swivelled it on its mount until it was pointing towards Baskerville Hall. This done, there was nothing to do but sit and wait.

  He waited an hour. He waited two hours. The wind moaned across the top of Lafter Hall, shivering loose roof tiles. The moon hung high. Three hours passed. The stars performed their slow, inexorable cartwheel across the heavens. Four hours into his vigil, midnight now just a memory, Holmes was beginning to lose heart. Had he erred? Was the theory he had formulated about the monster moth misbegotten? Surely not! He lit a cigarette to sharpen his nerves, fastened the earflaps of his cap more tightly and huddled down deeper inside his Inverness cape.

  The cigarette was almost down to the stub when the moth appeared.

  Holmes hastily ground out the cigarette beneath his toe and sprang to his feet. The creature had arisen from the horizon and was flitting in the direction of Baskerville Hall. He put his eye to the telescope’s eyepiece. Operating the device with as much care and precision as his night-chilled fingers would allow, he tracked the moth’s bouncing, erratic journey through the air. He adjusted the focus wheel, bringing the object of his scrutiny into yet sharper relief.

  Then he smiled a broad smile and uttered a low chuckle.

  “I have you, you rank absurdity,” said he under his breath. “Oh, I have you now.”

  Chapter Twenty

  THE BODY IN THE BOG

  The next day there was a significant development.

  Holmes, having risen late after his nocturnal adventures, was on his way over to the Grimpen Mire. The sun shone and there was a breath of warmth in the air that felt like the last, sweet exhalation of summer before autumn set in for good. His mood was buoyant. He even whistled a tune, a Paganini serenata.

  Earlier, upon waking, he had found a note from Grier. It had been slipped under the door of his bedroom.

  Mr Scarecrow

  I heard the moth last night. It fluttered noisily about the house, tapping at walls and windows. Per your instructions, I ignored it. This was no mean feat but I am pleased to say it was accomplished.

  Neither Sir Henry nor Harry was disturbed from his sleep by the insidious creature this time around. It persisted for perhaps twenty minutes before relenting and departing.

  I am off to the Grimpen Mire now and may see you there later.

  Yours,

  Mr Chimneysweep

  All of this was to Holmes’s satisfaction, aside from Grier’s insistent use of the nicknames Harry had given the two of them. As far as my friend was concerned, matters were coming nicely to a head. The pieces of the puzzle were slotting into place, and perhaps even that very day he would be able to draw his investigation to a tidy conclusion.

  Halfway to the mire, he met a man hurrying towards him from the opposite direction. It was one of Grier’s ditch diggers. The labourers had been sent home two days earlier, their services no longer required and their pockets lined with Sir Henry’s money. A few, however, were staying on of their own volition, unpaid, curious to see how the drainage was proceeding and what it might reveal. This fellow was one of those, and he greeted Holmes with a frantic wave.

  “Mr Grier sent me to catch you. Them’s found something at the mire, sir.”

  “What kind of something?” Holmes asked.

  “A body, sir. A dead body.”

  Holmes quickened his pace, the ditch digger falling in step beside him. Within quarter of an hour they were approaching the mire. Among the half-dozen or so men gathered beside the morass, there was a palpable sense of excitement. Voices rose in a hubbub, and fingers pointed.

  “Holmes,” said Grier, “I believe we have an answer to the question of whether Jack Stapleton is dead or not.”

  Holmes stepped up to the edge of the mire. What had formerly been a level expanse of boggy earth was now a series of irregular-shaped depressions with a couple of narrow causeways meandering in between. The causeways represented the strips of dry land that had at one time been the only safe means of crossing the mire. Near one of these, some twenty yards from where Holmes stood, a brown form lay half-exposed by the receding waters. It was unmistakably a corpse.

  “I have forbidden anyone from approaching it until you got here,” Grier said. “I know you would like to be the first to examine the body and would prefer the scene undisturbed.”

  “And here was I thinking you could go no higher in my estimation, Grier.”

  Holmes set off along the nearest of the causeways and in no time had arrived at a spot as close to the body as he could get without entering the mire. The thing was lying supine, and at this distance, some six or seven yards away, Holmes could discern that it had once been a male adult. The clothing was masculine, as was the physique. However, he would need to get closer still in order to determine more than that.

  He called to Grier to bring a rope. He lashed one end of it around his waist and invited the American to take a firm hold of the other.

  “You are my lifeline,” he said. “I am trusting you to pull me out, should I get into difficulties.”

  “Have no fear,” said Grier, planting his feet and wrapping the rope tightly around his massive fists.

  Holmes slipped off his boots and socks, and rolled up his trouser legs above the knee. Then, with some trepidation, he slid down the bank of the causeway, entering what remained of the mire. The mud came up to his ankles and rose gradually further as he waded out until, by the time he reached the body, it was at the top of his shins. Each step was an elaborate pantomime, demanding that he lift his foot fully clear of the mud’s sticky grasp before setting it down again. More than once he trod in a patch of greater than usual softness and depth, which threw him off-balance and nearly caused him to plunge headlong.

  He made it nonetheless, and bent down to commence a careful study of the half-submerged cadaver.

  The body was in a state of only partial putrefaction, the mud having gone some way to preserving it from full decay. The stench emanating from it was unpleasant but tolerable, not much worse than the stench of the mud itself. With one hand Holmes wiped the film of slime off its head. The withered lips and sunken eyelids thus revealed put him in mind of an Egyptian mummy. For all that, the facial features were clearly distinguishable. The jaw was lean, the nose prim, but there was also a hint of Hugo Baskerville about the physiognomy, not least the beetling forehead. The hair, meanwhile, was thin and flaxen.

  “Well?” said Grier from the causeway.

  Holmes straightened up. “I have not a shred of doubt in my mind that these are the mortal remains of Jack Stapleton.”

  He returned to the causeway. Grier extended a hand and helped him up. They walked back to the mire’s edge, where Holmes cleaned off his lower legs with handfuls of grass and put his boots and socks back on.

  “So where does that leave us?” Grier asked. “Our principal suspect lies yonder, incapable of doing anything but decomposing.”

  “Stapleton was never my principal suspect,” Holmes said. “I always thought the chances of him having c
heated death were slim. I consented to Sir Henry’s plan of draining the mire largely because I believed it would be good for Sir Henry. That it has eliminated Stapleton from our enquiries is merely a beneficial side-effect. After all, if Stapleton had still been alive, why did he wait five long years to get his revenge? Why not effect it sooner?”

  “Because it took him that long to find, or breed, his giant moth?”

  “Ah, with regard to the moth, Grier, I have made a—”

  Holmes did not get to finish the sentence, for at that moment a young lad came running up. He was red-faced and short of breath.

  “Which of you gents be Mr ’Olmes?” he panted.

  “That would be I.”

  “I’ve a message from Dr Mortimer, sir. ’E begs you to come quick. ’E sent me with a wagonette to Baskerville ’All to fetch you. Sir ’Enry Baskerville told me you was ’ere.”

  “Where is Mortimer?”

  “Coombe Tracey, sir. But we must ’urry.”

  Holmes and Grier exchanged glances. The lad was already making off across the moor towards Baskerville Hall. The two men went after him.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  THE DEVILRY OF IT ALL

  The wagonette rumbled into Coombe Tracey with Holmes and the driver in the front seat and Grier and the boy sitting facing each other, knee to knee, in the back.

  Holmes told me that he was feeling an odd sense of fatalism as the carriage pulled up outside the boarding house that Mrs Laura Lyons called home. This was a journey he had been expecting to make that day regardless. Dr Mortimer’s summons had merely hastened the inevitable. Holmes did not know why Mortimer had called him there and why the urgency, although he had a strong and troubling suspicion.

  The landlady with the lazy eye was overwrought, near hysterical. “In my ’ouse!” she moaned as Holmes and Grier entered the main hallway. “A suicide! A suicide! What will people think? I shall never get over it.”